Common People

A Simple Day In the Life Of An Ordinary Girl:

Miles almost didn't notice her at first. It was that kind of day, really; morning rush at a coffee-shop usually meant that you didn't have time to do more than smile and nod at each customer while making their change. So even though she was a regular, Miles barely registered anything more than 'tall girl, dirty blonde hair, kind of chubby' as she approached the register until she suddenly got a panicky look on her face.

"Um..." she said, blinking sleep out of her eyes with sheepish embarrassment. "I forgot my purse at home." She was holding her coffee with the desperate look of someone who had clearly just managed to make it out of the house this morning and was relying on caffeine to clear away the cobwebs, and it was probably that same early-morning befuddlement that made her forget her purse.

At most other times of day, this wouldn't even be a blip on the radar, but the shop was packed with commuters who needed their fix of wakefulness as they headed off to work. Already, the line was backing up behind the girl (Miles had never learned her name, she always paid cash and there was never time for chit-chat at this time of day), and customers were beginning to look at her with the kind of irritation that only coffee-deprived people can muster up.

Miles looked around. He barely stifled a grimace when he saw that his manager had noticed the situation. If his boss hadn't been looking, Miles could have just waved her through--she wasn't particularly good-looking or anything, but Miles tended towards sympathy when it came to people having to pay four bucks for a cup of coffee, and it wasn't like she made a habit of this. But Jim was looking. That meant letting her slide was out of the question.

The man behind her gave both of them an angry glare, and the girl winced. She had eyes like a sad puppy...Miles sighed. Fuck it, he decided. He'd tell Jim she was a regular and that they'd get the money from her tomorrow. That would still get him in a little trouble, but Jim probably wouldn't write him up or anything. "Go on," he said, gesturing with his head towards the exit from the line. "You can pay for it tomorrow." He made sure to keep his voice very low. He did not want the other customers getting the idea that they could start up a tab.

She smiled gratefully and darted away to one of the tables with a muttered, "Thanks!" Any second, Miles expected Jim to swoop down on him, but when he got a chance to look around, Jim caught his eye and shrugged nonchalantly. Miles smiled nervously back at him and returned to work. That was...unexpected, he thought. Jim was cool about some things, but giving away freebies was most definitely not one of them. He'd expected a lecture at the very least, but Jim seemed willing to look the other way.

Miles glanced over at the girl as he made change. She was sitting there, drinking her cappuccino and looking back at him with a sort of dreamy hero-worship expression on her plump face. Now that he thought about it, Miles realized she'd spent an awful lot of her mornings looking over at him until her bus arrived. She didn't have a crush on him, did she?

Then again, she was kind of cute. It was the smile, he decided. It really transformed her whole face. You could tell an awful lot about someone when they smiled, and the girl--he suddenly wished he knew her name--she just seemed to radiate approachability. Friendliness. Miles gave her a little smile back in between customers, and the way she blushed in a sort of mix of shyness and adoration gave him a warm fuzzy feeling in the back of his head.

In fact, he decided, maybe he should think about going over there and talking to her in a few minutes, once the rush subsided a little. Just to say hello, maybe let her thank him again for the rescue. Find out her name, get to know her just a little--

But it was not to be, at least not today. She saw the bus pass by out of the corner of her eye, and looked down at her watch with an audible yelp. Miles watched her sprint out of the shop in a panic, and he chuckled to himself. Even the ditziness seemed kind of cute on her.

He hoped he'd see her again tomorrow.

*****

Carla glared angrily at the girl who sat down across the aisle from her. It represented a major change of focus from her previous activity, which involved glaring angrily at the bus driver up at the front of the bus. But when the stupid bimbo had walked down the aisle and had the nerve to plant herself right next to Carla, well...she was about five seconds away from giving this goddamned ditz a piece of her mind.

It seemed only fair, really. Carla was the one who was going to have to walk into work and get yelled at by her boss, and she was the one who was going to have to explain that the reason she was late was that the bus had spontaneously stopped to pick up some dumb girl who hadn't been at the stop and had apparently sprinted almost a full block to get the driver's attention...and then spent two minutes in whispered conversation with him, during which time the bus hadn't moved even one inch. So if Carla was going to have to deal with that, she could at the very least pass on some of the misery to the person who caused it all.

"Just who do you think you are?" she hissed across the aisle. The girl looked over at her, slightly startled. "This is public transportation, you know. For the benefit of everyone. It's not your personal limousine."

The girl at least had the decency to look apologetic. "I know," she said contritely. "I'm sorry, this day just hasn't gone well at all, I forgot to set my alarm and I'm really sorry for holding everyone up, but I forgot my purse and the driver didn't want to let me on without my bus pass--"

"You forgot your alarm, you forgot your purse, but it's the rest of us that are going to have to pay for it, you know!" Carla was in full flow now, and she noticed one or two of the other passengers nodding appreciatively as they overheard. "Have you ever thought of maybe taking the time and effort to get your own life in order, just the tiniest little bit, instead of inconveniencing everyone else with your antics?"

Carla was really more irritated with the bus driver than the girl, when she started thinking about it, but the girl was there and the bus driver wasn't. "Honestly, he shouldn't have even stopped for you, much less gone ahead and let you on without paying! Do you do this in other areas of your life, hmm? Just decide not to pay for things and expect other people to support you? Off to the unemployment office now, perhaps, to throw away that five-dollar cappuccino and pretend you don't have two dimes to rub together so that my taxes can go to paying for your lifestyle?"

She expected the girl to perhaps defend herself about that, try to stammer out that she had a job or something, but instead all she did was sit there and grin. "What's so funny?" Carla spat out. The smile infuriated her more than anything else. If the girl had been genuinely sorry, Carla's ire might have blown itself out, but to see her look back at Carla as though she was overjoyed to be yelled at just redoubled Carla's fury.

"Sorry, it's just...you're angry with me," the girl said. "You're absolutely furious. You're chewing me out, humiliating me in public."

"Yes?" Confusion was starting to replace anger, or at the very least overlay it. Was this girl on drugs? Was that why she was acting so happy that someone was mad at her? "And?"

"And I'm letting you," the girl said with a beatific expression on her face.

Carla felt a twinge of worry when she heard those words. The girl didn't look dangerous in the slightest; she was clearly out of shape (she'd been panting for breath simply from the run to the bus), and they were in a public place surrounded by people. But Carla had read enough stories in the news about crazy people snapping, taking a gun or a knife or something and not caring who saw when they..."What do you mean, you're letting me?" she asked, her voice suddenly a bit uncertain.

"I'm not stopping you," the girl said, suddenly taking notice of the change in Carla's attitude. "I mean, I'm...no, it's okay, don't be afraid." That just made Carla worry even more. She hadn't said anything, but somehow this girl knew Carla was frightened of her. Wasn't that true of crazy people? Weren't they supposed to be able to sense fear, like dogs? "No, no, I...look, please, just forget I said anything."

Carla didn't like the way the conversation had gone. Ever since she'd asked the girl...asked her...she'd asked her something, and the girl had said...Carla shook her head slightly. No, whatever it was, it was gone now. Stupid bitch probably hadn't said anything particularly intelligent anyway. "I...um...I expect you were probably late because you'd been smoking some weed the night before, or getting drunk with your slacker friends," she said, getting back into full flow. She must be on the right track, she knew, because the girl certainly wasn't smiling anymore.

*****

Ryan frowned as he watched Mimi chattering with Jada. Jada caught the hint and cut the conversation short, returning to her work, but Mimi seemed a little bit lost in her own little world. Which wasn't exactly a good idea, for someone who was already just the tiniest bit in her boss' bad books for today. Although technically speaking, she hadn't actually done anything wrong--she'd made it in a few seconds before the clock hit nine, and gotten to her desk with a minimum of dawdling--but he preferred his employees to get to work without a cartoonishly theatrical sprint to make it to the office before he considered them to be late.

Still, at least she'd made it in on time today. After three weeks of employment, it was clear that punctuality just wasn't Mimi's forte. Along with a host of other necessary office skills, really. It wasn't that he didn't like Mimi. She was a nice girl, everyone thought so. But she was a slow typist, her phone skills were terrible, and worst of all, she just never really seemed to care about her work. Ryan sighed. He was beginning to wonder why he'd ever hired her in the first place.

He stood up abruptly. No point in dwelling on the past, he decided. Whatever his reasons had been, they weren't important now. Mimi was here in his office, and it was Ryan's job to take her and mold her into a data entry powerhouse. And it was time to start now, before lunchtime hit and the business of digestion made everyone even less productive than they already were.

He walked over to her desk and was rewarded with a widening of the eyes and a sudden flurry of activity. "Mimi," he said, "I wanted to check in with you, see if you had finished putting in the numbers for the Haussmann account."

Mimi stifled a tiny yelp and started looking through the papers on her desk. "Um, I'm almost done with that," she said. "I just got sidetracked with the changes to the Kurtz file, and then I set them..."

Ryan let out a sigh. He'd been told his sighs were very good, definite upper management material, and certainly the effect they had on Mimi bore the statement out. "The Kurtz changes," he said, "were supposed to be done two days ago." Really, her desk said it all. Papers everywhere, no kind of rational filing system, three empty coffee cups, paperclips scattered all over...Ryan tried not to be one of those micro-managing office Nazis who ran their department like a military base, but he sometimes suspected that a girl like Mimi needed exactly that. She just had a tendency to coast through the day when left to her own devices, and unfortunately, Ryan didn't have the time to spend keeping her on track. He began to wonder if training Mimi might not be an actual impossibility, or at least enough of one that he'd have to let some other boss at some other business do the work. As much as he hated to fire anyone, especially a sweet girl like Mimi, she just didn't seem to be getting better at being responsible.

She looked up at him with sincere misery in her eyes, and Ryan instantly relented. "It's alright, Mimi," he said, patting her on the shoulder. "We all make mistakes from time to time. I know I've been forgetful myself from time to time." Ryan couldn't quite think of any recent examples, but the important thing was keeping Mimi from getting too down on herself. The poor girl looked like she'd had a hard day already, and Ryan didn't want to make it any worse.

In fact... "Mimi," he said, surprising himself a little, "why don't you go ahead and take the rest of the day off? I'm sure those files will keep a bit longer, and you look like you could use a little break." Mimi looked pathetically grateful as she stood up. "With pay, of course. I wouldn't ask you to take a pay cut for this. We'll just write it off as a sick day."

In the back of his head, Ryan kicked himself for his sudden burst of generosity. It wasn't so much that he felt like Mimi didn't deserve another day off with pay...although she probably didn't, he admitted, realizing in his heart that this wasn't going to help her learn any kind of office discipline and that he'd probably need to stay late to finish the files that could not, despite his claims, wait a bit longer. It was really more that he worried about the rest of the girls' reactions. Despite her generally sweet demeanor and ability to get along with everyone else in the office, Mimi was bound to become the target of some nasty gossip if she kept getting preferential treatment like this. (Ryan wondered briefly why he kept giving Mimi this kind of preferential treatment, but he shrugged the thought off. He needed to stay focused.)

He glanced around the room surreptitiously as Mimi gathered up her things and said, "Oh, thank you so much, Mister Pezzini!" But surprisingly, nobody else seemed to mind Mimi's early departure. In fact, they seemed to be giving him supportive looks. Perhaps everyone else had noticed how frazzled Mimi looked, and thought she could use a day off as well. Or maybe they just felt like the office was more productive when she wasn't there. He dismissed the thought as unworthy. No, they just all liked Mimi as much as he did. He smiled.

Just call her the office mascot,

he thought to himself.

Mimi walked out the door with a last wave to the group, and Ryan returned to his desk with a smile. Nice girl, he thought. He was definitely glad he'd hired her.

*****

"So how did today's little exercise in futility go?" Vincent asked archly as one of the girls (Mimi never bothered trying to figure out which one was which, and she suspected that neither did Vincent) showed Mimi into his study.

"D-minus," she said, collapsing into an overstuffed chair. A girl brought her over a glass of brandy, but she waved it away. She never liked drinking around Vincent. It wasn't that he probed--he'd always been very respectful of her shields, which was more than she could say for a few telepaths she'd met. But she didn't trust herself not to do anything silly after a few drinks. "And that's me being generous. Three times before I got to work--four if you count my making the manager of the coffee shop not notice what I did to his employee--and I gave myself the day off by eleven o'clock." In fact, she didn't trust herself, period.

"Well, it's easy to give yourself a generous grade when you make up the rules," Vincent said, taking a sip of his own brandy. He was sitting in a chair with his feet up on one of the girls. She'd never seen the point of using a human being when there was a perfectly good footstool in the corner gathering dust, but then again, that was just one of the differences between her and Vincent. "Which is rather the point I've been trying to make all along, Mimi. We make the rules. We don't live by other people's."

"Oh, not this again," Mimi groaned. She mentally ordered one of the girls to go get her a glass of orange juice. She knew Vincent had to have some around the house; how else could he make a screwdriver? "I'm not asking you to try to do what I'm doing, Vincent, just to try to understand how I feel. I just want to be able to be...normal! I want to have a conversation without the other person agreeing with everything I say, I want people to be able to think thoughts I didn't put into their heads, I want...I want to feel like I did before I got these powers. Just a little."

Vincent gazed out the windows, staring at the New York skyline. "Oh, it's an admirable goal, Mimi," he said. "There are really only two problems with it. One, it's undesirable, and two, it's unworkable. But apart from that, I certainly know exactly where you're coming from." One of the girls refilled his brandy without needing to be asked.

"Undesirable?" Mimi said, her frustration beginning to boil over. "Vincent, I feel like I'm walking on eggshells! Like the human mind is just too fragile to touch without screwing it up! This morning, all I had to do was look at a cute guy and he started flirting with me. I can't keep dealing with people like this, not without forgetting that they're people at all. I feel like I'm losing myself, Vincent. Like I'm starting to divide the world up into telepaths and toys."

"Like me, you mean?" Vincent smiled a crooked smile at her. Even without being able to read his mind, she could tell he was enjoying her discomfort as she tried to decide how to answer.

She finally decided on honesty. "Yes," she said. "Like you." It was odd, she thought. She and Vincent were able to lie to each other, a rare commodity for someone of their gifts, but yet they both told the truth just about all the time. Maybe being a telepath just gave you a different perspective on the lies people told each other. "I won't tell you how to live your life, Vincent, but I don't want to stop caring about people. You're not the worst telepath I've ever met, but I dare you to look me in the eye and tell me you're not a monster."

Vincent chuckled and shifted position in a way that deliberately dug his heels into the back of the girl he was resting his feet on. Mimi sensed nothing from her but pleasure. He'd adjusted all the girls in his service, made them feel nothing but overwhelming pleasure from serving his will. Even pain felt good to them, if they thought it was pain that Vincent wanted. "Oh, I have no illusions about that, my dear. I'm a monster. We're all monsters. This girl, the one I'm currently making into a convenient footstool? She'd be a monster, too, if she had the chance and the power. That's the thing about being a telepath, it gives you a rather unique insight into human nature. All of those normal people out there, the ones you profess to want to be like? The one thing they all have in common is that secretly, they wish they were like you and I."

The girl brought in Mimi's orange juice, and she snatched it away angrily as Vincent continued. "If I were to restore free will to this girl's mind, allow her to remember everything I've done, and tell her that you wanted to be normal like her, how do you think she would respond? Do you honestly think that she would even be able to wrap her head around that idea, even a little?"

Mimi frowned. "No. But..." She took a gulp of her juice. "But I have to have rules, ethics, a code of behavior to cling to. Something."

Vincent shook his head. "And you think that will make you 'normal' again? It won't, Mimi. Because that's the other thing. Even if you do manage to learn the self-discipline to tolerate the hell that is other people, to paraphrase Sartre, you'll never escape the fact that you are merely tolerating it. You go to your job every day not because you have to, but because you think it somehow makes you a better person to submit to life's little indignities. You'll never be able to really relate to these people, not ever again." He waved his hand towards the window as though he were encompassing not just New York City, but the whole world. "Because you're not trapped like they are."