"the boys and girls watch each other eat when they really just want to watch each other sleep." dance anthem of the 80s by regina spektor
It starts like this.
Olive Snook holds the hand of formerly friendless taxidermist Randy Mann, and Ned feels something other than happiness for her. The something stirs in the pit of his stomach like a sickness that he can't quite identify until suddenly he can, as he turns back to the kitchen and looks at the face of the girl called Chuck.
It's the same thing he felt when he saw Chuck holding someone else's hand, the same dip and swoop of his gut when he saw his father's new family, all of them moving on without him.
Jealousy.
He deposits the bowl of apricots on the silver kitchen table and opens the door to the fridge, hoping the cold air will somehow freeze away what exactly it is he realized. It doesn't, but he pretends it does anyway.
He manages to make himself forget the moment ever happened in the next couple of days, filling up his time with more yearning over his inability to touch the woman he loves (the only woman he loves, he reminds himself). In other words, the Pie Maker continues as he always does.
Aunts Lily and Vivian (or rather, mother Lily and Aunt Vivian) are overjoyed when they realize that their respective daughter and niece, Lonely Tourist Charlotte Charles, has been returned to them, by way of being raised from the dead.
Ned does a small demonstration of his ability on one of the Aunts taxidermic birds, allowing the bedazzled robin to flutter erratically around its cage until he touches it once more, and it stills.
Lily curses a string of obscenities more creative and colorful than Ned has ever heard before. Vivian faints. Chuck grins. Ned feels lighter than he has in years, being able to tell people on his own without them finding out about his ability by accident or by being a byproduct of it. Lily and Vivian swear up and down that they will not tell a living soul about his power, all the while embracing their girl, Charlotte Charles, aka Chuck, with all their strength.
Ned laughs at the scene, ignoring that feeling in the pit of his stomach that something is about to go horribly, horribly wrong.
It, of course, does.
Seven months, six days, twelve minutes, and twenty-six seconds after his disappearance, Chuck's father, Charles Charles, reappears.
This event in and of itself would normally be nothing too significant to Chuck and Ned's relationship, as Chuck had already decided where her loyalties lie in terms of cake versus pie. But when the man suddenly bursts into the Pie Hole, wrapped in bandages and holding up a contract, a contract that the Darling Mermaid Darlings signed and Ned composed, a seed of doubt is planted into both Ned and Chuck's minds that they just can't seem to shake.
"Five months," he declares loudly as he stomps over to the counter, where Chuck stands ready to take orders.
"What five months? Who said anything about five months, I sure didn't," Ned rambles, hoping Charles Charles will simply leave without elaborating. This is not the case.
The facts are these: Ned's contract with the Aquacade traveling water show is still perfectly legitimate and signed. How Charles Charles got his alive-again hands on the papers the Pie Maker does not know, but at the moment it doesn't seem to matter as Charlotte Charles, aka the daughter of Charles Charles, aka the Lonely Tourist, aka Chuck is looking at Ned as if he just killed her father yet again.
"They signed it?" she asks after Charles finishes explaining why he's returned. "They're still going to Europe?"
"In five months," Ned says, a tinge of desperation seeping into his words. "They had already signed when you told them you weren't, well. Dead."
"I told you that was too much, Ned, I thought you understood-"
"Charlotte," Charles interjects, holding out his hand for her to take. "I've only come back so I can right a wrong. I want you to be happy, and I just thought you should know that I'll be following them to Europe to keep an eye on them. I won't say I'm alive, but I still want to keep an eye on Lily and Vivian. You can come with. We can be a family again."
Chuck turns away, grabbing a dish towel and pulling Ned by the arm out the door. "I need to think about this, dad," she mutters as they pass by.
What ensues is a fight so loud that all the neighbors (with the exception of Olive Snook, who is not in) can hear it.
"You didn't tell me they were leaving, I only just got them back-"
"I forgot, I honestly just forgot! Chuck, you're not seriously going to let that guy-"
"That guy is my father, who you killed if you've forgotten that, too-"
"Is that what this is about?"
"No, what this is about is you lying to me! Or at least not truthing. Telling the truth. Whatever."
"I'll go with you! There, Olive and Emerson can watch the Pie Hole, and we can have a vacation!"
Chuck sighs, some of her anger finally dying down as she settles on the couch. "I'm not sure if we should even try, Ned."
He pauses there, not quite sure what he's hearing. "What do you mean?"
"I mean what if he's right? What if he's always been right and we've just been kidding ourselves?"
"Don't say that," Ned murmurs softly, sitting on the couch next to her. He holds up his hands as if to touch her, forgetting for a split second that he can't. A split second, though, is all it ever takes.
"That's what I mean. That's what he's been saying, that's what Emerson and Olive have been saying, that's what Vivian and my mom have been saying. You can't even hold my hand." She looks up at him through tear-filled eyes. "We can't kiss on New Year's Eve, we can't hug when I'm sad, we can't make love on our wedding night. We can't ever have kids, I'm not even sure if we can get old together. Digby sure as hell isn't aging. I thought it was enough, but I don't think it's going to be. Not anymore." She picks up a glove from the bedside table and puts it on. "I think I have to go now, Ned." She touches her hand gently to his cheek, running her finger from his temple to his jaw, and Ned leans into the contact, even as his eyes fill will unwanted tears as well. "I think we have to go."
This is how two days, three hours, and fifteen minutes after the reappearance of Charles Charles, Chuck moves out of Olive Snook's apartment into her childhood home.
This is how five months, one week, and two days later, Mother Lily, Aunt Vivian, Charles Charles, and the girl called Chuck leave the town of Coeur d' Coeurs for a Darling Mermaid Darlings European tour, leaving behind Emerson Cod, Olive Snook, and the Pie Maker.
This is how Ned feels that his heart is broken. He spends his time before Chuck leaves drowning his sorrow in making too many pies and then giving them away when Olive can't eat everything. He decides that he will never be happy again, that true love will never brighten his doorstep again after losing the perfect woman.
Ned is, of course, wrong about this.
In the chaos following the return of Charles Charles and subsequent exit of Charlotte Charles from his life, Ned has completely forgotten about Olive Snook. Had Chuck been there with him, such an event would be of no significance, but the Pie Maker's realization that life still goes on without her at his side (but carefully not touching his side) comes as more of a surprise than it should have.
For example, in his six month, two day, four hour, and twenty-six minute post-breakup haze, Ned fails to notice several things. One, that Randy Mann has apparently become a regular at the Pie Hole, always ordering a blueberry cup pie and hot chocolate from Olive Snook, his waitress and girlfriend, and two, that when he finally comes out of his self-indulgent daze, Ned feels that twinge of jealousy yet again when he sees the pair together.
He decides to keep his feelings to himself, despite his desire to tell Emerson Cod what he thinks about them. The Pie Maker rationalizes the feeling in his gut, the dip and swoop of nervous and slightly angry jealousy, as coming from his wish to be back with his own sweetheart.
He takes care not to examine the way his side tingles whenever he accidentally bumps Olive in the kitchen. He especially doesn't examine the way he's become clumsier since he first noticed this phenomenon.
Emerson has been keeping busy with his come home again daughter, Penny, and his lady friend, Simone, spending less time at the Pie Hole than he used to. As a result, Ned's case load of private investigations increases, since Emerson simply begins swanning off the easier cases to Ned to solve on his own.
This is how Ned finds himself asking one Olive Snook, waitress at the Pie Hole and hopeless romantic, to become his new junior partner. This is also how Ned finds himself being accompanied on cases by not only Olive Snook, but also her beau of seven months, Randy Mann.
The first case the three work together is open and shut. Ned disappears into the morgue alone, asks the victim whodunnit (the butler, which Ned finds amusing), and returns to give a nonsensical explanation as to why he came up with that conclusion, when he sees Randy whispering something into Olive's ear. She laughs that bubbly musical laugh that she used to give the Pie Maker and swats her boyfriend's arm playfully.
Ned clears his throat awkwardly. "It was the butler," he explains. Olive nods her head, immediately believing him, though Randy looks a bit more confused.
"How does he know that?" he asks, gesturing to Ned with the hand that isn't on Olive Snook's waist. Ned is almost unsurprised when his hands clench into fists.
"Oh, don't worry, pumpkin, Ned's just like that. It's a P.I. thing." She gives an exaggerated wink to Ned and stretches up on her tiptoes to kiss Randy's cheek. "Well, if that's over, whaddaya say we blow this popsicle stand? I make a mean strawberry milkshake, and I'm thinking I'm gonna whip one up before dinner." Olive leads him out by the hand and they chat agreeably to the car while Ned trails behind.
After that, Randy doesn't question the way Ned seems to just know who the killer is after only a minute with the victim. The Pie Maker would be relieved if he didn't also resent the man for being a part of the whole process anyway. He takes to wearing his specially-made pie coat whenever possible, but he realizes quickly that Olive apparently had one made for Randy, one with little stick-figures of men on it. He would find it funny if he didn't find it so irritating.
He also refuses to wonder why exactly he finds it so irritating.
One month, two weeks, four days, and twelve minutes after Chuck's final departure from the town of Coeur d' Coeurs, the Pie Maker considers himself finally over his childhood sweetie.
One month, two weeks, four days, and fourteen minutes after Chuck's final departure from the town of Coeur d' Coeurs, the Pie Maker realizes that he has apparently developed a crush on Olive Snook.
One month, two weeks, four days, and sixteen minutes after Chuck's final departure from the town of Coeur d' Coeurs, the Pie Maker delicately wraps his hand in gauze after cutting it by slamming it on the table in a fit of anger at his own stupidity.
When he arrives at work the next day with a bandaid on his finger, well. Olive Snook doesn't notice, being too busy talking with her boyfriend, Randy Mann.
Ned the Pie Maker feels that something has changed. He doesn't like it.
One week, two days, fifteen hours, and five minutes after his realization, Emerson joins Ned, Olive, and Randy on a case for the first time in a month.
The facts are these: Herman Frost was a very rich, very handsome, very married philanthropist who happened to have been killed at the motel where he was meeting his mistress, his secretary, Georgia Bloom. He was beaten to death with a heavy, blunt object. For the Pie Maker this would normally not be a problem, except that the attacker mostly attacked the victim's face, smashing his teeth and ripping his jaw open and apart. Ned's attempts to discover the killer only result in gargled, indecipherable responses.
"My money's on the wife," Emerson Cod notes, digging into his rhubarb pie with the kind of fervor usually seen only in wild dogs. "Means, since she wasn't built like Itty Bitty over here-"
"Hey, I resent that statement-"
"Motive, because of the whole, till death do us part, and she stood to inherit everything, and opportunity 'cause her alibi is shaky at best. Just because she has a movie ticket doesn't mean she saw a movie. Two hours is plenty of time to catch hubby acting out and then murder his ass. It's the wife." He ends his summary with a final bite of pie and stands to leave. "Now is that it? I have my daughter and my lady to get to."
"Not just yet, Pops," Olive declares with a flourish. "Did the wife even know he was cheating? And what about the secretary? Maybe she wasn't too happy about the fact that he wasn't leaving his one-and-only for her."
"Olive is right," Randy agrees, nodding his head. "We should look more into this."
Emerson rolls his eyes, grabbing his jacket from his chair. "Well, fine then. You two go see about the secretary. Ned and I will go talk to Mrs. Frost."
The questioning leads Emerson Cod and the Pie Maker exactly nowhere, as the pair discover quickly that Mrs. Frost had no idea about the affair. Her personal assistant, an odd combination of snooty and stuttery named Roger, explains that he kept Mr. and Mrs. Frost's personal lives as separate as possible in order to keep the affair as separate as possible.
"If Wendy-Mrs. F-Frost- ever found out about Mr. F-Frost's little-" he snorts haughtily, "f-flirtation with G-G-Georgia Bloom, it would just k-kill her."
"Good to know," Emerson replies, turning to leave the mansion with the Pie Maker. "Come one, Ned. Let's go see about Itty Bitty and her man." He grabs Ned's arm and forcibly drags him outside, throwing him toward the front steps like a rag doll (or a Ned-doll).
'Oww..." Ned mutters, rubbing his arm where Emerson held it. "That hurt."
"He's hiding something," he states shortly, gesturing back to the house with his hand. "No one is that protective of someone they work for. He's looking at her like Olive used to look at you."
"Used to?"
"Yeah, used to, she's with tall, dark, and lonely now, she's every kind of over you. Why do you-" Emerson stops suddenly, his features sliding from confusion to annoyance. "Oh, hell no."
"Emerson, what are you-"
"You have a thing for Itty Bitty, don't you? I shoulda seen this coming, after Dead Girl left you high and dry. You always did have a weakness for the things you couldn't have."
The Pie Maker knows the jig is up. If Emerson Cod knows, it's as obvious as the nose on his face. So he does the only thing he can think of and tells the truth. "Okay, maybe since Chuck left, I've realized some- emotions I didn't know I had. That doesn't mean anything, though. It's Olive. We're fine."
"Now that I think about, you look a bit like the P.A. did, too. Are you sure this is only a crush?"
"Positive."
Emerson Cod comes right up into the Pie Maker's space, staring him down with a slightly terrifying, very angry look. "Good. Because if I think for one second you're planning to start stringing along Itty Bitty again, I will take. You. Down. Got it?"
Ned gulps. "Got it."
Olive Snook and Randy Mann meet Emerson Cod and the Pie Maker back at the Pie Hole, informing them that the secretary is innocent.
"She loved that stupid little cheat," Olive explains. "She would never hurt him. Plus, she had an alibi. The motel manager saw her getting ice at the same time Frosty the No-Man was being bludgeoned. What's the dealio with the wife?"
"Innocent. That leaves Roger the Stutter," Emerson decides. "Let's go catch ourselves a criminal."
The facts were these: Roger the Stutter had worked as a personal assistant to Mrs. Wendy Frost back when she was just Ms. Wendy Hart, poor little rich girl dating serial dater Herman Frost. Roger was indeed in love with her and took it upon himself to eliminate those who would ruin her happiness. Herman Frost was one such person.
"Wow. The personal assistant." Olive shakes her head, digging into her blueberry cup pie. "Never woulda guessed. Well, wait actually I would have. He was the only other person that the guy seemed to know. Figures he would fall in love with his boss." The last part she mutters, but the Pie Maker always did have unnaturally good hearing.
"Wait, what?"
"Nothing. Who said anything? I didn't. Can I get you any pie, Randy? You must be hungry." Olive Snook quickly makes her exit, her little green uniform swirling around her as she bustles about the kitchen.
Ned finds himself gazing at her until realizing that his expression mirrors one Randy Mann's, who is actually dating Olive Snook. The Pie Maker makes his excuses and leaves, asking his one waitress to close up.
He pretends not to notice the way his ear drifts to the wall connecting his and Olive Snook's apartment, allowing him to listen to the lovers' dinner conversation. He especially pretends not to notice the way he does a less than favorable imitation of Randy Mann every time the taxidermist speaks.
The fall quickly turns to winter, but the Pie Maker doesn't really notice that either.
The twenty-fifth of December is a day the Pie Maker would rather not be required to celebrate at all, but the experiments he and Olive Snook had performed on all the previous months of December working at the Pie Hole had yielded the same results. More Christmas cheer means more business means more money, which Ned could always use.
The facts are these: when Ned was eight years, four months, and six days old, when his mother was still alive and his father still around, Christmas was a grand affair, filled with wonderful presents and holiday cheer, which his family was more than happy to provide. The next year, however, when he was at the Longborough School for Boys, no such Christmas celebration came, as he had no friends to share presents with and no parents to buy said presents.
This Christmas is looking to be no exception, were it not for a particular set of circumstances. Randy Mann is apparently also a Family Mann Man, because he is spending the holiday with his own parents in the town of Beaver Lake, Nebraska, instead of with his girlfriend, Olive Snook.
Olive, explaining that she is determined to not get too clingy too early, stays in town for the holiday, allowing her beau to visit his family on his own.
"Next year we'll all do something together," Randy promises, pecking Olive on the cheek as he exits the apartment with his suitcase in hand. "See you later, Olive. Love you."
"I love YouTube," Olive returns hastily. "Have a great flight."
Randy Mann quirks his eyebrow but leaves to catch his plane.
Ned, having just happened to overhear the whole conversation, exits his apartment and happens to run into Olive Snook.
"Hey, Olive. What's the haps? The dealio? The skinny?" He winces. Apparently he even sounds like her now.
"Oh, nothing," she sighs, dramatically leaning against her door frame. "Randy's going back home to good ol' Nebraska and I'm here alone with no one to celebrate Christmas with."
It was with these words that Ned happens upon an idea of a slightly-dangerous-but-high-in-pay-off nature. "We can celebrate Christmas together."
Olive claps her hands together and smiles. "Oh goody! Now I can do all the things I wanted to do before. Come on, Neddy-boy, we're gonna have a grand time, you and me. It'll be just like the good old days."
Ned ignores the feeling in his stomach that things are about to become horribly, horribly mixed-up.
They, of course, do.
On December the twenty-fifth, Ned and Olive close up the Pie Hole an hour earlier to begin their holiday festivities. The Pie Maker does what he does best and bakes pies, and Olive Snook does what she does best and waits.
"You could help you know," Ned says amusedly from his place in the kitchen.
"Helping means working and it's my day off, bosserino. You and I both know I never do anything that I don't need to do."
"I suppose." Ned carefully picks up a strawberry from his secret hiding place and brings it back to life, placing the fruit carefully in the pie.
The facts are these: Olive Snook has been working in the Pie Hole for four years, five months, six days, and seven hours. In all her time as waitress and pie-girl extraordinaire, she has never once seen Ned change rotten fruit to fresh fruit with a simple touch of his hand. Until now.
"What was that?" she asks softly, moving around the counter into the kitchen where she stands with her hands planted firmly on the table.
"What was what?"
"That, the thing, the whoozits. I saw that strawberry, it was as dead as a doornail. But then you touched it and it was like it was alive again."
"That?"
"That."
"That was- nothing. I think you just mis-mis- saw. Missaw. That strawberry was as fresh as a daisy. Or a fruit. Whichever."
"Like hell it was fresh as a daisy-fruit-whichever." Olive barrels around the table and snatches the bowl of rotting strawberries from his side. She gasps melodramatically and turns. "What are these, Ned? What in the sam-heck is going on around here?"
"I'm- I'm," the Pie Maker searches, but there is no explanation to be found. "I can wake the dead."
For exactly twelve seconds, the Pie Hole is silent. Until Olive Snook snorts and laughs.
"You can wake the dead? Ned the Dead-Waker? Oh, you really had me going there, Pie Guy. But seriously, what just happened?"
"I told you- I can wake the dead." He pokes at the strawberry once more, and it decays rapidly before the eyes of Olive Snook. "If I touch something once, it's alive again. Until I touch it again, and then it's dead again. If I keep it alive for more than a minute, then something else has to die. Those are the rules."
Olive Snook searches his face for signs that he is lying, that it is all just an elaborate trick. Upon finding no indication of the sort, she gasps again, more quietly. "You really can wake the dead."
Ned nods.
"Then Chuck really didn't fake her death, when she told me she died and came back to life she wasn't lying. And that's how you know who killed all those people so quickly, you just wake 'em up and ask." She gasps once more, back in an overly dramatic fashion. "I thought you were so smart, but really you're just magic."
"You're not gonna tell anyone, are you? It's kind of a secret."
"So that's why you all have your secret meetings. Chuck knows, Emerson knows, I bet Lily and Vivian even know now that they know she's alive. Every knew before me, didn't they?"
Ned backs up into the corner, where Olive had pushed him with her tiny frame. "Wow, you sure used the word know a lot in that sentence."
"Well?!"
Ned sighs, hanging his head. "Yes. You're the last to know."
"I knew it! I knew there was something else! How could you do that to me, Ned? I thought we were friends."
"We are friends! I just- I just wanted one person to still just like me for Clark Kent."
"Like who for what?"
"Clark Kent. Like Superman. It felt like everyone only really liked me because I had this power, except for you. You liked Clark Kent. I liked- that."
Olive deflates, walking back over to the counter once again and sitting down. "Well, at least the rhino makes sense. Randy didn't actually confuse him for being dead when he was alive."
"No, he was dead. As a doornail."
She sighs, laying her head on the counter. "This is confusing."
"Yeah. I know."
And then something extraordinary happens. Olive Snook, formerly in love with Ned the Pie Maker and currently not, takes the hand of Ned the Pie Maker, possibly-maybe-sort of in love with Olive Snook and formerly not. She smiles at him and nods her head once.
Ned feels that something has changed. This time, though, he doesn't dislike it.
Randy Mann returns from Beaver Lake, Nebraska, and things go back to normal. Except that normal now includes Olive Snook becoming part of Emerson and Ned's powwows and cases with as much information as they have. Emerson scolds Ned for being careless, but continues to call Olive his Itty Bitty, so he knows it's not that bad.
Some days the Pie Maker still misses the girl called Chuck, but those days get fewer and further between until Ned wakes up one morning and realizes that he hasn't thought of her at all in one month, three weeks, five days, and thirty-six minutes. The day upon which he realizes this is, due to the laws of the universe, Valentine's Day.
Unlike with Christmas, Randy Mann and Olive Snook actually plan on spending the holiday together. As a result, the Pie Maker is left to babysit Emerson Cod's newfound daughter, Penny, while the private investigator and his lady love have a romantic evening by themselves.
Unfortunately, Ned has never been one to relate well to children, more specifically female children, because, with the exception of Chuck, he has never really met a female child.
"So," he says nervously across the counter. "Did you want me to make you a pie?"
Penny nods happily and Ned breathes a sigh of relief. Pie he could do.
Twenty minutes and thirty-three seconds later, the Pie Maker and the daughter of Emerson Cod have become friends, discovering that their favorite pie is the same (cherry), both had to get braces (hers purple, his blue), and both apparently have a crush.
"On who? What's his name?" Ned asks, digging into his slice with Chuck's special long fork. Why he still has the utensil Ned does not know, but it makes him laugh to use it.
Penny sighs melodramatically in the way only an eight year old can. "Jonathan Pleats. He's so cute! But he doesn't know I exist."
"I'm sure he does. Just go up and talk to him and say, 'hi, my name is Penny,' and then he'll know for sure."
She shrugs, lifting her purple-covered shoulders until they hit her ears. "I guess."
"Well, I know."
They eat in silence for nine more seconds until Penny asks the obvious question.
"Who do you have a crush on?"
Ned sighs again, finishing up the final bites of his pie. "Just someone who I should've appreciated when I had the chance."
Penny quickly wolfs down her slice as well and hands him the empty plate. "Then appreciate her now."
It isn't until two hours, sixteen minutes, and thirty-four seconds later that the Pie Maker sees the true genius of Penny Cod, but see it he does. And he forms a plan.
Step number one of the Pie Maker's plan (which he aptly titles, "Don't Screw This Up Again, Idiot") works perfectly.
"Hey," Ned leans carefully over the counter of the Pie Hole to where Olive Snook stands ready for the morning rush. "Do you want to see that one movie at that one theater?"
"When?"
"Eight."
Olive Snook ponders this for a moment. "Yeah, sure."
Ned gives himself a high-five back in the kitchen.
Step number two of the Pie Maker's plan (which he titles, "Let's Go to the Movies, Annie, You and Me!" because Chuck made him watch that musical exactly twenty-six and a half times during the course of their relationship) works less well.
At seven, as Ned prepares to close up, Randy Mann strolls into the Pie Hole.
"Randy!" Olive Snook semi-screeches as Ned mutters halfheartedly, "Randy."
They all end up going to the movie together, a weird mix of people who are all simultaneously the third wheel.
Ned kind of wishes there were a way for him to kill himself with just a touch. He knows this is not possible.
Step number three of the Pie Maker's plan (which he titles, "Well, Here Goes Nothing") is difficult to analyze when the Pie Maker uses his typical system of measurement.
"Bye, Randy," Olive says softly as she kisses him goodbye in the car. Ned makes a face when he turns his head away as Randy replies in an overly sweet voice, "Goodbye, honey bear."
At the kitty-corner of their apartment, Ned enacts step number three.
"That was fun! I liked that movie! I love big, scary robots, they're so sad, don't you think?" she exclaims happily as she fumbles with her keys, seemingly incapable of opening her door.
The Pie Maker reaches out his hand to take the keys from her to open the door himself, but finds that the limb has attached itself to her waist instead.
"Ned," she mumurs softly as his hand remains, "what are you doing?"
He waits four seconds before replying. "Something I should've done years ago," he whispers, tightening his grip on her tiny waist before capturing her mouth with his.
For twenty-two blissful seconds, Olive Snook kisses the Pie Maker back in exactly the way he imagined. On the twenty-third second, however, Ned finds himself being shoved back. On the twenty-fourth second comes a shrill, "I have a boyfriend, Ned! What the hell what that?" On the twenty-eighth second he is slapped in the face. On the thirtieth second, he is alone outside, still able to feel the warmth of her lips against his.
Ned thinks that perhaps he may have miscalculated something.
Olive Snook does not show up for work on Monday morning, and while Ned is grateful for the lack of confrontation, he is also nervous about what will happen when she is actually there.
That, and he really needs a waitress.
For two days, thirty-four minutes, and twelve seconds, the Pie Maker sees neither hide nor hair of his waitress or her boyfriend, taxidermist Randy Mann.
It is interesting to note that upon using the phrase "neither hide nor hair" in reference to Randy Mann, Ned snorts into his water glass and can't stop laughing for a minute and a half exactly.
This is, of course, the exact moment when Olive Snook enters the diner, one hour, twelve minutes, and forty-three seconds after last seeing the Pie Maker.
"Ned," she says carefully from the entrance.
"Olive, hi!" Ned quickly walks around the counter, wiping his hands on his apron as he moves to stand in front of her. "I was wondering when you were coming back."
"Quit the small talk, buddy boy," she snaps, holding up her forefinger to his lips. "Why did you make with the smoochy-face?"
"Well-"
"Is it because of Chuck? You looking for a little action, some tail?"
"No, I-"
"Why are you doing this now, when I finally have a boyfriend? I thought we were friends, Ned!"
"We are friends! I just-"
"So what is it then?"
"What it is, is I love you!"
Olive's jaw snaps closed with an audible click.
"Wow."
"I'm sorry I told you like that, I-"
"You used the word 'is' twice in that sentence."
"What-"
"That's pretty impressive."
Ned laughs then, feeling something slowly relaxing behind his ribs. "Are you gonna say anything about what I said?"
For thirteen seconds, Olive Snook does not answer. To understand what it is like for Ned during these thirteen seconds, one may wish to imagine that one is a nominee for an Academy Award, or some other such prestigious honor, and one has a one in a million shot of winning, and these thirteen seconds are the time between the presenter's last words and someone's name. This is the closest one can come to knowing how the Pie Maker feels during this exact moment, right now.
"I broke up with Randy," she confesses finally. "I told him what happened."
"What did he say?"
"He asked if-" she pauses, glancing around the store as if afraid someone would hear, "if I was still in love with you."
Ned tilts his head in confusion. "What did you say?"
"I didn't say anything."
"Well, can you tell me what you were thinking of saying?"
"Yes."
The Pie Maker's head tilts at an even more extreme angle which to any passers-by would look hilarious. "Yes to which?"
"To both."
"Can you say it then?"
"Only if you say it first."
He laughs again, gently grabbing at her waist to pull her closer. "I said, and I quote, 'what it is, is I love you.' And I do. I love you, Olive Snook."
For six seconds Olive Snook simply gazes at his face with a look of happiness until the Pie Maker clears his throat. "Well?"
"Sorry," she mumurs, snapping out of her reverie. "I was imagining us singing 'Somewhere Out There' right then." She chuckles to herself. "I guess I don't really have to imagine romantic scenarios for us anymore, do I? I was saving that one for last."
"Good to know."
She takes a deep breath, straightens her spine, and brings her eyes up to his. "I love you, Ned. I always have."
And then, in typical romantic fashion, they kiss.
The Pie Maker thinks perhaps this was always where things were going to end. He finds that this makes him much happier than he would have thought it would have.
It ends like this:
Charles Charles ends up being hit by a car in one of his attempts to cross the street, as his bandages do not allow for him to turn his head very well. The girl called Chuck mourns privately, until she meets the funeral director, a handsome Englishman named Jackson Johnson. They marry, and Emerson Cod, Olive Snook, and the Pie Maker attend the wedding. Ned finds it appropriate that the girl inextricably intertwined with death would marry a man who makes the subject his occupation. In five years time, also discover, very happily, that Chuck can indeed age.
Mother Lily and Aunt Vivian lead the Aquacade traveling show on a smashingly successful tour across Europe and go on to travel the rest of the world in their synchronized swimming act, the Darling Mermaid Darlings, with Charlotte Charles and Jackson Johnson trailing behind in post-wedding bliss.
Emerson Cod has a wedding of his own with his lady friend Simone, for which his daughter, Penny, gladly serves as flower girl. Ned is pleased to see her dancing with her crush, Jonathan Pleats, at the reception.
Randy Mann finds his own love, a fellow taxidermy enthusiast by the name of Ruby Heller, and together they open up their very own taxidermy shop. It does reasonably well, considering the lack of people who buy and commission taxidermic animals.
It also ends like this:
A moment, just one, in the town of Coeurs d'Coeurs, with the two of them, Olive Snook, the waitress, and Ned, the Pie Maker, her tiny hand in his large one, a small touch as they drive their brood of tall or tiny children back home from dinner. Despite it taking what many would consider a very, very long time, Ned and Olive are happy together.
And Ned thinks that perhaps that's all that really mattered, in the end.