Chapter 7

“And as you join the Good Ship Earth, and you mingle with the dust,
be sure to leave your underpants with someone you can trust.
And the hard-headed social worker who bathes his hands in blood
will welcome you with arms held high and cover you with mud.
And he’ll say ‘you really should make a deal’ as he offers round the hat.
Well, you’d better lick your fingers clean. Well, I’ll thank you all for that.”
-Jethro Tull, “Lick Your Fingers Clean“

The next morning, Lucinda de San Finzione walked through the halls of the Business Wing of Castle Finzione to her office. Conversation ceased as she passed, and everyone turned to stare. None would dare utter a word or make eye contact as she strode amongst them. The ones who’d been present for her humiliation were too scared to utter a sound, and the ones who’d been smart enough not to attend knew better. Calling attention to oneself at this moment would be death. She didn’t slam the door as she closed it behind her, but the relative quiet made it loud enough to seem like she had.

She sat at her desk, bowed her head, and produced a rosary from her purse. As she prayed, a maid entered carrying a tray with a cup of tea and a newspaper. She quietly set the tea before Lucinda on the desk and stood by while she finished her prayer, picked up the tea, and took a sip. In the middle of her second sip, the newspaper was dropped onto her desk.

The front-page photo was of her, covered in the corpses of multiple pies. It was an English-language paper instead of her usual Italian; and the headline above it read “Lucinda’s Lock-In Lists Loony-Toons.” She looked up at the maid. She saw me. Hi, my name’s Susan Bailey. (Sorry for the unusual intro, but I think you see now that I was going for something.)

“The Italian paper’s headline wasn’t as funny.” I explained to her in that language. “Before you say anything about the maid’s uniform, Lucinda, I gave one a hundred euros to let me borrow it and told the assistant you make fetch your tea every morning that I’d take care of this for him. Don’t hold it against him. I used my ‘status’ as a friend of La Familia Royale and said I had a private matter to discuss with you. I did all this to make two points.

“The first was that I could very well have put on a servant’s outfit and helped Jeanne out if she’d needed it. That’s La Contessa’s maid’s name, by the way, Jeanne. If Jeanne, Helen, Maria, or someone else I respect needed it of me. I have that skill set. You see, Lucinda, I’ve done this thing called ‘work a day in my life,’ and I’d have no problem doing it again. Work is a word that’s in the Bible AND the Dictionary.”

The look on Lucinda’s face was one that I wish I’d readied a camera for. The “what the hell...” from my paper drop hadn’t completely faded before the look of recognition and seething hatred of “how fucking DARE you” mingled with the confusion of “wait a minute, who the fuck does something like this” and the corpse of the quip about my wearing the maid’s uniform that I’d taken down before it passed her lips was worth the hundred euros to set it up. This close, I could also see the bleariness of having had a couple herself when she got home last night. All of it combined into a visual that caused me to attain Total Spiritual Enlightenment with regards to the meaning of the word “flabbergasted.”

She took another sip of tea to try to recover. The next word was still mine, so I took it.

“The second reason was to give weight to my suggestion that you tear up those plans for the twins. And to give you things to think about if you have any more plans for them. Because I don’t know if you noticed, Lucinda, but something very curious happened just now. Do you know what that was? I put on a maid’s costume and brought you your newspaper and morning tea.

“And do you know what you did, Lucinda? You picked up that tea and you DRANK it! Without even looking to see who I was. Like I knew you wouldn’t. And if I’d just said nothing and walked away, you’d never have known it was me.” I gave that a second to sink in, and when she was still shocked, I took something out of my pocket.

“Oh, this isn’t ‘the antidote’ or anything, don’t worry. I wouldn’t do something like that, Lucinda. There’s nothing in there but your Oolong with no cream or sugar. Just the way I know you like it now. That’s a skill I learned from working too, Lucinda. Remembering what people you know you’re going to see again like to eat and drink. No, this is something I need to return to Helen’s office, I just decided to do this along the way to send you a message, Lucinda. So I hope you’re listening or recording or whatever.”

She was too startled by the realization that, if I HAD chosen to poison her, it would now be too late to respond, so the floor was still mine.

“The twins already have a moral guardian, and you’re who she’s guarding them from. The Devil, too, but saying that feels redundant. I figured that part out, too. Why you needed to wait until you thought Helen might not be around. This wasn’t to feel her out now that she’s a mother. Or to see how Maria would handle things if you suspected Helen wasn’t here to look out for her. They’re both known quantities to you. The purpose of this exercise was to test the unknown quantity; to see that IF Helen had left the country and IF her dearest friends had gone after her, then who was this woman whom ALL of them entrusted with the children while it was going on? Well, Lucinda?”

I leaned in close for my big ending.

“Hi. My name’s Susan Bailey. Got your answer?”

I didn’t wait for her reply. I walked out.

Lucinda would need revenge. Troy watches the Godfather movies every Thanksgiving weekend. (He has this joke he never seems to get tired of about it being “time that should be spent with The Family.”) So I’d seen them enough times to know that since I’d sent her a message, now she HAS to send me one back. Unless I’d pissed her off to the point of hiring a hitman overnight, though, it was too soon to worry about it. (And if she goes that far, I’ll just have to trust that I’ve done enough favors for the Ultimados by now that they’ll do what they do for Helen and “get rid of the problem” for me before I even find out one was ever there.) I’d have to start watching my back tomorrow or the next day, but for today, I could just enjoy the victory.

It was a few hours later, after returning the maid’s uniform and going back to the Palace Wing, that I ran into Maria by the Nursery and we stopped in at the little conversation alcove there.

“I understand why you needed to do it.” Maria said after I told her about my trip to the Business Wing. “But si, you have thrown down a gauntlet and ensured a next time, Susan.”

“Then the Pastry Chef’s going to need to hire some backup and I’m going to have to see if anyone in the Marketplace carries anvils and dynamite for my counterplan.” We both laughed at that. I had another thought and shared it with her. “You were a step ahead of me the whole time, Maria. Which means that you probably figured out the other thing that I did long before, too: Who Lucinda was really testing.”

“Oh, si.” She replied. “Her plan would have had the same chance to succeed or fail with Great-Grandmama present. It would still have taken her some maneuvering to refuse graciously in a way that Lucinda could not gain from.”

“So what would you have done if Rita hadn’t agreed?”

“I would have made up some excuse for her. Something relating to the babies and perhaps gross enough that no one would question. That she was tired from nursing them all day or something, they would have gone for it.”

“Then why didn’t you just do that?” I asked. “Why let me go to all this?”

Maria smiled at that.

“Because I liked your plan, Susan. Because you had things under control and because there was something that I needed to learn, too.”

“What was that?”

Maria put her hand on mine.

“I do not question your friendship or loyalty at all, Susan. There was something I needed to know about you, though: Would you stand up to me if I had a bad idea? I knew right away that it would simply add complications to a situation already full of them. I knew you were a good enough friend to do it, but were you a good enough friend to tell me why we shouldn’t? I’ve learned that those friends are far more important. I would have ‘come to my senses’ and asked you to stop before you really did it. Now I know, Susan, that you will tell me if I have a bad idea in the future, when it truly matters. I need to know who I can count on for this on the day that I am not simply ruling in secret until Great-Grandmama returns.”

While I looked questioningly at Maria, she gave a little laugh and continued.

“Did you truly think that I would panic like a debutante in a P.G. Wodehouse book over all of this?” She looked over at the Nursery door, smiled, then looked back to me. “I, too, now have future rulers of San Finzione to think of. And whom I can entrust with them.”

I smiled at the future Contessa Maria Louisa Francesca de San Finzione.

“No.” I told her as I stood. “I thought you handled it like a Contessa.”

That got a smile back before she left to go meet Stavro and I went to go spend some time with the little people that everything the past couple days had been for.

Troy, Julie, and Helen got back Monday night. The three of us had a lovely reunion and Helen listened to Ramirez and Ortega give her lectures about responsibility while Maria alternated between slapping her upside the head and hugging her.

Troy & Julie decided that it was time to leave Helen with the boys, go back to Federal Way, and resume their lives. Not permanently, we’re going to be coming back and forth all the time to see the kids and everyone; and La Contessa’s doctor also happens to be part of our Ultimados protection across the street, so they’ll be coming to see us, too. (And, now that Troy’s the father of the Royal Twins, we’re not getting out of having that protection any time soon.) We’re looking into getting vehicles of our own to keep here so we don’t have to keep borrowing Helen’s or the castle’s.

I know that we often talk about moving to San Finzione as if it’s some kind of horrible emergency last resort; like if the world learns our secret, our Plan B is “Oh no, we have to go move into a palace with Helen and be waited on hand and foot for the rest of our lives!” It’s not that we’re the world’s biggest ingrates, or maybe it’s one of those “hard to grasp if you can’t control minds yourself” deals. It’s that ... remember how when you were a kid, people told you that you could do anything, you could change the world? And then you got older and found out that really, it comes down to one or two things that you can do better than most and beyond those things, there’s a whole lot of stuff that you really can’t do or change? These three never got the second memo. Well, Helen did, but their third memo, letting her know the second one was bullshit, came early enough that she eventually forgot it.

The life that Troy and Julie want to make for themselves is in King County, Washington; where Troy helps people make their worlds a little better, and Julie shows them the world she sees, that the one we all share could be. And the life that Helen might not want but needs to have is here, trying to carry on the work of one great old man who was, quite frankly, an impossible act to follow, because of the guidance of another. As much as they all need each other, they also need to do those things. (Every semester, the University of San Finzione offers Troy an honorary doctorate in Economics. And every semester, he politely declines and reminds Helen that he wants to earn it on his own.)

Troy & Julie liked my solution to the Lucinda problem as well. It turned out that they’d known what was going on the whole time.

“You felt like you needed to do this without our help, Susan.” Julie told me in bed that evening. “You forgot that there’s a part of you that knows better than that.” She kissed me. “When was the last time you and Suzy-Q did that?”