Chapter Fourteen
     Vicky heard the knocking in response to her knock and frowned. She knocked again, a little louder, and was surprised by seeing Simone in Earl's room when the door opened.
     "Oh, hi," Earl said. He was looking flushed, Vicky thought, and was acting as if he was surprised to see her.
     "Oh, it's you," Simone said from behind the large man. She, too, looked flushed and her sweater was up over her hip on her left side.
     "Hi, Earl, am I interrupting something?" Vicky was a little more upset than she felt she should be, and began trying to process the scene and gain control over it. This was just a reality, she told herself, and she needed to deal with it. Her Scientology training would be important, now, for her to handle this situation with reason and maximum affect. This was no time to be emotional, and it surprised Vicky that she had any emotional reaction at all.
     "No, we've just been hanging out, waiting for Perris to come over," Earl said. "C'mon in, join the party."
     Simone, surprisingly, was giggling and Vicky thought that was most unusual. She hadn't thought Simone to be the giggling type, but she reminded herself that she didn't know Simone and that she was basing her reaction on a very limited set of information.
     Vicky walked in and Earl helped her with her coat, which Vicky decided to keep on. She saw Simone's jacket, a much better one than she had, laying on the bed and Vicky felt that her simple nylon coat would look cheap next to the more elegant garment.
     "I'm glad you came over," Earl said. He reached out to take Vicky's hand and she wasn't sure if he meant to shake it or hold it. She extended hers, fingers down, so that he could shake it but so that anything else would be awkward.
     Earl shook it, which answered that question, and then invited her to sit down. Simone was already at the foot of the bed, and Vicky didn't feel like putting Earl in the middle. She sat down close to Simone, leaving Earl the head of the bed if he wanted to sit.
     Instead of taking a seat, though, Earl excused himself and walked to the closet. He came back a moment later with a bottle of rum and lifted it, smiling at Vicky as he did so. In his other hand was a white paper bag and he handed that Vicky.
     "What's this?" she asked.
     "Open it, you'll see." Earl was looking quite pleased with himself and was no longer flushed. In fact, Vicky thought, he was positively beaming.
     She opened the sack and pulled out the candlestick and slipped it back in the bag.
     "It's yours," Earl said. "It's for you."
     "Mine? No it isn't. Why would it be mine?"
     "Because I'm giving it to you."
     "Why are you giving me a candlestick holder?" Vicky asked. She had a sudden, horrifying thought, that it was because of the show she'd given him the other night.
     "It's just a present," Earl said. "I promised you a present the other night and, well, here it is."
     "Oh, that," Vicky said, relieved. "You mean when you gave me ..."
     "Yeah," Earl interrupted. "When I gave you that."
     Simone had been watching this exchange with a look of puzzlement and reached out to take the sack from Vicky. "May I?"
     Vicky stopped staring at Earl to look instead at Simone. "Sure," she said. "It's really pretty."
     Simone examined the simple trinket while Earl looked at Vicky. She felt awkward, not sure how to react to the gift, but was touched that Earl had thought of her and had bought it for her. She still had no idea what they'd been laughing about when she first knocked, but she began to think that her suspicions and wonderings had been mostly wrong. Maybe they'd been flushed from laughter,she thought, and their awkwardness had been an extension of her own. Vicky knew that she frequently imposed her own feelings on what she saw, and she was working on relieving herself of that tendency.
     "That was really nice of you, Earl," Simone said, handing the gift back to Vicky.
     "Yes, it was," Vicky echoed. "Much better than the other gift."
     "What was the other gift?" Simone asked.
     "Nothing," Earl interjected quickly. "It wasn't even a gift, I was just paying her back."
     "What did you give her?" Simone asked. She looked both eager and puzzled at once.
     Earl looked at Vicky, who managed a tiny smile. She liked having a secret from Simone, whom she felt was better than her in every way.
     "It was nothing," Vicky said, closing the subject.
     Earl looked relieved and again lifted the bottle that he still held in his hand. "Would you like a rum and coke?" he asked Vicky.
     Vicky looked at the bottle a moment, and then at Earl's hopeful face. Tomorrow Vicky didn't have to go to her temp job in the morning, but she was supposed to go to the Org and begin her coursework to remove her Condition of Danger. She'd need to be sober and alert to do her studying.
     "Do you have my money?" Vicky asked. She couldn't begin her coursework until she paid for it.
     The smile dropped from Earl's face as if it were a load of unsupported rebar. "Money?"
     "The twenty-five hundred you were going to give me?"
     Simone looked embarrassed, but curious, to be privy to this conversation. She turned her face from the others and began studying her hands and long, sensual fingers.
     "Oh," Earl said. "That." He looked at Simone, who didn't notice his doing so, and then at his door. "When do you need it?"
     "Right now," Vicky said. "I can't begin work on my condition until I get that money."
     "I don't have it," Earl admitted. "I didn't know you needed it so soon. I'll still have to see what I can do."
     Vicky was crestfallen. She'd been counting on Earl to give her the money for the condition he'd put her in. She had a feeling the other night that he wouldn't come through, but now that looked like less of a possibility and more of a certainty. She had another plan, but she'd hoped she wouldn't have to go through with it.
     "So, you don't have it?" Vicky asked. "None of it?"
     Earl looked as if he were about to cry. "No. I'm sorry, Vicky."
     "What's this all about?" Simone asked. "If I can ask."
     Vicky began explaining about the Condition of Danger she was in, without mention how she'd earned it. She explained that her church had discovered that Vicky was in a low state on its tone scale and that there was a course she had to take to remove it. Until Vicky took the course she would be unable to achieve her freedom or to take any of the other courses she needed to reach her full potential.
     "So your church says you have this problem, and that they can fix it for twenty-five hundred dollars?" Simone asked.
     "My caseworker and the EO have decided it, yes. The course I have to take costs that much."
     "What's an 'EO,' is that some sort of test?" Simone asked.
     "It's an Ethics Officer," Vicky answered simply.
     "A what?" Earl asked.
     "Ethics Officer. Scientology is built and founded on Ethics. An EO assures that our actions our ethical and is responsible for deciding our condition. When she feels we are in a low condition, like I am, she refers to the tech and suggest coursework to raise our condition."
     "So this Ethics Officer decides that it will cost you twenty-five hundred dollars to get back to normal," Simone stated. "And you can't argue with it."
     "There's nothing to argue with," Vicky said. "The EO is right and the process to relieve the condition is all laid out."
     "This sounds really weird to me," Earl said.
     "That's what I was thinking," Simone admitted.
     "I'm not explaining it very good," Vicky said. "And that's one of the reasons why we don't use any verbal tech. You have to look it all up in Ron's writings, that's where the truth is. I don't want to talk about this any more because what you're saying is wrong. If you went to the Org you can find out the truth, and maybe you should do that before you make any more comments."
     Earl and Simone sat silent and looked at each other. Earl shrugged his large shoulders and Simone gave a sly smile that only Earl could see.
     "I'm sorry about the money, Vicky," Earl said. "I'll see what I can do for you."
     Vicky said nothing and was clicking her shoes together mindlessly. She had no friends other than the people at the Org, and she was trying to fit in more with the rest of the world. Before moving to LA a year ago, she'd been unhappy and on the outside. She felt accepted and welcomed within Scientology, but that hadn't yet translated to any degree of comfort with other people. Now, with the bad things that Earl and Simone were saying about her church, Vicky knew that she couldn't see them if they kept talking that way. She would try to avoid bringing up her courses and her life within Scientology, but she didn't feel she had much else to talk about.
     She wanted to win with these people, win in the way that she had wins when she completed one of the courses or the grade exercises at the Org. There she would be honored and applauded, but these people were much harder to please and much less demonstrative of their feelings. Vicky had never been one to lead, not in anything, but now she wondered if she had to show these two how to react to things, to successes, and maybe if she was supportive of them that they would learn to support her.
     "It's okay," Vicky told Earl. "I may have another way of coming up with the money."
     "Really?" Earl asked. "How's that?"
     "Yeah," Simone chirped in. "What's your secret?"
     "I'd rather not say," Vicky said. "Not right now. I need to think about it some more first."
     They took that answer, but it was obvious from the looks on their faces that they were disappointed. Earl had a strange gleam in his eye and Simone was looking as if her opinion of Vicky had dropped a few notches.
     "Tell you what," Earl said. "Anyone want a drink?" He brandished the bottle of rum again. "I know I could use one."
     Vicky bit her lip and made a teepee with her hands and laid it against her face. She didn't have to go to work the next day and it didn't look like she would be going on course, either. It wasn't a good thing to get drunk, but she could see that Simone was brightening at the idea of drink and Vicky didn't want to be left on the outside, alone.
     "I'll have one," Vicky agreed. "But can I go to my room and change first?"
     Earl raised his eyebrows, but told her that it would be fine. "It will be right here for you when you come back," he said.
     Vicky claimed the white paper sack that held her candlestick and when she'd gone, Earl began preparing the drinks and humming to himself. He was stopped from completing the act by Simone's hand, which lightly touched his wrist.
     "Earl," she said. "About that kiss."
     "What about it?" Earl asked. "Want another?"
     "I need you to promise you won't mention it to anyone."
     "Okay," Earl agreed, slowly. "Was it that bad?"
     "That's not the point, sweety," she said. "But I don't want Perris to hear about it. If I promise not to tell Vicky, will you do the same?"
     Earl nodded in agreement. He had a distant look, one that Simone couldn't place, but he looked sincere. She leaned over and gave him a peck on his cheek, rubbing her breast against his arm slowly as she did so. "That's a good boy," she said. "It can be our little secret."
     Earl smiled, but didn't look at Simone. He finished making the drinks when there was a quick knock at the door. He got up and Vicky was standing there. She'd changed into the thin cotton dress that she'd worn to the fight and in the gentle evening breeze it flitted about her as if it were dancing to music that it alone could hear.
     It was a flattering dress for her figure, and Earl looked her up and down as she came into the room. Vicky saw him studying her and was was buoyed by his attention. She was still unsettled by Simone's presence and curious about what she'd interrupted when she'd first arrived. She didn't feel she could compete with Simone, not physically, and the chiseled features and lithe body were features that Vicky knew she could never possess.
     She remembered that Earl had said she was pretty, and it didn't occur to Vicky that he would have said that about any half-naked woman who was showing herself to him. Vicky was comfortable with her body, it was just skin, even though she knew that it wasn't like the ones the models in the magazines had. She wasn't concerned or embarrassed about her show for Earl, and it was just something she'd done to find out what a regular guy would think.
     Vicky was shocked that she considered Earl a "regular guy." He was a guy, sure, she thought, but he was all wrapped up in his drugs and wasn't concerned with freeing himself from the things holding him back. If she could get him to the Org she could introduce him to people who could point out to him what he was missing and get him to begin taking the courses necessary to achieving his full potential.
     Those people, the ones at her church, were the ones she spent her time with and the ones she shared her wins with. At the part time temp job she was a receptionist and the only person in front of the wall that separated her from the three people who worked in the back office. She rarely saw them, and never spoke with them, and answering phones for the tiny insurance firm gave Vicky none of the human contact she wanted.
     She got that at the Org, but Vicky sometimes felt that the people there weren't as genuine as they could be. Yes, they all stood around and cheered when Vicky did something right, like completing a course or talking about a win that she'd experienced, but now she was seeing that they were quick to turn on her and label her an outcast if she did things they didn't approve of. It was as if she could remain their friends only when she followed rules, and there were times when Vicky wanted to do things not proscribed by the numerous bulletins and orders. She had no desire to thwart them, for she truly believed that they were right, but Vicky felt like testing some things for herself. If it hurt her, that would be fine, but she didn't want to be both hurt and ostracized.
     Today it had been humiliating at the Org. No one spoke to her, no one even acknowledged her presence, and Vicky knew that her Danger Condition was known to everyone. It was part of her punishment to be shut out, and it was that part of the punishment that Vicky objected to. She needed to belong, and it was now obvious that she would have to behave in a certain way to earn that belonging. She had no objection with that in theory, but she was upset that it was an enforceable process that everyone went along with.
     She looked at Earl, who was still fixing the drinks, and thought about the gulf between the two of them. He was doing everything wrong according to what Vicky had been taught by her church to believe, yet he acted as if he were right where he belonged doing exactly what he should. His existence, and his acceptance of it, troubled her.
     "Here you go," Earl said as he handed her the drink. His face was a mess with bruises and lumps still visible, and a thick, dark scab covered part of one of his lips, but when he smiled the room condensed into his simple joy and his innocence and acceptance of anything and everything made it impossible for Vicky to see anything except his pleasure.