Jess could hardly stand the thought of his mother spending the holidays in that place. Not that the holidays had ever really been anything special for them. Some years Liz would litter the house with tired-looking, half-broken decorations, mostly home-made and old, and…frankly, pathetic. Occasionally she'd enlist his aid to lug a bedraggled, puny pine up the flights of apartment steps, grumbling at her the whole way…why are we doing this? At least half the time the thing ended up knocked down in some fight, or party hoopla or stumbling binge, pine needles and dirt and broken ornaments crudding up the floor for months. Most years she spent a considerable portion of the season passed out. And there were nearly always copious amounts of tears…hours of ragged sobbing for one reason or another. This would actually be better, right? Still. He couldn't help but feel guilty. The holidays were important to Liz. He should find some way to spend them with her. He couldn't exactly say he owed it to her, but… Hey, it was either: spend the season with the grinch and the lunatic asylum or… Okay, that's not funny. Well, it was one loony bin or another - he'd put it that way.

Her voice sounded tinny and far away through the ancient corded handset. Honestly, who other than Luke still had a phone with a rotary dial?

"No, Jess. Stay. There's no place like Stars Hollow at Christmas. You'll love it. I mean - you're you, so you probably won't love it. You'll probably grumble and grouse your way through the whole thing just like Luke always does, but… You don't wanna come here. I don't want'cha to come here. I don't want you to see me like this." He could have scoffed at her for that. She was probably in better shape now than she had been most of his life. And he'd seen her… She didn't wanna know how he'd seen her. He didn't wanna know how he'd seen her. He did his best to repress the flash-backs and keep his breath from getting shallow. "Besides, you should spend at least one Christmas with Luke. That's what family does, right? Spends Christmas together. I can't believe I never took you to spend Christmas with Luke. That's crazy! Right?" Only his mother would use the word crazy that lightly, considering her present circumstances. And, how would he know what families did for Christmas? The self-sacrifice of The Gift of the Magi flashed through his mind and he sighed a quick, heated sigh in consternation at his mental filing cabinet and its nasty habit of indexing whatever would make the lousiest contrast to his own life at any given moment.

"Whatever you say, Liz." If she didn't want him there, he could more than live with that.

"You should stay with Luke. Who knows. It might be the only Christmas you ever get to spend with him." Jess took very little time noting that very little Liz said ever made any sense. She clearly didn't remember the Christmas they all spent in the E.R. waiting room. Not that that really counted, anyway. And he had no idea why she presumed that either he or Luke was unlikely to be around any of the December 25ths for the rest of his life. He shook his head, slightly baffled but mostly jadedly resigned.

"Sure. I'll stay," he conceded. His jaws clenched and he summoned the nerve to ask her if any of this was doing any good. "How are the sessions?" She laughed in response. That couldn't be a good sign.

"Everybody knows that in a place like this, it's the doctors that are nuts!" Typical. "They keep trying to tell me that I have some sort of dissociative something-or-another, and I keep trying to tell them that the whole thing's a load of bull. I mean - people should mind their own business, you know? I don't need crazy neighbors telling people I'm crazy and getting me carted away to a place where they try to look at my brain through some kind of microscope! I mean, I should be the one reporting Mrs. Lotzky and getting her brought in here! Do you know what she did to poor Ernie? Did you hear about that?" Liz babbled, making Jess feel sicker with every sentence. He rolled his eyes before closing them. Mrs. Lotzky wasn't nuts. Mr. Lotzky wasn't nuts. And neither of them gave a flying hockey puck whether his mother had bats in the belfry or was a danger to herself or anyone else, or whether she or him or any of the losers that drifted in and out of their apartment decided to jump off the stinkin' roof and splatter up the sidewalk or kill each other or go get a whipped frappe chai latte whatever-they're-called. It made no difference to them. They couldn't care less. And the longer she held on to the ridiculous animosity and denial based on the supposed lunacy of the people who sent her there…yep, Liz, I made that call because I'm the delusional one… You're fine. *I've* been imagining things all these years… You'll do just *great* there without anybody looking out for you… Nothing to worry about. It's all in my head…the longer it would be before she got any kind of help from being there at all.

"I gotta go, Liz," he responded abruptly. He didn't want to hear what Mrs. Lotzky had done to Ernie…or what Liz had heard that Mrs. Lotzky had done to Ernie…or what story Liz made up in her head about what Mrs. Lotzky did to Ernie. As far as he was concerned, Mrs. Lotzky and Ernie could go get a whipped frappe chai latte!

"Okay," Liz said, brought up short. "Okay, call soon!" she added hastily, but letting Jess off the line in case Luke was coming and Jess didn't want him to hear the wrong parts of the conversation…or something.

"Sure." He hung up the phone. As he climbed down the stairs, he could hear Lorelai's over-bright voice drifting up from behind the curtain, babbling inanely about coffee and roof repairs…and something about The Partridge Family, feathered hair and bell bottoms…and how great Luke would look in bell bottoms.

"Should I send for the men in white coats now, or send them around to your place later?" Luke asked dead-pan.

"They'll take me to the room with the pretty, pink, soft walls?" she cooed. Jess stopped in his descent, gritted his teeth and tried to swallow down the impotent rage at how crazy that woman pretended to be…as if it was funny…as if it was a good thing. As if everybody had a choice.

"What's going on?" Rory's voice. She must have just walked up to the counter.

"Driving Luke nuts, wanna come along for the ride?" He could visualize the glazed-over grin on her face.

"Sure, what's the next stop on the tour?" Rory chimed in.

"Oh, we're gonna bring out the dancing bears in a second. And, the guys in leotards."

Luke's grumbling was barely audible, but floated through the curtain next. "Insanity is highly overrated."

THANK YOU.

Jess came through the curtain with a face like a black storm cloud and a heavy step. Lorelai actually flinched

"Well, don't you look chipper," she commented sarcastically. Jess plastered a fake smile on his face. Even a fake smile was an unusual sight, and both Lorelai and Rory looked at him strangely.

"Just going to see if I can find a nice white lab coat," he remarked, voice sharp, though he kept the virulence muted and slathered over it with an almost sticky sweetness so it could pass as a friendly joke - but his head went down and he hunched his shoulders and stuffed his hands in his pockets as he pushed his way around the counter and out the diner door, making the bell tinkle-tink stiltedly in his wake. Three sets of blue eyes stared after him mild surprise before they returned to the banter of coffee, life, the universe…and everything.

*o~~…~~o*o~~…~~o*