The Nineteenth Annual Clairvoyants' Crystal Ball is in three days, and Milla Vodello hasn't got any earrings.
Or rather, she's got dozens and dozens of them - hot pink or pale purple, soft peach or fiery red, glittering silver or pure, opalescent white. Sometimes, combinations of two or three or more of those colors. But exactly none of them are a dark, shimmery bottle green, and truly no other color will go with this dress. The dress isn't that color - it's a rich violet, with just enough reddish-pink in it to keep her skin tone from washing out. All of her girlfriends have told Milla how fabulous she looks in it, regardless of the way it deviates from her usual style. But violet-red-pink earrings with a violet-red-pink dress would be too much.
But the trim is bottle green, and her shoes are bottle green, so what Milla Vodello needs are the best, boldest bottle-green earrings she can find.
She's just having trouble finding them.
Milla whisks through the mall, tall boots clacking on the tiled floors. Today is her last day where she will have any sort of time in which to find these earrings, and since the mall closes in about an hour, she is quickly running out of time. She feels like she's been in every store at least twice, going in circles, comparing and contrasting, but nothing is the right color, nothing has the right flash. She wishes it were convenient for her to poke around psychically, desperate for any extra time, but in a place like this there are too many people and too much mental noise for it to be effective. The whole thing is threatening to give her a headache.
Milla is just about to give up and leave the mall, prepared to attend the ball with no earrings at all if need be, when she crosses through a department store on her way out and, from afar, sees them. A perfect pair of earrings.
Right next to another, different perfect pair.
"Oh, no," Milla groans, crossing slowly to them where they hang on the rack. Is this day just conspiring against her? Each pair has its own fabulous draw, and she doesn't know how she'll possibly choose between them. The pair she spotted first are wide, flat discs, with swirling patterns etched ever-so-slightly into their surfaces that echo the faint patterns in her dress almost exactly. But the pair to their right intrigues Milla, too. They are smaller, thicker, and sort of oblong-shaped, and each has a stony vein of earthy tan running faintly down the middle. Their appearance doesn't match as well, but their style, their mod non-Milla-ness, fits the style of the dress to a T.
So what now? She can obviously buy both pair, but she can still only wear one to the Crystal Ball. She knows she will regret any decision the instant she makes it...
And then suddenly, the solution is perfectly clear: ask Sasha.
Milla focuses intently on each pair of earrings in turn, until she is certain she has clear mental images of them both. Then she calls to mind as accurate a picture of her dress and shoes as she can manage from memory. Concentrating as hard as she can, fingers pressed lightly to her temples, Milla broadcasts all three images in Sasha's direction.
Moments later, in hard blue-green lines like a digital clock, Milla merely receives the number 2.
She smiles and lifts the oblong pair from the rack, not even bothering with the others. Somehow, Milla finds herself realizing that those were really the pair she'd preferred all along. She just can't seem to figure out why her fashion choices appear to be shifting a little lately, and why she is so drawn to that deep bottle green.
-xxx-
The Ball is a disaster.
Milla and her date, a good friend of hers name Jean that works for the French branch of the Psychonauts, arrive fashionably late - they miss out on a small chunk of the party schmoozing, but will be able to see all of this year's speaker, a clairvoyant philanthropist named Cassie Fishburne. True to her nature, Milla "does the party thing" (as Jean calls it with a laugh), talking with other notable psychics in her field, laughing at their jokes, telling a few lighthearted stories of her own.
Just before the speaker is set to begin, Milla excuses herself to the ladies' room to freshen up, leaving Jean with some other handsome, finely-dressed men like himself to keep him occupied. Passing through the bathroom's exterior, Milla's earrings swaying in the mirror catch her eye, and she smiles at herself fleetingly before entering the nearest stall and locking the door behind her.
She's just about to leave when another woman whisks into the bathroom, raving on a cell phone. "What do you mean my speech won't get television coverage on more than one network?" she spits. A pause, then, "I don't give a damn, Harry! If this isn't going to boost my public opinion ratings at least three points - no, I don't care! What good are the children if they don't set me up to beat out Zanotto as president of PsyCorp?"
Milla gasps - and then, less discreetly, flushes her toilet.
"Oh shit, Harry, I'll have to call you back - but this conversation isn't over," hisses none other than Ms. Fishburne herself, as Milla steps out of the stall with a look on her face that says she is very much not "doing the party thing."
"Hello, miss. How's your night been - "
"Don't you try to pull that sort of thing on me, honey? Do you know who I am?"
Cassie panics, and in that split second of dropped guard, Milla invades the woman's head with a little clairvoyance of her own. In her mind, Milla is all hips and fluttering eyelashes, with a vacant look on her face and, Milla notices, slightly blonder hair.
Milla snaps back to her own brain and snarls. "I am not some stupid bimbo! I am Agent Milla Vodello of the Psychonauts!"
Cassie panics even more.
"And I heard every word."
Milla advances on her, towering with her stylish green heels in addition to her already above-average height. "I could almost forgive you for being a corporate puta instead of a caring person," she says acidly. "It's despicable, but I've encountered enough of you to know that you can't be changed. But to threaten my boss and his integrity is one thing - and to speak that way about children is another. I can't believe you."
Milla storms from the bathroom, on the prowl for Jean. "Come on, we're leaving," she tells him as soon as she finds him, but he resists.
"I said let's go, Jean."
"Ahh, Milla, ma cherie, why must we go so soon?"
" - Are you drunk, Jean?"
"Who, me? Of course not. I mean, this champagne, c'est magnifique, but - "
"Oh my goodness, look at you!"
"What, what? What is wrong?"
"Jean, can we just leave, please."
"Ah ha ha, you are so eager to come back to my place for the night?"
"Jean!"
"You must wait, sweet Milla," he says to her, as if scolding a little girl, but that is the last thing in the world that would make Milla wait at this point, and she runs from the banquet hall (as tastefully as possible, of course) and stands in the parking lot, nearly in tears. This idiot woman was supposed to be a role model. Jean was supposed to be her friend. This was supposed to be a good night.
Instead, it's just freezing cold. Milla has left her jacket inside at the coat check, but she exited too dramatically to go back in and retrieve it now. So she huddles in on herself, arms crossed over her chest for warmth, and thanks God that at least it isn't raining.
And then she calls Sasha.
"Hello, Agent Vodello."
"Oh, Sasha darling, thank goodness. I'm sorry to interrupt your meeting - I know it's obviously very important, or you could have gotten away to go to the Crystal Ball - "
"Er, no - no problem. Continue."
"Tonight has been terrible, Sasha. The speaker is a liar and a conspirator, Jean turned into a jerk - I just want to go home." Milla worries she may be pouting, but she almost feels she is justified, just this once.
"I can give you a ride if necessary, Agent Vodello."
"Oh, could you? I feel terrible, interrupting your meeting."
"It - it's nothing," Sasha assures her. "I'll be there momentarily."
And momentarily, he is, in his sleek, boxy black car; and by then, it has started to rain, and Milla can keep the rain off with a psychic shield but the cold still permeates through. She is overjoyed to climb into Sasha's passenger-side door and discover that the seats are heated.
"Thank you so much, darling," she says, over and over again. "Thank you so much."
"You know my apartment in town isn't very far from here," he tells her. "It was not out of my way."
"Oh, was the meeting in your apartment?"
"Ah - that is - "
"I knew it!" she cries, chuckling through her shivers. "You just didn't want to go to the ball! There was no meeting."
Sasha sighs. "Things like that are your element, Agent Vodello, not mine."
Milla sighs, too, heavier. "You know I've told you not to call me that." She looks at him now - his dark-tinted prescription glasses even at night (since he's nearly blind without them), his slightly loose-fitting blue-grey turtleneck (nothing fits Sasha snugly, he's skin and bones underneath). And his gloves, smooth black leather, regulation things, that he never takes off, even off the job when he's allowed to.
"Yes, Agent Vodello," he says, "I am aware of that."
They continue to drive back to Milla's loft in silence. Street lights slicked with rain cast red and green halos onto Sasha's nearly-colorless skin. His face is composed, showing nothing, and Milla knows that if she tries to look inside his mind, it will be schooled into a black-and-white cube that is equally impassive. She understands this kind of fortitude in normal situations, but she's never understood why he goes through all the effort to keep it in place all the time.
He pulls over in front of her building, with her side of the car on the sidewalk side, like a gentleman. "Goodnight, Agent Vodello. I'm sorry your evening did not go as planned."
"Me too," she says with a small smile. "Goodnight, Agent Nein."
As she's ascending the steps to her building's door, searching in her handbag for the key, and as Sasha's car is pulling away, a soft telepathic message comes to her:
The earrings look stunning, Milla.
-xxx-
At work the following Tuesday, Milla cannot focus.
The Cassie Fishburne scandal has been splayed all over newspaper headlines and TV bulletins everywhere. Truman Zanotto has made a formal statement on the subject, and Milla has had to lock herself in her office the past few days to keep out the reporters anxious to speak to her, the woman that witnessed it all. Her determination and professionalism have thwarted most of them by now, though. Frankly, she'd be rather sick of it, if she'd been paying it any attention.
But she can't manage to think about anything except for the fleeting, tentative way that Sasha's mental voice said her name.
Milla can't remember a time when Sasha used her first name that wasn't in conjunction with her surname and title. And it has certainly never before sounded like that, or she most definitely would not have forgotten it. But what is that, anyway? What kind of intonation, subtle and nervous, had escaped the cool, calculated Sasha Nein that night outside her apartment?
A knock on her office door startles her a little. "No more interviews," she calls out, almost reflexively by now.
"No, Miss Vodello, it's me," responds a voice Milla was definitely not expecting.
"Lili? Is that you?"
"Can I come in?"
"Of course, darling."
The door creaks open, and in walks the most precocious eleven-year-old Milla has ever known. Her boss's daughter is smart as a whip, which has unfortunately been known to get her into trouble. Lately, she's kept her hair cut shorter, which Milla likes. It seems to suit her better.
"Miss Vodello, I need your help."
"Call me Milla," she tells her.
"Okay, Milla then. Whatever."
"Help with what, darling? Schoolwork?"
"...Milla, when have I ever needed help with my homework?"
Milla laughs. "True, true. What is it, then?"
Lili steps toward her and sits in the chair across from her. "It's...well...boys."
"Ahhhh," says Milla.
"It's Raz," Lili continues. "Usually we're able to read each other's thoughts, right? And we got used to that, and it was, um, kind of cool."
"But?"
"But a month or so ago it stopped happening naturally, and we'd actually have to try to do it, and now...now I can't do it at all. And I don't think he can either, even though he won't say anything about it because he's a boy and boys are stupid...Milla, is there something wrong with me?"
Lili looks so horrified that Milla can't help but laugh even more. "What is it, Milla?" asks Lili. "I've tried to look it up in all kinds of books but - "
"Lili, darling, nothing is wrong with you," Milla assures her through her chuckles. "You're just growing up - both you and Razputin."
"...What?" Lili is unimpressed.
"It's something that happens to psychics that doesn't happen to other people. When boys and girls get to a certain age, they start becoming inherently different from each other. I'm sure you know all about that."
"Ew, gross. But yeah, so?"
"Well, your minds are changing, too," says Milla. "For the next few years boys will be utterly incomprehensible to you, even the ones you think you know best. And similarly, Razputin probably can't understand your mind at all right now, either."
"But it'll go away, right?" Lili presses. "Once puberty's over or whatever, I'll be able to understand him again, no problem?"
Milla sighs. "Unfortunately, no," she says. "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, darling, but it's a skill you're going to have to re-teach yourself all over again. And some people never get it back at all."
Lili pulls a face of angered disbelief. "Never? But we just figured out how to make out inside our heads! I might never get to do that again?"
"Don't worry, Lili," says Milla with a smile. "You're much too clever to fall into that trap. Just keep at it and you'll learn to understand...everything..."
And if Lili says "Thanks, Milla!" and leaves the office, slamming the door a little too hard, Milla doesn't really hear any of it, because she has just realized that she understands everything.
Trancelike, Milla rises from her desk and walks out the door. All the reporters are gone, but even if there were thousands Milla wouldn't see them. She's just walking, slowly at first but with gradually increasing speed, to the office of one Agent Sasha Nein. By the time she gets there she's snapped out of it, and she's rushing, bursting through the door full of determination to find him sipping confusedly on black coffee.
"Agent Vodello?" he mumbles.
"I realized just now that I have never fully understood you, Sasha Nein," she tells him. "You help me in the weirdest of circumstances without ever asking questions, but turn down simple favors and invitations just because you'd have to leave your comfort zone. You wear your gloves outside of work, and you never bring home women, and you never, ever let your guard down." She pauses, trying to see if he's even taking any of this in. "And you won't call me Milla...except the one time you do, it sounds like you've been waiting to say it your whole life - and it wasn't even out loud." And so she finishes her speech inside his head. So unless I've got this totally wrong, Agent Nein, you're scared. But you shouldn't be.
And there, walking on the flat surface of his stupid cube-brain, Milla's astral form finds Sasha's astral form and kisses it soundly, not giving it any time to react, and understanding the reasons this would definitely appeal to Lili and Razputin.
When they break apart Milla falls back into herself and looks at real-Sasha.
"Well?"
Sasha, though a bit breathless, is ineffable, and merely picks up his coffee mug again.
"Quite right, as usual," Sasha says, "Agent Vodello."
But around his coffee he smiles at her, and whispers Milla into the back of her mind, and when she smiles back it is not quite at Sasha, but at his bottle-green jacket, because now, now she understands.
-xxx-
and they didn't teach me that in school
it's something that I learned on my own