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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 144: Takano 129
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Brown 333
Brian stopped by and gave her the disappointing news of his unsuccessful search for a new apartment. She told him that he couldn’t expect the perfect place to appear overnight, but she told herself that this meant another week in the hotel. She had picked up a loaf of bread, some peanut butter and some honey and some paper towels on the way home, and made herself a peanut butter and honey sandwich. Lunch was going to be her big meal of the day, such as it was. This was cheaper for supper, and she could keep it in her room. It was a long way from buffet tacos in an upscale townhouse, but it was a long step above starving.
After dinner she dressed and went out to practice.
Part of doing something was knowing it was possible, Tommy told herself. She walked to the edge of the Hansen Building. Eleven feet away across a five story drop stood the Florence Tower. She had warmed up, stretched out, tightened her shoes. The night before she had checked the footing on both sides. For the past week, she had done jumps with measuring tape on the tops of roofs with gravel like that of the Hansen Building, and gotten thirteen feet for a running long jump.
There was no wind in the moonlit night.
She could do this, she knew. A quick prayer that she did not lose her nerve, and she circled back around to just short of the middle point of the wide roof. Oh, this is crazy, she thought, and began to head for the stair building atop the roof and the steps back down. But no, she knew what would happen. She would grind at herself until she came back again, and again if needed unless she abandoned this whole idea.
I don’t have powers. That was the problem. If she wanted to be a superheroine, she was going to have to push past the normal limits of what a girl could do. One quick step was followed by a jolting stop. No, she could not do this. But in the back of her mind was her trump card. If she had been a normal girl, she would not be a super. But say she was, and she still would not have tried this this high. No, being this high was to ensure she versed out quickly, without pain.
“Oh--” She ran, and her legs flew, and she felt faster than ever, and slower, oh so much slower, than she needed to be. The drag on her legs was rising, and there was no way, and she put her foot on the edge. It was already too late to turn back, but her treacherous instincts still said to turn back. Instead, she pushed off as hard as she could.
Sailing through the night, flailing her arms in a way that she knew was bad, not what she had trained for, she flew. Below her, five stories below her, the unforgiving street waited, unrewarded. Tommy came down on the far side, and rolled smoothly onto her feet, and took two more steps, and laughing wildly looked to check her jump.“Fourteen feet.” This was a new personal best. A startled whoop of joy rang out into the night air startling some nesting pigeons.
Rolling her shoulders, pumping her legs, she went to the far side of the Florence. One story down and twelve feet away was the next flat roof. Not giving herself a chance to think, she ran back and back again, and leapt, this time enjoying the sense of flight as she hung in the air. Coming down, she hit the landing, and rolled twice before coming to her feet.
Turning to the right, she checked, and ran off the back of the four story building to land and roll on a three-story insurance building. Hooking her kawanaga on the edge, she slid down the rope to the second floor pediment that ran around the whole of the building exterior, a good six inches of decorative footing. Walking down it twenty feet, she came around a corner. That was unnerving, but she did it. She could have lowered herself by her kawanaga straight to where she was, but she needed practice on climbing on the outside of buildings.
Taking out her kawanaga, she snapped it out, hooked it around the metal strut of the street lamp, and swung out to land on the side of the wooden power pole. From there it was an easy climb down metal stepping pins hammered into the pole for the linemen to use. There she reached the street, and looked about, wishing for applause. No one was around.
“I did it. Five stories high atop the Hanson to Oak Street level.” Tired, she walked past the jewelry stores with their empty glass windows. She knew what Robinette would say. ‘They don’t need all that, and a bit for me, and more for some poor people.’ Thing is, she could see Robbie’s point. The extremes of wealth and poverty, of homeless crazies and megalomaniacal billionaires, did not exist yet, but the disparity between the wealthy and the poor was great. Plus, she mentally compared her peanut butter and honey sandwich to what Robbie ate. Avocados, shredded beef, and a nice townhouse stood in harsh comparison to sliced bread with staple spreads in a small hotel room.
Leaving Downtown on her way to The Paris, she thought more. Keller was a fairly nice man, but did he need such a giant Caddy? Apparently he was on a board of directors for half the town. On the other hand, he did seem a nice man, and she had some suspicions, good ones, about him. But it was not just Keller. Maybe Keller deserved his money, but what about Cutter? She had come back from lunch to see a secretary bawling her eyes out. She had not moved quickly enough to open a letter for the man, and he had verbally cut her to pieces for over ten minutes of snarling, shouting, and threats of getting her fired.
He certainly did not deserve his money. In fact, one could argue that it would be a good thing to take some of his wealth away. Maybe he would learn to be less of a complete jerk if someone did that. She could put a holiday ticket into that poor secretary’s mailbox, courtesy of Doctor Jonas Cutter. Snickering at the thought, she continued home, taking the chances to practice her leaps and flips on the way.
She wondered what Uncle Brian would think. He seemed fairly straight-laced. What of Dorothy? Or back in her previous world what of Varlax and Davey? She thought Davey would accept it as he kind of idolized her, and Varlax, well, she could be flexible. Son of Torin, she laughed out loud, he would love it. The little mischief maker would find it a complete lark. What of Johnny Angel? He had played his drums and given her some useful information, but there had been a depth there. It was like he had been so much more than those around him. Just the same as with Lauren. Both had long histories that stretched for who knew how long, and encompassed mysteries and wonders both vast and small.
Just what had they seen?
All of that was hiding from what Lauren would think. Even now she could see in her mind’s imagining Lauren’s face, and the disappointed look in her eyes.
Worse, supposedly she was a Christian. What would Jesus think was supposed to be the most important question in her mind. But here, she was a bit confused. Yes, He had clearly said, don’t steal. He also did not want people to be greedy. He had knocked over the moneychangers’ tables in the temple, and from what she knew bankers treated their money like a god. Perhaps she was rationalizing, but most everyone thought Robin Hood, who had stolen from the rich to give to the poor, had been a hero.
What to do? She did not know, and left it there as she walked onto The Paris’ parking lot. It struck her that she was being envious, even covetous. Her residence here was in a lot of ways better than the nest by the campfire in the last world. Then the quail came, she remembered. Don’t complain about what you don’t have.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #516: Versers Stymied. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
