The Underground (11 page)

Even so, she couldn’t focus on the briefing. There was something about her conversation with Shayla that disturbed her.

“He’s very dear to me. Please, can you help?”

Those words echoed in her head, and she vowed to find out about this man who had softened her daughter’s heart.

——–

As Shayla hung up the phone, she cried harder, knowing that Nathaniel really was missing.

She looked at her heart-broken eyes in the mirror. Her mother considered crying weak. “Big girls do not cry.” That’s what her mother said when Shayla was little, no matter the reason.
 

Her father would hug Shayla. “It’s okay, let it all out,” he would whisper, as long as the Queen wasn’t around.

Shayla regained her composure and called the office.
 

“I’m going to Washington for business,” she said to the Cambridge Public Works facilities coordinator, with the authoritative voice she inherited from her mother. As much as Shayla hated being on the receiving end of this tone, she was grateful to have that voice in her toolkit to mask any lack of confidence.
 

“Did I miss a meeting on the schedule?” the office manager nervously asked.

“It just came up. I’ll let you know as soon as I have my return date. Damn, just a second, somebody is calling in. Actually, I’m going to take it,” she said, grateful for the interrupting call so she could avoid further questions. Maybe it was Nathaniel. She hoped for this with each phone call.

She clicked the phone and looked at the number. A rumble of anger and nervousness went through her body. Janice sure was a piece of work. The first drunken rambling phone call had been pretty nervy. “I know you have him. Where is he?” she had slurred.

That’s what I’d like to know myself, Shayla thought, as she hurriedly got off the phone last time.

Shayla pressed the Ignore button on her phone, knowing that she needed to take care of that. It might be time to enlist the help of her mother’s head of security since Janice was becoming a nuisance. But the thought of bringing her mother into this would open up a rat’s nest. Shayla didn’t feel like explaining her circumstances to her mother, not yet anyway.
 

——–

“I have strict orders to bring you to your mother as soon as you arrive,” Gerald said as he greeted Shayla, giving her a fatherly hug, just as his cell phone rang.
 

 
“Your majesty?” Gerald said, but Shayla mouthed “no” to him as she moved her head back and forth.

“Yes, she has arrived, but isn’t available in the moment,” he said like the perfect butler. He had always been a liaison between Shayla and the Queen and Shayla couldn’t imagine what she would do without him.

 
“Yes, your majesty,” he said several times before wrapping up the call.

“Whew!” Shayla said. Gerald nodded and she knew he understood that she wasn’t quite ready to see her, “But it will be nice to be home for a few days.”

“A few days?
 
The Queen inferred you’d be coming to stay,” he said, surprised, his eyebrows pressing together.

“Well, you know my mother. She thinks all words from her mouth are the law. It may be true in most ways, but not in terms of controlling my whereabouts,” Shayla said feeling angry at her mother’s continued attempts at manipulating her. “I really am here for just a few days,” Shayla said.

“You’re not leaving your job?” he asked with surprise.

“No, did she say that? Never mind, I don’t want to hear it,” Shayla said, rolling her eyes.

“Well, whenever you are here, short or long, it’s a treat,” he said, smiling. He was her family and she loved being around him.

As he escorted her down the grandiose corridors that Shayla still found breathtaking, various staff members greeted Shayla looking pleased and surprised. As Shayla looked up at the twelve-foot tall ceilings with the Victorian-era
 
moldings that were pristinely maintained, she couldn’t help but think about all the men who worked at the Cambridge Public Works and would never even see such beauty as their view of the world mostly consisted of the rat-infested underground world below the city streets.

“How is my mother doing anyway?”

“Oh, she’s fine, perhaps a little more stressed than usual. She is always trying to keep a lid on her policies, but lately she seems a little more unnerved by the situation than usual.”

“What situation?”

“I’m not certain, exactly, but there is always a small vocal group protesting, but she seems more worried lately. She has been putting together a state of the nation speech that she will deliver live on the Webavision.”

“Do you think she should be worried?” Shayla said, stopping in her tracks and turning to face him. He wasn’t an easy read, but he had always been honest and level-headed, which marveled Shayla, especially considering he was a Spot.

“There is always talk, Shayla. I don’t want you to worry and am sure the Queen wouldn’t want that. I shouldn’t have said anything. You know I only hear dribs and drabs so please don’t take my word as anything more than secondhand news.”

“Have you heard anything about…oh, forget it,” Shayla said.

“What is it?”

“It can wait,” she said. Shayla didn’t have the energy to bring up Nathaniel. She could barely keep her tears at bay. It’s not that Gerald hadn’t seen her cry a million times. He had brushed off all the childhood bumps and bruises that her mother scoffed at, particularly once her father died and her mother’s involvement in child rearing fell entirely off a cliff. Since Gerald couldn’t become a father in the usual way and she lost her father at a tender age, it worked out well.

“I’m going to do a little work from my suite,” she said as she walked toward her room.
 

“Let me know if you need anything.”

“Just one more hug,” she said, smiling.

“Gladly,” he said, leaning into her. “It’s great to have you home,” he said.

She couldn’t agree more, but didn’t say so as she knew the words would have crumbled to tears and she didn’t feel like bawling in the hallway with elephant-eared servants swishing by.

Later, there would be another opportunity to get this secret off her chest to him.

Shayla punched the code to her suite and slipped inside. The room had been preserved in the palatial childhood pink décor she had insisted on as a child.

The servants had drawn the curtains open so the afternoon sunlight illuminated the frilly but faded pink canopy bed. She plopped down on the mattress and looked out over the capital city, which made her smile, but her mind kept circling back to Nathaniel.

She almost called her mother to ask about him, but stopped herself. Her mother detested weakness and desperation.

Somehow, she would wait the four plus hours until dinnertime to find out.

Chapter 14

“Keep your Laws off my Body. Equal Rights and Justice for all Men.

Keep your Laws off my Body. Equal Rights and Justice for all Men….”

Saying it ten times in a row each morning in unison with an auditorium of Grounders gave Nathaniel a sense of camaraderie, despite the fact that they were all forbidden from befriending one another.

“Amen.”

Just as their voices spoke together, they ceased with crisp precision and each man immediately downloaded his daily schedule to his electronic tablet. Nathaniel pressed the button and nervously waited, as he did each morning.

Nathaniel’s Daily Schedule

7:30 to 9 a.m: Chores – Bathroom Cleaning

He had already taken – and mastered - “Bathroom Cleaning, From Toilet Base to Countertop,” so he was confident he could do an excellent job of using the right cleaner and tools for the job. If he didn’t meet the Underground’s high standards, the inspector would make him do it over.

9:15 a.m. The Reality of Women, Part 2: Decoding a Woman’s Mood

This pragmatic seminar offers tools to manage her moods. Learn how to temper her after she has had a long day at the office. What if she has bad PMS? What if she is being irrational at some other time of the month? This course teaches what to do and what
not
to do.

Nathaniel thought of living with Janice as the ultimate primer for this course. Surely he would pass quickly. Still, there was always more to learn, especially when it came to the subject of women and moods.

11:30 a.m. Intermediate Romance

You’ve passed ‘Beginning Romance’ so you already know the basics: How to make a woman feel special and interesting whether she talks about hair styles, politics, fashion or advances in medicine. This course takes it up a notch: Know when to draw her a bubble bath vs. when to have a cocktail prepared. Learn the subtleties of asking her for something – from money to a night out with your male friends. These skills are key to the Underground’s mission of luring and keeping a woman.

Nathaniel was concerned about mastering the nuances of understanding a woman’s mood. Still, he had already mastered a lot of other foreign subjects: …“Vegan cooking,” “How to Dress – All Occasions,” “Gift Buying and Wrapping.” He breezed through “Quickie Meals and Gourmet extravaganzas: How to Pull Together a Party in 20 minutes or Less.” After living with Janice, Nathaniel considered himself an expert in this area and could probably teach something to the Underground’s Master Instructor.

He was most proud of graduating from the seminar about “Understanding Women’s Emotions.” That was a killer. He didn’t feel he understood women, but learned the appropriate behavior modification techniques. “It doesn’t matter if you ever understand why, but knowing what you must do is what’s important,” his Master Instructor said. That made so much sense and freed his mind.

Somehow, he would muddle through these latest classes, he thought, as he continued to read the schedule.

1:15 p.m. Lunch

2 p.m. Study

3:15 p.m. Gym and Shower

5:30 p.m.
 
“Into the bedroom… Sex to Please Women: Learn the Ins and Outs of Satisfying Every Woman’s Desires
 

His palms were sweaty at the thought of actually being observed and graded for his sexual efforts. He knew this day was coming, but still…He had the whole day, until late afternoon, to fret about it. What would they grade on? What if he couldn’t perform? Did they expect men to perform oral sex?
 

“Did you take…” he started to instinctively ask the guy next to him, but stopped himself mid-sentence. He kept forgetting the Underground’s rule of no communication with Grounders except in a classroom environment.

Nathaniel quickly swallowed his words and turned away from the guy, but not before noticing that he was clearly recovering from some kind of surgery. The purple/yellowish swelling below the man’s eyes, coupled with a white bandaging and stitches at the base of his nose told him that, at the very least, this man had a nose job.
 
It looked painful.

“Line up,” one of the guards said in the trademark drill-sergeant voice they all had, regardless of what they looked like.

Nathaniel, along with the other Grounders, were silently escorted through the Underground corridors and dropped at their respective assignments, one by one as usual.

“Do I have to clean this whole thing myself?” Nathaniel asked the instructor who motioned for Nathaniel to go in the bathroom. There were 25 stalls and an equal bank of sinks.

The instructor did not acknowledge Nathaniel’s question. He turned on his heels and left. That’s your answer, Nathaniel, he thought.

As Nathaniel picked up the buckets of cleaning supplies, he focused on mixing the floor cleaning solution, precisely as he was taught in class. He examined the tiny floor tiles and assessed the best mop for the job. Much like in the class he had graduated from, the cleaning supply closet held many choices.

As he began to move the mop across the endless floor, thoughts of Shayla welled up. How he missed her raw honesty, her compassion for men, and feeling her silky body moving beneath his in rhythmic sync. His stomach knotted as he wondered if he would ever see her again.

He’d been gone nearly three months and he wouldn’t be surprised if she was dating someone else by now. The thought of her kissing another man sickened him and he suddenly realized he had stopped cleaning and was sitting on the floor. He got back on his feet quickly and looked at the job in front of him – the floor, the sinks, and all those toilets.

He vigorously began to clean the floor, needing to banish Shayla from his mind. He knew he had no right to her, but couldn’t help how he felt.

“Keep your Laws off my Body. Equal Rights and Justice for all Men.

Keep your Laws off my Body. Equal Rights and Justice for all Men….”

He said it aloud over and over, and it soothed him like a drug.

——–
 

“Darling!” the Queen said, offering a statesman kiss to Shayla.

“You’re all dressed up,” Shayla said to her mother who was sporting her trademark silk sari.

“I had meetings all day and haven’t had a chance to change, but let me look at you!” the Queen said giving her daughter a once-over. The Queen thought Shayla looked fine, but her manner of dress was boring business suits. How she wished her daughter would take a little fashion advice from her, but she knew that wasn’t going to happen. Of course what she
really
wanted was to formally groom her daughter to not only dress a little more like the Queen, but to see her duty and embrace her future role as the Queen. It was inevitable, so why fight it?