The Olive Grove - "Friend Of A Friend"
10 Feb 2018Jemine Caesar
“Hello, my love,” said Sam Hodkin. “Busy day?”Jemine Caesar nodded wearily as she sat down in the living quarters of the Citi Gateway apartment she shared with her boyfriend. It was almost a week since the opening of The Olive Grove, and its proprietress was beginning to realise there was more to running a brothel than she’d first imagined.
“One of the girls called in sick,” Jemine replied as she flopped down onto the sofa. “A regular client who’d booked her wasn’t too happy about it, either. Some big wig from the ruling faction in Liu Huang, apparently. He’d made a twenty light year trip especially to see her. When Suki told him we’d have to give him a substitute, he hit the roof. Started threatening to sue for breach of contract. It took me ages to get him calmed down. It didn’t help that I had a thumping headache at the time.”
“I’m sure you handled him very effectively.” Sam poured a small glass of white wine and handed it to Jemine. “Did he accept the, er, substitute in the end?”
Jemine took a few sips of her drink before answering the question with a simple “Yes.” Never mind that the client had insisted on the substitute being Jemine herself. And never mind that she’d given him the service free of charge as a ‘gesture of goodwill’. Sam didn’t need to know all the details.
He’s probably guessed, anyway, she thought. Time to change the subject.
“Sam, do you remember Hunter Casooch?”
Earlier in the year, a fevered cry for help from Casooch by k-cast had led Jemine and Sam to a rocky planet in the Pleiades. There, near a pair of the now infamous so-called barnacles, Jemine had found poor Casooch in his ship, raving about voices in his head urging him to “kill them all”. Jemine and Sam had taken him to Cubeo for treatment at a medical facility.
“I do indeed,” said Sam, frowning. “Our trip to the Pleiades still gives me the shivers, in view of recent events there. Why, has he been back in touch?”
“Not him,” Jemine said. “A woman, named Margot. She didn’t give her last name, but said she was a friend of Casooch’s. She asked me if I knew anything about a special project he’d been working on.”
“Bit blunt of her, I must say. What did you tell her?”
Jemine shrugged. Not so very long ago she’d have ingenuously answered Margot’s questions, but life as a spacer had taught her a few lessons about placing too much trust in strangers.
“Not much. I told her Casooch was an old acquaintance, that it had been a few months since I’d last seen him, and that I wasn’t aware of any projects he may have been working on, special or otherwise. I also suggested that she should perhaps try asking Casooch himself.”
Margot had told Jemine that she couldn’t ask Casooch about anything, for the simple reason that he was presently in a coma. There had apparently been a bad accident, in which Casooch was seriously injured. Before losing consciousness he’d asked Margot to look after his affairs, giving his assets to her as payment. She’d then explained that she was trying to access Casooch’s logs and notes, so far without success. Then, finding Jemine’s contact details in Casooch’s belongings, she’d called in the hope that Jemine might be able to help.
“Most of Hunter’s logs are password protected,” she’d said. “I thought perhaps he might possibly have confided in you, since you are a friend.”
Jemine had reiterated to Margot that she knew nothing of Casooch’s work. She’d gone on to say that even if she did, she’d be very wary of handing over any information on it to a total stranger. Jemine’s scepticism had quickly made Margot realise she was going to get nowhere.
“I understand your reluctance to trust me,” she’d said. “I’d do the same if I were in your shoes, believe me. I realise I haven’t gone about this in the best way... Look, I’ll try to make whatever progress I can on my own. Once I know more, perhaps I could come to Inara and explain the whole story to you in person?”
“I’ll be here. I’m a permanent resident on Citi Gateway nowadays,” Jemine had told her, adding, “I own a business in the Entertainment District. It’s called The Olive Grove.”
After recounting the details of her conversation with Margot to Sam, Jemine finished her wine and changed into some more casual clothing.
“Off to your Keep Fit class again?” Sam said.
Jemine nodded. She’d not told her boyfriend that her daily ‘keep fit classes’ were actually lessons in the martial art of tensatsuken, or that her teacher – her sensei – was Suki Hai. It was, of course, perfectly true that the hour long sessions were keeping her fit; she’d rediscovered muscles that she’d forgotten she had. There’d been four lessons so far, during which Suki had taught Jemine different ways of falling over. The actual fighting part would come soon, Suki had promised. She had been impressed with her new pupil’s poise and fluidity of movement, which Jemine had attributed to the dance training she had received as a child from her mama.
Keeping fit, however, was not the main motivation for Jemine's desire to learn hand-to-hand combat. If -- no, when -- the time came for her to engage in a real fight, she wanted to be prepared.
“Yes, Sam,” replied Jemine. “Off to keep fit.”
==========================================================================================================
Author's Note
Thank you to commander Casooch for the contribution to this entry