Genrenauts: Season One

by Michael R. Underwood

  Chapter Six: The Glamour. The Marvel. The Paperwork.

  Roman sat at a chic desk at the corner of the gym floor, sorting through client charts. In reality, he wouldn’t need to do any substantive work with other clients, as he could farm them out to other PTs. They were there for Theo, and he was due for his first appointment at the gym any moment now.

  It had taken some finagling, with King and Shirin tag-teaming the computer systems to rearrange Theo’s insurance and make it so their gym was the only place where his physical therapy would be covered.

  A severe and beautiful white woman walked in. She had midnight-black hair and wore a lab coat draped over business wear. She held a clipboard, like she’d just walked off of the set of Grey’s Anatomy.

  “Are you Gregory Roman?” she asked from ten paces away.

  “Yes, may I help you?”

  “I’m Doctor Andrea Thorsson, and I’m here to talk to you or someone about why my patient was reassigned here when I’d referred him to, and he’d already started, physical therapy at another practice.”

  The hell? Roman thought. He put on a “what can you do? “face to stay in character and rolled forward. “I just got the referral and saw him on my schedule. You didn’t have to come down here yourself. Should have taken it up with the insurance company.”

  Dr. Thorsson scowled. “This is quite ridiculous.”

  Roman shrugged. “Insurance companies, right?”

  A hobbling Theo Long walked in the door, with the assistance of a crutch. He said, “Doctor Thorsson, it’s fine. The insurance company says I should go here, I’ll go here. It’s the treatment that matters, right?”

  Theo looked thinner than his pictures, his smart clothes hanging a bit loose on his frame. He was put together, but not severe like his companion. Also, there wasn’t supposed to be a companion. Why was his doctor accompanying him to PT? He was glad King was out of sight; it’d keep another member of their team in reserve. Roman started to think of how they’d investigate her but refocused on the now.

  Roman extended a hand to shake. “We’ll take very good care of Mr. Long.”

  They had a staredown for a beat. As he watched her intensely, the doctor blurred slightly at the edges, out of focus with the world around her. Which meant she was connected to the breach, tied in more substantially than he’d imagined. That’d explain the odd behavior. The doctor was caught up in the story.

  “Well, don’t get too cozy,” Doctor Thorsson said. “I expect he’ll be out of your hands very soon. I’ll be here if you need me,” she said to Theo.

  Roman turned the doc’s comment back around on her, all smiles. “Sounds good to us. We love getting clients back on their feet as quickly and safely as possible.”

  Before she left for the waiting area in front, the doctor gave Theo a significant look, and more pieces clicked into place. He’d need to update the team as soon as this scene was done.

  Roman extended a hand to Theo. “I’m Greg Roman, I’ll be your therapist. Shall we take a seat and get started?” He moved to engage Theo and block off the doctor from the conversation, trying to minimize her role in the scene. A twinge of guilt ran down his spine as Mallery’s voice called out the macho power play for what it was. However, he didn’t see a way to preserve the connection without sidelining her. Social engineering wasn’t his forte.

  He kept one eye on the doctor to fill out his report to the team. They’d need to run down her connection to the story.

  Then they’d need to disentangle whatever her dynamic was with Theo. While trying to rekindle his relationship with Anna, and actually doing physical therapy so he’s ready for the reconciliation? Mallery needed to hear about this as soon as possible. First, the scene at hand.

  Roman led Theo to a pair of chairs along the wall of the gym. The man set aside his crutch and sat in the chair, wincing as he went.

  “So, your referral says you’re looking to recover range of motion and strength in your left leg. Can you tell me about the accident?”

  “I was crossing the street on Eighth Ave, and a black compact car comes careening around the corner, driven by some blonde woman in a hat. It hit me here,” Theo said, gesturing to his left hip, “and kept going. I went flying, people say like ten feet, and landed weird on my leg. People say she didn’t even stop, just drove off. New York, man.” He shrugged. “Anyway. I was in traction for several weeks, and now that I’m out, I’m here.”

  “You got lucky,” Roman said with his best smile, trying to build rapport. “Why don’t you hop up on the bench here so I can see what’s what.”

  Roman rolled out some paper and Theo climbed onto the bench, sitting with his legs over the side.

  “What do you do for work?” Roman asked, testing Theo’s range of motion. He’d never actually studied physiotherapy, but a lifetime of dealing with his friends and comrades’ injuries let him fake it pretty well. “A lot of physical activity?” He stopped when he felt resistance and saw Theo wince.

  “No, I’m an architect. Desk jockey. I dance on weeknights and weekends, though. Or I did, I guess.”

  “Before the accident?” Roman asked, betting that wasn’t the answer but still baiting for the info.

  “Yeah, that, and. Well, just before the accident, I had a bit of a blowup in my personal life.”

  “Oh, sorry to hear that. Rough timing. On your back, please.” Roman gestured to the bench. “Any chance of putting things back together?”

  Theo leaned back, easing the descent with his elbows. The guy was not in great shape. They might have to go for a low-physicality reunion plan if he didn’t start making strides soon.

  “I don’t know. My fiancée, or she was going to be my fiancée. I proposed because I was so happy for her that she’d gotten offered this great job.” Theo was going red. Roman stopped for a moment, let his client-slash-lead catch his breath. “It seemed like things were finally coming together for her. If she wasn’t worried about her future, she’d be open to the proposal, but instead, I spooked her and she left for the weekend. Haven’t heard from her since, not even after the accident.

  “Oh, man, that’s harsh.”

  “Yeah, I just don’t know what to do. I mean, are we even together? Is that what happens when you blow a proposal? It’s not something you can take back.”

  “Well, just like this leg, it’s not going to get better if you don’t work at it. Extend your foot as far as you can go without pain,” Roman lifted the man’s upper leg, watching as it reached seventy degrees of rotation, then Theo gasped and stopped.

  “Okay, we’ll definitely have to work on that.”

  Roman continued to run Theo’s leg through its paces, drawing on the many, many hours he’d spent in physical therapy himself, while he started to workshop solutions, trying to anticipate questions from his teammates. They’d look more into Theo and this Doctor Thorsson.

  “Okay, on your feet. Let’s look at how you walk.”

  “This is going to hurt,” Theo said.

  “I know. I’m right here. I’ve been through this myself. We’re going to make this better,” Roman said with genuine warmth. He liked this guy and really hoped they could actually help. He’d been born to help, even if he was used to solving problems by punching people and blowing things up. Here, he could help just by being there for someone at the right time, and that, that was pretty fantastic.

  * * *

  When Theo left, Dr. Thorsson guiding him out, Roman and King caught up over “paperwork” and headed back to the loft. Leah and Mallery had returned from their assignment just minutes before.

  “I think the Doctor is a genuine factor,” Roman told the team. “Definitely worth looking into. My guess would be False Fiancée, but there’s a chance she and the boy are supposed to end up together.”

  Leah jumped in to clarify. “So, by False Fiancée, we mean like the person that the romantic lead shacks up with when the hero and heroine are estranged, who is perfectly wonderful on paper but is never actua
lly the right match. That kind of false fiancée?

  King answered. “Or the hero or heroine’s partner at the start of the story, the one who is either nice but boring or actually quietly or not-so-quietly abusive-slash-demeaning.”

  “So, Not the One,” Leah said.

  “Precisely.”

  King paced. “If she’s not a False Fiancée and he’s supposed to end up with the doctor, then why’d we get dispatched for the breach?”

  “Exactly. It might have been the accident. But maybe the world is self-correcting with the doctor.”

  “How often does that ever happen when we’re on-world?” Roman asked.

  King shook his head. “Never when we need it to.” He looked at Roman’s stack of files, brought back from the PT clinic. “You going to up those notes and get them filed?”

  Roman made a small grumbling sound as Leah and Mallery went to another room. “Why do we have to do the paperwork if we've farmed the clients out to real physical therapists?” he asked.

  “Part of the deal. They dictate notes, we file them.”

  “Fair enough." And really, to do otherwise would cause more ripples, if small ones. He put in his earbuds and cued up the recorded notes of the PTs, stopping and rewinding to get every word precisely right, but not nearly as much as if he’d been asked to transcribe one text to another. The joys of dyslexia.

  However he did it, he’d do it right. They were guests in this world, and part of their job was to leave as few ripples as possible, and only the right ripples.

  It didn’t matter if these people were bound up by universal rules that he saw as being tighter, more restrictive than his own, whether their world felt like just another story to him and anyone from Earth Prime. These people’s lives were their own, and he’d spent enough time in war zones made by power-hungry warlords to want to propagate any of that if he could avoid it. They couldn’t avoid it entirely, so he’d try to minimize the damage.

  Rewind again and get it right. The meeting could wait.

  * * *

  The team assembled at an Italian restaurant around the corner from the condo. Leah barely caught Mallery slipping the server a twenty to get them a table tucked away in the back corner, with instructions that the servers were only to visit every ten minutes.

  They caught up and plotted over pasta so amazing that Leah was afraid that she’d died and gone to story heaven. It was like a troupe meeting from her improv days, but with less intra-group drama and way better food.

  The five of them sat around a circular table, digging into the food, family style.

  “The thing that’s got me worried is the doctor here,” Shirin said. “She’s clearly part of the breach—ripple or instigator. Get her out of the equation, we’re looking at a two-day-fix, maybe four at max, depending on how quickly we can put together a reconciliation moment.”

  “Agreed,” Mallery said. “Our first priority is figuring out where the Doctor fits in this equation.”

  “Once we find out where she practices, I can go in as a pharma rep and get a read on her,” King said. “Try to trip her up if I need to.”

  “Would that be Sexy Pharma Rep?” Mallery asked with Groucho Marx level eyebrow-waggling.”

  King chuckled. “If that’s what it takes.”

  “When in Rome, right?” Leah added, very happy to join in on the opportunity to have a laugh at the boss’s expense while he was in on the joke.

  Mallery continued. “That’s settled, then. Roman, you tail Theo and see if we can’t find out when he’ll be out with Dr. Thorsson and vulnerable to an interruption once we take her measure.”

  Mallery clapped. “Now, enough with the shop talk. I need to catch up on all of the office gossip from while I’ve been gone. Shirin, you’re up.”

  Chapter Seven: Only Tourists Look Up

  Mallery was expecting the Empire State Building, or maybe a trip down to the Statue of Liberty.

  Instead, when Mallery and Leah met Anna for their day of sightseeing, she just started walking down the street.

  “The best way to experience New York is block by block, on the ground level, the way New Yorkers do,” Anna said, gesturing to the bustling city around them. “More New Yorkers use the subway than cabs; more walk to work than drive. The tourist things, those you can do on your own. The real magic of the Big Apple is in the moments that come up organically.”

  “First stop, New York bagels,” Anna continued.

  Walking up to a Jewish deli, they found a line out the door and down the street. They chatted in line, Mallery and Leah trying to angle the conversation around to topics that could help nudge her toward reconciliation, but Anna wasn’t having any of it. She headed off all conversational advances, coming back around to talk about the city. Anna knew a surprising amount about the city’s theatre history, though since Leah didn’t, it was hard to tell if this was actual history or Romance World history.

  Either way, the bagels were delicious. Steaming hot, with schmear that melted as it hit the bread. The shell was slightly crunchy; the center was soft but chewy.

  Leah had to take a moment to savor. “This alone is worth the price we paid to get here,” she said, covering her mouth as she chewed.

  “So true.” Mallery’s accent firmly in place. “So, what’s next?”

  Anna walked on, already done with her bagel, fingers licked clean.

  “Now we walk around Bryant Park and do some people-watching.”

  Since they weren’t getting anywhere on their conversational agenda, Leah assumed they’d just back off and work on building rapport. They’d reached their limit of allowed personal prying, and now they had to build up trust to the next threshold.

  So, they talked about everything and nothing, Mallery guiding the trio through an increasingly elaborate backstory about “Toni” and “Susan’s” lives in LA. Mallery was seriously a machine. Wind her up and then she could just go, and go, and go. Leah thought of herself as good on her feet. She’d maintained backstory while reacting in-character and trying to steer the conversation around to a particular topic, all while subtly communicating to a colleague what should come next…but even her improv experience couldn’t prepare her for this level of con-artistry.

  Because that’s what it was, ultimately. Even with the best of intentions, they were still habitually lying to the woman and manipulating her. And they’d only known her for hours, instead of troupe-mates she’d known for years in improv.

  Leah had only spent this much time with a couple of people from story worlds, and never this long with someone who wasn’t already on board with (at least a version of) the Genrenauts’ plan. It wasn’t yet a long game, but it was something different.

  The day rolled into a highly filmable montage of the city—street vendors, parks, weird little shops so specialized that they were almost too cute (thank you, East Village), and more.

  They took an extended break to eat lunch at Anna’s absolute favorite burger joint, which also served cupcakes in a combination that was as delightful as it was unexpected.

  Every step of the way, Leah had to keep up the Honeymooners act, and it was getting to her. Feigning intimacy with someone you’d just met was one thing. When you clearly had chemistry? And were on Romance World? That was something completely different. There were signals, and hotness, and kissing, and Leah was going to need to check some regulations here really quick.

  Five hours in, Anna started to open up again, giving Leah a blissful distraction from her ambivalence.

  “So, what do you want to do next?” Mallery asked.

  “I thought we could relax here for a little while longer, then I could take you on the High Line, then put you on the ferry to go see the Statue of Liberty.”

  “What happened to ‘The real New York is the everyday New York’?” Leah asked, keeping her tone light.

  “Of course, but you still want to see the Statue of Liberty, right?”

  They nodded.

  “Plus, I have to get to wo
rk for my afternoon classes, and I have to prep for an audition tomorrow.”

  “An audition? For what part?” Leah asked.

  “A chorus role in a revival of Oklahoma! It’d be a steady paycheck. They’re guessing they’ll get at least a year out of the run.”

  “Do you like the show?” Mallery asked. “Not that I’m biased. I have nothing against Oklahoma. It’s North Carolina I can’t stand,” Mallery said, winking.

  “It’s fine. If the show doesn’t last too long, I can apply for something else. I just—it’s funny, I just want some kind of control over my life after all of the last month’s whirlwind. Normally, in this situation, I’d go running away from certainty, but…”

  “Certainty comes with control,” Leah said.

  “Yeah. And life’s been pretty out of control. In other people’s control. My bosses. My…” She paused, sorting through her choice of words. “…Theo, his accident, his family.”

  Mallery put her hand on Anna’s. “I know what you mean. So I’ll tell you what my friend Lance told me when I was freaking out about the idea of proposing to Toni.”

  “This story is good,” Leah said, even though she was pretty sure Mallery had just made it up in her head.

  “He said: ‘Honey, you can’t control everything in your life. Usually, you can control very little. So why not be smart about the things you can control? You don’t know that everything is going to work out with her, but you know how you feel, and you damn well better know how she feels. So, either that’s enough or you accept you’re so scared of getting locked in, you’d rather just float on the wind, hoping that somehow something even better comes along. And darling, that don’t happen every day. Ask yourself—is she worth the risk? If so, then that’s all the certainty you’re going to get and all you need.’”

  Leah sniffed back a tear. Damn, the girl was good.

  Anna squeezed Mallery’s hand, then leaned back in her chair.

  “And…” Anna asked.

  Mallery sighed, beaming. “I ran to Toni and never looked back.”