"Apparently being an Immune doesn't exempt you from seasonal allergies," she joked after sneezing several times on her call with Annisa on her trip to the penitentiary.
Unlike any other clients where the profiles were accessible through the Prattle app, this ex-inmate's data were sent in a PDF by the officials. She learned that this man had been moved from a Class-A prison to the lower-class penitentiary facility because it was closer to the logistic hubs in the West Jakarta administrative area. She was aware the active inmates were employed as a helping hand in the distribution chain, but she did not know to what extent.
Based on his file, her first task was to ensure the former inmate arrived safely at the assigned place. She wasn't a legal counsellor, and her job was not to spout clauses of an indictment. She was not, theoretically, his parole officer.
There was nothing to dictate what job he would take or where she should go after dropping him in. She only needed to drop him in a hotel—yes, it was a hotel—where the ex-inmate would stay until God knows when.
When the plague pranced around and gloated at mortality, countless houses were left empty or locked with dead bodies and, sometimes, dead animals, inside. She kept hearing the hushed stories of haunted areas from the workers she met.
"The old mansions near Menteng Park . . . Bro, even penniless, I wouldn't move there. The hushes after dark . . ."
Murmurs like these reached her ears at every quarterly meeting. As she didn't snitch her current apartment from a dead person, she wouldn't know how it felt like to move into a place where the previous owner didn't—and would never—give a green light for her to get in. If she had deceased and the court just threw someone she didn't know to slide into the place, would she hunt the new tenant?
She doubted the spirits would complain, though. One time, the mortgage was one thing they worked hard for. Homeownership. A new shiny car. And the next day, they died. The cars and houses became properties of the state and free for the court to give away.
~*~
"You're here for Mark Zuhair?"
The lady officer motioned to her to follow along. They clomped around the piles of card boxes and plastic containers scattered across the narrow flooring of the penitentiary office.
"The inmates here used to be deployed to work at the hubs, but it was a near-miss for us as two almost made a run. We captured them back before they were far away, but, long story short, this office became a sort of logistics centre on its own," the lady said in a clipped tone. Perhaps, everyone here had to speak in a robotic manner, Stephanie cheekily assumed.
That was what with the boxes, she thought. She peeked into one of them and saw bric-a-brac and clothes. Secondary and tertiary items, then. That explained why this compound was not buzzing like a logistic hub. Security measures were still aggressively imposed.
A clerk hunched his shoulders behind a desk, eyes zeroing on the twenty-inch monitor screen and fingers clicking the mouse and typing on the keyboard. Someone's assigned to monitor the daily manifests of their docking area, probably.
Seeing Stephanie's attention to how the business was run there, the lady explained, "He replaces your client as today will be officially the first day Mark no longer works with us."
Stephanie nodded and smiled towards the clerk. She was about to open her mouth and ask a question or two about the daily activities around here when the lady spoke. "Here he is."
She followed the lady's gaze and found a tall man, maybe almost one hundred eighty centimetres tall, stepped slower and finally stood still in the middle of the hallway. She couldn't make the face of this new man as his face was partially hidden by a black cloth face mask.
The lady noticed the reluctance, so she told the man, "Don't be silly. She's an Immune, too. You guys can talk to each other without masks."
The man's sharp dark eyes surveyed both ladies' faces. Sandi the clerk, oblivious to the awkward introduction around him, continued staring at the monitor, his fingertips dancing on the keys as the only constant sound filling their silence.
"Hi, I'm Stephanie Marsayudi. I'm a Companion from Prattle, assigned by Department of Commerce and Department of Justice to be your reintegration buddy." She spoke in a soft yet firm manner, the tone she reserved for hostile clients. Why did she have to be full of prejudice? Didn't she promise herself not to be afraid? Her hands clasped on her front.
He lowered his mask reluctantly. Stephanie waited with bated breath. So much for a first meeting. She mentally slapped herself for being fearful. Mark was just another client, he deserved to be treated free of stereotypes, no matter what his charge was. He served his time and now it was her job to paint sunshine and rainbows so he could start a new page.
Then, she saw him. For a 41-year-old man, his face was etched with horrors in life in equal amounts as wisdom. Few soft lines stretched across his furrowing brows when he finished unclasping his mask from his ears. A pair of full lips and an angular jaw lined with a perfect five o'clock shadow had been hidden underneath the traitorous mask. Pretty, yet lonely.
Stephanie couldn't help her gaze when it glanced down his sinewy body oh-so-furtively and then back up. His svelte torso bulked up at the right places. What was he doing when serving time?
She now did all imaginable torture methods to her consciousness for daring to check out a client. Her eyes went back appropriately to his short hair with silvery streaks decorating his temples. Stephanie puffed her breath out.
Mark opened his mouth, then the spoken words were rolled in a deep voice, laced with suspicion towards her. She wasn't prepared to face heavy suspicion on their first encounter.
"Mark Zuhair. And I don't know that I'm not allowed to go alone yet," he tilted his head, petulant strands of hair swaying lightly just above his right brow.
The lady officer explained concisely about the situation and Stephanie filled in the elaboration. She noticed his reticence gradually faded out, albeit he couldn't shake that narrowing eyes look at her. He said goodbye to Sandi and the officer with a smile and thankfulness. Stephanie caught herself from staring at the dimples formed beside the corners of his lips.
Stephanie led the way out, and not long after, she found herself walking at a normal pace on the pavement outside the penitentiary with Mark in tow.
When she offered a hand to carry his bulky and tattered suitcase, he refused.
"I hope you're okay that we walk for about ten minutes to the bus stop. If that's heavy," she jutted her chin towards the luggage, "I'll carry it for you halfway."
"'M fine," he mumbled.
They walked silently towards the fibreglass half box of the bus stop.
Birds chirped in a distance, the only sound she could hear even after straining her ears. Stephanie felt the cool breeze of the coming rainy days touch her face, so did her client, she supposed.
Her eyes glimpsed sideways to the man.
"I'm not guarding you. Please don't be a stranger. The bus will come in fifteen minutes."
When the client was hostile, she had to approach them using a straightforward technique. Short and effective sentences, instead of the normal pleasantries. She was okay with keeping her lips sealed.
"Why are you assigned to me?" He began the conversation after being tortured by an uncomfortable silence that he created. His shoulders and back relaxed while his fingers still fiddling with the handle of his luggage.
She threw a confused look.
"I heard about the Companions, and Prattle was notorious for, you know, dodging the bullet. So I was—"
"Dodging which bullet?" she frowned.
"Not working in manual labour."
She opened her mouth and closed again, letting him continue. Her tongue darted out to wet her upper lip while gauging the general consensus of the grapevine when it came to Prattle as the pioneer work slacker.
"Point is, you usually work with Protected people who need companionship, right? Why are you helping me settle?"
"Department of Commerce's order. A Companion to be a friend so that you're not alone when reintegrating. Jakarta today isn't the same as it was two decades ago. You'll need help. "
The one-every-6-hour bus arrived on time. Stephanie tapped the card reader once with her transportation card, spoke to the driver to explain Mark's situation, then both of them walked to a pair of seats in the middle of the bus. Some other workers with blue jackets—utility line workers, such as for electricity and water services— gave a curious look at Mark.
Being a Companion who travelled across the city to any random grid almost every day made her a familiar face to gaze upon, what with the remaining bunch of people. And it was about the air of comfort and habit that exuded her body, showing she was used to this, getting on and off buses meeting different people.
Mark's gait, she noticed, was still spruced up by staggering and bashfulness. He almost bumped to Stephanie when they messily sat down. Stephanie ended up on the alley side and her client next to the window.
"Who is he? Doesn't look like a Companion, does he?" a voice raised from someone at the back. It was mid-morning so she assumed those people switching from their depots after clocking out their shift.
She turned around bodily, facing those tired people who sounded affronted at any slightest chance to get abrasive. She never liked being chummy with people on the bus, especially those who she felt categorising her job as bone-idle, but she wouldn't back down from a fight when what they were doing was waving a red flag to her. She rose to the bait.
"I'm a Companion. He's my client. Why?" Her tone might sound sugary, as friendly as commanding to the room. But to the people who knew her, it was laced with venom that she was about to spit.
"Is he an Immune?" one male voice inquired angrily.
She wanted nothing more than to roll her eyes back further than she physically could. Ignorance was a virus, too, that could travel and stay with people even with mobilisation grid and whatnot.
But in front of everyday's people, a Companion should maintain her amicable composure, so she said, "Do you seriously think I want to do any act that might revoke my licence and throw me to jail?" That was the limit of venomous comeback she could throw, though.
But by the end of the sentence, she wanted nothing more than a brawl.
"He doesn't—"
She cut him short with a firm and higher tone. "He's from the penitentiary, a free man now like all of us. So, would you guys mind your own business, please?" Her icy glare shot at each of the individuals sitting behind her.
She turned back after being satisfied in raising her voice. But a mumble caught on to her ears, saying, "I didn't know that Companions offer their service to an ex-inmate."
She bristled, scratched her suddenly itchy back, and turned around again.
"For your information," she hissed on each word, "our service can be offered to you, too."
She faced the front of the bus again, focusing on the asphalted highway zooming out after the bus like the sky split by the faster-than-light warp spacecraft. When was the last time she saw the sky full of birds and not the supersonic trails of aeroplanes?
"Sorry you had to be in that conversation," her client whispered.
Stephanie threw a comforting smile to Mark. "It wasn't a conversation. They were just looking for trouble," she murmured back. No more snide comments from people at the back, she felt her heartbeat go down to normal.
"You haven't asked me about the conviction."
Now, she turned rapidly as far as her swivelling hips could allow given their sitting position. "Why do you bring this up out of nowhere?"
He hesitated, then lowered his gaze to a random stain on the metal floor. Its raised pattern invited aged dust and caked deposits all over it. Another cleaner passed away, another spot of earth left dirty forever.
"I thought you might want to ask."
"I never need it anyway, and the file sent to me doesn't disclose it, so I promised myself not to."
"Why?" he asked, his voice tinged with displeasure as if his life didn't matter.
"Because everyone deserves a second chance," she managed to curl up a corner of her mouth.
Mark answered it silently with his graceful stare. Stephanie broke eye contact to fish for her phone, then she was absorbed in the map for a few seconds. According to the map, they had two more stops before the one they were supposed to get off at.
"Your eyes okay? Seeing that glaring rectangle?" he asked hesitantly.
She fought to be on the same page as Mark until it finally clicked. He referred to her smartphone. Its screen was indeed glaring, but it was just her automated setting when she opened it below the sunshine. Maybe for Mark, it was obvious and invading. "You'll get one, I suppose. That's in your manifest that I checked before we left."
He stared outside the window at the fleeting, blurry, shapes of trees and electricity poles. When was the last time he looked outside a moving vehicle and enjoyed the view? Stephanie wondered how much she had to teach Mark to catch up, and her heartstring got tugged for a different reason.
"I'll help. It's not gonna be a breeze, but I promise you'll get the basics of it by the end of the day."
"Easy for you to promise this and that."
"That's a nice way to remind myself that we have something to look forward to," she replied sincerely.