Chapter 27: Joel X Esther

The main reason Joel made a point of hovering around Barack so aggressively at times like this was to keep a hold on his communications. In this particular case, Joel noted with some alarm that Esther Okerye had been trying to contact Barack all morning long- on his direct line. Which is to say, she was trying to bypass Joel as an intermediary for talking to Barack altogether. Joel decided that this wouldn't do at all. So while in the process of fraudulently setting up a meeting wherein Barack would be able to listen to Esther's concerns firsthand, naturally deleting any course of this conversation from Barack's phone, Joel decided on a new plan of action. He was going to have to become Esther Okerye's friend.

This was no simple task. Esther Okerye frightened nearly everyone she came into contact with. Even though she had been with the Rainbow Shirts from the very beginning, they had never fully trusted each other. It wasn't a matter of malice, just inescapable class differences. Where Barack and Homer received a typical elite upbringing, with a very formal understanding of martial arts and the like, Esther learned how to fight by fighting. She terrified men and women alike to the point that no one was entirely certain what her sexual identity even was. That was how difficult it was to get close to her.

As Joel stood looking in the mirror, trying to hype himself into making a good impression on Esther, he had to remind himself that either way he had no sexual interest in her either. It wasn't that Esther was bad-looking by any means, but rather that sex was an distraction in matters such as this. Joel had to put himself in the mindset of being a literal child, someone who was just lonely. He believed that this was how Esther felt about herself, less because of any concrete information, but rather because this was how Joel himself felt most of the time. For all his best efforts, Joel's obsessive desire to gain normal emotional approval from another human being usually locked him out of that goal. And no matter how humiliating the inevitable failure may have seemed, or how likely the prospect of Esther placing Joel on a permanent list of people to be violently murdered at a later date, Joel had to try. That was what he did, his only useful contribution to anything as far as he could tell. Joel Rotierre never gave up.

When Joel entered the pool hall, Esther didn't stand up to greet him. She just stared at him in disgust, realizing that once again her access had been blocked. Joel looked around nervously. This place was filled with tough looking people, every last one of whom was probably wondering how easily they could squish Joel into a tiny cube. This place was incredibly loud- and thus very secure. Short of a bug placed directly on one or both of them there would be no way for anyone to hear what either of them were talking about.

"Unbelievable," she said as Joel came to the table, and prepared a cue stick. "So what, even his private line isn't secure anymore? Ugh. It's almost enough to make me want to try that new, what do you call it, some kind of intraneural interface communications thing? Not sure what it does. I don't think it sounds safe."

"Oh, it's totally safe!" said Joel, picking up a stick and prepared to break. "But I'm afraid it wouldn't be much help when it comes to talking to my liege. He hasn't had it installed yet.

"Really," said Esther dryly. "I remember he wouldn't shut up about it, back when development first started. But yeah, I'm not optimistic about the viability of this particular fad. Seems like if it was any good my soldiers might have noticed we were walking into a death swamp and maybe, I don't know, popped out a warning."

"That was very impressive you know," said Joel, preparing to break. He moved seamlessly into the rhythm of the game. Joel had long favored the logical geometry of pool, though he wasn't very good at it. "Your surviving I mean."

"Not particularly," said Esther observing as Joel knocked the balls into position. She was struck by his apparent incompetence. Only about half of the balls had been moved at all. There wasn't enough force to his shot, in part because he was angling the stick in a very strange way, between his fingers. Nothing was in a position that could be easily shot in to a hole, even considering Esther's personal handicap of only doing needlessly complex shots.

"Any competent military squad could have figured out what was going on," Esther continued. "But that's not what I'm here to talk about."

Esther miffed her first shot. Somewhat incredibly, the cue ball managed to end up in such a spot that Joel could easily get one in. He was stripes.

"So what's Barack's excuse for not being available this time?" she asked.

"There's a lot going on with the presidential election," said Joel, lining up his shot. "He thinks it's the next big thing."

"That's very interesting," said Esther. "I'd think that maybe he'd be more interested in our current situation. Like how we've got a woman locked up in the basement, at this point for no reason I can think of. Homer thinks we should cut her loose."

"And what do you think?" said Joel, thoughtfully pausing before the shot.

"I think she could be an asset," said Esther. "At the very least she's someone I can talk to, which is more than I can say for the rest of the idiots around here."

"Now, Esther, you're being very unfair to your fellow soldiers!"

"Come on. Seriously?" Esther scoffed. "You've seen the jokers we hang around with. They're all useless. Garbage. Sometimes I think I could do better on my own. Just fighting entire armies by myself."

"What, like a superhero or something?" asked Joel.

"Don't be ridiculous," said Esther. "It's the exact opposite problem. They grow up watching all these nerd cartoons or whatever and think they can win fights by using their augments like superpowers. That's not how it works. Killing, you know, hasn't changed much over the years. I study what works. I know what can kill a person, and what can disable them. That's how I win. Gimmicks just get in the way."

After this long excessively polite display of listening to Esther, Joel finally took a shot. He didn't quite get his ball in the hole, but it was so close that there wasn't any way for Esther to get any of the solids in that hole either. Esther observed, to her chagrin, that all of the solids were bunched together just enough that this particular hole was her only real target.

But after briefly considering the board, Esther also took a second look at Joel directly. Joel could feel her oppressive thoughts.

"Didn't that freak you out a bit?" asked Esther. "The way I was really blunt just now about the whole, you know killing people thing."

"Oh, no," said Joel. "No, no, no, no, no. I mean, I hear people say crazier things than that all the time. I think your way of thinking is, um, very functional. Very functional and very sane."

As Esther took her next shot a smile was starting to creep on her lips. She could tell that Joel was a bad liar. But his nervous awkwardness was surprisingly cute, especially since he was so focused on the game that any notion of trying to leave seemed alien to him. To the contrary- Esther could tell that Joel was going out of his way to pad out this conversation, if only as a means of trying to change the subject.

Esther was so distracted by all of these thoughts that she rather incredibly managed to miss this shot as well, though it was perfectly doable one. Now Joel had another chance to get his extremely easy ball into the hole.

"I think this must be my lucky day," said Joel, hardly aware of the extent to which he was sweating in this loud room as he prepared for his shot.

"So anyway," said Esther. "You're from Iowa. I'm sure you've heard about this Oracle of Des Moines right?"

Joel felt a moment of horror and panic that caused him to fail the shot. The cue ball bounced around the board, only finally managing to hit a stripe by sheer dumb luck.

"What?" asked Esther. "Don't tell me you dated her or something."

"I, uh, just got something in my eye," said Joel. "Of course I've never even heard of the Oracle of Des Moines."

"Really?" said Esther. "That's very interesting because you know, back in the chopper, the one that's dead now, from all the fumes, I did a lot of research about Des Moines and isn't she the sole source of tourism in the entire city or something? And you're telling me you never heard about her even once?"

"Maybe once or twice," said Joel stammering. "I'm really not interested in cultural stuff. It's just work, work, work for me."

"And yet you know how to play pool," said Esther.

"Oh, this," said Joel waving his hands all over, "this is nothing. I play like a simpleton."

"No," said Esther. "You pretend to play like a simpleton. "It's very clever actually. Luring me into a false sense of security, when what you're really doing is playing defensively, blocking most of the best shots. Now if I was some stupid idiot who thought I was playing against a robot, maybe I'd get angry. Feel humiliated at losing to such an easy mark. I'd get angrier and angrier, and start playing worse and worse."

"That sure is a complicated plan," said Joel, laughing nervously. "I would never be able to come up with something that ridiculous."

"Yeah yeah sure, whatever," said Esther, dismissively. "What I don't get is why. Are you trying to make me mad?"

Joel dropped his stick and put his hands over his mouth in horror. Esther was right. By sheer habit he had lapsed back into his usual pool playing habit, completely forgetting that this wasn't a mark who he was trying to provoke into doing something with plausible deniability, but someone he had been trying to turn into a friend. He sunk to the ground.

"I've ruined everything," he said. "But how?! I can't do anything right! I thought I planned it so well, but what was I doing really? I can't even make friends right!"

And just like that, Joel abruptly started crying. Esther self-consciously looked around the room, realizing to her relief that nobody noticed or cared. She walked over and tried to comfort Joel, patting him on the back. Joel noticed that Esther's natural patting motion was so hard it felt like she was punching him. Joel took comfort knowing that if Esther wanted to break his bones or anything, she would hit him a lot harder than that for sure.

"I'm such a jerk," said Joel sniffling. "I'm sorry I'm always blocking you off from Barack. It's not my fault, honest. He needs a scummy jerk like me to do all the dirty work for him. That whole Chicago thing was his idea."

"Did something happen to him in Iowa?" asked Esther. "I know he went there, but the signal went out after he passed the border. I thought it was really strange, him not seeming to care about this Oracle business at all."

"How do you know about that?" asked Joel, still sobbing, increasingly weakly. "Are you spying on him?"

"What? No, no," said Esther, retreating into a defensive spot.

"It's perfectly fine if you want to," said Joel. "Everybody should spy on each other. Privacy is overrated. I mean how else are we going to keep each other honest right?"

With that Joel forced a laugh. He felt like he could just die of embarrassment right there. He was in one of these babbling moods of his and no one would be able to take him seriously.

"Maybe?" said Esther with a smile.

Esther's smile was unlike anything Joel had ever seen. It was completely crooked and misshapen, as if the last time Esther had even tried to smile her face had a different structure and the muscles were all trying to make dimples in the weirdest possible places. Joel pondered whether this might be a side effect of Esther's various augments, which were mostly geared around maximizing the efficiency of her bodily functions.

But on a deeper level Joel's heart was warmed by the crookedness of Esther's smile. It was so utterly sincere, unpracticed. Joel thought about himself standing in front of the mirror earlier, mustering all of his lifetime of duplicitous skill to try and come up with a version of himself that he was sure Esther would like. Joel compared that intrinsic lie of his life with the sincerity of the woman before him, and just started crying again.

"Hey, come on," said Esther. "Do we need to leave?"

"No! I want to stay here," said Joel, as Esther started to lead him to the washroom.

"I just want you to know," said Joel between sobs, "that Barack doesn't care about the Oracle. And he's really busy with the planning of this uh...this thing I can't tell you about. Barack doesn't care about her at all. He wouldn't have any opinion about her being in custody. I think. I don't know actually. I'm all discombobulated..."

"It's fine, really," said Esther, dabbing Joel's eyes with a dry towel in the washroom. "Look, we don't have to talk about work or anything, but you want to finish our game of pool? I've always wanted a partner who can, I don't know, maybe not be a total jerk."

"I have so much worked planned for today though," said Joel sniffling again.

"I insist," said Esther grimacing, unconsciously making a fist with her hand. "It's funny, really. I talked to the Oracle, and it kind of felt like talking to you. Maybe we don't really need her around. Just my lonesomeness acting out."

"Yes, yes," said Joel. "I'm sure that's exactly what's going on there."

"So how about that game?" said Esther. "I got a lotta break time saved up."

"Well, I'm reasonably certain I'm not really needed today," said Joel. "No big disasters planned that would require my help to untangle, at least."