Her finely crafted plan didn’t work. Isabella didn’t fall to the dining room floor in a dead faint or go clutching for Gail’s knees, as Sylvie had, during the test. Instead, Isabella blinked twice and gave a little shiver…and otherwise didn’t react. Gail didn’t have the same reaction as when she had untagged Sylvie, either. Instead of reaching into the toilet to fish out some turds, this time it was as if she held a hot bloody knife in her hands, a knife covered in Isabella’s blood. Ewww and worse.
“Focus? Gail? What did you do?” Bart said. He shook his head and turned to leave. “Your little plan didn’t work, did it?” he said, condescending. He didn’t think he needed to grab her and toss her in a closet. Not for some ill-conceived worthless stunt. “Sorry.”
“I just untagged your wife,” Gail said. Guilty, guilty, guilty! Guilty, as if she had just knifed Isabella.
Bart stopped cold and turned to Isabella, who shrugged. “Bart?” she said. “What’s going on?”
This definitely hurt Gail more than it hurt Isabella.
Bart rounded on Gail. “You can’t do this! You have to keep her tagged,” he said, confusion entering his voice. He didn’t understand Gail’s plan. “She’s one of your Transforms. Tag her again, right this instant.” Violent emotions and confinement ideas roiled through Bart’s expression.
Shit! What should she do, now? Isabella was supposed to be begging Gail to retag her, and influencing Bart to give in to Gail’s demands. The difference in reactions must have been because Sylvie was one of Gail’s Focus attendants.
What a disaster!
This wasn’t part of the plan.
“Uh, um, no,” Gail said, improvising as fast as she could scramble, difficult with her guts screaming at her that she was doing the wrong thing, a bad thing, a horrible thing. “This is a different sort of juice weapon, and I’m not using it to control the household, but to keep the household from controlling me.” Her prepared statement would have worked better if things had worked as planned. “I…” Her voice trailed off, not sure where to go next. The strong acid taste of vomit filled her throat.
Bart made his decision and reached forward to grab Gail, but too much time had passed. Her people were reacting now, to Gail’s words about her confinement. Ed Zarzemski grabbed Bart’s arm and held him back, practiced bodyguard reflexes kicking in. “You will not harm my Focus,” Ed said.
Gail’s Transforms, all of them who were at home, crowded farther into the small dining room and murmured approval. Bart took a deep breath and gathered Isabella into his arms.
Inspiration struck Gail. “Untagged, she can’t be harmed if I mishandle the juice,” Gail said. She reached into her handbag and picked out a copy of a short article from the Detroit News, from two years ago. The article was part of the plan’s preparations, to give to Bart when, as they had predicted, he told Gail she couldn’t untag Isabella because untagging was illegal. “Nothing bad has to happen. But it might.”
No, the reason why Focuses didn’t do such things, Gail realized, was that untagging one of her Transforms felt like murder, or suicide, or self-mutilation. She knew if Bart called her bluff and walked away, got food for himself and Isabella, and ignored the confrontation, she wouldn’t be able to keep herself from retagging Isabella. She had a hard enough time keeping from retagging Isabella right this instant, with Bart snarling in her face and physically threatening her.
“They don’t care,” Bart said, after he quickly read the Xerox of the article. “They really don’t care.” His mouth twisted into an angry frown and he looked at Isabella. “A Focus untags one of her Transforms and they don’t care?” The article reported an incident where a Focus Stell untagged one of her male Transforms and sent him back to the Clinic. When he complained to the police about his treatment they just ignored him and let him rot. He went Psycho, and when his family complained, after his death, the police told them they thought Focuses should do this more often, and stop bothering them, because no crime had been committed. Isabella paled and started sobbing, softly and lady-like.
Gail guessed Bart hadn’t realized how bad off her Transforms were. “Legally, any officer of the law can decide at any time that any Transform they are dealing with has become a Monster, and kill her on the spot. All of us Transforms need bodyguards, Bart, not just me. The dangers I face are no worse than what any Transform faces, and, yes, I want to live, and keep living, as much as the next person.”
Bart backed away from Gail, fear riding his face now, attempting to ease back into the crowd. He found Buddy and David Carlow, his current top flunkies, stuck with Van at the back of the crowd, out of reach. “So, I guess I’m out as household leader,” he said, his voice filled with fear and calculations. “You’ll need another, or take over yourself.”
Finally, something they had anticipated, something for which she had a prepared answer. Gail still shook, but she was able to take a deep breath and quiet her own shivering emotional reactions. “No. This is about me, not the household,” Gail said, willing now to give her people a little taste of her father. “If the household wants to keep you on as leader, fine. Me? Neither you nor the household gets a say in where I go, or when. No longer. I don’t think I need bodyguards. If the household does, then provide the bodyguards and quit whining.”
The household murmured approval. Gail realized she had her Transforms all pumped up to their stimulation optimums. If she gave the word, just one word, they would riot and tear Bart apart, limb from limb. Just. One. Word.
She didn’t speak. Instead, she concentrated on being a Focus, and slowly lowered their juice.
“What are you planning on doing with this freedom you want so much?” Bart said. His voice remained condescending and parental, with a faint echo of fear, but Gail, with a little help from the figurative red blood on her hands, managed to keep from exploding with her typical Rickenbach temper.
When they had talked this obvious question over, ahead of time, Gail had wanted to say ‘that’s none of your business,’ while everyone else, led by Helen, suggested the best course of action would be to play to the crowd and tell the truth.
Gail so much wanted to tell Bart to go fuck off, but she let her crew’s advice sway her. “I and a few people have been working on a research project about Transforms, Focuses and Transform households, digging information up and collating it.” Behind my back, Bart muttered to himself, unhappy. Bart had told Van his Transform research wasn’t wanted or needed. He had even threatened to confine Van. “I’m going to continue doing so. It’s in my best interest, and hopefully everyone’s best interest, for us to know as much as we can about Transform life, and how other Transform households work, given that we’re not exactly loved out there in the Transform community. I’m also going to get a job. Melanie is sure she can get me in as a waitress over at the Olde Oak Barrel.” Where Melanie currently worked. “Waitressing may not bring in much money, but a job beats sitting around all day in a tent.”
Everyone laughed, except for Bart and Isabella. Gail sensed Bart come to a decision, even though his facial expression never changed. “I apologize, Gail. It was wrong of us to keep you restricted to the farm after you defeated your early Focus problems. Consider your demands fully satisfied. You are our Focus.”
Well, hell. Kurt was right. Bart had decided to play to the crowd himself, and attempt to keep his leadership job. She followed Kurt’s advice, said “Apology accepted” and retagged Isabella without making a fuss.
Bart left with Isabella and the crowd started to break up. Many of her Transforms smiled and nodded at her, and several gave her surreptitious thumbs-up. Only Rev. Narbanor said anything aloud, a quiet “Thank you, Gail. You did well.”
As soon as she was able to extricate herself, she rushed back to her tent, alone, to wail and laugh and cry and giggle all at the same time.
She had broken the chains binding her.
---
Van knocked on the tent door before he entered, surprising her. “May I come in?”<
br />
Gail wiped her eyes yet again and made sure the tear-wet clothing was out of sight. “Of course,” she said. He had never knocked on their tent, before. Or asked to enter. Strange. Disquieting. Was this it?
Did she want it to be it?
Van came in, hesitant and sheepish, and gave her a studied look. She didn’t meet his eyes, or challenge him, or speak, still reveling in her freedom. Whatever he saw in her banished his hesitation, because his mood changed and his fear left. He bounded up to her, grabbed her, and swung her around in the air. “You did it. You did it!”
Gail didn’t understand Van’s mood, but went with it, and kissed him on the cheek.
“That was just so amazing, Gail. Amazing!” Van rarely got like this, all bouncy and exuberant; his vibe brought a smile to her face, and a few more bits of bliss to her mood. He put her down, but didn’t let go of her. She ended up in his lap, curled up with her head on his shoulder, tucked under his chin. She was very glad they weren’t in public. “When the plan went all to hell, and Isabella didn’t react the same way Sylvie did, I thought we were all goners. You improvised your way out of the disaster in an amazing fashion. That was just so neat to watch.”
Gail’s skin chilled. “Goners? What did you think would happen?”
“You and Sylvie and Melanie, confined. Kurt and I kicked out of the household. Helen told that unless she behaved, and unless Roger kept quiet, she would be hurt.”
His words edged Gail toward anger, but she took a deep breath to steady herself. “You didn’t mention this before.”
“I talked to Helen and Sylvie, and they convinced me to keep my, quote, damn fool intellectual mouth shut.”
Gail’s anger turned to happy laughter. Her inner circle was functioning the way she had hoped. Helen and Sylvie had been correct – his speculations wouldn’t have helped.
She noticed more than just relief in Van, though. “So, tell me, what has you so happy?”
“I’d thought I’d lost you,” Van said, continuing to bubble. “The real Gail. My Gail. The one who once braced the U of M Regents in their lair, without thought of backing down.”
She could have smacked him one, but paused and reigned in her temper. She replayed his statement in her mind, and heard the tones submerged in his comment. Buried in his emotionally inarticulate utterings was love, love that had been missing for weeks and weeks.
The damn fool liked her as a bitch.
She decided not to call him on his absurd statement. Instead, she nestled closer to him, and purred.
“You did wonderful, stupendous, amazing,” Van said. She had hoped for some private comfort, her asking Van, many times, whether she had done the right thing, and Van telling her she had, each time. Moral support, though, wasn’t on the menu right now. “The look on Bart’s face was priceless when Ed grabbed his arm and Bart realized the jig was up. Heh! You’ve successfully pulled off your own Declaration of Independence and Revolutionary War, all in one short evening.”
He would have to think of her confrontation with Bart in that way. However, his comment was reassuring. Not reassurance that she had done the right thing, but reassuring her competence. In his eyes, he had put her on a tall pedestal, and was happy looking up.
“Hmm, okay, thank you,” she said, settling the emotions she didn’t understand in her mind the same way she settled deeper into his comfortable embrace. He spoke unknowingly to some unexpected Focus emotions, higher ordered echoes of love, fear, and pride. “What I keep thinking is ‘please-Lord-don’t-let-me-ever-have-to-go-through-that-again.” She turned in his arms, looked him in the eyes, and saw in them starry eyed wonder. And love.
“What I keep thinking is where you’re going to go with this,” Van said. “Not just this week, or this month, but long term. I don’t think you’re going to be an ordinary Focus.” He didn’t want to control her, or heaven forbid have the responsibilities she had. No, he just wanted to watch as she pushed the world around, and help her if he could. What he wanted for himself, he wasn’t sure of yet. No, he didn’t want to leave her.
All easy to read, and all nothing she could talk about. Yet. Perhaps ever.
“Well, for where I’m going, how about this?” she said. She reached up, grabbed the back of his head, and kissed him, hot. She made her decision. She wanted to get laid, long and hard, no matter how much it hurt, until it hurt no longer.
Until this moment in the tent, she hadn’t realized that she had been the one making the decision, not Van…and she had decided she would not walk her path alone.
Later at night, Gail metasensed Watchmaker making his rounds. However, when he approached the main house, right at the dining room windows, he froze in place, let out a blast of panic wilder than Gail had ever metasensed from him before, and sprinted away in horror and disgust.
Gail groaned, and sighed, luckily not loud enough to wake Van. Not that waking Van would be easy; she had exhausted him in bed tonight. He had been more animated in bed than she had seen him for a long long time.
Untagging Isabella was a bad thing; doing so must have produced copious amounts of bad juice, enough to disgust Watchmaker, even if it wasn’t enough for her to metasense. If Gail guessed correctly, they had lost their Crow. Fuck the Crows, she thought, if they can only stand to take whatever they subsisted on from households with enslaved Focuses. Fuck them all.
Just the usual one step forward two steps back moment in her life as a Focus.
Epilog
“Order up!” Johnson, the shift cook at the Olde Oak Barrel called out. Gail hustled over, read the order, remembered the table, and served the older couple and their three high school and junior high school kids their finicky late evening meal, keeping a sparkly smile on her face.
Working, even a mere twenty hours a week, helped her mood, keeping her mind off the household travails and her inability to keep her emotions from yanking around everyone’s juice. She spied David Carlow bussing tables, and smiled. He was about the unhappiest person in the household, stuck in a bad job as well as pulling night-time bodyguard duty, all because his wife Gretchen had slipped up and gotten overly emotional at the entrance gate of where he worked at the Detroit Locker plant six weeks earlier, in late June, costing him his old job. He blamed Gail for everything, and because of her, his marriage was nearly over.
The Olde Oak Barrel wasn’t fine dining; the place was nothing but a dive, a freeway exit bar and grill chain restaurant knockoff. On the other hand, Gail found keeping a smile on her face and getting excellent tips far easier than riding herd on her Transforms and their mercurial emotions.
As Gail had feared, Watchmaker never returned. Bart had, as Kurt predicted, made peace with Gail and Gail’s inner circle, and kept his job as head of their household. He was wary of Gail, now, which pleased Gail no end, but he was no longer consumed by fear. They hadn’t gotten anywhere on contacting any other Focuses, but they had managed to find more examples of Weak Focus households, enough so Gail crossed off her scrawled ‘mine’ from the noteboard. No, compared to a true weak Focus, she was doing just fine. Things weren’t perfect – they still faced a Michigan winter living in a small farmhouse…in sleeping bags, using every square inch of floor, including the ancient stone-walled dirt-floored cellar.
Gail noticed Sylvie come in through the thick, gouged and creaky front door of the Olde Oak Barrel. Strange, as Sylvie didn’t have a shift, today. The situation did bring a smile to Gail’s face; the more people in her household who worked here, the more the other staff decided to leave, creating openings for more of them. This might have been a problem, save that Don Wilder, the manager and owner of the place, loved the business Gail brought in, and would do nearly anything to keep Gail employed. She didn’t advertise the fact she was a Focus, and few of the patrons knew or cared, and she didn’t officially have any noticeable Focus charisma, but the bar and restaurant patrons liked her well beyond her average waitressing skills. Something screwy brought in the tips.
As if someth
ing wasn’t always screwy around her.
Sylvie called Gail over, when Gail had a free moment. “Betha got a call about an hour ago from one Delia Vinote, attempting to verify we were the ‘household of one Focus Gail Rickenbach’.”
“Okay.” What was it this time? More complaints from the county authorities about their tents and shacks? “Why the rush over?”
“Delia’s a Transform. Her Focus is going to be calling tonight, and we all thought you might want to get home and take the call, Gail.”
Shit! A Focus calling her! “Which Focus.”
Sylvie paled. “Tonya Biggioni.”
Gail almost died on the spot. “She’s a member of the Focus Council! Dammit, I didn’t do anything! I promise! Well, nothing you don’t already know about.” She hoped the call wasn’t about Kurt’s drug dealing.
“She says she’s the new director of the Focus Mentoring Program. Or so she said to Betha.” Sylvie’s eyes turned wild. “Biggioni! The celebrity Focus from hell, the one who singlehandedly quieted the riot in Philadelphia! What’s she going to do to us?”
“Absolutely nothing,” Gail said. She would make sure of that. “Can you cover for me? I’ll go home and deal with this bitch. None of you will have to worry about a thing.”
Damned if she was going to let some outsider interfere in her household, or with her. She would never allow anyone to chain her again.
Or so she hoped.
She took a moment to quiet her fears and anxieties, those parts of her which refused to acknowledge that she wasn’t still confined to the farm. Fear lived on long past the events, she realized.
A pack of eighteen-wheelers rumbled past on the Interstate, loud enough to drown out the restaurant noise. She had learned to enjoy the quiet of the Ebener farm nights.
Here we go again, back into the crazy shit, she thought. She changed out of her waitress uniform, wiped damp August sweat off of her face, and slipped behind the wheel of one of the household cars to drive back to the Ebener farm.
No Chains Shall Bind Me (The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Seven) Page 19
