Double trouble: the legend of crime brulee

Chapter 2

Cecelia sashayed through the double-doors of her favorite sister’s workplace and helped herself to a seat upon one of the flimsy barstools. Sucking in her tummy, she straightened and smiled, at attention for the man who approached her from the other side of the counter. He was tall and thin, with dark brown hair just on the elegant side, rather than the careless end, of overgrown, and a beard that she thought made him appear worldly. “What are you drinking, Ma’am?”

She was ‘Miss’ last year, until overnight, she was somehow ‘Ma’am’, but she was sure it was nothing to panic about. Vocabulary evolved all the time.

“Just unsweet tea, pink packets on the side. And do you know Constance?”

“Connie? Yeah, I’m her boss.” He turned around to pour her drink and placed it on the counter. “And we’re out of the pink packets; you want the blue ones, or the real thing?”

“The blue.”

“You know the blue ones give you cancer, right?”

“It beats cankles!” Which she definitely did not have, no matter what Cornelia might have said. “Could you send her out to speak to me?”

“She’s not here today,” said the man.

“Oh…well, could you give her a message from me?”

“And who’re you supposed to be?”

“Cecelia. Cecelia Cole? She’s never mentioned me?” It wasn’t her real last name, but she wouldn’t mind it if this charming, handsome fellow associated her with her clever, pretty sister–not that Cecelia was un-clever or un-pretty, although she would claim to think so in order to give people the opportunity to point out her obvious merits. After all, humility was a good look on a girl. But yes: Cecelia was every bit as clever and pretty as Constance, and everyone could see it, although Constance was content to settle for any man off the street, while Cecelia remained much more discerning…usually.

A part of her didn’t know what she was thinking: as far as marriage went, she liked to keep her eyes on the prize, holding out for a genius or a future millionaire or at least Mr. Universe. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have had the time of day for some guy who worked in a restaurant, even as a manager. But there was just something about him…

“Oh, so are you her mom?”

OOOOH! If he weren’t so compelling!

“Her sister, obviously!”

“Huh…well, I guess she never mentioned Cornelia, anyway; she just started coming in one day in her dark shades and weird suit and earpiece…what is she, like, FBI, or something?”

"USHD. Although, I'm not sure what it stands for, or what she actually does." Cecelia snatched a spare piece of receipt paper off the nearby bar printer, scrawled a quick note onto it, and folded it in half. "Just give this to Constance, if you would. Oh! But don't read it!" she added, hoping to reverse-psychology him into reading it. Perhaps if he did, he would take sympathy on her in her current predicament.

"I wasn't going–! Why would you think I would do that? Who reads other people's letters?" he expounded. "I'll have you know that I respect Connie very much, both as an indispensable employee and a great person. I would never violate her privacy!"

Cecelia's heart skipped a beat: what a gentleman!

"Well, thank you so much for all of your help!" She stirred a hefty handful of sweetener packets into her tea with the spoon he had so thoughtfully provided and drained half of it in one gulp through the straw. "Now, for lunch, what would you recommend if I'm trying to be calorie-conscious?"

"Honestly?" he said. "The salad place up the street."

How selfless! He was perfect. She could have swooned.

***

Connie was there, in the kitchen, prepping lime juice. The well was running dangerously low, and anyway, Connie had told him ages ago that she didn’t want to be bothered if Cornelia came around asking to see her. He assumed the same applied to anyone else, including this new chick, Cordelia, or whatever.

Letting himself through the rickety tin door into the back, he approached Connie at the station she’d assembled for herself next to the salad prep area. 30 or 40 limes sat chopped in half on a cutting board, and as she halved the last of them and rinsed off the knife to return it to the chef, he held the note out to her. “This is from your sister.”

She flipped the switch on the electric hand-juicer and kept doing what she was doing. “That’s weird,” she said over its mechanical whir. “Nellie never writes a note, she just pages.”

“Other sister. Amelia, or something? Older, I think.” Cornelia must have been the middle child. Now that he was thinking about it, he could see the resemblance–at least, between the other two. While Cornelia had a reed-thin build and Whatsername was kinda doughy, they had the same studious green eyes and slick black hair that seemed almost afraid to stray from its tight, neat bun. Neither one of them had much of a sturdiness to their frame; Cornelia might have come disassembled just as easily as one of the other one’s bones could be plucked from her body like a peach slice out of a jello salad. Connie, on the other hand? He had seen her lift kegs that weighed more than she did, and her round brown eyes burned with a mischief and curiosity that kept him up at night. “Kinda chubby. Seemed just as nice as Nellie, though.”

Connie’s jaw suddenly clenched. “I know you’ve only met Nellie like, three times, but it shocks me that that’s your impression of her. She’s never been nice a day in her life, she’s a monster! You’re either of use to her, or you’re standing in her crosshairs, and she has no reservations about letting you know which it is. As for Cece, her whole pleasant act only holds up as long as you’ve got something she wants, but somehow, I think that makes her even worse! I’m lucky there’s two of them, and that they’re usually too busy torturing each other to wreck my life any more than they’ve already wrecked it, otherwise, I’d totally 86 myself.” She peeled the gloves from her hands, snatched the note, tore it in two, and dropped both halves in the trash with the rinds of all the limes she’d angrily pressed dry during her tirade.

“Damn. I did not know it was that bad.” Though, how could he have? He had an effect on people.

He wasn’t that great of a manager, and Antonio’s was a godawful restaurant. The menu was a mess; the chef truly must have been on crack. Yet, he spent his days charming and delighting his guests, and nobody was ever anything but nice to him, thanks to the superhuman charisma he’d bought off an entity whose power he still didn’t fully comprehend. Connie alone seemed immune to his sway, her autonomy preserved, somehow.

But he supposed it was too late for him to petition the Bloodhound for a refund.

Connie smashed another lime half into the juicer. “Yeah? Well…now you know why I never ask for holidays off.”

***

It was a slow shift at the restaurant, and Connie had spent it ruminating over her little meltdown in the kitchen after she found out Cece had come to bark up her tree, and so soon after Nellie had done the exact same thing. Usually, she didn’t talk about her sisters. It felt futile to waste any more energy than she couldn’t help on resenting them. But, like milk on the stove, her anxiety about the possibility of helping Cornelia going disastrously had bubbled over the edges of her.

She just couldn’t pass up an opportunity to satisfy her addiction to flab.

Maybe she oughta see if there were twelve steps she could work for that.

Despite walking out of Antonio’s with eighteen bucks in tipout, Connie still managed to have a lucrative night knocking over a corporate convenience store. When she staggered into her apartment with a bra stuffed full of bills from the register, the phone was ringing. She wasn’t in the mood. She let it ring until it went to the answering machine.

‘You’ve reached Connie! I’m not at the phone right now, but if you leave your name and number and state your business, then I just might get back to you!’

“Constance? It’s your favorite sister,” said Cecelia. “I stopped by your job this afternoon, but that strapping young manager said you weren’t there…”

Great. So Cece was just going to keep bothering her until she got some attention, huh?

Connie trudged to the phone and picked it up. “Good, I didn’t want you to know I was there.”

Cecelia gasped. “I knew it! He was far too sweet to have blown me off without your orders!”

“I mean, I didn’t ask him to do it, but I’m glad he didn’t let you waste my time.” She leaned against the wall and sighed. “Which I’m letting you do anyway, right now. What do you want?”

“Oh, Constance, I wouldn’t have called if I had any other choice, and I tried, I really did. I negotiated for an extension and everything, but in the end, I simply couldn’t prevent this eviction!”

“Wait, eviction? I thought your welfare checks covered the rent on your sad, walk-up apartment.”

“And I didn’t foresee that dining room set eating so severely into my finances–”

“You bought a dining room set?”

“To entertain company, of course!”

“Cece, you DON’T HAVE ANY FRIENDS!” Connie screamed down the receiver. Cecelia sniffled.

“Which is why I had to call you! Please, just…let me stay on your couch? At least until I get back on my feet.”

“Why can’t you stay with Nellie? At least she lives in a real house.”

“Stay with Nellie? Nellie and the obese land-whale she married?! So his bad habits can rub off on me?”

Connie lit up a cigarette; the first, she was sure, of many.

“Can’t you, I don’t know, stay in a motel or something? Maybe get a job?”

“I’m in the lobby of a motel, but I don’t have enough for a room. I managed to rent a storage unit for my bulkier stuff, but I don’t want to sleep in there!”

Connie weighed her options:

Take Cece in and deal with an indeterminate period of back-to-back migraines;
Leave Cece out to dry and hope exposure to the elements or a speeding car or a rogue attacker got to her before she could bootstrap her way back into being a problem, or
Burn Cece to a crisp, which would rid her of the bitch once and for all, but create a spectacular mess for her to clean up, which she wasn’t sure she was up for on top of her new gig at the Division, starting with her assessment at–fuck!--eight tomorrow morning.

“Constance? Are you still there?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just tell me how to find you and I’ll be right over.” Since the useless moocher couldn’t even drive.

***

“Oh, not tonight, honey. I’ve got a killer headache.” Lying on her stomach in bed, Cornelia removed her husband’s arm from around her waist as, by lamplight, she studied the annotations she’d made in her Deviantology textbook. This Ph.D wouldn’t come easy, even if she was pursuing it in the study of people just like herself, and she couldn’t afford distractions. Even if she could, though, her level of interest in a tumble in the sheets with Henry was low, and not even an all-time low, just a regular one. She’d had a ‘killer headache’ every night for the last two and a half years.

His family had the money to put her through graduate school, now that her share of the inheritance had run out, and that was all he meant to her. In another life, he might have been Connie’s: the rotund belly and ever-widening hips that so repulsed Cornelia would have provided her little sister with a whole bouncy-castle’s worth of fun. But Connie hadn’t even come to the wedding, too busy sticking up some A-list actor and his entourage at a trendy bar that had once been featured on The Food Channel. It had made the landing page of YeeHaw Dot Com and everything.

On the bedside table, the phone rang. Cornelia picked it up at once, grateful for any excuse to avoid the subject of sex, only to regret it.

“So sorry to bother you at this late hour, MISSUS Hastings, but I just wanted to thank you personally for sending the captivating Ms. Cole into the Division Dorthwest. I’ll of course, be taking her on personally as a protege.”

Cornelia blanched, and gagged, and swallowed, and forced a smile she knew Agent Daniels couldn’t hear over the phone, but it was more for her benefit, anyway. Fake it ‘til you make it sort of thing. “Shouldn’t she be mine? I referred her, after all.”

“Ordinarily, yes. But, as she is your sister, the Division has decided that it would create a conflict of interest if you were to train her.”

“Who…who told you she was my sister?”

“Connie did, of course.”

Of course.

Stupid Constance.

Stupid, STUPID Constance!

And stupid Cornelia, for not anticipating this.

“Well, you know what? She’ll make you a wonderful apprentice, so good for you!” She slammed down the phone, seething. “That legless bastard!”

“He totally heard that,” said Henry.

“What?”

“Slamming down a cordless phone doesn’t disconnect the call; you have to press the bu–”

“FUCK IT ALL TO HELL!”

***

“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!” sang Cecelia, sliding a small duffel bag full of her things onto Connie’s coffee table. The remaining two, much larger duffels fell from Connie’s arms and smacked against the floor with a THUD. “I’ll be the loveliest roommate, you’ll see! I’ll organize your closet for you, clean your toilet, I’ll regrout your bathroom for you if that’s what you want me to do, I’ll even alphabetize your breakfast cereals for you! You know breakfast is the most important meal of the day? That’s how you jump-start your meta–”

“Cece, stop, just stop, okay?!”

Cecelia stared at her sister for a long moment. “Stop what?”

“Stop throwing your affection at me like a weapon! Don’t think I don’t remember how elated you were to see me kicked out onto the street as the ‘affront before God’.”

With a PLOP, the chunkier sister helped herself to a seat on the couch. "That's hardly fair. I was young and immature. All is forgiven, Constance! I don't even believe in God anymore."

"Really? When did that happen?"

"Well, I went back to church sometime in '97, but that year I actually gained six pounds, so–"

"Wait, wait, wait. You PRAYED for–? Cece, there is so much wrong with you." There was probably an equal and opposite amount of stuff wrong with Connie, but at least she had fun, and let herself eat food. Come to think of it, she could have blamed it entirely on her sisters if she wanted to. Between Nellie's using Cece's weight to torture her and Cece's obsessive efforts to escape a life of fatness and all the shame it entailed, it made sense for Connie to develop an obsession with fat guys, perhaps as a reproductive strategy, so she wouldn't have to compete with them. She refused to let them have the credit, though. As far as she was concerned, she was the determinator of her own fate, and that was final.

"I care about my health, and somehow that makes me the bad guy? Anyway, where was I? Oof!" Cece heaved herself up. "Right, the closet."

"No, no, no no NO!!"

Despite Connie's protests, Cece beat her to it, and found herself confronted with a wadded-up costume in creamy beige and glittering gold. Then again, Cece had probably already figured it out, right?

"Neat! But of you're planning on cosplaying Crime Brulee, you might want to think about working some crunches into your daily routine–"

"NO! WE ARE NOT DOING THIS!"

Cecelia abruptly stopped twirling her hair. "Doing what?"

Her little belly stuck out, and her face was cherubic and adorable, and she played so innocent, and to anyone else she would have come off as oblivious, but Connie could spot a liar. "Maybe everyone else falls for your little stupid act, but don't pretend you don't know who I am or what I've done! Your sister has fire powers, there’s a pyromancer at large, anyone with a brain could have put two and two together, and you just want everyone to think you're dumb and cute, but you're neither one of those things, so just cut everyone a Goddamn break!" Connie's only stroke of luck in all of this was that Cece couldn't very well rat her out, dependent as she was on her right now, and thank God. It felt good to explode.

"Constance, what are you…? Wait…you're actually Crime Brulee?"

Connie screamed.

She screamed so hard, she wondered if it would take her voice from her forever. She collapsed onto her knees on the floor, buried her head between them, and screamed on, so loud and so long she was sure the landlady would be having a word with her in the morning, but DAMMIT and FUCK IT and AAAAAAUGH!

"Constance, stop it! You're acting like a total psychopath!" Cecelia gripped Connie's shoulder, and, with a grunt of effort, dragged her to her feet. "Why do you always have to be so paranoid? How is it that no matter what I say, you always think I'm lying to you?"

"Because you usually are, if you think you can get away with it!" Connie snapped. Cecelia backed off, toes pointed in on the scuffed floorboards.

"Alright, I lied a little. I did call Cornelia and ask to stay with her; she said no."

"You're both so predictable."

"Anyway, what was it you were saying before? About what you had done?"

If Cecelia sincerely didn't know Connie had killed her parents and burned down their house, she certainly wasn't going to tell her. "Nothing. I'll order dinner."

Dinner was this ridiculously expensive pizza that Connie paid for with the spoils of her latest heist, curious after the dish had made its debut in the city to rave reviews. Connie ended up thinking that while the butter-poached lobster and black lumpfish caviar complimented one another well enough, neither went well with the mozzarella, and the edible gold leaf was an entirely unnecessary touch. None of those things needed to be pizza toppings. Cecelia initially turned her nose up, wary of an excess of carbs, but ended up chowing down and appreciating the novelty far more than Connie could bring herself to do. As the new episode of Space Trek aired on the TV, Connie said, "So you're really an atheist now?"

"Not only that," said Cecelia, absentmindedly palming a stomach stuffed taut full of a week's rent's equivalent in pizza, "but I've totally un-forgiven Mom and Dad for kicking you out."

"How does that figure?"

"I'll admit it, Constance: you were always so gifted, and bouncy, and loved. Then your fire powers came in, and you were out, and I thought I might come into whatever love would've been yours. Looking back, it's demented, I know. But then? When I next saw you? I was still this short fat thing, and you? You looked like you had been forged from steel, okay? Is that what you want to hear? That I'm jealous of your body?"

So that was what it boiled down to, in the end. Connie had spent years sweating in summer heat, shivering on the pavement of snowy parking lots, and scrounging off of uneaten bits of pastries from unbussed tables on the patio of La Parisenne, but Cecelia could sympathize with none of that; Connie was thinner, and that made her enviable.

"Fuck no. Who do you take me for, Nellie?"

***

The stunning Ms. Cole had aced her obstacle course with flying colors, and most new applicants flunked it after their encounter with the Doctor (terribly old, terribly old-fashioned, and insistent upon dividing himself in half so he could take patients' vitals and samples at the same time. It was disgusting to watch, and, Ned assumed, disgusting to experience, but Connie came out smiling on the other side.)

"How did I do?" she asked, panting as she exited the simulation room.

"Well, you destroyed all our drones, including the ones you didn't need to. If you ask me, you're going to make a wonderful stateside hero. Now, how do you feel about the codename Blowtorch?"