Chapter 2

“I call you on the telephone,
my voice too rough with cigarettes.
I sometimes feel I should just go home,
but I’m dealing with a memory that never forgets.
I love to hear you say my name,
especially when you say ‘yes.’
I got your body right now on my mind,
but I’ve drunk myself blind to the sound of old T-Rex.”
-The Who, “You Better, You Bet“

“Hey, Girl.” Troy Equals said into the phone.

“Hey, Boy.” Julie Equals replied. “Everything going ok?”

“Yeah, it’s...” Other voices and the sounds of medical equipment came over Troy’s end, forcing him out of Contessa Helena de San Finzione’s bedroom and into the 4 AM air of her balcony. “Sorry, Mistress. It’s crowded in there at the moment. Nothing bad; just, you know she wants drugs, and with her history and tolerance, Dr. Maisson and the anesthesiologist were wary of how much would be enough, but not too much.”

Julie smiled on her end and stroked Susan Bailey’s hair as she lay next to her on the suite’s bed. Troy didn’t know a lot about medicine, but that sounded like Math to Julie, and she often called him her Math Boy for a reason. Knowing him, he’d probably helped them work the numbers or something.

“You can’t help her with What We Do?” She asked him.

“We both agree that it’s too risky. In a delivery room, we’d have a closed environment; we could control the room and make them forget that I’d been commanding her to feel no pain. In her bedroom at the castle, there are too many people going in and out to risk someone leaving with questions in their head. Then we’ve got our friends who know; like Maria and Colleen, in the crowd with everyone else coming and going, to consider. I don’t want to accidentally make Generalissimo Ramirez or Jeanne forget San Finzione’s worst-kept state secret.”

“That’s got to be a special kind of Hell for you.” Julie said back to her best friend. Because Helen hadn’t been as discrete with the ability as the others had, there were whispers that La Contessa was some kind of supernatural creature with the ability to control minds. The fact that she’d appeared in the film “San Finzione Shakedown” earlier in the year, before her pregnancy started showing; where she’d pretended to have that power, caused most people to laugh the idea off along with her. One vice that Helen did not possess was the inability to laugh at herself.

Troy, on the other hand, feared the world learning about their ability, and Helen knew how he felt about it too much to allow it to happen. Almost a year ago, an enemy of Helen’s had learned the truth about her power and dragged the Equals and Susan into their private war. She’d prevented him from revealing her secret to the world, but her relationship with Troy & Julie was exposed to the public.

Helen had been able to control the story so that the world only knew that Julie was her lifelong friend and a talented artist who had La Contessa’s patronage. Because Troy was still wary of gaining any fame whatsoever, the father’s identity had been kept out of the press. A handful of male celebrities were suspected of being the potential father, and they were happy to let the media continue to speculate.

Not being able to help Helen more than “any ordinary father could” frustrated him. Troy was a helpful and empathetic person by nature, and little more bothered him than a situation where he had the ability to help, but for one reason or another, couldn’t. It was a trait he shared with Susan, and it had created a connection between them that Julie loved seeing.

“How’s Susan doing, Sunflower?” Troy asked her.

“Good. She’s next to me and in trance. I’m sharing the story about the day after our first time.”

Troy thought in silence for a moment. He and Julie had been children when they learned the secret, and they taught Helen in their early teens. Susan was a grown woman when they taught her a year and a half ago and, for many reasons, teaching her had been an entirely different experience than teaching Helen.

“Guess she’ll learn what we mean by ‘problems no one who can’t do this can relate to.’” He mused.

“Like having a husband who still sort of lives in fear that the world will find out he’s on good enough terms with his first girlfriend to knock her up?”

“You’d punch my arm if I said something like that. You’re too far away yet.” Troy replied, wistfully. He’d been needed most in San Finzione the past couple months and hadn’t gotten to see much of his best friend and the permanent third member of their marriage.

His missing of them was cut short by a scream inside the bedroom. Although it wasn’t something that they discussed; he, Julie, and Helen all knew about Susan’s paralyzing fear of hospitals that she still wasn’t ready to talk about. Because of her past, it wasn’t difficult for them to imagine reasons why a formerly-abused woman might fear hospitals; Helen, in her royal capricious whim, decided upon a home birth at the castle.

“And that was a contraction.” Troy said, checking his watch. “Nine minutes, I’d better get back in there. Love both of you.”

“If Susan could answer, she’d also say that she loves you.” They ended the call.

Julie turned back to Susan and began tracing spirals on her body.

“Troy says he loves you.” Julie whispered to her. Susan sighed. “Speaking of which, let’s get back to that.”

While using the bathroom, locked inside with her phone, Julie Andrews pulled up a number that she hadn’t called in years. She took a deep breath, then pressed it. It took a couple of seconds before she heard the click indicating that the call was going international to Europe.

The first sound that Julie heard from the other side of the world was the sound of fire touching tobacco and cigarette paper, then being sucked into a soft breath. This was followed by a shout, not into the phone, but to someone in the immediate vicinity of whomever had just answered.

“It’s a fucking routine hostage situation! We’re a tourist destination; if you do something here, you get the world’s attention. So, some asshole tries to pull something like this every couple months! If Santori can’t handle a simple negotiation, tell the Ultimados ‘Weapons Hard until I get there, that is an order from LA CONTESSA, not the Generalissimo’ and have Ernst prep the chopper! Until he’s ready to go, fuck all of you!”

A door slammed on the other end of the phone, and Contessa Helena de San Finzione leaned against it and took a drag of her cigarette before putting the phone up to her ear.

“Is everything all right?” Helena asked into the phone.

“Yeah, I think.” Julie said after a little pause. “If this is a bad time...”

Helen cut her off.

“Nah, this one SAYS he’s got a bomb, but I can see in his eyes that he’s bluffing. Everyone’s safe as long as my Generalissimo doesn’t do something stupid and just lets him read his sick love letter to me or Jodie Foster or whoever without turning things into a bullet festival before I get there. What’s going on?”

Julie searched her mind for the right way to tell her “You know the boy you’ve never stopped carrying a torch for? The one you’d probably abandon a kingdom and run to right now if he only asked? Yeah, that one. Well, I fucked him last night, just blew him before calling, too. What should I do now???”

“Ok,” She said, trying to find it. “You know how sometimes, we command a guy to do something, and he turns out to be really good at it, and you can really feel something for this one...”

Helen interrupted.

“But you can never be sure how it would’ve gone if you hadn’t been able to do The Thing to him and let him approach you like a regular girl. So, how much of it was really him and how much was you making him? And do you risk telling him our secret, then making him forget again, to find out? And if he wouldn’t have, then you’ve got to give him a memory of a whole new night where he didn’t have sex with you, because you feel bad now? Or you forgot to ask if he had a family who’d miss him before the evening started; so now, there’s a bunch of people you have to go give memories of not having sat up worrying all night?”

Despite their personal issues, Troy, Julie, and Helen had made a vow years ago that because the ability to control minds brought with it problems and complications that someone who isn’t able to do it wouldn’t be able to understand; no matter what else was going on between them, if one of them needed to talk, the others would always answer. And everything else could go fuck itself. The scenarios she’d described had been the most common over the years. Given how they parted, Helen concluded that there had to be another reason that Julie would choose to call her over Troy.

“Not really. I’m pretty sure it was mostly him, and he knew what I could do.”

Helen coughed out her exhale before answering, having figured out where Julie was going.

“Julie, there is exactly one ‘him’ in the world who knows what you can do, and we both know who he is.”

Julie raised her voice, then lowered it so Troy wouldn’t hear through the closed door from the bedroom if he’d come back yet.

“Yes, and that’s who it was! We were drunk, we were playing ‘What’s Changed...”

Helen cut her off again with a laugh.

“I’d say something REALLY BIG has changed, hasn’t it? And I know just how that can happen.”

“We didn’t plan it, Helena. It just happened.”

“Hey, hey, Sunflower.” Helena replied. “I’m past that. I’ve got a fucking castle and servants now, what do I care, right? You and Troy belong together. Everyone has said it. I’m sorry the last time that I said it, I shouted it at you, but that never stopped it from being the fucking truth. Does anyone know yet?”

“Yeah.” Julie admitted after a few sheepish seconds. “I don’t know if Mom walked in on us doing it or saw the bottles and us sleeping naked, but they already know.”

“I figured you were in the Medinas’ upstairs bathroom from that extra reverb that Propappou’s choice of bathroom tile gave everyone over the phone when they called from in there with the door closed. Maybe you two were just loud enough to hear across the yard.” Helena replied with a little smile.

“Hmm ... maybe.” Julie mused. “I remember getting a couple of good shows from you when he left the blinds in his room open.”

“It was me who opened those blinds every time, Julie. Because I knew you’d be watching.”

“Yeah, Helena, but I was watching you, not Troy!”

Helen laughed even harder at that.

“Yeah, keep telling yourself that, Mistress. No, Julie. Last night was neither a drunken mistake, nor a mind control mistake. Last night was the fucking destiny that’s been beating you two over the heads since before either of your parents even fucked. Why do you think that long after I gave up trying to tell you that it was About Fucking Time you two did it; I’d still drop the odd ‘Hey, you know that Troy guy? Betcha I could talk him into a threesome.’ Yes, I said it to Troy when I could convince him to take the rare ‘But it’s my Name Day, Troilus; and I want you to be high with me today’ hit or nip of something. So, when he gave a “Wait, WHAT?’ answer, I could always claim to be ‘just high, Master, now come take a hit.’”

“Mmm...” Julie responded dreamily, but with a tone of understanding. “Coulda been any day of the week in Europe, then. I see. You’d usually jump me right after the question.”

Helen took a drag of her cigarette before replying.

“It was to preserve the look on your face, Julie. That half-second of ‘Hmm,’ where you actually thought about it, before giving me yet another fucking ‘Eww.’ I was cutting you off with my tongue before you got to that look, because I always hated that look, but I loved the one that’d come right before it, where you’d almost consider it.”

Julie winced a bit at that. “Eww” HAD been her typical response whenever Helena, or anyone else, brought up the subject of her and Troy getting together. It was also Troy’s as well, not because either of them found the other unattractive, but because they’d had that best pals mentality all their lives; despite reminders from Helen, her parents, Propappou, and others that they weren’t truly related.

“If you want my blessing, Julie, you’ve had it since long before I stormed out of the suite shouting it to you. You always have. In fact, if things had worked out the way I wanted...”