2
Ten minutes earlier….
The Edmonds famed restaurant was a bit busy tonight, but guests were getting into the romantic Pasadena location with small waiting periods of ten to twelve minutes, but some people received their tables sooner at under eight minutes. It was not quite the exquisite fine dining establishment of the Hotel Tipton or the Quarrels out toward Oceanside, but it did put on the airs of the more expensive establishments and bistros. It had been built out of an old winery on the hotel property, expanded and updated in the Fifties in the days after the end of the gangster-era. Relics and decorations of that time decorated the walls with white table linens on the tables and hard wood chairs with baroque designs replicated from museum pieces. The tables had candles and flowers, and a wine steward often moved through to pour wine and champagne for guests. The place even looked expensive, but Howard had been here before with his relatives from Sacramento, and he recalled the menu quite well and the dishes he could afford. He glanced the room over and waited for his table from the foyer then thought he'd check the lounge area for Leonard to arrive. Public hostess Cyndi Reason looked up regally in her shoulderless powder blue dress to him and then back to her niece as he departed her line of sight.
"Thanks again for dinner, Aunt Cyndi…"
"You're welcome…." The socialite beamed her grin toward her sister's daughter. "I love spending time with you girls… You're like the daughters I never had."
"What about Christina?"
"She's the daughter I got!" Cyndi Reason had always felt she was destined to be single with as many boyfriends as possible so the rumor of her having other children out in the world was always a possibility. From her penthouse in Chicago, the timeless beauty had been linked to George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Brendan Fraser and countless other boyfriends. In the whispers of Chicago social circles, her bed was reported to be as large as twelve feet wide by fifteen feet under a mirrored ceiling. In fact, she owned all top five floors of the White Building in Chicago, which if the rumors were true had been linked together into a maze in the Forties as an over-lapping labyrinth of halls, stairways and galleries with secret doorways and passages. Sara Michelle Troy had lived there at one time when she was a model, but now she had her own horse ranch near Olympia, Washington when she wasn't expected to make appearances at the family estate near the tiny hamlet of Collinwood, Maine near Lake Woebegon. Those were just the few scant things the public knew about this affluent family.
"So…" Cyndi was finishing her Caesar Salad. "I have not seen or heard a thing about that hunky brother of yours. Can you still bounce a quarter off his ass?"
"Aunt Cyndi, I'm eating here!" The younger girl dropped her fork next to her fried tilapia and sipped her wine. Her brother was a still touchy subject in her life. He had been raised as William Samms in London, England; his foster mother had been an old friend of their mother during their wilder days. Sara met him first at Lauperville High School south of Los Angeles, California and had romantically dated him. Unfortunately, two years later her mother got the family estate back out of probate and decided she wanted her daughters back together… and her long lost son, someone they did not know even existed. When Madelyn Donna Louise Troy suddenly revealed to the eight sisters their long-lost younger brother, Sara had been one of three who ran screaming from the room.
"Did he marry that girl yet?" Cyndi asked. "Or is he still pining for that little sorceress on Waverly Place?"
"I don't think he's ever getting married…." Sara sipped her wine again and tore off a piece of bread to dab into her plate. "He's in too much trouble for that stunt he pulled with that girl's brother. Mom shipped him off to Camp Half-Blood, and he's not crazy about the place… mostly Olympian demigods, only two Asgardians, one Danaan and one Anasazi…." Sara ate her bread and lifted some of her fish on her fork. "He gets a lot of flak for being half Olympian and half Asgardian, not to mention part Danaan…"
"The Olympian gods never did get along well with the Celtic or German gods…." Cyndi still remembered when Uncle Hades and Uncle Loki started the Great Chicago Fire of 1906, but her interest in the last five hundred years of her existence was interrupted in the appearance of Dr. Leonard Hofstadter entering the restaurant and taking his seat with Bernadette and Howard at the next table. Though short and bespectacled, Cyndi looked into his big brown eyes and grinned ready for another young lover. In one glance, she could read the young physicist's entire family tree. He wasn't a demigod like herself, but like so many gifted mortals, he had to have at least one god or immortal in his ancestry; with a name that German, it was possibly someone from the House of Odin like herself or her niece. Unfortunately, without keeping that immortal vibe alive in the family by intermingling with other demigods, it was possibly bred out by years of marriages with other mortals. Feeling the pangs of her grandmother, the love goddess, and the ferocity of her hammer-throwing grandfather, she felt a stirring in her little frame to vamp the young scientist. Finishing her meal, Sara watched her aunt give the waitress her credit card for their meal then turned to look upon Leonard for herself.
"Oh, cute stuff at six o'clock…"
"What else can you tell?" Her aunt the love-goddess was grinning.
"Hmmmm…" Sara's psychic gifts started reading Leonard as well. "He's smart… I can see him in a lab, he likes science, also a comic book geek and fantasy nerd…"
"No more fantasy nerds for me…" Cyndi Reason's attraction clicked off. "Once I tell them I'm part Olympian god, they're always asking to go to Pandara, Narnia or some stupid fictional place…"
"He's also off a bad break-up…." Sara's clairvoyance went further. "He was in love with a girl named Penny, but she was not as deep into the relationship as he was and they broke up…. " She paused. "Uh-oh, he's been fixed up with some girl named Joy Selkirk, but fate says he's still meant to reunite with Penny. This Joy is really, really annoying…. Almost as annoying as someone named Sheldon…"
"When was the last time you played love-goddess?" Cyndi signed her receipt and gave it to the waitress clearing the table.
"I don't do that anymore." Sara turned around to see her aunt rising from the table. Standing in her black sweater and blue jeans, she turned to grab her father's old Air Force jacket stolen from her brother's closet.
"Oh, you know you want to…"
"No, I don't…"
"Yes, you do…" Cyndi collected her wrap and left a five-dollar tip for her server. "Darling, your mother is the grand-daughter of Aphrodite… For two thousand years, we've always helped true love find its mark, reunited lost loves and ruined the lives of the mismatched." She and her niece glided unnoticed toward the front entrance. "Can you seriously see a future for this young man with this horrible excuse for a lady?"
"I have been feeling a bit bored these days…" Sara lightly tucked a strand of her long blonde hair behind her left ear. "But it's so not me… I like teasing William… not complete strangers…"
"Think of it as clearing your palate…" They hesitated briefly outside the restaurant's spare dining room. It was a smaller seventy-five seat room for private parties decorated with the same modern elite furnishing of the main dining room, old tintype photos in simple frames, emerald green leather seats with wood tables and old gas lights reused as modern light fixtures. It was entered through a set of glass wood doors off-set by windows letting the windows stream sunlight through the building during the day or let patrons view the scene of Pasadena lit up at night by the brilliance of a million lights. A set of curtains further separated the room from the rest of the building as the soft soles on sneakers treaded up the exterior walkway of the location and entered the hostess area.
"Hi…" Joy Selkirk entered the restaurant foyer and walked into the lounge area off the bar area. Still clad in her exercise clothes from her Krav Maga class, she stopped up to the hostess podium. "I'm meeting someone. Bernadette Rostenkowski?"
"I have a fourth person opening with the party of Howard Wolowitz…" Natalie Bristow was the hostess of the restaurant. She was not allowed to be prejudiced with anyone inappropriately dressed for the place since the cheerleader incident. Against her best judgment, she decided to allow the exercise-dressed guest.
"That's it."
"I'll show you the way."
"I can find it. Thanks, princess." Joy patted Natalie on the back, and Natalie freaked and left to get another new clean work blouse from the storage room. Out of her line of vision, Joy continued on her way to the dining area down the hall, passing the curtain to the empty spare dining room on her right, just as an arm reached out of it, grabbed her by her shoulder strap, then yanked her off her feet into the room with a light shriek. All she saw was the brief face of Cyndi Reason looking down on her before drifting off to sleepy darkness…
"I used to do that to Lecy when we were little." Sara spoke of the way she could put anyone into a sleep-induced hypnotic coma.
"She's going to wake up tomorrow feeling…." Cyndi dropped the girl into the seat of a booth. "…Sick as a dog."
"So, I guess I go take her place…"
"Not yet…" Cyndi Reason turned to Sara and gestured lightly before the younger demi-goddess. The younger girl felt herself lightly swooning, her body feeling heavier and light tingling in her fingers and toes. Her long blonde locks suddenly filled out and cascaded around her back and shoulders. She knew had had been transformed and reshifted her weight to her other leg. She was taller now, her clothing mystically treated to expand and alter to her new size. Her aunt was just a bit shorter to her now as Sara rolled her blue eyes to the mirror in the room expecting to see her own regal face, but now, she resembled the girl from Leonard's memories. She now looked exactly like Penny Parker.
"There…" Her aunt shined and primped her attire. "Now, you look perfect!"
"Aunt Cyndi…" Sara stepped back with her new height and new size. "This isn't funny! Change me back now!"
"It's very important that you look like Leonard's dream girl, and this is it." She recalled how she used to change herself into Jean Harlow and Elizabeth Taylor back in the Golden Age of Hollywood when she had a new boyfriend for every week. "Mortals don't like change, they don't pay attention to repetition or déjà vu…. You need him to fall for the girl he is meant to be with…"
"Really?" Her voice sounded annoyed. "Well, why don't I just do this?" Sara responded sarcastically and half-seriously as she looked down upon her sweater, watching it extending, filling out and becoming wider and fuller. She was not going to be an exact clone of Penny Parker… maybe an exaggerated version of her. Her attire slightly expanded for her new dimensions as she lifted her head back up to the mirror and mussed her longer and fuller hair once more.
"Hello, Ashley… Hello, Mary Kate…" She named her new bosom and lightly giggled. "I've seen these things turn full-grown men into babbling morons." She had learned this trick from her sisters Lecy and Lisa who often enjoyed in spooking and terrifying their dates back home. Her sisters, Jessica and Kristy, on the other hand had inherited their mother's full-figure looks, but the rest of them, Gwen, Lecy, Lisa and herself had more modest figures like their cousins Carolyn and Aunt Marcia on their father's side of the family. Cyndi motioned up to her looking slightly jealous with a touch of disbelief.
"Princess, you've got to stop hanging out with your sisters…"
"Whatever…" Sara's mind was still thinking behind the face of Leonard's girlfriend. "Take Lady Sweat-Stains to her home, but leave me her cell phone…" She paused to accept the device and rummage through its contact history. "I think this might be fun after all…." Her aunt stood by her grinning like a modern Trickster. Tossing back her new full mane of blonde hair back, Sara was already composing a fake identity and history in her mind. She tapped out the cell phone number for Bernadette on the phone.
"Hello…" Sara looked into the mirror at the reflection of Penny Parker replacing her. "Is this Bernadette Rostenkowski?"
"Yes, it is…" Bernadette responded. "Who is this?"
"This is…" Sara hesitated from using her real name. "Lisa… Lisa Wilder… I'm a friend of Joy's." She lied. "It seems she won't be able to make it… She came down with a case of food poisoning."
"Oh, dear…" Bernadette sounded genuinely concerned. "Will she be okay?"
"Yes…" Sara was starting already to form an identity and history for Lisa Wilder in her head from separate parts of her sisters' lives. "You know, I'm not doing anything tonight…." She peeked out and could see Bernadette at her table blissfully unaware the two were actually so close. "…And I'm so close, I could fill in for Joy if you like?"
"Oh, would you?" Bernadette was relieved that things were working out like this. "That would be perfect!"
"I'm just a few seconds away…" Sara responded. "I'm practically pulling in as I speak!" She clicked the phone off, tossed the long blonde locks of Penny Parker out of her line of sight and looked to her Aunt Cyndi standing by her side.
"You see…" The flighty hostess lifted her head up and beamed proudly to her niece. "You're acting as if you've been doing this your whole life."
"Just so long as I get my real face and body back afterward…" The demigoddess checked out her reflection in the mirror with Penny's likeness copying her movements. "Although I might keep the boobs…." Her Aunt Cyndi had by now mystically warped through interdimensional space with the most unlikely of blind dates dragging behind her. Mustering up her penance for mischief, the formerly petite heiress took a deep breath in this new voluptuous body she had and briefly hesitated before passing through the curtains for her trip back to the dining room.
"I can't believe I'm doing this…" She told herself as she stepped forward; her new cup size slightly bouncing to the hormones of every single male in the dining room. A bus boy slowed down from collecting dishes from a table, a waiter became distracted from taking an order and two female employees looked up, at each other then back again. His head resting on his arm, Leonard casually glanced up then back again in shock, his jaw slowly dropping in stunned shock. She looked like Penny, but somehow… he knew she wasn't….
"Are you Leonard?" The young demi-goddess strided lightly up to their table. "Hi… I'm Lisa… Dr. Lisa Wilder… I'm your date for tonight." She looked them over and lightly grinned at their shock. She was hoping to get their reaction to her new resemblance to the actress from Leonard's building, and they did not disappoint in the least. Bernadette couldn't speak. She could just barely find her water and take a drink. Howard uttered one barely, "Oy vey." Leonard was shocked almost as much as they were. He thought for sure this woman was Penny until he saw her incredible figure and regal bearing. Sara's mind was trying to keep from giggling. Leonard had raised to his feet with his heart beating faster and faster, his fingers nervously stumbling through his jacket pocket for his inhaler.
"Penny?" Leonard finally choked out the name.
"Excuse me?"
"Oh-my-god…" Bernadette reacted with both fear and stunned surprise. "She looks exactly like Penny!"
"Well, not exactly like her…" Howard ogled her figure then felt Bernadette's foot striking him to his leg as Leonard held out her chair and helped her sit by him. Grinning ear to ear as if he had hit the lottery, he noticed as Howard snapped a photo of Lisa on his phone and was texting it to the real Penny Parker. Bernadette must have noticed because she did the same thing. Several dozen blocks away and across a highway or two, the real Penny was in her apartment scraping the dead skin from her foot with a pumice stone. Dressed in shorts and a worn t-shirt under her robe, she heard her phone buzz then reached to pick it up with her bottle of water in her other hand. She noticed Bernadette's name then Howard's come up on her screen. Bernadette had typed, "Meet Leonard's New Date!"
"Like I give a damn about some tramp Leonard is dating." She mumbled. "Let's see if she's prettier than I am…." She tipped back her bottle of water to her lips and screamed into the bottle as the image popped up, spewing a spray of water five feet long across her apartment.
"A doctor?" Leonard was grinning, giggling and partially bouncing in his seat like a small boy at Christmas. "Not an actress?"
"Not an actress…" Lisa sipped her water.
"So… what kind of doctor are you?" Bernadette asked both stunned and surprise. Since when did Joy know a girl who looked exactly like Penny?
"I'm a forensic anthropologist with minor degrees in veterinary medicine and behavioral science." Lisa had stolen two more subjects from two of her sisters to become Leonard's dream girl. "I'm down here from Olympia, Washington examining Native American remains in the Mojave Desert with Dr. Temperence Brennan from the Jeffersonian and Dr. Niles Reeser of the Mecklenberg Academy in Germany. They're actually pretty fascinating… they might be the first genuine evidence of an earlier Pre-Columbian Mayan tribe existing much further north than what was previously believed."
"I am so winning this break-up…." Leonard sipped his water and couldn't stop smiling.
"You look so much like Penny…." Howard could not stop staring at Lisa. "I would have bet even money you were Penny… but with two honeydew melons down the front of your sweater."
"Howard…" Bernadette warned him from being crude.
"Not that I don't love your own two honeydews, my little honeydew…" He seemed to sate her anger and secure his place in her heart. Bernadette just sipped her water again as Howard finally waved their waiter over to order dinner. Leonard was in the mood for something thick and hearty, something told him he might need as much strength he could get tonight. Over his non-kosher Italian spaghetti, Howard and Bernadette had plied Lisa for more details about her about her life. She just had a small seafood salad, but over it she spoke of her sisters and her little brother; most of it was the truth. As Sara Michelle Troy, she really did live in a large mansion in Maine and have a small personal ranch in Olympia to raise horses. Her little brother really did impersonate celebrities and order pizzas in the voices of Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro. Yes, her twin sister really did once star in a movie with Meryl Streep, and her mother really did work in fashion design, but she skewed things slightly to say Lisa's mother worked for Madelyne Troy instead of saying she was fashion designer Madelyne Troy. However, she did steer away from confessing that she had been on the Carpathia when it picked up the survivors of the Titanic or that she had worked as a photojournalist during the Fifties or that her grandmother had faked her death as Marilyn Monroe in 1963 to start life anew as a socialite living in the south of France.
Over on Los Robles Avenue, Penny had composed herself enough to change her clothes of the water down the front of her clothes and had stormed out of her apartment. After twelve ignored voice mails to Leonard's phone, she realized he must have had it shut off and decided to confront the nutcase in the apartment across the landing from her own.
"Sheldon…" She knocked hard. "Sheldon…" She knocked harder. "Sheldon…" She copied his own annoying knocking style.
"Stop knocking!" Dr. Cooper had appeared at the door. Tall and angular with round eyes on a triangular face with short cut hair, he wore his orange Flash shirt over a green long sleeved undershirt and tan corduroy pants. "Do you know how annoying that is?!"
"Yes, I know very well how annoying it is!" She flashed her phone. "Who is this?! Who is this?! What kind of sick cloning experiment have you and Leonard been working on?"
"Oh, good!" Sheldon shined quite please. "I'm so glad you and Leonard made up. I was getting so tired of him whining and moping around the apartment."
"That's not me, Sheldon!" Penny flashed her phone at him with stressed impatience. "Look at the boobs! Look at the boobs!"
"Penny," Sheldon sighed as he looked around the stairs. "Could we talk about this inside the apartment? I'm trying to avoid Amy Farrah Fowler."
"Who's the girl, Sheldon? Who's the girl?!"
"Who's the girl? Who's the girl?" Sheldon mocked her. "Penny, other people might have more urgent problems here aside from your own narcissistic fantasies. I have much bigger problems far-reaching yours. Amy Farrah Fowler wants me to meet her mother, and I have no idea what that means!"
"Sheldon…" Penny grabbed the cuff of his t-shirt in her fist, wrenched it tight into her fingers and yanked his head down to her height and scowled with her eyes narrowed into two angry slits. "You either tell me who the girl is, or else I'll pull your underwear so tight over your head it will take surgery to remove!"
"That's anatomically impossible." His quivering voice squeaked out barely audible.
Penny started annoyingly shaking her head.
"Howard and Bernadette fixed Leonard up on a blind date! That's all I know!"
That must have been a good enough answer. She suddenly dropped him and turned back to her apartment, leaving Sheldon gasping for breath and lifting himself back up to his feet. Across the landing, Penny slammed her door shut.
"I hope this new Penny has a friendlier disposition than the last one." He muttered, checked the stars again and slipped back into his apartment. Across the way, Penny was pacing back and forth and trying to call Bernadette once again. At the Edmonds, the short petite biochemist looked at her buzzing phone and noticed Penny's face on it. Lisa looked over from her small salad while listening to Leonard's story. Howard glanced up as well as Bernadette checked the call. Even the ring sounded angry.
"You going to answer that?" He asked.
"I'll call her back after dessert."