Chapter 3

“Here’s to the babies in a brand-new world, here’s to the beauty of the stars.
Here’s to the travelers on the open road, here’s to the dreamers in the bars.
Here’s to the teachers in the crowded rooms, here’s to the workers in the fields.
Here’s to the preachers of the sacred words, here’s to the drivers at the wheel.
Here’s to you, my little loves, with blessings from above.
Now let the day begin.
Here’s to you, my little loves, with blessings from above.
Now let the day begin. Let the day begin.”

-The Call, “Let the Day Begin“

Julie Equals turned on the bedroom TV, making certain the sound was low, so that she wouldn’t interfere with Susan Bailey’s trance.

Their flight to San Finzione had been forced to go around a storm in the Mediterranean. Although they were flying above the cloud layer, it was still a better idea to go around than risk it. Julie couldn’t get a signal to call and see how Troy and Helena were doing, so she’d turned on the TV to get one of the San Finzione news channels.

When she finally found one, the reporter was speaking from the castle’s courtyard, in front of the Speech Balcony, where a large television screen had been set up. Reporters were not being allowed into the castle, and they were saying that La Contessa would likely be addressing them via the screen when she was ready to do so. Black lines and blocks glitched on the screen as the storm interfered with the TV signal as well.

Circumnavigating the storm meant that they’d land at least an hour late. Before the call cut off, Troy had told her that Scappa, Helen’s chauffeur, and an escort from La Policia were waiting by the runway to rush them to the castle. Helen was already sedated and wouldn’t be able to “delay” for them.

Julie tried to exhale away the tension of going from being in constant contact with her husband and first girlfriend to being less informed than anyone in San Finzione who lived within shouting range of anyone else with a television. She tried to send with it the frustration of not being able to simply go up to the cockpit and make the plane fly faster or go through the storm. She COULD use her ability to command the pilots to try those things, but that felt like a bad enough idea to not need a second opinion upon.

Julie muted the television and returned to the bed, where Susan was still smiling dreamily in trance. Julie smiled back. She had one of her loved ones with her and she still had a story to finish telling Susan. She turned onto her side to face Susan and took hold of her hand.

“Now, where were we, Susan? Oh, yes. Back in the bedroom.”

“Hey, Boy.” Julie Andrews said to Troy Medina from the bed.

“Hey, Girl.” He replied from the doorway.

He surveyed the scene. Julie on his bed, a couple of plates from her mom on the nightstand. It was a Saturday morning, so he was certain that if he picked up the TV remote and turned it on, he could still find some decent cartoons on one channel or another. He wanted to go join her on the bed, turn on the TV, and just snuggle close and watch them, like they had on any given Saturday morning together in their lives.

There were several differences to the usual image in his mind, though. The most important being that generally, both of them were at least wearing underwear on those previous Saturdays. The fact that the word “edible” was now in Troy’s mind with regards to both the food Julie’s mother had made, and Julie herself, was a close second. Beyond that, he thought all the scene was missing was Helen and/or another relationship partner to read more into the scene than “My best friend spent the night and now we’re laying on the bed and watching some cartoons together. Come join us!”

Helen missing from the scene wasn’t unusual. Before Troy and Propappou gave Helen his old bedroom across the hall, when the three of them had a sleepover here, she often picked up her blankets and pillow in the night and went downstairs to Propappou’s room. She’d curl up in the TV chair next to the old man’s bed and sleep next to him. The fact that if there’d been someone else present to read into the scene, they would have been right this time, was the last difference.

A few seconds had passed now while Troy stood in the doorway, so Julie spoke again.

“You coming to join me, Master?”

“Yeah.” Troy responded with a smile, sitting on the bed next to her. She scooted closer to him and wrinkled her brow.

“Thought I’d get cleaned up while I was in there.” Julie said, sitting up and wrapping her arms around him from behind. “Wasn’t sure what you’d feel like doing now.”

Troy reached out and patted her hand, for once in his life, wondering how much holding Julie’s hand might be too much. Or not enough?

“There are a few things I feel like doing right now, Julie.” He answered. “I’m trying to think of the right one.”

“You’re Troy.” Julie said, letting go of Troy so he could turn around to face her. “Thinking of the right thing to do is most of what you do.”

Troy looked down, realized he was looking at Julie’s naked boobs, and looked back up to her. This time, he noticed the little smile on her face.

“Mistress, I just need to know: That was really us, right? I mean, I didn’t get drunk and maybe Do What We Do to influence...”

Julie cut him off. The two of them hadn’t had what could be called an awkward conversation since the day that, his mother gone and having no sisters, Troy had to ask Julie what those cotton and paper things that she and Helen shoplifted from the Women’s Health aisle were for.

“No, Troy. You didn’t do the thing I’ve been half-wondering if I might have been out of it and horny enough to do to you at some point in the night, too. You’re not the type, I would have caught on; and if you don’t remember the conversation we’d been having before, I said that if you’d ever decided you wanted to do something like that before, I’d have been cool with it, because ‘I trust my best friend with all that I am’ means everything. And because there isn’t another man in the world who COULD do that to me, so it seems now like the only way either of us might’ve gotten that fantasy fulfilled.”

That gave Troy a smile.

“Ok, good. I would never want to do something you didn’t want.”

Julie sighed.

“Some of these ‘ethics lessons’ of yours have sunk in, you know. ‘Persuading someone who didn’t want to have sex that they do is simply Seduction; how the human race continues to exist. We have an edge over everyone else, why shouldn’t we use it? Forcing someone would be wrong but talking someone into an idea is just a thing that people do.’ I don’t think I was doing anything, Troy; and you told me you weren’t, so if I’d had any doubts, I believe you now. I think we just might have to accept that everyone else we know has been right and we’ve both always wanted this.”

Troy took hold of her hand again.

“It was amazing, Mistress. You were amazing. I’m feeling ... all kinds of stuff right now, Julie. And all of it’s good. What are you feeling?”

Julie laid back down onto the bed, so she was alongside him, looking up into his face.

“I’m feeling great. Feeling like I’ve needed that for years. And yes, kind of feeling like I need to know where we are now, too; because that wasn’t ‘a fuck.’ We absolutely made love last night, so if we’re not together now, then we need to sit down and iron out that fuckbuddy arrangement everyone’s always accused us of having, because I am absolutely going to want more of that!”

Troy laid down to face her.

“I’ve always planned to love you forever, Julie; the only thing that’s changed this morning is the way I’d like to go about it.” He showed her the phone that he was still holding. “I’ve been trying to figure out what to say when I came back in here. Not knowing what I’m going to say to you is an unusual feeling for me, Julie, and I was searching for the words until I saw this.”

He pressed the button and his phone’s screen came to life. The wallpaper on his phone was a familiar one to Julie, because she’d seen it yesterday.

It was a picture of the two of them at the age of four, sleeping in the bed that used to be across the hall in what was Troy’s childhood bedroom and, although she likely wasn’t coming back, was now “Helen’s room.” The bottom of the bed was dirty, but Julie’s mud-covered feet solved that mystery. She was curled up to Troy, who had his arms wrapped around her; the way they’d slept together every time from before the night the picture was taken until they fell asleep last night.

On that night, Julie had a bad dream. Rather than crawling into bed with her parents, she left her house, walked across the yard to Troy’s house, and got into bed with him. It was a scene that repeated over the years until Julie’s parents stopped frantically calling Troy’s in the middle of the night, because everyone knew where Julie would go and that she would be safe.

“I woke up some of those nights.” Troy explained. “Not that night, and never completely. Enough to register ‘Oh, Julie’s here. She must’ve had a bad dream. Ok, get in here, Best Friend, I will protect you’ and go back to sleep. Even if I didn’t, I never questioned waking up holding you. I just woke up happy to see you.”

“And I always woke up in the morning with everything better.” She replied. “It just always ... made sense to come to you.”

“And it made sense that you were here, Julie.” He wrapped his arms around her, the way they had in the picture, the way they always eventually fell asleep. “This, right here; holding you like always, makes sense. So much other shit in the world doesn’t, but this feels right.”

“Luckily, you have the power to control minds and a Propappou who taught you right from wrong; you’re someone who can do something about all of that, Troy. I mean, you found a way to get rich AND help people with it at the same time!”

“The second one’s always mattered more. The whole ‘take what we want’ aspect of it has never really appealed to me the way it has...” Troy was hesitant to bring up Helen because that might spawn a whole other discussion. “To some.”

“Yeah, she’s honest about that much, though.” Julie replied, also wanting to avoid talking about her. “Like she says, ‘Sometimes, we ALL need something that PRESENTLY belongs to someone else. Doesn’t mean I have to be a liar about it.’”

“And that’s something I was thinking about downstairs, too, Julie. Not that thing; About how we can have anything we want, any ONE we want, any time we want...”

Julie interrupted him.

“I think I know where you’re going with this, Master. Because I’ve been having this thought, too. Do you mind if I complete it?”