Jonohkada

CHAPTER 15

The walk to Julie’s place of employment is pleasant. She only snaps at me when I take too long to gaze at our surroundings, causing me to profusely apologize and hurry after her. We leave the nicely designed buildings and well-kept plascrete footpaths with spindly trees in wrought metal cages in exchange for more serviceable coal slag and fly ash composite brick structures. It is into one of these drab but serviceable dwellings that Julie leads me, and my hearts sink as we step into a den of stressed, downtrodden humans who are floored atop a wall-to-wall orange and brown low pile woven fabric that is an absolute monstrosity on our eyes.

The instantaneous ocular pain is amplified by the lighting, which is flickering rapidly enough to trigger every being who remotely suffers from any degree of photosensitive epilepsy. The lights also seem to be the source of a hair-raising 120 hertz frequency that’s instantly irritating my ears. The buzzing hum gives the impression that we’ve just entered the belly of a slightly perturbed beast.

A labyrinth of work stations stand before us like a maze of misery. Stacks of papers, so many papers, fill many of the stations. Each station is occupied by a human who is operating what I know from my studies is called a phone and a data module. Some module sets are large and blocky devices, while others are slim and compact.

At some stations, there are two humans, and at each of these pairings, without fail, one of them is a very distressed human, while the other human appears emotionally numb.

“What is this horrible place?” I whisper.

“Hell,” Julie tells me. “Otherwise known as a law office.” She leads us straight into the heart of the labyrinth, stops at an empty station of suffering, and indicates the utilitarian chair that is paired to the station. It has a high backrest designed for humans, not hobs.

My wings will not be comfortable here.

Julie rolls it away from the station’s desk surface and aims it in my body’s direction. “Sit.”

I obediently fold myself onto it. Immediately a state of low spirits seeps into me, as if the very furniture of this place causes a loss of hope and courage. My wings are indeed trapped behind me, even more cramped in their cloak prison than before. My posterior detects the lack of ergonomic padding necessary to make this a comfortable perch for any length of time. Most unfortunately, it’s my understanding that we will be locked in this space for a minimum of eight human hours. I’m suddenly certain my posterior will regret this.

Julie slaps a sheet of thin parchment paper onto the desktop space in front of me, causing me to startle. “Put your signature on this.”

Dutifully, I place my left thumb and finger over the area she’s indicating, leaning my weight on that hand as I carefully make the character markings that represent my name in English Earthen language with the writing instrument in my right hand, which, I read, is the dominant hand humans use across their planet. “What have I signed?” I ask, curious.

“A confidentiality agreement. People trust their lawyer with their every dirty secret because lawyers—and legal secretaries and the like—keep our fricking mouth shut, and you will too. Now sign here.” With a brightly painted fingernail, she taps another box.

I do as she’s ordered.

She raises the lid on the compact device on my desk, revealing a large data console screen. “HR is going to need to set you up with all the passwords. While I deal with them, you can log in under me.” She logs me into the data module under her own credentials, which is a great risk to herself. She informs me thusly, warning, “Don’t fuck anything up, or it’s my ass. And if I get my ass chewed, you’re getting your ass kicked. Got it?”

“I think so,” I tell her worriedly. “Thank you for trusting me,” I say.

She gives me a piercing stare and grumbles, “I hope I don’t regret this.”

Swallowing hard, I come into silent agreement with her, fervently hoping that I don’t give her any cause to regret trusting me either.

With an impatient wave, she indicates a palm-sized controller on the desktop in front of me. “Scroll to the calendar app.”

Brows knitting, I look at her fearfully. “Scroll?”

She sighs loudly and knocks me in the chest with her arm as she reaches across me to crush her hand over the palm controller. She yanks it back and forth on the desk surface, and a white arrow jerks across the data console screen. The arrow rapidly blinks over some kind of icon, and a clicking noise pops the air. The thin data module below it makes an unhealthy grinding sound and the screen fills with lightly colored squares in a lunar brace formation.

“This is your calendar. Check this constantly to make sure you’re on track. And for your first trick, you’re going to schedule phone conferences. Let me show you how.”

Rapid clicks emit from the palm device she directs around a square palm controller corral to the right side of the data console screen.

“Okay, this is the program. You enter it by clicking this icon, okay?”

“All right…”

“Once you’re here, your client list is on the left. The available time slots are on the right. This is super easy, just pick the hour when the client should have a phone conference with an attorney, and as long as they don’t overlap, you’re good.” Julie retracts her arm and waves for me to take over the operation of the palm controller once more.

Hesitantly, I lay my hand over it. “How do I know what hour the clients and attorney prefer?”

“You could call them, but I don’t recommend it.” Julie’s lips press into a line. “The attorneys never show up for any of the conferences anyway.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“So I’m to select random conference times for conferences that these attorneys won’t be attending?”

“That’s right.”

“Are the clients aware that the attorneys won’t—”

“No, the clients think we’re here to help them. Some firms care, but that’s really not how this one likes to operate. Anyway, you randomly match clients to time slots, email the clients to let them think that they’ll be having a conference, and then you email the attorneys so that they can ignore you and pull a literal no-call, no-show on our clients.”

“This seems rather inefficient.”

“Yeah, well, we get paid for the inefficiency.”

“Who pays us?”

“The firm.”

“Who pays the firm?”

“The clients.”

“The ones we’re treating inefficiently.”

“Yep.”

My mouth opens, then closes. When I regain the ability to speak, I point out, “But that’s not fair…”

Julie tips her head in agreement. “You got it. Next we’ll have you draft the DocuSigns to collect e-signatures.”

“All right…”

“You’ll do fine. Once you learn to do one, you’ll know how to do them all. Which is good, because you’ll send no less than a million by the end of the day.”

“Ah,” I say, feeling doomed. “I’ll begin working on them right away. Thank you for trusting me with your login credentials for this data module.”

“Jonoh? Stop calling it a data module.”

“Oh.” I meet her gaze, especially curious. “What should I—”

“Call it a labtop.”

I hesitate, then repeat it to be sure I heard her correctly. “A lab top?”

“Lap top,” she enunciates, widening her eyes in a way that makes my wings cringe beneath my fitted shirt.

“Sorry,” I tell her. “It sounded to my ears as if you said—”

“I did,” she confirms snidely. “Us natives call it a labtop because we have lazy diction.” She purses her lips bad temperedly. “Or in my case, no dicktion, which is half the reason for my mood.”

“Yes, princess,” I say agreeably.

She sighs happily and pats my shoulder. “All the cutthroat employees here—that would be every employee—are going to love you.”

“Really?” I ask, brightening.

Her expertly plucked brows have fixed higher on her head, very firmly. “Oh yeah. We’re going to take advantage of your over cooperation and that awful need to please until it’s straight up abuse and we”ve sucked every drop of agreeable blood from your sweet little soul.”

“Oh,” I say, a little less brightly.

Julie gives me an unsettlingly sharp-toothed smile. “Have a great first day.”

***

I schedule meetings aplenty and collect e-signatures until I’m certain I’ll be able to collect them in my sleep. Just when my stomach has begun its first protest that it would like rations in order to live, Julie brusquely collects me and guides me to a room called a break room, where I face several of my coworkers who are breaking up their shifts with predetermined periods of company-allotted rest and ration consumption.

I recognize a few of them. Not by sight, because although I’ve technically been working nearly side by side for several human time measures called hours with these humans, we didn’t visually make introductions due to fabric-walled partitions that kept our workspaces cubed off separately. No, I recognize a few by their scents, which I became accustomed to while we worked near each other, and I can now associate faces to their individual odors.

A pleasantly perfumed female who sits only a few cubicles down from my left exclaims, “Get this, her soon to be ex-husband Facetimes with his mom every day.” She has emphasized the last two words in a sort of horror-struck disbelief.

Everybody around the table groans.

Slowly, I turn to take in the room. Just as the humans on my planet—who we consulted for direction in how best to design their need-attending stations—directed, there is a coffeeing station, although it”s a rudimentary one. A large machine seems to offer packaged meals, and another machine has colorful canisters of some sort. Round tables with human chairs—without wing support, not surprisingly, but somehow these are more uncomfortable-looking than the chairs in our work area, which is confusing since the purpose of this area is for resting from working in those very terrible chairs—are spaced around the floor, but the humans are all huddled at one table. Glancing at the other empty tables, I can find nothing amiss. Therefore, I ascertain that the strong human drive to remain in herds is causing these humans to clump together.

And today, this very day, I am one of them.

With feelings of great enthusiasm and eagerness rejuvenating my system, I fit my frame into a seat, excited to join ranks with humans. I look around their surprised faces with confusion. “Why is this male’s affectionate behavior for his dam… er, his mother, that is, groan worthy? Until recently, I have communicated with my… my mother—” my mother figure, anyway, “—at least once a day.”

Collectively, everyone in the room winces. Someone hisses, “At least?!”

My brow has furrowed. “Sometimes twice a day. Or more.”

They look down at my hands, which I have inquisitively folded in front of me on the tabletop. Their eyes go back up to mine. “Are you married?” one female asks.

I smile proudly. “I have a mate.”

Someone gasps.

I draw back from everyone, frowning in concern. “Is that… bad?”

They all stare at me, jaws dropped, until one female, who smells like a simulated form of the cookies I crumbled for Hannah and Julie’s coffees, covers her face, laughing. “Aww, geez. It’s always the pretty ones.”

I blink at her. “What is always the pretty ones?”

She shakes her head. “Mama’s boys. Your poor significant other.”

Deducing her meaning, I think of Hannah, and feel alarm. “Why do you say that?”

She rolls her eyes, but not mockingly. She seems very resigned. “Because mama’s boys come with tyrant monster-in-laws who don’t want to let their pretty baby boys go.” When she sends me a pointed, grim stare, I have to force myself not to cringe or flinch, for some reason feeling pinned. “Bet you ten bucks this mama you call once or twice or more a day is an overbearing, controlling, opinionated lady, right?”

“Well…” I hedge. “I wouldn’t label her behaviors negatively. She’s trying to help.”

My office companions stare at me as if I’m an alien from another planet.

“Oh no,” another female groans. I recognize her scent too. Her pleasant fragrance calls to mind some sort of crisp alien fruit. “In case you didn’t know, the Everybody Loves Raymond show is not cute in real life.”

Before I can ask her what this Everybody Loves Raymond show pertains to, the other female sends me a pitying look. “Marie was a textbook monster-in-law. Classic enmeshment 101. This kind of mother wants her son dependent on her in all the ways.”

The alien fruit-scented female shudders. “MILs like Marie are nightmares.”

My brow couldn’t be more furrowed. “Why?”

She wrinkles her nose. “They’re nightmares because they get territorial over their son.”

“Why?” I ask again.

She shrugs, making the lapels of her dress shirt bump her dangling earrings. “Usually because she doesn’t have a husband.”

“Or she doesn’t bond right with her husband,” says the female whose scent is reminiscent of daybreak coffee cookies. She leans forward and folds her arms over her chest, giving me a sad, sad stare. “Either way she raises her son to be her little husband.”

“The son-husband,” says a male human who smells of a cool, bracing herb every time he exhales.

The daybreak coffee cookies female dips her head in a nod, agreeing with him. “Her baby boy is perfect for her. He loves her unconditionally. Unlike most faithless men, her son-husband will never abandon her. He gives her love and attention on demand, and she raises him to be the spouse she wishes she’d married. When he’s old enough to want an intimate relationship with a woman who is not his mother, she begrudgingly lets him get a side piece—maybe even marry one—but Mama will be threatened. This new woman’s job is to take away her son—you know, ‘leave and cleave?’ The natural order of things? But for her, it’s literally her son-husband cheating on her with a homewrecker, so Mama is almost programmed to hate the ‘homewrecker,’ and run her off.”

“My stars,” I breathe, horrified. “This really happens?”

“Oh yeah. Behind your back she’ll belittle and harass her, and in front of you she will be so overcritical, stirring up negativity and pointing out every flaw, that the flaws will be all you see. She’ll create drama and employ triangulation like a maestro until you hate your girl too.”

I draw back, nearly offended. “I would never!”

But my strident negation does not assuage anyone’s lack of faith in my ability to see Hannah without the critical lens Gracie will view her with in the near future. The female speaking to me gives me a resigned look, and as I pan my gaze around the table of my coworkers, I see all of them are giving me varying subdued, saddened looks. My eyes are drawn back to the simulated cookie-smelling female as she warns me, “We see it all the time.”

A male wearing smart-looking glasses folds his hands in front of himself and gives me a sympathetic stare. “At this firm, I can tell you that sixty-four percent of the couples getting divorced cite their interfering in-laws as a contribution of their divorce. Not infidelity, not even falling out of love rates higher. It”s interference from in-laws who don”t allow healthy boundaries and a natural separation of families that break them apart,” he confirms.

I appreciate him providing data. I will be researching this at length. “How horrid.” Silently I worry, thinking, How do I prevent this from happening? Because Gracie has demonstrated a degree of aggressively intrusive, protectively possessive behaviors with females who were becoming interested in me. None of them were my mate however, so the behavior wasn’t unwelcome. And Gracie surely will treat Hannah with love, because Hannah is my mate.

The male human, whose glasses give his face a very wise aura, sits up in his chair, placing his forearms on the table and knitting his fingers together. “Your mom runs your family like the mafia, right? She’s the head of everything, and everyone has to listen to her, because if mama ain’t happy, nobody’s happy?” he guesses, shaking his head, his lips twisted up in an unhappy sort of smile, as if he has experience with this special form of suffering. “If you get married to your girl but you don’t tell your mom to back off, eventually you’re going to find yourself here, getting divorced. Tale as old as time.”

I shake my head, at a loss.

The male whose exhales scent of a refreshing herb—that tickles my mucous membranes and activates the cold-sensitive receptors on my face—gives me a pitying look. “Don”t get us wrong, there are lots and lots of loving moms who let their sons date and marry and drop grandkids she lets the couple raise. Moms like these have healthy boundaries where she hardly interferes. But those couples are happy and don’t end up here on our doorstep.”

One of the females rises from her seat and crosses the room to drop her disposable cup into a waste receptacle. As she returns, her footwear clicking, she cautions, “You’ll see a ton of the unhappy cases since you work here. You’ll see it over and over. Unless the man stands up and leaves his mom, and puts some firm boundaries between her and his wife, his relationship will be cursed.”

“Boundaries?” I ask tentatively.

The cold-sensitive receptor activating-scented male, whose jaw is working as if he’s grinding his molars on a substance that requires much mastication, snorts. “You need to tell your mom what you won’t tolerate. And you need to stop tolerating your mom getting her claws in your woman. When your mom goes after your girl about anything—and I mean anything—be careful you don’t immediately jump on your mom’s side. If they’re going at it, don’t protect your mom but leave your wife undefended. It undermines the married couple’s relationship when their partner takes their parents’ side and doesn’t stand up for their spouse. Unfortunately, like Chrissy said. It happens allll the time.”

“Man, that’s a marriage killer,” the daybreak cookies female comments morosely.

The first male is shaking his head. “It is.” He pins me with a serious stare. “You need to stand up to your mama before you ruin your life. And your woman’s life. I’ve worked here six years, and can’t get over how often I hear people say their marriage would have a fighting chance if they could only divorce their in-laws.” He looks at me meaningfully, and his look pierces me to my soul as if he knows this is something I need to consider deeply for the safety of my own relationship. “That’s sad, man.”

“This is heartsbreaking,” I agree.

I think guiltily of Gracie, of how callously and abrasively she tends to treat people, perhaps especially women.

And most definitely women who show interest in me.

Some women have fought back and attempted to pursue a non-mate status tryst with me, but eventually, even the strong-willed females buckle to Gracie’s oppressive aggression.

“What a terrible pattern,” I say.

The crisp-fruit scented female nods. “It gets worse. If she lets you two stay together, someday, your mom will see your woman as a breeder and she’ll push you two to have her grandchildren. Except she doesn’t want grandchildren, she wants your children. Inevitably, when the birth mother objects to the mother-in-law butting in and trying to mother your kids as well as get in the middle of your marriage, MIL will go nuclear on her. She’ll chase your wife off so she can ‘help’ her son raise his children, taking his wife’s place, creating a very special screwed up family for yet another messed up, enmeshed generation where she presides over them all like a queen.”

I swallow hard, thinking of all the times Gracie has joked that she is a queen.

Problematically, Hannah is extremely unassertive—nearly as unassertive as I am. As I imagine how Gracie might operate with Hannah if Hannah won’t stand up for herself, an alarm builds in my hearts. I feel hammered with the concern that my friend Isla was right. As was Dohrein, Gracie’s mate. My relationship with Gracie must change. Immediately. Irrevocably.

Deeply contemplating the sage wisdom that has been dispensed to me, I clear my throat. I attempt to adjust my spine. It”s currently impressed against my wings which are crushed against my dreadfully uncomfortable resting area seat.

As my new coworkers drift to interdepartmental talk, I draw out my Comm and access the human Internet—accessible thanks to the Na’riths; this is the only privilege I originally paid them their exorbitant fees for—to verify their claims. Just as my coworkers asseverated, the top reasons reported for marital and dating tension indeed seem to revolve around interfering in-laws. And just as my coworkers avouched, lack of privacy with in-laws, in-laws who force their opinions, and partner’s taking their parents’ side against their spouse are top destructive factors.

I’m jolted out of my data search when someone presses a decoratively folded sheet of parchment against my arm.

“Sign this card.”

With no delay, I obediently pluck the writing instrument they offer me and start to sign—

“Uh, there’s a card inside…” a female chirps.

“What?” I ask, confused.

Taking the parchment from me, she opens a clever flap and draws out a second folded parchment. She splits it open. “Sign it in here with everybody else…” she says strangely. “On the card.”

I do exactly as she’s ordered.

“It’s Lacy’s birthed day,” she goes on. “It’s a surprise, but we all chipped in and got her balloons and the margarita blender she needed. This will be her third one since she started working this job so it’s the least we could do. Wow… that’s a weird signature…”

My hearts slam into the stratosphere. I was so distracted with thoughts of Hannah facing Gracie and flustered with signing the wrong place, I forgot myself and signed wrongly. I forgot to use English Earthen characters. “Umm, it’s in my language.”

“Where are you from?” she asks.

“Do you know where Crimea is?” A sanctioned misdirection, and as I said, per my instructors, a safe one since absolutely no other human will have heard of the Earthen location, let alone be familiar with it.

Everyone winces.

Experiencing a sinking sensation behind my ribcage, I ask, “What? What is amiss?”

“Oh man, how do you feel with what’s happened in Crimea?” questions the male who is masticating on some soft, shapeless mass that is evidently very fibrous.

I freeze. Then I ask, “Something has happened to Crimea?”

My office companions stare at me yet again as if I’m an alien from another planet.

“Don’t you watch the news?” someone asks.

“Does everyone in Crimea wear cloaks like that?” the cookie-smelling female asks, eyeing me. “It doesn’t really fit business casual. Are you allowed to wear that in the office?”

One male rolls his eyes. “Don’t be a bitch.” He transfers his attention to me, and advises, “You look cool, man. If anyone tries to call you on the carpet for your style, tell them you identify as a phantom.”

The woman ignores him. She narrows her eyes on me. “Fine. It looks cool. But why are you wearing a cloak?”

Before I can formulate an answer, let alone an explanation, someone new enters the rest area for humans partaking in their predetermined period of company allotted rest and ration consumption time.

And everyone at my table shouts, “HAPPY BIRTHED DAY!” …except for me.

Catching on, I grin in delight. “Ah, happy birthed day!” I chime in belatedly but heartily, because this must be the person whose day of birth we are coming together in office camaraderie to celebrate.

A brightly wrapped gift that would draw the eye of any Gryfala is pressed into the female’s hands. The recipient brims with happiness; her eyes shimmer as she looks around the dimly lit breaking area with a bright smile. “Aww, guys, you shouldn’t have, thank you! What in the world did you get me?”

“It”s a surprise!” I exclaim, caught up in this excitement.

The female, who is certainly Lacy, grins happily and pretends to shake her somewhat heavy-looking gift. Unfortunately, she looks directly at me as she playfully demands, “Oooh, tell me! Is it—”

“It’s a blender that the other secretaries chipped in to get you along with things called balloons,” I obediently blurt.

The room goes dead silent.

No.

No, Jonohkada, you did not just ruin the buoyant expectation filling the entire room.

Except… I can tell that with my obedient outburst, I have done exactly this. Horrified, I drop my head back and grimace at the ceiling.

In the crackling silence, I wince and lower my head to take in the other occupants in the room. My table of companions are staring at me in disbelief. But as the tension in the break room thickens, their expressions are morphing to cold disappointment.

Of all the things to inspire in others, disappointment is the worst of all. My wings crumple so tightly against my back, my chair becomes a fraction more comfortable.

“Why did you do that?” the cookie-scented female asks me, sounding justifiably perturbed.

“I’m sorry,” I say. I want to tell them that I answered because Lacy, the recipient of the birthed day gift, asked me to tell her, but because humans don’t have an obligation to obey as hobs like myself do, they will not understand my very real compulsion. In fact, if I attempt to explain that it was the female’s question that triggered me, they may feel that I’m blaming Lacy, the very one we are honoring in remembrance of her birthed day, for my outburst, and feel more upset.

“I’m… very sorry,” is all I can add. But nobody in the room thaws.

Fortuitously, Julie chooses that moment to retrieve me. “Jonoh! Come here.”

I nearly upend the table, I rush to my feet so swiftly.

Perhaps at my haste to respond to her unintentional command, Julie’s head rears back for the briefest reaction—and then she bares her teeth.

I reach her side. “What is the matter you called me for?”

“Your break time is up. Sorry that I worded that as an order.”

“No trouble.” Then I frown. “My coworkers were settled for their break times before I arrived. Are their break times lengthier because they have worked at this establishment longer?”

“No, they’re just lazy shits.” Julie is watching the room behind me, her gaze shrewd. “Things looked tense in there.” Her eyes scan every human, many of whom, I see as I risk a glance back, are clustered around Lacy and are emitting resentful grumbles amongst each other. My ears are unfortunately sharp enough to pick up some of what they are saying, and all of it is quite unflattering about my person.

“What’s going on?” Julie asks. “Why is everyone giving you a dirty look?”

I sigh. “The birthing day recipient accidentally ordered me to tell her what our coworkers gifted her,” I say glumly. “I ruined the suspense element of the gift.”

“Mother of macaroni,” Julie sighs. And without another word, she leads me back to my desk.