editor’s note 1: this story was originally published in The Grapevine, the literary journal of Bakersfield College. It is reproduced with edits here under Creative Commons.
editor’s note 2: you can read the original Transimus Maximus story here, which adds context to this one, but is not required to understand the events of the story below.
editor’s note 3: the editor hopes you’re having a lovely day today. did you do something different with your hair? it looks marvelous.
editor’s note 4: the Transimus Maximus trilogy main page can be accessed by clicking anywhere on this text. the editor hopes that makes it easy for you.
~:dedication:~
This story is dedicated to
all children estranged from their families of origin.
Whatever the reason:
you don’t have to look back if you don’t want to,
no matter what anyone else tells you.
You are the arbiter of your own destiny.
TRANSIMUS MAXIMUS 2
THE ETERNAL RETURN
Karen Dunn sat at a table at the Hotel Beaufort bar with her boss, Steve Kraus, as they waited for their prospective clients. The business power couple worked for the Lockdead Grumman Corporation selling small arms and weapons systems to militaries and militias across the globe. Karen’s make-up and dress were to Steve’s specifications. Short black pencil skirt, pastel button-down ¾ sleeve blouse, black pumps, dark nylons. Her brunette hair was tied back in a tight, military-style bun.
“For your makeup, we want a little flamboyance, but not too much,” Steve had told her the night before. “Not your usual neutrals and nudes, but not drag queen or street worker looks, either,” he explained with over-exaggerated brush motions on his face. “Think Bob Ross. Happy medium.” Steve would know about the queen looks. He did drag bingo to benefit every kind of cancer imaginable at the Rainforest Café every Friday night.
Steve almost never deigned to tell Karen how to dress. The reason he put so much emphasis on Karen’s appearance for this meeting in particular – though she had her own motivations – had to do with it involving certain high-profile international clients. More specifically, clients from the Argentine Republic with deep pockets and a thirst for Peronist blood. Even more specifically, clients who may or may not have been spending CIA money to protect US interests in the area. The clients in question were Minister of Security Ricardo Hirschel and Senate Defense Committee Chairwoman Lucía Garza. One of Karen’s more overt motivations for the specificity with which she dressed was that she did not want to lose this especially lucrative contract to Southern Martin Defense, Inc.
In contrast to the “little flamboyance” displayed by Karen’s outfit, Steve’s dress was simple and sensible. His hair was cut short on the sides and back and gelled with a slight wave to one side, colored to match his natural dark brown color to hide the grays coming in. His face was shaved, which caused a bit of a double chin to show, but Steve seemed to carry it with dignity. His suit was a middle gray with a soft red tie. In the right company, he’d jokingly call the tie pink.
Earlier in the week, during a late night review of their Argentinian account, Karen asked her boss with a wry smile, “Are they needing a new fleet for sending folks out on helicopter rides?”
“Oh, please honey,” Steve replied, limp-wristed and lispy as he peered over his laptop screen, “helicopter rides are so fascé,” to which they both guffawed.
After their laughter, Karen highlighted a few lines on her papers and said “No, but really, their latest models are from the late 70s. Maybe we could encourage some newer models? With crew-serves? Lines on auto-ordering ammo? Make it seem like a special?”
Steve sat with the idea for a moment, arms crossed, his thumb under his chin with his index finger tapping his lips as he pondered. “Yes,” he finally agreed with a snapped finger and a point. “Nothing bigger than 60s and SAWs on the crew weapons, though. And no armor-piercing or explosive rounds. DoD policy.”
Meanwhile, back in the present, Karen’s attention was caught by a man, a woman, and a gaggle of children meandering through the hotel hallway outside the bar. Their bright outfits and colorful banter reminded her of a different event in the more distant past: her children leaving the nest, how long it’d been since, and how long it’d been since she’d finalized her divorce. The family Karen was watching seemed to be leaving the pool to head back to their rooms. She couldn’t help but look at them with longing, knowing what she had lost, wondering what could have been. It had been about three years since her children left home and 1 year, three months, and three days since she finalized her divorced. Her children leaving was a wound, while her divorce was surgical. Hence the more precise temporal scar tissue on the latter.
One of the children was given a directive Karen couldn’t hear, but what she did hear was the child state emphatically, “No!”
The mother rebutted the child with words that stabbed at Karen. “Don’t tell me no!”
Steve, ever observant of Karen’s emotional states, far more cognizant of such details than any other man she’d known (even the gay ones), calmly told her “Girl, you need to focus on what we’re doing.”
Karen nodded, compartmentalized like a good little girlboss, and shifted focus to her dossiers for a moment. “You’re right.”
“You’ve been over those files enough in the last week to have them memorized, bitch.” Steve beckoned for eye contact. “Tell me what we’re doing.”
Meeting Steve’s eyes with her own, Karen couldn’t help but smile. Steve was always so charming, and his grins so contagious. “We’re making that money happen!”
Steve wagged his finger in front of her nose and said, “That’s right, bitch. So put that sad girl shit away, and get your bad bitch shit out, ‘cause here come our marks.” He barely shifted his finger to motion toward the Argentinian Minister and Senator such that only Karen would see him pointing.
Karen turned around to see a gentleman in a navy blue pinstripe suit with pepper gray hair gelled and slicked back and a well-trimmed goatee of a similar color. At least, the gentleman is who caught her eye. Ricardo. Of course it had to be him. From so long ago. That lovely man who gave Karen an illegitimate daughter. An illegitimate daughter who doesn’t know she’s an illegitimate daughter. An illegitimate daughter who won’t talk to her anymore. An illegitimate daughter who will never ask where her black hair or lovely eyes came from.
Make that money happen, Karen repeated the mantra to herself internally as she brought herself back to the present and remind herself she already knew this Ricardo was her Ricardo. She knew that when arrangements were made for the meeting.
The last time Karen saw Ricardo was during the post-9/11 furor over Islamic extremism. He was in the Chamber of Deputies back then. She was a lowly sales rep. Their meeting, happenstance. She was in D.C. closing a sale at the Pentagon on a new line of crew-served weapons for up-armored trucks. He was in the U.S. on a diplomatic visit with the Foreign Relation and Worship commission in the Chamber of Deputies. They both had one too many glasses of Malbec in the same place and time, and that’s how Karen’s daughter Charlotte came to be.
Make that money happen.
However, the sordid tale of how Charlotte came to be says nothing of how her son Daniel came to be or Karen’s grief at his seeming death. The unnamed whirlwind of emotion concerning the thing that stood in his stead that her ex-husband Chad tried to exorcise. The knowledge of that entity’s existence, that Charlotte gave it a name, defended it… all of it had been a source of constant anguish and confusion (at best) for Karen since that early February morning. Where did she go wrong? What could she have done better?
Make that money happen. Make that money happen.
“Good afternoon, Minister Hirschel! Senator Garza!” Steve’s voice and mannerisms were far more traditionally masculine when he was ‘in character’ working on a deal. For reasons Karen couldn’t pinpoint, the shift was more disquieting in the moment. Steve offered the minister a firm handshake and eye contact, and a softer handshake for the senator.
Senator Garza was dressed similarly to Karen. She wondered for a brief moment if the Minister and the Senator shared each others’ intimate company, but before Karen could follow that thought too far down the rabbit hole, she was being introduced. “This is our Strategic Accounts Director, Karen.”
“Ah, yes,” Ricardo took Karen’s right hand gently by the fingers and spent a seeming eternity leaning in to tease a peck on it. Afterward, he looked up, still bowed, to meet Karen’s slightly bewildered gaze, and said, “The fates have already been kind enough to see to our meeting.”
Karen glanced around to see Senator Garza barely attempting to hide an eye roll and her boss trying and failing to hide a thumbs up and toothy smile from the Argentinian officials to whom they were now attempting to sell weapons and militarized vehicles. Karen lightly tugged her hand, hoping only Ricardo noticed, and said “It is a pleasure to see you again, Minister.”
Ricardo nodded and released her hand and gave a grand, wide-armed gesture in one swift, fluid motion. “I’m hungry!” the Minister exclaimed. “Let’s eat! Then we’ll do business!”
Minister Hirschel insisted on sitting across from Karen. To Ricardo’s right was Steve, and across from Steve was Senator Garza. As the four looked at the menu, Minister Hirschel commented, “It’s Lenten season, so we should avoid meat, my friends,” with a solemn nod. Looking at Karen, he asked, “Do you observe the season of Lent, Ms. Woolcock?”
Steve barely contained a chuckle as Karen choked on the water she was drinking. Senator Garza closed her menu and crossed her arms and legs as a smug grin grew on her face. “Come, now, Minister,” the Senator said. “This is the United States. We can’t expect them to do something as holy as fasting. They are the world’s biggest consumers, after all.” Senator Garza’s eyes flashed like those of a hunter enthralled with the thrill of stalking some sort of rare and dangerous game.
Ricardo held out his hand as if to keep the Senator at bay, “Now, now, Senator. I want to hear from Ms. Woolcock.”
Karen placed her hand lightly on her chest while clearing her throat and then paused, holding her breath.
Steve placed his elbows on his legs with his chin resting on his folded fists, and said “Yes, Ms. Woolcock, I’m dying to know!” He almost slipped back into his campy high tenor.
Karen exhaled, took a drink of her water, cleared her throat again as softly as she could, and began to update Ricardo on her situation while looking at Senator Garza. “Well, Senator, I was married.”
“Oh, a divorce!” Senator Garza seemed to revel in such a juicy morsel while playing at something resembling pity.
“Senator, please!” Ricardo interrupted the interrupter. The senator sat in her chair, unmoving, poorly hiding the fact that she was feeling pouty about being told to be silent.
Karen looked at the others at the table in sequence, pulling nervously at the hem of her skirt before continuing with a sigh. “There was a divorce. We simply grew apart. Sometimes that happens,” she explained with a slight wave of her hand like a magic wand.
Senator Garza’s lips formed a one-sided grin, as her eyes moved from Karen to Minister Hirschel. Ricardo’s eyes darted over to the Senator as if to prevent her from speaking to say “Called it!”
“Rather than keeping my husband’s name of Woodcock and everything that reminded me of all that history, I chose instead to return to my maiden name of Dunn.”
Ricardo crossed his arms and stroked his goatee while nodding his head before placing his elbows on the table with his fingers steepled in front of his lips. The Minister’s gaze was fixed on Karen.
A moment of silence befell the table before a waitress named Sophia arrived. “Are we ready to ord-”
“Filet mignon and a glass of red,” Ricardo cut the waitress off flatly.
“Okay,” Sophia took note of Ricardo’s order before looking at the rest of the table.
As Karen and Steve exchanged nervous glances, Senator Garza smiled. “May I please have an order of the Cobb salad and a glass of sparkling water?” she ordered confidently.
“Of course!” the waitress replied before turning her attention to Karen and Steve, who were making last second re-calculations on their orders. “Do you need more time?”
“No!” Karen laughed. “Of course not. May I please have-” she paused uncomfortably with a slight chuckle, “the salmon?”
“The salmon,” Sophia mimicked what she perceived as uncertainty from her customer, before making eye contact to confirm.
Karen grasped for the cross necklace she used to wear. It used to bring her comfort just to fiddle with it in times of uncertainty. She never actually prayed. It was just about the tactile stimulation. She stopped wearing it because she was tired of being mistaken for a Christian, but it left her with nothing to grab for when she was stressed or anxious. She noticed Senator Garza’s smug face as she was fumbling for the cross. So she simply tapped the first knuckles of her fingers softly against her sternum and said “Yes. Salmon,” with a nod for each word.
Sophia then turned her attention toward Steve who answered salmon before Sophia asked. After she finished writing, Sophia thanked everyone and informed them that their orders would be ready shortly.
Minister Hirschel’s eyes never left Karen since she revealed that she had been married. As a strategist, she always wanted to know what was going on in peoples’ heads. As Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, “If you know your enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles… If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” Most of the time, she knew what was in peoples’ heads because she knew what was being put in peoples’ heads. When it came to Ricardo in this moment, she was at an extreme disadvantage, but at least she knew she was. Karen knew what was in the dossier on him, but this experience regarding her maiden name brought them into uncharted territory.
His eyes. So similar to Charlotte’s in color and shape. He is where she got her tenacity, surely. Her craftiness. Her passion.
The Minister’s gaze didn’t just pierce Karen in that moment. She felt as though his eyes was unraveling her very being. Revealing for all to see the deep, empty core of what she truly is: nothingness without end. A void that just consumes greedily everything and everyone around it that cannot stop. A hunger that destroys anything it cannot control.
Make that money happen. Make that money happen. Make that money happen.
“So, I was looking over some reports, and-”
“After dinner, I said, Ms. Dunn,” the Minister interrupted. “I do not mix business and pleasure if I can avoid it.” Minister Hirschel was unmoving. His eyes fixed and unflinching. “However, there is much I would like to discuss with you after dinner and after business, Ms. Dunn.”
“Of course, Minister,” Karen nodded, trying to smile.
Returning Karen’s attempt at warmth with what seemed to her, genuine appreciation, the Minister replied “Please. Call me Ricardo,” with a smile.
Karen smiled back, and quickly glanced at Steve who looked like he was trying to hide the fact that he was pleased with how things were shaping up before returning her eyes to Ricardo. “Of course, Ricardo.”
Karen carefully glanced toward Senator Garza, who was examining her nails, and lightly bouncing the leg she had crossed over the other. She seemed as though she thought the idea of waiting for dinner before compiling data on how to best spend their nation’s defense budget was a dreadful waste of time. Karen’s dread wasn’t rooted in any particular idea about a waste of time, but rather a sense of foreboding concerning Senator Garza’s compatriot.
Should Karen tell Minister Hirschel about Charlotte? About Charlotte leaving? Would it matter to him? Would this knowledge just make things worse with Charlotte? Karen knew now wasn’t the time for such questions, but they were like an infected wound that she didn’t have dressings for that she just couldn’t stop picking and prodding at.
Make that money happen. Make that money happen. Make that money happen. Make that money happen.
The part that made Karen feel the most guilty of all was rooted in paradox: the current guilt she was feeling sitting across from Minister Herschel was actually about just how little guilt she felt in the moments of her initial encounter with him. She didn’t feel guilty for wanting to fuck him. She didn’t feel guilty for cheating on her husband with him. She didn’t feel guilty for not being honest with him. She didn’t even feel guilty for seducing her husband afterwards for plausible deniability when she knew she was pregnant with Charlotte.
She wanted to feel human. Ricardo gave her that. In the process, she denied his humanity, while also destroying the precious gift given her by Ricardo.
Make that money happen. Make that money happen. Make that money happen.
After dinner, Ricardo invited the Senator and the arms dealers up to his hotel room, where they would conduct their business. After a silent elevator ride to the top floor, the Minister realized he forgot something. Standing outside his suite, he said “Ladies, if you please, I forgot that we have no wine.”
“I’m not your secretary, Minister,” Senator Garza stated matter-of-factly. “Send Ms. Woolcock, but if you want to put this off, I’m going back to my room for a nap.”
Steve and Karen exchanged nervous glances. Karen knew she had to step up to the plate, but she didn’t like the idea of leaving Steve and Ricardo alone like this.
Make that money happen. Make that money happen.
“I’ll go get us some wine,” Karen diffused the situation with her conflict avoidance jiu-jitsu. “What kind would you like?”
Senator Garza rolled her eyes. “A rosé. I’m setting my alarm for an hour,” she said from halfway down the hall as she left for her room.
Ricardo put his hands lightly on Karen’s shoulders and looked at her with a warmth and trust that was a little unsettling. She tried to keep her cool. “It is a very special wine, and you may have to stop at a few shops to find it.”
Karen nodded once, keeping eye contact. “I’ll do my best.”
“Now, you may be tempted to go online and make phone calls, but I need you to actually go and look yourself, please?” Ricardo asked.
Karen nodded again. “As stated, I’ll do my best.”
Ricardo relaxed his expression and smiled. “I’m sure you will.” He then leaned in and gave Karen a peck on the cheek before dropping one hand off one shoulder, giving a squeeze with the other and saying “I’d like a bottle of Wild Goose Wine. It is my absolute favorite.”
Karen looked at Steve, then back at Ricardo, and nodded. “I’ll do what I can,” she said before turning toward the elevator. Once inside, she pulled out her phone and texted Steve, “Wild Goose Wine? I’ve never heard of that.”
A few moments later, Karen’s phone buzzed with Steve’s reply, “Do ur best. B back in 1 hour with that and the rosé or just rosé.”
After 45 minutes of feeling like a doofus at three different liquor stores near the Beaufort asking for a wine that apparently doesn’t exist, Karen bought a middle class budget rosé and went back to the hotel. Upon her return, she found Senator Garza waiting in the lobby. “If you want this contract – my room. Now,” the Senator quietly demanded.
Karen followed the Senator to the elevator, and once the elevator reached the top floor, she followed past the suite where the men were waiting for them. The Senator opened her door with her card, looked down both sides of the hallway, then grabbed Karen by the wrist and pulled her into the room. Karen was reminded of the way Chad grabbed Charlotte and threw her into the hallway the night the demon took her son.
The room seemed smaller than what Karen was expecting. Upon getting her bearings and quickly scanning the layout, she realized she wasn’t sure what she expected. The door to her right was the bathroom. What few white lights were on in the room allowed her to see that there was a couch with a coffee table in front of it across from a dresser with a flat screen TV on top. Beyond all that was a king bed. Karen couldn’t help but notice that there wasn’t a trace of luggage or any other sign that the Senator was actually staying in the room. Karen surmised from this detail one of two things: Senator Garza was either very well organized with her packing or the Senator was hiding something.
As Karen’s eyes continued adjusting to the darkness, Senator Garza spit her demands with the quickness. “Sell us the good weapons.” The Senator began counting on her fingers as she specified each demand. “We want explosives, armor piercing rounds, M-4s with attachments, Mk-19s, M-2s, claymores. We want new tanks, new choppers, and armored transports. We want upgraded riot gear, too. That old sack Hirschel doesn’t know shit. He doesn’t know how to get the job done. But I do,” the Senator thumbed to herself before putting her hands on her hips, obviously impatient for Karen’s reply.
Karen also knew how to get the job done. She’d dealt with power-grabbing, short-sighted upstarts like Senator Garza before. Karen nodded. “I’ll need to consult with my superiors, but I don’t see why-”
“I don’t want to hear that shit!” the Senator exclaimed. “Argentina is awash in a sea of red. And I mean to make sure that red is Marxist blood rather than communism itself.”
Karen cleared her throat, and smiled before giving a Senator Garza an impish grin. “Well. I wasn’t expecting any hot girlboss on girlboss action tonight, but here we are.” Her closed stance relaxed and she asked “May I sit?”
The Senator seemed confused, but Karen took the initiative, set the bottle of wine on the coffee table, and sat on the couch in a slightly lounging position.
“So, here’s the deal,” Karen began.
Make that money happen.
“As a strategist, I like knowing what’s going on in peoples’ heads. Or at least having a pretty good idea so that I can move with them. Right now, you’re thinking about glory. Glory for you, glory for Cambiemos. The reason why Minister Hirschel has gotten as far in his career as he has is because he understands that you can’t use a machete for surgery except in the most dire of circumstances.”
“What are you saying?” Senator Garza asked.
“What I’m saying is: there needs to be a balance. What US leadership has found is that involves helping the populace feel informed and engaged, while offering no meaningful solutions to actually bettering anyone’s lives. We all know this is inherently contradictory and absurd in the extreme, but most people just accept it. Those who fight against it, whether they are communists or fascists, get shut down. Although, the communists are usually shut down before the fascists, and we’ve found ways of managing the communists in our borders that don’t involve a bloodbath.”
“Well then? How?”
“Let the reds talk shit. Let them do their graffiti. Let them post on social media. Let them read Marx, Davis, Crenshaw, or Kropotkin in their little book clubs,” Karen explained with a dismissive hand gesture, before holding up a finger in a point. “However, the moment they get guns or disrupt the flow of capital, the cops just find something to charge them with. Drug charges. Traffic violations. And then mention the guns on the news. They don’t even have to be armed to be arrested and charged,” she said, before continuing, “The real weapons aren’t the guns. It’s the laws used to put people in chains for questioning the established order in any way that matters. Further, it’s the superficial divisions and threats to rights based on any number of demographic factors that keep people from realizing the one simple and obvious truth: all fights are the same fight.”
The Senator stood staring at Karen, spellbound and mystified. Senator Garza had known all this intuitively, but to have it explained so clearly and succinctly was not something she was expecting on this trip. “I think I need to sit with this a bit,” Senator Garza said, her hands falling to her sides as she stared at the floor.
Karen stood and walked to face Senator Garza, who returned Karen’s eye contact. “Of course. Take all the time you need. For now, why don’t we stick with established conventions, and listen to what Minister Hirschel has to say?”
The Senator nodded. “Yeah. That’s fine. Thank you.”
“Hey,” the strategist said, moving between pointing at the Senator and thumbing toward herself, “us girlbosses gotta stick together. Work with me on this, and I’ll see what I can do on my end to get some of what you’re asking for.” With a wink and a point, Karen concluded “The rosé is on the table,” before turning to leave the hotel room.
On the way to the Minister’s suite, Karen checked her phone for the time. 7:06 PM. A little later than anticipated, but not by much. She would have been on time if not for that little upstart’s interruption. The business discussed, sans Senator Garza, involved maintaining established conventions. Contract acquired. Girlboss status maintained.
The Minister didn’t even ask about the wine he’d sent Karen after.
Another elevator ride and a rideshare later, Karen and Ricardo were sitting at a different bar. A smaller, dimly lit bar. Not at the hotel. Drinking Malbec. Just like back in ‘04. The time was now about 9:30pm, Karen guessed. The strategist was briefing the Minister on the more personal updates in her life that she began opening up about at dinner.
“A daughter?” Ricardo chuckled.
Karen smiled and nodded.
“You’re joking,” Ricardo was still smiling.
Karen smiled, eyes wide, and shook her head.
“It was just one night!” Ricardo laughed.
Karen nodded, her expression static, making eye contact on the third nod. When she did she shrugged nervously, and they both laughed.
They were both on their third glass. She knew going in this was a bad idea. However, Karen had decided now was a time to weather a season of recovering from poor life choices. Doing so was probably easier with a bit of liquor to numb the pain, or so she had reasoned. She gulped down the last of her current glass of wine, then smiled big at Ricardo. “Do you wanna know the worst part?”
Ricardo’s right eyebrow perked up.
Karen laughed. It felt good to laugh again. Even if she was about to engage in the most self-destructive behavior she had engaged in in two decades. She was laughing overly long.
Ricardo’s lips pursed together, his brows furrowed, and he looked Karen square in the face. “Please tell me what happened.”
“She won’t even talk to me anymore,” Karen’s laughter turned to tears.
“What?” he asked. “Why?”
Karen continued, slurring her speech, “Charlotte, our daughter, won’t talk to me anymore because my son is dead.” While she explained, she was grabbing for Ricardo’s shoulder for him to pull her in and hold her, which he marginally complied with.
“That sounds awful,” Ricardo loosened his posture in an attempt to become more comforting to the drunk woman crying into his $900 suit. “Do you know how it happened?”
“Yes,” Karen sniffled. “My son got possessed by a demon. And the demon tricked Charlotte and now they’re both gone.”
Ricardo squeezed the crying woman with both arms, and explained, “When you’ve been in the business of politics for as long as I have been, you learn to see things from a much wider perspective, though we pretend not to on the surface to achieve our aims. As a strategist, I’m sure you understand how this works.”
Karen pushed away from Ricardo with her hands on his chest, looking a bit like a cat begging for a treat. “What?” she asked.
“Your friend, Steve, for instance.” Ricardo began.
“My boss,” Karen corrected with an eye roll before leaning back into Ricardo.
“Right. Your boss,” he continued, “seems to have a very open policy regarding the information he’s willing to share about his compatriots and subordinates. I learned a lot from him.”
Karen shot up in her bar stool, almost falling over, but was graceful enough to avoid detection by the bartender with help from Ricardo for stabilization. When her eyes were done darting about and she was more certain of her balance, she asked “What did he tell you?”
“He told me about some of the details of your children leaving and subsequent divorce over a couple cigars,” Ricardo explained. “Cubans. Good ones, too. It was shortly after we – or rather – I, sent you ladies on, how you say… wild goose errand?”
Karen’s bewildered drunken gaze became a glare. “You bastards.”
“I am not, actually. My father’s line can be traced to Germany back through the 1700s. That was a mark of great pride for my great grandfather Wilhelm,” Ricardo corrected the drunk woman. “As far as Steve goes, I am uncertain. Many homosexuals seem to have problems with their parents, and it’s little wonder why.”
“Watch what you say,” Karen told him. “I’m not the one who was hurting him.”
“And what did you do to stop it?” Ricardo asked.
Karen readied her finger to give Ricardo a solid wagging. Ready to explain to him that he didn’t know what it was like being a woman; continually beaten and berated by a man she knew she was smarter, stronger, and ultimately better than. She stood ready to expound upon all the ways the church reminded her time and again that it was better for her to remain in a marriage where she had to watch her children be continually harmed, where she had to be continually harmed, because it was ultimately for a higher purpose that she didn’t even really believe in but couldn’t effectively argue against because she didn’t have the words. Ready to let him know about all the times she was ready to just quit everything and run away to be a crazy cat lady or a lunch lady at a public school in a small town.
Karen, instead, dropped her finger, and sunk into a slouch.
“The only demons we can be sure of are the ones we allow to grow inside us,” Ricardo said as he poked Karen in her sternum. Returning to his drink, Ricardo continued, “As for myself, I’m called a traitor by many of my own countrymen for accepting your country’s covert intelligence money. My betrayal is the result of my own demons.” With a small chuckle, Minister Hirschel concluded, “Then again, my great grandfather was a Nazi. Maybe our demons are hereditary.” He finished his Malbec in a single gulp.
Karen stared at Ricardo for a long while as he ran his finger around the rim of his empty wine glass. Everything around faded for Karen except Ricardo. That beautiful man, in his blue suit, sitting at the bar, playing with his wine glass, looking wistfully as though he wanted to simply wish for a happier present than the one his choices and the world around him had foisted upon him. She placed her hand lightly on his forearm, causing the wineglass to tip over, but it thankfully didn’t fall all the way to the floor and shatter.
“If I can ask,” Karen paused, “what did my boss tell you about my family situation? Specifically?”
“He told me enough to know this: that you have two daughters who are doing their best to thrive in an inhospitable world.”
“But my son,” Karen pleaded.
“Your daughters don’t talk to you because you don’t listen to them. The only demon here is you.”
She knew Ricardo was right. That was her initial thought. However, that answer didn’t serve her, or that was what she decided based on her understanding of things. So she compartmentalized, like a good little girlboss. “I think I should be getting back to my room,” Karen told the Minister with a smile. “I hope you have a lovely evening and a safe flight home, Minister Hirschel.” She quickly tabbed out and ordered a ride on her phone.
On the way back to her hotel room, Karen found herself unable to compartmentalize away the last thing the demon told her and her ex-husband before it left: “Try not to hurt anyone else, and listen when someone tells you you’re hurting them.” She couldn’t bring herself to remember the name Charlotte gave the demon. All she could understand was that Daniel, the son she’d raised, named for the interpreter of dreams, had become a nightmare. And while she wanted to wake up, this was her reality. Cold and unchanging. She just needed to get back to the room, wash her face, shower, and get ready for work the next day. After work, there was Steve’s drag bingo. This week, it was for kids with leukemia at St. Jude’s Hospital.
Karen’s gaslighting, gatekeeping, and girlbossing doesn’t end here! Read more in
Our Lady of the Perpetual Metamagic 