In Chapter 4: you can't live in a small town without bumping in to all sorts of people in a cafe on a Saturday afternoon.
It's very late on a Saturday afternoon when Myka rushes out of the post office after having sent some forms to the planning department and a couple of applications for grants from local foundations that support the Arts in the Mid-West and the Great Plains. She also carries a small mountain of papers from the bank, because her bank manager needs her to complete umpteen forms that will help her sustain her business as it becomes.
The thought of all this bureaucracy leaves her craving some caffeine and quite possibly something sticky and sweet. She walks into a small artisan coffee place on Main Street and places an order for a large Hazelnut Americano and an oversized triple chocolate chip cookie, and sugary consequences be damned.
As the baristas fulfil her order, she fumbles with the papers she has stacked on her arm and tries to find a way to hold them and her keys and her sunglasses and the coffee and the cookie. She's frustrated by her not being able to juggle this because usually her brain is exceptionally good at working through these types of puzzles very quickly. This is just one of the reasons she did so well at the Secret Service, even though that's not her life anymore.
"Let me help," a soft, British-accented voice she would recognise almost anywhere startles her from behind, and a slender, toned and slightly sun kissed hand she would definitely recognise anywhere sweeps up her sunglasses and keys from the counter.
Myka turns around and brief, courteous gratitude falls from her lips automatically as her green eyes meet the brown of her counterpart's, and she doesn't quite believe what she sees. "Helena?"
"Fancy seeing you here," Helena smiles a gentle smile that drips of the same nostalgic fondness that's been lulling her to sleep every night for the past year, induced by the recordings of their reproductions of eleven years ago.
Myka smiles back. She really can't believe that Helena is here, because this is the middle of nowhere (Myka chose this place because it's the middle of nowhere), and Helena never struck her as the middle of nowhere kind of person. In fact, last she had heard of her, she was pegged to be next in line to head the R&D department of that mega tech corporate she worked for when they met all those years ago in DC. But this was, what? Her mind works quickly through its filing system, six years ago?
A lot can happen in six years, she reminds herself. A lot can happen in a lot less, because Myka is living testament to just how much can change in much less than half that time.
"What are you doing here?" Myka asks with a surprised smile. A pleasantly surprised smile.
"I could ask you the same," Helena retorts in her usual, cocky manner. That's just about all she can manage right now – her default setting of slightly aloof, slightly arrogant confidence. She didn't expect to find Myka Bering, of all people, in a small town in the Mid-West. She thought Myka would be heading some kind of elite team in the Secret Service or some other secret government organisation, possibly the same one Irene Frederic is heading in Helena's imagination.
As nostalgic as she is about her time with Myka, and – if she is honest – as much as she had been using Myka Bering as a sort of yardstick against which all of her lovers have been measured since their encounter, she never entertained the possibility of seeing her again. It just seemed like a highly improbable thing to happen, and Helena doesn't indulge herself with such improbabilities.
"I moved out here a couple of years ago," Myka answers, slightly backfooted initially, but then she remembers who HG Wells is, what she is like, and she's not feeling like Helena is being suspicious or offensive with her detached tone, she's just being Helena. As she recalls these details about the dark-haired engineer, her memory dredges up every single aspect of her knowledge of Helena Wells, Myka's mouth dries up a bit and her heart beats a little bit faster because her knowledge of the woman in front of her is quite deep and quite intimate.
"I work not far from here," Helena offers and gestures towards Main Street with her thumb absently, because she is very much focused on taking in Myka, eleven years on: her face is a little softer, her eyes are a bit brighter. While she still has the posture of a figure skater, she's not so rigid in her stance. Helena considers that the fact she isn't wearing a suit, or a gun on one hip and a badge on the other probably helps. Helena reminds herself to look back up from Myka's hips to her eyes, hoping she didn't linger too long on those curves, because she can't help but wonder how differently they'd feel now to eleven years ago. "Fancy that," she utters, and she's not entirely sure if the musing is about the last thought that went through her mind, or the actual conversation she and Myka are having.
"Wow," Myka exhales through a bright smile, "I did not expect this," she says and shakes her head, because that's pretty much the only thing that keeps flashing in her mind, between her memories of HG Wells: working late nights at the DC field office, going back to her apartment or to Helena's executive suite, talking about / playing / recording music, and almost instantly falling in… and Myka's mind stops for a second, because she was thinking "-to bed", but the romantic in her, the part of her that comes alive through music and pretty much nowhere else finishes that sentence entirely differently. "Uh," Myka winces and shakes her head again because this isn't the time or the place for her to start thinking about love, "do you want to…" she points awkwardly towards a table.
"I'm terribly sorry, Myka, I can't," Helena's accent is stronger now and Myka knows that means a polite and slightly evasive rejection is underway. "I'm afraid this was but a quick break from an awfully busy day."
Myka nods with a tight smile and a short huff because some things don't change. "Still working all hours, then?" she asks.
"Yes, but with some greater flexibility these days," Helena smirks. "And you?"
Myka stammers a bit, "Uh, yeah," she chortles, because running her own business is not really a nine-to-five deal, and even though she isn't working with pay today, she has work stuff, a pile of paperwork to sort through, if she were to be paid at any point in the near future, "but in a different setting," she chooses to be as vague as HG.
"Oh?" Helena sniffs the bait Myka dangles in front of her.
Myka laughs heartily and Helena's jaw drops because she almost forgot how intoxicating that sound is, how tantalising the sight. "That's not really a story for the middle of an awfully busy day," she jabs through a smile.
Helena narrows her eyes at Myka, reminded that Myka is a peer. Myka is – quite possibly – the only peer Helena ever had. Everyone else in her life was, usually, slightly less smart and slightly less capable and slightly less anything else than she was – if she may say so herself. So she tightens her smirk and adds heat to her glace into Myka's eyes, "I'll bite," she parries a jab in return, "would you like to catch up some time?"
Myka's smile turns into a smirk, because she missed this. She missed these little fencing matches she used to have with Helena in the six weeks they spent together. "Next Friday?"
"The last of the month?" Helena confirms.
Myka nods. "There's a bar called The Voodoo Lounge over on Fillmore. 8pm?"
"I look forward to it," Helena flicks her hair over her shoulder subconsciously, realising what she'd done after the fact, as she feels she needs to be more flirtatious than she has been.
"Me too," Myka notices the hair thing, and in her mind Helena is definitely putting her game on, and she wonders what Helena thinks this date is for. A date, she pauses her own thoughts. It's been a while.
After a handful of awkwardly silent seconds Helena turns towards the door and Myka turns to a nearby table, relieved to rest the reams of paper onto a surface that's not her arm. She exhales as she starts ruffling through the forms and she reaches for her coffee when that slender hand is in her line of sight again. Myka looks up.
"These are yours," Helena smiles and lets go of Myka's keys and sunglasses atop the pile of thinly shredded, compressed and bleached trees. "See you next Friday," she husks and hurries out the door.
Myka gives up all pretence of reading the guidelines for writing a business plan for the bank in the whole of 4 minutes because her encounter with Helena keeps playing on her mind. She reunites the document with its kin on the tabletop, sinks into the small coffee-shop armchair and drinks her coffee.
Her gaze is fixed mid-air, halfway between where she sits and the door to the coffee shop. She spins the near empty cup between her fingers slowly as her mind does that thing that made her a top investigator: reviewing details, images, knowledge (central and peripheral) - no matter how small or insignificant.
She scans every single detail of her six weeks with Helena: from when they were first introduced, the banter-come-insult-filled first hours (how they measured each other, tested who of them is smarter, cleverer, more capable); through to the last hours they spent together, parting the way they agreed and arranged to part – no fuss, no overly emotional farewells, no driving the other to the airport, or leaning sadly into a window of a cab or an apartment, watching the other get farther and farther away.
Myka smiles at the naivety of that parting, with its near-surgical precision, almost the direct opposite to what their six weeks together had been. How it was discussed two nights before Helena's scheduled return to Detroit. The both of them curled up on Myka's sofa, messy and sated and sweaty and careless; two highly intelligent, independent and self-sufficient women who had found something in the other for the six weeks they shared, but knew that there was too much for either of them to lose if they were to leave their lives in favour of chasing a fling, or even a love story.
Now that the coffee shop is nearly empty, Myka can spend a bit more time thinking about their time together and be honest with herself that her time with Helena was a six-week-long binge on being in love. As amazing as it was, she still believes that how they parted ways was the best thing to have done, because Myka had a stellar career for the seven years that followed, seven years she would never have had if she got transferred to the Detroit field office. And those years still matter to her even though things with the Secret Service did go sideways in the end.
To keep herself from thinking about her final year with the Service (when Sam went back to his wife and the terrible months that followed, when budget cuts were announced and the order was given for her to decimate her team; when her mother fell ill, when she decided to remove herself and name Pete as her successor) she thinks about the Helena she met earlier today. As she files those details away, she marvels at how little someone could change and can't help but wonder whether Helena had changed at all.
Eventually, the coffee shop owner asks her politely to leave and she makes her way home in a slightly dazed state.
Helena, on the other hand, takes nearly three hours to lose her concentration and gives up working in favour of listening to all three reproduction sessions from her first week with Myka. She recalls how awful she had been to agent on that first day, and how awful Myka had been to her in return. In hind sight, she's convinced that the only reason Myka suggested they go out for a drink at the end of that unpleasant day was so Myka could get her so drunk she would have been incapacitated the next morning.
Helena smiles at the memory of that night, how a game of musical trivia (which was aimed to settle which of them knew more, knew better) turned into a heated discussion, then a heated argument, even thought they were in complete agreement with each other. She recalls how – when they bid goodnight to each other – Myka nodded drunkenly at Helena and said something along the lines of "you're a barrel of laughs, Wells, when you're not trying to show yourself up to everyone" to which she responded an uncharacteristic and laconic "takes one to know one" and that's the last she remembers of that night.
The following day they were discussing Led Zeppelin over lunch, where they shared thoughts about the production of the tracks in Houses of the Holy and how they would each do it differently. D'Yer Mak'Er was the first song they tackled in Myka's home studio that evening, and it was daylight by the time they were putting the finishing touches to The Song Remains The Same.
The night after that, they stripped David Grey's White Ladder. The night after that, they redressed Tracy Chapman's début album. The night after that they kissed and fell asleep in each other's arms in Helena's executive suite. The night after that they got into Myka's bed and didn't get out until Monday morning forced them to.
Helena recalls the worst conversation they had, a week before Helena was due to complete her secondment at the Secret Service, the conversation in which they both admitted to having felt something special, and with the same breath admitting to being driven and focused and not really willing to stop everything in order to test just how special that something is.
Maybe that's why today happened, what next Friday is for, Helena ponders, maybe this is the reason she wound up at Warehouse Records' oldest studio here, rather than in one of their flagship studios in New York, Vancouver or San Francisco. Then she laughs at the silliness of the notion of fate or Karma or whatever, and chides herself for being a romantic fool.
Claudia is late when she walks into the B&B on Thursday night. She's late enough to have missed the signup sheet and hasn't brought her guitar anyway. She is in a bad mood. Artie hasn't seen her like this in five years, not since she turned sixteen and decided she had had enough of The System, of foster families, of schools. The lot.
Her lack of energy and practically ghost-like appearance worries him so much, that he leaves his eternal post behind the bar and comes around to usher her back behind it with him.
He places her on a tall wooden stool he usually leans against and she slumps into it, her shoulders collapse in, head hanging limp, her chin touching her chest. She sits there for a long while, through the dull and monotonous set of Marcus Diamond, the very same set he plays every third Thursday of the month, the same set she always does something to – whistle or harmonise or commentate – because it's so samey and repetitive, it kills her just a little bit every time he plays it on stage.
But Artie determines that there is nothing left in Claudia for Marcus to kill. The young musician is beyond wits end, and is much closer to laying at despair's door. He raises his arm to wrap her in a fatherly hug, but thinks she seems too frail and fragile and the last thing he wants is to break her. So he makes as though he's just stretching and lands his palm on his rag, and he picks it up to deflect the missed intent.
The only way Artie knows how to comfort people who don't talk is to give them their usual, which often means drink and food. Attempting to judge Claudia's general state, he's not sure what he should and shouldn't give her.
He's also not sure of her financial state. Claudia is – after all – a punter, and Artie knows better than to take pity on punters like that, because heaven knows that if he didn't, he'd have been out of business a long time ago.
But this is Claudia, he's known her since she was a little girl and he can't just stand on the side lines and let whatever it is that's running her down take its toll. So he flags Trey over and whispers a command in his ear to fix Claudia her favourite and he goes back to the bar and cracks open a Coors Light and puts it in front of slumped redhead.
Marcus Diamond finishes his set and walks off the stage and Claudia grunts loudly. Trey leaps back on stage to introduce the next act, an odd duo consisting two women, one in her fifties and one in her twenties who sing bizarre folk tales; and runs back down to bring out Claudia's club sandwich and fries.
"Thanks," she mutters under her breath, barely having moved, "but I can't have that."
"Why not?" Trey's brown eyes widen and he looks like a lost puppy, "It's your favourite. I just made it for you."
She musters up some energy and looks up to him, flings her arm over his shoulder, "You are too sweet, Trey Lore," she says, "but I have no way of paying you for that."
"That doesn't matter, does it?" he looks at her, trying to cheer her up. "Does it, Artie?" he glances at his boss, who stands behind her breathing noisily through his nose.
"It doesn't matter today," Artie answers as he walks around Claudia to stand next to Trey. "Please eat."
Claudia picks up a chip tiredly and places it in her mouth. She chews languidly and swallows hard, as if the chip was made of cardboard. "Thanks," she whispers her gratitude.
The odd duo finishes their odd set, and Trey leaves Claudia and Artie to MC the rest of the evening. Artie uses that break to bend down and seek Claudia's lackluster gaze. "Do you want to talk about it?" he asks her cautiously.
"I got fired," she answers all too quickly with a harsh exhale. "I got fired because I told my boss to not upgrade the server until after business hours, but he insisted, and I told him I wasn't gonna because this would wreck a day's work for every single client connected to that server, and he said I should re-route them, and I told him I can't do that with live connections without data loss and I won't do it unless we got the clients offline, so he went and did it anyway, and now three clients are threatening to sue, and his boss came down on him like a ton of bricks so he, the pillar of honesty that he is, blamed me, and now I'm fired and that stupid-ass-of-a-life-form-that-doesn't-deserve-to-be-called-human is probably going to name me in their lawsuit, and I won't get paid this month, so I won't be able to afford rent let alone the lawyer that I may need to hire, which means I will probably never be able to pay you for this food!" she picks up another chip only to throw it back onto the plate at the end of her speech.
Artie nods once to acknowledge Claudia's distress. He hates seeing her like this, not only because it's not comfortable for him that another human being is being human so close to him, but because it's Claudia that's being human and he has come to love her like family. So he sighs as he thinks about her rent, and needing a lawyer (which he reckons is probably unlikely to happen) and needing to eat and drink.
Then he sighs again when he thinks about the pile of bills he has on the desk in his office, and he thinks about the B&B's bank balance, and he thinks about a job offer that landed on him – by surprise – from his ex boss' friend, or PA, or whatever Leena is, and he thinks about whether or not he should change his life to help Claudia with hers.
He scratches his eight o'clock shadow (that's more of a stubble by now) and sighs a third time. "How about you work here for a few weeks," he mumbles, "and I'll talk to Vanessa about your rent being delayed this month."
Claudia answers with a sigh of her own and looks up at him through her bangs. She feels awful. She knows that the B&B is unbelievably tight on cash, she knows that Artie plays a game of Star Trek TNG Chess with every single creditor the B&B has, she knows that it was only because of him that Vanessa let her rent the room above her garage to begin with, when she didn't even want a tenant. All of this makes her feel like the biggest pain in the rear of any creature – real or fantastic – that had ever lived on the earth or in the minds of those who inhabit it. "I can't ask you that, Artie. That's too much," she says, defeated.
Artie smiles. Or at least Claudia thinks he smiles, because his expression looks only half like what it looks like when he winces, but his eyes are warm and his cheeks are just a little bit softer than usual.
"Sounds like it's about right to me," he answers in a warm, fatherly tone, "now eat your dinner," he walks back to the middle of the bar and starts serving the punters who came to listen to the best open mic line up in the whole of the Great Plains.
Claudia picks up another chip, then another. By the time she finishes eating her fifth chip, lyrics are starting to take shape in her mind, and melody echoes in her ears like a rushing tide, and there's a beat, and orchestration. She fumbles for a cocktail napkin and a pen from under the bar and she scribbles notes (in words) and notes (in music) for one song.
By the time she finishes her portion of chips, there are drafts for two new songs; by the time the she downs the sandwich, there are two more.
It's nearly 10pm and the last act of the night walks on to the stage. It's a girl – much younger than Claudia – and she is holding on to a guitar like it's a rifle and she's about to run over the parapet she's absolutely terrified. Claudia can tell because she's been there. The girl's voice trembles as she sings Firework by Katy Perry, and then her fingers slip on the strings and she loses two bars' worth of chords during a quiet rendition of Demi Lovato's Neon Lights.
Claudia really feels just how scared this girl is and completely forgets that she, herself, feels like crap. The girl walks off the stage after two songs and it takes Claudia a handful of seconds to realise (and appreciate) how far she, herself, had come over the past five years.
She looks down to the scribbled cocktail napkins and a small, mischievous smile creeps up the corners of her lips, because she knows the answer to Myka's question.
It then strikes her that it's a Thursday and Myka should be here, so her head snaps up to where Myka usually sits, but there is no one there.
And suddenly Claudia has a new purpose.