Chapter 26: Getting to Know You, Getting to Know All About You...
After throwing out the two nuisances, Brooke returned to her desk and sat down to consider her client.
Angeal had watched the entire operation with awe and a look of—was that delight? He reseated himself, facing her. "I don't think I've ever seen anyone manage that so efficiently before," he said with a peculiar light in his eyes.
"I'm nothing if not efficient," said Brooke, pleased that he'd actually volunteered an opinion on his own. A first for today.
"Genesis was right; I think we'll get along fine." Now his expression was positively inscrutable.
"I hope so," she said truthfully, regarding him with some suspicion. She took a moment to call her secretary. "Dave, I just kicked Sephiroth and Genesis out of my office. See that they go away, all right? Thanks."
She hung up and smiled as benignly as she could at Angeal. Her face hurt from all the smiling she'd done so far. A pleasant expression was a must with twitchy clients, though this one seemed to have settled over the course of the meeting. Especially, she noted, after he'd observed her treatment of his friends. He'd found it funny. Interesting.
And speaking of the recently departed nuisances... "Were they serious about manufacturing a sex scandal among the top officers of the company?" she asked. She could believe it of Genesis, but Sephiroth? He always came across as so straight-laced, formal, and also rather unimaginative.
Angeal chuckled. "I honestly don't know. It wouldn't surprise me if they were, though."
His laughter, a deep rumble, sounded almost soothing. She said, "Well, if I see something like that in the headlines, I guess I'll know who to blame."
"Undoubtedly." Unexpectedly, he relaxed in the chair, casually crossing one leg over the other. "So, what now?" He was back to watching her with that analytical air.
Maybe she needed to reassess her initial impressions of him. "Now? We chat a bit, get some information, figure out what will work best for our campaign. I've got your dossier and I'd like some deeper details about some of the information in it. Then we'll move on to some trials."
"What kind of trials?"
"Hair, makeup, test shoots, that sort of thing." She waved a hand dismissively. "It's no big deal, but necessary for analysis about what works before we start with the real sessions."
"Makeup tests, really?" He grimaced. "It was all very minimal when I did those recruitment promos."
"Recruitment posters are much different than a wide-scale disinformation campaign."
He lifted his eyebrows and his blue eyes gleamed. "At last we're being honest about what's going to happen. I wondered about you when you described it as merely 'controlling the narrative.'" He made air quotes with his fingers.
"That's exactly what it is," she said, doing her damnedest to suppress a budding uprising of offense. "They are the same things." At least, they were in Shinra.
"One sounds just a tiny bit nicer than the other."
"Most people prefer the nicer sounding description." She definitely needed to reassess her original impression of him. This was no musclebound lunk; she discerned a sharp intelligence behind that glowing mako gaze. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs, mirroring his posture. "You know, when you first walked into my office, I thought you were nervous and uncomfortable, but that doesn't seem to be the case."
He laughed. "Oh, I was. To be honest, I still am, a little. I'm not good at this PR thing. But after watching you handle Seph and Gen, well, I'm a little more comfortable. You seem to have a straightforward, take-no-prisoners approach when needed."
"Huh," was all she said to that. Seph and Gen? No one else would dare call them by such casual nicknames. She wasn't sure she liked his frank and undiplomatic assessment of her, but while not the most flattering, she knew herself well enough to recognize its truth. Here was a client who liked things blunt and on the table. She could do that. "Okay, then let's get to the actual interview straight off. First thing I need to know is if there are any other indiscretions lurking in your past."
"Like the centerfold?" He had the grace to look a little embarrassed.
"Yes, exactly. Is there anything that the tabloids can dig up and spin to your discredit, no matter how insignificant it might seem to you? We don't want any surprises."
He regarded her steadily for a moment, assessing, making her want to squirm. She ruthlessly kept herself still. Finally, he said, "Just childhood nonsense. I used to steal dumbapples from the local orchards when I got hungry. Cut classes now and then. Got in a few fights, experimented with alcohol, that sort of thing."
She didn't consider playing hooky or stealing a few pieces of fruit to be of any great concern. Same with playground or adolescent fights. "As long as you weren't the town drunk," she said leadingly.
Angeal chortled at that. "No, mostly I just threw up anytime I drank too much when I was a kid. That encouraged me to use some restraint later on, when I got older and drinking became more socially acceptable."
She couldn't repress her own amused snicker. That was an old story she'd been told many times before. "Glad to hear it. Now, this is going to sound intrusive, but we need to know. Was there anything worse, like shoplifting or drugs? Any exes who might have an axe to grind?" She already knew from his file that he didn't have any current significant—or even insignificant—others to worry about.
This was the part of her job she hated the most: Dredging up dirt from a client's background. It always made her feel like one of those disgusting tabloid "journalists." Or worse, like what she imagined a Turk to be.
She had never understood why the Turks didn't just include everything in the dossiers they always provided her. The files weren't even redacted, just incomplete, and she was always forced to interrogate clients about their pasts. Privacy issues, she supposed, though no one who worked for Shinra at the higher levels really had any expectation of privacy. Then again, anyone assigned to work with her was going to be public in short order, so perhaps there was a method to the madness: If she couldn't dig up dirt, maybe the reasoning went that neither could a journalist.
That seemed like a flawed premise, but it was the best she could think of. She supposed the Turks must have their reasons.
At least she didn't have to worry about discovering any really serious stuff, like murder or grand theft. SOLDIER didn't accept anyone with that kind of a criminal history—or if they did, the Turks scrubbed it out of the official records.
"Exes are always a potential problem," Angeal sighed. "I've always thought I was on good terms with mine, but I dunno." He shrugged and his lips twisted. "So far, no one's come screaming for vengeance."
Brooke wondered if that were true, and if an old lover was the source of that centerfold. Or worse, some stalker. The Turks hadn't included that information in the file they'd given her.
"As for stealing," Angeal went on, oblivious to her train of thought, "when I was little, it was just apples from the orchards. When I got old enough to work after school, oh, I guess I was around eleven or so... Anyway, I never stole anything worse than some fruit and veggies from the farms I worked on. It was kind of an unofficial perk for the pickers to supplement the low wages, though we weren't supposed to take so much that anyone would notice. The owners knew about it but didn't make it an official policy. Probably for tax reasons," he added cynically. "Anyway, once Gen and I came to Midgar and joined the SOLDIER program, well, money wasn't a problem anymore so there was no need to work on the farms or swipe a snack."
She made a few notes. Nothing sounded tabloid-worthy. In fact, it all sounded like a typical and rather uneventful childhood in an agricultural community, but it depended on how desperate the rags were to generate a story. With luck, the Turks' plans would work and the tabloids would all be turning their attention elsewhere.
"What about drugs?" she asked. He hadn't mentioned that.
"Mako," he told her in a flat voice and with a perfectly serious face.
She snorted.
"I'm a chronic user. Have been for all this time since I was fifteen," he added, still deadpan. "Just mako, though, nothing else unless a doctor prescribes it. It's a burden, but it keeps me going. Kind of like coffee."
Brooke laughed outright and he quirked a smile at her. She made a note in his file: Beware, dry sense of humor.
They talked a little more. She got the tale of how he'd come to do the centerfold, which he didn't appear to consider particularly remarkable, though he did turn a bit pink while discussing it. Brooke imagined the pay would have been quite the windfall to a fifteen-year-old in straitened circumstances. Genesis had been correct: the story could easily be publicized as an honorable act of family devotion, and it would generate huge amounts of sympathy. But the downsides of increasing media attention were still unavoidable, as well as contradictory to the Turks' own plans—at least, the plans she knew about. It was still something to keep in mind, and maybe even suggest to Veld. She made some more notes.
"Okay, let's move on," she said. "How did you decide to join SOLDIER? That's a pretty momentous decision, isn't it?" And one that a lot of people would love to know. Maybe there'd be something interesting or unusual to spin.
Angeal shifted in his seat. "Well, it's not too exciting. I'm sure it's noted in that file of yours somewhere."
"Yes, but there's not much there, really. A description of personal experience is always of more benefit."
"I suppose it might be useful for other kids," he said doubtfully.
Brooke nodded and made a motion with one hand for him to keep talking. "Exactly. Tell me something about you that's unique to your experience. People love that stuff. They want to know details about public figures that they can build into a story in their own heads."
"You want a story about my unique life experiences?" He gave her a speculative look.
"Naturally," she told him. "Stories are important for PR. Short, yes and no answers don't help much except for confirmation. Details are important when it comes to creating a believable public image."
"Okay, a story, then." He eyed her and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "You know my family was poor, right? I guess it's called 'working poor' these days, but whatever the label, it meant we had to economize wherever we could. Used furniture, second hand clothes and tools, a beater truck to get around in, that kind of thing. It's why I'm pretty cheap even now."
"It must have been a hard life," she said quietly. She thought she saw where this was going. He'd come to Midgar to escape poverty and build a better life. It was a common tale that usually didn't have the happiest of endings. Lacking higher education and useful skills, many people ended up in the slums, not as one of the top three SOLDIERs in the company.
"It wasn't bad for me," he said. "When I was little, I never noticed it. When I got older, I realized it was hard on my parents, though. Both of them worked; sometimes Dad worked two or three jobs just to pay the bills. Having enough decent food was sometimes a problem. We rented a small cottage at the time, though I've bought Mom her own place since I started getting better pay. Anyway, the cottage had enough land to keep a small vegetable garden."
Brooke leaned forward, listening intently. She'd spent her adult life in Upper Plate Midgar, and before that her family had always had anything they needed. Certainly she'd never experienced food insecurity, and she supposed that was why Angeal had stolen food when he was a kid. Considering his size, he'd probably eaten his parents out of house and home, especially during growth spurts when kids were hungry all the time and ate everything in sight.
"Mom got good at drying herbs and canning fruits and veggies," he said. "Banora has a really good climate—it's subtropical, warm with lots of rain, palm trees love it there. There are entire forests of palm trees. We could grow food and medicinal plants all year round, but preservation techniques were important to tide us over in case the plants didn't survive or produce enough. I helped out with canning and the garden, too."
"Oh?" Brooke murmured to keep the details coming.
"The canning was an interesting experience. If you don't sterilize and seal everything properly, you can get sick and maybe even die. So Mom made sure I knew every step, cleaned all the canning jars scrupulously, boiled them to sterilize them, took every temperature measurement while cooking the preserves to the exact degree. Aseptic sterile technique, she called it. She told me she learned it a long time ago in school, and that it's important in lab work as well as canning. And then she told me to avoid the sciences because there were better things I could do with my life."
"So, you're a jack of all trades?"
"And master of few. Things only needed to be jury-rigged well enough to work," he said with half a smile. "You don't need to be an expert at everything, but you do pick up a lot of oddball do-it-yourself skills out of necessity when money's tight."
Brooke hummed sympathetically. "Obviously you didn't become a lab tech."
"No, it wasn't my thing even without Mom discouraging it, but she did beat into my head that keeping everything sterile was important if I didn't want to kill my family with botulism. I don't suppose it's the same as the sterile technique you'd find in a medical or science lab, but I guess as long as there aren't any pathogens in your food, it's all good."
"You grew your own food and preserved it, too. Pretty interesting skill set." Especially for a high-ranking SOLDIER. Many thought of them as little more than human weapons. Others considered them sex symbols, mere objects to admire. This was exactly the kind of information she could leak to humanize her client.
"Dad also taught me how to fix cars and appliances since we couldn't afford to have them repaired by a pro, but that's another story." He smiled at her surprise and added with a wink, "I can sew, too. Anyhow, that's why I like gardening, and why I have enough skill and knowledge to keep houseplants alive even with all the pollution here in Midgar. I'm pretty proud of that."
He settled back again, eyeing her expectantly. It seemed to be the end of his tale.
"Wow," said Brooke. She'd asked for a story, and she'd gotten one: An inspiring story, truly, about overcoming a difficult situation and growing from it. She made more notes, and paused, frowning and staring at her screen. She was missing something. Confusion about—what?—tickled at the edges of her thoughts. What had she wanted to know? Surely not information about gardening and canning? She scanned his file. Well, gardening and cooking were listed as two of his hobbies, but still... She frowned deeper.
He was still watching her, and she noticed a devilish twinkle in his eye.
SOLDIER, she recalled. She'd asked him about why he'd joined SOLDIER. "What does that have to do with my original question?"
"You wanted a story about my unique life experiences, and you got one. Every story is worth hearing," he said, again utterly deadpan, as though he were giving a class lecture and there'd be a quiz later.
She gawked at him a moment before her brain finally caught on. "You're messing with me, aren't you?" she asked, trying not to laugh. It had absolutely nothing to do with what she'd asked, and he'd sucked her right in with that long, rambling divergence. He'd kept such a straight face, too!
He grinned at her and finally let out a mischievous chuckle.
"How have your friends not murdered you?" she asked, shaking her head and desperately wanting to know if he'd pulled a similar deflection tactic on Sephiroth—and what Sephiroth's reaction had been. Oh, she'd love to know that. "Please, Angeal, promise me you won't do anything like that during any real interviews with actual reporters."
"Do what?" he said, all innocence.
"Riiight." She should have expected him to put her on about something, after that straight-faced joke about mako being his drug of choice. She'd even made a notation about his dry sense of humor and not heeded her own warning. She added a couple new notes next to her earlier one: Can get offbeat and weird. Don't trust any rambling stories no matter how interesting, they are probably to divert you from things he doesn't want to talk about. Or he might just want to mess with you.
"Oh, and I came to Midgar with Genesis," he said, taking pity on her. "We joined up together."
That still didn't tell her what his own motivations had been, aside from sticking with a friend. She'd already read that much in his file.
"Did you do it for honor or glory?" she asked. "Many do."
Lots of teenagers, dazzled by the idea of becoming a "Hero-with-a-capital-H" like Sephiroth and unaware of the slick PR campaign that had created that unattainable (and mostly fictitious) image, tried to join SOLDIER. She hadn't thought Angeal fit that mold; he didn't seem the type. But maybe he had been once; fifteen-year-olds were a lot different than experienced adults. Almost certainly his definition of honor would have changed in the intervening years.
"SOLDIER honor is worth striving for and keeping," he replied, almost in a lecturing tone. It sounded like a well-worn phrase that he'd used many times before. "I leave the glory part to others. That kind of renown brings too much hassle."
And that was probably all she'd get out of him. Perhaps in a roundabout way, though, he had told her enough and just expected her to have the wit to see it. He'd actually given her a good deal of information about himself in that random tale. She thought about it and decided that her earlier impression had been correct and he'd come to Midgar for a better life. Maybe that was really all there was to it.
Those were good enough reasons for PR, at any rate, assuming the subject even came up. Usually PR spun the "honor, pride, dreams" angle with him, anyway. She saw no reason for that to change. Any deeper motivations weren't particularly important for their current campaign.
Angeal had a reputation for scrupulously protecting his privacy and minimizing public interest, which was why he wasn't usually a tabloid target like Genesis and Sephiroth. She had often suspected that he preferred to hide behind his rather bland public image. Clearly, a weird sense of humor was one of his defense mechanisms to keep people from prying too hard beyond that outer guise.
Perhaps a different subject was in order. "So then, moving along. Your dossier says that you've recently taken on a student to mentor. Zack Fair?"
She thought she'd hit on a perfect topic when Angeal relaxed and treated her to an attractive and natural smile. "Yeah. He's a good kid. I've only been working with him for a little while, but from what I've seen and the assessments I've read, he's got promise. I guess his training's off for now, though."
Brooke very deliberately did not wince. "Yes, I'm sorry everything was put on hold."
"A few weeks won't matter. It just seems unfair to him, to get him started on his extra training then cut it off so abruptly."
She made a sympathetic noise and decided to dig around a bit. "Now, when you say he's got promise, do you mean he might one day make First Class? What about his background? Was that a factor? You having a student could be a good angle to play. It would humanize you, when so many people just see a SOLDIER First Class and not a person." She checked her computer. "There's very little about him in your file, and I don't have access to his yet. I'll request it after we're done here." She positioned her fingers on the keyboard, ready to record any interesting anecdotes he might relate about his experiences with his student.
Angeal fixed her in place with a glacial gaze; the mako glow in his eyes flared. A forbidding, oppressive wall of indescribable menace radiated from him and loomed over her like a tsunami, poised to smash her into paste. She instinctively pushed back into the cushions of her chair, her lungs paralyzed, the hairs on her arms lifting in gooseflesh, frightened for the first time during the interview. Her vision failed her, narrowing into a tunnel, the room seeming to darken despite the bright overhead lights. She couldn't move; she was helpless, powerless, like she was trapped between slumber and waking with a nightmarish presence crushing her chest.
She'd heard that the highest ranked SOLDIERs could freeze a person with terror, but she'd never before experienced it for herself. It was horrific, inhuman. Not even Genesis or Sephiroth had ever done that to her, but maybe she'd just never trod a step too far with them.
Then the atmosphere lightened and she could breathe again.
Angeal Hewley hadn't moved a single muscle in those terrifying few seconds.
He merely said, quite firmly, "Zack has nothing to do with my problems. He is barely fifteen years old and doesn't deserve to be dragged into the current circus. Please keep him out of all your PR activities."
Ooookay. Zack Fair was absolutely, positively, utterly and completely off limits. "Very well," she agreed numbly, because what else could she do? She glanced at the time as an excuse to avert her eyes and hide her panic. She wondered if he could hear the way her heart still hammered...
"Oh," she said, a sudden jolt pushing through her screaming nerves. She hadn't realized how much time she'd spent talking with Angeal.
"Problem?" he asked. Calm, so calm. Serene, even. How could he be so calm after...that?
"Just that we're running a little late," she said, forcing her voice to sound bright—normal—and secretly thanking all the powers of the Planet for such an excellent excuse to end the interview. She stood, and he rose with her. She barely repressed a flinch at the way he towered over her. "Hair and makeup is expecting us. You. Well, both of us, five minutes ago. We can cut this short for now and chat later, but right now we need to get you to the holoimaging studio."
He nodded and stood aside, letting her pass before him. She was still so over-sensitized that she swore she could practically feel him looming behind her, even though he kept a respectful distance. She unlocked the door, pleased that her hands didn't shake and expose her lingering alarm—and opened it to the safety of public space. "Just come with me, and I'll take you right there."
After this day was over, she was going to march down to her favorite bar and get a stiff drink.
Or three.
NOTE: For those who don't recognize it, the chapter title is taken from the Rodgers and Hammerstein show tune "Getting to Know You" from "The King and I." The most famous rendition was sung by Julie Andrews.
You may have noticed by now that I like to drop pop cultural references in for fun. XD