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There were only so many times her cousin’s girlfriend and her cousin’s girlfriend’s codependent best friend could independently pass through the same courtyard in the course of two hours before Helen started having questions. The fact that her cousin’s girlfriend’s codependent best friend was wearing a wig two of those times didn’t raise additional questions, exactly, but it didn’t help the ones she already had. The fact that she didn’t see her cousin pass through the courtyard at all did answer at least two.
Helen was ostensibly reading on a bench in the sun but in reality texting Sophos, who was halfway through his year with some sort of off-brand Peace Corps and too far away for Helen’s preferences. It was slightly better now that it was the off-season and Helen was on the mountain less, so it was less likely one of them had shitty cell reception at any given moment, but Helen would prefer if cell reception was not necessary to begin with. Even games of Name That Rock were getting old.
talk later, gen situation, Helen sent Sophos, and stood up to wend her way through the street until she found a sufficiently narrow and shaded alley two blocks away.
“Gen,” said Helen.
Her cousin dropped off the roof beside her, silent even in the face of gravity and loose gravel. “Helen.”
“What’s going on with Irene and Relius?
“You know what’s going on with Irene and Relius,” said Gen.
“I’ve never known what’s going on with Irene and Relius,” said Helen, turning so she could see him fully and leaning against the wall.
This was not strictly true. Helen did know, objectively, the latest developments that had led to Irene and Relius’s recent estrangement, which included a massive breach of confidential information and source identity through Relius’s negligence. Part of the documentation was about Irene’s involvement in what Gen called Operation Rocks in Hard Places and what the whole family except for Gen called the Hand Incident. Gen had made sure every mention of Irene stayed out of the press, but he also made sure that everyone - including and especially Irene - knew who, exactly, was responsible for breaking trust and also legal contracts, effectively ending both Relius’s career and his friendship with Irene.
“He was going to fuck it up for her,” Gen had said, when Helen found him squeezed into the gap between the shed and the fence at her family home the evening after everything had gone public. “I couldn’t let him do that.”
Because Relius’s guilt complex reached levels of drama matched only by fifteen-year-old theater kids whose school was doing Les Mis, he had been avoiding Irene ever since in ways that included but were not limited to rolling under produce bins in the grocery store (he’d come out covered in dust and a bit wild around the eyes) and flinging himself out of a window (only a first-story window, but the hedge was unfortunate).
Irene, for her part, was pretending he did not and had never existed, which was one of her best skills.
“I’m fixing it,” said Gen now, mirroring Helen’s position against the wall to her right. “It was all a little gangrenous anyway. You know, how sometimes if a bone heals the wrong way, you’ve got to break it again so it’ll grow back stronger.” He brandished his hook to add a last-minute flourish on the confused medical assertions cake.
“So you’ve… cut off… Irene’s… hand,” said Helen slowly, “but instead of, oh, properly disposing of biohazards, you’re going to… send it in for a cleaning and reattach it?”
“It’s not like it’s been eaten by a woodchipper,” said Gen, which was an obvious and unfair attempt to distract her.
“And Irene is not the problem, of course,” continued Helen, ignoring him. At the first winter gathering after Gen and Irene had gotten together, Cleon had joked that Gen thought he could fix the corporate lawyer and then three of them had to pull Gen off of him. Sten still had a scar.
“Of course not,” said Gen, unoffended. “The problem isn’t even Relius.” He paused. “Mostly. The problem is that they’re attached at the wrong angle. It’s not sustainable.” He tilted his head, considering. “It’s like one of those little bonsai trees. Nothing’s wrong with it, probably, but you’ve gotta make sure it grows just so to be healthy.” He scrunched up his face and squinted, pinching the air in front of him a few times, as if tweaking something very small.
“Or so it looks how you want it to,” Helen said dryly. “I’m also under the impression that growing bonsai trees is a long and careful process.”
“Yes, well,” said Gen, “if you had to deal every day with an Irene with a severed Relius, you would get impatient too.”
Helen had still noticed. Irene had looked a little more haunted than usual, these past weeks, and Helen freely admitted she had little patience for it. There was no reason to mourn as if Relius were dead. If she was mad at him, be mad at him; that didn’t preclude anything else.
“So you’re trying to get them back together,” Helen surmised. “And you think you can accomplish this by, what, setting up some sort of espionage simulation?”
“I can’t just ask them to make up,” said Gen, as if Helen had suggested riding horses across the rooftops or telling someone you needed help. “It’ll take them back to the good old days. Remind them why they need each other.”
Helen thought back to the good old days. “They’ll remember what a terror you are and once again band together to plague you?” High school was generally never the setting for anyone’s best self, but Irene and Gen’s psychological warfare had kicked up significantly when Relius had gotten involved. Gen, being Gen, had dealt with creative harassment by breaking and entering, which did not win him many sympathizers. And, okay, Helen wasn’t above psychological warfare herself, and, okay, maybe two against one hadn’t been fair for Irene and Helen shouldn’t have been so annoyed by the complications caused by the addition of Relius. But, well, that was then, and they could let bygones stay gone as long as no one asked Helen to say she was sorry for it.
Gen gave one of his shrugs that was a lie. “If that’s what it takes. Irene needs to know he won’t fuck it up that bad again.”
“And you’ve been going about it this way why?”
“First I needed Relius to know he wouldn’t fuck it up that bad again.”
“You can’t solve every problem by climbing in people’s windows and perching on the ends of their beds in the middle of the night.”
“I didn’t say I was doing that.”
Helen looked at him.
“I may have been doing that,” Gen said.
Helen sighed.
“But” - Gen held up a finger - “but now we’ve moved onto the next stage, which takes place almost entirely in public during daylight hours and is progressing quite nicely.”
Helen shook her head, pressing her lips together to keep in a smile. “Why are they going along with this?”
“Irene’s indulging me. I set up that scavenger hunt for her last Valentine’s Day, remember? There’s precedent.”
“And Relius also thinks you’re doing a cute date activity?”
“Relius thinks I’m enacting some sort of elaborate revenge and the only thing he hates more than the thought of falling prey to my elaborate revenge is not knowing what it is.”
“I see.”
“You will,” said Gen airily. “Just wait.”
“Tell me about what Gen’s doing now,” Sophos said when Helen picked up the phone that evening.
“It’s so good to hear your voice, Helen, I can’t wait to hear how you’ve been,” said Helen.
“Hearing your voice is always the best part of my week,” said Sophos, so earnestly that Helen blushed, “and if I asked you how you’ve been you would say I hear every day about how you’ve been and then start complaining about what Gen’s doing.”
That was probably true. Helen said, “He’s got some plan to get Irene and Relius to make up.”
“That’s nice of him,” said Sophos with the correct amount of doubt.
“It is, as far as I can tell, a classic Gen plan that involve an unnecessary amount of dubiously legal activity, but there’s always something he’s not telling me.”
“Wasn’t it Gen’s fault they’re at odds to begin with?”
“Not directly,” said Helen reluctantly. “And honestly, I don’t see what else he could have done.” Gen was often responsible for problems, even if he was using them to solve other problems, but she really didn’t think he’d been out of bounds on this one.
“Remind me what Relius and Irene’s deal is,” Sophos said.
“They met in high school. Irene found him after he’d been hit by a car and the driver didn’t stop,” Helen said.
“Oh, and she called an ambulance for him?”
“No, she took him home with her, and he taught her to hack government databases. At least that’s what I hear.”
“From whom?”
“Irene.”
Helen could hear Sophos processing that. “And the car crash injuries?”
“I asked about that too,” said Helen, “but Irene made that expression like- it’s one of the expressions she doesn’t make, the one where she’s put her face on pause while she runs to the next room in her head to double-check her encyclopedia on human behavior. You know.”
“The one she made when Chloe asked if the fact that she was responsible for the loss of Gen’s hand ever made their relationship awkward?”
“That one. So Irene and Relius proceed to become inseparable, Relius teaches Irene useful skills such as lockpicking, Irene connects Relius with her family’s wide network of contacts in high places, and taken together that eventually gets Irene out of that house, which improved everything for everyone. You know the rest.”
“I was going to clarify I meant ‘what was their deal’ in terms of interpersonal dynamics, not their backstory, but I think the backstory does sufficiently convey that,” said Sophos.
“So,” agreed Helen.
“Do you think Gen’s plan is necessary?” Sophos asked. “You’re sure Relius won’t just talk to Irene on his own given some time?”
“This is a man who held his cape in front of his face to pretend he wasn’t there when he got accidentally cornered by the drink machine in the Circle K.”
“And Irene is the woman who let that succeed,” concluded Sophos, conceding.
Helen didn’t know if Gen’s specific plan was necessary, per se, but it had become clear to her that some outside force was going to have to intervene to get Relius and Irene to communicate again. That was something that had confused her more the longer their estrangement persisted. If it had been Gen who had done to Helen what Relius had to Irene, it… well, Helen wasn’t going to say it wouldn’t matter. But she got mad at Gen all the time. Gen had fucked up in big ways that materially impacted Helen’s life. It never changed the fact that she would always turn towards him instead of away.
“You’ll have to keep me updated,” Sophos said.
“Oh, you’ll be hearing about it,” said Helen forebodingly, and Sophos laughed. “You said you had an interesting find in the library?”
“Right! So, it was Tuesday, and it was raining-”
Gen dropped over the back of the living room sofa, where Helen was curled up with her phone and a blanket her sister had crocheted, and sent the old springs creaking. “Learn to text!” she told him, shoulder-checking him off of her without unwrapping from her cocoon.
He sprawled obligingly over the rest of the couch, pressing his feet into her side. “Can’t a man visit his cousins?”
Helen looked pointedly around at the empty room. “A man can visit his cousins, but a man historically tends not to at this hour of the day, because he tends to spend the evenings with his lawyer girlfriend who lets her obsession with legal language leak into outside of business hours if given, like, one tenth of a chance. Where’s Irene?” As far as Helen knew, Irene didn’t have any major cases at the moment.
“She’s gone to the law library,” said Gen.
Helen stood corrected. “And you don’t have plans with that poor man you are tormenting?”
He looked at her blankly. A single soap bubble of enlightenment popped behind his eyes. “Oh, Costis?”
Helen rolled her eyes. “I don’t know, Gen, is Costis the walking handbook of moral responsibility you’ve been dragging around with you for the past few weeks whom I have only ever seen look beleaguered?”
“He’s busy,” said Gen. “He has a life, you know.”
“And you’re so good at respecting people’s personal lives,” said Helen.
“Yours doesn’t count,” said Gen. “I’m basically baked in there.” And didn’t Helen know it. The first thing people said half the time they saw her was ‘Where’s Gen?’ or, if they knew the right question, ‘What’s Gen doing?’ Helen didn’t know the answers to these most of the time, but it never stopped anyone from asking again the next time. And somehow if Irene, Gen’s romantic partner he lived with, got asked about anyone’s location, it was Relius. “Anyway,” continued Gen, “I came here to ask if you could get me the spatial data for the newest geology assessment of the park.”
“Do an open data request,” said Helen.
“They don’t give you everything, though,” said Gen.
“Do a whatever you usually do to get the everything.”
“I’m asking you,” said Gen promptly.
“I don’t do the computer stuff,” said Helen, which Gen very well knew. “I’d have to ask the Magus. You can just ask him yourself.”
“He likes you better,” said Gen.
“Yeah, because I spend hours guiding him around the park so he doesn’t fall into a chasm while he’s measuring plants and you set his lab on fire one time.”
“Exactly. Plus, if I ask him, he’ll say no, and then if you ask him after that, he’ll know something’s up. So we should just start with you.”
“There is no we in this plan, Gen!”
“Sure there is. We are discussing it right now, aren’t we?”
Helen closed her eyes. He was, unfortunately, probably right about how things would play out. The Magus, a sort of free-range ecologist who did esoteric tasks for parks all over the region, did like Helen and furthermore had an established history of giving her access to things she probably wasn’t supposed to be able to access. “Gen,” said Helen, “why is Irene at the law library at 8 PM?”
“Light reading?” Gen suggested hopefully.
“Try again.”
“I may have dropped a bit of a puzzle I’ve been looking into,” said Gen. “At the end of my scavenger hunt.”
“The prize from the cute date scavenger hunt you set up for your girlfriend was a legal case file from your job?”
“I got you a rock for your birthday,” said Gen. “You’re not allowed to judge what people find exciting.”
“I’m not judging her,” said Helen.
“Besides, I need to keep Irene invested, and there’s only so long she’ll indulge me. ‘Why am I hunting down dead drops using poorly-written directions when I could just put it on the kitchen table,’ that sort of thing.”
“Isn’t the point of a dead drop that the people who are using it are the ones who know where it is?” said Helen. She herself had never gotten much into the games Gen (and Irene, and Relius) had found fun as kids - she was fan of the straightforward ones that involved whacking people with sticks, or collaboratively moving balls around a defined area - but she generally knew enough from Gen to know when he was bullshitting her.
“I was making it extra fun,” said Gen. “And the more things they didn’t know in advance, the more successfully my intentionally confusing directions could get them to cross paths. You know, Relius drops something here, Irene picks it up, they don’t realize they’re talking to each other.” He dropped an imaginary item into the air and mimed scooping it up with his hook before it hit the ground. “Also, if I didn’t make it excessively convoluted, there’s no way Relius would take it seriously.”
“And it’s just a coincidence that this information is something you also need figured out,” said Helen.
“Not at all,” said Gen cheerfully. “So, will you ask the Magus for the maps or not?”
“I’ve had three of your lot in here today already,” said Brinna, which made them all sound like kids in cliques again, but that was Brinna’s prerogative. “What’s that cousin of yours up to now?”
“Depends on which three,” said Helen, scanning the bakery case. She’d had everything in there and usually ended up with one of the same few things, but the deliberation was part of the ritual.
“Irene, Relius, and of course Eugenides. All individually.”
Helen didn’t think it was worth telling Brinna that she did not consider Relius part of her lot, exactly - more like a sort of in-law - and instead said, “Gen’s trying to get Relius and Irene to talk to each other again. I’ll have an almond cake, please, and a coffee.”
Brinna scooped up the almond cake and bellowed Helen’s coffee order to the current of the rotating cast of teenagers Brinna kept on staff to handle the register and ‘those fancy drinks,’ which referred to anything more complicated than a black coffee with cream. “About time,” she said. “Relius was good for her. That girl needed a friend. And she was certainly having no luck with the regular idiots.”
“She needed a special idiot,” said Helen.
“So,” said Brinna. “Now she’s got quite the collection. And thank the gods for that.” Brinna had a protective fondness towards Irene that came from years of letting child Irene hide in the kitchen. She’d take Irene’s side after the Hand Incident; Gen hadn’t been allowed in the bakery until he and Irene had been dating for months. “I remember one time they were in here studying and Relius told her she shouldn’t trust anyone, not even him.” Brinna smiled reminiscently. Her teenager, busy at the coffee machine out of Brinna’s sightline, made an incredulous face Helen caught in profile.
“And you thought that was a good sign for their friendship?” Helen rubbed powdered sugar off her nose. Today was not going to be a day where the almond cake made it out of the bakery.
“She’d never trusted anyone enough for that warning to be necessary,” said Brinna.
“What were they doing?” Helen asked. “This morning, I mean.”
“Irene spent a few hours working by the window, told me it was a new project. Relius came shortly after she left and asked after her, and then had to go outside to take a phone call. Gen came in to buy a cherry danish.”
“That’s it?”
“That was my thought,” said Brinna grimly. “I didn’t notice a single extra pastry missing after he left.”
“Suspicious for sure,” agreed Helen. If she pressed the right way and implied she might be able to explain given adequate information, she could probably get Brinna to go into more details about the conversation she had with Gen. Fortunately, Helen had decided Irene and Relius were none of her business until Gen (inevitably) decided to make it so.
“Speaking of special idiots,” said Brinna as the teenager passed Helen’s drink over the counter, “how’s your young man?”
Helen grinned. “Oh, Brinna, if you want an update on Sophos, I’m going to need another pastry.”
“-And I don’t hate tourists as a concept, but I wish they would at least read signs, right? They don’t have to know a single thing about nature and they don’t even have to like it or respect it for its own merits, but if they could just respect the fact that we have put a sign that says Do Not Go There and, you know, not go there, that would be great. I don’t want us to have to block off the end of the cliff trail but I am so tired of seeing footprints on the other side of the rope.”
“You and your mountain,” said Sophos fondly from where her phone was on speaker on the bed beside her.
Helen and practically everyone she knew had all lived in the shadow of the Hephestial Mountains her whole life. Her family had been here for generations. They all felt a fierce sense of pride and possession. But the volcano at its heart was always Helen’s mountain, whenever anyone in her family talked about it, and every protest she had ever made had felt and sounded false. It was Helen’s mountain. It was hers.
But that sense of possession was partly responsible for the loss of Gen’s hand. Gen had only been out there looking at that machinery in the dark - had only been looking into the problem to begin with - because Helen cared so much about it. It didn’t matter that Mede Enterprises was planning on going ahead with their drilling operations without a contract, before the paperwork was signed and reviewed, before anyone had time to protest. She hadn’t even thought they’d been doing something unscrupulous when Gen started looking into things; she just thought the tracts in discussion for the Sea of Olives National Forest were too close to the border with the national park, too close to her mountain for her own comfort, and she hadn’t shut up about it for weeks.
And then Gen had found something, and she hadn’t exactly tried to talk him down from looking closer. She knew where he was going that night.
So even though Irene had been there for some godsforsaken reason, had somehow known Gen was there and told no one and gave the go-ahead anyway, it was more than a little on Helen. There had certainly been no keeping everything quiet after than, and no way for Mede to go ahead with anything at all anywhere near the Hephestial Mountains after the public outcry; but the outcry would have been raised anyway, eventually. Instead, Gen had lost his hand for the same outcome, all because Helen had a godsforsaken parasocial relationship with a fucking volcano.
She’d said as much to Gen. He’d said he’d done everything he’d done so she could keep her mountain sacred, so she’d better keep it sacred to herself.
“Stop ruminating,” said Sophos gently.
“Stop reading my mind,” she retorted.
“I don’t think I can be blamed for that when you’re thinking so loudly I can hear it from thousands of miles away.” When she didn’t take the beat of silence he offered as an opening, he said, “What’s the latest with Gen and Irene and Relius?”
“I told you he’s transitioned them into real investigatory work,” Helen said. “I think maybe the goal was to put them so on edge with whatever weird innocuous nonsense he was pulling before that they’re relieved enough not to question what he really wanted them to do. It’s like the time Gen asked the thrift store if they did blind bags.”
“When he what?” said Sophos.
“Did I never tell you about that? Ismi got rid of a bunch of his clothes while he was stuck in bed-”
“She thought he wouldn’t notice?”
“No, Ismi’s insane but she’s not that insane. She was actually doing something nice - she was going to alter some of his clothes so they’d be easier to wear with one hand - but she dumped a ton of them because, and I quote, ‘they were unsalvageable, Genny, why the fuck did you even have them.’ Well, Gen noticed pretty much right away, there was a screaming row, their dad got involved, Ismi got in trouble for getting Gen worked up, Gen got mad that Ismi got in trouble for getting Gen worked up and not because she had scrapped his personal belongings, Ismi broke out an itemized list of every article of clothing Gen has ever stolen from her and not returned, etcetera.”
“And Gen noticed right away because…”
“Because he was trying to sneak out against doctors’ orders and those were his sneaking-out clothes, yes.”
“So Ismini is really a hero of our times.”
“In the only way any of the miscreants in that family ever manage to be, I suppose.”
“That family,” said Sophos, and she felt his grin in his words like his shoulder pressed to hers.
“I said what I said.”
They both sat there, smiling across the distance.
“The thrift store,” said Sophos.
“Right. Ostensibly he wanted, like, ready-made disguises, since Ismi had managed to undo in a day what he assures me was years of work.”
“And a carefully curated collection can be easily replaced by a stapled paper bag with whatever thrift store employees were tired of looking at.”
“Well, joke’s on us, because he didn’t get blind bags but he did adopt a trio of employees somewhere in the middle of his impassioned case for his right to sartorial eclecticism. As per usual in Gen’s world, they are a perfect trifecta where one is invested in making him look good, one is invested in making him look ridiculous, and one doesn’t give a fuck what he’s wearing but is the only one with any taste. He claims every time he goes in that it’s the luck of the draw who he’ll get, but he has their schedules memorized.”
“Wow,” said Sophos.
“Right.”
“So is that where the-”
“The pitneen outfit, yes. That one was special. They all agreed about it.”
“So then he felt morally obligated to wear it,” Sophos extrapolated.
“Which is why any of us saw it at all,” agreed Helen.
“Helen.” Gen’s head appeared around the door. “Helen, if you were a nerd, how many languages would someone have to speak for you to find it hot.”
“Why are you asking me this,” said Helen. “In this hypothetical scenario, I could choose to give you any number, and it would be arbitrary.”
She glanced at her phone, and Gen caught it. “Oh, is Sophos here? Perfect. Sophos,” said Gen, “how many languages does someone have to speak for you to find it hot?”
“I think any language can be hot depending on who’s speaking it and how they’re using it,” said Sophos thoughtfully. “So, one?”
“Oh my gods.” Helen dropped her head onto the comforter. “You are a parody of yourself and you mean it every time.”
But Gen was nodding contemplatively. “Okay, that’s promising,” he said. “I am not working with a lot here.”
“What are you doing now,” Helen asked, exasperated.
“I’m getting Relius a present.”
“Can’t you ask Irene what Relius finds hot?”
“No, no, I know what Relius finds hot,” said Gen dismissively. “It’s not about Relius.”
“The present for Relius isn’t about Relius?”
“Not about what he finds hot. Though, speaking of,” said Gen, drawing the word out, and Helen lunged and blocked him as he tipped towards the bed.
“No,” she said.
He leaned unconcerned on her forearms, grinning. “Sophos,” he continued. “What do you think about Aron’s portrayal of the lovers in Gracia-”
“Nope! Go away. You can bother Sophos literally any other time.”
“-and do you think it has parallels in modern-day telecommunicative dating?” said Gen. “Listeners are dying to know.”
“Well-”
“Don’t answer that,” said Helen over her shoulder, pushing to her feet on the bed for leverage and shoving Gen up so he tipped back in the other direction.
“I don’t mind-”
“Thank you, Sophos, I love you, have fun with your rocks!” Gen shouted as Helen wrestled him out of the room and slammed the door behind him.
At the crunch of other feet approaching on the hiking path behind where she was crouched, Helen shuffled a little closer to the edge so they could pass and she could continue watching the bees. But when they stopped, she looked up in puzzlement.
“Helen,” said Teleus, already looking pained about it.
“Teleus.” Helen glanced at the ample space for him to continue walking and concluded that he must actually want to talk to her. In the hierarchy in Teleus’s head, as best as she could figure, Helen existed as an appendage to Gen, who must be borne for the sake of Irene. As an accessory to evil, Helen was approached with reluctance but not outright loathing. She stood up.
“What the fuck is Gen doing.”
Never one to mince words, Teleus. “To Relius?” said Helen.
“No, I know what he’s doing to Relius,” said Teleus. “I want to know what he’s doing to Costis.”
“Costis?”
Helen’s surprise must have been genuine enough that Teleus was convinced she didn’t know anything. He pursed his lips and turned to continue on his hike.
“Wait,” said Helen. “What is Gen doing to Relius?”
“Indoctrinating him to his side,” said Teleus darkly. That was a new one. Helen was expecting a summary of details or possibly something like ‘ruining his life,’ though it did have that same tone. She wondered what ‘side’ Relius was being indoctrinated away from. Though, she supposed, that did indicate progress towards Gen’s reconciliation goals. Though, she realized, Gen had never said that he was using this plan to ty to get himself on good terms with Relius again.
“Thanks,” said Helen thoughtfully. Teleus rolled his eyes.
“I hear the band’s back together,” said Helen as the bus pulled away behind her.
Gen cocked his head.
“That was an idiom and not an idea.”
“Too late,” said Gen. Helen made a mental note to text Dite a warning. “Did you know Relius plays the flute?”
Helen settled onto the bench at the bus stop. No one else was waiting, and she may as well use it if Gen was going to insist on taking the most circuitous route to his point. “I guess I remember he was in the band in high school.”
“He still does. He tutors kids sometimes.” Gen perched on the back of the bench, and then stood up again and circled it, and then perched on the back facing the other way before dropping to sit almost normally on the part of the bench intended for sitting. “How’d you know they made up?”
“Well, Temenus said he heard them arguing about, quote, ‘goat farms, and by all the gods, Hels, do not tell me if “goat farms” is some sort of CIA acronym for nuclear weapons, leave me out of their freaky shit,’ end quote, which seemed like a pretty solid indicator considering no one’s seen them speak to each other in weeks.” And considering how Irene made decisions - abruptly and completely - Helen assumed the matter was settled. “Seems like your plan worked.”
Gen shrugged, and this one was a lie because he was clearly pleased with himself. “Irene and Relius got to solve a problem together, I now have a problem solved, they’re texting in ciphers and doing wine on Thursday evenings again, and Relius finally took me up on my offer to help him with his job hunt.”
“I thought you intentionally made it so that no reputable company will hire Relius again,” said Helen. “Are you going to arrange for him to learn a new trade?”
“Ah, no reputable company will ever hire Relius,” said Gen. “But the unreputable ones may.”
Helen paused, processing, and then almost smiled and shook her head. “So this has all been a business venture?”
“Noooo,” said Gen, looking wounded. “It was for Irene.”
“Hmm.”
“But I can multitask.”
“You’re sending Relius to work for Mede Enterprises?”
“I’m not sure that one would work,” said Gen. “Nahusaresh absolutely knows about Relius’s connection to Irene. But, you know. Melenze. Roa. Whatever the fucking Pent-Brael conglomerate is calling itself these days. We’ve got options.” Sending Relius to work at Mede would also be too easy, Helen figured. Gen liked to be more creative with people he really hated. “Besides,” added Gen, a smug smile unfolding across his face as if on cue. “I should be getting enough from Mede shortly.”
All right. Time to get to the point. Helen had come because Gen had asked if she would be around to meet him and used an actual question mark in his text. “So where’s Irene?”
Gen sighed but didn’t pretend that wasn’t what this was about. “She’s coming.” He stared out across the street instead of meeting Helen’s eyes. “I was wondering if you could talk to her.”
“About what?” Helen said, coloring the question with enough exasperation to tease but not enough to imply she wasn’t taking it seriously. She’d played buffer between Gen and Irene on Gen’s request enough times now that she knew the reason was always the same.
Gen shrugged. “I don’t know. Get a sense of how she feels about the whole situation with Relius.”
“I thought they’d made up,” said Helen. “Surely she thinks that’s a good thing.”
“Yes,” said Gen, “but I haven’t really talked to her about it since.”
“You live in the same 800 square feet,” said Helen. “You share a bed.”
“Not always,” said Gen, which meant he had been lurking on rooftops like an ad hoc weather vane instead of sleeping.
“What do you think she’s going to have a problem with?” asked Helen.
Gen kicked the ground, the familiar scratch of rubber on pavement rendered eerie by how incongruous it was to come from Gen. “I don’t want to make her decisions for her,” he said finally. “She has so few friends, and Relius is the first one she chose. And certainly the first one who mattered.”
“But also,” said Helen, understanding, “she has so few friends, and he is the first one who mattered.”
Gen nodded, his attention still on his feet instead of Helen.
“Gen,” she said, “if Irene had a problem with you so serious that it would end your relationship, she’d either tell you to your face or she wouldn’t still be here. When will you stop being nervous about your relationship?”
“The same time you stop feeling guilty for my choices,” retorted Gen.
“Your choices are your own,” said Helen, “and mine belong to me. You cannot take from me the ability to decide that for myself. Gen,” she said, leaning forward to prop her forearms on her thighs so she could twist to meet his downcast eyes, “you have to trust Irene knows the decisions she is making.”
He cut his eyes away from her, but he didn’t argue. Helen sat back and folded her arms across her chest, stretching out her legs and crossing them at the ankles. After a minute with silence between them on the bench, Helen said, “Who does Irene think she’s meeting here?”
“Me,” said Gen reluctantly. “Which she will! Just after you talk to her.” He finally turned to look at her with pleading eyes.
Helen covered her own briefly with her hand. “If you thought she was going to be mad at you, why didn’t you have it out at home where any crash is a noise complaint rather than a public nuisance charge?”
“I am always a public nuisance, and no one has charged me for it yet,” said Gen primly.
“The time with the sheep doesn’t count?” said Helen. “Or the time you set up that game where you tried to see how many places you could steal signage from?” Their cousins’ betting pool had been enormous by the time Gen let himself be caught after striking a deal with Agape in exchange for a cut of the profits and a favor whose details Helen had never been able to weasel out of either of them.
“No one can prove it,” said Gen.
“Yes, they can,” said Helen. “In fact, I seem to recall them doing so.”
“Could’ve been anyone,” said Gen serenely, stretching his own legs out to mirror Helen’s position. He closed his eyes, a faint grin on his face.
Helen thought her face must be doing the same thing. She closed her own eyes to complete it, and when she opened them not thirty seconds later, Gen had disappeared.
Instead, a bigger man was settling in his place, four reusable grocery bags at his feet and a gallon of milk on the bench next to him. “Oh,” said Helen in realization when she saw the enthusiastic splatter-paint of freckles across his face and arms, “you’re Gen’s” - she swerved diplomatically twice - “Costis.”
Costis looked resigned to this descriptor. “You must be Gen’s cousin.”
“One of them,” Helen agreed. ‘Gen’s cousin’ was a pretty safe guess for any of Gen’s known associates who looked even a little like him. “Don’t worry. I’m not on his payroll.”
“What, is he on yours?” Costis asked.
Helen smiled, delighted. “He only torments you if he likes you,” she said in exchange.
Costis considered that. “There’s Sejanus. And Teleus. And Xikos. And Ornon. And-”
“He likes Ornon!” Helen said encouragingly. Costis, justifiably, received this statement with doubt. “Gen torments me all the time,” she added. “You have to torment him back. He’ll let you.”
“He does not,” said Costis, with a little bit of horror and the present tense.
Aha. There was Irene. Helen slapped Costis on the shoulder and stood up. “Hang in there.”
Irene was standing very still at the end of the plaza, but Helen could tell she was scanning for Gen and marked the moment she saw Helen instead. “I take it that I am not meeting Gen here after all?” Irene said once Helen was close enough.
“He’s around,” said Helen. “He wants me to talk to you first.”
“Hm,” said Irene, with a minute change in expression that would have been an eye roll for anyone else.
“Are you going to break up with him because he trashed your best friend’s career prospects and then cajoled you two into talking again?”
“No,” said Irene.
“Great. While we’re standing here letting him squirm, I did have a question,” said Helen.
Irene inclined her head.
“Why did you cut off Relius like that?”
Irene looked surprised. “He deserved it.”
“Did he?”
“Of course.”
“And that was enough? Even though it was Relius?”
“It should have been,” said Irene. “Now that I have gone back on that, I keep thinking, what am I doing? But I thought that the whole time we weren’t talking, too, and I was miserable then and only believe I should be miserable now.”
Irene knew better than anyone how some situations had no winning outcomes, even if you were able to choose which outcome it was. She didn’t question it when such a situation seemed to arise, because on some level she always expected it. This was not one of those situations. Irene and Relius only thought there were no possible positive outcomes because they were, often, the same kind of idiot.
“Good,” said Helen.
“Good?”
“I believe in forgiveness,” said Helen blithely.
“Helen, I couldn’t walk outside for months without one of your family members appearing to minorly inconvenience me.”
It was true that Helen had arranged that, but it wasn’t like it had taken a lot of convincing. She had cousins voluntarily adhering to schedules who had never adhered to a schedule before in their life. “So,” Helen acknowledged anyway. “And now we’re friends.” A beat. “No, see, I know we’re friends because I can tell that you think I’m ridiculous.”
“You’re as bad as Sophos,” said Irene, but the almost unnoticeable amusement hadn’t left.
“No one is as bad as Sophos.” Helen paused to put her thoughts in order. “I suppose it may be more accurate to say I believe my own emotional relationship to a situation is not irrelevant. And sometimes it doesn’t or shouldn’t factor, but sometimes it does. Sometimes it’s telling you something you haven’t reached with logic yet.”
When Gen had said that Irene needed to know that Relius wouldn’t irrevocably fuck things up for her, but that first Relius himself needed to know that, Gen hadn’t meant that Gen’s own actions would set up safeguards to prevent Relius from doing it again. He’d meant that it was already true, and they needed to realize that.
“You could have told me,” Irene said.
“What?”
“You knew what Gen was doing, with Relius and me.”
Helen nodded when it seemed Irene was waiting for an answer.
“You could have told me.”
The thought had not crossed her mind. “I wouldn’t have gone about things the way he did,” Helen said slowly, “but I don’t know you and Relius.”
“You have Gen,” said Irene. It took Helen a moment to realize that Irene was drawing equivalencies between Irene’s relationship with Relius and Helen’s relationship with Gen because the concept was so ludicrous.
“I do have Gen,” said Helen diplomatically, though not diplomatically enough, because Irene’s eyebrow rose in amusement.
But Irene didn’t press her. “How does he know it’s safe to come out?” Irene asked. “Do you have to make some sort of subtle signal?”
“I have to twirl in place with my hands on my head indicating how mad you are on a scale of one to ten,” Helen said.
Irene nodded gravely, as if she had expected this. “Let’s save your dignity a while longer,” she said. “Do you know someone named Kamet?”