Trouble in Paradise

This is a scene from this chapter. Two of the three main characters are in conflict. One (Christina) is in love with the other (Gail).

“What do you mean you can’t agree with the plan?” Christina scowled at Gail, who she thought was being obtuse.

Gail stood up and backed away. “I…I don’t want anyone to die because of me.”

Christina stood too, and advanced towards Gail holding her hand out. “Look, I understand that. None of us wants anyone to die, but what choice do we have? We can’t let North Korea detonate a nuclear bomb and kill millions of people.”

Gail started to cry. 

“Oh for heaven’s sake!” Something Christina’s mother had said sprouted in her memory, “Once the words are out of your mouth, you can’t take them back young lady.” The memory wilted as Christina remembered that this had been promoted by her calling her mother a troll after getting grounded. She still didn’t understand why staying out past curfew, to party with a couple of boys from the football team, was a ground-able offense. She slinked further forward, fully extending her arm. Gail pushed it away.

“You don’t understand.” Gail’s voice hiccuped in-between sobs. 

They were in one of the Cavern’s extension caves. The Orb had called the caves ‘private areas’, and assured them that they were sound-proof. Christina hoped this was true, since what was going on here was not anything she wanted washed in public; even if the ‘public’ in question was only Nathan and The Orb. She could feel anger rising inside her. Action was what was needed. Doing things, making a strategy then executing it. This was part of her sporting life, and she did it automatically most of the time, always looking for a way to win. Sometimes she lost of course; it was part of the game, what made it exciting. The mantra ‘no pain, no gain’ was something she understood, it raised her up. Sacrifice was not optional, it was what you had to risk in order to achieve what you wanted. If a hundred people had to be sacrificed to save a million, that was a factor she could live with. She would have no problem looking at her reflection in the mirror, and knowing that she had done the right thing.

Christina retreated and sat back on one of the two beds that extruded from the cave’s wall. The bed’s surface was covered in what looked like tiny nails. She touched one. It felt hard and cold, like something you’d hammer into a wall to hang that crass family portrait on. Yet the first time she’d sat on the bed she’d squirmed and giggled. It was more comfortable than the bed she’d slept in when her parents had taken her to a fine, Italian villa: all cushions, velvet and ornate bathrooms. Now she wished she could transport herself and Gail there. Have some wine, some relaxing food, and perhaps a night-swim in the infinity pool. 

Gail was leaving.

“Wait,” Christina yelled. “Look I’m sorry. Please can we talk this over?”

Gail turned. 

Tears were running down each side of Gail’s nose. Christina fought the urge to walk over and wipe them. Gail walked back to stand in front of her. Even sitting down, Christina only had to incline her head slightly to look into Gail’s swimming eyes.

“You don’t want to talk,” Gail said accusingly. “You want to kill. You agreed to this plan without thinking about the people who’ll die because of it.”

“Might die, not will. We don’t know for certain�"“

Gail’s hand chopped down. “You know as well as I do what their chances are. Their government will have their heads, possibly literally. You can’t believe there’s a chance they’ll survive?”

Christina found nothing interesting to study on the wall opposite her, so moved to picking that unidentified black substance under thumbnail. 

“Well?” Gail moved her legs apart, and folded her arms. 

“They might get out with a jail sentence,” Christina mumbled.

“Riiiight, and that’s your justification for going along with this?”

Christina stood up. The lights in the cave brightened to eradicate the shadow she had begun to cast over Gail. Christina put both hands on the sides of Gail’s crossed arms. Her touch pinged a static charge, as if joy had flicked a switch in her heart. “Can’t we agree to disagree?”

Gail flinched back. “You uncaring b***h,” she shouted.

Christina’s mouth dropped open. Not in the ‘OMG’ sense, but in a way that left her soul free to vacate the premises should it so desire. Her passion rose like a shield to defend her. She slapped Gail.

The sound her palm made on Gail’s face was bitter, as if Christina’s skin disapproved of her reaction. The cave’s acoustics conspired against her, and the snap of impact sounded like a stick fractured over a bent knee. Christina stared at her hand, which hung in mid-air like a child caught stealing from a candy shop, hand half-way from a bulging pocket. She looked up and saw a sad, scarlet welt appear on the left side of Gail’s face. 

“I’m so sorry,” Christina said, her voice dripping with remorse. “I wish I could take it back, I do. Please believe me.” Gail stared at her. Christina saw in her friend’s eyes the disbelief she felt in herself. How could she hit the one person she wanted to protect? What had this situation done to her? 

Gail’s hand came up to her face at a funereal pace. She touched the impact zone tentatively with one finger, as if testing for an internal injury. “I thought you were someone different.” Gail paused as if the pain of contact was just reaching her. A fresh tear slid down her face. “I think I hate you right now.” 

Gail could not have cleaved Christina’s heart more readily than if she had wielded Excalibur and riven it. Those words oozed a poison designed to wither Christina’s feelings and fertilize another emotion, something anti-love. For Gail to imply that Christina was some two-faced chameleon, who might not care about anything, was more than she could bear. “Who do you think I am?” Christina forced each syllable out with effort.

Gail removed her finger from her face, revealing the hand-shaped welt now fully formed there. “I’m leaving now. If you want to be responsible for the death of those people, you go right ahead. I won’t be a part of it.” She rubbed her eyes, looked at the dampness on the tops of her hands then wiped them on her alabaster sweater.

Christina felt that she was losing something vital to her being. She could feel Gail slipping away, like a captain on the deck of a docked ship being pulled by a tsunami out to sea; futile to resist the inexorable tug of the ocean, watching the mooring ropes ping apart strand by strand. This was not part of the plan. She, Christina Jensen, was not bad and Gail was her special friend, her…her vital part… s**t what was she? Could she move into that dark, spectral house and flood light into it? Scare off the demons who laughed at her every time she dreamt about Gail. “Who’d want to be with a towering lummox like you?” they’d shout from behind shuttered windows. Christina would shake her fist at them, but that only made them chortle louder. It was time to storm that fortress.

Christina took a deep breath. “You can’t hate me, because I l-“

Gail punched her.

Probably she’d aimed at Christina’s nose but, like a boxer with bad timing, had connected embarrassingly too low. Christina felt the force as Gail’s petite knuckles connect squarely with her jaw through the insufficient protection of her skin. 

“Ow!” Christina yelped, and instinctively brought her hand up to rub the sore heat suddenly radiating out. She imagined her chin having a Gail’s fist-shaped dent in it. But that wasn’t the end of it. What Christina had thought was a sole retaliation turned out to be the beginning of a full assault. Gail kicked her in her left shin, which felt like a hot poker had been lanced on the front of her leg. 

“Stop, please,” Christina said, as she hopped on one leg. Gail pushed her. She timbered back onto the bed, which soaked up the impact with quiet industry. She looked up at Gail, who had her fists raised in what Christina recognized as a good replica of a boxing stance. 

“Stand up and fight,” Gail screamed. “I’ll take you down. I’m not scared of you.”

Christina held up her hand and scooched back towards the wall. The closest Gail would come to taking her down would be to jump on her back and then push against the ceiling. Christina had kilos, centimeters and a brown belt in judo on her friend. That was game, set, and match.

“Calm down.” Christina recognized a ‘seeing red’ scenario when she saw one. She’d had them herself at times during matches, but was always able to re-channel the anger into her game, it helped fuel her. She was a natural target for the opposition, so she anticipated it and dealt with it. The best way to get even was to win. But this she had not predicted: this contention, this disharmony. There was no winning solution here. Christina saw it in Gail’s face; the red mist turning into a molten rain. Gail’s eyebrows furrowed like a bridge collapsing in the middle, and the sides of her mouth stretched as if elastic were pulling them from each side. She’s going to really lose it now, Christina thought. Gail’s fists bunched, and her posture went rigid like a cat ready to pounce. 

Christina realized that drastic action was called for; a preemptive strike, a disarming tactic. There was only one thing for it. She moved fast, using muscles conditioned by training and reflexes that could not be bought. With one movement she was through Gail’s defenses, barging stiff arms with shoulders broad enough to carry the weight of feelings beguiled since she had first seen Gail. 

Christina grabbed both sides of Gail’s head; too roughly, but the situation did not call for deftness. This was an ‘all hands to battle stations’ emergency. Before she could think, since thinking before doing was not one of her strongpoints, she kissed Gail. It was a sloppy kiss as kisses went. She was off target, but she made sure to keep her tongue firmly out of the discussion. Still it felt joyous, like the first taste of some long-promised dainty whose sweetness surpassed expectations; a delicious sugar-rush of mother’s milk mixed with candy-floss. But, like the subsequent trip to the dentist, the pleasure was rinsed away as Gail pulled back, and Christina saw a mixture of shock and denial in her face.

“H…how dare you!” Gail’s hand wiped her lips, as if awful slime had been smeared there. 

Christina, who wanted nothing more than to repeat the exercise with more accurate contemplation, tried to smile. In her mind this came out as, look baby, I’ve wanted to do that for ages and now seemed like as good a time as any. This was done in a cool manner, like Bogart delivering a line. The affect on Gail, sadly, appeared to be more Terminator than Casablanca.

Christina said, “Errr…” She realized this did not sum up how she felt. Gail, she supposed, had been raised to be a ‘proper lady’ in the Labradoodle environs of Boston’s suburbs. Whereas Christina, whose parents really had given her too much free reign (although to be fair she hadn’t given them much choice), was quite receptive to feelings that varied from the norm. She wasn’t normal, not physically, not outwardly. So it seemed quite natural to her that she might not conform inside either. She had reconciled this after Gail Knitter had strayed into her heart. Perhaps this wasn’t the time to get into this after all. “Sorry, it just sort of slipped out,” she said, as if she’d burped at a dinner party. 

Gail blushed, which meant that the undamaged side of her face now matched its twin. Then she turned and stormed out of the cave.

It felt like the air, in sympathy with Gail, had decided to leave a vacuum for Christina to contemplate. She stared at the spot Gail had vacated, caught between action and inaction like a metro passenger eyeing a bank note lying tantalizingly beyond long-open doors. She moved forward, stopped, started again, then finally stopped. She had nothing to say, nothing to defend herself with. This was an argument she could not win. 

Damn cats, she thought, why can’t they stay in their bags?