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A Little Night Music Ch. 06

"From the President of the United States,
To the lowliest rock & roll star.
The doctor is in, and he'll see you now.
He don't care who you are.
Some get the awful, awful diseases,
some get the knife, some get the gun.
Some get to die in their sleep
at the age of a hundred and one."
-Warren Zevon, "Life'll Kill Ya"

The light went on in the room ahead. There was a buzzing sound, and then another door inside that room opened. Something orange moving inside and something blue moving past the wire-reinforced window in the door in front of her that hadn't opened yet. The old institutional tube light in the hallway where she stood waiting flickered overhead. There was a latching sound inside the room, and then the partial figure of a person in a blue uniform filled the window. A louder, closer buzz, and the door was opened.

Helena Medina... No. "Parker," she reminded herself, the judges wouldn't let it be Medina and make this exercise completely unnecessary; stood in the doorway. Behind her, Propappou placed a hand on the shoulder of the jacket she'd worn three years ago, tiny snags from her run through the woods now grown into large rips that had been patched with the logos of various punk and metal bands. She'd had to remove the pins and studs she'd secured or reinforced other parts of the jacket with before coming this far.

Her hand touched his, then let go. Troy stood at her side, out of view from inside the room. With her other hand, she reached out and touched his for a moment. He did the same and they smiled at each other. A second later, she stepped through alone.

Wade John Wayne Parker sat at a table in an orange jumpsuit and glared past his daughter at the old Greek man behind her. He gave the old man a look that said he wanted to jump up on the table and laugh and mock him for the courts not letting him steal her away and that the only reason he wasn't was that he was aware his ankles were chained to his chair and that the guards would surround and beat him. Byroni Medina returned it with eyes demanding that Zeus immediately blast this malaka pimple from the ass of the Earth with his thunderbolt. Their eyes remained fixed while a guard offered to get Mr. Medina some coffee until the closing of the door forced them to break contact.

Helena walked up to the chair on the other side of the plexiglass partition that bisected the table between them, and looked around, seeming not to notice the man seated three feet from her. Wade broke the silence, his voice coming through a grill in the glass that seemed to be floating in space a few inches above the table.

"One of the guys owes me a pack of smokes. I guess the fact that you're here means the judge saw reason, huh?"

Helena looked down at the seat of the chair. She flicked an imaginary bug or speck off of it. If she'd heard, she didn't react.

"How's the new foster family? Must be doing something right, even if they keep letting that old bastard bring you for Father's Day. You still letting his half-goat stick it in you?"

Helena let that go and continued looking at the red lights on the cameras in the corners. Things were actually going great with her foster family. Her case worker had proven very agreeable about her situation and always felt the compulsion to let Helena know a couple days before any visits or "surprise inspections." The foster family she was with were also more than happy to agree to Helena's proposal of cashing and handing over her entire maintenance check each month in exchange for lying to the social workers that she was home every night instead of spending all her time at the Medina house and keeping her room clean but otherwise undisturbed for when she had to be there for visits. She smiled and waved to one of the cameras, as if noticing them for the first time.

"OK," Wade said. "We're gonna be like that. Fine. I'm sorry, ok? Maybe if the cops had kept me all weekend, I wouldn't've come home so pissed, and your mom..."

Helena turned at the last two words and quick-walked over to the chair, an expression on her face that said that she was extremely interested in whatever he was going to say next.

"What," she asked. "What possible reason are you going to tell me my mother gave you that made you HAVE to beat her to death that's going to make me go 'Oh, ok?' WHAT? Let's hear it!"

Even through the glass, Wade Parker took half a jump back before responding with more anger.

"Look, I was drunk, ok!"

"I watched you kill my mother, Wade. I KNOW you were drunk! You were ALWAYS drunk! That excuses NOTHING!"

"This... look, shit happens. You shouldn't have let them call the cops on me!"

"And let you kill me and bury me in the marsh like you always say you should have?" He began to open his mouth to deny it. She shouted him down before the words left it. "Don't fucking tell me you weren't! You bought the fucking garbage bags and duct tape! Because the other guys weren't dumbfuck enough to go along with your 'my daughter can be our accomplice, she'll risk jail for us, won't ya sweetie' plan! Booze didn't tell you to be a piece of shit criminal, YOU told you to do that!"

"Well, those days are over, honey. I'm sobered up now, can't get a drop in prison. Got my AA chips and everything."

Helena sat and listened with a blank look on her face again, remembering playing checkers using his 3-day and 1-week coins whenever he was inside before and she could have friends over. And stories of how guys got booze smuggled in were a standard amongst the "uncles" who'd visit.

"I... I've been going to church in here too, honey. Getting right with the Lord. I know Jesus is going to show me the way." He took out a little hand-made wooden cross out from under his jumpsuit to show it'd been hanging on his neck this whole time. "I made this in the shop. There's one for you too."

Wade gestured to a small gift box on her side of the glass that separated them.

Helena lifted open the box lid and saw a cross identical to the one he was wearing. She set the lid back down on top of it.

"Maybe you can wear it to my next parole hearing. And something nicer than what you got on, and the board'll know I've got you on the outside to look after now. I'll get a real job and take care of you and we can be a family and it'll never happen again."

A look containing ten viewings of Scarface's worth of "Fuck You" appeared in Helena's eyes. A look that made Wade miss the look of infinite disgust and rage he'd gotten from Propappou a few minutes earlier.

"'It'll never happen again.' Now Julie owes ME a pack of smokes."

The look didn't leave as a big smile spread across the lower half of her face and she picked up the little box and stuck it into her inside jacket pocket, then began rooting around in it.

"I made something for you too, Wade. Something special. Spent a lot of time thinking about it."

Wade Parker leaned forward and smiled as Helena fished in the lining of the jacket, the pockets long torn into the lining, making for easier shoplifting. At last, she produced a folded-up piece of lined yellow note paper from the depths of the jacket. She stood up and looked at the guard on her side of the glass and the one on the other side.

"Leave us for a minute, please," she asked them. "And tell them to turn off the cameras too."

Both guards nodded and stepped out into the hallway. When they were gone, she sat back down and faced him.

"You wrote me a fucking poem," he asked, too upset that she didn't bring him any of the things he'd asked her to get for him on the outside and ready to mock whatever it was to question what she'd said to the guards or notice that they did so without a word upon Helena's request. She noticed the red lights on the cameras shut off and smiled.

"No. I just wrote it down because I wanted to get it right." She looked down at the paper, then fixed him with a gaze that he'd never seen from her. "Now, shut up."

He found himself no longer wanting to speak as she read.

"You've just decided to join the Aryan Brotherhood. After I leave, you're going to go out into the yard, find the biggest group of tough-looking black guys you can find, and start loudly proclaiming your new-found ideals and beliefs to them. Use the N-Word a lot. Tell them how they're inferior to the white man and ought to be rounded up and sent back to Africa, go ahead and get creative with it. Whatever they do to you after that, you're going to accept it and not fight back. This is all your own idea."

Helena folded up the paper and got up, Wade silently nodding and not understanding why he knew that was exactly what he'd made up his mind to do after she left. She knocked to let the guard know she was ready to leave. The other came into the room on his side.

"Oh, and, uh, Happy Father's Day... Daddy." Helena said before leaving.

She walked down to Visitor Reception and got the small cardboard box containing her pins and studs back. Propappou and Troy walked with her, each holding a hand, onto the ferry to leave the island and go home.

"Hey, Helena, I think, tonight, we go somewhere nice for dinner, eh," he said to her in Greek as they found seats in the back.

She looked up at the man she wished were her father, then back at the prison as the ferry pulled away from the docks. Troy turned on his phone, saw he'd missed six texts from Julie asking how it was going, and turned to text back.

"Can we just go home and have cocoa instead, Propappou?" Helen asked, also in Greek, watching the prison get smaller and hearing the sound of sirens coming from inside the walls growing distant.

She reached into her pocket and retrieved the note and the gift box.

"Sure, sure. Hey, what's that?" He asked.

Helen tore up the note and tossed the pieces and the box over the side, into the inlet.

"Something that'll never happen again," she responded.

* * *

"She's lost a lot of blood," one of the paramedics said as Contessa Helena de San Finzione's Eurocopter EC 115 helicopter descended toward the roof of the Byroni Medina Memorial Emergency Medical Center. "If your man hadn't been there, Generalissimo..."

Generalissimo Ramirez set down her purse; which, in all the chaos, had ended up in his care. He removed his jacket, now soaked with the blood she'd lost as he helped lift her onto the stretcher and into the helicopter, unbuttoning his shirt.

"Does she need more? I am O Negative."

Maisson, the Ultimado field medic who was first on the scene and rode in the helicopter with them, shook his head no and guided him down into one of the seats.

"They'll have that when we land, Mon Général. It's all ready for her."

The medic gestured for him to strap in for landing before doing the same.

Ramirez looked over her, over the EMTs doing their jobs. He should have done his job earlier, but the unconscious woman on the floor in front of him had made a mistake.

He knew what she could do, had heard tales about her back when he could have a drink with "the men" instead of "the officers." Grown men living in the 21st century spreading gossip about La Contessa the same way their ancestors in centuries past gathered to whisper tales of the demonic creatures that their rulers truly were beneath their human guise. By the time he'd met her, he'd heard too many of them to believe any. Might've told a few himself.

Now, he knew which ones to believe: the ones about her strange ability to command the wills of men. He'd seen it happen, experienced it himself. And when it happened again a few minutes before, he knew it was an accident. She was telling the assassin to stop, but everyone in the room except him did it, including the Generalissimo. If she hadn't told everyone they could move again before losing consciousness, he and the tourists would probably still be immobile in the ballroom, puzzling everyone who'd arrived after to see them all frozen in place still.

The cause was irrelevant: he couldn't do anything to help her then, and he couldn't do anything for her now. He watched the EMTs work, trying to find something they might have missed; some way to be helpful.

"Why is nothing being done about the cut on her neck," he asked Maisson. "He was cutting her throat, and then you and Velasquez fired..."

Maisson raised his right hand in reassurance as he fished for something in his left pocket.

"The neck wound was only superficial, Mon Général. The blade glanced off this and broke." Maisson held up the gold chain, one link now broken, that held the emerald pendant La Contessa had been wearing. "He missed her jugular."

Ramirez exhaled sharply. It was one good thing today. Maisson handed him the pendant and Ramirez reached for La Contessa's purse, placing it inside. But it still didn't feel like he was contributing.

"Shouldn't they be giving her morphine? What if she regains consciousness? The pain would be..."

The Ultimado figured out what was going on with Le Général and once the helicopter touched down, unbuckled himself and stood to block the Generalissimo's view.

"Mon Général," Maisson said. I did all that I could for La Contessa at the time, recognized that my skill was insufficient, and sent her on to people more expert than myself; these people. And now they are going to send her on to the men who know more and they will help La Contessa."

Ramirez looked up at the man and secured La Contessa's purse inside his uniform jacket.

"And if they cannot help, her, Maisson? If they do not have the skill?"

The Ultimado stood at attention.

"Then Le Général shall find the names of the men who DO have the skill to help La Contessa! He will GIVE them to Le Ultimados, and WE will kick in their doors and drag them SCREAMING to her bedside, Mon Général!"

The Tenente saluted. The Generalissimo rose and returned it. The doors opened, and the emergency room team took over, lifting La Contessa onto a gurney.

Ramirez carried the bloody bundle of jacket and purse into the hospital, and stayed with the gurney until they told him he couldn't. As the first responder and having La Contessa's full medical history, they needed Maisson to stay with them, and he promised he'd tell the Generalissimo as soon as he knew anything.

The swinging doors closed, Ramirez realized that he was still wearing his cover and sunglasses indoors and removed them, then looked for the elevator. While he rode down to the cafeteria level, a text came in and he reached for it from his shirt pocket, and felt it there too. The blood had soaked through his jacket and there were wet, red patches on the front of his shirt. The text was from his wife. Wanting to know the same things his last forty-five missed calls and thirty-six awaiting texts did. He noticed that everyone in the elevator was looking at him and put the phone back. He'd reply soon. He needed a moment.

Hernando entered the cafeteria to no one's notice. All eyes were focused on the televisions in the corners, showing images and videos from tourist cameras. Pictures of him and Maisson kneeling in the pool of blood that surrounded her. Him lifting her onto a stretcher and Maisson maintaining pressure on the wounds. An angry look on Velazquez's face right before she kicked the tourist in the testicles for trying to get video of Maisson's ripping La Contessa's blouse open to clear it from the wounds. The Generalissimo made a mental note to give that woman his harshest, most severe three-day-pass when they returned to base.

The footage changed to his image again, loading La Contessa into the helicopter, his jacket fully red in front. Ramirez's footsteps then sounded somehow louder to him. Louder than the televisions or the cooking sounds in the kitchen. By the time he reached the coffee machine, he realized that they hadn't gotten louder, but that all the other sound had stopped. When the noise of his selection of American black coffee filled the room, he looked around. The televisions had been muted, the kitchen staff had come out front. All eyes were upon him. And the stains on his shirt.

Hernando picked up his coffee, walked to the cashier, and paid for it. The cash register ringing up his purchase seemed much louder amongst the silence in the room, and its noise was followed by his shoes again as he walked over to a table with an ash tray and sat down with his coffee and his bloody bundle.

Not a word was said as he gave his coffee an experimental sip, then reached into La Contessa's purse and saw the item he'd spotted earlier when he put the pendant in it: a pack of her cigarettes. He opened it. Only three gone. She must have opened it before the meeting. Something about the meeting floated across his mind for something to connect with. Then he realized it must be that it was a shorter meeting than it had seemed to him if she'd only smoked three.

With that many left, she'd be ok with him borrowing one. She wasn't going to need them for a while, anyway. He'd buy her a carton for it later, that's what she would do if the situation were reversed. He found her lighter and lit it.

The room remained silent, watching him smoke his cigarette and drink his coffee. He reflected upon something she'd said at the warehouse last night. It was her cigarette that he was borrowing and would pay back, therefore, in a way, she was sharing it with him.

He gave a wry smile as he thought on how right she was. They were sharing a cigarette, and once again, lives were on the line.

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