Jake tested her bicep gingerly between his thumb and forefinger, and then held his own arm, which was at least four times the size, up next to hers. He shook his head sadly. “Woman, you are pa-the-tick. Pick on someone your own size.” Jake gestured to a youth who came over eagerly. “Hey, Danny, think you could take this puny little thing?”
Danny studied her bicep speculatively and nodded. Moments later he and Em were setting up for an arm wrestling match. Jake checked the positioning of their arms, made sure their wrists were straight and muscles relaxed before they started. Danny winked at his buddies and the match was on. He won and the crowd hooted and hollered their approval.
“Best two out of three,” Jake ordered. Em won the second match and Danny won the third, but not easily. Money passed back and forth between numerous men and women. Danny and Em shook hands formally and then hugged, falling over each other with laughter. Em returned to her seat and Jake motioned for the gang leaders to join them.
“Time to go,” Someone announced and everyone filed out calling goodbye. Five young men and two girls sat with Em and Jake. Em waved Ron over. Jake stood and examined Ron as Em introduced them. Few people could tower over Ron, but this man did.
“This the little guy who helps you?” Jake asked.
“Yes. And I kinda like him too.”
“You do!?”
“Be nice.”
Jake looked Ron up and down critically, frowned and finally shook Ron’s hand. “You’ll do.” He gestured for Ron to sit with them and took his own seat.
The young men and women relayed the gang news assuring Em that there had been no deaths or fights since her last visit. She asked about specific families and jobs and housing.
“The shuttle buses are working out well,” the girl named Anny, said. “The ride makes a long day longer, but it beats no job.”
Jake turned to Ron. “One of the greatest frustrations of the inner city bro is the lack of job opportunities in the hood.”
“Plenty of jobs out there, but miles from where we live,” Anny said.
“And without wheels, how can we be expected to get out there and hold down a job?” One of the boys wearing a Nissan shirt with his name tag said.
“So, what's happening with the kids at home?” Em asked.
“Set up day-care and after-school care for them. Most of the grannies help out so doesn't cost the parents much.” Anny looked proud as she spoke.
“Situations not ideal,” Jake groused, “but it does provide incomes, stabilize families, and most importantly, keeps the men at home.”
“Exactly where we want them.” Anny high-fived the other girl at the table.
“Man, you guys are good,” Em said. Everyone seemed to sit a little taller at her words.
Business concluded, they went outside. Frank was waiting by the car with a group of men. It was great to see the repairs that had been done since her last visit. Window boxes full of herbs, green onions, lettuce, and flowers added color and life, and the street was clean. It even smelled fresh. Becoming livable.
“There was a proposal at city hall once,” Ron whispered in her ear, “to change the name of this community in an effort to change the image. No name change, however well intentioned, could have accomplished this.” Em tried to stifle a sinful little welling of pride.
*
Ronny boy got to be with Em at work, his hand on her thigh. Sky! Why couldn't that have been me? Ron watched and learned that Em didn't offer answers or solutions. Instead, with questions, she directed the conversation subtly, leading the group to discover the solutions that would work for them.
Well, duh, what did he think? That Em bullied her way through her job? Well, I guess … maybe … it would seem that way to anyone watching the news.
The irony of the situation did not escape Ron. Had to give him credit for that. For years he had participated in celebrity events to raise money for gang intervention programs, but he had never thought of going to the areas his circle pretended didn’t exist, except as an excuse for the golf tournaments, of course. Yet, there he was feeling safe, comfortable, and welcome. All because of my Little Soldier. She set the tone for everything she touched.
Lying in bed later, Ron wanted to ask how everyone had recognized her when she wasn’t in what he called “Madame clothes,” and how many times she had been there and why they had never heard about that work on the news, and how many other things she did that no one had heard about, but Em was already asleep. Her answers would be, at best, vague and oblique. She was a master at evasion when she wanted to be. In the end he knew he wouldn’t ask at all.
And my darling, Em? She was relaxed at that moment—in his arms—her worries at bay, her search for her other life forgotten for a moment. My job now, was to find a way to keep the memories of her other self from intruding in this life she led with me. I’d go to Mentor for help, butter her up by asking advice. Maybe that would soften the old bat. Humph! Who was I trying to kid?
Chapter 35
Em was an astronaut without a spaceship again. A sense of perfect calm washed over her. She felt her muscles relax one by one and sighed with the heady sweet pleasure of feeling loose and carefree.
Too bad that feeling was to be so fleeting. She deserved better. But she needed this meeting with me, needed answers.
She tensed when she sensed my presence. She knew too that my deep soothing voice would seduce her yet again. I wasn’t above being flattered that she thought of me that way. Seduce. Seduction. Seducer. Seducing.
“It’s not fair you know,” Em said before I could speak. “I have so many questions and you always cut me off. Why me?”
The same question I had asked when told I was to be a Power. Yes, I had excelled in my education and training but so had countless others. Why me? Why not Exelrud, my best friend, who always outdid me, and always lorded it over me, grinning and teasing and helping me to do better next time? Why not my sister, who was wiser and wittier? Why not one of the hundreds of eager candidates, all of whom came from more privileged backgrounds, some the offspring of Grand Council members?
“Why not?” I said. The same answer I’d been given—an offhanded dismissal. I knew now that the Guardians chose me as an experiment. They’d been accused of racism, choosing novices from the ranks of the elite only. I wasn’t just a Drone to them, I was their guinea pig.
“I’m serious, damn it. Don’t mock me. There are billions of people on Earth. Billions more intelligent, more qualified. I’m so ordinary. Why me?”
Why not you? I felt a pang of guilt at my flippancy. I’d give her a better answer than I’d been given, something she could hold on to. “You made three wishes. And once you developed those wishes you never wavered.”
“Pfft! Those were nothing more than childhood fantasies. I only played with them to put myself to sleep.”
Her wishes were much more than that. They were the desires of a profound soul. How to explain to a mere human, what we in the Guardian universe understood instinctively?
“Have there been others before me?”
“Yes,” I said. “And, like them, you too will be remembered.”
“Please not as a religious figure.”
“You don’t want to be a god? Sorry, goddess?”
“No! I just want to be me. Miracle Madame. Please.”
“Silly name they gave you. Sounds like you should be running a brothel in the Old West.”
“Hey, that’s my line.”
Em chuckled and relaxed a little as I’d hoped she would. If only I could do that for her all the time. If only I could tell her everything, how I really felt. “Em, my dear—”
“Please let me just be me,” she said.
I sighed. What would I have said if she hadn't interrupted? What could I have said with Mentor no doubt hovering? “If you insist,” I agreed. How could I deny her anything? “More like you will follow.”
“Unless people destroy the earth
first.”
“That was a possibility.”
“Was?”
“Less likely now because of you.”
“I’ve been doing the right things then, stopping wars?” She should have sounded relieved.
I felt a shiver of alarm. “You still have doubts?”
“Lord yes,” Em said. “What if war is…? What if war…?”
I waited for her to say it.
“What if war is a good thing?” she blurted. “Maybe human beings aren’t doomed to kill each other. Maybe they are destined to.”
An eternity of hell in the question. I had to calm her. “Do not fear.”
“Don’t use that damn soothing tone with me. I’m not a child. And cut the crap. I have a right to worry. You should too. We’re messing with everything. Hell, fear is all I know.” She took a deep breath.
I held mine.
“I fight always, always to appear calm, to provide the assurance people need, to be perfect.”
She was perfect. She was doing everything exactly right. I knew it, but she didn’t. “My dear, my dear, don’t fuss so.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Don’t you see? There is no end, damn it, no way out. I’m trying to hold back the flood with one tiny finger in the dike. And, what if my interference only makes things worse?”
“You have acted as we expected and you have done well. Very well.” She’d done her work so well, in fact, that I was more confident than I had ever been about my review.
“I have done nothing that really matters. And if that is as you expected, then you haven’t expected nearly enough,” Em said. “We’re being tested, you know,” she added, almost as an afterthought.
Tested! What did she know? Mentor? The Grand Council? The Guardians? In direct contact with a human? “Tested?” I felt sick.
“History, time, other worlds—they’ll all judge us and we’ll be found wanting, negligent, ridiculous.” She laughed, on rising hysteria. Embracing the edges of madness. She knew it, but couldn’t stop. Perhaps welcomed it?
“You asked the questions,” I said.
“But you didn’t answer them. You with all your power and insight and wisdom, you didn’t answer.”
“No, even we don’t do that. Beings must find the answers themselves.”
“And if they don’t, you send someone else.”
“Eventually.”
“So I’m the colossal failure.”
My knees quivered and I felt the familiar chill of fear. She wouldn’t be able to finish her job with that mindset and where would that leave me? “You must never think that.”
“Then you’re the colossal failure.”
Guardian, this was worse. “No!” I almost shouted. “Stop and think.” There was a pause so long I thought I had lost her.
Finally she spoke. “I’ve come to realize that everything is interrelated, a complex tangled mess of a web. The problems we’re dealing with must be seen in the global context.”
“And solved in the global context.”
“Yes. But how?” Another unbearably long pause. “One little step at a time, girl, one little step.”
I sagged with relief. She was thinking, theorizing, looking for solutions. She was back. “We’ll work it out together.”
“Thank you.”
“Why are you thanking us?” My voice rose alarmingly. “We made you do all the work, often left you to your own devices, put you through the agony of not knowing.”
“But you gave me a gift.” She sounded very much like a small child. “You let me make a movie. You helped me. That was okay? Making the movie I mean. It’s being seen around the world you know. What we did was right? Of course it was right, or you would have changed it. Your message is spreading just like you wanted.” She stumbled to a halt. “You’re okay with it?”
“Yes. Stop fussing. You have another question.”
“I don’t want to ask it.” Her voice trembled.
“We did not make him love you,” I said softly, my voice almost a caress. “We did not control that. Your love is your true destiny.” Oh, oh, oh. I didn’t know I could be such a liar. But Ron had lied to her too. That’s what love did then, made liars of us all?
Her breath came out in a ragged rush that ended with a harsh sob. “But I don’t understand why. What did I ever do to deserve Ron’s love?”
I wanted to say it was my love, my love she deserved. I took a deep breath. “Keep it clinical.” Mentor’s voice sounded in my head. Hovering. Always hovering. The bitch. Yeah, right, Boss, that’s the way we operate. I took another breath.
“You are too modest. Because you go beyond yourself. How old were you, ten or eleven, when you began to wish for the magic to save the world? Even as a child you used your Aladdin wishes for others.”
“Those were wild imaginings of childhood, irrational dreams.”
“Not so irrational after all, eh?”
“But—”
“Stop! It’s all for you—no one else.”
Pointless to argue. She must have realized that for she shifted gears.
“May I tell Ron about you?”
Oh, dear Guardian, the one question I dreaded. The question that forced me to tell her. I hesitated.
“Say it!” Mentor's voice hissed in my head.
Still I hesitated. There must be a way out. Surely the Guardians wouldn't force me to—
“Get on with it.” Mentor said. She was right beside me. There was no way out.
“There are some things you need to know about your future. Listen carefully.”
Mentor said I had to tell her the bad news. Tell what I had decided in my rage of jealousy. I pleaded and begged, down on my knees. Told Mentor I wasn’t myself when I said it. I didn’t really mean it. I was just venting. I didn’t mean for Em to pay the price. I implored Mentor, asked her to intercede with the Grand Council. Offered myself as sacrifice. I even cried. Real tears. To no avail. It was a done deal and now I had to tell Em.
Chapter 36
She woke with a start, sat up, and called frantically, “Ron!” But he wasn't there. Oh God, I'm at home, in my own room. I was with Ron. I was! Jake’s booming voice rang in her head. She sank back and pulled the covers over her head. Maybe she could go back. Maybe, if she closed her eyes and wished hard enough she could leave this life. Run away. Go back. Be with Powers and Ron forever.
*
“What shall we do today?” Em turned off the TV after checking the news.
“I’d suggest golfing but it looks like rain.”
“Frank could take us to the gym for a workout. I haven’t had time to go for days. Would that be all right with you?”
“Sure, but I don’t have any workout clothes with me.”
Em could have told him not to worry. The stuff he needed would be there. “Let’s check the closet.”
Ron found shorts, T-shirt, socks, and runners. Em put on spandex tights and a navy blue T-shirt with “dos” on the back and “devant” on the front in large fluorescent orange letters. She tried to explain the word play to Ron but the subtlety was lost in the translation. Just as they were tying their shoelaces there was a knock on the door.
“How does he do that?” Ron asked.
“Frank? Mental telepathy. Come on.”
“We’re near the bar we were in last night, right?” Ron said as Frank pulled up to the curb.
“It’s just a couple of blocks over.” Em led the way to a door under a small sign that read simply, “Jake’s.”
“It figures,” Ron muttered. “Mr. Muscle doesn't even need a proper sign.” Em liked that he was a little jealous. She felt warm and loved.
A trio of old guys and two young women, whose babies slept peacefully in their strollers, ran on the treadmills. They greeted Ron and Em with waves and then left them alone.
Em worked with free weights and a stability ball doing exercises a policeman had taught her.
Ron watched her do f
lies with twenty-five pounds in each hand. He laughed.
“What?” Em wasn’t sure if she should be offended.
“Remembering my first workout with eight-pounders. My arms shook uncontrollably and Tony laughed, called it muscle fatigue.”
“I know that feeling. I was a body of flab when I first started working out.”
Jake came in midway through their workout. He watched them for a while and made suggestions. No kibitzing.
At the end of the workout, Ron and Em lay side by side on the mats, stretching. Em laughed at some silly pun of Ron’s.
“God, Em, I love that I can make you laugh.” Rita’s scoffing had taught him to curb his quips. Sandra had enjoyed his humor at first, but after a time the wit and word plays slid off with little or no acknowledgement. Em seemed to genuinely enjoy his repartee; another reason to love her, he thought.
Jake sauntered over and suggested drills. Em agreed. She took off her runners and socks and stashed them under the bench that held their towels. She removed her ring and asked Ron to hold it. He studied it carefully. The large stone had a flat dull gleam, which he realized was a contradiction of terms, but nevertheless a true description. Ron was still studying the ring when it winked at him.
He started and almost dropped it. “Em, your ring….” He shook his head in disbelief and looked almost stricken. Em didn’t even try to explain. How could she? All these months later and even after the visits with the voice, she didn’t really understand. The ring was as surreal as the rest of it.
*
Played with his head, there. Couldn’t resist. Elspeth huffed and defended Ron. And Mentor gave me hell of course.
*
Ron shook his head again and slipped the ring onto the end of his little finger. “Go.” He waved Em away. “I’ll watch.”
Em joined Jake in the center of the gym. They practiced footwork and sparring, both punches and kicks, working their way back and forth across the room.
“It’s a drill, called lines,” the elderly attendant, James, explained to Ron.
Jake and Em alternated making offensive moves while the other provided a moving target. Their moves were slow, flowing, and controlled. Then they went to the mats by the ring to do some light sparring.
“Empty hands. No gloves,” James said. Ron winced
Em didn’t stand a chance against Jake but neither did she back away. Ron groaned each time a punch connected. He pictured new bruises he knew Em wouldn’t even notice.