This choice: Just keep doing what you've been doing • Go Back...Chapter #44The Management Secrets of Steve Patterson by: Seuzz   You grunt softly to yourself. No, fucking with Johansson isn't worth it, and you're tempted only because the little Prescott homunculus inside you is making trouble. He's pissed off because now he knows about how Johansson and Tilley betrayed him, and he wants to hurt them back.
Oh, he ought to be pissed off at you, too, because you made them do it. And maybe he is pissed at you. But you—you're just coldly amused. Yeah, you made Prescott's friends do those jobs. At the time you thought it would be a good insurance policy: a little blackmail to hold over them, so they'd be careful about cooperating with Prescott against you, for you could blow up their friendship by revealing what they'd done. Also, each of them would wonder if his other friend had done something dirty to him. Cold, self-interested suspicion would keep them apart, and dependent upon you.
But there's no need to worry about Prescott now, and Tilley will soon be at Eastman. Johansson will be alone, with no one to make common cause with.
"I'm gonna hang out with Cindy upstairs after practice today, if that's alright with you," Seth Javits murmurs to you at your locker just before the start of third period.
"Why don't you say it a little louder, Javits," you say in voice that carries over the roar of the crowd. "I don't think everyone heard what you're planning to do with your girlfriend after school and where you're planning to do it."
Javits turns very red.
"You've been up there an awful lot since Sunday," you continue. "How about you let someone else use it for a change?"
You've only been gone a couple of days, but you've returned to novel arrangements. Aside from the change to your own being, Caleb Johansson is now a senior member of the club and is living under Seth Javits's identity—Javits himself is now trapped under Johansson's mask—so that's how come Javits has access to the fuck room, and has been taking Cindy up there every day. Meanwhile, up until today Tilley was pretending to be Nurse Shaffer, but Lynch—who has finally managed to score a copy of Laurent Delacroix—will be taking over for him. That only leaves Gordon unchanged; and Gordon hasn't been one for changes.
At lunch, in the cafeteria, you watch him and Chelsea out of the corner of your eye. He's got his arm around her shoulder, and there briefly flashes through your brain the hope that Chelsea will get felled by food poisoning and have to make a trip to the school nurse. "If we wear our uniforms out there—" she is saying.
You catch Gordon's eye, and with a careful flick of your eyelid convey a small novel cataloging your opinion of Chelsea and her transparent attempt to overwhelm and hijack Sophia Van den Berg's upcoming Halloween party. Gordon just stares back at you blankly; and Chelsea wears out her breath long after you've ceased paying attention.
"Look at this shit," Lynch mutters as with a loud crash he drops a tray of gloppy food onto the table and slides into the seat next to you. For a muscle-bound little fireplug of psychosis, Lynch can move with a silken grace—or he moves with a silken grace when he forgets how girly it makes him look.
"Where the fuck have you been?" you mutter.
"Miss me?" he grins.
"Get your hand off my knee."
"Fucker. Anyway, yeah, I had to go to the nurse's office. Me and this pissant got in a fight." Again you catch Gordon's eye, and this time his lips twitch: he was the one who gave Lynch his new assignment. You are briefly tempted to pull the mask off the thing next to you, and let Nurse Shaffer spill out in front of the horrified alpha-jock table.
"You're such a baby," you snort. Lynch mutters something inaudible.
Your noises have attracted Chelsea's attention, at least briefly. She is looking over at you and Lynch with a mild frown, as though resenting the distraction. She glances up at Gordon, and then her eyes lock onto something at the far end of the table. A little glint comes into them, and you feel a cold spot form above your heart. The light in her eyes is the sheet lightning of a far off but rapidly approaching thunderhead. You don't have to turn your own head to know who she's looking at. It will be Seth and Cindy, cuddling and cooing over each other.
* * * * *
You and Gordon haven't had much of a chance to talk since your "return" from Eastman, so at after-school practice the two of you set the rest of the team to drilling while you stand off to the side, ostensibly to watch and grade, but actually to talk about things. "So are the little shits gonna be scoring us any more Eastman players?" Gordon asks.
"I told 'em I wanted Carpenter and Straussler," you say.
"What about Gregory?"
"We get Carpenter, we can sideline Gregory. Otherwise, it's a pussy raid."
He grunts. "Make that one get out of Javits. I can't stand looking at him."
"Maybe you wanna step into Javits's shoes?" you tease. "Get a little Cindy action?"
He shoots you a hard, dark look, and his jaw clenches. "I can do that with the mask and that thing you got upstairs."
"You haven't, though. Chelsea's been good to you lately."
"Mnh. But just move that guy out to Eastman, along with his friends. If you're not gonna get rid of 'em."
"They're too useful. Lynch too. We can move him to Eastman too." Gordon says nothing; he knows you don't like Lynch. "We could have real fun, just the two of us, without the others gumming up things."
"I toldja we could get rid of 'em."
"And I toldja we could make up a double of Chelsea, but you didn't like that idea."
"Are you queer for thsse assholes?" he asks. "Are they sucking your cock? Cuz that's what Chelsea does for me."
"I'm just making a point that we can't always get what we want. Find a way to make yourself happy, Gordon. We'll move Johansson to Eastman and then you can take over for Javits."
"I don't want—"
"After hours, I mean. So you don't have to go home. Be yourself at school, where it matters, and be Seth at night."
He puts his hands on his hips and taps the hard floor with his toe. "I'll think about it."
* * * * *
"Miss me?" you grin at Kendra, and squeeze her thigh with one hand while navigating the car with the other.
"What day is it?" she says in a dazed tone.
"Doesn't matter. It's just you, me, and endless possibilities."
But she's looking very peaked, and her eyes don't focus on anything, even though she's trying to take in the traffic and the storefronts and the rest of the city you have on your way home. "It's nice to be outside that loft," she says. "You should take me out more often."
You do a little double take at her words; is it possible that all this blinking in and out of existence, and being trapped in the same locale, is damaging to a golem? You've certainly not thought of them as being real things, but if being imprisoned is psychologically damaging to them—
You shake your head. No, it's just an illusion created by the masks, you decide.
"Well, it's a nice Sunday afternoon drive for you," you say. "Even though it's not Sunday." You pat her on the thigh again. "Okay, we'll be there in five minutes. Get undressed."
She winces, but complies: The golem doesn't have to obey you, but this one at least seems to have accumulated the habit of obedience. Still, you'll feel better when you've got it swapped out for the other golem.
She's out of her clothes by the time you pull up in front of your house. Inside the garage you pull the tarpaulin off Prescott's old golem, then gesture Kendra out of the car and have her lay down beside it. She sighs sadly as you lay your hand on her face and tear the mask off.
You're about to set it onto the other golem when another idea occurs to you, and you open up the box that sits half-hidden by the garage wall. You smile down at the two masks it contains: the two masks that Tilley and Johansson got for you, and which you moved out here so Prescott wouldn't stumble over them.
One of these days you might find a use for the mask of Harris Prescott—which Tilley scored as his first job for you—but right now you're thinking you could definitely use the other mask, which was Johansson's fifth job. Is Umeko Prescott—Will's cousin—as hot as he thinks she is?  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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