"Oh, wow…"
Alfredo staggers up the stairs at the crack of dawn. He still can't quite believe it. Colette took him to a dance club, where she insisted on paying for him, and they danced slow. HE danced slow with COLETTE! "Oh, wow," he repeats, touching his face to make sure it's really him.
Later, she took him out into the Bois de Boulogne to meet a biker gang – friends of hers – where she introduced him as "my boyfriend." Their jaws dropped, and he understood the feeling; his jaw dropped harder than anyone else's. Later, when a couple of drinks had loosened their tongues, they told him privately how lucky he was: everyone had wanted her, but they'd always thought she was a lesbian. He just sat there, blushing and glowing. When she drove him home, she asked him "aren't you going to kiss me goodnight?" and, when he stared in embarrassment, she cupped the back of his head in her leather-gloved hand and pulled him down into a kiss that… well… it's good she can't see his body's reaction, is all. He thinks of doing something about said reaction, but exhaustion wins out; this makes it two nights he hasn't had any sleep. He falls onto the couch and is asleep in seconds.
It doesn't feel like he's been asleep for more than half a minute when he's rudely awoken by a tug on his hair. "Aw, c'mon, Little Chef!" he moans. "Let a guy sleep, willya?"
The tug is more insistent. Now.
Alfredo rolls over and runs a hand through his hair – not hard, but enough to make the little guy move aside. Whatever it is, it can wait. He can barely keep his eyes open…
"Whoa!" His legs swing off the couch despite himself, and he lurches into a sitting position. "Aw, c'mon!" Suddenly, his friend lets go of the controls, and Alfredo crashes to the floor. He gives a yell at the rude awakening, and forces his eyes open, angry now. "What, Little Chef? You're mad I didn't take you on my date? Was I supposed to…"
He blinks as the rat gives a loud squeak and slaps his tail against a piece of paper he's holding – on the floor, which coincidentally is Alfredo's eye level right now. It's the mauve paper his mom always used to write letters on. Curiosity getting the better of him, he reaches out for the paper, turns it so he can read it at his angle on the floor. "Mon cher Monsieur Skinner…" he begins. "What, Little Chef? How'd you get the letter my mom wrote to Skinner? You sure I should be reading thi…"
He falls silent as the tail slaps down onto a part of the letter. "Gusteau's… son?" he reads aloud, uncomprehending, then looks to another spot where the tail is pointing. "Pl…please don't tell Alfredo? What…?"
He bolts upright, grabbing the letter and scanning it once, twice, three times. The familiar tears start as he sees his mother's handwriting, but they're dried up by the pounding of his heart. This is a joke, his mind is insisting, it has to be a joke, but his heart, the serious expression on Little Chef's face, his mother's handwriting which he'd know anywhere, are all telling him otherwise. He runs a hand across his face. "Auguste and I were very close," he reads, but his eyes keep jumping back to the phrases, "Gusteau's son" and "Please don't tell Alfredo". He shakes his head, unable to take it all in; the room is spinning. I'm dreaming, he thinks, beginning to hyperventilate. I'm dreaming and any moment now I'm going to wake up and…
He's jolted out of his anxiety by the Little Chef biting his hand. The pain seems far away, unreal. "This… this… where did you get this?" he asks, inanely.
His friend shakes his head impatiently, dismissively, and thrusts another paper in his face. DNA TEST REPORT, it reads. Alfredo scans it and rubs a hand over his face, hard. This cannot be happening. Why now? His Dad… His Mom always said he was in the Navy and would come home someday… This is proof that his Dad walked out… no, that's not right, he never even knew he had a son… he has no idea how to deal with this, he wants his Mom, he has to talk to her, now, but his Mom's dead...
"Ow!" He's bitten again, and in some perverse way is grateful for the pain, as an anchor to reality. Little Chef is thrusting a final paper into his hands now, slapping his hand with his tail to snap him out of it. "Gusteau's Will?"
And in this, the craziest of all crazy documents on this craziest of all crazy days, he reads that if a living heir appears, the restaurant will go to him.
"What's that got to do with me?" he asks Little Chef, disbelieving. No way does a loser like himself get to have a mysterious letter with a mysterious will. Just… no way. This kind of thing only happens in black-and-white movies. The old kind with the happy ending. But him? No way. He slumps back against the couch. This is a crazy dream, and with luck he'll wake up soon enough.
"Whoa!"
He's on his feet, already holding the papers, and is halfway out the door before he comes to himself enough to realize that the rat, apparently despairing of getting a response out of him, has taken matters into this own hands. "Little Chef – wait – what are you – where are you…" He descends the stairs completely without volition, and only begins to come to himself when he realizes he's out in the street. Attempting to regain control of his own body, he's unceremoniously propelled towards a telephone booth.
"Whoa! Just a minute, Little Chef! Who am I supposed to call?" he asks, somewhat rhetorically, as he's already been slammed into the booth. Not waiting for an answer, the Little Chef dives into his clothes. In less than ten seconds the rat has gone through his pockets, extricated the carte telephonique, inserted it into the slot, and is now standing atop the metal payphone, waving a slip of paper before Alfredo's eyes. It's the number Colette stuffed into his pocket as they exited the restaurant together.
"Aw, c'mon, Little Chef! I can't just call her… Oh, no!" Not taking no for an answer today, the rat jumps into his hair. The next thing he knows, her voice is on the line, sleepy and familiar and comforting and utterly beloved, and although he's nervous beyond imagining, he doesn't feel so alone anymore.
"Allo?"
"Colette?" he croaks.
She's instantly alert. "Alfredo? Qu'est-ce qu'il y a? You sound strange."
"I'm…" I'm Gusteau's son. I'm an orphan. I'm a bastard. I'm lost. I'm found. I'm your slave forever. I… "I need your help." Now he's said it, he knows it's true. "I really need your help, Colette, please…"
Her voice is businesslike, all traces of sleep gone. "I'll be downstairs at your apartment in ten minutes." She hangs up.
He slides down in the booth, knees up to his chin, waiting. He's dimly conscious of Little Chef replacing the card and number in his pocket. After a while, his eyes slide shut with exhaustion.
Remy sighs with relief. Mission accomplished; and he's pretty sure Colette won't let anyone cheat his friend out of his inheritance. She's got guts.
He slips into a pocket of Linguini's, and settles down to wait for Colette.
Remy himself must have fallen asleep, because he's jolted awake by Colette jolting Linguini awake. "…wrong?" he catches the tail-end of her sentence. "What is it, Alfredo?"
Remy chances a peek out of Linguini's pocket to see him wordlessly handing her the papers.
It's interesting to see the play of emotion across Colette's face. First her brow puckers, reading; her eyes widen as she reads the mauve letter, and flit to Linguini in sympathy – "Oh, Alfredo" – and then Remy remembers that Gusteau was her idol, too: her gaze begins to fill with awe, taking in the implications, as she reads the DNA test report – "Oh, Alfredo!"
Then her attention turns to Gusteau's will. She reads it once, twice, three times, carefully, and when she looks up, her gaze is full of fire, and Remy knows he's won. "Le salaud! Espece de cochon!" she curses. "How DARE he! How dare he keep this from you! I'll kill him! And to think I respected him!" She's breathing hard. Sudenly, she looks up. "How did you get these?"
Remy's blood chills. He never thought of that. But Linguini replies, slowly, "A…friend gave them to me. Just someone. I don 't…" He goes on, entirely truthfully. "I don't even know his name."
She shakes her head. "Well, he may just be the best friend you've ever had." She stares again at the papers, dismisses their provenance as an irrelevance, and a hard look settles into her eyes as she yanks Linguini up by his sleeve. "You have to claim your rights," she declares. "This can't wait a minute longer."
"But…" Linguini protests weakly as he's hauled onto the motorcycle. "But the legal stuff takes time…"
"Time? What time?" Colette revs up the bike, and its roar makes a flock of bluebirds take off from a nearby telephone wire. "We're going to install you in your office." They roll into motion.
"M-my.. what?" He has his arms wrapped tightly around her waist, for reassurance as much as for balance, Remy thinks. Hey, if he'd just discovered something like that, he'd need an anchor, too.
"Your office!" Colette says sharply. "Gusteau's! Your father's! The office he was stealing from you! He was the executor of Gusteau's will! He knew, he must have known! Oh, how dare he!" They're out on the Boulevard Peripherique now. The bike picks up speed as, in her rage, she guns the engine ever higher. "I'm gonna show these to Horst and all the others! They have to know…" She swallows. "We thought he was a better person than that! And once the others know, I'd just like to see him try anything!"
Remy dives into Linguini's pocket as the wind threatens to whip him out of it. He settles into the cloth pouch more comfortably. Now, at last, he can relax.