Zachary Rawlins - The Anathema

“Again, no,” Anastasia said frankly. “I didn’t even know that was what happened to Steve Taylor and Charles Brant — it was them, right? — until right now. That kind of thing is beneath me, Director. I never imagined that Emily Muir would become that desperate.”

Gaul shrugged, but he kept his doubts to himself. John Parson had a way with people; specifically, he had a way with helping people to find places inside themselves that were far darker than they had believed possible.

He had put it off as long as was possible. Frankly, the funerals had been easier to deal with. Nevertheless, with break ending on Monday, and the last of the burials more than two weeks old, Rebecca would not tolerate any further delays. So Gaul was facing a crowd of benignly drunken faces, doing his best not to sound like he was delivering a lecture.

“I want to thank you all, both personally, and in my capacity as the Director of the Academy. Your services to our institution in its time of need may very well have prevented its destruction and dissolution, and the Academy is indebted to each of you for the role you played in its preservation.”

Gaul paused and took a sip of water. His mouth was still inexplicably dry. The faces arrayed before him were intimately familiar, cheerfully intoxicated, and worked by Rebecca into a state of enthusiastic complacency. In any other context, he would have invoked the fear of God in them. But not today. Not during the speech he had been dreading since the attack, since he called in the favors, since he realized it would be necessary. He’d tried to keep such events to an absolute minimum in the years he had been Director, instead turning a blind eye to Rebecca’s less official celebrations, but that could only go so far. Clearly, in this case, more was required, for the sake of morale, if nothing else. He’d let Rebecca pick, and to his relief, she had chosen a relatively inexpensive bar on the fringes of Central charmingly named The Toss Up. It had a couple of pool tables, a barbeque in the back, a small dance floor, and the kind of bar that only served cocktails that ended with ‘and coke’, so that was fine with him.

“It would be a mistake to think that, because we are survivors, that we did not sacrifice. Every one of you gave up something in order to see that your home was safe. Some of you may not even realize yet that you have lost anything. But you have. This night is not just a reward, though you have earned a reward. Nor is it merely a celebration of victory, though certainly, a celebration is called for. Rather, tonight is a celebration of our survival, the protection of our homes and the continuity of our values, the security of our families and the conviction of our beliefs. This party is a celebration of your excellence, in rising to the occasion, in doing what was demanded of you, when nothing less would have been sufficient. We celebrate, in short, that when it came time to stand or fall, we choose to stand.”

The speech was awful. He knew it. There was simply nothing he could do to make it any better. His position obligated him to make it. He had been careful to position himself so that he couldn’t see Rebecca rolling her eyes and laughing at him. Instead, he found himself looking at Anastasia’s polite smile, which was sort of like looking at the teeth of an elaborately coifed shark. Behind her, the rest of the Black Sun stood as a monolith, students, combat teams, and even the senior Martynova himself. Across from them, North stood at the head of a hierarchically organized group of Hegemonic soldiers. Caught in the crossfire of their muted hostility, he almost lost his place on the scrolling text he was reading on his head’s up display.

“So, please, all of you enjoy tonight. For the staff, I remind you that Monday is a workday. For those of you who are still students at the Academy, I remind you that permission to drink reasonably for the evening does not give you license to overindulge, and that Monday is a school day. The rest of you, I remind you that you are guests here, and to behave accordingly. Thank you. Good night.”

Scattered applause, louder when they saw he was walking away, relieved that the speech was over. Heading for the door, his various social obligations be damned. He could not imagine having to talk to North right now, even worse if the senior Martynova decided he wanted to chat. Rebecca headed him off smoothly, grabbing him by the elbow and steering him away from the exit and toward the bar.

“You know how to end a speech,” she said cheerfully, her cheeks flushed with drink.

“Shut up,” Gaul said tersely. “You know I hate this kind of thing.”

“I do know that,” she said gently, using his arm to hop up on her bar stool, still somehow vacant despite the crowd at the bar, all of whom gave them a respectable distance.

“And I know that you are manipulating me to calm me down and keep me here so I can chat with the important people,” Gaul continued.

“Of course you do,” Rebecca affirmed, flagging the bartender down with ridiculous ease. He walked over to them, bypassing a half-dozen people who had been there longer, but no one objected. The brunette bartender looked over at Rebecca adoringly.

“Two whiskeys,” Gaul snapped. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter.”

The stunned bartender scurried to obey. Rebecca cocked an eyebrow in his direction.

“Don’t look at me that way,” Gaul said. “After that speech, anyone would need a drink.”

It took a couple of drinks, and a little nudging on her part; some empathic foundation work, as it were, a little shoring up, and she had Gaul as ready and willing as he would ever be. She sent him off in the direction of North and his resurgent Hegemony crowd, figuring he should start there. Anastasia and her father could wait. If the Black Sun could be said to have virtues, then patience was one of them. Rebecca felt a bit tipsy, but not as drunk as she would have expected, given what she’d had to drink. She did a quick turn around the bar, stopping in to check on a few sad faces, urging a couple of shy folks toward the dance floor, smoothing out a few brows wrinkled with anger or grief. She was the good hostess, the very incarnation of hostessness. Then she went outside for some air. Some air, she thought cheerfully, and a cigarette.

Without her, it wouldn’t have been much of a party. The wounds were still too fresh, too many faces still absent. A few weeks weren’t enough time to adjust. However, they all needed some kind of release, some kind of acknowledgement, before they could go back to the real world, to their lives and responsibilities. Rebecca quietly removed the inhibitions that might have made this the kind of party where people drink heavily and grimly. By the time she made it outside the small dance floor was in use, the pool tables crowded, the conversation boisterous. She wondered idly how many people would get laid tonight because of her, and then she wondered bitterly why she was never one of them.

The restaurant had a small patio surrounded by a larger gravel-lined outdoor area, and it was far less crowded than the inside of the place had been. She nodded at a few people, glanced around at the little knots of smokers and conversation, and then she noticed him, standing on the other side of the gravel walkway, by the fence, at just the right angle so he could see in through the back window of the bar. He was so engrossed by whatever he was watching that he did not even notice her walk up next to him.

“You have a pretty good view of the dance floor from here,” Rebecca observed, lighting up her cigarette with satisfaction. Alex almost dumped the beer he was holding all over the ground in front of him.

“Don’t do that,” Alex said, glaring as if she had snuck up on him. “My nerves are fucking shot. I swear, after this last break, I think I need another vacation — hey, wait a minute. You are wearing a dress,” he said, looking her up and down, maybe a little shamelessly, before glancing back at the window. “You never wear dresses. It looks really good on you.”