by Jay Smith
I asked just to see his reaction, but his response was to simply edit me out of his busy cat food making lifestyle.
"It doesn't work like that, I'm afraid." Alan looked at his wristwatch and sighed. I was boring him now. "Our time is at an end, Winston." The face of my polite acquaintance returned, radiating warmth and acceptance. "You’re not going to 'cash in' as Parker's note demanded. You need to see yourself in the light of truth and respect your own limitations. Safe flight home, Mr. Casey."
Before he shot off into his home to leave me in the kitchen, Alan extended a consolatory hand like I’d just lost to him at tennis. I accepted it. After all, I like a good game. And the only way to learn some games is to join in and play.
~
It felt like the end of a cut scene in a video game. A lot happened that I had to digest, but I also found myself left alone in the mansion. I could go anywhere, look around or set off on what Alan implied was my next mission. I presumed Huan was off somewhere putting herself back together. Alan was probably already in a world-changing meeting where he could convert wealth into weapons-grade Awesome. While pretty sure I was under surveillance, I wasn't asked to leave. After a few minutes, no one came to usher me out to the portico.
"Cash in, don't cash out." How did Alan know about that?
A soft buzzing crossed the air. Huan left her suit jacket and purse on a countertop. The purse pulsed with the light of her cell phone inside. I picked them up and left the kitchen the way I entered, back into the gardens and toward the staff car that brought us.
The car was running and Huan sat behind the wheel motionless and tense, lips tight and eyes wet with tears held back by force of will. I got into the passenger side, gently placed Huan's belongings in the back seat next to my luggage and we were driving before I could get buckled in.
"I'm… sorry about what happened in there."
Here, I started to note the subtle difference between in-world Huan and her real-world persona. Neither was the truth, but in her emotional state, she reverted to the cold, violent enforcer of Aeternus, with its deeper tone and darker language. The real Huan was humiliated by Alan Horus, but Mistress Huan was only serving Lord BUS. That made it easier to cope, I guess.
She did not look away from the road. "I don't want to hear from you on the subject. You know nothing of it."
"I have had some twisted supervisors, but none of them made me…" I caught myself wanting to twist the blade a little, so I trailed off with a feeble, "…you know."
"Do not patronize me. You bested me." She seemed genuinely surprised by this. "I underestimated you and you took the opportunity to best me. Fairly. I am revising my opinion of you, Winston. I won't be so easy to fool again."
"It isn't a competition, Huan. I'm not your enemy."
"You're a small man in a dangerous place. Of course you want to fly home and forget you ever saw us."
I changed the subject. "How long have you been with Lord BUS?"
"I am not 'with him'. I am the ambassador to entities outside the realm."
"He told you he loves you and you said..."
"That is not your business."
"I'm trying to understand this place so maybe I can understand why Parker brought me here."
"I see." She took a breath and composed herself. "You may continue."
"You wear a collar."
"That is not a question."
"You're a dominatrix. With a collar."
"We all wear a collar."
"I don’t."
That earned a little sneer. "We all do. It is invisible until the chain is pulled."
"Point."
"It is my pleasure to be collared by the Lord of Lords. He earned the right to do so."
"What does that mean, really?"
"That is quite personal. I will say it is a show of utter loyalty between us. It means that I serve his varied, sometimes insatiable needs. I carry out his wishes."
"And what do you get out of it? Other than being a taste-tester for his pets, I mean."
She slipped a finger into the hoop of her collar. "I am part of something incredible, a life outside of life. Something you don’t understand – rebirth."
"Oh, I think I have a line on the concept."
"To discover what one can truly be while in the safety of the realm…it is a gift."
I shook my head, less confused about Huan’s reasons for being there than Parker’s. "Rebirth" -- it was the most complex, yet consistent lie shared by the entire community. Outside the realm, Huan sold real estate. When Horus hired her as an event planner, she left that world and became Mistress Huan full time in his live action role-play world.
"That goes for both worlds, then?"
There was a long contemplative pause before she answered, or rather changed the subject entirely. "I should tell you something about your friend Parker, but I'm going to let you find out for yourself. Or I'm going to let you turn around and run away from it, whichever way you choose. I will tell you that Parker also bested me once and he used that fact to manipulate me for a time. He did the same with others in our organization. Your arrival here is his final round in a long, personal game he played against Lord Bus."
"Parker or his character in the realm?"
"Both."
"If I tell you Parker's game, will you tell me about the man himself?"
"No. That would be cheating."
"What do you mean?"
"Did you wonder why Lord BUS did not ask you about yourself?"
"Because he's a self-absorbed prick?"
"Because he already knows where you are from, what you do, your income, credit rating...everything he could glean from social media and a basic background check. The reason he brought you to his home to speak with you was to see what kind of man you are underneath it all, what kind of threat you pose...or opportunity you present him."
"Did I pass the audition?"
"The next few weeks should be enlightening for all of us."
"I go back to work Monday."
"You are free to do so, but I sincerely doubt you will choose to, especially once you get to know your dear old friend Parker."
PART FOUR
Home Again
"Our past is suspended in the amber of imperfect memory. The future is all we can control and so long as you love me, I will protect you from all the horrors of the world to my last breath."
- Lord Parque to Queen Ezrin
(Short Stories of The Realm Aeternus, Aeternal Media 2014)
Chapter Fifteen
The driveway was empty when I reached the house - no longer "home" by any definition - so I got to park in Clownshoe's spot. Claire hadn't changed the locks or the security code. In fact, most of the house remained unchanged. The biggest difference was the big empty spot in the sunken living room where my recliner used to sit. The one thing in the house I looked forward to seeing and experiencing was gone.
In my absence, Claire led a surgical extraction of any sign I ever lived there. The master bedroom smelled like a Total Fitness locker room covered in Febreeze and all our shared photos were off the walls throughout the house. Everything we bought together remained as I remembered it just like all Claire's things. And like my chair, books, DVDs, pictures, even my favorite cereal – gone.
This didn't mean there was a gap in our home. Evidence of Clownshoe appeared everywhere once I started looking. Clownshoe's permanent invasion of the house took its foothold in the garage with a pile of truck parts and tools. Despite the flattened cardboard on the concrete floor, he left ugly, black oil stains across both bays and old, plastic bottles darkened by wet wads of old chaw. I didn't bother going through the plastic tubs up in the storage loft.
There were things I could have taken, but beyond the small artifacts from my life before Claire, the only other thing I wanted was missing. I was about to lock up when I heard the key in the lock.
Claire was alone.
"Winston," she said like identifying me on a Flash Card.
> "Yes. Hi. I was just leaving."
She looked confused, like she might be standing in front of a fichus that looked like her estranged husband. Every phrase she had been practicing since I left fought for the right to leave her mouth first.
"Yeah. I just came for my stuff but I see you took care of it."
Finally, she said, "W-we need to talk" and pushed past me and marched toward the kitchen. She wasn't prepared and needed to reach her personal courtroom to feel comfortable enough to lay in on me. I didn't want to wait.
"Okay. Let's talk about where my chair got to."
"I had it put into storage out by the old Greek diner." She tossed her keys on the kitchen table. "I can't stand looking at it."
"I can understand that. It went out of its way to offend you."
Happily backlit by the skylight over the breakfast nook, with arms folded across her chest she began. "Where the hell have you been?"
I could have insulted her by saying she sounded exactly like my mother because it was true. I chuckled.
"Funny story. I've been wandering the southwest, hitchhiking really. Every town I've been to seems to have some kind of problem that I get in the middle of. Somehow I always get my butt kicked, turn into a giant green rage monster..."
"Winston..."
"... break up a bar or a repair shop, wake up under a tree, solve the mystery, turn back into the rage monster, beat up the bad guy..."
"For fuck sake!"
"...and then walk off into the wilderness to lonely piano music. It's been a weird week, Claire, and I really didn't want to talk to you. At all. And it hasn't stopped your plan to move my replacement into our house."
That startled her or took her off-script. She stood in the nook, lost in a mess of thoughts and wants and feelings without a way to focus them.
I broke eye contact with her and went to the fridge. It was full of cheap beer and plastic tubs full of leftovers. I found a bottle of water and shut the door.
Claire began again, sounding slightly concerned. "You know you're about to be fired from, like, the only real job you ever had."
I took a long swig and shrugged. "Yes. Sad, really."
"You haven't returned any of my lawyer's calls. He's considering going after a summary against you."
"What, and not let us get divorced? That's just bad legal advice if you ask me."
"That's not funny. You won't have any say in what you take away from this, alimony..."
"…custody of my recliner. I get it. My attorney will be in touch on Monday. Soon enough?"
Again, she was thrown. This was all new territory for her. If her conversation went roughly the same as the one I had with my lawyer, she had been instructed not to talk to me without representation. But Claire was no good at listening to people. "You're tan."
"I discovered the sun."
"You've lost weight, too. Are you…?"
"Sick? No. I just got out and – walked a lot."
"You know, as I was going through our things and boxing up, I really looked at our photos for the first time in a while. I put a copy of our wedding album in storage for you."
"Nice of you. Once I figure out where the hell I'm going to live…" I stopped. "Claire, what the hell were you thinking?"
"I was angry! You were gone and ignoring me! You left me and I left you a message to call me back or I was going to move you out. You didn't and so I did!" She tried to sound confident but it just came out guilty. Whenever we had a stressful time of things, when her grandparents died for example, Claire would respond by repainting a room or rearranging the furniture. A fresh point of view helped her look at life differently.
She leaned back against the breakfast table. "I was going through our photos and I realized how things just stopped being fun. I know I'm a daddy's girl and you never stood up to him."
"What?"
"And you never stood up to him because I always sided with him. I'm sorry. He made things a lot easier for both of us when we started out. Hell, he paid to have your sh- things moved into storage when I asked him."
My poor chair. It likely didn't make it to storage intact.
"It's been over for a long, long time, Winston."
"I know." I took a breath. "You know, I wasn't really surprised when I found out about Blake."
Claire jumped in shock, but then realized there was no reason to be upset. It was like worrying about the garage catching fire when the rest of the house has already gone up in flames. "How long have you known?"
"Not long. We were already in trouble when I got my diagnosis and while I was laid up you held everything together. I can't blame you for needing emotional support. I would have preferred you hook up with someone with more emotional range than a jockstrap, but hey."
"I didn't mean for – him - to happen. It just kind of did."
Nope. Not going there. "Like my dad always said, 'It is what it is.'"
"Are you in trouble, Winston? Is that why the police called me? Why you didn't call?"
"No. I'm fine.
"They called and asked me all sorts of questions about you. They wanted to know if you might be involved with drugs or pornography or something... you should have heard the obscene questions they asked my mother about you."
I could imagine and it amused me mightily.
"No, I'm not in trouble. I met Carla Baron – you remember her, right?"
"Did you sleep with her out there?" She didn't care if I did, just if there was a chance I closed the "cheating" gap in our marriage.
"No. She's a mess. Park tried to help her and it didn't take. She didn't have a good life after high school. Police asked me questions and I gave them answers. They were looking for her. Don't know why."
"I see. I'll make sure my mother knows you're not in prison."
My conscience will feel so much better if you did.
"Where will you stay," she asked.
"I'll find a place."
"I'm sorry, Winston."
"Me, too, Clairebear." It came out before I could stop it and for the first time in many years the word fell out of my mouth like a half-chewed piece of meat. "I need you to do something - not for me, but yourself."
"What?"
"If you start getting calls from people asking about me, about us or if specific people call - I'll give you a list of names - I need you to say nothing. Don't speculate and don't volunteer any information about yourself or me or us or even Clownshoe. You're not in any danger, but..."
"What the hell, Winston?"
I thought about what I just said. "Okay. That definitely sent the wrong message by being too vague. Let's try this again."
I took the dry erase marker from the fridge door and removed a pithy quote torn from Claire's Joke-a-Day calendar to write on. I wrote several names on the back. "If any of these people call, tell them to call me. You have nothing to say because you know nothing. Ask them nothing."
"Who are these people?"
I held her frightened gaze for a moment, then replied, "Telemarketers."
~
Without even a chair to crash on, I spent the afternoon at an artsy city bookstore listening to jazz and reading the second half of Alan's fourth volume of growing psychosis posing as epic fantasy. I drank tea and relaxed. I had my own means. Little digital farmers were earning me more a day than writing speeches and sitting through meetings.
I tired of reading Alan's fifty-page history of Lord Bunting-upon-Stropf's Gospel to the Reptilians and his subsequent torture at the hands of its Commander-General Thrawl and got lost in a twenty-minute improvised jam on the little raised stage below my spot in the observation gallery. The quintet played like five good friends shooting the shit at a long overdue reunion. All their stories and the memories converted to melodies and rhythms, shifting from one idea to another as the feeling moved them. I followed the images in a long mural behind them depicting dozens of figures along the Susquehanna River representing two hundred years of people living their lives.
; For the first time in many years I felt at peace. Life wasn't any better, but at least I was in control of it.
And then some jackass blocked my view of the mural.
Chapter Sixteen
"I'm Dennis Reilly. I represent the late Lawrence F. Kline, Esquire. I'm also his executor."
He intended for this to mean something but I waited for him to fill that part in.
"Mr. Kline — King — was a friend of Grant Parker's."
"Oh. And you know me how?"
"I spoke to your wife and she suggested you might be here."
I JUST got done telling her…
At first glance Reilly didn't strike me as an attorney. My third and fourth glance didn't help, either. I expected him to launch into a story about how he was robbed nearby and needed just enough for bus fare home to take care of his sick mother. He looked like a lawyer freshly fished out of a drunk tank. He wore his only suit with an open collared shirt, his missing tie probably causing the bulge in his wrinkled coat pocket. The man needed a razor and a comb if he was going to try and live up to the smug expression on his face. At minimum, he would have to kill the stink of Marlboro's and scotch he carried with him.
If not for the mention of Park's name, I would have gestured him away as a non-person and returned to my quiet reflection. "What did you need, Mr. Reilly?"
He gestured to the chair opposite mine. "May I?"
"Must you?"
"I have some information about Lieutenant Parker that might be of interest."
I shrugged in place of a warm invitation and he scraped the metal chair out from the table to sit down. I put away my Magic Book to give him my full attention.
"Ah! You have the new Elite Librus 4M Book. How do you like it?"
"I have nothing to compare it to. You know what this is?"
His expression suggested of course he did. "The Magic Book, custom designed for elite live action players in the Realm Aeternus. When I started, it was an iPad mini and couldn't do a tenth of that yours can do."
"It's an interesting tool. I can't do anything unrelated to The Realm so it’s a pretty limited accessory outside it."
