Chapter Twenty-One: 61 Sincerity (Zhōng Fú)
Gabriel has a dream in which he speaks to Raymond Booth. Raymond encourages Gabriel to tell him what’s he’s doing to make his life worthwhile.
Geneva goes to visit Baker; Gabriel and Joel drive her to Rochester. The visit goes well, with Geneva describing her life and her transition. They all stay overnight in Rochester, Geneva making a connection with her grandfather that is promising. The next day, Gabriel and Joel visit Bettina, who explains that Arthur Knox’s mom was arrested for being an accessory to Knox’s crimes. But they are concerned Knox may target Baker, so they arrange for bodyguards. At the same time, Gabriel wants to be proactive so he and Joel break into Mama Knox’s house. They start searching, and Gabriel is surprised by Knox hiding in the shower. Knox knocks Gabriel out, disarms him and Joel, and locks Joel in the bathroom, dragging Gabriel away with him to ‘talk.’.
Joel manages to free himself and meet Geneva outside. Joel knows that Gabriel has a second phone on his person, with a GPS device to track his location. Geneva drives while Joel tracks them outside of Rochester. At the same time, Joel gets Bettina to alert authorities. They find out the area Gabriel is in has been cordoned off due to an alleged hazardous spill nearby. Joel figures this is a hoax Arthur set up. They get away from the police and find the actual road Gabriel is on. Then they see a group of old abandoned brick buildings ahead. One is on fire on the ground floor.
Gabriel sees Ethan Nelson in front of him, telling Gabriel he’s in hell. Joel is there too, on his knees as he was in the warehouse. Gabriel throws himself in front of Nelson’s gun. Then he wakes up in the building, not knowing what’s going on. His phone is buzzing. He answers to hear Joel’s voice, and he realizes he’s in a building on fire. He begins to panic. Joel and Geneva come up with a quick plan, running to the building next door. Joel gets Gabriel to make it to the roof of his building. Geneva sets up a rope for Gabriel to get across. Gabriel is terrified to do so, but they coach him across. He makes it, and they escape downstairs.
Fire and rescue finally arrive. Gabriel is taken to another hospital. Gabriel is okay, although he needs to be treated yet again. Joel watches over him.
Chapter Twenty-Two: 30 Radiance (lí)
A news article describes the arrest of persons involved in a human trafficking operation in New Jersey, the one Don was running. The story goes into Gabriel’s involvement in both the Mathers case and with Knox.
Gabriel has a dream in which Leonard visits him. Gabriel says he hopes he did right by Leonard, but Leonard says what’s important is that Gabriel did right by the dead women.
Gabriel recovers in the hospital. Veronica is handling business. Gabriel chooses not to respond to Alex’s overtures of sympathy. Once Gabriel has returned to NYC, Chiang gives him some advice on his path.
Mikki visits Gabriel and Joel at Gabriel’s apartment. They discuss what they could do with Leonard’s belongs, to perhaps give them to Sara. Bettina updates Gabriel on Knox. Sophie is released and Gabriel and Bob pick her up, and Edward visits to talk about Leonard.
Gabriel is considering the place his life is at, in this moment of his birthday and Valentine’s Day. He rushes home to Joel to confirm their love.
Coda
A new article from Mankiewicz. He’s reviewing a couple recent television shows on the Mathers case, which feature Gabriel. The story indicates some trouble is happening with Gabriel currently.
Between the Pages
- I like the relationship sparking between Geneva and her grandfather. Left unsaid is how Geneva is coping with the fact her mother has rejected her and her father is a cypher. She has her adopted mom and dad as a loving memory. I didn’t want to make her life harder for her at this time by bringing her mother back for an encore.
- In researching the rope thing that Gabriel does, the worst is being over open space like that. It’s not mentioned explicitly in the series, but Gabriel has a fear of heights. He’s not going to be chasing anyone on the tenth floor of a construction site, is what I’m saying. It’s the prospect of death by fire that gets him over that roof edge, and even then he probably wishes a miracle helicopter comes out of nowhere.
- This story had such a different feeling than The Hanged Man, as it should. Although I love mystery series like Nero Wolfe and Lew Archer, I wanted books with different atmospheres and distinct growth and changes in characters, as well as different frameworks (hence the I Ching framework here). To me, The Hanged Man is Gabriel establishing a place in the world, finding out how to deal with serious professional adversity (he’s already dealt with much personal adversity). In Two-Faced Woman, Gabriel is building upon the two aspects of his life (duality is a consistent theme in Gabriel’s World): professional success and internal breakdown. He had to look out for his physical safety in THM, here his danger is from his internal demons.
Beyond the Pages
- Author’s Notes may not get a lot of attention, but just as Gabriel wanted the focus of the news docs he was in to focus on the women, I’d like to help bring some info on human trafficking, so that was my focus of the author note. As I read about in several good books on the topic, it’s not just sex. Quite often it’s domestic work or manufacturing. Trafficking runs across genders, ages, and families. The following are resources in the note:
http://lastradainternational.org/?main=newsletter§ion=newsfacts&news_id=341
http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/glotip/Trafficking_in_Persons_2012_web.pdf
https://www.freetheslaves.net/SSLPage.aspx?pid=285 http://www.polarisproject.org/about-us/overview
- I recommend the book by Kevin Bales Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy and Siddharth Kara Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery.
Questions for Readers
The dream Gabriel has where Nelson shows up and taunts Gabriel strikes me as a basis for a question. Nelson represents the demons of Gabriel’s recent past, events he could not control. I imagine Gabriel as having stress dreams after this in which Nelson makes an appearance. What sort of dreams do you have under stress? Do you try to figure them out as to the heart of what’s bothering you subconsciously?
Thank you for reading Two-Faced Woman. I hope you continue the Gabriel’s World journey in The Book of Joel.
Playlist
First, for the scene where Geneva and Joel are trying to catch up with Gabriel and Arthur, Phil Collins: In the Air Tonight. Very Miami Vice of me.
And I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord
Well I’ve been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord
And to end on a high note, be Erasure’s Be with You, which is what I was playing in describing Gabriel coming home to Joel at the end.
Want me
Lover say you want me
And tell me that you need me
Is all I wanna know
Extras: Deleted Scenes
Originally, I was going to have Gabriel be abducted from Senator Baker’s house. That scene is the first part. Then I considered adding a bit from a documentary (fictional) on people with other selves. That is the second part.
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Joel drives them both to the Senator’s house. Baker listens to Gabriel’s recount of what he’s heard, the phone threats. But he doesn’t seem that worried himself. The ‘it couldn’t happen to me’ privilege.
Gabriel asks, “Do you mind if I look over your house, security-wise? That’s part of my work.”
Baker is much more mellow today. “Well, if you feel the need to. We really don’t have many people here, Maria and I, the gardener. A maintenance person…some part-time help, the cook.”
“Very nice. Do you have a bodyguard?”
“No, no need for that.”
“Maybe now there is.” Gabriel takes Joel with him to tour the house. The house itself has a security system, standard alarm company. What Gabriel doesn’t like is the isolation of the woods behind the house on the expansive grounds.
When they return to the office, Gabriel explains that he thinks Baker should hire a couple of people to patrol until Knox is arrested.
“Mr. Ross, I don’t know that this is necessary. Do you want to stay here?”
“I would, but we don’t know how long this might take for them to find him. We have to get back to New York City eventually. But I could, we could, stay until things are set up…”
Gabriel suddenly zones out, staring out the window.
“What is it?”
“Something’s not right.”
Joel is instantly on alert, feeling Gabriel’s instincts. He goes to Gabriel’s side. Geneva, next to her grandfather is also alarmed.
Baker grabs her hand. “What’s going on?”
Gabriel’s at the door, looking out the hall, both ways. He looks back over his
shoulder.
“Anything outside?”
Joel checks out the window carefully. “Not that I can see.”
“Open it.”
Joel throws open the French windows. Gabriel comes back in, up to the windows. Now they hear it. A crackling.
“Get them out, out through the window.”
“What is it?” Baker gets out of his chair, a little unsteady, leaning on Geneva. Joel takes his other arm and leads him to the window. He has his phone out to call 911.
Gabriel is back to the doorway. He calls for the housekeeper. “Maria!”
No answer. He goes out far enough in the hall to look up to the second floor landing. “Maria!”
Joel’s back beside him, but Gabriel isn’t waiting. He runs through checking the downstairs rooms and then goes up the stairs. They can smell smoke now.
Joel follows him up. They both see Maria on the floor outside the room that’s on fire. The door is shut but the smoke is creeping out of it. Maria’s unconscious
Gabriel hoists her up off the floor and over his shoulder, with Joel’s help. Joel leads him back down and they manage to get her out the front door without interference. In the distance, fire engines are heard.
Geneva and the senator are in the circular driveway. Baker gasps at seeing Maria in Gabriel’s arms. He lays her out on the ground beside them, seeing that her head is bleeding. She’s breathing, at least.
“What happened to her?”
“She was hit.”
The engines pull into the driveway. The firefighters are directed to the room, and begin taking out their hoses and equipment.
Other than being a little shaken, Baker is okay and refuses an ambulance. Maria is loaded into one, apparently stable.
Baker and Geneva sit in the back of the Camry. Gabriel is watching the house intently, thinking.
“What?”
He looks at Joel. “He did this. Revenge.”
Joel nods. “Where did he go?”
“And why a small fire?”
The firefighters are finishing up.
Gabriel suddenly looks over to the woods behind the house. “Wait here.”
Joel grabs him. “What are you doing?”
“I just want to check something. You watch them.” He makes his voice commanding.
“No. Call the cops, get them to do it.”
Gabriel frowns and asks one of the firefighters who the captain is. The woman indicates an older man standing at the corner of the house. “Let me talk to him,” he says to Joel.
Joel watches him go to the captain and begin talking. They move around the corner out of sight.
“What was he saying? That man Knox is here?”
“I think he was.”
He explains this to Baker again. Then Baker uses Joel’s phone to arrange to have some security personnel sent out for the house, and to arrange for a hotel for himself and Geneva. He then calls his daughter and starts a very tense conversation.
Joel realizes Gabriel has not returned.
The captain is standing with his crew, but Gabriel isn’t there.
“Shit. Where did he go?” He leaves Baker and Geneva and begins walking around the front of the house. Night falling makes everything more difficult to see. Gabriel isn’t on the grounds. Joel hopes he isn’t in the woods.
<<<>>>
From the PBS documentary, Dual Minds
Narrator: Vivian, who lives in Chicago, says she has an alter. Although people who are multiple often prefer different terminology than alter or personality–such as ‘self’ or ‘selves,’ because systems with distinct selves don’t feel they are ‘alternate,’ but all equally part of the physical person. Vivian in fact, she says she has seven different selves, each with a particular identity, self-image, and personal characteristics. Some are very separate from Vivian, who says she’s the ‘primary’ or front-runner personality, and some are like her.
Vivian asked Seth to talk to us. Seth is male, older than Vivian, and a more talkative personality.
(To Seth) What do you think is the most harmful misconceptions about multiples?
Seth: That we’re violent. You see that in movies a lot. And also, some people tried to pretend they were multiple as a defense to terrible crimes. Kenneth Bianchi, the Hillside Strangler, faked being multiple. He was lying. But when people like this claim to be multiple, then the public puts everybody in that category. Or thinks the whole concept is false. And again, movies perpetuate this. Psycho. Secret Window. Primal Fear. Identity. Mr. Brooks.
Narrator: Yasmin, a co-running self, one who is actively present in the body at the same time as Geoff, lives in Seattle. She expressed this concern:
Yasmin: People think we’re all victims, that this happens because someone beat us or sexually abused us. If we tell anyone, and we have to be careful who we tell sometimes, then that person usually thinks Sybil or Three Faces of Eve. Singlets, people who only have one self, feel that anything that’s ‘different’ has to be due to mental illness. They can’t conceive that it could just happen, just another way to be. Like people have variations in gender, race, height, skill, and sometimes in the number of selves inside.
If a multiple character was in Star Trek, it would be called innovative. But in real life, society wants to institutionalize us. We’re in the DSM, under dissociative disorder. We have to find others like us outside psychiatry in order to understand who we are and get positive feedback. We don’t want to be cured, we’re not fragmented. If Geoff tried to integrate me, he’d kill me off. He doesn’t want to do that, and I don’t want to do that to him.