Chapter 37 – For What It’s Worth

Reedley.
The Cloister.

Eppie sat with her friend and waited for Mio to process everything: the song, the implication, the message.

Once her friend had dried her eyes, she held up the cassette.

“Mio, I have a plan,” Eppie said to the girl swallow her tears on the stone bench. “I will get justice for us both, and it need not involve you personally if that’s what you choose. Will you listen?”

Her friend nodded.

“Good,” Eppie sat beside the girl again. “In the Spring Gala, the most prominent role will be for the Classically Classic, Titus Andronicus. I’ve got a good thing going with Cooper and Costello, and there’s a good chance that Principal Burton is on our side. Therefore, here’s what I propose…”

She told her friend about Antigone, about Titus Andronicus, about the reflexive tragedy that is Hamlet. Her [Script Analysis] was on overdrive.

Mio nodded, then nodded again, and her eyes grew wide.

“So,” Eppie rested her illustrative hands. “What do you think?”

“It’s…” Mio’s eyes held only awe and disbelief. “It’s incredible. Are you… Are you really Euphemia? Eppie could never have come up with something so… Machiavellian.”

“I am every inch Euphemia,” Eppie was a bit tired of saying the same thing over and over. “And I am also the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father, or Iago, take your pick.”

“Your plan, it’s incredible,” Mio smiled at the cobblestone floor, then at the heavens. “The layer upon layers. It’s like you’re not from this world.”

“I fell from heaven,” Eppie horse-laughed to offset the awkwardness. “Well, from the fourth storey of LAPA’s main building, if you wanted to be pedantic about it.”

Mio stared, then she laughed for a long while, while Eppie felt more and more self-conscious wearing her [Persona]’s skin.

“Whoever you are, Euphemia Fontaine.” Luciana wiped the tears from her eyes. “Thank you.”

The girls returned from the orange orchard holding hands. Not just touching, but truly joined in some inexplicable way the others could not comprehend. Father Parson saw them through the nave, rallied the others, then gave them his blessings.

“Come, it’s Thanksgiving,” he said to them. “Eat first. Talk later. You can meet Mr and Mrs Mio as well.”

The Parish hall behind the church was newer, but it was still a rural community building. The Thanksgiving luncheon was a day-long and communal: families from anywhere in the area and beyond were welcome, and they brought their own contributions. Everything was shared, everything abundant.

The sheer volume of people naturally meant the festivities spilt out of the hall and into the courtyard. Tables magically appeared as if by sorcery, dragged from the interior of the old hall by men who could heft entire dinner tables with one arm. These they laid on the sun-hardened ground, below the orange groves that grew here and there around the church, forming a long line. Tableclothes were laid, made from bedsheets hemmed in blue and turquoise, made by hand by the local ladies, bringing colour and life.

The food was already there, and they were still arriving by vanloads. There was a cast-iron pot the size of Eppie’s torso, carried by two men who grunted with every step. Looking inside, Eppie salivated at the posole, its broth a deep orange from dried chillies, and the pork falling apart as the men moved. On another table, someone had brought a butcher’s worth of roasted chicken thighs, burnt at the right places, oily and inviting. Tamales were stacked thigh-high, spewing steam into the chilling air.

Entire fields of Tupperware held towers of rice, fried rice, paella, beans, pinto and edamame.

Mio’s people, the Nikkei families, had set up at the far end with the confidence of people who knew their food was a notch above the standard Spanish fare. They had Onigiri wrapped in brushed nori, blocks of perfect tamagoyaki cut into serving sizes. Pickled daikon was stacked as high as forearms, and row upon rows of sushi glimmered like living fish on hand-carved sushi boats made by someone’s handy uncle.

The kids were wildlings. They zoomed at waist height, in sections and from station to another. Each national dish an adventure waiting to unfold.

The soundscape of the world outside the cloister came in layers. The sweet percussion of spoons on plates, ladles on pots. The conversations in Spanish and in Japanese, the sound of kids speaking English with a Californian accent. The collective consciousness of the community bathed Eppie in a supernatural warmth.

Eppie watched all of this and said very little.

She knew now that Mio being here was the right choice.

Mio sat across from her with a plate she was working through slowly, describing LAPA in the past tense, the way people describe places they aren’t sure they’ll return to. She invokes the names of her beloved instructors carefully, as if the details might dissolve if handled too roughly. Dr Cooper, she said. He was always her guardian angel. Costello, her friend and confidante. She named a lunch spot. She named a corridor where she had sat with friends in October. She spoke without regret, like everything had been a Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The afternoon light moved through the orange trees and turned the ground gold.

Eppie ate voraciously; she ate roasted chicken, mounds of tamales, small hills of sweet potatoes, chilli, beans, and cornbread in cast-iron pans, which was the right thing to do.

Mio ate slowly, smiling now and then, praising Eppie’s music, dreaming a little.

Eppie groaned when she could eat no more, then ate two more bowls of flan brought by Uncle Paco.

Eric stood outside with the men, drinking beer and laughing, fitting in perfectly in his jeans and flannel, talking about trucks and home improvement, making new friends.

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Zara was recognised by many of the church folk; she was, after all, a minor local celebrity, but she had not brought her guitar.

An hour later, Eppie found her Newfoundland in a food coma, barely able to move, sitting semi-comatose under the church arches, looking at the valley around them.

“Did you find your peace?” he asked.

“I did,” Eppie sat beside him. Without asking, she rested her head on his shoulder. “Thanks, Eric.”

“We still going after the Chens?”

“Yes, and no. We’re going after them in our own way. In a way that leaves William nowhere to hide, where the law cannot delay.”

“I see.” Eric yawned. “Tell me about it later. What’s the plan now?”

“Did you get the song I just sang?”