Chapter 8

“Grampa pissed his pants again,
he don’t give a damn.
Brother Billy has both guns drawn,
he ain’t been right since Viet-Nam.
‘Sweet Home Alabama,’
play that dead band’s song.
Turn those speakers up full-blast,
play it all night long.”
-Warren Zevon “Play It All Night Long“

A potted plant came sailing down the hallway, smashing on the floor of the Greens’ living room. Troy Equals slipped the shoes he’d started to remove back on and hurried down the hall, toward the shouting. If the foliage was suffering, it meant that most of the rest of the breakables in the room had already been eliminated.

The Ultimados were trying to drown out their fight with the sound system they’d hooked up outside, so that any complaints from neighbors would be about that, rather than the sounds of the inside of the house being destroyed. Mander had set up the playlist earlier in the afternoon, and whatever had gone on down the hall had been done to the tune of The Beatles’ Penny Lane. That song had since ended, and Troy was now surveying the damage to the opening guitar of The Who’s 5:15.

“She’s a MOTHERFUCKING CIVILIAN, HELENA!” Julie shouted from the dining room. “What is she going to do to the FUCKING TRIADS? YOGA them to death?”

Helen must have found something that wasn’t broken already, because something shattered with each pause in her reply.

“She’s a FUCKING ... GROWN ... WOMAN! And since you want to bring ranks and such into this, Army Brat First Class, she’s also a fucking citizen of San Finzione! One who came to La Contessa in a crisis and said, ‘I know something I can do to help.’ How was I supposed to ignore her?”

Troy surveyed the room from the end of the darkened hallway before entering. The overhead hallway light had been hit by something hurled down the hall before his arrival. Troy looked back toward the living room, now noticing how much of the debris in the living room had been dining room furniture, and figured it was likely one of the chairs that were in pieces that he’d passed.

Before now, the Greens’ dining room reminded Troy of those mock-up 1950s suburban communities in the desert from old A-Bomb test footage; populated by dummies dressed as happy suburbanites. Kid dummies, being handed invisible ice cream by a dummy ice cream man, businessdummies waving goodbye to their housedummies; frozen in the middle of their sunny suburban day, and oblivious to the countdown booming from loudspeakers.

The image he got now was from the aftermath of those videos. Debris strewn all about, missing only men in gas masks and business suits walking around with crackling Geiger counters, and thinking they were protected while horrible, other effects that science wouldn’t learn about for decades began slowly taking place inside their bodies.

In the middle of the wreckage stood Julie Equals and Contessa Helena de San Finzione, both holding fragments of plates as if deciding whether to throw them or use the sharp edges to cut a bitch. Neither had seen him in the hallway yet, and Troy was still watching.

Helen wasn’t a petite woman, only a few inches shorter than Julie, with a build a shade more athletic than Julie’s curvier one, though her breasts were still large enough to have been the source of Troy’s Tit Man-hood; and it was only during their fights like this, when they were shouting in each other’s faces and Julie took the effort to try to loom over her, that he really took notice of the two women who’d played the biggest roles in his life’s differences. He listened, waiting for a sufficiently-long lull to step in, rather than interrupt and get two dish-pieces hurled at him. Julie continued.

“Susan ALWAYS wants to help! She’s a helpful person! But the woman has PROBLEMS, Helena! Some of the ones you have, too, but more! She has...” Julie caught herself. “It’s nothing to worry about most of the time, but Susan has some very real issues. There’s no telling what could happen to her in a shootout or a brawl, but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be anything good! And what if she gets hurt? They’ll take her to...” Julie stopped and took a deep breath and ended it. “It’s like with me and Troy and Deathwater Pits, all right? There’s places Susan can’t go.”

“That’s why I sent her with two people with proven track records in saving Maria and my lives! Yes, Mander looks like the giant dude Indiana Jones always has to fight; if I didn’t know him, do you think I’d have brought him into your home? Susan was great at the crime scene, she’ll be able to handle it.”

“This isn’t the same as taking her to a crime scene, surrounded by fifty cops and Ramirez, you sent her on a FUCKING Ultimados OP! And I REMEMBER the quality of guys you used to bring home, Helena!”

“Yeah, your taste in men has always sucked really bad, Helen.” Troy said from the doorway, stepping in with what he hoped was a disarming smile.

The two women stopped and turned to Troy. They simultaneously dropped the sharp dish fragments they’d been holding, causing them to break into tinier pieces. Julie stomped toward him.

“Troy, do you know what she did?”

“Capitan Ortega told me. And Mander and Velasquez went with her?”

Helen nodded and stomped up to join them.

“Yes. She wanted to help. I told her she could help us all by staying safe here. But, like someone told me earlier, I’m not going to keep you guys under house arrest all week.”

“Then what?” Julie turned to her again. “She asked you what it was like to get stabbed and nearly die and you recommended she try it?”

Helen’s response to that was to sucker punch the first girl she ever loved in the stomach.

“Felt about like that, bitch!” Helen shouted as Julie doubled over onto her knees. Julie looked up and saw that Helen’s crotch was unguarded, and was about to nail her with a fist right in the cunt when Troy grabbed it and dropped to his knees to look Julie in the eye.

“I just got you back, Mistress.” Troy said softly, putting his hand on the back of her neck and gently guiding both their heads together until they touched. Helen could still hear him; he’d been making no effort for her not to hear. “And I won’t have the strength to do it again without some of that barbecue that I’ve been smelling since I was a block from home and a nap.”

He took hold of her hands and kissed her forehead.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen to anyone; but I see Helen’s point: It’s Susan. She was going to try to help in some way. Helen gets that, too. Remember what Susan said before we went to the room? She doesn’t want to be the princess locked in the tower. Just like Princess Mesmera wouldn’t tolerate it. That’s a third of the reason I didn’t suggest that you go away with her.”

While they spoke, Helen found where her cigarettes had gotten to in the struggle. She fished one out of the crumpled pack, found it was broken, pulled out another, and put it in her mouth. She looked about for her lighter for a moment, couldn’t find it, and went into the kitchen.

“But what’s she going to do, Master?” Julie whispered back, calming down. Helen fiddled with something out of sight in the kitchen. The stove clicked on a moment later. “We’ve taught her how to Do What We Do, and she’s been doing great, but she’s never had to COUNT on it, Troy.” Helen returned from the kitchen with a lit cigarette. Julie gestured with her right shoulder, because Troy’s back was to Helen. Julie seemed to be almost deflating as she looked into her best friend’s eyes. “Like she did ... that one time it didn’t work...”

Helen stopped at that. Her other hand crept up to the scar on her neck while Julie continued.

“You’ve both gotten me thinking about other ways What We Do doesn’t work. Here’s one that she forgot from our time in Europe: They’ve got to understand us. If we ran into someone who didn’t know English, French, or Greek, Helena had to do the talking. I could only get across what I could infer from similar languages. Triads are Chinese, aren’t they? What if the guys they send don’t know English? She...” Julie gestured to Helen again. “Could just tell them to drop their guns in Cantonese or Mandarin ... She’ll take one look at them and know the right fucking regional dialect to use! That’s probably WHY her thing is languages: So Helena can command anyone and everyone!”

Helen finally spoke.

“Velasquez and Mander speak a language everyone understands. I know you’d like to believe otherwise, Troy, but all too often, it’s the only one people will listen to.”

Troy turned to her with a look that told Helen that she wasn’t helping.

“I said I saw your point, Helen; I didn’t say you were right. The woman has administrative skills, and it looks like you had a little office setup here before it all got smashed. You could have just asked her to be your secretary while all this is going on.”

“She’s not Moneypenny, Troilus.” Helen replied, taking a couple of careful steps closer. “She was pretty perceptive before learning The Thing, she’d have seen that for what it was right away; an effort to give her something to keep her busy and safely out of the way. She would have told me to fuck off, I would have deserved it, and then she would have gone home mad and started thinking of ways she could contribute substantively. I tried telling her that you’d never go for it, too. That would factor into her thinking, and she would have concluded that she’s a big girl and she’ll just have to find a way to help without our fucking permission. Then we’re in the ‘daughter sneaks out and goes to an older kids’ boy/girl party with no parents’ episode of some wacky sitcom.”’