“What does Elena, Dallas’s vigilante killer, and a DEA Agent all have in common?”
I stood in Claret’s loft on Live Oak, patiently waiting by her meager kitchen counter. I normally sat in one of Claret’s many leather and/or vinyl chairs, but a nervous cold sliver had run down my spine upon entering, preventing me even that small measure of comfort. Claret was tinkering in her lab, the mundane chemical one this time, and her voice was marked with an edge of frustration by the delay of her work, or art depending on the day, and her ever-present pissy attitude.
“I don’t have time for your games or weird questions today, four-eyes. Come over here and do that sound cleany thing you do on this beaker.” I could hear her moving around hurried and deliberate, the ingredients of a new project. I steeled myself and answered her in my most confident and straightforward voice.
“No.”
The clinking of glass and metal stopped, followed by three quiet footsteps into what for a sighted person would have been my field of vision.
“…What?” Disbelief beat out the venom in her voice, but only just.
I felt like a rookie soloist with a fresh bout of stage fright. I took a deep breath and repeated myself.
“What do you mean, ‘No’?” She came closer to me, the smell of menthol cigarettes and designer hairspray intensifying.
“I mean,” I stuttered as I cleared my voice, “that I can’t help you anymore with…ya know…” I waved an arm towards her lab. “I can’t help you make drugs anymore.”
“Erica, you don’t help me make drugs, you just clean my shit.” Her aggression waned slightly at the semantic tactic.
“But you use that stuff to design and produce drugs, Claret! I’m still helping, and that’s wrong!” I tried to not sound like I was pleading, desperate for her understanding, but I don’t think I succeeded.
She paused, briefly but noticeably, and the fire that I was expecting didn’t come. Instead, I got a soft but firm question of her own. “Why the change of heart?”
Totally not what I was expecting, by the way. I had braced myself for yelling and condemnation and jagged jibes at my expense, not complicity, as vague as it was. I fought back the tears (it had been a rough week, don’t judge me).
“I had…a talk…with a friend. She let me know that what I was doing was wrong, and… after a brief moment of introspection, I agreed.” I could tell Claret was nodding slowly and deliberately to herself by the way her earrings and various other piercings jangled. I kept talking to try to fill the moral awkwardness.
“I should have known better. I thought that I was just helping a friend, ya know, contributing my talents to something productive and useful, but really… I…” I gulped nervously. “I was helping to hurt people. What’s worse, I was using my Magic to do it! That’s… You can’t do magic you don’t believe in! And I don’t believe in hurting people, or at least, I didn’t think I did until I actually used my brain for two seconds and thought about how I was helping the downward chemical romance spiral of Greater Dallas! I’m not going to be that kind of person! Not even remotely! All I wanted to do was help a friend, to feel needed, but that’s not a good enough reason. Maybe I thought that maybe I could be a good enough friend to you that you wouldn’t need to do the drugs anymore, I dunno, I don’t know what I was thinking,” I took a deep breath, “But I’m thinking now, and I have to stop helping you.”
My nerves gave out at that point, and I tilted my head down sheepishly, again waiting for the fire of Claret’s ire. Claret hmm’ed for a moment, the jangles indicating she was nodding her head again, and turning away from me to walk into the kitchen. In silence, she poured a cup of coffee, added a hint of cinnamon to it, and walked back to me. She took a sip of her coffee right in front of me, hmm’ed to herself again, and tossed the entire contents onto my new cotton blouse.
In shocked panic I recoiled, falling backward on the faux kitchen tile and expecting the smell of the coffee to be followed by burning and scalding of skin only to find the beverage to be lukewarm at best. The scalding heat, however, came from Claret.
“F*** YOU, ERICA! You know what?! F*** you! You little goody-two-shoes!" Her voice raised to a mocking childish pitch. “Oh look at me I’m hurting people oh no what ever will I do.”
“Cla-” I tried to interject, but her words were as scalding as I had expected the coffee to be.
“No, you shut the hell up! This is my house! How dare you come in here and tell me that what I do for a living is wrong! I’m not making these people shoot up, I don’t shove pills down their throats or shove powder up their noses, they want to do it! It makes them feel goooood, and they’ll get their fix with or without me. I provide a service, I don’t hurt anybody, they want to hurt themselves so don’t you f***ing judge me. You don’t wanna help; your ‘conscience’ telling you that what I do in my life is ‘wrong’, fine! Don’t help. I don’t need you or your high horse bull****, I’m just fine on my own. You can go try and ‘save’ somebody else, bitch, I like my life and I ain’t changing it for anyone, not even for my so-called ‘friends’!” Claret turned on her giant lift-boot heel and strode back into her lab. I think she tried to slam the separation curtain in anger, but it being an open air loft and all and since she didn’t really have interior doors, it came across as childish.
I stood up slowly, letting my hands find a couple of napkins on the counter to try to soak up the coffee before it utterly ruined my blouse. I let the small motions and intent specific purpose of my actions keep me from boiling over with my own emotions; all kinds of anger, sadness, and confliction in wide and brilliant flavors, not to mention a few nonsensical ones that come from being… well, me.
As I dabbed, I focused on not drawing in Power, kind of a flight or fight response that occasionally happen with these kind of reactions. I managed to keep everything at their appropriate levels, my mom’s meditation and Dr. Scott’s emotional management training kicking in appropriately, so when I spoke my voice was cool, if not necessarily soft.
“You never answered my question, Claret.”
“Are you still here?!” she answered abruptly. She stomped angrily back to me as I disciplined my thoughts and continued to dab my blouse nonchalantly in what I’m sure was a completely ineffective yet stoic fashion. She got directly into my face, her mint gum mixing scents with her overabundance of makeup in addition to her usual cacophony of Gothic smells.
“I thought I told you indirectly to GET OUT!!!” she screamed into my face.
Miraculously, I maintained my stoic expression, but even I couldn’t keep from drawing in a little whisper of Power when I breathed in slightly in reaction to her yelling in my face. I mean, I’m a hoss in the area of mental discipline, but still, she was in my face and that even makes hoss’s angry. The air thrummed with a faint reverberation, accompanied by a discordant melodious ringing, like the tinkling of steel wind chimes caught in a faint but growing wind. Claret’s reaction was immediate, shuffling back a few steps and stammering a nonsensical apology as she tried to get the kitchen counter between us. Oh good, Erica, I thought to myself, tell her you don’t want to hurt people then inadvertently threaten her with that same Power, simultaneously exploiting her magical insecurity issues. I’m such a hypocrite. I held my breath, calmed my thoughts and emotions again as I had grown up learning to do, and released my breath as I let go of the trickle of Power I had not consciously intended to point at Claret. Claret stopped too, waiting nervously to see if I would lose it and no doubt trying to pick a direction to dodge should I do so.
I kept my voice cool like it had been earlier, but still firm and resolute. “I… I will never hurt you, Claret. Like I said, I don’t want to hurt anybody anymore. I…” I flexed my fingers out and in reflexively. “I don’t want to be that kind of person that hurts people, especially their friends, for no good reason.” I put a little emphasis on the ‘good’ part of that sentence, to send the point home.
Claret stood behind the counter for a moment, not moving, maybe not even breathing. After a tense minute, she let out a ragged laughing breath. “You know you could have just said so.”
The tension broke, and I sputtered comically and threw the coffee’d napkin at her, both of us laughing. I did start crying again, though, this time trying to hide it behind my hands. Claret came back around the kitchen counter to me and awkwardly tried to give me a hug.
“Oh Dammit, Erica, you know I suck at hugging, please stop crying, OK? I’m sorry about just now, alright? Does that make it better?” she laughed half-teasing. “You know I don’t do well with emotional bull****, come on, we’re still friends, right? We don’t always agree on stuff anyway, this will just be one more on the list.” She patted me on the back like you would imagine a robot doing on television as I wept gently into her shoulder, nodding with her comments. I appreciated the effort, mechanical and forced as it was, ultimately because try as she might Claret did suck at the ‘not-hurting’ part of social situations. I hugged her back. We won’t mention that the coffee on my shirt was still wet when I hugged her, I’m not a saint. She’s probably wearing black anyway.
I pulled myself together a half minute later, much to Claret’s glee then chagrin after she noticed the transferred stains. I got another napkin for the meager tears my damaged tear ducts had managed to squeeze out, and I blew my nose as I leaned against the counter.
“You still haven’t answered my question, ya know.” I tried to sound as casual and friendly as I could so I wouldn’t spark another verbal conflagration, ya know, just in case.
“What question?” Claret asked, now paying attention obviously.
“The Question I asked when I walked in here.” I tried to not sound a little hurt by being ignored, a social soft spot for me unfortunately.
“Oh, right! What was it, What does… uh…”
“Elena,” I prodded.
“Right!” Claret eagerly pipped in, now I think overcompensating for feeling guilty for yelling at her friend. “What does Elena, the Dallas Vigilante killer, and a DEA agent all have in common, right?”
“That’s the one.” I gave her a thumbs up and blew my nose again.
“Umm… beside each of them scaring the shit out of me on multiple levels?” Claret joked, trying to keep things light.
I laughed a little at that. “Yeah, beside that.”
“Uhhh… I don’t really have any idea, sweetie. A little help?” Wow, she called me sweetie, she must really be feeling guilty.
“OK, I’ll help, but you have to do three things. One, turn off whatever is burning over there in your lab.” Claret made an ah crap sound and ran off, while I continued. “Two, I need a new shirt-” A sweater I had left at her place after our last Church goth night landed on my head- “Thank you… and three, most importantly, you will need to sit down for this…”
About ten minutes later, Claret lay splayed and face-up on her bed, breathing heavily into a brown paper bag. I sat next to her on the edge of probably the only king size bed I knew of that sat three mattresses high without a frame. Not that I know of a lot of king size beds, I’m just saying is all.
“Really?” Claret asked me, for probably the sixth time in as many minutes. “You’re sure?”
“Yes, Claret, I’m sure. I heard it all from Elena herself.”
“So… Let me get this straight…” Claret sat up a little bit and brought down the bag, “Elena… your friend Elena from the Scooby Squad… is the Plano Punisher, the Made Man’s Nightmare, The Dallas Double-Tap… and she’s an F***ing ex-DEA F***ing Agent?!”
I nodded a little. “Yep,” I said with a sigh.
Claret breathed into the bag once more. “Which means she’s trained to hunt down and kill drug dealers…”
“Yep.”
“And she knows… that that’s what I do…” Panic creeped into Claret’s voice.
“Yep.”
Claret paused for a moment, then lay back on to the bed with a flop. “I am so screwed…”
“Nope.”
Claret’s shock was palpable as she sat up and turned towards me, both hands on my shoulders. “Wait, What?”
“Well, if I was to take a guess, I would say that she hasn’t targeted you yet because she doesn’t have any hard evidence. At least, nothing that puts you above the small time dealers all over DFW. But that’s really only a matter of time till she does. Once she does though, she may not straight up kill you because she and I are friends, but given her justice code, that probably won’t ultimately stop her either. She’ll have to figure out something creative to get rid of you so I would never know or that I wouldn’t suspect her. Anyway, what I’m getting at is that you are not dead yet.”
Claret paused again for a moment then flopped once more back on her bed. “Thanks, Erica, that makes me feel so much better.” She took another deep breath from the paper bag.
“Which means,” I said as I poked her approximately in her side, “you have an opportunity to call off her ‘hit’, so to speak.”
Claret, rather than rising shocked for the third time, just lay there continuing to breath out of the bag. “Just say it, Erica, I’m too tired for this anymore, just tell me what I got to do and I’ll do it.”
Excellent. “Well, first off, you got to not deal drugs anymore.” Claret groaned, turning on her side away from me. “I’m serious, Claret, you gotta stop cold turkey. And that means taking them too. Everything stops, no more drugs.”
“Why bother, then?” Claret drawled. “I’d just be calling off one hit in exchange for another. Tony down in Houston was so impressed with Flowers that he gave me an upfront bonus to work out a new Xstacy/LSD cross. If I told him I was out of the game he’d off me just on general principal. Ugghh…”
“That’s where the second thing comes in.” I took a gentle hold of Claret’s shoulder and turned her back towards me. “Give Elena your word of honor and Power that you’ve quit that life for good, and as a sign of good faith,” I leaned in towards her for emphasis. “Give her your little black book.”
“Um Erica I don’t think Elena really dates, at least not my type of-”
“No, Claret, the other black book.” I Spocked one eyebrow, my blind girl version of winking thru my Aviator Shades.
“Oh, Oh Ooohhh Claret sat back up slowly, her tongue ring clicking against her teeth as she thought furiously.
“That way,” I continued, “Elena has a entire catalog of people worth killing, including Houston Tony, before she even thinks about you again. And at that point, you’ll be clean and repentant and… ya know… not criminalling anymore. Reformed and what have you. No reason to kill you then, right?”
“Right, right.” Claret clicked her teeth once more. “Wait a second, how do you even know about that black book?”
I stood and walked slowly towards the foyer area to get my things. "You have a metal safe behind the cupboards, just big enough to hold ledgers and notebooks and small bits of precious in jewelry boxes and such. You use octopus ink in your Disappearing Ink potion which I always smell around the cupboard but never anywhere else, nor do you use it whenever I’ve been around except for that one time when you pranked Barb’s diary, which both of you told me about later over different types of alcohol. Disappearing ink would be perfect to hide important illegal book info in case you got raided. And there is no way that Claret aka “Dr. Jekyll and Miss Type A Personality” doesn’t have a comprehensive contact and reference sheet for emergencies and/or leverage, should the need arise. And there is no way you would let anyone else ever get that info unless you wanted them to."
Claret followed me towards the front door while I got my things on. “Wow, nice one, babe,” Claret crooned, “chalk up one scary point for the Blind chick.” She laughed, but I could tell she was still a bit worn out.
I got my cane ready and headed towards the door. “Oh and one more thing. You’ll need to move.”
Claret scoffed. “Obviously.”
“My friend Midori and I are talking about getting our own place. Actually we’ve talked about it for a while, but it hasn’t really been viable since I wanted to stay behind Auntie Em’s threshold while the Ft. Wolfe Posse wanted me dead. Now that we’re meh-ish level friends with that pack, I can actually move into my own place. I can’t really afford anything on scholarship handouts, especially since my latest caper caused me to miss my financial aid meeting. Stupid NeverNever time dilation. Anyway, if you want a place to live without anyone knowing where you are, you can room with us when we get a place. I’m not promising much, since Midori has only just turned 18 and may be kind of iffy on a decent lease agreement, but you can always crash with us if you need to.” I gave Claret a big hug, which she kind of returned. “You are my friend, Claret, even though I think you only started talking to me because I couldn’t see you making drugs so it was OK to have me over. And that since I was blind I couldn’t judge you based on what you looked like, even though you dress the way you do to keep people at a distance.”
“Well, kinda but-”
“It’s OK, Claret, I get it. Its cool. Regardless of how it started, we’re friends now and that won’t change for me, OK?”
Claret sniffed a little and hugged me on her own, decently I might add. “Yeah, me too.”
“For science?” I asked teasingly, doing my best Dr. KaBoom impression.
“Heh, yeah, for science,” she laughed. “Give me a day or two to decide, OK? I promise I won’t run, I just need a little time to process.”
“Sure thing,” I said as I walked out her door and thru my hasty wards surrounding her meager threshold.
As I walked down the hall, Claret called after me.
“Hey, your friend that you talked to, about your change of heart and moral stuff… what that Elena?”
I stopped and turned my head slightly to answer. “Yeah.”
“She made you choose between the two of us, didn’t she?”
I turned around towards her fully. “Yeah, but I couldn’t choose between the two of you, so I cheated and choose you both.”
“Is she going to be OK with that?”
I shrugged. “I dunno, maybe. But it doesn’t matter.”
“Why not?”
I turned back around and started walking down the hall again, raising my non-cane arm in a farewell. “Because it was the right choice.”
I stood in Claret’s loft on Live Oak, patiently waiting by her meager kitchen counter. I normally sat in one of Claret’s many leather and/or vinyl chairs, but a nervous cold sliver had run down my spine upon entering, preventing me even that small measure of comfort. Claret was tinkering in her lab, the mundane chemical one this time, and her voice was marked with an edge of frustration by the delay of her work, or art depending on the day, and her ever-present pissy attitude.
“I don’t have time for your games or weird questions today, four-eyes. Come over here and do that sound cleany thing you do on this beaker.” I could hear her moving around hurried and deliberate, the ingredients of a new project. I steeled myself and answered her in my most confident and straightforward voice.
“No.”
The clinking of glass and metal stopped, followed by three quiet footsteps into what for a sighted person would have been my field of vision.
“…What?” Disbelief beat out the venom in her voice, but only just.
I felt like a rookie soloist with a fresh bout of stage fright. I took a deep breath and repeated myself.
“What do you mean, ‘No’?” She came closer to me, the smell of menthol cigarettes and designer hairspray intensifying.
“I mean,” I stuttered as I cleared my voice, “that I can’t help you anymore with…ya know…” I waved an arm towards her lab. “I can’t help you make drugs anymore.”
“Erica, you don’t help me make drugs, you just clean my shit.” Her aggression waned slightly at the semantic tactic.
“But you use that stuff to design and produce drugs, Claret! I’m still helping, and that’s wrong!” I tried to not sound like I was pleading, desperate for her understanding, but I don’t think I succeeded.
She paused, briefly but noticeably, and the fire that I was expecting didn’t come. Instead, I got a soft but firm question of her own. “Why the change of heart?”
Totally not what I was expecting, by the way. I had braced myself for yelling and condemnation and jagged jibes at my expense, not complicity, as vague as it was. I fought back the tears (it had been a rough week, don’t judge me).
“I had…a talk…with a friend. She let me know that what I was doing was wrong, and… after a brief moment of introspection, I agreed.” I could tell Claret was nodding slowly and deliberately to herself by the way her earrings and various other piercings jangled. I kept talking to try to fill the moral awkwardness.
“I should have known better. I thought that I was just helping a friend, ya know, contributing my talents to something productive and useful, but really… I…” I gulped nervously. “I was helping to hurt people. What’s worse, I was using my Magic to do it! That’s… You can’t do magic you don’t believe in! And I don’t believe in hurting people, or at least, I didn’t think I did until I actually used my brain for two seconds and thought about how I was helping the downward chemical romance spiral of Greater Dallas! I’m not going to be that kind of person! Not even remotely! All I wanted to do was help a friend, to feel needed, but that’s not a good enough reason. Maybe I thought that maybe I could be a good enough friend to you that you wouldn’t need to do the drugs anymore, I dunno, I don’t know what I was thinking,” I took a deep breath, “But I’m thinking now, and I have to stop helping you.”
My nerves gave out at that point, and I tilted my head down sheepishly, again waiting for the fire of Claret’s ire. Claret hmm’ed for a moment, the jangles indicating she was nodding her head again, and turning away from me to walk into the kitchen. In silence, she poured a cup of coffee, added a hint of cinnamon to it, and walked back to me. She took a sip of her coffee right in front of me, hmm’ed to herself again, and tossed the entire contents onto my new cotton blouse.
In shocked panic I recoiled, falling backward on the faux kitchen tile and expecting the smell of the coffee to be followed by burning and scalding of skin only to find the beverage to be lukewarm at best. The scalding heat, however, came from Claret.
“F*** YOU, ERICA! You know what?! F*** you! You little goody-two-shoes!" Her voice raised to a mocking childish pitch. “Oh look at me I’m hurting people oh no what ever will I do.”“Cla-” I tried to interject, but her words were as scalding as I had expected the coffee to be.
“No, you shut the hell up! This is my house! How dare you come in here and tell me that what I do for a living is wrong! I’m not making these people shoot up, I don’t shove pills down their throats or shove powder up their noses, they want to do it! It makes them feel goooood, and they’ll get their fix with or without me. I provide a service, I don’t hurt anybody, they want to hurt themselves so don’t you f***ing judge me. You don’t wanna help; your ‘conscience’ telling you that what I do in my life is ‘wrong’, fine! Don’t help. I don’t need you or your high horse bull****, I’m just fine on my own. You can go try and ‘save’ somebody else, bitch, I like my life and I ain’t changing it for anyone, not even for my so-called ‘friends’!” Claret turned on her giant lift-boot heel and strode back into her lab. I think she tried to slam the separation curtain in anger, but it being an open air loft and all and since she didn’t really have interior doors, it came across as childish.
I stood up slowly, letting my hands find a couple of napkins on the counter to try to soak up the coffee before it utterly ruined my blouse. I let the small motions and intent specific purpose of my actions keep me from boiling over with my own emotions; all kinds of anger, sadness, and confliction in wide and brilliant flavors, not to mention a few nonsensical ones that come from being… well, me.
As I dabbed, I focused on not drawing in Power, kind of a flight or fight response that occasionally happen with these kind of reactions. I managed to keep everything at their appropriate levels, my mom’s meditation and Dr. Scott’s emotional management training kicking in appropriately, so when I spoke my voice was cool, if not necessarily soft.
“You never answered my question, Claret.”
“Are you still here?!” she answered abruptly. She stomped angrily back to me as I disciplined my thoughts and continued to dab my blouse nonchalantly in what I’m sure was a completely ineffective yet stoic fashion. She got directly into my face, her mint gum mixing scents with her overabundance of makeup in addition to her usual cacophony of Gothic smells.
“I thought I told you indirectly to GET OUT!!!” she screamed into my face.
Miraculously, I maintained my stoic expression, but even I couldn’t keep from drawing in a little whisper of Power when I breathed in slightly in reaction to her yelling in my face. I mean, I’m a hoss in the area of mental discipline, but still, she was in my face and that even makes hoss’s angry. The air thrummed with a faint reverberation, accompanied by a discordant melodious ringing, like the tinkling of steel wind chimes caught in a faint but growing wind. Claret’s reaction was immediate, shuffling back a few steps and stammering a nonsensical apology as she tried to get the kitchen counter between us. Oh good, Erica, I thought to myself, tell her you don’t want to hurt people then inadvertently threaten her with that same Power, simultaneously exploiting her magical insecurity issues. I’m such a hypocrite. I held my breath, calmed my thoughts and emotions again as I had grown up learning to do, and released my breath as I let go of the trickle of Power I had not consciously intended to point at Claret. Claret stopped too, waiting nervously to see if I would lose it and no doubt trying to pick a direction to dodge should I do so.
I kept my voice cool like it had been earlier, but still firm and resolute. “I… I will never hurt you, Claret. Like I said, I don’t want to hurt anybody anymore. I…” I flexed my fingers out and in reflexively. “I don’t want to be that kind of person that hurts people, especially their friends, for no good reason.” I put a little emphasis on the ‘good’ part of that sentence, to send the point home.
Claret stood behind the counter for a moment, not moving, maybe not even breathing. After a tense minute, she let out a ragged laughing breath. “You know you could have just said so.”
The tension broke, and I sputtered comically and threw the coffee’d napkin at her, both of us laughing. I did start crying again, though, this time trying to hide it behind my hands. Claret came back around the kitchen counter to me and awkwardly tried to give me a hug.
“Oh Dammit, Erica, you know I suck at hugging, please stop crying, OK? I’m sorry about just now, alright? Does that make it better?” she laughed half-teasing. “You know I don’t do well with emotional bull****, come on, we’re still friends, right? We don’t always agree on stuff anyway, this will just be one more on the list.” She patted me on the back like you would imagine a robot doing on television as I wept gently into her shoulder, nodding with her comments. I appreciated the effort, mechanical and forced as it was, ultimately because try as she might Claret did suck at the ‘not-hurting’ part of social situations. I hugged her back. We won’t mention that the coffee on my shirt was still wet when I hugged her, I’m not a saint. She’s probably wearing black anyway.
I pulled myself together a half minute later, much to Claret’s glee then chagrin after she noticed the transferred stains. I got another napkin for the meager tears my damaged tear ducts had managed to squeeze out, and I blew my nose as I leaned against the counter.
“You still haven’t answered my question, ya know.” I tried to sound as casual and friendly as I could so I wouldn’t spark another verbal conflagration, ya know, just in case.
“What question?” Claret asked, now paying attention obviously.
“The Question I asked when I walked in here.” I tried to not sound a little hurt by being ignored, a social soft spot for me unfortunately.
“Oh, right! What was it, What does… uh…”
“Elena,” I prodded.
“Right!” Claret eagerly pipped in, now I think overcompensating for feeling guilty for yelling at her friend. “What does Elena, the Dallas Vigilante killer, and a DEA agent all have in common, right?”
“That’s the one.” I gave her a thumbs up and blew my nose again.
“Umm… beside each of them scaring the shit out of me on multiple levels?” Claret joked, trying to keep things light.
I laughed a little at that. “Yeah, beside that.”
“Uhhh… I don’t really have any idea, sweetie. A little help?” Wow, she called me sweetie, she must really be feeling guilty.
“OK, I’ll help, but you have to do three things. One, turn off whatever is burning over there in your lab.” Claret made an ah crap sound and ran off, while I continued. “Two, I need a new shirt-” A sweater I had left at her place after our last Church goth night landed on my head- “Thank you… and three, most importantly, you will need to sit down for this…”
About ten minutes later, Claret lay splayed and face-up on her bed, breathing heavily into a brown paper bag. I sat next to her on the edge of probably the only king size bed I knew of that sat three mattresses high without a frame. Not that I know of a lot of king size beds, I’m just saying is all.“Really?” Claret asked me, for probably the sixth time in as many minutes. “You’re sure?”
“Yes, Claret, I’m sure. I heard it all from Elena herself.”
“So… Let me get this straight…” Claret sat up a little bit and brought down the bag, “Elena… your friend Elena from the Scooby Squad… is the Plano Punisher, the Made Man’s Nightmare, The Dallas Double-Tap… and she’s an F***ing ex-DEA F***ing Agent?!”
I nodded a little. “Yep,” I said with a sigh.
Claret breathed into the bag once more. “Which means she’s trained to hunt down and kill drug dealers…”
“Yep.”
“And she knows… that that’s what I do…” Panic creeped into Claret’s voice.
“Yep.”
Claret paused for a moment, then lay back on to the bed with a flop. “I am so screwed…”
“Nope.”
Claret’s shock was palpable as she sat up and turned towards me, both hands on my shoulders. “Wait, What?”
“Well, if I was to take a guess, I would say that she hasn’t targeted you yet because she doesn’t have any hard evidence. At least, nothing that puts you above the small time dealers all over DFW. But that’s really only a matter of time till she does. Once she does though, she may not straight up kill you because she and I are friends, but given her justice code, that probably won’t ultimately stop her either. She’ll have to figure out something creative to get rid of you so I would never know or that I wouldn’t suspect her. Anyway, what I’m getting at is that you are not dead yet.”
Claret paused again for a moment then flopped once more back on her bed. “Thanks, Erica, that makes me feel so much better.” She took another deep breath from the paper bag.
“Which means,” I said as I poked her approximately in her side, “you have an opportunity to call off her ‘hit’, so to speak.”
Claret, rather than rising shocked for the third time, just lay there continuing to breath out of the bag. “Just say it, Erica, I’m too tired for this anymore, just tell me what I got to do and I’ll do it.”
Excellent. “Well, first off, you got to not deal drugs anymore.” Claret groaned, turning on her side away from me. “I’m serious, Claret, you gotta stop cold turkey. And that means taking them too. Everything stops, no more drugs.”
“Why bother, then?” Claret drawled. “I’d just be calling off one hit in exchange for another. Tony down in Houston was so impressed with Flowers that he gave me an upfront bonus to work out a new Xstacy/LSD cross. If I told him I was out of the game he’d off me just on general principal. Ugghh…”
“That’s where the second thing comes in.” I took a gentle hold of Claret’s shoulder and turned her back towards me. “Give Elena your word of honor and Power that you’ve quit that life for good, and as a sign of good faith,” I leaned in towards her for emphasis. “Give her your little black book.”
“Um Erica I don’t think Elena really dates, at least not my type of-”
“No, Claret, the other black book.” I Spocked one eyebrow, my blind girl version of winking thru my Aviator Shades.
“Oh, Oh Ooohhh Claret sat back up slowly, her tongue ring clicking against her teeth as she thought furiously.
“That way,” I continued, “Elena has a entire catalog of people worth killing, including Houston Tony, before she even thinks about you again. And at that point, you’ll be clean and repentant and… ya know… not criminalling anymore. Reformed and what have you. No reason to kill you then, right?”
“Right, right.” Claret clicked her teeth once more. “Wait a second, how do you even know about that black book?”
I stood and walked slowly towards the foyer area to get my things. "You have a metal safe behind the cupboards, just big enough to hold ledgers and notebooks and small bits of precious in jewelry boxes and such. You use octopus ink in your Disappearing Ink potion which I always smell around the cupboard but never anywhere else, nor do you use it whenever I’ve been around except for that one time when you pranked Barb’s diary, which both of you told me about later over different types of alcohol. Disappearing ink would be perfect to hide important illegal book info in case you got raided. And there is no way that Claret aka “Dr. Jekyll and Miss Type A Personality” doesn’t have a comprehensive contact and reference sheet for emergencies and/or leverage, should the need arise. And there is no way you would let anyone else ever get that info unless you wanted them to."
Claret followed me towards the front door while I got my things on. “Wow, nice one, babe,” Claret crooned, “chalk up one scary point for the Blind chick.” She laughed, but I could tell she was still a bit worn out.
I got my cane ready and headed towards the door. “Oh and one more thing. You’ll need to move.”
Claret scoffed. “Obviously.”
“My friend Midori and I are talking about getting our own place. Actually we’ve talked about it for a while, but it hasn’t really been viable since I wanted to stay behind Auntie Em’s threshold while the Ft. Wolfe Posse wanted me dead. Now that we’re meh-ish level friends with that pack, I can actually move into my own place. I can’t really afford anything on scholarship handouts, especially since my latest caper caused me to miss my financial aid meeting. Stupid NeverNever time dilation. Anyway, if you want a place to live without anyone knowing where you are, you can room with us when we get a place. I’m not promising much, since Midori has only just turned 18 and may be kind of iffy on a decent lease agreement, but you can always crash with us if you need to.” I gave Claret a big hug, which she kind of returned. “You are my friend, Claret, even though I think you only started talking to me because I couldn’t see you making drugs so it was OK to have me over. And that since I was blind I couldn’t judge you based on what you looked like, even though you dress the way you do to keep people at a distance.”
“Well, kinda but-”
“It’s OK, Claret, I get it. Its cool. Regardless of how it started, we’re friends now and that won’t change for me, OK?”
Claret sniffed a little and hugged me on her own, decently I might add. “Yeah, me too.”
“For science?” I asked teasingly, doing my best Dr. KaBoom impression.
“Heh, yeah, for science,” she laughed. “Give me a day or two to decide, OK? I promise I won’t run, I just need a little time to process.”
“Sure thing,” I said as I walked out her door and thru my hasty wards surrounding her meager threshold.
As I walked down the hall, Claret called after me.
“Hey, your friend that you talked to, about your change of heart and moral stuff… what that Elena?”
I stopped and turned my head slightly to answer. “Yeah.”
“She made you choose between the two of us, didn’t she?”
I turned around towards her fully. “Yeah, but I couldn’t choose between the two of you, so I cheated and choose you both.”
“Is she going to be OK with that?”
I shrugged. “I dunno, maybe. But it doesn’t matter.”
“Why not?”
I turned back around and started walking down the hall again, raising my non-cane arm in a farewell. “Because it was the right choice.”
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