The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Four Read online

  Because of all that, Greg didn’t order most of the equipment because he didn’t have a place to put it until the build-out finished. He didn’t start hiring because he didn’t know when the gym would open…except I had told him to start hiring, and he had followed orders and hired a couple of people, but they were supposed to start a week from Monday and what was he going to do with them? Also, Greg was positive there was some paperwork that needed to be done with the IRS when you hired somebody, but he didn’t remember the details.

  Also, Greg didn’t understand much about bookkeeping. He did make sure he wrote everything down on pieces of paper. These scraps were around, somewhere. He often forgot to write down the checks payable in the check register, but he didn’t worry, because he was sure he could reconstruct them if and when he needed. He figured he would be able to work out how much money remained in the account if I needed some exact numbers.

  No problems, right? Well, except for this other contractor. Greg had hired a guy to come in and paint. Greg was sure he paid the guy, but the guy insisted on more money, and Greg didn’t know what to do. Also, Greg suspected he might have wanted to wait on the painting until some of this other work got done, because the walls were looking pretty messed up already. Oh, right, he hadn’t found a plumber yet, and he hadn’t found anyone to sell him some lockers, and he suspected there might be a few other things he needed to do that he hadn’t thought of yet.

  Like, perhaps, advertising? Oh, and phones. Greg had forgotten about phones. Maybe the gym should get an ad in the yellow pages? But the yellow pages wouldn’t come out for months, so he wasn’t sure how people would know the gym was open, except that he would tell a few friends of his, and they might come.

  Once Greg started, he just kept going and going and going. Every time I thought he had run out of problems, he came up with more. As he kept going, he seemed more relieved. He finally confessed the sins consuming him, and as he did, he dumped all his problems on me.

  What the hell was I supposed to do with them?

  I didn’t know any more about starting a gym than Greg did. Probably less. I listened to this endless litany of disaster. With every new problem I felt like someone slowly buried me in mud. I had absolutely no idea how to fix the situation.

  Greg finally ran down, and I left. I took the checkbook and the scraps of paper home with me. Bobby and I spent the evening trying to reconcile them and get some idea of what was going on and where the money went.

  By morning, I was ready to curse the entire gym into oblivion.

  I went back to Greg the next morning, and we spent the entire morning trying to organize the disaster. We made a best guess on the checking account. Following Bobby’s suggestion, I called the bank and got the balance from them, and found the balance was considerably off from our estimates. After a little Arm prompting, Greg remembered a couple more checks he had written and we added those in as well. By lunch, we had something we both sort of believed.

  After lunch I tried to cope with the contractor problem. I left a terse message with the contractor. I was about to go visit him in person when I had another idea, and decided to do a complete search of Greg’s apartment. The search took the rest of the day. I turned up a couple of bank statements under his bed and found the check to his painting contractor, unsent, in a pile in the kitchen. I made Greg send off the payment to the painting contractor with a nice apology, and I set about balancing the checkbook one more time.

  At day’s end, I threw in the towel. To do this right, I would need to learn to run a gym, but learning to run a gym was an utter waste of my time. I needed someone who knew how to start up a gym. Or, failing that, someone who understood how to run a business.

  Lucky for me, I already owned this someone: Mr. Tien. I hauled him in and dumped him on Greg. Mr. Tien couldn’t run a successful business, but at least ran a failing one, one step up from Greg and me.

  My brilliant earthshattering idea bought me a completely new set of problems. Mr. Tien didn’t approve of Greg, because of Ying, and he certainly didn’t think much of Greg’s competence after looking at the state of the gym. Besides, he lectured. He would stand in front of Greg, and in short, sharp sentences in his fractured English, he would list every mistake Greg made in excruciating detail, while the veins in Greg’s temples stood out farther and farther. When Greg tried to explain his side of the story, Mr. Tien would turn his back. When Greg shouted at him for his behavior, Mr. Tien ignored him. Needless to say, they came to me and complained about the other. Repeatedly.

  I wanted to smack them both, tell them to quit acting like children and work it out. However, ignoring problems in favor of laying down the law got me into this situation. So, I tried to mediate. Even burning juice into my predator effect didn’t solve the problem. I gave up on being nice, put Mr. Tien in charge and told Greg to follow orders.

  Greg got pissed as hell. He would do what Mr. Tien told him, but no more. Mr. Tien took off at a gallop toward what would have ended up looking more like a Chinese restaurant than a gym. He conserved money on the equipment and the locker rooms. He wouldn’t allow Greg to put up posters of half-dressed muscle-men because he thought they were tasteless. Instead, up went the Great Wall wallpaper. Mr. Tien did hire some staff to run the gym, but they turned out just like his waitresses: genteel, soft-spoken and had never exercised a day in their lives.

  I checked up on everything a week later. My gym might open eventually, but when the gym opened, it would be a lousy gym. I had a good idea of what a gym ought to look like, and this wasn’t right. Even forgetting the business justification, I wanted something better than this place for myself.

  Exasperated, I gave Greg back some authority and put him in charge of equipment and hiring. Greg and Mr. Tien started squabbling again.

  I didn’t kill them. I wanted to, but I didn’t. Instead, I put off the opening date of the gym for a month.

  I needed better recruits.

  Hope

  “Hello?”

  “Hello. Is this Deborah?” Tonya sat at her office desk and stroked her old gray mongrel cat, Stalker III, for comfort.

  “Yes, this is Debbie. Who’s calling?”

  “This is Tonya. Tonya Biggioni. Your mother.” Tonya’s stomach fluttered worse than during a Council meeting.

  “What? What the heck do you think you’re doing, calling after all this time?”

  Tonya took a breath. Deborah hadn’t hung up yet. A good sign.

  “I wanted to tell you congratulations. I understand you’re expecting.”

  “You’ve been talking to Paul,” Deborah said. Paul was Deborah’s brother and the single one of Tonya’s children Tonya remained on speaking terms with. Stalker hissed in protest and leapt out of Tonya’s lap. Tonya realized she had let a little too much of her nervousness through.

  “Yes. I was so glad to hear it. Are you doing well?”

  “Well, he should keep his big mouth shut. You stayed away this long, you can keep staying away.”

  “Deborah, sweetheart, I…”

  “Don’t call me sweetheart,” Deborah said, interrupting.

  “Deborah. You’re about to have a child. A child should have a chance to know his grandmother.”

  “He’s already got two grandmothers and they aren’t you.”

  Tonya took a breath and tried to steady her nerves. “I’d like to be one of them.”

  “You can like all you want.” Click. Dial tone.

  Tonya gently put the phone down. Really, she told herself, after all these years, this counted as a positive response. Her daughter had actually spoken to her for a few sentences before she hung up. Tonya would be able to work with that. A few more phone calls. Letters. Kindness. With any luck, her daughter would open to her eventually.

  Her children had long ago found their own paths, without her. She missed them. If she found a way to heal a little bit of the breach with her daughter, she might be able to hold her first grandchild in her arms one day.

  Ton
ya turned her attention back to the papers on her desk and found her hands shaking. She put her hands firmly on the desk and took several deep breaths before she attempted to review the papers again.

  Business papers this time, not politics. Her household had come into a considerable amount of money as a byproduct of Keaton’s bleeding-bad-juice visit, and Tonya had used the windfall to start a construction company. Expensive suburban homes, individually constructed, with all the custom touches. Over the years her people had accumulated an extensive amount of construction experience as they refurbished the household’s steady stream of residences and they were convinced they would be able to turn their construction skills into a business. Tonya hoped they were right, because they had sunk a heck of a lot of money into the project.

  The potential for a big long-term payoff was huge. A successful home construction business would supply enough money to keep the household afloat indefinitely. More than enough money.

  Biggioni Homes looked good so far. Chas had come up with a second family who wanted a house. The household did their first two homes below cost, as examples. The families, both distant relations of people in her household, got the houses they wanted at a reduced price in exchange for agreeing to let potential customers come through and inspect. With a couple of houses in the works, the budding construction company would have some legitimacy. Hopefully, the business would take off from there.

  This was a lot of hope for one day. A business, a grandchild. Tonya wasn’t used to hope. She shook her head and smiled. Maybe she would buy a gift for her prospective grandchild. A crib. Her spies said her daughter lived with her husband in a small duplex in Queens and didn’t have money in abundance. They wouldn’t turn down gifts, wherever they came from. Just a little something to crack the ice.

  Who knew? Maybe a miracle would occur. Maybe she would get to hold her grandchild after all.

  Anecdotes from the Inferno Stay

  (1)

  The sun barely peeked over the neighboring houses when, after a sleepless night working on the Chimera autopsy, Hank, Lori and Tina cadged breakfast from the morning kitchen crew. “So, ma’am, would you be willing to explain your sudden change in demeanor?” Zielinski asked, formally. The Focus had been so distracted for so long the sudden re-emergence of her hyper-competent and scary self was quite the shock.

  “I hear through the rumor mill you’re creaming my engineers at poker in Bob’s Barn,” Lori said, spooning up Shredded Wheat and ignoring his question as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘Rumor mill’ being Zielinski’s own earlier side comment. “I think I need to stop by and take in this marvel of poker playing. Perhaps even join the game.”

  Right. With the way the Focus acted tonight, they would be lucky if the cards didn’t end up as illusions. He had called her on her charisma, asking why she didn’t do mind control directly, instead of the charisma-the-senses games. As an answer, she ordered him to go dig through her purse and find two tampons to stick up his nostrils. He managed to fight off her charismatic order only after unwrapping the first tampon. Her example left him with shaking hands and a splitting headache. Lori explained her illusions didn’t leave as nasty a set of residual effects as direct charismatic control.

  Afterwards, he watched his questions carefully. No ill-considered questions about which bullets had more stopping power. In her current mood, she would probably demonstrate by using him as a target.

  “You do need to join us on Friday night,” Lori said. A little charisma in her voice, not much. Just enough to get him a little more open to the subject. Subtlety. He hadn’t realized she even knew the word ‘subtlety’. “I’m sure Ann will be the perfect chaperone. You two can take notes, together.”

  Mee-ow!

  (2)

  “Torture,” Jim said to Tina. The trainees ate lunch in Bob’s Barn along with the engineering crew. Too many people eating sandwiches and soup around an old folding church table. “To use juice in training you have to be tortured.”

  “Congratulations, Doc,” Tina said, with a laugh as the big woman grabbed a second sandwich from the plate at the center of the table. “You’ve just made a bunch of tin pot dictator Focuses happy. You’ve given them another excuse to torture their own people.”

  “Most of them won’t like the results,” Zielinski said. “They tend to be a little leery of the mild benefits even normal training can give their Transforms.”

  “Figures something like this would come up with our Focus in the mood she’s in,” Tina said.

  The Focus had been on an unending rampage since the start of February, the illusion tricks she did to him during the Chimera autopsy just the start. The conga line she arranged last Sunday had been the worst, an impressive but utterly innocuous way of showing who was boss in the household. All arranged with her charisma, with the Focus herself leading the way by clapping out a beat and reinforcing it with castanets. Connie had been livid, but what could she do? Everyone involved claimed it was their own idea to make themselves part of the conga line.

  Twice, Lori had almost talked him into one of her Friday night extravaganzas. Lori refused to let go of her idea to fix him up with Ann. Insane.

  Then there was the first bodyguard show, where he showed off how much the first set of bodyguards had improved their unarmed combat skills. Lori, instead of being supportive about the improvements, had cleaned her bodyguard’s clocks using physical skills he thought only Arms possessed. Where did she learn them, anyway, if not from sparring with her own people? She wouldn’t say. The bodyguards had never seen Lori do anything like she did then, either emotionally or physically.

  He did have the urge to check out all the dojos near Boston College, though.

  “How come the Focus didn’t come up with this before?” Tina said, speaking with her mouth full of ham sandwich.

  Connie and Ann thought Lori wasted herself doing research, and they were right. Lori’s strength was as a Focus. Until someone found a solution to the low juice problems every Focus suffered, she would never again be the intellectual powerhouse she had been as a teen.

  He couldn’t help but defend the Focus, though. “Microbiology is a different subject than what I’m working on here,” Zielinski said. “I’ve gone a long way over the years with my one little idea: try things, watch the juice.” Watch the psychology as well, he didn’t say. Always increase the stress. “Any idea why the Focus has been acting so atypically recently?”

  An entire table of Transforms studied their lunch and didn’t say a thing. “Transform politics,” Tina said, quietly. Tina wasn’t one of the Focus’s inner circle, but she was close, closer than anyone else in the engineer crew. “What do you know about Sports, doc?”

  “I used to play tennis,” he said. Before Keaton wrecked his legs. His response drew a glower from Tina. She meant the Transform variant, not athletics. He carefully didn’t smile. “Sports are variant Major Transforms, less common than Focuses but more common than Arms, with obscure talents standardly less useful than a Focus or Arm possesses. No two Sports are exactly alike in their capabilities.” He went into lecture mode, spending the rest of the lunch explaining the technical differences and giving examples. Tina was all ears. Usually she zoned out when he talked technical.

  Quite curious.

  (3)

  Tim sat down beside him on the weight bench and sighed. “I don’t know how you’ve managed to do it, Doc, but you’ve managed to piss off Ann, Connie, Sadie and the Focus at once. That takes work, you know. I even had to scotch one of Sadie’s poems she wanted to send out, referring to you as Doc Pain. What did you do, anyway?”

  Zielinski winced. “I don’t know if you were aware of it or not, but Lori has been leaning on me for weeks to attend orgy night,” he said, leaning over to rest his elbows on his knees. “I kept begging off and Lori kept leaning. She’d been trying to set me up with Ann.”

  “What did Ann think of this?” Tim asked.

  “Ann thought the Focus’s game was a crude bit of paybac
k for something Ann did. Neither of them would say what. I think her ire had something to do with who Ann partnered with on Friday nights, but that wasn’t a subject I was, ah, interested in discussing.”

  Tim carefully looked away. Tim was, well, a homosexual. Zielinski had quite a difficult time acting normal around him, all hypersensitive about saying the wrong thing. Zielinski wondered if Tim was having the same problems with him.

  “You don’t buy the post-human morality business?” Tim asked.

  “Post-human morality is just fine for Transforms,” Zielinski said. “I’m leery of allowing any of the normals to get involved. Having been the object of interest of an amorous Arm on several occasions, I know how chewed up a normal can get in such a relationship.”

  Tim frowned. “You’re interested in the Focus, though.”

  “A little.” Zielinski watched Amy walk on her hands across the practice area, immense pride in his heart. “Part of my interest is normal Focus allure, which I thought I was used to, but Lori got to me during the Monster juice assassination episode. The other is the intellectual allure of a relationship with someone close to my academic specialty, which is also nearly irresistible. In my time here, my improper interest has waned. I wasn’t obvious, was I?”

  “No, you weren’t. I’m sure the Focus picked up on it, though,” Tim said. “She picks up on everything.” Normally, Tim seemed closed off and distant, but he had been in an effusive mood for the past week. He had sold a screenplay to a small filmmaker, a heart-wrencher about a Hispanic woman torn between her family duties and the needs of a child she bore because of rape.

  “Anyway, the Focus came up with the bright idea I could take notes with Ann during a Friday night session,” Zielinski said. “Let nature take its course. No pressure on us at all. Ann wasn’t happy with the idea to start with, but I think the Focus may have done more than just talk to Ann, if you catch my drift.”