Chapter Six: Just what I needed
I am so sorry this took so long! And that it's so short! I promise I'll get the next one out before you can say swordfish special! Enjoy!
On the way home, both Joe and Rina were silent the whole way.
Rina was lost in thought of what to do with her new, um guest; Joe was too consumed in his thoughts of relatively the same thing. Sort of.
'What's she gonna do to me? Is she gonna kill me at her house? No, she would've done that already. Torture? She is holding me hostage, but she already taunted me when she was still a fish; that was abject humiliation right there! Use her powers to turn me into a krill? No, she doesn't seem the type. Maybe-'
"Thank the good lord! Where have you been, I've been calling for hours!?"
Joe's thoughts were interrupted by some scrawny girl in a suit gritting her teeth at Rina; the bags under eyes were a clue to Joe she hadn't slept in a good while, or was an insomniac.
"Tomo, what're you doing here? The deadline's not for another two weeks." Rina calmly replied, tucking Joe behind her subtly.
"That's what I came here to tell you! The deadline's been moved up to this Wednesday!"
"What!" Rina took no time to run up the driveway of her house, plopping her bag and Joe in her sitting room and rushing upstairs with Tomo hot on her heels.
While the girls were ranting in the rooms above; Joe took this opportunity to take a gander at his captor's living quarters.
The walls seemed to have some design printed on it, the tops and bottoms covered in a vintage molding that gave it an old-but-good-old air about it. The paintings seemed to be self-drawn, their frames a curlycue gold accenting to the vintage look.
Upon every shelf, every counter, every table were trinkets of glass jars filled with dried plants, candles in holders or lanterns, or plants of every shape and size.
Joe may not have been all that knowledgeable about witches, but if this house didn't scream "witch" no other house would.
"-I just left him on the table, it'll just take two seconds!" Rina came trotting down the staircase and scooped up Joe heading for the back of the house.
Outside her backyard, it was a menagerie of flowers and trees as far as the eye could see. It had colorful gem-stoned walkways, a table with tools to grind and store plants, and in the center, a pond.
Uh oh.
"Don't even think about it!"
"Ready or not!" Without a second to brace for impact, Rina emptied the lantern-shaped fishbowl into the pond, not even bothering to take the bowl with her.
"Now you stay here and try to keep your voice down; anyone finds out about talking fish, I'll have Ringling Brothers on my front door."
"Who?"
"Just try to put a lid on it, just for the next two hours till I can get you inside." Rina could hear her friend inside scrambling around the office trying to get ahold of some pens and ink. She rolled her eyes and ran off.
Two hours? More like all night. Joe lost count of how many laps he did in the pond, and it was fairly spacious for a small body of water. He gave up trying to find a drainage pipe to lead him back to the ocean, hoping to get out of this nightmare. When did everything get so undone? How did he allow himself to get to this point; now sitting in someone's backyard pond like some koi fish, waiting up on some human like she was his master until she finished her work...
Come to think of it, putting aside the fact that Joe never really cared till just now, he never once heard Rina talk about her background.
He could tell she was lying when she said she was an experiment that was given the gift to talk, explaining her vast knowledge the upper world and such...well, now he knew why she lied.
Also, while stating the obvious, she possessed magical skills in witchcraft; no doubt the explanation to her victory in outsmarting him, bet she used her black magic to read his mind or something. One would think he'd pick up on it sooner, but then again he had only just acquired speech and thought process within a short period of time.
She seemed very keen on being knowledgeable in various fields of study as well; it was one of the few qualities he actually respected about her. However, her personality was so, so, well...elusive. Even Joe couldn't doubt her tact at being able to ease into, through, and out of conversations and jump right into something else, but when it came to accompanying him at the meetings, she always took a rain check and retreated to his office, alone. And he never wondered why, until now.
That just didn't add up. Why shut yourself away when one-you are a powerful witch, and two-you have formidable communication skills. If he were all-powerful, he'd waste no time to brag and exploit the attention that came with being magic.
Something else that caught his attention, her ethics. While she would constantly try his patience with her snarky comments like calling him "average Joe" or "G. "(whatever that meant), he noticed a look she gave after every single one, like she felt bad when she said something so sharp to him.
Was she pitying him?
That couldn't be; he was the leader of a nation of exceptionally intelligent fish, a king in the eyes of the masses. Why would she feel pity for him when he had everything? Well, everything at the time?
He had to know; being left alone to really analyze her made him now more curious than ever to figure her out. Something must've happened in her past that would evoke such nonconformist thoughts and decisions and he had to find out what; it might be of some use to him in escaping this limbo and regaining his beloved nation again.
"Alright, just one more page then it's ready for the final draft." Rina carefully skimmed through her third rough draft before okay-ing it for the final draft of her story.
"Thank heaven! I don't think I could've been able to talk my way out of pushing the deadline another two weeks." Tomo straightened out the other five hundred proof sheets for the fifth time, carefully slipping them into an orange packet for safe keeping.
"Well, then maybe you shouldn't text me it's okay to take my time with finishing up my work when you aren't even sure you pushed it to begin with."
"I said I was sorry; it was a misunderstanding with the publishers. I could've sworn I told them to ease up on the timeframe so you could get you two seconds of alone time."
"It wasn't two seconds; I said I wanted two weeks to clear my head and not think about work. Two weeks to sleep, two weeks to draw, two weeks to clean, two weeks! Not two days!"
"By the way, was that a fish I saw you lugging over your shoulder?"
"Yeah, pretty isn't he?"
"Is he one of your, you know-"
"Yes and no. He's a work in progress at the moment."
"What are you gonna do with him?"
"Done!" Rina handed her friend the last page and collapsed on her soft carpeted floor. "I knew I loved this carpet for a reason. So soft..."
"Rina," Tomo put the proofs into her briefcase and sat on the floor with her friend, equally exhausted.
"What?" Rina groaned, not wanting to stay awake for another second.
"You didn't tell me what your plans were for your new 'guest'. Don't you think it's a little, you know, what you're doing? I mean, whenever you bring-"
"Tomo, I am a grown woman. You know better than anyone I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself. I can stop anytime I want!"
"How about now?"
"I said anytime I want."
"Right." Tomo rolled her eyes at Rina's comment; she knew she was never gonna get her to stop, even if she begged. And she tried.
"Besides, he needs me to help him out."
"I don't see why you can't just walk away. The first two were okay, I guess, but you never know when they are going to stab you in the back, even with your...special skills."
Rina, against her body telling her to lie down and catch a couple winks, sat up and looked straight on at her friend "Tomo, remember when you first started working with me, how no one liked you because you were so snobby and kinda out of it?"
"Don't remind me, I still feel stupid for acting that way."
"And now look, you are so much more caring and feeling compassionate than anyone could ever hope to see out of you."
"Yeah, I guess so."
"Aren't you glad that out of all the experienced editors I could've chosen, I chose you? And that through working for me, I got to show you a whole nother world besides the one you saw in the mirror?"
"You made me into a kind and loving person,"
"Because I saw you needed guidance and was more than willing to lend it to you. And aren't you better off like this?"
"Okay, I see your point, but I still think you should be more careful with the company you keep,even if their lives make good page-turners."
"I'm careful. I'm always careful; who knows bad guys better than someone who used to be one?"
The night stretched on, the moon gliding lazily through the night sky till the first light of morning peaked through the horizon through the trees.
A very worn out Rina trudged through the backyard, having finally finished her deadline by a hair.
"Sleep well?" Joe asked sarcastically.
"What sleep?" Rina said in a dead voice. "If I never see another writers pen, it'll be to soon. That woman needs to get her dates right, I swear."
"What did you even do? It's not like when you were my advisor, you had somewhere to be."
"I'm a writer for a company that sells books; I am one of their most bestselling authors, and they apparently got my publish dates mixed up. Usually, I'm given a longer leash so I don't have to report to the office till I've finished my work."
"Hmm, I don't care." Joe moved to the edge of the pond, edging towards the bowl. "You mind?"
"Hey, you asked." Rina picked up the discarded fishbowl and scooped him up. "You were lucky to actually get a good nights sleep; why're you so cranky? It's not not like you were up all night with anything."
Joe didn't answer her; unbeknownst to Rina, he was still groggy from waiting up all night to batter her with questions.
He had it all figured out- he would ask her questions about her past, gain her trust, find her weakness, then back to the ocean they go! Now if he could just find the willpower to stay awake long enough to start asking the questions.
"Joe?"
"Hmm?" He answered, a little disoriented.
"You didn't sleep last night, did you?" Rina entered her living room and began to climb her stairs to the attic.
"Gee, what gave me away?"
"Your attitude; its much more pricklier than usual."
"I wanted to ask you something."
"No, I am not going to put you back in the ocean, and no , I am not giving you the anti-fish potion."
"Then what are you going to do?"
"I don't know yet." Rina said in her elusive tone. "Maybe I'll just keep you here till I know what to do with you," She held him up so he could see that they were in some kind of dusty old room. In front of them, there was an old fish tank with odds and ends sitting on top of it.
"Through personal experience, I've learned this is the best way to tear down a persons barriers: solitary confinement."
Joe felt like he was going to be sick."You're not going-"
"I dunno. Should I?" Rina stared him down, daring him to come up with a reason.
"Um, well, we could just call it, water under the bridge?"
"Hmm, nice try." Rina waved her finger at the tank, magically removing the clutter and filling it with water. She conjured up some gravel and a tiny box marked "prison", humorist that he was in jail. In actuality, she was only going to hold him there for a couple of days to leave him alone with his thoughts, sort of like a time-out.
She wasn't that heartless!
"No, please! I beg of you, give me another chance!"
"I'll think about it. In the meantime, goodnight!" Rina once again poured Joe roughly into the tank, skipping tauntingly as she made her way to slumberland.
Joe took a good long look around; he was nowhere near anything useful and she had the windows shut so he couldn't tell when the sun set or rose.
'When I get out of this mess, I'm going to feed that girl to a barracuda!'
Meanwhile, Rina got ready for a major catnap when her phone blares up.
"Please don't let it be a call in." She checked the phone, reading it out loud.
"Sorry, I forgot to mention you are invited to some ritzy event going on uptown. I made sure it was a charity event before even considering an R.S.V.P, bring a fat check, lol."
Rina pondered this a moment before passing out in her bed.
"A charity event full of rich snobs, sounds more like Joe's scene than mine."
...DING!
Well, I wonder what she has in store for our little troublemaker. And what's all this about dropping bits of her past, but no whole? Only one way to find out, read on!