In this Night We Own (The Commander Book 6) (28 page)

“I’ll tell you, but first,” Gail paused, and caught one of her Transform’s eyes as she came out of the church office.  “Hey, Melanie?  Do you think you could rustle up a snack for us?”

“Sure, Gail,” Melanie said, and walked off with a smile.  Melanie had mixed feelings about Gail, but she still wanted to do Gail favors.

Gail had noticed something strange over the last month: not only did her people want to do her favors, but they also wanted to do favors for any of the visiting Focuses.  Grace Johnson, a black woman and another Detroit Focus, had visited last week, as Gail’s household had been moving into the Church.  Her people, not the most liberal enlightened white folks in Michigan, had treated Focus Johnson like royalty.

“And this is Van,” Gail said.  Van, pacing up and down the hall with his dissertation in his right hand and red pen in his left, flickered his eyes at Beth, then back at Gail, and grunted a perfunctory ‘hello’ that didn’t last a second before his eyes flashed back to his work.  “He’s oblivious to the world, editing while he’s pacing.  PhD dissertation.”

“Ouch.”  Beth didn’t appear to be impressed.  Gail didn’t blame her; with his dissertation defense coming up soon, Van couldn’t afford much in the way of social niceties.

Gail led Beth and her entourage down into the basement, where the meeting rooms were located, chattering all the way.  “Twenty years ago, St. Luke’s was a thriving church – bustling, busy, a force in the community and all that,” Gail said.  “Unfortunately, the community’s changed, and the people who used to live here all moved out to the suburbs.  Now, it’s a black neighborhood, and they don’t go to this church.  According to what Matt found out, service attendance was down to no more than twenty people, all over seventy.  The whole church was dying.  This beautiful old building, but no people.”  A beautiful old building with a vandalism problem, as well.

Gail directed Beth to a meeting room.  The room once held old pews and Sunday school chalkboards on wheels.  The household had already moved a few of the old pews out, but the place was still packed.  Didn’t matter.  The household needed a meeting room.  Her people had dragged several tables into the room.  The pews they used as impromptu chairs.

“More, more,” Beth said, as she sat in a pew across from Gail.

“Late last summer, the old pastor, some poor guy barely younger than his parishioners, had a heart attack.  He didn’t die, but he had to retire from the ministry.  Well, Matt Narbanor – you’ve met him, haven’t you?”  Beth nodded.  “Matt Narbanor had been heating up the phone lines with his Bishop, talking about the need for a ministry to the Transforms.  The Bishop dropped a hint about St. Luke’s and we went to have a look.  We fell in love with the place on first sight, and Vic Crawford, one of my bodyguards,” Gail said, still fighting off the urge to blush when she said the word ‘bodyguard’, “had the bright idea that we might be able to move the entire household into the Church.  At least for a while.”

“See how good things can seemingly come up out of nowhere!  I told you things would work out,” Beth said, flashing her breezy smile.

Gail sighed.  “Yeah, but making the idea real took a lot of work.  I swear the wheels of bureaucracy have a flat tire.  But anyway, the Bishop gave Matt a posting as senior pastor at St. Luke’s, with a commission to minister to those affected by Transform Sickness.  We were real quiet about our idea of moving the household in, because we didn’t want to mess anything up.  So anyway, right after the posting came through, Matt went to visit the Bishop, and told him about how bad things were for our household.

“The Bishop didn’t offer the church, or any help at all, but he did agree to come visit us at the Ebener’s place.  When he saw the household, with the misery and the mud and the shivering kids, he offered us the use of St. Luke’s.  We only have until spring, and we promised to fix the place up while we’re here in lieu of rent.  So here we are.  This place is the next best thing to heaven.”

“So,” Beth said, “what sort of ministry is Reverend Narbanor going to set up, anyway?  Just for Transforms?”

“No, no.  Anyone’s welcome to come.  It’ll be Methodist, of course, but Matt is planning to be real flexible.  Turns out Methodism has a lot of flexibility.  Matt spent a bunch of time talking to his Bishop about the problem, but he thinks he can stretch the forms and rituals a bunch.  He’s been talking to our first attendees, and everyone wants the forms and rituals of the church they knew.  It’s a problem, but Matt is convinced he can figure out something acceptable.”

Gail smiled at Matt’s commentaries on the subject.  “Religion is a strong thing,” he had said, “You don’t help it by taking things out.”  Then he muttered harsh things about Unitarians under his breath, which Gail didn’t quite follow.  He did say he would be willing to add things from other denominations to his services, though.

“Think there’d be any problem with some of my people attending?”

“Problem?  I was just wondering how many of your people we could drag in here,” Gail said.

“Oh, lots and lots,” Beth said, with a twinkle in her eye.  “So, how are you coming on setting the place up for living?  It took us several households before we figured out the difference between what’s a necessity and what’s a luxury.”  Melanie took that moment to come in and start laying out a snack, mostly home-baked goods, including some fresh black bread from a recipe passed down in Phyllis Zarzemski’s family (the Kieshnicks) for generations.  Gail’s household was still poor, but now, with St. Luke’s institutional kitchen available, the food was plentiful.

“I don’t know if we’re ever going to fill this place up for services – the sanctuary can seat nearly six hundred.  Huge!  Plus, St. Luke’s has all these extra rooms for meetings and schools; did I tell you they ran a parochial school here back before World War II? Anyway, that gives us lots of places to set up with beds and cots and partitions for sleeping.  We’re going to hold three of the rooms out for play rooms for the kids during the week and Sunday School on Sundays.  Kurt thinks we can set up the parlor as a giant family room during the week.”  Gail cut herself a slice of fresh bread, slathered on the butter, and ate.  The smell of fresh baked bread constantly filled the basement of St. Luke’s these days.  The smell made Gail hungry every morning and afternoon.  She had worried she would get fat from all the food she ate, but once her weight got back to what she thought of as normal she had stopped gaining weight.  She did have to go thrift store shopping again for clothes, though.  Her jeans didn’t fit around her rear end and her breasts bulged out her bras.  Embarrassing.

“I’m going to get one room in the church office and Matt’s going to take the other, and Anita’s going to act as church secretary,” Gail said.  “Best of all, ‘round the corner down the hall is this absolutely huge Fellowship Hall, with a fantastic institutional kitchen where we can make our own food, like this fresh bread.  Plus, there’s the manse next door – it’s a real house for the minister and his family.”

Unfortunately, they only had one shower.  The shower was over in the manse and demand was so high that showers were limited to no more than three minutes if you took the shower between 6:00 and 7:30 A.M.  There was a sign-up sheet and Helen Grimm policed the hall with a stopwatch.  You showed up naked with your towel and left dripping, and if you wanted to wash your hair, you used the sink.  Heaven help you if you ran over your time, because Helen would shut off the hot water.  Every morning, at least three people left the shower with a leap as the shock of ice cold water hit them.  The poor people at the bottom of the sign-up sheet had it worst because the hot water always ran out anyway.  Gail smiled to think about the shower situation.  Not being a fool, and because she had the flexibility, being unemployed after the move, she took her own shower around noon.

“Aside from a few minor problems, I think we’ve really got it going,” Gail said.

“Great!”

“So,” Gail said, and leaned forward, lowering her voice: “I want the scoop on the dirty Focus politics.  What was all this hoo-rah last month?”

“Nope!” Beth said, and grinned.  “I’m not going to drag you into any more problems than you already have.  We can save the bitch patrol Focus politics for another year.  They play for keeps and you don’t want to know.”  Gail turned away and winced.  There were always more secrets to dig up and she was itching to explore them.  She would have to find out the mysteries of Focus politics some other way.  Beth paused, and looked Gail clean in the eye when Gail turned back.  “You need to think about making up with Focus Adkins, though.  She can really help you.”

“Like hell,” Gail said.  If she ever met Focus Adkins again, it would be one time too many.

“No, really.  She’s got some of the most amazing local political contacts.  You need something fixed with city hall, Focus Adkins can often get things fixed for you.”

Okay.  Beth had Gail’s attention.  “She’s the senior Focus in the area, right?” Gail said.  According to their admittedly spotty research.  Maybe Adkins would be willing to spill something about Focus politics.  Beth nodded.  “She does more than just sneer at other Focuses?”

“Oh, yes.”  Hesitant.  “I’m not going to say she’s perfect; she
is
a real bitch sometimes.  She’s just a useful bitch.”

“I’ll think about it,” Gail said.  Grudgingly.

“Great!”

They ate bread in silence for a few minutes.  Gail pulled her nerve together.  “Ah, Beth, I’ve got a small problem I don’t know how to deal with,” Gail said, her voice almost a whisper.

“Tell me.”

“It’s, well, um,” Gail said.  Blushed.  “About sex.”

Beth snorted.  “You and every other Focus.  Us Focuses are all a bunch of frigid ice queens, remember?”

“But what do I do?  I don’t want to lose Van.”

“Huh?”

“He’s, um, my boyfriend.”

“Van’s your boyfriend?  How long?” Beth said, blushing.  Like most, she had written Van off at first glance.

“Three years.”  Gail had met Van at a political get-together during the ’66 midterm campaign.  He stood out in the anti-war crowd as, well, different.  He thought Vietnam was wrong not because it was a war, but because it was the wrong war.  Because America had stepped into a pre-existing struggle between two sets of oppressive thugs, still hashing out the problems left behind after the fall of the old French colonialist regime.  As a historian, he had nothing good to say about colonialism.  Or communism.  Or unfettered free-market capitalism.  Gail had attached herself to him immediately, despite his overly intellectual demeanor and his sensitivities.  He had been a tremendous help to her as a Focus, acting as her first head researcher, her sounding board and her emotional anchor.  Only he had slipped her extra food before Beth enlightened her about how much extra food a Focus needed.  “As a normal I was, um, flat chested; Van and I were snidely called the ‘pencil twins’, the tall one and the short one.”  Gail wasn’t short for a woman, but next to Van…

Beth winced.  “Gail, I don’t know if I want to congratulate you or cry.  Focuses don’t do well in intimate relationships.”

“Yah, I know,” Gail said.  “But I don’t know what I’d do without him.  Besides, some Focuses have spouses, at least according to what I’ve read.”

“Some.  Not many.”  Beth turned away.  “I suspect nearly all of them are marriages of convenience only.  One that I know of – God!”

“What?”

“No names.  Don’t even think about names.  The Focus married the man for money, with the idea that she could satisfy him with a ready-made harem of unattached Transform women.  What I’ve heard is the Focus turns him on with her charisma, then pumps her poor Transform woman until she’s, well, ready, and then sits and watches while they, you know.”

“Um, right.”  Gail shuddered.  She already had a little of the Focus charisma stuff the authorities said would take a couple of years to show up, and she wanted more.  “I’m not staying with Van for the good of the household.  I’m doing it because of, well, love.”  Gail winced at her own comment.  Her words sounded sappy, even to her.  They didn’t come close to expressing the depths of her feelings.  He was the one she confided in the most, and the only one whose judgment she trusted.

“Well, there’s ways,” Beth said, in a whisper.  “It takes work, though.”

“Ways of what?”

“You know, so you can get a little bit in the mood.  At least enough so you can keep from going round the bend with a screaming fit if some horny guy touches you.”

Gail almost dropped her bowl of homemade cottage cheese as the blood drained from her face.  “It’s going to get that bad?”

“What?” Beth said.  “It’s not already that bad?”

The light dawned and Gail blushed from head to toe, totally mortified.  When Beth described a Focus’s frigidity, what else could she be talking from except personal experience?  With horror, Gail realized Beth had been describing her own reaction to men.  “Sorry,” Gail said.  “I’m really sorry.” Small tears gathered at the corners of her eyes.  “I shouldn’t have brought this up.”

“Look, don’t worry about it,” Beth said.  Firm, but not angry.  “I’ve had plenty of years to get used to it.  So,” Beth said, her happy face returning instantly.  “Tell me how you react in bed.”

The flush of a moment ago wouldn’t go away, but talking was fun, too.  Gail hadn’t talked girl talk in ages.  “Cuddling is fun.  I get a little interested, but rarely enough to get, well, juicy.  I fake my orgasms.”