Flipping Out
He sidled up to the bar, squeezing in sideways between a drunken crowd of Yalies on his right and a loner on his left. His irrepressible grin went unnoticed by both the customers and the bartenders, so he stood, waiting patiently until he could catch Philip's eye for a second round of drinks.
Fidgeting a little, he shifted his position, accidentally kicking the loner's bag lying on the floor next to his stool.
"Sorry," he said to the loner as he bent over to slide the bag back under the stool. He tucked the corset shirt back into the bag and stood upright. "Damn," he said as he watched Philip the bartender move away from their side of the bar.
"You're here for the charity event?" he asked the loner, trying to make small talk while he waited his turn. Even though he'd tipped Philip handsomely at the beginning of the evening, he wasn't the sort of person to make unreasonable demands when it was obvious that the staff was overwhelmed. He knew Philip wouldn't ignore him; it was just a matter of a few more minutes. With company like the loner, he knew they'd have something interesting to discuss once the ball got rolling.
"Yeah," muttered the older man, draining his glass. "Why in the world do people with money think that it's necessary or even a good idea to put on a show before they'll write a simple check? You'd think they'd have had enough silliness by now and would just get on with their lives."
Flashing his grin again, the younger man shrugged. "It's good entertainment. Even if you've got some disposable income, you still like to have a good time, right?"
The man simply arched one eyebrow at him, reached over the bar and opened the tap to refill his own beer glass. He opened his wallet and added the cost of the beer to the short stack of bills in front of him.
"Nice move. Do you work here?"
"Nope, a guy who used to work for me tends bar here most nights. As long as I pay and don't make a mess, he's good." He looked at the younger guy and chuckled. "You're looking kinda thirsty. No luck as the big tipper, huh?" Almost imperceptibly he caught a bartender's eye and was immediately served.
"Ed, Yalie here is thirsty. Can you help him out?"
"Consider it taken care of. What'll you have, sir? Luke, are you good?" Luke nodded, rapping his knuckle on the bar at the same time.
"Two double scotch would be great, light on the ice, Ed, thanks."
"Luke, is it?" he asked. Luke didn't bother answering.
"Anyway, Luke, thanks. Nice to meet you. My buddy and I are grateful to you."
Lorelai pushed happily against Rory's shoulder to win the lionness' share of the mirror.
Rory giggled and pushed back, trying to regain some mirror space, but was failing.
"I still can't believe you got Luke to come to Parents' Day, Mom. That is so cool. Did he like it?"
"It wasn't hard at all, you know he loves you and is very proud of you. Once he got acclimated to the campus, he loved the day as well. I had to drag him away from the Forestry and Environmental Studies department. He could have spent the whole day there just learning about the projects."
"Maybe Grandpa and I can find him a seminar or something to go to sometime. I'd love to show him the campus when it's not swarming with parents."
Lorelai occupied herself with her complex makeup scheme. "Mmm-hmm, I bet he'd like that a lot. You two hardly get to talk anymore."
"I miss it too. We used to talk a couple times a week, mainly while I waited for you in the diner."
Lorelai trotted into the bathroom where the ice bucket dripped into the bathtub. "Do you want another margarita?"
"God, no, Mom. I've had one already and you know we'll drink more before the show begins."
"Oh yeah, at least we don't have to drive tonight, so I can get as smashed as I like. This one's my third," she said proudly, coming out and insisting on clinking bottles with Rory again.
"Hold on, kid, let me check your makeup." Lorelai touched up Rory's eyes a little "for the stage lights" she said, smoothed her daughter's hair back and declared her ready. "You were born to play this part, my sweet."
"Sure, even I can agree with that, but I still don't understand how you convinced Luke to participate."
"I used my womanly wiles on him, sugar. Also Red Sox tickets and Jimmy Buffet tickets. I even have to go to the Buffet concert. That and a month of er, negotiation."
"You mean nagging, don't you? That still doesn't sound like enough to get Luke here, Mom. What else did you do?"
"I had to swear on the life of my firstborn that there would be no pictures of the event anywhere."
"No way can you guarantee that, Mom. He probably ought to register under a false name just in case."
"Good idea, help me to remember that. It also made a difference when I told him that you wanted to do it, plus that it's for charity. When that still wasn't enough, I promised I'd do anything he wanted."
"Ooh, dirty! Did he tell you what he wants? At least in words which won't make me gag?"
"It took a couple of weeks of nagging, but one evening, he suddenly agreed. One condition of the agreement is, I don't find out what I have to do until afterward. He must be shy about it."
"Sounds like he's got something special planned. Hope you're looking forward to it," Rory said.
"Oh, I'm not worried, I'm the adventurous one in the relationship. I can handle anything he can imagine."
Lorelai looked at her image in the mirror. "Looks perfect, just the look I'm trying for. Ready?"
"Let's do it!"
"Here you go, sir, two double scotch, light ice." Ed handed the glasses over to Yalie, who gave him a large bill and told him to keep the change.
"Ed, could you do me a favor and ask Philip to keep these coming? My buddy and I are over there by the mirror."
"Sorry man, Philip's shift ended half an hour ago. He must have gone off the floor right after you tipped him," replied Ed.
Luke snorted and looked at Yalie. "Looks like your whole tipping thing didn't pan out tonight, did it?" he smirked.
"Hey, you win some, you lose some," he said, right before his buddy came up and thumped him on the back.
"Logan, perfect timing! I'm dying of thirst. Let me take those off your hands. I'm chatting up a potential Columbia over there," he said, pointing out a short woman checking her hair in the mirror.
Luke, Ed and Logan all followed Finn's unsteady finger.
"Great, Finn, keep it up. Just don't break up with her until after we've performed, OK? I'll get us some more drinks." Logan turned back to the bar and smiled sheepishly at Ed.
"Coming up, Yalie." Ed trotted off to the other end of the bar.
Logan rubbed his hands together as he prepared himself for the next step.
"So, Luke, you're a Yale parent?" Logan asked, his infallible devil-may-care grin failing completely with Luke.
"Nope. Well, yes, sorta," he amended. "My girlfriend's daughter goes to Yale. I've been taking care of them since she was a little kid." Like he'd done a dozen times today when asked about Rory, he pulled out his wallet and his favorite picture of Lorelai and Rory. The closeup of them hugging each other tightly was special to him because it was the first picture taken of them after Lorelai's first visit with him to Sniffy's. In this picture she looked at him not as her best friend, but as her friend and lover.
"Wow," was all Logan said, his normal savoir faire momentarily gone AWOL.
"I hear ya," said Luke. "I'm the luckiest SOB on the planet. Except for the crazy."
"The crazy?" asked Logan, suddenly hooked.
"Oh yeah, the crazy runs deep in that family. Now Rory, that's her here," he said as he pointed to the younger Gilmore, "she's got a slightly better grip on reality. Lorelai, however, well let's just say Lorelai is the reason we're here tonight. She's been pestering me for years to do this, and now we're doing it."
Logan probed a little deeper. "Do you know what you're getting into? I mean, this is not a costume that just any guy would wear," he suggested.
"Goddamn hair flip." Luke stared deeply into his glass.
"Hair flip," repeated Logan in a manly yet sympathetic voice.
Luke looked Logan up and down. "Did you ever have a steady girlfriend? I mean, one who means everything to you?"
Logan shook his head. "I'm just a college student. I like to play the field."
"It'll happen to you one day soon enough." Luke shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "She'll blow into your life like a tornado and knock your heart flat on its ass. She'll repeat it until you get a fucking clue that she's there for you, forever; it's really you that she wants. The happiness is unbelievable."
"Suddenly you're going to town meetings and enjoying them. Or you're shopping, and it's fun. A mall! You're at a mall, the euthanasia center for modern humanity, and you're having fun! Eventually you look back on the events and you realize it was the hair flip. She lifts her hair, flicks it in the air like Harry Potter's magic wand, and suddenly you like shopping."
"Surely it took more than a hair flip to get you into this costume," puzzled Logan.
"That's because the hair flip is nothing. She uses it to get the small things, like an extra cup of coffee. When it comes to the big things, the really hard things, she pulls out the big guns-the hair flip WITH the dress."
"Ah." May have to continue this playing the field thing for a while. Luke's a goner.
"Those dresses are made by the spawn of Satan, I'm pretty sure, because once she's wearing the dress and she flips her hair, I'm lost. That's why I'm here."
"You're happy?"
"Happy as a clam."
"Sounds like it's worth it." Logan assessed his chances before continuing. "Hey Luke, which characters are Rory and … Lorelai, is it? going to be? Finn and I are looking for a few more people on our team. The bigger the team, the better chance we have of winning."
"What's the prize, anyway?" Luke asked.
"Winners get to choose their favorite charities for the money to go to."
"Hmm, sounds good to me. Do you have the charities identified already?"
"Nah, you guys can choose if you like."
"Lorelai is Magenta, Rory is Janet, and you've seen my costume."
"Luke, I think we've got the beginnings of a great collaboration here. Let me go talk to Finn and see what he's arranged, but don't commit to anyone else, OK?"
"You've got to wait until Lorelai gets here anyway. What she says goes for both Rory and me."
"OK, man, I'm going to change. I'll see you in a few?" Logan offered his hand to Luke, who took it, saying, "Later, man."
Before long Luke was being kissed by a raven-haired creature with pale makeup, triple the normal amount of eye mascara and eyeshadow, sporting wild hair that was completely natural, not a wig, like most people who play Magenta. Beside her stood the perfect Janet, if possible even more innocent-looking than Susan Sarandon.
"Did you miss us?" Lorelai asked, after Luke had been dazzled enough by her arrival.
"More than you'll ever know," he replied, happy to have his arms around her again.
Rory looked around the bar searching for anyone she might know. Coming up empty, she turned to her mother. "How does this work, Mom?"
Lorelai turned in Luke's arms, leaning back on his lap as he sat on the bar stool. Pulling the entry form out of her purse, she skimmed the information, finally answering, "Each team has to lip-sync one of a short list of songs. Each team gets a score from a team of judges, and the audience can vote with money. The top five teams get to choose their favorite charities for the donations."
"The bigger teams have the advantage. A team gets more points if they have more characters on stage," added Logan, who now appeared dressed as Brad, Finn drafting behind, the ever-present scotch in his hand. "Hey Luke."
"Hey Logan." Luke smiled as he wrapped his arms tighter around Lorelai, whose jaw had dropped, wondering when Luke had started picking up men in bars.
"I'm guessing you're Lorelai, and you must be Rory, right?" Logan asked, looking between the two women. "It's a pleasure to meet you."
The requisite introductions made all round, Logan and Lorelai stepped off to the side to make arrangements while Finn entertained the others with a bewildering array of disjointed thoughts and drunken gaps in logic. After Logan revealed that he'd arranged for a small room off the stage for rehearsal, they left the bar.
Luke stayed behind to settle his bar tab, but Ed refused, conceding that Logan had opened a tab for them all and put Luke's beer on it. Simultaneously annoyed at Logan's brashness and being forced to acknowledge his generosity, Luke shoved his already-collected beer money into the tip jar and followed the others.
"KISS," he said, as Lorelai began working on Luke's makeup. She promptly plopped a wet noisy kiss on the tip of his nose.
He rubbed his nose dry with an irked expression. "Not kiss, KISS!" whereupon she repeated her first move, this time with a giggle.
"You're going to have to be a little more specific, Monosyllabic Man," she tittered.
"KISS the band. I want makeup so thick that no one will be recognize me."
"Honey, no one's going to believe that you were EVER involved in a Rocky Horror stage show. Your name would be below Anita Bryant's on the list of people likely to appear in a Frank N. Furter costume."
He grimaced at the thought. "And don't tease me about the costume. It would be just creepy if I thought me in this outfit turns you on."
After the makeup was on, he quickly grabbed his flannel and covered his torso with it, breathing a sigh of relief for the first time since they'd entered the rehearsal room.
Lorelai comforted Luke by telling him that his role was very small, even though Frank N. Furter was prominent in the film. He mainly needed to stand in the background, looking the part, while others danced around him. Only at the end was he to strut to the front of the stage, and she would be there to guide him the whole way.
Logan furthermore explained that they'd chosen a medley of Time Warp and Toucha-Toucha, so they could best showcase all characters onstage. As Lorelai, Logan and Finn choreographed the Time Warp dance, Rory sat gratefully off to the side with Luke. A bartender entered the room with a tray full of Long Island Iced Teas, chosen by Lorelai to relax the more stressed and energize the enthusiastic.
"These damn fishnets itch like crazy! How in the world you can wear stockings is beyond me," Luke ranted.
"You get used to it," Rory said, shrugging. "Shaving your legs helps."
"That ain't gonna happen."
"I know, Luke, you only have to wear them a couple hours more, afterward never again." She patted his shoulder in consolation.
They drank their tea while they watched Finn and Lorelai argue over the dance steps, as if the steps really mattered.
"Crazy stuff," Rory said.
"Yeah, but I'm looking forward to next week. It's going to be a great week." Luke smiled as he imagined Lorelai's expression as she fulfilled one of his longest-desired fantasies.
"Can I know, or is it too dirty to tell?" Rory asked.
"Not dirty at all, but you'll have to wait until Monday, just like your mother." Luke smirked openly.
Just as it seemed Lorelai and Finn were about to start a fistfight, Logan stepped in with his elfish grin and defused the situation. Rory watched him smooth over the disagreement, impressed by the way he got Lorelai to listen to him.
"Hey, Luke," she said.
Luke hadn't heard those words with that pleading tone in a year or two. It was Rory's favorite opening line when she needed practical life advice from him. He followed her eyes as she continued to watch Logan. Ah, geez, a love life question. Those were the hardest.
"What's up, kid?" he asked kindly, crossing his legs and just as quickly uncrossing them again as he realized not only did he look ridiculous with fishnet stockings sticking out from underneath his flannel shirt, but it was even more uncomfortable with crossed legs.
"What do you think of Logan?"
"I don't really know him. He's a little dumb, but nice enough, I guess. He's got a generous heart. Why? Does he look interesting to you?"
She looked into her glass, suddenly shy. "Maybe. I was kind of wondering what he'd be like to date." She unconsciously ran her hand through her hair, taking a small lock and flipping it through her fingers.
Was that a hair flip? "Ah. He did say that he hadn't ever dated anyone steady. Lots of dates, but no girlfriends. He doesn't strike me as a boyfriend type."
As if summoned by her wishes, Logan appeared before her. "Rory, can you join us? We need to run through Toucha-Toucha, which is mostly just the two of us," he said.
Rory stood up and looked at Luke nervously before she walked to the center of the room with Logan. Right before she turned to face him, she pulled her short hair into a ponytail and gave it a distinct flip.
Luke jumped to his feet as Lorelai approached him. "Did you see that?!" he hissed. "She did the thing!"
"What thing?" Lorelai asked, restraining her laughter at the sight of jumping Luke in flannel and fishnets.
"The hair flip! She flipped her hair at that kid!"
"Who, Logan? She must like him," commented Lorelai nonchalantly.
In the center of the room, Logan was reassuring Rory. "We're going to do this closer to a PG rating than the original show. You're good with that?"
"I'm glad. It's one thing to sit in the audience, but another to actually do some of those things," she said cautiously.
He guided her carefully through their moves, adjusting when he sensed her discomfort or uncertainty, developing a choreography that worked for them both. They found common ground, too, in journalism. Logan immediately regretted avoiding the newspaper office during the past months, and told her so.
Rory smiled, repeating her hair flip from before. Logan missed a step when she did it; laughing at himself, he studiously avoided thinking about Luke's warning about the dangers of the flip. Too much happiness seemed to be working out fine for Luke, why not for Logan as well?
"Lorelai, she did it again! Aren't you going to stop her?"
"Why would I stop her, Luke? She doesn't even know she's doing the hair flip. It's purely subconscious."
"Well, it's a dangerous weapon. She should be more careful."
Lorelai laughed in disbelief. "Dangerous? I flipped my hair at you hundreds of times over the years. You never took the hint."
"Hint? You WANTED me to respond? The hair flip was a sign?" Luke was up and pacing now; this was all too frustratingly disappointing to believe.
"Well, sure. I flipped my hair like a helicopter in front of you; I thought I was going to take off sometimes."
"Don't you think it would have just been easier to ask me out? Oh, god the sleepless nights I had thanks to those hair flips. You tortured me," he moaned.
"Right back atcha, buddy. The whole town kept telling me you had a thing for me. Everyone except you. Don't you think it would have just been easier to ask ME out?"
Luke threw himself back into the chair, crestfallen. "To think what we might have been, if we'd only understood each other."
"Water under the bridge, babe. I will talk to Rory, though, to make sure she knows to be more direct when she thinks the flip isn't working."
"He's not good enough for her, you know." Luke gestured toward Logan, who was clearly making progress with Rory.
"Are you going to be like this with every guy she meets, hon?"
"Probably. That doesn't make me wrong." He was adamant.
"Not even Jess?" she asked pointedly.
"No! Not Jess. What a hot mess their relationship was," he said.
"You do understand the concept of free will, right? Rory has to make her own mistakes."
He looked at Lorelai with condescension, but gave in. She responded to his condescension with the patronizing act of patting him on the head.
"So you've got something special planned for Monday?"
Luke smirked. "Yep. You're going to make my dreams come true."
"Is it going to be hot?" Lorelai leaned in close to Luke, running her finger down his neck under his flannel shirt and man-corset.
"Sometimes hot, sometimes not. Wait and see," he suggested.
The performance went off mostly as planned, with Luke, fortified by a second Long Island Iced Tea, actually managing to strut confidently down the center of the stage, Finn as Riff-Raff and Lorelai as Magenta ready to rescue him if needed.
The team proudly accepted their third place finish, donating their share of the charity funds to Connecticut State Forests at Luke's request.
Rory was disappointed when Logan disappeared as quickly as he came into her life. Only later would she find herself running into him repeatedly; a direct consequence of her hair flips, even though he never told her that.
Luke burned the costume.
The bells jingled their usual Lorelai ring as she came through the door on Monday. No one ever understood how the same bells rang a different ring for her, but Luke didn't care. He was just happy to know she'd come in this morning, like she did most mornings. Especially this morning.
"Hi sugar, give me some sugar," she said, leaning over the counter for a kiss, given far more cheerfully than usual.
"Well, aren't you Mary Sunshine this morning," she commented, overwhelmed by the sheer joy in his kiss.
"It certainly is a great day, beautiful in fact," he replied, his megawatt smile lighting his face. "Almost as beautiful as you."
"Ooh, call me a dentist! Your sweetness is giving me cavities." Lorelai giggled at schmoopy Luke.
"You remember your promise, right? One week, seven days, Monday morning until Sunday night?" he asked, locking her into her vow.
"Anything you want, Luke. I promised. Tell me, is it going to be dirty?"
"Have patience, all will be revealed. I made you a special breakfast. Be back in a minute." He disappeared into the kitchen right before Lorelai's cell phone rang.
"Hi kid."
"Did he do it yet? What's Luke's plan?"
"I don't know. He hasn't revealed it yet. I'm waiting to hear," Lorelai said impatiently.
Luke came out of the kitchen carrying a large breakfast for Lorelai. He set the plates down in front of her, leaned over to the phone and said, "Hi Rory," for once allowing Lorelai to use the cell phone in the diner.
Lorelai looked at her breakfast, subsequently knitting her eyebrows together in confusion. Finally she looked up at Luke with eyes narrowed to slits. His loving smile took on a dastardly cast.
"Welcome to Lorelai's vegan week."
Fin