Galettes (2)

"But the process was not as simple as that, I believe? Just from the meeting with Val and Gema I can sense your company has its own hardship," Mark said. He stretched his hand to reach the corner of Stephanie's lips, wiping away little crumb she didn't realise it was there.

Embarrassed of her clumsiness, she said, "Sorry."

Mark said, "Sorry," at the same time.

"What for?" he asked back.

"It was okay," she replied to his first statement.

Feeling awkward of speaking at the same time consecutively, Mark stayed silent, he meant to let Stephanie speak freely first. But of course she couldn't say anything like 'I'm fine you touch me' or something like that.

She only said, "Pardon my mess. Talking while eating, I was engrossed in the story." She smiled, showing her pearly whites earnestly.

"It's the first time I'm in an enthusiastic conversation about something that happened in this pandemic era."

She felt her face warm up.

"B- but, it wasn't as simple as that," she stuttered while normalising her jumpy heartbeat, " . . . it was a bumpy road all along."

She recalled their early days, they were full of her resting her forehead on her palms after pressing the 'leave' button, effectively concluding the video call of debriefing with the new Companions, to ensure they were doing the right thing in the field, and what to improve on the next visits.

But due to the email she received beforehand was from the Council, she couldn't really focus. The email from Den Haag stated that they had added an appendix of the June Pandemic Year 2 edict: each company with residence visitation business had to hold a valid licence guaranteeing the hundred per cent of their field employees were Immune. This was the licence that much later became their problem again after Stephanie had a session with Lila.

Cursing quietly after accidentally sending the damn email to the Spam folder, she pulled it back and called Val, Gema, and Annisa to discuss.

She ranted in that hot room after the video call. Her sweat beads rolled down her armpits, legs, and neck, unclear if caused by the temperature alone or mixed with her violent anger. "It was an organised effort to limit us."

She added to the faces of Val, Gema, and Annisa on the tiny thumbnail boxes of their video call. "Mind, they play victim by throwing around the statement that they'd been on limited resource, too. I mean, feeling victimised against this little Companionship business which is under their mercy? I feel guilty by his subtle accusation that we've blocked their essential, life-preserving business, by snatching the workers from them."

Annisa groaned. "But that's the twisted logic, isn't it? It's not two giants buttheading each other. They're literally drafting the Immune, but we open job opportunities. Still, they want to stop us. As if we globally shift all of our focus to one part of the needs and abandon the others. We have people's natural needs, you know. And it's not like they can't automate some of the logistics processes."

"Try to reason that with them."

Val added his number wisdom as usual. "Did they even benchmark the pay? A Companion doesn't even earn that much. I can say that's even a tad lower than the Ration people of the Commerce department's salary. It's always a losing option for us. We increase the service fee, we'll lose clients."

Stephanie inhaled deeply and let everyone's disappointment simmer in the background. People would always choose to do the work they were comfortable with. Not everyone wanted to be a Companion, not everyone could be a last-mile logistic frontline deliverer. Their idea of hoarding the workforce was absurd. Chaotic, wasn't it? The Unified Global Government she put much faith into, the one she chose to follow over the Ex's idea of fleeing the country, stood against them now.

It had been a grave mistake, then, to not surrender to the Ex's proposition, hadn't it? Why did she even bother to start Prattle? Why didn't she throw her towel and let Gema and Val be her successors?

Gema's voice roped her back to the current. His soothing, deep voice balmed her soul and doused the yapping clamour of the doubt. "Then we won't need to follow the licencing process. We lay low in the recruiting," Gema chipped in. Brothers she didn't know she needed they had been, Gema and Val.

"But then . . .," Stephanie was back to the present, facing Mark with displeasure colouring her soft face. "We ended up following the rule! We paid— no, actually, Val and Gema paid since I had no piggybank money back then. We submitted the documents, paid, waited, and so on and so forth until we were finally, finally, acknowledged legally by the Council and all departments under it," she huffed.

Mark was mesmerised upon hearing this. Her story captivated him, and aside from oh's and hm's he murmured along the way, his eyes always glimmered with excitement. She felt giddy with the effect of her words to other people. The joyous feeling created a feedback loop between them, so contagious.

"That's why it was a big issue for you guys with the licence renewal problem. It shouldn't have needed renewal, right?"

"Yeah. It was more of a punishment."

"But do you think I'm a punishment? I don't know why it's a punishment for you, since I do nothing. I'm just a client."

She shrugged her shoulder. "There are limits of what we know as subjects, but no limit of what the Council know as the ruler."

They left it at that, since it was no use to think about something that they didn't have any influence on.

"How about . . . hm, is it okay, to ask about the days leading up to my pick-up?"

Stephanie could hear unspoken fear in his tone. She nodded.

Between them, Stephanie had eaten a little of her savoury galettes because she kept telling the story, but Mark chewed slowly as if accompanying her at her pace.

"It was like this," she started again.

~*~

She spent the day before calling back and forth with Val and Gema and the Department of Wellbeing from home because she was sick. Her runny nose and feverish body forced her to drop the appointments on that day. With the throbbing migraine that began as a budding dull pain and ended flaring up to crack her skull asunder, she had no choice other than to let Val took over her client. She felt better at night when she had a call with Annisa, fortunately.

The rocking bus gliding from the South to West Jakarta area like a serrated knife slicing a loaf of bread didn't do well for her overall mood. This day was the important day of her career and Prattle's sustainability. Beggars couldn't be choosers, she kept telling herself. Because she baulked at paying for the ridiculously baseless certification, she had to put up with former inmates reintegration into society.

She had her first ex-inmate client that day. Her okay head was brimming with anticipation.

She should not direct her anger towards the inmates, but still to the Department of Commerce people, she reminded herself after her phone screen went back to sleep. It was their decision, anyway, to move forward with this option.

Her contract, her first government-issued contract, stated that she was to assist the reintegration of this ex-prisoner, easing him into the assigned accommodation.

She remembered all the reading she did on the bus. She changed the screen from light into the dark mode, then light again. It wasn't the gentle shakes of the bus that kept her distracted from progressing her reading. She loved reading on her e-reader app on the bus during her commute, but this time she would want to read the profile of her client.

When the bus pulled over at the stop half a kilometre away from the penitentiary, she reeled back in her professional composure and shushed her wandering mind. The hot white sky sprawling above her with the horizon hidden behind the skyscrapers like hedges cut by an impatient gardener with blunt shears. She focused on the cranes and migratory birds.

She actively recalled Annisa's suggestion in the crash course to not bring up any past verdicts. She didn't need to talk about the sins of her client, she agreed. He's atoned, she remembered Annisa spoke in an assuring voice that was specific to hers.

The girl even called her right before she stepped out of the bus.

"It's my dry humour all day every day, you don't have to remind me. Yes, okay. No, I won't bring up our financial situation to him, why would I? Now, you make me sound like an incompetent and heartless person. I see, taking him to his assigned accommodation and then moving on with my life. Yeah, it's from the Department of Justice, and I'm not sure if it's permanent. Maybe they'll assign him another place after some time. Okay, have a nice day, too. Bye, Annisa."

Oh, it was like when we reminisce the events leading up to a memorable first meeting, we couldn't have know that it would leave a great impression. We couldn't have anticipated it.

But obviously she couldn't mention this lasting impression to Mark right away or she could combust with shame.

"I'm sorry since I'm still a problem to someone else even after all these years," he bent his head down.

"To say you're a problem, it's incorrect. But to say it's a walk in the park, it's also incorrect," she jibed.

She explained succinctly that she was nervous the days before their meeting.

Before she went back to bed the few nights before, when the backlog of Prattle operational matters occupied her mind, she scrolled her email to read the unopened items. Only a few remained, but one of them caught her attention.

The materials that Annisa had promised.

She scrolled down. Keywords like 'correctional psychology' and 'behavioural therapy' filled her addled brain. What made the former inmates stop offending? But she wasn't there as their parole officer, was she?

Minutes passed by before her brain yelled at being at work and not sleeping.

But as doom-scrolling, the activity of keeping scrolling as if there was no tomorrow, became a hobby and psychological relapse for everyone in the pandemic where outside activity was limited, hit her, she couldn't stop as there was always one more item to read.

The identity of the assigned inmate.

She didn't dare to open it, as she wanted to save it for a few hours later where she would be emotionally and mentally prepared in business mode, not at her weakest state in this witching hour.

But she clicked it open.

There she saw the name of the inmate, who would be out after twenty years of serving.

"I was afraid back then," she said to Mark, "I didn't find anything worthy to talk to you, to ease you back into a society which has been a crumpled sheet in the history."

Mark's eyes gazed downwards, it looked difficult for him to swallow the last bite of Stephanie's mushroom galette that he tried.

"Don't think too much about it, okay? You're here, you're free, and you're opening a new leaf. Let's not dwell in the past. I'm sure you'll find more activities to keep you happy and productive. We need people to rebuild the world, of course."

There, she steered the topic to the job search that she had been wanting to discuss.

"Is there anything required from DoJ for you to do? I don't know the living arrangement or the work, the dossier didn't go to such extent."

Theoretically, Mark could do work in logistics, keeping his old job at the penitentiary but now at a bigger scale, such as supply depots or hubs. But she wasn't sure which are to assign to, and what assistance he'd need from her once he found a new environment.

The Department of Commerce hadn't sent any further instruction whether Prattle needed to assign Companions for more ex-inmates, so she could only play the waiting game.

"I need to do logistics, but I think I can free up some days to accompany you. There's no structure, that's what confuses me."

Stephanie didn't want to see that kicked puppy look anymore on his face, so she suggested that he could go to report at the nearest hub tomorrow, then discuss with his superior if it's possible for him to be a part-time Companion.