A-Cup Angst Ch. 13

"Because there's nothing to undo," Aldo said, laughing. He picked up the various cards and documents and held them up for Jamie to see. "These are fakes, all of them! My friend whipped them up for me as a joke!"

His words broke through the whirling gears in Jamie's head and Jamie glared at him in disbelief. "Look," Aldo urged him as he held up the various items for his inspection. "The cards are demagnetized, they don't have the holograms on them, the seal on your visa approval is that of the State Forestry Corps and the stamps on your work permit are from the Office of Standards and Measurements! It's all fake! It wouldn't fool anyone."

"Fake?"

"Yes, fake," Aldo said. "My goodness! You really are yesterday's fruit if you believed for even one minute that this much bureaucracy could be handled in Italy in just five hours!" Aldo snorted. "More like five months!"

Jamie took a closer look at the things and saw what Aldo had meant. His family name had been "The Canadian" in some of them. He set his elbows down on the counter and buried his face in his hands. He had almost gone medieval on the old man because of a completely harmless joke. He had mistaken a joke for an actual problem and jumped to start solving it. If he had only bothered to take a second and look at the name on all of the documents, he would have instantly seen through the prank. He felt ashamed and so stupid for his failure. How could he have, even for a second, thought that he'd do any good if he hadn't first identified the fucking problem?

"Think before you act," He admonished himself in his head. "Look! See! Listen! Keep a cool head and let the Force guide you, you fucking idiot!" He grimaced and drew deep breaths to try and stabilize his mood.

Aldo began to ask Jamie about the repairs he had made that day, but Jamie felt too bad to give him any kind of answer. He reached for his laptop, heard the chime announcing that another item had been sold, and took out a piece of paper from Aldo's notebook. He wrote down the shipping address, tore the paper out and stuck it to the item in question. Aldo kept asking him about things and Jamie just ignored him. He picked up his laptop and camera and left the shop.

Jamie got in his car and started the engine. The memories of all the bad things he had done and all the lives he had taken began to choke the life out of him. His chest felt tight and his heart raced. A cold sweat beaded on his skin as anguish and despair clouded his mind. His meditations and mental exercises weren't going to cut it tonight. Not after his gargantuan display of blinding stupidity.

He let the engine roar his anger as he drove away from the A-D Repairs and Restorations shop. Away from the city. Away from his mother's house. The roads wound up and down the hills of Tuscany and Jamie followed them blindly. He stopped at a gas station to refuel and bought two bottles of hard liquor. He kept on driving without aim or intention, avoiding even looking at the road signs. His tears began to obscure his vision, so he parked in a field where there was no sight of people anywhere near.

He loaded the queenadreena CD he had into the CD player and let it play at full blast. Katie Jane's voice screamed of frustrations and Jamie screamed right alongside her. He tossed back drink after drink and hollered her lyrics right back at her. The few cars that passed him during the night, saw nothing odd and heard no noise.

Jamie woke up in the morning with a splitting headache. His throat was dry and his gut felt uneasy. He groaned and squinted out at the morning sky. A tractor passed him by on the road, pulling a huge trailer full of hay. Jamie flinched and covered his ears at the noise. He growled and cursed after the retreating noisemaker. He needed to pee. He tossed the empty bottles aside, opened the door and struggled to clamber out of his seat. Leaning against the car, he managed to get around it and relieve himself.

He felt like shit. The road he was parked by wound out of sight, behind a hill, and then popped back into view, lined by tall, swaying trees on both sides. Jamie growled again as the tractor came around the hill and plodded on down the road. He needed to do something about his condition. He retrieved a canister of water from the trunk. It was there to replace the water in the cooler after an accident, such as the one he had had when Nova had been pulled offline. He chugged half the canister in one go. It made him feel a bit better. Then he had to pee again.

His physical condition had improved after all that water, but it only receded to let the anguish of last night surface again. Jamie knew he wasn't the smartest guy around. He didn't want to be the smartest guy around and he didn't want to be thought of as such, whether deservedly or not. All he wanted was to stop being the dumbest version of himself. He needed to stop making wild assumptions and then rushing off to act on them. He needed to find a way to instantly bitchslap himself back to sense when the assumption monster struck. If he couldn't, then what fucking good could he do in his life? Could he ever be of any use to himself, or others?

He sighed and sat cross-legged on the roof of his BMW X5. He needed to clear the mess in his mind, reorganize his thoughts and instill some order and discipline into it. The problem was in his mind. He was the only one that could fix it. He began his meditation with breathing exercises. Cars that passed him by, noticed him and honked. Despite the Force warning him of when they were coming, they were abrupt intrusions in his mental work. Jamie welcomed their interruptions. He needed to train his mind to work through whatever came along and suss out the truth of the matter.

As the Sun rose higher on the horizon, he went deeper into a state of semi-lucid trance. Soon, he started feeling the Force shield his mind when the next honk was coming. He braced his mental muscles each time and let the loud, interrupting sounds wash over and through him, while his inner cool stayed undisturbed. He reached a profound state of calm and remained in it. It reminded him of the time he had meditated in a forest next to his slave witches. In this state of mind, his magic had spoken to him and told him how to defeat every magician that stood in his way. Now, only the Force was there and it had nothing to report. Jamie let himself stay in this deep state of mental clarity. He imagined it to be his new mental home and felt around to find all of its borders and edges. He committed them to memory and did his best to conceive of a mental shortcut that would immediately pull him back to this place of calm reflection, if he so needed.

As he took the time to construct and strengthen his shortcut to clarity, he started to receive a vague feeling of foreboding. It was distant and hazy and he could not get it to coalesce into anything concrete. After a while, he realized he could do no more at that time, so he gently surfaced into the outer world. He slowly loosened his limbs and slid down the car to stand on his own two feet. He checked the time on his phone and saw a dozen missed calls from the Rossis and his mother's house. There were also messages asking him to call. He sighed and dialed his mother's work number.

"Hello," a male voice asked.

"Could I speak to Mrs. Benson, please," Jamie politely asked.

"There's only a Miss Benson here," the voice said. Jamie hung his head in shame. He had not even asked his mother what marital status she was giving out to people. He took the freshly made shortcut and calmed down, suppressing his shame.

"Yes, her, please," Jamie said.

"Hold on," said the man.

"Hello," Jamie's mother said.

"Mom, it's me," Jamie said. Lori sighed in relief. Jamie could hear her choke back a sob. "I'm fine." He heard his mother sniff. "I'll see you back at the house and we'll talk this afternoon, ok?"

"Yes," she said.

Jamie hung up and felt his stomach growl. He needed some food. He also needed to call the Rossi girls and apologize for standing them up last night. He was feeling like a bastard for having done it. He took the shortcut again and controlled the bad feelings. Perhaps ditching them to get drunk had an upside to it. It, coupled with not calling them, or answering their calls and texts, was a loud and very clear message that they were not in a relationship. Back when he had had slaves, he had spoken to them in order to understand the mysteries of the female mind. Those conversations had been short and infrequent, but the girls did tell him that women do not recognize one night stands. If there was sex involved, women always saw it as the starting point of a new relationship. Jamie nodded to himself. Giving the girls the cold shoulder felt like the right move to make. It made him a heartless bastard, but at least it stopped them from working on a crush. He put his phone away and got in the car. He started the engine and began to drive. He purposefully ignored his GPS and drove around blindly, intending to find an eatery and have some breakfast. He'd be home before his mother got there and that was his only commitment for the day, as far as he was concerned.

He found a small village on a hilltop and drove through it. When he saw the little ristorante in the main town square, he parked across from it and went in to have some food. It wasn't as good as Trattoria Rossi, but it wasn't all that bad either. As he was leaving the village, he finally checked a road sign and saw its name. He consulted the road map of Tuscany in his glove compartment and saw that he had less than an hour to drive back home. He had been going in circles last night and today.

He came home and changed clothes. He texted his mom that he'd cook dinner and pick Suzie up from school. His mom texted him right back, saying she'd pick Suzie up after work as Suzie was going to be with friends in the city. She also texted that she'd pick up something to eat at the trattoria. Jamie sighed unhappily. His mother was going to talk to her best friend, the woman he had fucked on Sunday afternoon. "Shitfuck," he muttered to himself. "No good can come of that." He entertained the idea of going to the Rossis before his mother, but he honestly didn't know what he'd try to accomplish there. He stayed at home and meditated. After that got boring, he made himself a sandwich and played videogames until he sensed his family driving up. He descended the stairs and joined them in the dining room.

"Aaaah," Suzie called out in mock fright. "Mommy, there's a stranger in our house!"

"Hardy, har, har," Jamie deadpanned.

"Help, Mommy," Suzie hugged her mother, "I'm frightened!"

"Knock it off, Bones," Jamie said.

"Mom," Suzie said, indignantly, "tell him to stop calling me Bones!"

"Will you two kids stop," Lori said. She set the containers of food down on the table and sat down. "Sometimes you just wear me out. The both of you. You're acting like children."

"I am a child," Suzie said. "I'm not supposed to behave any other way. I don't know what his problem is."

"Enough," Lori said, forcefully. "Both of you! Let's just sit down and have dinner like a normal family!"

Suzie slowly slunk down into her seat, Jamie handed out utensils, and the three of them each took a container from Rossi's and began to eat. After a few minutes of silent eating, Lori got up, poured herself a glass of wine and sat back down, saying, "So, the whole town is talking about how you've bedded both the Rossi girls." Jamie choked on his food and coughed to clear his throat. "Even the kids in Suzie's class are teasing her about it." Jamie punched himself in the chest to ease the passage of his food. He glanced over at Suzie who shot him a reproachful glare in return. When he cleared his airway at last, he locked eyes with his mother. The look in her eyes was accusatory, but she held her tongue. "I take it you're going to stay with us, then?"

"No," Jamie said.

"What, you're gonna dump both your girlfriends," Suzie asked.

"Shut up, Bones," Jamie said, not taking his eyes off his mother.

"Mom," Suzie said, offended, "he's still calling-"

"Shut up, Suzie," Lori said, holding Jamie's gaze. "So, you plan to leave us?"

"That has been the plan since day one," Jamie said. "Yeah. I intend to leave."

"When?"

Jamie shrugged and said, "As soon as I figure out where I'm gonna go and what I'm gonna do."

Lori sat back in her chair and took a long sip of wine. At last, she spoke, "What are you looking for, Jamie?"

"I don't know, yet," he said.

"Are you looking for love," Lori asked. "Because, you have it. Right here, right now. I love you. Suzie loves you."

"No, I don't," Suzie interjected.

Lori shot Suzie an annoyed look and then continued softly speaking to Jamie. "As I understand it, you have two willing girlfriends in this town and-"

"I don't have girlfriends," Jamie said, cutting her off. "I was asked by Laura to deflower Alessandra and I had to pass an audition with her, first. That's it. No boyfriend-girlfriend stuff." His mother's face turned beet red as her jaw hung loose.

"Bullshit," Suzie said and masked it with a cough.

Lori chugged her glass of wine and stood to refill it. Jamie did his best to not sense her mood, but her shock at hearing her sweet, darling boy speak of such matters so casually was almost too much for her to handle. After she chugged another glass of wine, she topped it off yet again and sat back down at the table. Jamie could tell she was getting a bit tipsy. "Anyway," she said, "what about your job?"

A part of Jamie had been quite pleased at shocking his own mother in a sexual manner, but he decided to never tell her about any of the things he had regularly gotten up to with his harem. She'd probably die of shock. His musings were ended when he finally processed what she had said. "What job," he asked.

"Uh, you work in a repair shop for antiques," Lori said.

"No, I don't," Jamie said. "Where did you hear that?"

"Your boss came by the trattoria when I was there and he asked about you," Lori said.

"I don't have a boss," Jamie said. "And Aldo can count himself lucky I don't bitchslap him for claiming he is my boss."

"Jamie," his mother said in shock. "I didn't raise you to threaten old men with violence. Shame on you!"

"Shame on me," Jamie asked. "Shame on him! Going around town and spreading lies about me. Did you know that he tried to get me deported as a joke yesterday?"

"What?!"

"Yes," Jamie said. "The guy is more than a few cards shy of a full deck."

"Jamie," his mother admonished.

"I'm serious," he said. "He seems charming and quaint, at first glance, but his screws aren't so much loose as they're altogether absent."

His mother looked at him and hiccupped. "Excuse me," she said, putting her hand over her mouth. "So, you don't work for him?"

"Nope."

"You really should, bro" Suzie chimed in. "No one but a lunatic would ever hire you."

"Shut it, Bones," Jamie said.

"Suzie, hush," Lori said at the same time. She blinked back her tears and Jamie could feel her getting very emotional. She reached out and took both her children's hands in one of her own. "Please don't leave us," she tearfully said. "We're all the family you have. You two are all the family I have. Jamie, please, please don't go. Please stay!" Jamie bit back tears of his own. He was getting overwhelmed by his mother's grief. "Please, son, don't abandon your mother."

Suzie pulled her hand out of her mother's and stood up. "This is getting way too disturbing for my taste," she said and took her container of food with her as she left the dining room. Lori hung her head and cried.

Jamie felt really bad seeing his mother cry. A desire to hug her and promise to do as she says threatened to overwhelm his rational mind. He took his mental shortcut and composed himself. "And do what, Mom," Jamie asked. "Play nanny to Suzie? Housekeeper, perhaps? I need to make a life for myself. I need to find some direction in life and take it. I'm not going to just sit on my ass and play video games for the rest of my life."

"I don't see why you can't do that here," Lori said, her voice hitching. "Finding your direction, I mean. You can stay with us as you think things through. You can go to Pisa and attend university. See what is out there. You missed the start of the academic year, but you can enroll at the beginning of next semester, can't you? You already have a semester behind you."

Jamie's papers-forging contact, Cyrus, had made it painfully clear that he wasn't going to arrange any forgeries for him ever again. Jamie didn't think he'd be able to just mind trick his way into a university. "I can't use my real name or actual transcripts," he said, "and I am not going to enroll on fakes and take someone else's spot."

"Well, if you're not going to go to college," Lori said, "then how are you to find your direction in life? How will you know what's out there for you?"

Jamie shrugged. He honestly didn't know. "I don't know, yet," he said. "I was thinking about, maybe, traveling around the world and seeing what's out there."

Tears started streaming from Lori's eyes. A few dripped off her chin into her glass of wine. "Jamie, baby," she whispered, "please don't leave us. We need you. Please."

Jamie looked away, uncomfortable at his mother's outpour of emotions. He forced his mind back into the calm place. "For how long," he asked.

"What?"

"How long do I need to stay here? How long before you're alright to be left alone? How long until I can go out into the world and you don't cry at seeing me leave?" He looked back into his mother's eyes. He shrugged and said, "I'm just curious."

Lori sobbed, her chin shaking, and got up to run to her bedroom. Jamie buried his face in his hands. He sensed his mother's misery and it was breaking his heart. He felt, deep down inside, that he needed to break free and do his own thing, whatever it turned out to be, but her grief was seriously damaging his already feeble resolve to leave. He again used his mental shortcut to the calm place within. "Don't go," Suzie said from the doorway. Jamie lifted his head and looked at her. She was looking down at the container she was eating from and playing with the last of her food. "Just stay. Shithead." She turned around and left without making eye contact.

Jamie sat back in his chair and shook his head in displeasure. Suzie wasn't gutted at the thought of him leaving like their mother was, but he could sense even she didn't like the idea. He withdrew his Jedi senses and retired to his room to think. The more he thought about things, the closer he came to the realization that he wanted to take a tour of the world. He had already visited all the continents, except for Antarctica, but he had merely popped over to kill bad guys, free any hostages, and pop over to the next base. He had not taken the time and opportunity to see the sights, or experience what life was like in any of those places. He was starting to feel that retracing his steps in exploration would not yield the answers he was seeking, so much as finally formulate the questions themselves. Then he could lead a happy and productive life seeking the answers to those questions.

He wanted to fly in a wingsuit through the Angel falls, dive in an Austrian lake that's a park for most of the year, see the festivals of light in Vietnam, go surfing at Bondi beach and so many other things. And he wanted to meet people everywhere he went. He surfed the net, reading about the many wonders that were out there in the world. As he read, he kept idly noting which events were annual and which sights were there forever. Even as he was starting to make concrete plans for a world tour, he couldn't help continually noticing that nearly everything he wanted to see would be waiting for him for the foreseeable future. He kept it up until he was too tired to keep his eyes open. He went to bed and slept fitfully.