"committed" By A.r. Kirby -- Episode 19: "thank God It's Friday"

COMMITTED by A.R. Kirby

Episode 19 Thank God It’s Friday

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guess things are going to be different around here, huh?” Liv stood next to the kitchen table, scratching Toby between the ears as he arched his back and purred, while Tal sat across the table from the two of them.

“Different how?”

Liv and Tal both jumped as Alice walked into the kitchen, sleepy-eyed and scratching her tousled hair with one hand, the other tugging at the drawstring of her pink pajama pants beneath her t-shirt. Her bare feet plodded over to the refrigerator where she opened the door and began rummaging through its contents. “Oh, well, summer is almost here,” Liv said as she moved between cat and daughter, motioning behind her back for Toby to get off the table. “The days are getting longer, we’ll be outside a lot more... things will be, you know, different. Different from... spring. Or winter.” Toby rolled his eyes, gave Liv a look that said you’ll have to do better than that, then sprang down from the table and out the kitchen door. “Uh-huh” came the muffled reply from inside the refrigerator, along with the sound of bottles being clanked together. “So what does that have to do with anything?”

Committed by A.R. Kirby Tal dropped his head and held the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefingers. He looked up across the table at Liv, and she returned his gaze with a shrug. “Oh, it’s nothing,” Tal said, and Liv sat down in her chair across from him. He took a sip of his coffee, and Alice joined them at the table with a glass, a carton of orange juice, and a package of organic yogurt. She eagerly began organizing her breakfast. “So what do you have going on today?” Liv took a sip of coffee, attempting to steer the conversation in any other direction. “Economics test,” Alice said through a mouthful of yogurt. “Then we’re starting a project in Government. And after school, Janie invited me over to her house to go swimming and spend the night. Can I?” “I don’t see why not,” Tal said. “How will you get there?” “Janie’s mom will pick us up from school, and she’ll bring me home in the morning, too,” Alice replied, hope visible in her gleaming eyes. “So? Can I? I really want to go swimming.” “I guess so. I’ll call Mrs. Azbik this morning, and if it’s okay with her, you can go.” “Sweet!” Alice downed the rest of her orange juice and jumped up from the table. “I gotta go -- the bus will be here in 15 minutes!” She went through the kitchen door with a playful leap. Tal looked at the clock on the wall. “Ahh! I’m gonna be late!” He almost spilled his coffee all over Liv as he tried to put his cup in the sink while simultaneously leaping toward the hall to the bedroom. It was not a graceful move. 2

Episode 19 “Oh, go get dressed -- I’ll clean this up. I don’t have to be in until nine,” Liv said, taking the cup from Tal. He gave her a quick peck on the cheek and bounded toward the bedroom. Liv smiled and shook her head as she rinsed out the cup and put it in the dishwasher. Things were doing to be different, indeed. ----------------By twenty minutes before nine, Liv was backing the car out of the driveway; at this time of the morning, traffic had thinned and the short trip over Red Mountain to her downtown loft office would take ten minutes, tops. Pulling out of the subdivision, she mentally reviewed her day. At noon, she had a lunch at John’s Diner with Arndt Davidson, the founder of a local urban farm. The firm chose the farm as the recipient of a pro bono publicity campaign, and Liv was heading the creative team for the project. She was looking forward to the lunch, and perhaps even a visit to the patch of land underneath Interstate 65 that Davidson had cultivated into row after row of sprouting vegetables. Otherwise, her schedule for the day was clear. There were no deadlines looming, and her creative team had enough projects to keep them busy for a couple of weeks. Thank God, she thought. I don’t think I could pull a deadline and figure out how to save the world on a Friday. Wait. Did I really just think that? Liv pulled into her parking spot at the firm, and noticed her hands were shaking on the steering wheel. She put the gearshift into park and hung her head. She sighed heavily. Well, duh, she thought. No freakin’ wonder I’m shaking! Somebody told me I’m supposed to save the world. Save. The. 3

Committed by A.R. Kirby World. Really. Seriously. And they gave me the power to do it. I know, right? What ... who lays that on somebody? I can’t go to work today! I should have called in sick! Liv put her hands in her lap and closed her eyes. She took a slow, deep, cleansing breath. She exhaled slowly, then repeated the process. This yogic breathing allowed Liv to calm herself when her brain started to get overworked, and it was most definitely cranking at about 10,000 percent of normal at the moment. Times like these -- well, not exactly like this one, but times of stress and panic nonetheless -- were why Liv learned this particular breathing technique. She breathed in deeply again, feeling her ribs expand with the breath. That kind of thinking won’t get you anywhere, Livonia, she told herself, exhaling as she did so. You’ve got to accept this, and deal with it. Another round of breathing. Liv’s shoulders started to relax. You don’t have to do it all at once. Just start by getting out of the car. You can deal with whatever happens next. Liv opened her eyes, pulled the keys out of the ignition, and grabbed her purse from the passenger seat. Three minutes later (at 9:02, to be precise), she was in her office with the door closed, leafing through her day planner. She went automatically through the standard morning pleasantries and daily business generalities; her thoughts, however, were far from the day-to-day dealings of Steel City Advertising and Public Relations. Liv sat at her desk and clicked absent-mindedly through various and sundry news websites. In the back of her mind, she hoped -perhaps -- she might find some sort of clue to exactly what it was they were supposed to save the world from. Her early browsing produced no likely candidates. The Iowa senator being brought up on ethics charges related to his improper dealings with the pork 4

Episode 19 belly market (there were spurious allegations that some of the conduct was physical) was hardly a major threat to the safety of Earth, Liv decided. She was about to click on a profile of an upand-coming brilliant young businessman in eastern Europe when the phone rang. Liv glanced at the caller ID. It was Deidre. She picked up the receiver. “Hey girl. What you up to?” “Oh, not much.” Liv clicked on a story about a riot in Ghana. Not much there. “Just trying to make it till this afternoon.” “Oh yeah. I’m a little bleary myself. And that’s why I called. I wanted to make sure y’all made it home after the party,” Deidre said. “Tal looked pretty ripped.” “Yeah, he ran into the dean last night, and decided to deal with it by getting trashed. He’s wound up pretty tight. It looks like the dean wants to make some changes in the department now that Old Laz is retired. He’s bringing Tal in for a meeting on Monday.” “Dean who?” “Paul Griffin. You know him?” Another click, this one to a story about a multinational corporation using Indonesian sweatshops to make athletic shoes provided to prisoners in the U.S. federal prison system. Liv bookmarked it. In her gut, it seemed to have potential. “Paul Griffin? No way. He is such a dick. Even back when I knew him back in high school.” “You went to high school with Paul Griffin?” “Hell yes, I went to high school with him,” Deidre exclaimed. “Berry High School, class of 1980. Honey, don’t you know Birmingham is the biggest small town in the world? Forget six degrees of Kevin Bacon. We’ve got three degrees of Birmingham. 5

Committed by A.R. Kirby Everybody in this town has a mutual friend that knows you. It’s crazy. Everybody knows your business. But anyway -- he was a jerk back then, too. Word was that he knocked up April Johnson his junior year, then blamed it on his best friend. Paul Griffin is a tool.” Liv grinned. She would enjoy relating this tale to Tal over dinner tonight. “Just let Tal know that Paul’s full of crap. Anyway, I’m just glad you made it home okay. Will I see you at Supper Club on Tuesday night?” Liv looked at the calendar and the circle she’d drawn around the following Tuesday. She’d completely forgotten about the monthly dinner she enjoyed with her wide and varied circle of friends. Once a month, Liv, Deidre and a number of other women would gather at one of their homes for an evening of potluck dinner and several bottles of wine. Liv most recently hosted the February version; Deidre would be the hostess for the dinner in August. This month, the dinner would be at Mona Stirling’s townhouse near downtown. “At Mona’s? I wouldn’t miss it. She makes the best stuffed grape leaves.” “Oooh, I almost forgot about those. Alrighty, then. Gotta run. I’ll talk to you later. Have a good morning!” “You too, Deidre. You too.” With that, Liv placed the telephone handset in the cradle and turned her attention back to her computer screen. Somewhere, she was certain, she would get an idea about what it was she and Tal would have to face. Click. Disaster.

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Episode 19 Click. Tragedy. Click. Man’s inhumanity to man. Click. Click. Click. ----------------When it was time for her to leave for her lunch meeting, Liv was -- in no uncertain terms -- incredibly depressed. She’d stayed in her office all morning, browsing the web and reading news reports from around the world. There was so, so very much on the planet that was wrong and needed to be righted. But where to begin? Figuring out how to save the world would be a monumental task. Liv was able to shake herself from her search long enough to make it to her lunch meeting on time -- but just barely. She soon wished she had canceled; meeting with Arndt turned out to be a bust. This was at least partially Liv’s fault; she was distracted throughout the lunch. She wanted a Cosmopolitan, thinking a little hair of the dog might ease her mind, but the bar wasn’t open during lunch; the sweet tea she drank was a poor, poor substitute. To make matters worse, Davidson completely owned the conversation. He went on and on about organic fertilizers, the evils of corporately-farmed pork, and a conspiracy theory about the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s role in the Kennedy assassination. Most days, she would be able to handle a long-talker like Davidson with ease, driving the conversation herself and getting the information she needed without having to hear a bunch of blather. But today, Liv just smiled and nodded, letting Arndt ramble. She couldn’t focus at all. After an interminable hour, Liv picked up the check and gave the farmer a vague promise of getting in touch with him sometime in the next week.. As she opened the door to her office after lunch, Liv’s phone was ringing. She was going to let voicemail catch the call, then 7

Committed by A.R. Kirby thought better of it when she saw that it was Tal. “You are not going to believe what just happened.” Tal seemed slightly excited. “What’s that?” Liv sounded as gloomy as Tal was cheerful. She twiddled a pencil slowly through her fingers, her mind still heavy with the thought of all the evil in the world. “Well, I’ve been in my office all morning gathering material for my meeting with Dean Griffin on Monday. I’ve been pulling three years’ worth of published papers, as well as all the information on the grant I applied for last month. And I’ve been cussing that man all morning long. So I’m sitting at my desk a few minutes ago, looking over an old article of mine, when I look out my window. Guess who I see crossing the quad?” “Paul, I guess?” “Yeah, Paul. He’s walking across the quad, looking like he thinks he is superior to everybody else. And as I’m looking at him, I’m getting angry. I mean, who does this guy think he is?” “I talked to Deidre about him this morning. She went to high school with him. She said he’s been a jerk forever.” “I don’t doubt it. But anyway, I’m looking out the window at him, thinking about what happened last night, and... well... it’s kinda hard to explain exactly what happened...” Tal snickered. “Tal, what did you do?” “I was standing at the window, watching him strut across the grass... and I started concentrating on the ground underneath where he was walking...” Liv’s gloom was replaced with interest. “What happened?” 8

Episode 19 “Apparently I made a little earthquake happen or something. I dunno.” Tal was laughing as he talked now. “All I know was I thought about popping up the grass where he was walking a little bit, and I took out a divot right as he stepped. He launched about three feet and busted his ass in front of about 50 students. It looked like he just tripped himself while he walked. Got grass stains all over that fancy suit of his. You should have seen him looking around, trying to figure out what happened. It was hilarious!” Liv smiled. It wasn’t exactly how she envisioned the two of them using their powers, but it was a start. “Tal, I don’t think that’s what these powers are made for.” “I know, hon, I know. But I couldn’t help myself. I just wanted to see what might happen.” “Well, try to keep from moving any more grass today,” Liv said, feeling better than she had all day. “We don’t know what we’re doing yet. Let Toby talk to us some more this weekend; then maybe you can give Paul Griffin a hotfoot or something during your meeting on Monday.” “Will do.” Tal laughed again. “I’ll give you a call on my way home. Have a good afternoon, baby. I love you.” “I love you too,” Liv said with a smile, and hung up the phone. To be continued ...

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