There are a bunch of people at Grandmom’s
house, all of whom are fretting over some logistical or scheduling problem that
threatens the party we were planning on having that night. Can we fix the problem or do we need to
reschedule the party? (Rupert) Giles and others spout suggestions and we
discuss them in turn, but in each case there is a sticking point. I personally am
rooting for “fix now; let's party” (duh!) but the solution is quicksilver
evasive. Heather Mason pitches (for the second time) rescheduling the party in
the grand hotel she has recently acquired. This sounds good to most so we all
reluctantly acquiesce.
Now that there’s no party tonight,
I need ride home. I work on various possibilities. I recognize how damned inconvenient
hauling my carcass would be for the person I really want a ride from; and
frankly I don’t care to ride with one or more parties for whom it’s no trouble
at all—so I refuse all rides and purpose to walk.
It’s a crazy fucking long distance
to walk, so I conjure Plan B: I call Roze to pick me up. Which means I need to get
to that corner by Hammonton Lake, just before the road curves to the right, to
meet Roze, who is, I’m afraid, put out by my request. Unfortunately, I leave a
McGuffin behind and I have to go retrieve it, which means schlepping through a
labyrinth of a retail media store, something like Tower Records. I discover to
my chagrin and stress that I can’t simply retrace the direct route by which I
left—there’s a door that locked behind me, maybe. I end up in unknown
employee-only territory briefly, and fear I’ve gotten myself lost, but a bit of
backtracking fixes that. Then I get stuck at a payment register (remember when
we used to say “cash register”? how quaint) between stairs helping with a
customer transaction. Run run run! There has already been phone trouble, and
trouble explaining the location to Roze; now I’m not going to be on “that corner”
when Roze gets there. She’ll be pissed off—or worse, she will think she has
mistook the location and leave again and my phone is dead and…
Later, around a restaurant table
with maybe eight friends sitting around, I relate the whole episode and explain
my retail labyrinth troubles to Rex: “It’s like a record store but much bigger,
more the size of a department store… not a huge department store like John
Wanamaker in the ’80s, but still, it takes up several floors, just with a
smaller footprint.” He is distracted, would much rather be participating in
another simultaneous conversation at the table, but he promises he’s listening
to me.
In the same location, a wee bit
later, some of us are playing out dramatic scenes in that weird limbo between
pre-written drama and real life. I and a random NPC have just finished up one such
interchange and I immediately start a new one, in the same character, with not
quite Chris Riggs as my interlocutor. My intent here is to drive at a
confession of sorts, and he is getting increasingly defensive. The whole while,
we are both fussing with small and various objects that are strung on a utility
line around the room, at the top of the walls near the ceiling. Several of
these objects in a row (but by no means all the hanging objects in the room) are
tiny pairs of scissors. The drama builds until NQCR is livid (again, it is not
clear how much of this scene is acting) and he brandishes tiny scissors at me
and hollers, “Don’t you tell me how
to solve my problems!” or some such. I haul out a hereto unrevealed factoid,
which shuts him down. He hangs the scissors back up, and SCENE.
We both return to the dinner table
and I replay the whole exchange in my mind. Inarguably, his was the more
sympathetic part; but I am confident my character was right and will be seen as having the better position in the end—by,
among others, NQCR’s girlfriend, who is sitting next to him at the table, critically
processing the scene with him. Still, I am, with a staunch (misguided) sense of
ethics, still portraying my character without any gratuitous cues for sympathy.
Let the rightness be demonstrated by itself, I reason, rather than have any or
all of these dullards side with me for lousy, sentimental reasons.
Finally—don’t ask me how we got
here—I am at a market of some sort, cash for animals and embryos. I’m here to
buy something exotic and ridiculous and wildly unethical. Wait, I need some water..
