Baroness Von Smith

by Survivanoia (v5. 0) (epub)

  “I don’t think anything’s broken,” he assessed. “I’m still a little dizzy. Do you have any ibuprofen or anything?”

  “There are painkillers you’re not supposed to take when you’re injured. In case of—”

  His dark look stopped her.

  “You want a soda to wash it down with?”

  He smiled at her through his bangs, like some kid brother who’d hurt himself running with scissors. “Please and thanks.”

  “Alright, let me find a vending machine. If they move you, call my cell.”

  He promised and she headed into the foray of the bloodied, the self-bandaged, the shrieking babies with no other way to express their discomfort, and the lonely old people convinced they are dying because this conviction guaranteed them a modicum of caring, human contact at least for today.

  At the soda machine, she realized that she hadn’t asked him what kind he wanted and that furthermore she probably didn’t have any cash. Conveniently, the ER offered an ATM, where for a mere three dollar courtesy fee she could get money from Bankzilla, which would charge her its own fee. She did this, and then stared blankly at the twenty dollar bill the machine spit at her. Because of course this wasn’t any good in the vending machines either.

  “I got fifteen dollars for who needs change.”

  Daci looked up to see a man dressed like he used to be somebody. Crisp shirt, tailored pants, shined shoes. But a gleam showed in his eye, announcing the lunacy to which he had finally succumbed.

  “What if I need change for a twenty?” she posited.

  “I got fifteen.”

  “Singles?”

  “Four singles and a ten.”

  “That’s fourteen.”

  The man blinked, a gesture that somehow reminded Daci of an owl whose head had twisted that strange, impossible way they do. “I got fourteen dollars for who needs change.”

  Daci marveled that this man wading knee-deep in madness still appreciated his own need for money. She asked to see the dollars he was selling and he produced them, so she traded her useless lone sheet for his utilitarian four and the stray ten-dollar bill. She suspected that if she later needed to change the ten, this same man would have eight dollars for whoever needed change.

  She purchased two sodas, deciding on Pepsi because that’s what all the Romanians drank, despite their inability to pronounce it. “Pep-shee”

  “Pep-see.”

  “This is what I said. Pep-shee.”

  Back in the dark corridor, someone had joined Geo at his gurney. The two men chattered fast and quiet—coconspirators. Geo’s companion stood, pale limbs lean and lanky, in a hospital gown, its blue set off by his curly tangle of red hair. A few steps closer revealed the blur of a tattoo that displayed a three-D image if looked at the correct way.

  “Eddie.”

  He turned and set his blue eyes on her. The rest of his face hurt her to look at. Bruised on the left, stitched together down the side and distorted with swelling.

  “Let me guess, I should see the other guy?”

  “Ah, no, I’m pretty sure I am the other guy.” He held out the wrong hand for shaking, the right one encumbered by a short cast. “I remember you from my lawyer but I’m bad with names, I apologize.”

  Geo made a noise of distress. “You know her?”

  Daci offered Eddie the spare Pepsi. He declined, and while he explained to his step-brother how the Baroness had been at his lawyer’s, she opened Geo’s Pepsi and gave him some ibuprofen.

  Geo popped his pills then frowned at the floor. “That’s weird.”

  “You don’t know the half,” Daci assured him with a chuckle

  Eddie set those eyes on her again. “Say, can you get me out of here?”

  “You need a cake with a file in it?”

  “They won’t let him out without a chaperone,” Geo explained. “Someone to sign for him, so if he croaks it’s not their responsibility.”

  Daci looked around the gloomy hallway. Nurses scurried in both directions but no one stopped to ask if they needed help or even to accuse them of something. “Funny, they won’t let him out: They won’t let you in.”

  “I don’t have any clothes, really, is the problem,” Eddie explained. “I guess they cut them off me after….” He trailed off and a grimace of humiliation shadowed his face. Geo patted his step-brother’s shoulder. It seemed awkward for both of them, uncharacteristic, but gauging by Eddie’s face apparently needed and appreciated.

  “I can run out and get you sweats,” Daci offered.

  Eddie looked to Geo. “I don’t have my money.”

  “I can loan-”

  “I have something of yours,” Daci interrupted. She pulled Eddie’s wallet from her purse. He squinted at it until she opened it, revealing his license and a photo sans bruising and stitches.

  “How’d you get it?” he asked. Not a hint of accusation, pure curiosity.

  Daci considered this. “Circuitously,” she finally said. “You can have it back, your money’s still in it, but you need to explain something first.”

  Geo flopped again his gurney. “A condition to get his own wallet back, isn’t she hilarious?”

  Eddie winced at his step-brother. “I think he may have a concussion.”

  Daci ignored the both if them. She pulled the folded, flame orange certificates from the wallet. “Tell me about these.”

  “Oh. They’re pollution credits. So companies can—”

  “I know what they are. I want to know how you got them.”

  Geo sat back up now. “She thinks I stole them.”

  “Geo? No. I, uhm, acquired them from a guy whose house I watch when he’s away.”

  “Who?” Daci asked him.

  Geo moved to kick his step brother but missed. “You tried to sell those to me.”

  Daci looked from Geo to Eddie, raised an eyebrow at the redhead. Eddie stammered in response.

  “Just tell her,” Geo cajoled. “She probably knows already anyway.”

  Eddie glanced from Geo to Daci and back again. Geo rolled his eyes, turned to Daci. “He house sits for people and he steals stuff from ‘em. Only he’s too dumb or too much of a snob to steal stuff that’s actually valuable. Well, one of the things he stole had those inside it. He tried to sell them to me, figuring we might need them at Survivanoia. I guess he didn’t realize they were ours to begin with.”

  Daci took a hard look at Eddie, who nodded and shook his head at the same time.

  Daci laughed, then considered all she knew about Eddie. Recalled the signed Kenneth Patchen. “It’s books,” she said, gently. “You steal books.”

  He flushed, bringing out his freckles. “Yeah.”

  “Good for you. Nobody reads them. Whose book were those credits in, do you know?”

  Eddie gave a loose shrug. “I know what house it came from. But he’s an AR guy for comedians and stuff. Not a business guy, know what I mean?”

  She did. No manufacturing connections. No need for pollution credits. “Did he ask you about them?”

  “No. But he did ask about the book. Maybe he didn’t know they were in there.”

  “Do you still have the book?”

  “Yeah. I went to give it back to him but after he met me he decided I could keep it.”

  Someone pushed a giant canvass bin in their direction, spotted them, and hollered as he ran off, “Go back to your rooms please!” The bin smacked off Geo’s gurney and bounced against the wall before stopping. Eddie peered inside. “Hey!” He pulled a neatly folded pair of pants from the bin. “Scrubs!”

  “Guess that saves you a trip,” Geo said. “Say, can you get me out of here too? I’d do it myself but I think my car is broken.”

  Daci laughed again. “You don’t want to go back to yo
ur room?”

  Geo groaned at her. “I’m going to die waiting for these people to check me in.”

  Eddie looked up from the bin, where he had finally found a pair of pants long enough for him. “Why don’t you go up to my room? I’m already checked in. Besides, the Baroness needs that book from my apartment.”

  Geo gazed at the redhead like he’d spoken Swahili. But then a grin spread across his face, erupted into laughter. “Why not?” Geo said. He turned to Daci. “My brother—he’s a genius, huh?”

  Geo said this without irony and Eddie’s abused face blossomed into a smile. Suddenly, Daci wanted to cry. Stress? Something else, she thought. Guilt? Frustration?

  No. She watched Eddie hide his happiness by looking at the floor, saw him swallow hard, and she understood that neither of these men had ever referred to the other by that unqualified term before. Never felt of each other that way. What had transpired between them to produce that shift? Daci was not privy to that. She wondered if the men themselves were aware.

  Eddie needed Geo. The older, more grounded, more established brother. Geo’s approval had served Eddie the immediate relief that a life raft serves a drowning man; this despite their aura of competition. The people who help us the most are not always who we’d’ve predicted.

  People close to Daci had tried and they had meant well. Her father and Terri, believing that she was being derailed, nagged her persistently in order to help keep her on track. Her grandmother thought Daci needed to be reminded of her strengths, so she gave her pep talks and brought up the ugly, raging waters she had successfully navigated in her past.

  But none of these people had what she needed.

  Daci had scolded her friend for playing dice with death. But it seemed to her now that Terri’s folly intentionally mirrored her own. Daci was making a similar mistake, not realizing herself that this was a dangerous game she was playing with this company and her not-quite-ex, not accepting that the stakes were in fact quite high, and finally believing herself removed from the competition and its consequences, when in fact her own fate was tied to that of the company. Syd’s company.

  The only person Daci had with the strength or knowledge she needed was the very man she struggled against. Whose approval she needed as well, not just emotionally but in a very tangible, business-based respect. Had she grossly mis-tread? Was she putting out fire with gasoline? Perhaps she should be fighting by Sydney, instead of opposing him. Some bulls are too big to be taken by the horns.

  Daci put a hand to her forehead. This mental laundry needed to be sorted over a glass of wine and a relaxing soak, not after a horrible car crash. She didn’t cry. She followed Eddie’s lead and took a moment to recoup with a deep breath and long glance at nothing. Humility felt to her increasingly like a warm bath.

  “C’mon genius,” She said. “Let’s get your brother upstairs and get you home.”

  CHAPTER 21

  The daytime skies eased from blue to orange and the hills from green to a scrubby struggle of brown as L.A.’s August heat battered the shrubs and long grasses. Weeks eased along, too, in a flurry of redundancy and absurdism, punctuated by the occasional relevant conversation with the occasional sane individual. They seemed progressively more rare in Daci’s world as the days passed. She began to wonder if she’d be selling money in emergency rooms soon, especially since even the sane folks seemed to bring only bad news.

  The first had been Zane. Despite her consuming work schedule, they made and kept a date-night once a week. The summer daylight ran long enough that even with her corporate hours, most nights she could still watch the sunset while dining on her porch. The boats slowly congesting the harbor like an oversized family at Thanksgiving filled Daci with a sense of happy longing. Later in the evening, the dark masts would stand stark and foreboding, and on nights when the sky was more fiery, they appeared sinister as crosses.

  Zane arrived while the sky was still blue, clutching a good bottle of Pinot Noir that he nearly dropped in his fluster.

  “I don’t believe this,” he started. “But you probably will. You’ve made a liar out of me.”

  “Another notch in the bedpost,” she responded with a grin.

  “Laurel came up with nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Every cent Survivanoia has taken in can be tracked, and all to completely genuine expenses. Of course there’s the overpriced sales dinners, that sort of corporate nonsense, but nothing like what you’re looking for.” His big hands turned palm-up, surrendering a shrug.

  Daci cut the foil wrapper from the wine, then handed the bottle to Zane. “Syd’s probably funding his operation out of his own pocket.”

  “Beat you to the punch on that one, girl: Laurel checked the man’s personal finances. But they look clean too.”

  “Look being the operative word.”

  “Laurel’s sources are good.” Zane twisted the corkscrew effortlessly, yanked out the cork with a satisfying pop.

  “How good?”

  He splashed a mouthful into her wide, bell-shaped glass for her to sample. “Unless the man is hiding information from his own accountant. There’s no existing shady fronting operation of any kind, and again, the money is all traceable. A few dimes and nickels maybe but not enough to make anybody go hmmm.”

  “So not enough to fund a microbiologist research team expertly skilled in virus technology.”

  She twirled the wine in her glass, not feeling nearly as anxious as she would have ten days prior. Granted, humility’s warm bath had quickly turned tepid when contaminated by the reality of approaching Sydney. Not so much for the reason of admitting defeat as her uncertainty of what his response would be. Would he take back the reins? Shrug and smile? She supposed she wanted his help, but she found that difficult to envision. The logistics seemed unlikely.

  “You alright?” Zane remained poised with the bottle. “Yeah.” She sipped the wine, bubbling it over her tongue and then letting it sit on her palate before swallowing. “Oh, very nice! Everything a pinot should be.”

  “Which is what?” He poured her a full glass. “Full of leather and oak?”

  She cuffed him on the hip but laughed. “With an overtone of rusty nails!”

  Zane poured himself a glass and settled next to her as they waited for the duck to finish roasting. The thick scent of it wafted onto the porch from the condo while they watched the bay buzz with activity, all the ships coming in as the orange sun sank into the dark ocean.

  “I thought you’d be more agitated.”

  “Me, too.”

  But she wasn’t. Not by the bad tidings and not by the stagnant, fruitless day-to-day stuff ether. Meeting followed meeting just as changes followed meaningless changes, most of them strictly for her own entertainment. Her policies left some people happy, a lot of people angry and everybody confused. Days not wasted in meetings were consumed by phone calls and sidestepping inane arguments from her CEOs and COOs and SOBs.

  Daci wished it was the scientists her job forced her to interact with. She had little valid reason to associate with them. They seldom had meetings; instead they held impromptu problem solving sessions. On days when she couldn’t stand the clichés and chatter of the business end, she’d trump up an excuse to be in the labs.

  The Russians argued over who was the better of the Mighty Five, Rimsky-Korsakov or Borodin (an argument Rin ended by floating the proposal that the Mighty Five were an inherently synergistic fraternity). Wolfy flirted with Daci and sometimes played chess with Dr. Krakow. Akira sang along to his Van Halen CDs in accented and often incorrect English.

  Akira was the second sane but discouraging conversation, only a few days after Zane. She’d requested that he perform a literature search on the development and/or discovery of Flower Flu. It had by then occurred to her that none of the scientists working for her seemed conflicted, sug
gesting either some of them were selfish and evil, like businessmen, or none of them knew the Flu had a treatment, a vaccine. She hoped to out any moles by going to them for aid.

  None of them changed their attitudes around her. And her gut said they really didn’t know. So who did? Somebody invented this vaccine…but Akira, like Laurel, came up blank. Not a single peer-reviewed science or medical journal made mention of this virus that was supposedly manufactured. If the notebook pages

  Terri had received were authentic, they were proving to be the world’s most underground laboratory in the history of laboratories!

  “What is very…” Akira paused, searching for the English equivalent of his word: “weird! What is weird is that most private research is opposite, will announce discovery before is proven. To not announce at all…so strange.”

  Daci only nodded. Had Akira been just a modicum less earnest he would have been suspect.

  “So sorry,” he said in response to the face she must have made. Akira spoke with a thick accent but a precision to his words, reminding her of the clack of an old typewriter. “Oh, and since pretension meter project on hold, I have much free time, now. Perhaps you can fill?”

  “On hold?”

  “Yes, Scally-san come and say to wait until August sales meeting.”

  “Really. Did he say why?”

  “Something about new prototype. Already complete. Does not need this one, only needs approval.” His gazed into her eyes, awaiting instruction.

  Already complete? What did that mean? The past three weeks she’d been killing time, waiting for the sales meeting to bring The Doctor on board. Apparently she’d wasted those weeks, should have just hired him on her own accord, legitimacy be damned.

  She promised Akira she’d provide him a new project, and wandered out of the lab. As before, though, she wasn’t as agitated as she would have expected. In fact, she admitted to herself as she made her way up the broad staircase and to her office, she felt relieved. Because if she had truly lost the little scientist, then she had done everything she could, and if that were the case there would be no shame in approaching Sydney.