Fic: To Live and Die in Los Angeles (5/8)
“To Live and Die in Los Angeles”
Author: DJ_the_Writer
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Cursing, Drugs, PTSD, off-screen sex
Pairings: Charles/OFC
Beta: wikdsushi
Characters: Charles, Pickles, OCs
Summary: Charles attempts to recover from his ordeal during a legal tussle in LA.
[ Start back at the beginning]
fic:-snackers
Chapter 5
Charles Ofdensen was happy to be on a plane, putting as much distance as possible between him and LA, as fast as possible. He was happy to be away from the sun, the smog, and the heat, even if the recycled air of the jet wasn’t exactly pleasant. Not a lot could ruin his cheerful mood, not even ordering two hoodies to hose down the sleeping groupies who refused to leave, then making them sign waivers, then sending them out on their asses in front of one of the best hotels in LA. Pickles was his usual mid-morning cranky self, muttering incoherently even before he started drinking again, and that passed right over Charles’s head. Frankly, the only thing annoying him was that he had to work so hard to hide it. Angela was lucky. She had a hood, and she had an easier time acting like a normal business professional who was shadowing her extremely professional boss whom she definitely had not had sex with a few hours before.
In the back of his mind, part of him was screaming that it was bad. It was bad to get involved with coworkers, worse with people under you, and especially with glorified secretaries. Somehow, he imagined it would be more fitting if he were cheating on his wife, and Angela were the sort of person you would cheat on your wife with, but he wasn’t married and that wasn’t the case. Sleeping around in the office - bad, bad, bad. Putting aside the whole issue of executive dominance and messing with sexual boundaries, it wreaked havoc even with consenting equals, Crystal Mountain being a shining example of that. Roy Cornickelson had the decency to at least cheat on his wife with someone outside the office, which was probably why he hadn’t been caught (to Charles’s knowledge anyway). But just about every level beneath the CEO was a mess of drugs, sex, and booze. Charles wrote it off as a music industry thing - and would as long as the label money rolled in, which it did, down to the last penny if he had anything to say about it.
What he was sure of, not from personal experience but from his experiences in business culture, was that it almost always ended badly. That was why Facebones was so unnecessarily aggressive in the sexual harassment video about employee confraternity, even when he knew damn well the Gears were trapped in a crazy demonic funhouse in the sky with unlimited booze and they would fuck like rabbits. He just didn’t want to see the results, unless the babies were particularly cute.
On the other hand, the majority of his brain shouted back, Angela was probably going to die. As depressing as the thought was, it was a little reassuring, too. You couldn’t fly around in a metal jet with silver wingtips and blood red interiors without having some dark humor in you. They were both going to die, almost definitely sooner rather than later. He wondered if she’d ever noticed that for someone who planned excessively ahead, he had nothing on his calendar past 2015. No long-term investments paying off, no Roth IRA, no paying into social security, no nothing. And he thought that was an optimistic date, too.
He decided not to bring it up.
It was all a bad idea he could not talk himself out of. The restrained businessman on the outside wasn’t getting much play on the inside. That was, if she was interested in continuing ... whatever they had. That was the impression he got, but he didn’t work up the courage that morning to ask her directly.
He could face down the United Nations, but not his assistant?
Charles reminded himself that his last committed relationship was almost ten years ago, and came with the extremely ulterior motive of getting closer to Roy. It ended with her setting his wardrobe on fire while on PCP, and while momentarily irritating, it gave him a good excuse to duck out of something he didn’t want in the first place. Before that, there was another dry spell. He hadn’t truly opened up to anyone since Maria. Fuck, his therapist would want to talk about that, and it was so much harder to redirect the conversation when it wasn’t over the phone. He was almost tempted to say to Angela, Confirm my appointment with Dr. Bradley; I need to talk about you for forty-five overly-expensive minutes that will be billed as an hour.
She would probably laugh. G-d, she had such a beautiful laugh. Man, either she was a goddess or he just needed to get laid much more often.
Most of this ruminating took place over a rather slowly-played game of Minesweeper on his computer. Pickles was asleep in his seat, being able to sleep in just about any position (including, quite literally, in a gutter). Charles texted Nathan about a band meeting, and got no reply. Bad sign.
A full eight hours later, Nathan Explosion did not disappoint.
Drunk, confused by the time change, and eager to get drunker, Pickles practically ran to find his bandmates, who were trying to act casual in the living room and doing a bad job of it. They were not actors; the awfulness of Blood Ocean could not entirely be blamed on the script. And they did not look happy to see Charles standing there.
“Nathan.”
“Uh, yeah? Oh, hey, you’re back. You were gone, right?”
“Nathan,” he repeated, “why is Snackers not in her enclosure?”
Because she wasn’t. The adult alligator was on the carpet near Nathan’s feet, either sleeping or waiting to strike. With her, it was hard to tell. She was also wearing a torn Hawaiian shirt - she went through them quickly - that was completely covered in non-reptile blood.
Charles took an unintentional step back.
“She’s sleeping,” Nathan said. “Besides, she’s all fed. She doesn’t attack people when she’s not hungry.”
“Dood, I thaght we had like, a thing. Aboot her in the hat tub.”
“She ams nots in the hot tub,” Skwissgar said, half-submerged himself with his unplugged guitar and the rest of the band. “Alsos, you wants to be the ones to wakes her?”
“Look, it’s late, and I’m going to find out what happened one way or another, so you might as well just tell me,” Charles said. Whatever it was, it definitely involved dead employees. That part he didn’t mind so much; he just didn’t like it when they covered it up. Or directly caused it. Indirectly was OK.
He started tapping his foot, but not very hard, taking that comment about waking a sleeping alligator who already had tasted his flesh once before to heart.
“Uhhh ... so I might have given her a wig.”
“You gave your alligator, a reptile, a wig. Of hair.”
“Yeah, a black one. Because, you know, she’s Snackers Explosion. And ... she ate it.”
“Shahck of da month,” Pickles said, standing a significant distance behind Charles.
“And she choked. Sorta. We think. So we got some guys in here, and they tried to open her jaws, and uh, she really likes brains it turns out. Which I guess if she becomes a zombie is ... good.”
“You’re saying she bit the head off one of your employees. That’s what you’re saying.”
Nathan looked down at his beer. “When you put it that way, it sounds really bad.”
“And what is she doing here?”
“They had to take her out to deal with the choking thing, and then she kinda went her own way, and the hoodies were all fucking scared, and she came in here and went to sleep. Murderface read that it takes alligators a really long time to digest so it’s fine and they can fish that guy out of her little pool and change all the water because there’s so much blood in it.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t snakes?”
“Oh right!” Murderface piped up. “It wasch schnakes! They take forever to eat anything.”
Charles sighed. He was going to have to have a long chat with the Snackers team - when they were done grieving. And it would take Angela a while to track down who exactly ran away from the scary alligator and left the killer alone with Dethklok. He spoke into his wrist watch. “Get some guys in here to wrangle AK-75.” Because he sure as hell wasn’t going near that thing.
“Soes Pickle, yous done suing your old bands?” Toki said.
“Agh, guys! For the love of Gad, how many times do I have to say this? I’m suing Rikki Kixx! Not Snakes ‘n’ Barrels!”
Now Nathan was just baiting him. “But I thought he was their frontman. So that’s suing the frontman of the band. Suing ... the band.”
“He’s not their feckin’ frontman!”
Charles silently excused himself with a few more steps back as Pickles raged on, waiting for the alligator wranglers to show up and take Snackers away before he disappeared. They’d forgotten about him already, which was fine. Anything normal was fine with him.
He could handle normal.
********************************************
Over the next few days, Charles saw nothing of the band. This was not extraordinary. They avoided him when they knew he would press them to record, and he didn’t call any meetings. After such a long trip, he returned to Mordhaus and spent the first few days in his office, doing paperwork and answering emails and not a whole lot else. Paperwork was ordinary, boring, and in its own way, soothing. Being back at his desk, handling the business, was his way to unwind as long as the hours didn’t get crazy. He drank imported Israeli coffee and worked on spreadsheets while whatever havoc the boys created was contained. It would all be just perfect if he didn’t have something else constantly on his mind.
Charles prided himself on being creative. He didn’t seem that way, and his wardrobe didn’t send good messages in that regard, but he had his moments. And he had to find moments, because just calling Angela into his office on some other premise seemed tacky and inappropriate. So he called a meeting of the legal team in one of the employee conference rooms to discuss the upcoming arbitration in LA, then dismissed everyone but Angela, which itself wasn’t abnormal. At least until he disabled the cameras from his laptop’s controls.
“Do you want to get dinner?”
“Sure.” They’d spoken, of course, on a business level, but almost entirely in front of other people. It took her a moment to think it out. “Do you mean we should get dinner?” Employees didn’t like to eat in front of him, as it meant taking their hoods off at least halfway, and they were all superstitious about it for some inane reason. He didn’t bother to correct them in their belief that he thought they had no faces, or cared what they looked like, because somehow it would only encourage it.
“Yes ... that’s what I mean. The menu is anything, but to be honest, Jean-Pierre’s not that good with Indian food. We usually order out for it.”
The hood started blankly back at him. No fair. “Is this a date?”
“... Kind of? I think this is more like me ineptly making a pass at you.”
“I’m going to go with date, and yes, I am very hungry and do not want Indian food,” she said.
The ordered, and actually did some work before the food arrived. Jean-Pierre delivered it himself, perhaps because Charles was one of the few people he served who could look him in the eye and not cringe a little bit. When he was gone, Angela removed her hood. “Thank you. I have never actually eaten Jean-Pierre’s food.”
“You have. He does some bulk stuff for employees. The boys don’t keep him that busy. They love junk food,” he said. “And he will inhibit your ability to eat food anywhere else and stand it.”
“Maybe if you fed your assistants better, more people would apply for the position,” she said.
“I don’t need more people for the position,” was his reply. When she glanced up from her plate, he just gave her a grin. “Have we made the rumor mill?”
“It’s only been two days.”
“Two days? You guys are terrible at this.”
Angela looked at him with great skepticism. “And what experience do you have with office politics where everyone doesn’t answer to you?”
“Summer internships and one year in estate planning. There was nothing to do in that firm but gossip about people,” he said, correcting himself quickly. “Not that I was a huge, ah, gossip.”
“My only experience with those sorts of law firms was investigating them, which was still not very interesting.”
“Well, that’s how you make money in estate planning. You steal from your clients.”
“Did you?”
“I wasn’t there long enough to have clients,” was his answer. It was true.
“Would you have?”
He thought about it. “It would have depended on the percentages.”
She laughed so hard she had to cover her mouth. “That’s such a ... you answer.”
“It would have! Everything is about percentages. And by now I could be a big shot and you could be investigating me.”
“Only if you murdered a partner.”
“I didn’t care for the other new guy. So now we could be rich partners and I could be sick of him and he could be found in a garbage bin and then we would meet.”
“It would involve less music.”
“But also less death, probably. It would just be that one guy. Oh, before I forget - we’re recycling 293’s number. Remind me at some point.”
“Because he was eaten by an alligator? That doesn’t seem fair.”
“He doesn’t want it out of the system. His supervisor told me. And he put it in his paperwork so we’ll honor it. But don’t write it down.”
“Because this isn’t business? We’re talking about 293’s will for dinner?”
“...Yes. Just remember it.”
“Sometimes I think you like asking the impossible of us.”
He raised an eyebrow and said, “I always get it.”
The dinner was followed by the shedding of clothing as soon as they were in his apartment and the door was shut. He had warned himself prior to it that it didn’t have to end that way, but he certainly wasn’t going to object. Over the past two days, Charles had thought a lot about boundaries and expectations and commitments, all of which was completely lost to him when Angela so much as touched him.
She was not the first person he’d had sex with at Mordhaus - ecstasy was a hell of a drug - but the first to be in his bed. When he first moved in, he had thought about getting a twin to save space. He was small; he didn’t need a lot of room to stretch out. Angela was smaller, though not tiny, but a twin would have been demanding. He thought about this far less during than after, when neither of them was inclined to either move or sleep.
She seemed to uncannily read this mind. “Am I the first person to be in here?”
“Technically, the maid counts.”
“I’ll take that as a yes. Would you be offended if I said it looks like you haven’t moved in yet?”
He thought it was rather tastefully Spartan. “I confess that since Mordhaus was constructed, I have given almost none of my time to bedroom decoration. And that my previous apartment might have looked this way, too. Some people would say I’m not a very interesting person.”
“You are not a very interesting bedroom decorator. But in all other areas, I have to disagree. Not everyone turns their office into a hunting lodge.”
“Do you like it?”
“It’s strange,” she said, “because I know you don’t hunt animals.”
That was very true. He wondered how she knew that, but Nathan had a habit of busting into the office in an orange jacket and demanding that a hunting trip be organized, and on occasion inviting him. The man invited his dentist, for G-d’s sake. But Charles always had an excuse to say no.
Angela seemed to know when to stop asking questions. There were a lot of thing he felt he could say to her - perhaps being literally naked was an aid - that he couldn’t say to other people, but things could take a nasty turn with him very quickly. It was easier with other people, who just didn’t know about it, than people who did. It had been Angela who found him at the clinic, alongside the commandoes and the marauding veterans. He was not, at that moment, at his most vulnerable, but he was closer to it than he would ever allow in public. So far, she hadn’t said a word about it. He doubted she ever would, unless he did something crazy like dump his meds in the septic tank again.
There were things he wanted to tell her, and couldn’t. That was strange. He was not used to getting attached. There was no reason for it to happen after two rounds with a doomed assistant. He might just be lonely and overwhelmed and suffering and she was filling the part of him that still felt empty despite the comprehensive pharmacy in his dresser drawer and twice-weekly psychiatric appointments.
It’s bad, it’s bad, it’s bad, the little voice screamed. Don’t get close to anyone. Especially not her.
“Charles? You’re shaking?”
It wasn’t serious. It was just his hand. “I’m just cold.”
He was lying, but she didn’t call him on it. She just pulled up the blankets and snuggled closer, and the shaking eventually stopped.
“Do you have any idea as to what the hell we’re doing?” he finally asked. 'Aside from the obvious' was implied.
“I’ve given it a lot of thought,” she said, “and come to no conclusions.”
“I’m glad I’m not the only one.” He tilted his head to look more directly at her. “It would be nice for my ego if I said we could keep this secret.”
“Yes.”
“I suppose it doesn’t matter to my position, but it matters to yours. Because you’ll have to put up with it.”
“Then they can say it to my face,” Angela replied, “but they won’t say it a second time.”
He kissed her on the forehead. Her hair smelled clean and faintly of lavender, far more pleasant than his own bland masculine shampoos. It was just another thing about intimacy that he’d forgotten, learning the scent of people and the smoothness of their flesh. “And that’s why you’re my assistant.”
********************************************
It was a very comfortable non-arrangement. Everything made sense at Mordhaus, where Charles could control almost everything - and if he couldn’t control it, he could at least organize the clean-up. There was a lot of legal busywork to do before meeting with the judge, and it was too complex a case to just leave to the legal team. It meant a lot of staff meetings, but not much else. The venue negotiations with Georgia and Hungary moved along with very few complications, but no gigs were officially booked until the numbers came back. He didn’t mind going over fine print. He liked knowing all the details, and it was so much easier than the actual negotiations.
Aside from meeting with Nathan about concert design, or having Pickles drop in to “check on him” and drink his expensive brandy and fill his office with the smell of weed, Charles didn’t see much of Dethklok. There were no pressing deadlines and they would find him when they needed him. If he wasn’t alone in his office, he was usually with his assistant, which was in no way suspicious. Another damn convenient thing about his carefully-constructed Klokateer hierarchy that was having unintended benefits. The boundaries were already clear to both of them, no discussion needed: they were completely professional in front of everybody else, and when they were working even if no one was around.
The other times did not necessarily mean sex. He blamed his low sex drive on the pills, of course, though most of it was just years of repression, but she also had the rare Klokateer quality of being an interesting person to talk to. He said in press statements that a wide variety of people worked for Dethklok, but the truth was that a good 90% of their applicants were metalheads with nothing going on in their lives, which was why the ones who weren’t were so secretly treasured if they made it past initiation, which they usually didn’t. There were also a lot of soldiers who liked to talk about tours of duty, their stories decreasing in believability as they were retold, but it was a culture Charles spent a good deal of time pretending he had no experience or interest in. His only contact with another veteran was the occasional email exchange with his ex-roommate, Brett, the Iraqi War vet, who was looking toward being released with a (semi) clean bill of health and nervous about making it work with his wife, who didn’t seem to want him back. But that was only email, and Charles never talked about his own work except in very, very vague terms, even though Brett now knew precisely what he did for a living.
Angela, on the other hand, was worldly and intelligent. You had to be to make major case, or so a couple perusals of Criminal Intent on his Tivo told him (she refused to watch). She had cop stories, which were a lot like veteran stories without all the baggage on his end, so he could relate without going deep inside himself in misery. She’d even killed a guy (by accident, and in self-defense) before she became a Gear. She didn’t tell that story in such a jovial voice; she was still human and it had shaken her then and still shook her now, even when she lived in a world where violence was commonplace and acceptable. He decided he would never ask her to kill someone, just tell her to delegate, but he didn’t share this decision with her.
Sitting on the couch in his living room, she asked why he had three bookcases exclusively dedicated to history and archaeology of the ancient Near East. He said it was a hobby, and while she clearly didn’t believe him, she temporarily accepted this as an answer. It couldn’t be a huge surprise - she also opened his mail, and it was the majority of what he ordered from Amazon.
For the first two sessions with Dr. Bradley he stalled, and talked about his experience with Ketamine in LA, and how much he hated the place. On the third, it was just plain lying not to say something.
“I’m sleeping with my assistant.”
Dr. Bradley looked up from his file. Apparently, this did not require immediate notes.
“It’s a bad idea, I know.”
“Why?”
“Doctor, this may be the first company I’ve headed, but I’m not an idiot. You don’t sleep with your employees. You shouldn’t even sleep with your coworkers, but I don’t have any coworkers. No one’s on my level.”
“Many people do meet at work,” Dr. Bradley said. “The number’s increasing, actually, as Americans work longer hours for less pay. It doesn’t have to be destructive.”
“But she’s my subordinate.”
“And ... you forced her into a relationship?” Dr. Bradley’s tone implied quite the opposite.
“No. I mean, we signed a contract.”
“You signed a contract?”
“It wasn’t a good contract. It won’t stand up in court. I mean it’s written on scrap paper with the Hilton logo at the top of the page. And we stood as witnesses to each other. You can’t do that. And I was inebriated, so that can throw the whole thing out.”
“What did the contract say?”
Charles wracked his brain, realizing he hadn’t actually kept it because it was in Angela’s room. “It was a one-line thing about how we were both OK with whatever we were about to do.”
“And you had sex when drunk?”
“No. Actually, I just threw up and passed out on her bed. We had sex in the morning, when I was sober.”
“That sounds very consensual.”
He was momentarily offended. “Did you think it wasn’t? I’m not fucking stupid.”
“I was just making an observation. No, I did not think you raped your ... assistant?”
“She's a glorified secretary sometimes. Depends on what she has to do, exactly.”
Dr. Bradley’s voice, as always, was calm and rather warm, and never judgmental. “People fuck their secretaries, Charles. They do not have sex with them.”
“Really?”
“It’s not a universal ideal, but yes, your choice of words is important.”
Charles crunched up in his chair. “It’s still not acceptable.”
“Why not? Help me out, because I don’t have a secretary. Be very specific.”
He did put thought into it before he answered. “The employer-employee relationship is inherently one of domination and submission. I write her paychecks, even if technically payroll does it, and I decide her fate within the company. And seeing as how she’s given her life to Dethklok, I decide her fate in general. That’s a tremendous amount of power.”
“You seem very aware of it,” Dr. Bradley said. “All relationships have power struggles, even good ones. They just work out more subtly. For example, she might have some power over you.”
“That’s impossible.”
“I don’t mean within the corporate structure. Why are you sleeping with her? Did she seduce you?”
“No. It just happened. She did make the first move, but only after I was making some drunken rant about being lonely and unable to have what I wanted.”
“Which was her.”
“I didn’t say it, but you know, looking back it was fairly obvious. She’s smart, she’s funny, and she’s beautiful. And there’s the bit about me being lonely and she being the only woman I spend any time with,” Charles said. “You might have seen her in the hospital, when they wouldn’t let her wear a hood. It was the first time I saw her face. She was in the suit.”
“The African-American woman with the gear pin on her lapel?”
Charles nodded.
“We didn’t talk, but yes, I did see her.”
“Her name is Angela. I mean, it’s 3201, legally, but in the hospital I found out it was Angela. Sarah told me. My sister doesn’t like calling Klokateers by their numbers.”
Dr. Bradley made notes. It always bugged Charles when he did, even if they were brief, mostly just a few words to jog his memory later. “Do you think she’s happy in the relationship?”
“I haven’t directly asked her. I don’t want to speak for her. But it seems that way.”
“So you would consider it a relationship.”
Charles cursed in his head. He hated being cornered. “Maybe.” He would have just said ‘yes’ but now he was angry and it was his way of revenge on the clever shrink.
“Do you spend time with her in the way that you would spend time with someone you were involved with, outside of the business?”
“You mean, do we do something other than have sex?”
“Yes.”
“We’re both busy people, but yes, we talk. I keep trying to get her to watch Law and Order with me because she used to be a cop, but she won’t. And we ate a few dinners where we were not also doing work.”
“So,” the doctor said, “you’re interested in her as a person.”
“It wouldn’t have lasted this long if I wasn’t.”
“Have you had other encounters with people in your employ?”
“Pass.”
“What?”
“I pass on that question.”
Dr. Bradley regarded him. “What you say in these sessions is up to you, Charles. But you know by now that the more you say, the more I can help you.”
“There were two, and they involved that drug combo. Ecstasy and Viagra.”
“I believe the street term is ‘sextacy.’”
Charles decided he would never, ever use that term. “That’s all I have to say on the matter.” He wanted to smoke. Being in Dr. Bradley’s office always made him want to smoke.
“This is a very cursory reading of the situation,” the doctor said, “but it seems she does have some power over you, if it’s a balance of power that you’re concerned about. You have some emotional attachment to her despite the brevity of your relationship, and you began to get to know her as a person during a period of extreme vulnerability. In other words, it may go both ways.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that despite knowing a good deal about the psychological effects of office sexual politics, I’m not condemning your relationship. It may go awry, but even relationships in which people are equals do that on a regular basis. So my question for you is - why are you so eager to talk yourself out of something that’s making you happy?”
Charles couldn’t answer him.
********************************************
The trip to Albany included one stop on the way back to the private airfield. There was a VA hospital an hour’s drive with traffic, but at least they didn’t make Charles wait to see him. “Hello, Patrick.”
Patrick Peterson wore a half-smile, which for him was incredibly expressive. He was wearing castoffs instead of a hospital outfit. It still made him look shlubby, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as a gown or a bathrobe. Someone must have tried to take a weed whacker to his white beard, because it was considerably trimmed and his head was practically shaved, from what Charles could see under the knitted cap. The beard still rebelled, because it a mess, but a shorter mess.
“How are they treating you?” Charles said, not expecting an answer. Peterson hadn’t spoken in over twenty years. “We don’t have to play chess. We can play something else if you want.”
The hospital had boggle, which was a game Charles could actually beat him at. Aside from the shaking of the pieces, the game was mostly silent. Charles didn’t unload on poor Peterson, just mentioned a few highlights, like how much his cast currently itched (a lot) and how much he was not looking forward to going back to LA (also a lot). He pitched a couple questions about life in the VA hospital, which was considerably more rundown than the clinic had been. Charles knew that inside his head, Peterson was answering him. He just couldn’t hear.
“The new clinic will be rebuilt as soon as possible, I promise you,” he said after his allotted visitation time was up. “And the chess set will be less chewed on, but I can’t promise it will stay that way.”
Peterson didn’t have any response that Charles could understand.
********************************************
The band meeting actually came at Nathan’s request, via text. This meant they wanted something from him that even they knew to be beyond reasonable. Nonetheless, he prepared for an ordinary meeting - no reason to waste a chance to bring up the recording schedule to them - and showed up to find Dethklok waiting for him, minus Pickles.
Of course, he kept his face neutral. “You wanted to see me.”
“Ja, we gots some legals questions.”
He knew it was about Pickles, but there was no reason to say it. He sat down and put his arms up on the table expectantly.
“So, Pickles is like, suing his band, right?” Nathan took the lead as usual.
“As I’ve explained many times before, Pickles is not suing the members of Snakes ‘n’ Barrels. He’s suing Rikki Kixx for legal control over some of the band finances.”
“Yeah, that guy is a douchebag. But, um, the TV guy said that Pickles could - what’s the word - “
“Eternal powersch,” Murderface tried to help. “He wants eternal powersch becausch the glam rock guysch are in comas.”
“Power of attorney,” Charles corrected. “Guys, I know you’re hearing a lot of different stories on the news - “
“Is Pickle am gays with Rockso?” Toki’s voice didn’t make it clear if he was horrified or jealous.
“No. No, he is not. As I was saying, there are a lot of stories on the news, but the real story isn’t very interesting. Pickles is not trying to get power of attorney over his former band members.”
“So’s he couldn’ts-k pulls da plugs, deads on deads guys.”
“No. First of all, they’re not dead, they’re in comas, comas which they may in fact wake up from. Second, yes he would need power of attorney to do that, which he doesn’t have and doesn’t want.”
“Who does?”
“Who does what, Nathan?”
“Who wants to kill the fat guys from Snakes and Barrels?”
“No one. No one wants to kill them. Rikki Kixx just wants their money and Pickles is trying to prevent that from happening. The media sensationalizes stories so that - “
“So’s if Pickle ams in a comas, who has powerful attornies?” Skwisgaar asked.
“Pickles is not in a coma.”
“Yeah, we know that. We’re not stupid.” Nathan got very defensive when his intelligence was challenged. “But if he was - “
“ - we coulds votes on to kills him with powersal tourneys? Because, I votes noes!” Toki slammed his fist on the table.
“Yeah, like you need majority vote, right? Scho what if I wasch in a coma and you asscholes ganged up on me like when you kicked me out of the band - “
“William, I assure you that that would not happen.”
“But we can kick him out of the band,” Nathan said.
“But you cannot decide, should any of you be in a coma, whether you want to continue life support. That requires power of attorney, and none of you have it.”
“So who does?”
There was no reason not to tell them the truth. “I do.”
“You could kill usch?!”
“Ja, I not signs on fer dat, just becausch you’s a fuckin’ attorneys and we’s yours employers.” Skwisgaar hit a sour note on his guitar when he shouted.
“Guys, first of all, you’re not in comas. You’re all fine. Second, no, I would not pull the plug on any of you, unless you made it known to me previously that you did not want to remain in a persistent vegetative state.”
“Vegetable?”
“I wants to be a carrots!” Toki said. Of course he did.
It was like speaking to five-year-olds, but when was it any different? Charles sighed, but couldn’t bring himself to be too frustrated by it. “A persistent vegetative state is a coma that you’re never going to wake up from. Ever. Which is not the case with Snakes and Barrels and will hopefully never be the case with you.”
“Why do you have our power of attorney?” Nathan leaned forward. “Because you’re our manager? Managers just get that?”
“Nathan, do you remember your first liver transplant?”
Nathan winced. It was hard to forget, in a hospital in Seattle. “Yeah.”
“And it was delayed because you weren’t aware enough to make the medical decision about the transplant. I had to fly your parents in from Florida.”
“Yeah, that sucked.”
“And you said you didn’t want to see your parents again, and that you were fine with me making medical decisions for you when you were not capable of making them. So you signed the paperwork that allows me to make decisions in your best interest when you are unable to make them. That’s power of attorney. And then Pickles heard about not making decisions and wanted in, and the rest of you said the same thing. So you all signed off on it.”
“Cans we takes it back?”
Charles couldn’t help but be a little insulted by the Swede. “Then I would fly your mother in to make decisions, should you be unable to make them for yourself. It’s the immediate relative.”
“My moms?”
“Yes, Skwisgaar. She is your closest relative.”
Skwisgaar huffed. “Fucks dat, yous not killing mes, right?”
“Yes. That is our understanding. I will not terminate life support against your wishes. Guys, this is something that will probably never happen. It’s not something to worry about.”
“Wait.” Nathan had his thinking face on, and Charles sat back, knowing this train could take a long time to arrive at the station. “What if we’re in comas ... and you’re in a coma. Who makes the decision for us?”
“It would default back to your parents.”
“What?”
If I was not around, your parents would make the decision.”
“And then we could decide for you?”
“We no kills you, Charles!” Toki said enthusiastically.
“I appreciate the sentiment, but you won’t have to make that decision. My sister has my power of attorney. Do you guys remember when I was hit in the head and I was in the hospital for a few days?” It was hard to get them to remember last week, much less years ago, so he knew it was a stretch. “Toki, this was before your time. We didn’t have a contract and there was a concert where I was injured, and someone approached you after the show with a contract and you wanted to sign, but you couldn’t sign without me.”
“I remember!” Murderface sat up a little. “Your hair wasch burnt off!”
“Yes, because the board that fell on me was on fire.”
“You schmelled.”
“I’m sure I did. And the lawyers for the label called my sister to see if she could sign the contract on my behalf. She came to the hospital and refused.”
“Oh right. We were so pissed at her.” Now it was coming back to Nathan. “But she wanted to wait for you to wake up.”
“Which I did.”
“And you didn’t sign.”
“It was a bad contract. She knew what she was doing. That’s why I authorized her to make decisions for me when I couldn’t make them myself.” Charles was really amazed that they were still keeping the general thread of the conversation, but maybe the idea of killing each other or having him die on them was a little more engaging than pie charts about profit margins.
“So ... would she do it?” Nathan pried.
“Would she do what?”
“If you were, you know, a carrot. Would she pull the plug?”
“That’s a private matter. And I repeat - you don’t have to worry about this stuff. We’re all safe, we’re all healthy, and no one’s talking about pulling any plugs except some people on the news who don’t know what they’re talking about. No one is going to die.”
“Excepts Toki’s pets,” Skwisgaar said, and Toki punched him. And rightfully so. “Ow! You’s supposed-lies to be stoppings doing dat!”
“Yous not insults mes!”
This led to the usual round of bickering, which the others happily joined, and Charles was relieved. He did not want to tell them that his living will stipulated that he did want not remain in a vegetative state indefinitely, only until 2015. After than, if there was still a working hospital system, he wanted his organs going elsewhere. But it was a grisly thought, even for him, and he was much happier watching the boys fight over incoherent shit for the rest of the meeting.
Afterward, he found Pickles, who was in a drugged stupor in his room. Charles supposed it was only fair. “They called a meeting without you to talk about the lawsuit. They were under the impression that you’re trying to pull the plug on your bandmates.”
“Huh?” Pickles was aware enough for a conversation, but even that took him a moment to wrap his mind around. “Did yeh tell ‘em no? I would never fuckin’ do dat?”
“Yes, that is exactly what I told them.”
“Good.” Pickles didn’t have the best concentration either. “Wanna git high? ‘s good fer you. All mild stuff, I pramise.”
“No, thank you.”
“Dis about the Special K thing?”
“No, it’s about the me having a busy schedule of things to do ... thing.”
“Yeh know yer supposed ta relax, Charlie.”
“That is also on the schedule.” He added silently with an inner smile, And none of your damn business.
To be continued...
Author: DJ_the_Writer
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Cursing, Drugs, PTSD, off-screen sex
Pairings: Charles/OFC
Beta: wikdsushi
Characters: Charles, Pickles, OCs
Summary: Charles attempts to recover from his ordeal during a legal tussle in LA.
[ Start back at the beginning]
fic:-snackers
Chapter 5
Charles Ofdensen was happy to be on a plane, putting as much distance as possible between him and LA, as fast as possible. He was happy to be away from the sun, the smog, and the heat, even if the recycled air of the jet wasn’t exactly pleasant. Not a lot could ruin his cheerful mood, not even ordering two hoodies to hose down the sleeping groupies who refused to leave, then making them sign waivers, then sending them out on their asses in front of one of the best hotels in LA. Pickles was his usual mid-morning cranky self, muttering incoherently even before he started drinking again, and that passed right over Charles’s head. Frankly, the only thing annoying him was that he had to work so hard to hide it. Angela was lucky. She had a hood, and she had an easier time acting like a normal business professional who was shadowing her extremely professional boss whom she definitely had not had sex with a few hours before.
In the back of his mind, part of him was screaming that it was bad. It was bad to get involved with coworkers, worse with people under you, and especially with glorified secretaries. Somehow, he imagined it would be more fitting if he were cheating on his wife, and Angela were the sort of person you would cheat on your wife with, but he wasn’t married and that wasn’t the case. Sleeping around in the office - bad, bad, bad. Putting aside the whole issue of executive dominance and messing with sexual boundaries, it wreaked havoc even with consenting equals, Crystal Mountain being a shining example of that. Roy Cornickelson had the decency to at least cheat on his wife with someone outside the office, which was probably why he hadn’t been caught (to Charles’s knowledge anyway). But just about every level beneath the CEO was a mess of drugs, sex, and booze. Charles wrote it off as a music industry thing - and would as long as the label money rolled in, which it did, down to the last penny if he had anything to say about it.
What he was sure of, not from personal experience but from his experiences in business culture, was that it almost always ended badly. That was why Facebones was so unnecessarily aggressive in the sexual harassment video about employee confraternity, even when he knew damn well the Gears were trapped in a crazy demonic funhouse in the sky with unlimited booze and they would fuck like rabbits. He just didn’t want to see the results, unless the babies were particularly cute.
On the other hand, the majority of his brain shouted back, Angela was probably going to die. As depressing as the thought was, it was a little reassuring, too. You couldn’t fly around in a metal jet with silver wingtips and blood red interiors without having some dark humor in you. They were both going to die, almost definitely sooner rather than later. He wondered if she’d ever noticed that for someone who planned excessively ahead, he had nothing on his calendar past 2015. No long-term investments paying off, no Roth IRA, no paying into social security, no nothing. And he thought that was an optimistic date, too.
He decided not to bring it up.
It was all a bad idea he could not talk himself out of. The restrained businessman on the outside wasn’t getting much play on the inside. That was, if she was interested in continuing ... whatever they had. That was the impression he got, but he didn’t work up the courage that morning to ask her directly.
He could face down the United Nations, but not his assistant?
Charles reminded himself that his last committed relationship was almost ten years ago, and came with the extremely ulterior motive of getting closer to Roy. It ended with her setting his wardrobe on fire while on PCP, and while momentarily irritating, it gave him a good excuse to duck out of something he didn’t want in the first place. Before that, there was another dry spell. He hadn’t truly opened up to anyone since Maria. Fuck, his therapist would want to talk about that, and it was so much harder to redirect the conversation when it wasn’t over the phone. He was almost tempted to say to Angela, Confirm my appointment with Dr. Bradley; I need to talk about you for forty-five overly-expensive minutes that will be billed as an hour.
She would probably laugh. G-d, she had such a beautiful laugh. Man, either she was a goddess or he just needed to get laid much more often.
Most of this ruminating took place over a rather slowly-played game of Minesweeper on his computer. Pickles was asleep in his seat, being able to sleep in just about any position (including, quite literally, in a gutter). Charles texted Nathan about a band meeting, and got no reply. Bad sign.
A full eight hours later, Nathan Explosion did not disappoint.
Drunk, confused by the time change, and eager to get drunker, Pickles practically ran to find his bandmates, who were trying to act casual in the living room and doing a bad job of it. They were not actors; the awfulness of Blood Ocean could not entirely be blamed on the script. And they did not look happy to see Charles standing there.
“Nathan.”
“Uh, yeah? Oh, hey, you’re back. You were gone, right?”
“Nathan,” he repeated, “why is Snackers not in her enclosure?”
Because she wasn’t. The adult alligator was on the carpet near Nathan’s feet, either sleeping or waiting to strike. With her, it was hard to tell. She was also wearing a torn Hawaiian shirt - she went through them quickly - that was completely covered in non-reptile blood.
Charles took an unintentional step back.
“She’s sleeping,” Nathan said. “Besides, she’s all fed. She doesn’t attack people when she’s not hungry.”
“Dood, I thaght we had like, a thing. Aboot her in the hat tub.”
“She ams nots in the hot tub,” Skwissgar said, half-submerged himself with his unplugged guitar and the rest of the band. “Alsos, you wants to be the ones to wakes her?”
“Look, it’s late, and I’m going to find out what happened one way or another, so you might as well just tell me,” Charles said. Whatever it was, it definitely involved dead employees. That part he didn’t mind so much; he just didn’t like it when they covered it up. Or directly caused it. Indirectly was OK.
He started tapping his foot, but not very hard, taking that comment about waking a sleeping alligator who already had tasted his flesh once before to heart.
“Uhhh ... so I might have given her a wig.”
“You gave your alligator, a reptile, a wig. Of hair.”
“Yeah, a black one. Because, you know, she’s Snackers Explosion. And ... she ate it.”
“Shahck of da month,” Pickles said, standing a significant distance behind Charles.
“And she choked. Sorta. We think. So we got some guys in here, and they tried to open her jaws, and uh, she really likes brains it turns out. Which I guess if she becomes a zombie is ... good.”
“You’re saying she bit the head off one of your employees. That’s what you’re saying.”
Nathan looked down at his beer. “When you put it that way, it sounds really bad.”
“And what is she doing here?”
“They had to take her out to deal with the choking thing, and then she kinda went her own way, and the hoodies were all fucking scared, and she came in here and went to sleep. Murderface read that it takes alligators a really long time to digest so it’s fine and they can fish that guy out of her little pool and change all the water because there’s so much blood in it.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t snakes?”
“Oh right!” Murderface piped up. “It wasch schnakes! They take forever to eat anything.”
Charles sighed. He was going to have to have a long chat with the Snackers team - when they were done grieving. And it would take Angela a while to track down who exactly ran away from the scary alligator and left the killer alone with Dethklok. He spoke into his wrist watch. “Get some guys in here to wrangle AK-75.” Because he sure as hell wasn’t going near that thing.
“Soes Pickle, yous done suing your old bands?” Toki said.
“Agh, guys! For the love of Gad, how many times do I have to say this? I’m suing Rikki Kixx! Not Snakes ‘n’ Barrels!”
Now Nathan was just baiting him. “But I thought he was their frontman. So that’s suing the frontman of the band. Suing ... the band.”
“He’s not their feckin’ frontman!”
Charles silently excused himself with a few more steps back as Pickles raged on, waiting for the alligator wranglers to show up and take Snackers away before he disappeared. They’d forgotten about him already, which was fine. Anything normal was fine with him.
He could handle normal.
********************************************
Over the next few days, Charles saw nothing of the band. This was not extraordinary. They avoided him when they knew he would press them to record, and he didn’t call any meetings. After such a long trip, he returned to Mordhaus and spent the first few days in his office, doing paperwork and answering emails and not a whole lot else. Paperwork was ordinary, boring, and in its own way, soothing. Being back at his desk, handling the business, was his way to unwind as long as the hours didn’t get crazy. He drank imported Israeli coffee and worked on spreadsheets while whatever havoc the boys created was contained. It would all be just perfect if he didn’t have something else constantly on his mind.
Charles prided himself on being creative. He didn’t seem that way, and his wardrobe didn’t send good messages in that regard, but he had his moments. And he had to find moments, because just calling Angela into his office on some other premise seemed tacky and inappropriate. So he called a meeting of the legal team in one of the employee conference rooms to discuss the upcoming arbitration in LA, then dismissed everyone but Angela, which itself wasn’t abnormal. At least until he disabled the cameras from his laptop’s controls.
“Do you want to get dinner?”
“Sure.” They’d spoken, of course, on a business level, but almost entirely in front of other people. It took her a moment to think it out. “Do you mean we should get dinner?” Employees didn’t like to eat in front of him, as it meant taking their hoods off at least halfway, and they were all superstitious about it for some inane reason. He didn’t bother to correct them in their belief that he thought they had no faces, or cared what they looked like, because somehow it would only encourage it.
“Yes ... that’s what I mean. The menu is anything, but to be honest, Jean-Pierre’s not that good with Indian food. We usually order out for it.”
The hood started blankly back at him. No fair. “Is this a date?”
“... Kind of? I think this is more like me ineptly making a pass at you.”
“I’m going to go with date, and yes, I am very hungry and do not want Indian food,” she said.
The ordered, and actually did some work before the food arrived. Jean-Pierre delivered it himself, perhaps because Charles was one of the few people he served who could look him in the eye and not cringe a little bit. When he was gone, Angela removed her hood. “Thank you. I have never actually eaten Jean-Pierre’s food.”
“You have. He does some bulk stuff for employees. The boys don’t keep him that busy. They love junk food,” he said. “And he will inhibit your ability to eat food anywhere else and stand it.”
“Maybe if you fed your assistants better, more people would apply for the position,” she said.
“I don’t need more people for the position,” was his reply. When she glanced up from her plate, he just gave her a grin. “Have we made the rumor mill?”
“It’s only been two days.”
“Two days? You guys are terrible at this.”
Angela looked at him with great skepticism. “And what experience do you have with office politics where everyone doesn’t answer to you?”
“Summer internships and one year in estate planning. There was nothing to do in that firm but gossip about people,” he said, correcting himself quickly. “Not that I was a huge, ah, gossip.”
“My only experience with those sorts of law firms was investigating them, which was still not very interesting.”
“Well, that’s how you make money in estate planning. You steal from your clients.”
“Did you?”
“I wasn’t there long enough to have clients,” was his answer. It was true.
“Would you have?”
He thought about it. “It would have depended on the percentages.”
She laughed so hard she had to cover her mouth. “That’s such a ... you answer.”
“It would have! Everything is about percentages. And by now I could be a big shot and you could be investigating me.”
“Only if you murdered a partner.”
“I didn’t care for the other new guy. So now we could be rich partners and I could be sick of him and he could be found in a garbage bin and then we would meet.”
“It would involve less music.”
“But also less death, probably. It would just be that one guy. Oh, before I forget - we’re recycling 293’s number. Remind me at some point.”
“Because he was eaten by an alligator? That doesn’t seem fair.”
“He doesn’t want it out of the system. His supervisor told me. And he put it in his paperwork so we’ll honor it. But don’t write it down.”
“Because this isn’t business? We’re talking about 293’s will for dinner?”
“...Yes. Just remember it.”
“Sometimes I think you like asking the impossible of us.”
He raised an eyebrow and said, “I always get it.”
The dinner was followed by the shedding of clothing as soon as they were in his apartment and the door was shut. He had warned himself prior to it that it didn’t have to end that way, but he certainly wasn’t going to object. Over the past two days, Charles had thought a lot about boundaries and expectations and commitments, all of which was completely lost to him when Angela so much as touched him.
She was not the first person he’d had sex with at Mordhaus - ecstasy was a hell of a drug - but the first to be in his bed. When he first moved in, he had thought about getting a twin to save space. He was small; he didn’t need a lot of room to stretch out. Angela was smaller, though not tiny, but a twin would have been demanding. He thought about this far less during than after, when neither of them was inclined to either move or sleep.
She seemed to uncannily read this mind. “Am I the first person to be in here?”
“Technically, the maid counts.”
“I’ll take that as a yes. Would you be offended if I said it looks like you haven’t moved in yet?”
He thought it was rather tastefully Spartan. “I confess that since Mordhaus was constructed, I have given almost none of my time to bedroom decoration. And that my previous apartment might have looked this way, too. Some people would say I’m not a very interesting person.”
“You are not a very interesting bedroom decorator. But in all other areas, I have to disagree. Not everyone turns their office into a hunting lodge.”
“Do you like it?”
“It’s strange,” she said, “because I know you don’t hunt animals.”
That was very true. He wondered how she knew that, but Nathan had a habit of busting into the office in an orange jacket and demanding that a hunting trip be organized, and on occasion inviting him. The man invited his dentist, for G-d’s sake. But Charles always had an excuse to say no.
Angela seemed to know when to stop asking questions. There were a lot of thing he felt he could say to her - perhaps being literally naked was an aid - that he couldn’t say to other people, but things could take a nasty turn with him very quickly. It was easier with other people, who just didn’t know about it, than people who did. It had been Angela who found him at the clinic, alongside the commandoes and the marauding veterans. He was not, at that moment, at his most vulnerable, but he was closer to it than he would ever allow in public. So far, she hadn’t said a word about it. He doubted she ever would, unless he did something crazy like dump his meds in the septic tank again.
There were things he wanted to tell her, and couldn’t. That was strange. He was not used to getting attached. There was no reason for it to happen after two rounds with a doomed assistant. He might just be lonely and overwhelmed and suffering and she was filling the part of him that still felt empty despite the comprehensive pharmacy in his dresser drawer and twice-weekly psychiatric appointments.
It’s bad, it’s bad, it’s bad, the little voice screamed. Don’t get close to anyone. Especially not her.
“Charles? You’re shaking?”
It wasn’t serious. It was just his hand. “I’m just cold.”
He was lying, but she didn’t call him on it. She just pulled up the blankets and snuggled closer, and the shaking eventually stopped.
“Do you have any idea as to what the hell we’re doing?” he finally asked. 'Aside from the obvious' was implied.
“I’ve given it a lot of thought,” she said, “and come to no conclusions.”
“I’m glad I’m not the only one.” He tilted his head to look more directly at her. “It would be nice for my ego if I said we could keep this secret.”
“Yes.”
“I suppose it doesn’t matter to my position, but it matters to yours. Because you’ll have to put up with it.”
“Then they can say it to my face,” Angela replied, “but they won’t say it a second time.”
He kissed her on the forehead. Her hair smelled clean and faintly of lavender, far more pleasant than his own bland masculine shampoos. It was just another thing about intimacy that he’d forgotten, learning the scent of people and the smoothness of their flesh. “And that’s why you’re my assistant.”
********************************************
It was a very comfortable non-arrangement. Everything made sense at Mordhaus, where Charles could control almost everything - and if he couldn’t control it, he could at least organize the clean-up. There was a lot of legal busywork to do before meeting with the judge, and it was too complex a case to just leave to the legal team. It meant a lot of staff meetings, but not much else. The venue negotiations with Georgia and Hungary moved along with very few complications, but no gigs were officially booked until the numbers came back. He didn’t mind going over fine print. He liked knowing all the details, and it was so much easier than the actual negotiations.
Aside from meeting with Nathan about concert design, or having Pickles drop in to “check on him” and drink his expensive brandy and fill his office with the smell of weed, Charles didn’t see much of Dethklok. There were no pressing deadlines and they would find him when they needed him. If he wasn’t alone in his office, he was usually with his assistant, which was in no way suspicious. Another damn convenient thing about his carefully-constructed Klokateer hierarchy that was having unintended benefits. The boundaries were already clear to both of them, no discussion needed: they were completely professional in front of everybody else, and when they were working even if no one was around.
The other times did not necessarily mean sex. He blamed his low sex drive on the pills, of course, though most of it was just years of repression, but she also had the rare Klokateer quality of being an interesting person to talk to. He said in press statements that a wide variety of people worked for Dethklok, but the truth was that a good 90% of their applicants were metalheads with nothing going on in their lives, which was why the ones who weren’t were so secretly treasured if they made it past initiation, which they usually didn’t. There were also a lot of soldiers who liked to talk about tours of duty, their stories decreasing in believability as they were retold, but it was a culture Charles spent a good deal of time pretending he had no experience or interest in. His only contact with another veteran was the occasional email exchange with his ex-roommate, Brett, the Iraqi War vet, who was looking toward being released with a (semi) clean bill of health and nervous about making it work with his wife, who didn’t seem to want him back. But that was only email, and Charles never talked about his own work except in very, very vague terms, even though Brett now knew precisely what he did for a living.
Angela, on the other hand, was worldly and intelligent. You had to be to make major case, or so a couple perusals of Criminal Intent on his Tivo told him (she refused to watch). She had cop stories, which were a lot like veteran stories without all the baggage on his end, so he could relate without going deep inside himself in misery. She’d even killed a guy (by accident, and in self-defense) before she became a Gear. She didn’t tell that story in such a jovial voice; she was still human and it had shaken her then and still shook her now, even when she lived in a world where violence was commonplace and acceptable. He decided he would never ask her to kill someone, just tell her to delegate, but he didn’t share this decision with her.
Sitting on the couch in his living room, she asked why he had three bookcases exclusively dedicated to history and archaeology of the ancient Near East. He said it was a hobby, and while she clearly didn’t believe him, she temporarily accepted this as an answer. It couldn’t be a huge surprise - she also opened his mail, and it was the majority of what he ordered from Amazon.
For the first two sessions with Dr. Bradley he stalled, and talked about his experience with Ketamine in LA, and how much he hated the place. On the third, it was just plain lying not to say something.
“I’m sleeping with my assistant.”
Dr. Bradley looked up from his file. Apparently, this did not require immediate notes.
“It’s a bad idea, I know.”
“Why?”
“Doctor, this may be the first company I’ve headed, but I’m not an idiot. You don’t sleep with your employees. You shouldn’t even sleep with your coworkers, but I don’t have any coworkers. No one’s on my level.”
“Many people do meet at work,” Dr. Bradley said. “The number’s increasing, actually, as Americans work longer hours for less pay. It doesn’t have to be destructive.”
“But she’s my subordinate.”
“And ... you forced her into a relationship?” Dr. Bradley’s tone implied quite the opposite.
“No. I mean, we signed a contract.”
“You signed a contract?”
“It wasn’t a good contract. It won’t stand up in court. I mean it’s written on scrap paper with the Hilton logo at the top of the page. And we stood as witnesses to each other. You can’t do that. And I was inebriated, so that can throw the whole thing out.”
“What did the contract say?”
Charles wracked his brain, realizing he hadn’t actually kept it because it was in Angela’s room. “It was a one-line thing about how we were both OK with whatever we were about to do.”
“And you had sex when drunk?”
“No. Actually, I just threw up and passed out on her bed. We had sex in the morning, when I was sober.”
“That sounds very consensual.”
He was momentarily offended. “Did you think it wasn’t? I’m not fucking stupid.”
“I was just making an observation. No, I did not think you raped your ... assistant?”
“She's a glorified secretary sometimes. Depends on what she has to do, exactly.”
Dr. Bradley’s voice, as always, was calm and rather warm, and never judgmental. “People fuck their secretaries, Charles. They do not have sex with them.”
“Really?”
“It’s not a universal ideal, but yes, your choice of words is important.”
Charles crunched up in his chair. “It’s still not acceptable.”
“Why not? Help me out, because I don’t have a secretary. Be very specific.”
He did put thought into it before he answered. “The employer-employee relationship is inherently one of domination and submission. I write her paychecks, even if technically payroll does it, and I decide her fate within the company. And seeing as how she’s given her life to Dethklok, I decide her fate in general. That’s a tremendous amount of power.”
“You seem very aware of it,” Dr. Bradley said. “All relationships have power struggles, even good ones. They just work out more subtly. For example, she might have some power over you.”
“That’s impossible.”
“I don’t mean within the corporate structure. Why are you sleeping with her? Did she seduce you?”
“No. It just happened. She did make the first move, but only after I was making some drunken rant about being lonely and unable to have what I wanted.”
“Which was her.”
“I didn’t say it, but you know, looking back it was fairly obvious. She’s smart, she’s funny, and she’s beautiful. And there’s the bit about me being lonely and she being the only woman I spend any time with,” Charles said. “You might have seen her in the hospital, when they wouldn’t let her wear a hood. It was the first time I saw her face. She was in the suit.”
“The African-American woman with the gear pin on her lapel?”
Charles nodded.
“We didn’t talk, but yes, I did see her.”
“Her name is Angela. I mean, it’s 3201, legally, but in the hospital I found out it was Angela. Sarah told me. My sister doesn’t like calling Klokateers by their numbers.”
Dr. Bradley made notes. It always bugged Charles when he did, even if they were brief, mostly just a few words to jog his memory later. “Do you think she’s happy in the relationship?”
“I haven’t directly asked her. I don’t want to speak for her. But it seems that way.”
“So you would consider it a relationship.”
Charles cursed in his head. He hated being cornered. “Maybe.” He would have just said ‘yes’ but now he was angry and it was his way of revenge on the clever shrink.
“Do you spend time with her in the way that you would spend time with someone you were involved with, outside of the business?”
“You mean, do we do something other than have sex?”
“Yes.”
“We’re both busy people, but yes, we talk. I keep trying to get her to watch Law and Order with me because she used to be a cop, but she won’t. And we ate a few dinners where we were not also doing work.”
“So,” the doctor said, “you’re interested in her as a person.”
“It wouldn’t have lasted this long if I wasn’t.”
“Have you had other encounters with people in your employ?”
“Pass.”
“What?”
“I pass on that question.”
Dr. Bradley regarded him. “What you say in these sessions is up to you, Charles. But you know by now that the more you say, the more I can help you.”
“There were two, and they involved that drug combo. Ecstasy and Viagra.”
“I believe the street term is ‘sextacy.’”
Charles decided he would never, ever use that term. “That’s all I have to say on the matter.” He wanted to smoke. Being in Dr. Bradley’s office always made him want to smoke.
“This is a very cursory reading of the situation,” the doctor said, “but it seems she does have some power over you, if it’s a balance of power that you’re concerned about. You have some emotional attachment to her despite the brevity of your relationship, and you began to get to know her as a person during a period of extreme vulnerability. In other words, it may go both ways.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that despite knowing a good deal about the psychological effects of office sexual politics, I’m not condemning your relationship. It may go awry, but even relationships in which people are equals do that on a regular basis. So my question for you is - why are you so eager to talk yourself out of something that’s making you happy?”
Charles couldn’t answer him.
********************************************
The trip to Albany included one stop on the way back to the private airfield. There was a VA hospital an hour’s drive with traffic, but at least they didn’t make Charles wait to see him. “Hello, Patrick.”
Patrick Peterson wore a half-smile, which for him was incredibly expressive. He was wearing castoffs instead of a hospital outfit. It still made him look shlubby, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as a gown or a bathrobe. Someone must have tried to take a weed whacker to his white beard, because it was considerably trimmed and his head was practically shaved, from what Charles could see under the knitted cap. The beard still rebelled, because it a mess, but a shorter mess.
“How are they treating you?” Charles said, not expecting an answer. Peterson hadn’t spoken in over twenty years. “We don’t have to play chess. We can play something else if you want.”
The hospital had boggle, which was a game Charles could actually beat him at. Aside from the shaking of the pieces, the game was mostly silent. Charles didn’t unload on poor Peterson, just mentioned a few highlights, like how much his cast currently itched (a lot) and how much he was not looking forward to going back to LA (also a lot). He pitched a couple questions about life in the VA hospital, which was considerably more rundown than the clinic had been. Charles knew that inside his head, Peterson was answering him. He just couldn’t hear.
“The new clinic will be rebuilt as soon as possible, I promise you,” he said after his allotted visitation time was up. “And the chess set will be less chewed on, but I can’t promise it will stay that way.”
Peterson didn’t have any response that Charles could understand.
********************************************
The band meeting actually came at Nathan’s request, via text. This meant they wanted something from him that even they knew to be beyond reasonable. Nonetheless, he prepared for an ordinary meeting - no reason to waste a chance to bring up the recording schedule to them - and showed up to find Dethklok waiting for him, minus Pickles.
Of course, he kept his face neutral. “You wanted to see me.”
“Ja, we gots some legals questions.”
He knew it was about Pickles, but there was no reason to say it. He sat down and put his arms up on the table expectantly.
“So, Pickles is like, suing his band, right?” Nathan took the lead as usual.
“As I’ve explained many times before, Pickles is not suing the members of Snakes ‘n’ Barrels. He’s suing Rikki Kixx for legal control over some of the band finances.”
“Yeah, that guy is a douchebag. But, um, the TV guy said that Pickles could - what’s the word - “
“Eternal powersch,” Murderface tried to help. “He wants eternal powersch becausch the glam rock guysch are in comas.”
“Power of attorney,” Charles corrected. “Guys, I know you’re hearing a lot of different stories on the news - “
“Is Pickle am gays with Rockso?” Toki’s voice didn’t make it clear if he was horrified or jealous.
“No. No, he is not. As I was saying, there are a lot of stories on the news, but the real story isn’t very interesting. Pickles is not trying to get power of attorney over his former band members.”
“So’s he couldn’ts-k pulls da plugs, deads on deads guys.”
“No. First of all, they’re not dead, they’re in comas, comas which they may in fact wake up from. Second, yes he would need power of attorney to do that, which he doesn’t have and doesn’t want.”
“Who does?”
“Who does what, Nathan?”
“Who wants to kill the fat guys from Snakes and Barrels?”
“No one. No one wants to kill them. Rikki Kixx just wants their money and Pickles is trying to prevent that from happening. The media sensationalizes stories so that - “
“So’s if Pickle ams in a comas, who has powerful attornies?” Skwisgaar asked.
“Pickles is not in a coma.”
“Yeah, we know that. We’re not stupid.” Nathan got very defensive when his intelligence was challenged. “But if he was - “
“ - we coulds votes on to kills him with powersal tourneys? Because, I votes noes!” Toki slammed his fist on the table.
“Yeah, like you need majority vote, right? Scho what if I wasch in a coma and you asscholes ganged up on me like when you kicked me out of the band - “
“William, I assure you that that would not happen.”
“But we can kick him out of the band,” Nathan said.
“But you cannot decide, should any of you be in a coma, whether you want to continue life support. That requires power of attorney, and none of you have it.”
“So who does?”
There was no reason not to tell them the truth. “I do.”
“You could kill usch?!”
“Ja, I not signs on fer dat, just becausch you’s a fuckin’ attorneys and we’s yours employers.” Skwisgaar hit a sour note on his guitar when he shouted.
“Guys, first of all, you’re not in comas. You’re all fine. Second, no, I would not pull the plug on any of you, unless you made it known to me previously that you did not want to remain in a persistent vegetative state.”
“Vegetable?”
“I wants to be a carrots!” Toki said. Of course he did.
It was like speaking to five-year-olds, but when was it any different? Charles sighed, but couldn’t bring himself to be too frustrated by it. “A persistent vegetative state is a coma that you’re never going to wake up from. Ever. Which is not the case with Snakes and Barrels and will hopefully never be the case with you.”
“Why do you have our power of attorney?” Nathan leaned forward. “Because you’re our manager? Managers just get that?”
“Nathan, do you remember your first liver transplant?”
Nathan winced. It was hard to forget, in a hospital in Seattle. “Yeah.”
“And it was delayed because you weren’t aware enough to make the medical decision about the transplant. I had to fly your parents in from Florida.”
“Yeah, that sucked.”
“And you said you didn’t want to see your parents again, and that you were fine with me making medical decisions for you when you were not capable of making them. So you signed the paperwork that allows me to make decisions in your best interest when you are unable to make them. That’s power of attorney. And then Pickles heard about not making decisions and wanted in, and the rest of you said the same thing. So you all signed off on it.”
“Cans we takes it back?”
Charles couldn’t help but be a little insulted by the Swede. “Then I would fly your mother in to make decisions, should you be unable to make them for yourself. It’s the immediate relative.”
“My moms?”
“Yes, Skwisgaar. She is your closest relative.”
Skwisgaar huffed. “Fucks dat, yous not killing mes, right?”
“Yes. That is our understanding. I will not terminate life support against your wishes. Guys, this is something that will probably never happen. It’s not something to worry about.”
“Wait.” Nathan had his thinking face on, and Charles sat back, knowing this train could take a long time to arrive at the station. “What if we’re in comas ... and you’re in a coma. Who makes the decision for us?”
“It would default back to your parents.”
“What?”
If I was not around, your parents would make the decision.”
“And then we could decide for you?”
“We no kills you, Charles!” Toki said enthusiastically.
“I appreciate the sentiment, but you won’t have to make that decision. My sister has my power of attorney. Do you guys remember when I was hit in the head and I was in the hospital for a few days?” It was hard to get them to remember last week, much less years ago, so he knew it was a stretch. “Toki, this was before your time. We didn’t have a contract and there was a concert where I was injured, and someone approached you after the show with a contract and you wanted to sign, but you couldn’t sign without me.”
“I remember!” Murderface sat up a little. “Your hair wasch burnt off!”
“Yes, because the board that fell on me was on fire.”
“You schmelled.”
“I’m sure I did. And the lawyers for the label called my sister to see if she could sign the contract on my behalf. She came to the hospital and refused.”
“Oh right. We were so pissed at her.” Now it was coming back to Nathan. “But she wanted to wait for you to wake up.”
“Which I did.”
“And you didn’t sign.”
“It was a bad contract. She knew what she was doing. That’s why I authorized her to make decisions for me when I couldn’t make them myself.” Charles was really amazed that they were still keeping the general thread of the conversation, but maybe the idea of killing each other or having him die on them was a little more engaging than pie charts about profit margins.
“So ... would she do it?” Nathan pried.
“Would she do what?”
“If you were, you know, a carrot. Would she pull the plug?”
“That’s a private matter. And I repeat - you don’t have to worry about this stuff. We’re all safe, we’re all healthy, and no one’s talking about pulling any plugs except some people on the news who don’t know what they’re talking about. No one is going to die.”
“Excepts Toki’s pets,” Skwisgaar said, and Toki punched him. And rightfully so. “Ow! You’s supposed-lies to be stoppings doing dat!”
“Yous not insults mes!”
This led to the usual round of bickering, which the others happily joined, and Charles was relieved. He did not want to tell them that his living will stipulated that he did want not remain in a vegetative state indefinitely, only until 2015. After than, if there was still a working hospital system, he wanted his organs going elsewhere. But it was a grisly thought, even for him, and he was much happier watching the boys fight over incoherent shit for the rest of the meeting.
Afterward, he found Pickles, who was in a drugged stupor in his room. Charles supposed it was only fair. “They called a meeting without you to talk about the lawsuit. They were under the impression that you’re trying to pull the plug on your bandmates.”
“Huh?” Pickles was aware enough for a conversation, but even that took him a moment to wrap his mind around. “Did yeh tell ‘em no? I would never fuckin’ do dat?”
“Yes, that is exactly what I told them.”
“Good.” Pickles didn’t have the best concentration either. “Wanna git high? ‘s good fer you. All mild stuff, I pramise.”
“No, thank you.”
“Dis about the Special K thing?”
“No, it’s about the me having a busy schedule of things to do ... thing.”
“Yeh know yer supposed ta relax, Charlie.”
“That is also on the schedule.” He added silently with an inner smile, And none of your damn business.
To be continued...