Chapter 3

“She’s got a date at midnight,
with Nosferatu.
Oh, baby, Lily Munster
ain’t got nothing on you.
Well, when I called her evil,
she just laughed
and put that spell on me.
Boo Bitch-Craft.”
-Type O Negative, “Black Number One“

“Hi, your name’s Susan Bailey, isn’t it?”

Lucinda de San Finzione asked me the question in English. Casually, as if we’d met for the first time in a mutual friend’s kitchen, and we knew someone else was stopping by, but the friend had to step out and take care of something just then, leaving us to make introductions ourselves. She wasn’t lying just yet, though. My name is, indeed, Susan Bailey. Hi.

“Yes, it is.” I replied. Since she hadn’t lied yet, I figured I’d return the favor. “Hi. And you’re Lucinda, right?”

We’d seen each other a few times recently; while I was helping Helen with her nicotine cravings and a couple of times that she’s tried to get over to the Palace Wing while I’ve been there to shrug and pretend to not know Italian and point to a nearby Ultimado to tell her that La Contessa is too busy with the children for visitors. (The Ultimados have special instructions from Helen about La Familia as well. They’re to be kept out of the Palace Wing and, when possible, away from Lady Maria; but since they ARE Maria’s family, the Ultimados aren’t allowed to really do anything to hurt them if they persist. Without a direct order from Helen, anyway. Which she doesn’t give often. If Maria’s around.)

“Si,” Lucinda replied. “Er, yes. Lucinda de San Finzione. Are you lost?”

“Yeah.” I said, seizing the opportunity. “I ... uh, don’t get over to this side of the castle often.”

“I see.” Came her response. “Perhaps you were looking for La Contessa’s office?”

“Yeah. This looked like the nicest once, so I figured it must be hers.”

Lucinda gave that a tight smile, the kind that, if she’d opened her mouth to show her teeth, I would have been surprised to see just a single row of them behind it.

“No,” Lucinda answered. “This is my office. Would you like me to show you the way to La Contessa’s?”

“That’d be nice.” I replied, taking the offer, since getting out of this room without her noticing had been my original goal. I’d failed the second part, but still had hopes for the first.

“Come, this way.” Her smile lightened. She’d decided not to unhinge her jaw and consume me whole just yet. I let her lead me away from the scene of my not-really crime. I was off balance here. I remembered something from my mind control training with Troy; “The one asking the questions is the one controlling the conversation.” I’d had to learn that from him; and so far, everything Lucinda had said to me, she’d ended with a question, meaning that I’d allowed myself to be put in the position of being the one giving her information. I needed to change that.

“Sorry about being in there,” I told her. “Just, you know, all the lovely furniture and books on the walls ... was that Dante’s Inferno in the display case?”

“Si. Er, yes.” Lucinda replied. “A first edition. I like the illustration.”

We walked on for a moment before I continued.

“The Circle of Lust, isn’t it?”

“Yes. The second circle, an endless, warm, wet whirlwind.”

I had another thought as we reached the door.

“Isn’t one of the souls writhing in torment in that whirlwind for all eternity supposed to be Helen of Troy?”

“Yeeees.” Lucinda replied, drawing the word out so that she seemed to be pronouncing it with four Es. Although she was leading me and walking about two steps ahead, I thought I could hear her lips creaking into that smile again. “And how is La Contessa doing?” She asked, trying to take control back.

I hesitated. Hopefully, not too noticeably. When Maria was still Helen’s maid, Helen had implanted a trigger in Maria’s mind to fall unconscious if she was either being kidnapped or was at risk of telling someone “too much” about La Contessa. (The idea being that there was no point in a reporter ambushing or a kidnapper trying to hurt or get information out of Maria, because she wouldn’t wake up for it, so they’d gain nothing from it but MORE reasons to fear the moment the other tobacco, cocoa, and rose-scented thousand-dollar designer shoe drops.) Helen had arranged things to release Maria from the trigger if anything happened to her; so, when something did happen to Helen last year, it was removed. With six words, Lucinda let me know exactly what had been going on in Helen’s mind when she came up with that idea. Could Lucinda have known about that and been testing to see if Helen had done the same to me?

I was taking too long to answer. I thought of one of Moriarty’s lines in the Next Gen episode “Elementary, Dear Data,” “Your every silence speaks volumes.”

“You know, adjusting to motherhood, that kind of stuff.”

We came to an emerald-green door with an emerald-green carpet leading up to it. A gold name plaque on the door read “La Contessa.”

“Damn,” I said as we found it. “Here it is. How’d I miss it?”

“How, indeed.” Lucinda replied. She then adopted a tone that I wouldn’t call warmer but would still have to describe as “less cold.” “Will you be coming to the reception tonight?”

“Hmm?” I hmmed innocently. “Oh, yes; I’ll be there. I’m Vincenzo’s godmother, you know.”

Lucinda had seemed to be looking down her nose at me this entire time. I learned that my assessment had been incorrect when she put effort into it upon hearing that.

“Not YET! Once the child is baptized, THEN you are the Godmother! Not before.”

Something inside me was telling me to Do Our Thing and say, “Just tell me what the fuck you’re up to, bitch!” That something had a name, and it was Sue. I’ll tell you about her in a minute. The rest of me, though, was thinking that there’s probably a good reason I’m not seeing why Helen doesn’t just walk over here and do exactly that every day; and it would be a bad idea.

“I’ve offended you.” I told her. “I didn’t have a religious upbringing. I apologize.”

“A COMMON problem in San Finzione these days.” Lucinda looked at her watch. “I must be elsewhere. No doubt, La Contessa has sent you to fetch something and needs it back right away. She must be quite busy if she is unable to send her maid. I will see you tonight.”

Lucinda turned and started walking away. I didn’t take the bait she was laying out and went into Helen’s office. She was probably waiting outside to see what, if anything, I came out with. I went to Helen’s desk, grabbed something out of it, and went back to the Palace Wing.

I’d come over here for information, and ended up giving more than I got, but what I had gotten was essential: A deeper understanding of WHY this woman must never be allowed near Vincenzo and Byroni!

Ok, I mentioned before how there are three other women with whom I share my head. I also mentioned Chad, the only boyfriend I’d had before meeting Troy and Julie. Chad was what you get when the ‘roid freak high school quarterback jerks off onto a rolled-up copy of Maxim and fucks the bitchy prom queen with it.

I was an orphan, I didn’t have anyone to tell me that wasn’t what “a boyfriend” was, and by the time people did, he had me beaten down so far that I wouldn’t listen until Troy did what I now understand was mind control to help me see it. There are various ways to go about it. Troy used a somewhat gentler one with me than he and Julie would later use on Chad. I never felt like anything was happening, just that everything Troy was saying was completely agreeable. While learning it myself, I asked Troy to do it to me like he did to Chad. After assuring him I could handle it, he agreed. (It was the kind of “being made to dance like a puppet” that I get now why he hasn’t done it to anyone since.)

It wasn’t a happy time. Happiness essentially came in 50-minute bursts, when Chad was out drinking or showing off his Fast & Furious-mobile, and I was able to catch an episode of Star Trek without having to hear about “that stupid nerd stuff” I like.

People who have jobs that involve a lot of stress and putting themselves outside their comfort zones do a thing called compartmentalization; essentially becoming a different person to handle those situations. It’s how a lawyer can defend a Charles Manson or Leonard Whyte, or a hospice nurse can watch four families lose Gramma in one shift, and neither of them go home and blow their heads off at the end of the day. Between the diner and Chad, I had started taking it to an unhealthy level. I wasn’t allowed to be me, I didn’t go by Susan then. I went by one of the three names Chad would call me depending on what was expected of me right then.

As Helen described it once, a guy like Chad can only perceive women in one of three ways: Bitch, Whore, and Slave. Sue was the Bitch, Suzy-Ho was the Whore, and Suzy-Q was the Slave. I have a different perspective on them; that Sue is my survival instinct and the “wants to kick ass” thing is just in furtherance of that goal, Suzy-Q is something of a mystery, and Suzy-Ho is, yes, a total whore. But now that sex is something for MY enjoyment rather than his, she’s damn proud of it! Suzy-Q’s “recasting” from the slave role in my head seems to be what’s given her this ability to visit Helen’s mind. (It hasn’t escaped either of our notice that Helen and I both had shitty lives until Troy & Julie changed them. We have enough in common that, if it hadn’t been for how we met, we would definitely be much closer friends by now.)

I guess the best way to describe them nowadays would be “advisors who live in my head.” They’re not a danger; I don’t have blackouts or anything, I can let one of them “take over” if things are stressing me. And there’s another little thing I can do with them. Since it was 1:45 when I made it back to our room in the Palace Wing, and Rita wasn’t due for a while yet, I had a free moment to lay back on my bed, close my eyes, and...

Thirteen years ago, a woman began a relationship with an abusive fuck for a crime she didn’t commit. She and the other women inside her head escaped from a maximum-security control freak to the Equals House, and then the tiny European Nation of San Finzione. No longer giving a fuck about that prick, they now work at nothing in particular, but seem to end up doing a whole lot of shit for Helen. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you ask me nicely enough; maybe YOU can hire ... The Suzy Crew! It’s pretty easy, we don’t charge anything.

THE SUZY CREW Starring SUSAN BAILEY as Susan “Hannibal” Bailey SUZY-HO SUZY-Q And SUE as B.A. Iley Created by Susan Bailey Watching A Lot Of TV

The ladies and I were, as usual, in costume, (Poor Sue!) with the exception of Suzy-Ho removing Face’s suit immediately. Clothes have never really been her thing. We sat around a table at the café outside the San Finzione Marketplace. The Yia-Yia was there, but if she noticed us, we weren’t as interesting as her wine.

“Odd choice for a venue.” Was the first thing I said, taking a puff of my cigar. I don’t usually care for smoking, but since it was in my head anyway, I wasn’t bothered this time.