His Grace

by Aya DeAniege

  “She’s tiny.”

  “She is a tiny ball of fiery rage when poked,” Sam said with a small nod. “Ask Mike what he thinks of her, he’ll probably show you the scars from the last time he did something stupid.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Look, your life, I get it, okay. You don’t want gifts. You don’t want any of this whole thing. Normally I’d be fine, I’d give you all the time you felt you needed and let you come out of your shell because obviously you’re headed that way. I just. I need you to trust me, just for tonight, please.”

  I watched him for a moment, then nodded.

  “Okay.”

  “Oh-okay, good,” Sam said as I headed down the stairs. “Was it the pleading that did it?”

  “It was Lilly throwing you down a flight of stairs,” I called back up to him.

  “Six months versus two days,” I swore I heard him mutter as he came down the steps after me.

  Out on the street, I stopped, the panic gripping me. I turned back, then realized the futility of the motion. I knew what it was, but I knew it was stupid.

  I had seen others do it when they left their security item behind at the foster homes. They’d get to the curb, then stop and run back in. I’d always think they were running in for one last hug, but they’d blast past me and snag up that one-eyed bear that their biological father had given them before vanishing forever.

  Yes, I knew what the motion was, but upon turning back, it didn’t matter. The building could have burned to the ground, nothing inside it mattered. I didn’t need any of it to move to Lilly’s. I was simply packing it because that was what people did. They packed up their things and moved them to the new location.

  “Just say it,” Sam said.

  “Leave it all behind,” I said.

  As he said, “I fucked up.”

  We stared at one another, startled for a moment. He made a face and pulled out his phone, sending off a text.

  “I won’t instruct it be destroyed,” he said. “Just in case, seems prudent. They’ll pack it into storage for now. What about your clothing? Unless you’ve suddenly turned to my buying you things.”

  “No, don’t buy me things, of course, the clothing. And the text books, those things are expensive.”

  “Naturally,” he said. “But the dishes, the weird clay sculpture on the kitchen counter, those can go.”

  “They can,” I said.

  He hesitated, just for a moment, then slipped his hands into his pockets as a car pulled up at the curb.

  “That’s not your clay item, is it?” he asked.

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Did you bring anything with you from wherever you came from, besides your identification?” he asked.

  “No, well, a bag of clothing,” I said.

  “No pictures or knickknacks?”

  I shrugged.

  “What would I do with those things?” I asked. “I had a few between homes, but then I’d always lose them.”

  “Holy shit, you have nothing, do you? Nothing but the idea that was your home. No wonder you’re… fine. Fine, we’re fixing that, get in the car.”

  “We’re fixing that?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I can’t date someone who doesn’t have something that is theirs and has been bought for no purpose but to pleasure them. It’s practically a human right, I’m going to fix it.”

  “Stop buying me things,” I said.

  “You could buy it yourself,” he said pointedly. “One way or another, you’re getting something that is entirely yours. Car, in.”

  “Mean man,” I said, climbing into the car.

  He slipped in beside me, closing the door before he turned toward me and frowned.

  “Let me just be clear,” he purred out. “The next time you call me a mean man, I’m going to start buying you things, and I will start with lace and silk underwear, which I will make you wear for me.”

  We stared at one another for a moment, and it just welled up and burst forth before I realized what I was doing.

  “Mean, mean man.”

  “Oh, now I’m going to have to toss in a bra that makes you want to prance around in your underwear,” he said as if he were talking about beating on me. “See what you make me do?”

  “You were joking,” I said.

  “No, I wasn’t,” he said as he pulled his phone out. “Two sets of underwear delivered to Lilly’s place. Wait, I should tell Lilly before I order them, or she might think I was trying to order them for her.”

  “Why? You two aren’t a thing.”

  “Just because she’s asexual, doesn’t mean she doesn’t appreciate the feel of silk near her nether regions.”

  “But why would you be buying her underwear?”

  Sam was quiet a moment.

  “Suppose, that’s not normal to normal people. I like to buy the women who brought me pleasure in the past items now. I am a generous man.”

  “Shouldn’t you save your money?” I asked.

  “Money is a construct by man. It simply aids me in exchanging my services of sitting behind a desk and threatening to bite people for things which others might find enjoyable.”

  “Money is how I eat,” I snapped out.

  “I never said that you couldn’t have my money,” Sam said quietly in response. “This obsession with keeping the poor, poor, with the minimum wage no longer paying for a family, let alone a single person, to live and eat and be happy, is ridiculous. Did you know they’re raising the minimum wage?”

  “Thank goodness,” I said.

  “I’ve had business partners bitch about it, because it will eat into their income. I’m sorry, you make two billion a year, I think you can afford to feed your fucking workers. Trips all over the world, more drugs up their nose and into their arms than a hospital sees in a year, but you know what? Cry some more about how the government is trying to look out for the working poor.

  “Who shouldn’t be the working poor. They’re working, for crying out loud. Not under the table, on the table. Paying taxes, paying for benefits, while the rich avoid those taxes, while the rich don’t put into anything.”

  I stared at Sam, looked him up and down, then frowned at him. He huffed out a breath.

  “Right, I’m rich,” he said, seeming annoyed as he glared at the roof for a moment. “Uh… fuck the poor. They just need to work harder. If they tried at life, they wouldn’t be poor anymore.”

  He seemed to glare at the passenger seat of the car. As he glared, I rubbed at my lips and then a little over my lower jaw.

  “There’s this guy in charge of a big company,” I said.

  “The tech guy, with the pretty toys?” Sam asked, then grinned. “I love him. See, society is always at a turning point. There is always an up and down and an all around. The last generation was just at such and such a point, and all those abused little souls are coming into their own and, well, I’m surprised they haven’t nuked anyone. I’d do it. I’d smite them all.”

  “Smite?”

  “Uh, cause trouble,” he managed to get out in a strangled voice. “It is the time of the nerd, I’ve been told.”

  “Your face is too pretty to be a nerd.”

  “I said that was what I was told, not that it’s true. While it is a technological revolution, I believe, you have to look at the various companies and startups who are just plain jackasses taking advantage of all the rest. Who needs a belt that is four hundred dollars but is made of the same stuff as a twenty dollar belt? No one!”

  “Does it look like the twenty dollar belt?” I asked.

  “No, you pay three hundred and eighty dollars to have the designer’s name stamped on the leather. Of which, the slave children who make the item see nothing. The designer gets a great deal of what you pay. Oh, but fuck the children, because the children at home are totally living well. Therefore all are.”

  “Maybe you should run for office,” I said.

  Sam was starting to sound like one of those people who didn�
��t like humans at all. There was a word for them, one who hated humans.

  Not all humans.

  Just the ones whose ideals he didn’t agree with. But he was ticking off the list pretty quickly. At least his kind of strange wasn’t so odd that I couldn’t handle it. He wasn’t looking to put more hatred into the world, just really bitter about the hatred others put into it.

  “I’d end up killing everyone,” he grumbled. “Children are over medicated, creating a deeply seeded addiction that will follow them throughout their lives. They’re both unvaccinated but kept from dirt, ruining their immunities.”

  “Not all children are unvaccinated,” I protested.

  “No, not all are, just the ones whose parents have no problem being murderers to prove that vaccines cause autism. Which isn’t true. You know what causes autism? Autism.”

  “Autism causes science, I heard.”

  He huffed out a breath at my little joke.

  “I’m sorry, that was a long tangent. I have a problem with the world taking a turn for the worst.”

  “Says the man running a club.”

  “A club being the key word there. I understand that to devote more funds to cancer research, I need to make that money somewhere. I can make it legally by selling booze to people. Which is what I do.”

  “Where do you get off being a terror about everything?” I demanded.

  “I donate to some. I lobby for others. I have very strong opinions on things and how people shouldn’t screw things up more.”

  “More?”

  “In defense of past generations, they didn’t have the science to prove what can now be proved. I view many whining narcissistic groups as a majority of the world does those who still foolishly believe that the world is flat. The strongest shape in nature is the sphere itself. Why would our world be made into the shape of one of the weakest shapes?”

  “Wow, I think the only base you haven’t hit is the gender or racial ones.”

  “I believe there is only one race, the human race,” he said. “And any damned fool who thinks a woman can’t gut a man is stupid. I do believe that the genders were built for different roles. There are those that a woman succeeds at over a man, just as there will be those that a man succeeds at over a woman. There is a balance to it, but that doesn’t mean that I think a woman cannot drive, or play sports, or be a homicidal maniac. You could be in my position, ruling a business. In this society and culture, it would be harder for you to achieve my position and keep it, but that doesn’t make you less capable. It makes those who make it this far more dangerous.”

  “Uh… huh,” I managed to get out.

  “Have I offended you yet?”

  I made a mental list, ticking off items as I went, and then retreating and checking again.

  “Surprisingly, no,” I said.

  “I believe criminals should be shot on sight, to give more money to the poor. We give three meals a day and a roof to murderers and child rapists, yet allow the homeless to starve to death.”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it and frowned.

  “Yes,” Sam said. “That’s a statement that everyone gets upset about, but can’t quite argue at the same time.”

  “Yeah, against killing people, but also against the homeless continuing on as homeless,” I struggled to get out.

  Sam shrugged.

  “Kill the bad guys, they go to Hell and are tormented for all eternity, what’s the need for prisons?”

  “And there it is,”

  “Theist?” he asked.

  “Atheist,” I responded.

  “Great, finally, something we can disagree on.”

  I should not have said that. No. No, I really should have said that. Oversharing was the number one mood killer in new interactions. No one needed to know what I believed of the world, or how messed up it had become in the hands of humans.

  Not all humans.

  I watched Grace frown at the wall of stuffed animals before her. She turned that confused look to me.

  We had driven to a store which I knew carried just such things. It was a department store, nothing overly fancy. A place that I thought would carry stuffed animals that Grace could afford without feeling too out of place.

  “Pick one,” I said. “It took some searching to find a store that still had them without voice boxes or moving joints or whatever else people put into them these days. A stuffed animal should start out soft and squishy and wind up matted and worn out, but still full of love.”

  “I’ve never had a stuffed animal before.”

  “Or a pet, apparently,” I muttered.

  “No,” she said, then turned to the wall. “Stuffed animals are for children.”

  “What fool told you that? Look, a stuffed animal is a comfort item, single, dating, married, you still need comfort. Some people drink or go on spending binges. Some can turn to family and friends. As I wouldn’t assume that you have the chance to do that, this is the solution. That one’s soft.”

  “They’re all soft,” she said in an annoyed fashion.

  I reached out and plucked up a bunny with floppy ears. I bounced it through the air toward her and booped her on the nose with it. She snapped the stuffed animal out of my hands and just stared at it.

  “I’d get you a puppy, but Lilly is in an apartment building. That’s not fair to a dog. And cats don’t really count as companions, considering they own you, not the other way around.”

  “Lilly has a cat, it just ignores me. I don’t understand how people think that this will solve their problems.”

  “You protect it,” I said quietly. “For some, it is a security thing, but for you, it’s you who protects it, you hold it. You protect it so that what was done to you isn’t done to it.”

  “Nothing was done to me,” she snarled.

  At least anger was something I could deal with. I reached out to the shelf and plucked up a stuffed animal that was larger than the bunny. I gave her a light smack on the head with the teddy bear’s head.

  “I’ve heard stories about the foster care, and you’ve not said anything,” I said. “I made an assumption, and I apologize about it.”

  “I don’t need these,” she said as she took the stuffed animal from me and wrapped her arms around it.

  Both the teddy and the bunny were pushed tight against her chest. The bunny’s ears flowed over her arms as she seemed to glare down at them, then turned that look to me, as if daring me to say something.

  “I’m not saying you need them,” I said. “This is a want. You could survive without these, that makes it not a need. But I like the idea of you cuddled up to something when I’m not there.”

  “I’ll get the bunny,” she said.

  Except, she didn’t just toss the teddy bear back. She set him back on the shelf, her fingers lingering for just a moment before she turned and headed for the cashier.

  I turned to the stuffed bear, a jealousy flaring for a moment.

  Grace hadn’t paid me that sort of attention since our dinner together. Even that had been momentary and lacked that longing.

  I sighed out and plucked it back off the shelf. I then walked up to the cashier as Grace paid for her bunny. I set the stuffed bear on the counter and looked at her as she scowled at me.

  “Don’t you dare,” she hissed.

  “Ma’am, I’d like to purchase this bear.”

  “No. He would not.”

  “And donate to that charity you’re collecting for,” I said, pulling my card from my pocket.

  I only carried one card at a time, a credit card that varied depending on my mood. I paid off the debt I incurred by the end of the month. The cards were mainly there because they were expected to be there. I liked to maintain the look of an indebted businessman because for some damned reason the vain women I typically bedded ate it up like catnip.

  “How much would you like to donate, two, five, or ten dollars?”

  “Is there a competition for cashiers who collect the most donations?”
I asked.

  Grace had called me a mean, mean man in the car. She probably thought I was joking about being extravagant with my money if she said it again. I wanted to prove her wrong then and there.

  “No, sir, there is a store wide one, the store who collects the most gets two hundred dollars to throw a party for the staff,” the cashier said.

  “All right, I’d like to donate five hundred dollars. Might as well match the company’s donation and then some.”

  “B-uh, yes, sir,” the cashier said, then turned and stared at her till.

  “No, no, he’s not donating that much.”

  “Grace, we aren’t married, you can’t control who I donate to,” I said.

  “Fine, you aren’t buying that bear.”

  The cashier looked like she was going to bolt at any second.

  I held up my card and she motioned numbly to the card reader attached to the counter. I popped my card into the reader and entered my pin number, then removed the card when prompted.

  “Would you like a bag?” the cashier asked.

  “No, thank you,” I said, taking the stuffed animal off the counter and turning to Grace, holding it out to her.

  “I hate you right now,” she said, snapping it out of my hands.

  I smiled in response and slipped my hands into my pockets. She might say she hated me, but that wasn’t true at all. She was just upset because I had purchased something for her and she expected there to be strings attached to the purchase. It was a chance to prove worth and loyalty.

  I would never again ask about the stuffed animal unless I saw the stuffing of said bear all over the room. Then I would ask out of concern for my own safety.

  I might be immortal, but it hurt to get stabbed and such.

  The way Grace hugged the second stuffed animal told me that I had made the right decision. She hadn’t wanted to choose between the two of them, but she had made the financially smart choice. I slipped an arm around her, and we walked together out of the store, back into the car. She hugged those stuffed animals the entire way out.

  In the car, I moved my arm to around her shoulders and smiled at her.