I Unintentionally Became Her Kitten

Chapter 132: Beginning Peace Management

The elevator dropped me back into the main office room. I sensed a shift already, without seeing that Joseph and Alek had both tidied up their desks and were sitting straighter. I felt my nerves start to sing again. Alisha’s office door was closed, which was normal and with the tinted window I had no idea if she was alone or not.

Lili went back to her spot at one of the couches situated around a coffee table. She too was observing the room, but clearly didn’t see any threat here. 

It was up to me to investigate Alisha’s office so I steeled myself, half expecting to walk in on her cutting someone's fingers off. My hands were occupied with holding the drinks so I tapped my foot against the bottom of the door.

“Who is it?” Alisha’s voice asked, very muffled.

“It’s me,” I answered, hating how loud my voice was in this quiet workspace.

“Come in,” she said.

I struggled with the handle, ending up using my elbow to push it down and my foot to push the door in at the same time, all while balancing drinks.

Alisha was at her desk as usual. Across from her was Tye, sitting quite professionally with his hands folded together.

“Hi,” I greeted him. He nodded.

Alisha accepted her latte with a thank you and took a long sip before turning her full focus back to Tye.

“So they didn’t try anything while I was away,” she summarized from their previous conversation. 

I got myself situated on the couch enjoying a good long drink of cold and sweet fluid.

Tye gave her a quick nod. “So far they've stayed on their side of the border. But I don't know how long they'll wait if they think we're recuperating.”

“Hmm,” Alisha agreed. “Do you have any ideas?”

“I can have enforcers patrol the area. But that's about it. Maybe they'll think we aren't short on people that way.”

Alisha did that heavy contemplation, staring off into space, thing again.

“I can meet with Don Costello.”

Tye was skeptical. “What would you be proving by doing so?”

“That I’m here ad paying attention to him. If he doesn’t like that then maybe I’ll take care of him myself.”

“Alisha,” Tye protested. “That would start a war.”

“It would make a statement,” Aisha explained. “And it would be a last resort.”

“Murdering another don is only going to make the other families angry. You know why we can’t have that.”

“...even so,” Alisha continued. “There are lines they shouldn’t have crossed.”

Neither of them defined what lines those were.

I sipped my lemonade again trying to be more grounded.

“I’ll make that call myself,” Alisha stated. Then she looked at me. “There’s another project I’m going to be starting too. I need you to secure some building contractors for me.”

“We just made this office. I checked for vulnerabilities myself it should be secure.”

“It’s a different location,” Alisha explained. “And I want the best people on it.”

Tye inhaled before answering with a simple, “yes.”

“You can go now. I’ll arrange a meeting with Don Costello.”

Tye nodded but he put in a final, “be careful, Alisha,” before heading out.

Once the door shut behind him, his new shiny shoes disappearing beyond it, Alisha lene dback more and stared at the ceiling.

“Aer you going to be safe?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she said slowly and then brought her latte to her lips. It was hard to think of those lips as the same lips that had been on me earlier and I shuddered.

She sat upright again, pulled out her phone and started to dial a number.

“Give me a moment, alright?” she asked softly.

I nodded and focused on my own phone and lemonade. The acid sting of lemon was still grounding and the coolness helped the unease in the air. Alisha was not telling me or Tye the full truth of her plans. I trusted her, but the worry was still there.

She didn’t say much on the phone, simply listened before proposing a time and a location.

“Do we have an agreeable arrangement?” she asked finally. Then after the response said, “good. I will see you then.” The call ended.

I gazed curiously.

“I will meet with him tomorrow,” she explained. Her chair turned to face me directly and she crossed her legs in an incredibly regal pose. “So tell me what has you rattled,” she said.

I opened my mouth to say everything was fine, but what came out was the truth.

Alex was working just down the block. They looked miserable and I admitted I felt responsible for it.

“They’re not working at Starmaids anymore?” she asked.

“Charlotte fired them.”

“Oh. That’s why you feel responsible,” Alisha followed. 

I nodded. “If Charlotte didn’t hate me so much things might’ve been better for them.”

“You are not responsible for Charlotte’s actions and insecurities. That’s her issue to deal with and Alex is an unfortunate victim.” But Alisha still looked off into the distance again, looking troubled with that furrow forming in her brow.

“Is there anything we can do to help them?” I asked.

Alisha sighed. “Anything that comes from me will mark them as suspect. So  if they were going to be involved it would have to be their choice. I can’t just make them an offer.”

“Not even as a coffee-runner?” I asked.

She shook her  head. “If the conglomerate gets hit with RICO charges it doesn’t matter if all they did was bring coffee. They’re still a part of an illegal business and that makes them guilty.”

“I see.”

We really couldn’t do much for Alex. Giving them money from Alisha’s accounts raised flags. Working for Alisha made them guilty by proxy and I had no assets to help them out with.

“I can at least make sure their apartment building is safe,” Alisha said and went back on her phone, typing out some messages.

“That seems good,” I agreed.

I didn’t know how ‘safe’ Alex would feel if they knew mobsters were roaming around their apartment building looking for troublemakers to make trouble… with. But at least Alex would be slightly less likely to get murdered.

AN: Okay this'll be a long AN because I have a story to tell. Part of the reason (not the whole reason) for me being a bit dead lately is because of my partners vaginoplasty surgery. (Yes, bottom surgery) And I was more stressed about it than I think I was caring to admit. My last experience with someone getting surgery involved my father basically having the entire upper part of his heart replaced which ended up a sixteen hour operation. I sat in that waiting room the entire time other than a couple trips to the hospital cafeteria.

My partners surgery was different in that it only took a couple hours. But I was kind of expecting it to be more like my fathers where it takes hours and hours and hours and it drags on and you see people coming and going in the waiting room and you have no idea whats happening but you know they're pulling  chunks of his heart out, etc etc. The bottom surgery was more like, she went in for surgery. I got lunch, watched a couple episodes of a TV show and then I was called back to see her.

Long story short everything went well, no complications (so far) and she's recovering nicely.

But oh. my. god. did we have a rough first week after surgery.

We booked an airbnb in New Jersey (hospital in NYC, NJ within their recommended radius for emergency care.) for 4 weeks. I checked into the airbnb the day before, brought in a bag of groceries because we were planning on staying three weeks. I'd cook our meals to save money, make sure the place was clean. But my partner called me and was like 'could you stay the night with me beause I'm nervouse about the painful thing they have to do tomorrow' and naturally I was like 'I'll be there in twenty minutes' so I didn't really see much of the airbnb that night. Next day, she's discharged after being awake all night dealing with pain and the pee tests. I stayed up with her so she wasn't alone. So neither one of us has slept when we get to the airbnb. I get her settled on the bed, make sure she's comfy and start to go make dinner.

And then there's a cockroach. Just one, I took a photo jic and flushed it down the toilet. Didn't think too much of it even though somehwere in my brain there was a voice saying 'theres a sizable population if they're active this time of day.' But yeah I tried so hard to just shrug it off. I'm exhausted I jsut want food and sleep cause I haven't really addressed those needs for a day. I start to figure out what we're going to do for dinner. I see two more cockroaches. One which was a completely different species and another juvenile. That's when I realized the airbnb was really disgusting. They cleaned it, yes. But it was severely poorly maintained. My partner decides we can't stay there because I was upset (overtired, over hungry and thoroughly disgusted) and it's not super clean so we start to figure out plan b. But in moving around so much and in both of our panic, we forgot she needed pain meds and the subsequent pain levels for her were intolerable. We couldn't move that night. I spent most of the night trying to get her pain levels under control and her anxiety down because she has to relearn how to pee and that's a humiliating experience. the airbnb host said she'd send someone to take care of the cockroaches the next day.

Around four in the monring I finally lay down and pretend not to see the dozens and dozens of dead insects in the light above me and get a little bit of sleep until about five in the morning when my partner wakes up and we start her pain med regimen again. We get that entirely under control at that point. She's still in pain but that's unavoidable for long term recovery like this. 

I'm eagerly waiting for the handyman to come by and see the roach problem. For some reason during this period of time I see none so I wonder if I was being overmotional the previous night becaue yeah the over door is ziptied back on, and there's dead bugs in the lights. but it is clean and it is in new jersey. It's kinda expected to see a cockroach or two over the course of three weeks.

The handyman finally shows up at like 3pm I answer the door in like biker shorts and a tyedye pajama top because it was also getting very hot in there despitre the AC. (Keep in mind I still haven't slept or eaten much or showered and theres a migraine building in the back of my neck so I probably look fucked up). And the handy man wves a spray bottle around and is like 'i could spray this for you but you'd have to leave for six hours and it'll still reek when you get back.' I'm like, 'there is no way I am dragging my poor partner around NJ just to come back to toxic fumes. So I send him on his way while I get in contact with the host gain. I'm like, 'hey, we'll be out of the unit early tomorrow. So you can have him come around to spray then.' I hear nothing back.

Meanwhile my partner is starting to learn how to use her urethra correctly. Things are more smooth and I start to make us dinner (eggs and waffles. and so much butter and syrup).

In the process I see another cockroach, start dry heaving but since I haven't eaten or drank anything nothing came up. My partner and I have a 'nice' dinner pretending there aren't bugs scurryng around on the kitchen floor, (or maybe she didn't see them, I didn't ask.) We decide to book a hotel room to rest in before her appointment the next day and to sleep in after so the toxic fumes from the pesticides have time to air out. I book that room in a pretty nice hotel in Manhattan about a block away from her appointment. It cost a lot but I was looking forward to being able to sleep somewhere clean that I was familiar with. The room was actually pretty cheap becaue I had booked enough with that hotel chain for other reasons throughout the past five years that they gave me a small discount and free late checkout.

I'm constantly checking my phone at this point because I'm still waiting for the host to get back to me about the cockroach handyman pesticide situation. But she never responds.

I shower. I help my partner do her thing because she was still super anxious about it. What is hypothetically a 20-40 minute procedure took an hour and a half. And that's actually pretty normal at that stage. It's almost... traumatic? I want to say to have to readjust to a completely different anatomy in your genital area... Anyway. During that process I dispose of a tiny white bug I saw on the bed that I now know was a newly hatched cockroach. But at the time I thought it was like a weird gnat or something. I reassure my partner I have everything handled about the cockroach issue. Then have an emotional breakdown after going to wash our dishes and finding an adult female carrying her egg pod across the kitchen counter and started dry heaving again. I'm now at about 36 hours of very little sleep.

My partner reassures me that money is no object if I'm this uncomfortable but to be careful about the airbnb host vs support vs us situation. Under certain circumstances you don't get any money back or anything so it was dicey.

I get my partner to get some sleep and try to relax a little bit but everything feels dirty. Every little movement in my peripheral vision feels like a creepy crawly. The only thing I can think about is how wrong this whole situation is and how absurd that someone seriously sold us this as a nice unit. It was a pretty expensive airbnb.

I think around 2 in the morning after watching a baby cockroach circle the light over the bed for like forty minutes instead of sleeping something finally broke and I contacted airbnb support with full documents photos and video of a lot of roaches getting killed so they know it's not just one roach we keep refilming. There are in fact that many roaches in this place. I go in full overdrive mode. Call about six different hotels looking for somewhere that can accommodate us for three weeks. There was nothing in Manhattan or just outside of Manhattan. We'd have to change hotels every couple days if we did that but I finally found one just on the other side of the Lincoln tunnel. Not only did it have availability, it had suites for about the same price per day as our airbnb. And I was like yes. This. Will do nicely. Booked it for a couple weeks. Went and stared at the baby cockroach circling the ceiling light above the bed again. As soon as my partner got up I got a bottle of lysol nd tried to kill it. (I couldn't reach with any tissue or anything) and it fell directly where she'd been sleeping and I was like, mm, perfect photo op and that was the final photo i sent to airbnb. A baby cockroach crawling along my partners hygienic bed liner. 

The next morning the host asked why we had contacted support and I was like, "Im sorry but right now, we have to make sure we have a guaranteed safe space to rest and heal and this is not it." She told support she told us she was going to move us to a different unit. I told support right away, 'No her last message to use was at like 1pm yesterday telling us the handyman would be by soon. She didn't resopnd to my messages about anything after that.' I then told the host 'we'd like to cancel the remainder of our stay,' and she at least was decent enough to refund us the unused portion. At that time I hadn't slept more than an hour or two and a few brief catnaps for 48 hours. Had only had maybe two meals nd was very dehydrated since everything including the sink faucet was covered in cockroaches at different times of the day so I didn't trust anything to be clean. 

Then the host said like 'you didn't have to contact support like i was working on the problem. I have over 120 units this is an isolated incident.'

And I didn't respond but mentally you're just like, 'I have pictures of the bugs Ms. Host. There is a full infestation here. The lights have generations of insects in them and half the appliances are jury rigged back together after someone broke them. There is a long history of improper maintenance here so I have 0 confidence than any of your units are adequate for someone to have raw healing sutures and medical equipment that needs to be clean enough to enter their body.' 

As far as I know airbnb will not let her rent that unit out for a while until she proves the issues have been fixed but I do hope when the internal team reviews it that they see how bad it was and get us those first few days of payment back. I don't have super high hopes for that cause its a business in America and getting businesses in America to take accountability is like pulling teeth out of herding cats.

But it was an ordeal. And it felt so good to check into that nice hotel in Manhattan even if I was still in the same biking shorts from two days before, same underwear, super oversized t-shirt and lugging two Dollar General totes full of nondescript medical supplies around. Like there's all these well dressed tourists and business people and then there's me going: "Early check in. Please. Money is no object." Fortunately that worked out and I was either too crazed or exhausted to notice if anyone looked at me strangely.

But that crisis energy has been lingering. I'm still exhausted though less so now that I've had several days of normal-ish sleep and meals. I have also learned an important thing about myself: if I actually have to do something. I will ignore pain, exhaustion hunger, thirst, everything else to make it happen. And at some point I stopped caring about myself and simply defaulted to 'everyone else and their feelings (including shitty airbnb hosts) come before my safety and wellbeing.' That may be part of the reason why it feels so hard to write whenever I try to take it seriously because it feels like I'm selfishly pursuing something for enjoyment rather than doing 'real work.'

So I'll have to be working on that.

Anyway if you actually read that entire thing, thank you. Don't assume airbnbs will be nice just cause they have good reviews and pretty pictures. They may still be trash pits.

Oh and happy pride!