CHAPTER 108 — Don’t Dream It’s Over (2)

Fresno County.

Reedley.

Saturday, 4 October 2008.

They came up the valley in Zara’s Prius, just like the old days.

In November there had been fog. In October there was only dust and harsh light, and the vineyards going yellow, and two girls singing popular songs well enough to take to the stage themselves.

At the Hotel Basque, Aunt Carmen fed them as though the road from Los Angeles had been a pilgrimage of starvation. Eppie ate what was put before her, and then finished off Zara’s share.

Uncle Paco, home from the same tour and browner for it, loaded the red Ford with a box for la familia, and by mid-afternoon they were in Reedley, where the old church looked… refreshed. The walls were patched and whitewashed. There was an actual parking lot of gravel with marked lanes, and the roof looked cleaned and restored.

Clearly, funding for community projects was no longer a concern.

Inside, the courtyard had been mended since November. A craftsman had added the wings back on the plaster angels. Father Parson’s orange trees were heavy with fruit, green and orange globes both, and under them, on a bench, sat Luciana Mio.

On the girl’s hip sat the reason for everything.

Nozomi was eight months old. She examined Eppie with the flat suspicion of a customs officer, reached out, took a fistful of her shoulder-length gold hair, and tried to see how it tasted.

“I am so sorry,” said Mio, gently pulling the tiny hands away.

“She has taste,” said Eppie, glad that she had washed her hair with the best natural shampoo she could afford.

Eppie, as Godmother, took Nozomi inexpertly, then sat her on her lap as one might a priceless cello.

Mio was thinner than Eppie remembered, and more tanned, and she moved differently. Eppie’s [Physicality] and [The Facial Landscape] noticed it acutely. The talent that had once taken Petruchio off Valorie Sanders in an open audition was very quickly leaving her body.

Costello’s neutral walk, Laban’s movement.

Cooper’s Linklater voice.

Costello and Seyrova’s Suzuki work.

And the Senior training that she had missed out on…

Even with Nozomi laughing on her lap, Eppie felt oppressed by what one [Usurper] had destroyed so easily and without care.

They stayed three days.

The church had room.

And in three days, Eppie slowly put toward Mio the possibility that she could return to acting on stage, both musicals and theatre, and their silent friend, the young mother, did not respond.

On Sunday, Mio sang in the choir with her daughter on her hip, and nobody in the pews thought it strange. Eppie sat at the back between Zara and Paco, too short to see, and listened with her [Perfect Pitch] to a voice that had grown lower and steadier in a year, but also rawer, and less refined for the stage.

Afterwards, they had potluck with the community, then they washed dishes and stacked the chairs and the temporary furniture with Father Parson. Thirty years in the valley had worn the Irish in him down to the grain, but it surfaced when he was being emotional.

“She wants to perform, you know,” he said, the original accent rising above the surface American.

Eppie kept her hands busy.

“She’ll not tell you. She thinks it would be asking, and our girl never imposes.” He handed her a plate. “She reads to Nozomi at night. Shakespeare. Nozomi likes the villains, apparently.”

“That’s a bit concerning,” Eppie said.

“It’s a great thing she has here. Peace. A choir.” Another plate passed between their hands while the valley soaked in the sun, sending the sweet scent of citrus drifting from the courtyard. “But…”

Eppie dried another dish. “But she sees me, and Zara, and Valorie too… living large.”

“There’s a line in Proverbs,” said Father Parson. “‘Soundness of heart is the life of the flesh: but envy is the rottenness of the bones.’ I fear… I fear Mio isn’t as strong as you or Zara. Not if Miss Sanders, having attained her penance, receives her due.”

“How’s the grandfather?” Eppie asked. “Surely, he knows all about Nozomi by now.”

“Knows. Has known since the spring,” the priest said, was quiet for a moment, then spoke again. “He writes.”

The tea towel stopped.

“He writes?” Eppie raised both brows. “He’s not demanding to visit?”

“He writes once a month. In English. He has not once asked to come.” Parson rinsed a glass. “It is a very respectful distance. I don’t know what kind of man he was before…”

Well, he’s not a [Karmic Parasite] anymore, Eppie wanted to say, but also knew her explanation would sound like she was speaking in tongues.

In truth, she had not expected the pact to be obeyed exactly.

“He’s a far better man than William,” Eppie said, working off her gut feelings. “It wouldn’t… hurt if Mio decided to close the distance a little. Life has already been unfair. Very unfair, to our Mio.”

The [System] hasn’t been wrong… yet. If Chen Senior could afford Mio a little more reprieve…

+ Karmic Causality

+ Karmic Causality

Father Parson nodded.

The dishes were done.

“When do you leave?”

“Monday morning,” Eppie said.

“Alright.” The Irishman folded his apron to be dried. “I’ll speak to her.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

On Monday morning, she found Mio under the orange trees, with Nozomi in a daze against her collarbone after receiving the breast, Madonna and child.

“I may have a way”—Eppie decided to stop stepping around glass and just say it—“to get you back on track.”

Mio’s hand kept moving on the baby’s back. Nozomi, her bow-lips pink and perfect, cooed.

“There’s going to be a theatre. In New York. Not this month. Soon. Dr Cooper will run the company.”

“Dr Cooper?” Mio looked up. “He still remembers me?”

“You haunt him.” Eppie kept her voice level. “I’m not asking for Dr Cooper, though. I’m only telling you there’s a door, but we won’t force you.”

A bee landed on a heavy fruit, bright and orange and full of flesh and seed.

“New York costs money,” Mio said at last, appealing to the practical.

“It wouldn’t. Not for you. I have a Trust; Lady Vaughan has a Trust. I’ll have properties under it soon, as well, and I know for a fact Lady Vaughan has… vacancies.” Eppie looked at the sleeping child rather than at the mother. “Your parents can come as well. If they’d come. Somewhere to live, and the table laid. Hell, start your business again. I’ve tasted that Peruvian chicken your mum makes, Mio, and let me tell you, it will sell like gangbusters.”

“Eppie.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Eppie insisted. “It’s an open door. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“That’s too much kindness.”

“Oh.” Eppie cocked her head so that her hair was within reach of Nozomi. Her blonde locks were over shoulder length now. Nozomi woke at once and feasted on Eppie’s fruit-scented hair. “So some ass can ruin your life, but a friend can’t fix it? Is that how the world works?”

“That’s…” Mio’s voice was a tiny whisper. “That’s… true…”

+ Karmic Causality

Later, Father Parson walked the girls back to the truck, their feet crunching on the gravel.

“Bed and board for a family in Manhattan,” he said mildly, once Mio was out of earshot. “That is a great deal for one young woman to carry.”

“It’s… really not that much.” Eppie opened both hands. “You cannot begin to imagine how much money we’ve managed to bank for artists in the last month.”

“I don’t doubt it. I only wonder whether you’re the one who ought.” Parson looked south, as if the vista might provide some wisdom. “Shall I ask… Señor Chen?”

Zara raised her hand, then lowered it.

“Always on Luciana’s terms,” Eppie said. “And I think she’ll need to achieve her own catharsis before anything like that can happen.”

Father Parson nodded.

“I shall…” Eppie snuck a peek at the courtyard. “Get the accommodations ready, regardless. That much kindness, we can afford.”

“When do you expect to have your theatre?”

“Knowing Lady Vaughan, before the year’s end.” Because that’s when loans folded and commercial real estate couldn’t be refinanced. Someone paying in cash, even partially, was a lifeline for the history books. “It would be good if Mr Mio could set up his restaurant again. If nothing else, I’ll single-handedly eat them into profit.”

Father Parson looked at her strangely while Zara touched a hand to her forehead.

Somehow, neither of them doubted Eppie’s claim.

Santa Monica.

Tuesday, 7 October 2008.

Eppie spent the next few days with Zara, living in Culver on Curon’s corporate dime, sharing a room with her friend, and revisiting the city of her past.

They ate lavishly; they walked by the beach and the bay while the finance world burned and the political world faced its inevitable sea change. They ate fish tacos on the pier, thirty yards from the café where Eppie had once considered putting William Chen through the planking. They ate their way down the Third Street Promenade. They were recognised by tourists and locals.

Zara, who had a fortnight left before the tour reclaimed her, did morning runs and evening runs with Eppie in Culver City, security badges hanging from their necks. They visited sound stages and watched the weekly shows being taped while eating hot dogs.

It was over the hot dogs that Zara’s phone began to buzz.

“It’s Chelsea,” Zara said, looking surprised. “She knows I’m in town. She knows I am with you.” She scrolled. “Do you want the LAPA news?”

“LAPA?” Eppie cocked her head. Did she care?

She did care.

The school had not done Euphemia justice, but the teachers… as instructors of the arts, were phenomenal. “Sure.”

Zara hammered her iPhone.

“Well, the school’s fine,” said Zara, after reading the returned messages.

“Fine?”

“The school. It’s fine. It’s open. Everybody’s preparing for the Fall Showcase.”

It was fine, Zara reported. The reputation had taken its knock. And the money, meaning the parents and the patrons who had paid for the condos and the facade and the new everything, had quietly found other schools to love. Which meant that, for the first time since the funding rounds, there was nobody left to outvote Principal Burton.

“And the theatre?”

“Dr Costello’s the Chair now. Half of what Dr Cooper had going is on hold, and the other half he’s making them do again from the beginning. Chelsea says it’ll take a few semesters to recover.” She squinted at the screen. “‘We are ouroboros.’ Is that a thing?”

“It’s a thing,” said Eppie, imagining Chelsea and the girls doing circles, over and over.

“Dr Kirby was heartbroken. Chelsea says she cried at your empty chair and made them self-study Hamlet for a week after no one could answer her questions.”

Eppie felt her heart prickle.

She really, REALLY liked Dr Kirby.

On the hotel balcony the same evening, she rang Lim.

He answered on the second ring. “Hi, kitty cat.”

“Hi.”

There was a pause, and then the low laugh she knew. “How’s things?”

Lim knew exactly what she wanted.

“The cats are almost all adopted out now, other than Mr Chin, of course. We have more strays coming in all the time, so we’re keeping busy. Mrs Catch’em finally gave up and found a nice family close by to call home.”

“I meant you, Lim.”

“Sure you did,” Lim retorted. “I am doing an internship with Omnia.”

“Really?”

“It’s only an accounting internship,” he said nonchalantly. “Tax liabilities aside, there have been changes. Everyone’s received the deeds to their respective businesses; the Five Root Association building is now communally owned. It’s… been good.”

In May, her [System] had named Lee-Kwon Chen a mature [Karmic Parasite]; then he was converted. From the sound of it, the conversion had held. A penitent man who merely waited for the chance to see his grandchild was a man who was good for his word.

“If there is anything you need,” Lim said in turn. “For you. Anything. You know that.”

“I know,” Eppie sighed. “I’ll let you know.”

“Will you?”

She told him.

She told him that she might be running a theatre soon, and that she needed someone she could trust, who was competent, and might not mind… helping her shepherd the place at night. The last part had Lim go completely silent.

“There’s a reason,” she said, “why I might have to sleep at the theatre.”

“Fine,” Lim said.

That was the answer Eppie was looking for. Who else would simply accept that she wanted to stay in the dark, in an attic, in a theatre, for the hell of it?

“Tell Mr Chin,” she said, “that Ms Mistoffelees sends her regards.”

“I will,” said her tiger-sized Munkustrap, questioning nothing while wishing her well.

“I’ll call you once it’s done,” Eppie promised.

On Thursday, she did her test.

It was held in a school gymnasium that smelled of old sweat and sneakers, at a folding table, among a hundred sixteen-year-olds who wanted to leave school in order to work at the mall. The State allowed three and a half hours. A boy two tables over recognised her in the first ten minutes, and stared at her without paying attention to his own exam while she finished the whole thing in under two.

She handed in her paper, walked out into the sun, bought a latte, and never thought about the questions again.