Disclaimer: I do not own Code Geass or any other products mentioned in this story.
Warnings: How many warnings can a story have, let me count the ways. Dark (and dry) humor, political incorrectness, sexual themes, some OOC-ness, weird pairings, language, and overly specific references to Atlanta. This is also relatively unbeta'd.
Notes: Thank you to everyone who reviewed the story! Your kind words mean so very much to me.
Schneizel and Cecile were a completely different man and woman in the morning.
They'd somehow had the decency to get rid of the heady smells, but they still came downstairs in bathrobes with ruffled hair anyway. Lelouch was busy preparing breakfast and coffee when they arrived.
"Christ, you couldn't neaten up a bit?" he demanded. They just took their seats by the bar as Clara Carter tactlessly edged her way into the next seat over – not that it mattered that she was barely stealthy, because they didn't look particularly disturbed by her tactlessness. They made contented sighs and stretched and looked too happy.
Lelouch set two plates down before them with eggs and bacon and sausage. He suspected that if he and Clara Carter weren't here, and if the couple hadn't woken up and smelled the literal coffee, they would have been quite late in getting out of bed.
"I hope you slept well," Schneizel said pleasantly as he picked at the eggs Lelouch had prepared. "The bed wasn't uncomfortable, was it?'
"No, it was very comfortable," Lelouch said. "And pull your bathrobe up. Clara's here for Christ's sake."
Schneizel didn't bother to pull up his robe, and Clara Carter decided instead to focus her attention on the dual conventional ovens in the kitchen that the personal chef and housekeeper used. The housekeeper had a break because Lelouch was here. Lelouch heard that the housekeeper before her was a lesbian that was attracted to Cecile, and Schneizel had to fire her after he caught her molesting his wife in her spacious closet. Of course, he had entered the closet with the same intentions as her, which is ultimately why she was caught.
In any case, he was terrifically furious and fired the lesbian housekeeper on the spot.
It wasn't because Schneizel hated homosexuals or was at all opposed to the idea of a woman groping another woman's body. It was because, of all the nasty things he could inherit from their father, he inherited their father's vengefulness and his possessiveness. If you pushed the wrong buttons, Schneizel could be terrifically mean and destructive to those who encroached upon what he deemed totally and wholly his.
Cecile was someone he deemed totally and wholly his.
. . .
"How nice of you to prepare breakfast, Lelouch," Cecile said. She had the slightest of French accents but lacked a Southern accent. Schneizel didn't have much of an accent either from years of German lessons.
"When do we have to leave for the World of Coke?" Schneizel asked.
"We're going out to lunch and then we're all driving to the World of Coke," Lelouch replied. "Dad doesn't want to pay 20 bucks for another lousy hot dog at the vendors."
"And where's lunch being held, dear?" Cecile asked. It might have been charming if she didn't look she'd rolled around in the sheets with her husband all night long.
"Some pasta place," Lelouch shrugged. "I don't know. Euphemia wanted to eat at Mary Mac's Tea Room, but Dad said that was a chick flick restaurant and that he wasn't going to be seen there."
In truth, Charles Buckley had actually been to Mary Mac's Tea Room in the past frequently, when he was married to Marianne Buckley née Devereux. He used to get the pot likker and eat cornbread and enjoy the Southern cooking. But ever since Marianne Buckley née Devereux had died in a freak boating accident on Lake Lanier, he'd sworn off Mary Mac's and said it was a chick flick restaurant.
. . .
Schneizel and Cecile flat-out told them they wanted to be alone in the house for two hours, so Lelouch and Clara Carter wandered around their landscaped backyard and talked about the meaning of life and peanuts until they saw Euphemia's car pull up the driveway.
"Where's Schneizel?" she asked when they walked up to her.
"Frolicking in the house with his wife," Lelouch replied. "Probably trying to get all the lust out before they have to hang around Dad all day."
"Oh, bless their hearts," Euphemia sighed.
. . .
The pasta restaurant they went to had a pretentious name that Lelouch hadn't bothered to remember. Lelouch was kind of sick of pretentiously-named bistros in general, but he decided that eating at a pretentiously-named bistro was better than eating at an overpriced hamburger vendor outside of the World of Coke.
Charles sat at the head of the weathered, "vintage" wooden table they were sitting at, reading the menu. The menu was printed on a piece of weathered parchment that made it look rustic. When he said they were going to this pretentiously-named lunch-only pasta bistro, he left no room for alternative suggestions.
"I think I'll have a salad," Cornelia said. That was her way of saying that she was going to eat somewhere else once she was given the chance.
"So Clara," Charles asked, a hint of venom in his voice, "do they drink Coke up in your Yankee Boston?"
"Yeah, they do," Clara Carter replied. "Sir."
Charles' eyes narrowed, but he said nothing about her lack of manners. He turned to Suzaku. "Do they drink Coke in California, you?"
Suzaku nervously diverted his eyes to and fro. "W-Well, we have Coke products, sir."
"But do you drink them, boy?" Charles asked him with a piercing gaze.
"Dad, I think the waitress is coming," Schneizel interjected. It was true. Their waitress was coming to take their order. Suzaku looked relieved.
"Hey there, y'all," she greeted them. Clara Carter and Suzaku looked surprised and vaguely confused. "My name's Cindy and I'll be taking care of y'all today. Do you know what you would like to drank?" She scribbled down their drink orders one at a time. Euphemia whispered something in Suzaku's ear, and when the waitress came to him, he said he wanted a Coke.
Lelouch nudged Clara Carter. "Hey. Order a Diet Coke, will you?"
"Why? It tastes wicked nasty," Clara Carter retorted.
"Because my Dad has this really weird thing where if a woman doesn't order Diet Coke, she doesn't care about her figure," Lelouch said. "A lady keeping her weight in check is important to him."
"Do you know what you would like, darlin'?" Cindy asked Clara Carter. She looked up at her and smiled sweetly.
"A Coke, if you would please," she told her.
Lelouch turned his gaze away from his father's pointed glare. Euphemia swallowed and motioned to the waitress. "Um, excuse me, ma'am!"
"Yes, darlin'?"
"Change my drink order to a regular Coke," Euphemia said.
From the end of the weathered, "vintage" table, Charles made a loud, angry snort.
. . .
After the drink order debacle, Euphemia and Clara Carter retreated to the bathroom, so Cecile excused herself as well.
"Now you, too," Charles said gruffly. He was still in a bad mood from Clara Carter and Euphemia ordering regular Coke. "What are y'all doing back there?"
"Powdering our noses," Cecile replied. "We women like to do that to look our best."
That answer seemed to satisfy Charles to the point that he smiled at her. Lelouch looked at her as if she were a ruthlessly efficient machine. From the corner of his eye, he saw Schneizel looked just as pleased as Charles, but for an entirely different reason – perhaps the most telling example was the fact that his legs were now crossed. Lelouch struggled to keep his expression free of any disgust.
"She's a heck of a woman, Schneizel," Charles said from the end of the table.
"I knew that when I married her," Schneizel said more suggestively than he should have. Cornelia shot him a quick and warning glare. He ignored her.
"She drinks sweet tea with lemon," Charles said, "like a true lady."
"That she does," Schneizel said with a pleasant smile on his face. "She loves sweet tea."
"No regular Coke in that lady," Charles said.
"No, sir," Schneizel replied, his smile waning.
In truth, Schneizel and Cecile both loved Coke, like all good Atlantans. At home, they kept bottles of Coke hidden in a basement cellar that their father didn't know about. The bottles of Coke had actually aged down there in the cellar, so they had a fermented taste to them. It was a lot like drinking sparkling Coke-wine without the drunken aftereffects. Sometimes Schneizel and Cecile brought them to neighborhood parties during the summer or distributed them among the Buckley children.
The three women returned from the bathroom with fresh coats of lipstick and blush. Cecile sat beside her husband and cast a quick but knowing glance down at his crossed legs. Lelouch turned his head away from them and looked at Clara Carter. "So what did she lecture you about in there?"
Clara Carter smiled devilishly. "She told me to gorge myself on Coke at the World of Coke and to keep stirring the pot."
Lelouch looked at Cecile. She smiled back gently. He then looked at Euphemia. She shrugged and mouthed, "He's almost dead anyway."
. . .
At the World of Coke entrance, Gilbert Gammond asked, "Who's attending the funeral for Vladimir?"
"All of us are," Charles said. "Vladimir's relatives are also coming. They're staying at a Best Western somewhere downtown. They had no money when they came over here, and yelled at me to pay for their hotel, so I did. Oh, and one more person is coming, just out of necessity."
"Who?" Clara Carter asked. Charles ignored her.
"Who is it?" Cornelia asked in a much louder voice, directly in their father's hearing aids.
"Carlotta," Charles said.
Everyone's faces fell.
. . .
Carlotta Buckley née Wheatley was Charles' most recent ex-trophy wife. She was blonde and busty and 30+ years younger than Charles. She was a materialistic and spoiled gold-digger. Her family didn't have much money, and she pretended they didn't exist. She was proof that Cecile thought of Schneizel as totally and wholly hers, and could become terrifically violent and mean if you pushed the wrong buttons.
Here was what had happened.
Carlotta, being 30+ years younger than Charles, didn't care much for him and saw other men to fulfill her carnal needs. She met Schneizel at Easter and soon harbored an intense sexual attraction for him. Schneizel never allotted time to speak with Carlotta or get to know her, so he never noticed her blatant attraction for him. His wife, however, did, and she tried to be a lady about it. She really did. She gave Carlotta polite warnings about all the lawsuits she could file against her. But it didn't work on Carlotta. On the day of the family Thanksgiving dinner, Cecile walked into the kitchen to get some cranberry sauce only to find Carlotta in the midst of ripping off an unsuspecting Schneizel's pants – or trying to, at least.
Cecile lost her grip on her ladylike manners. And by the time the rest of the family had raced into the kitchen after hearing the murderous screams of rage, Cecile had already grabbed the Thanksgiving turkey and knocked Carlotta unconscious with it. So Carlotta had to be taken to the hospital, Charles had to call his divorce lawyer, and everyone had to order Chinese instead.
Anyway, Schneizel filed a sexual harassment lawsuit and a restraining order against Carlotta, which he both won. Charles shortly divorced her thereafter on the official grounds of her extravagant spending.
Even though they were divorced, Carlotta didn't have a place to live, so she was staying at Charles' house until her new condo was ready. She was currently consulting a psychologist for her new, marked fear of turkeys.
. . .
Lelouch realized at this point in his tangential vignettes that a lot of people were looking to get into his brother's and his sister-in-law's pants. He wasn't sure why. The thought actually kind of disturbed him.
. . .
Lelouch would actually ask his brother later, in the World of Coke, at the tasting stations, why so many people were looking to bed either him or his wife.
Schneizel looked shocked. "You really don't keep up with the family, do you? Odysseus gets way more women than I do, and Gwen has more lovers than Cecile ever had."
"Really," Lelouch said flatly. "Odysseus."
Gwen he could believe. She and Odysseus were his cousins. She was a well-endowed gold-digger, like Carlotta, but she never had a turkey smashed over her head. She was a little more discreet about her fancies than Carlotta. She had once tried to hire a hitman to kill Charles so that she could claim a tidy profit off of his life insurance, but she confided in Viletta the caretaker that she was pretty sure she would go straight to Hell for such a thing. Lelouch was pretty sure she'd go straight to Hell anyway for even thinking that up.
Odysseus, however, was a wimp who worked in accounting all day at a minor accounting firm that the family owned. He lived with a bunch of cats and read Arthurian legends obsessively.
"Yes," Schneizel said, nodding. "Odysseus has at least five women over at his apartment every night. Ask anyone else in the family. They'll tell you."
"But… how?" Lelouch sputtered.
"He reads them the tale of Lancelot and Guinevere," Schneizel shrugged. "And it just sort of happens. Just like that couple that's burning in the Second Circle of Hell."
. . .
In any case, the trip through the World of Coke's ticket line was pleasant until another employee noticed Charles' hobbling swagger. "Sir, would you like me to get you an electric scooter?" he asked.
"Yes, please, if you would," Charles said proudly. When Schneizel looked at him questioningly, he told him, "Lelouch used his brain for once yesterday and told me that it was more economical to take an electric scooter than it was to pay for batteries for the flashlight."
Schneizel looked at him oddly. Lelouch shrugged in response.
Once Charles was on the scooter and Schneizel had slipped the employee a $20 bill, they proceeded inside of the museum and were forced to watch some Coke adverts before being released into the bulk of the museum.
"Let's go to the tasting station," Euphemia suggested enthusiastically.
"Oh, sure," Charles said bitterly. "So you can drown yourself in Coke and blow up like a balloon."
Euphemia looked hurt. Suzaku wrapped his arms around her sympathetically.
"Hey, you! Don't touch my daughter!" Charles snapped, shaking his cane at Suzaku. Suzaku hesitated, but he didn't step away from Euphemia. Charles was starting to make a scene.
"Do you want to go into the History of Coke exhibit, sir?" Cecile interjected quickly. "It'll be good exercise. And Schneizel and I have so much to discuss with you… don't we, honey?"
"Yes," Schneizel coughed. "It's about the advertising firm."
"Ah, yes, yes," Charles said, miraculously and suddenly serene. "Let's go, let's go."
Clara Carter nudged Lelouch as they were following behind his babbling father. "I've learned something about this family."
"Really. Do share."
"No matter how much you deny it, youse guys stand up for each other like true siblings. You love each other, I bet."
Lelouch sighed. "Well, if you want to say that. I'm not sure it'll last once Dad's dead."
Charles Buckley had millions in assets. Maybe even billions. He owned a lot of things his children and people in general would deem valuable: gold jewelry, diamonds, designer-brand clothing, expensive furniture.
Charles Buckley also had some very greedy children. It was partially his fault, actually. That was how he had raised them. They wouldn't be very successful heirs to the Buckley business empire if they weren't as greedy as him.
When Charles Buckley did die in the future, Lelouch's words would come true. The Buckley children would throw away the years of support they had offered to one another and make a mad dash to get as many valuable items as they could from their father's estate, heedless of his will. It would take Viletta the crack shot caretaker's shotgun, Nunnally, and a pre-Easter miracle to finally make them realize the error of their greedy ways.
It didn't matter anyway. The family would go back to acting normally, even though nothing was really the same anymore. They had done this one other time, and that was when Marianne Buckley née Devereux passed away.
. . .
Lelouch's mother had had a profound impact on the Buckley children.
She was charming and charismatic in her own way. She was much nicer than Charles, even to his lovechildren. She had an adventurous spirit and she liked to plant crazy ideas in people's heads.
She was the one that told Euphemia it was okay to become a philanthropic surgeon that performed free surgeries on underprivileged handicapped children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, if that was her dream. She encouraged Cornelia to take fencing lessons, fostered Clovis' artistic talent, and paid for Schneizel to learn German so that he could eventually figure out that his mother sent him German recipes on those tacky postcards.
She was incredibly dangerous to the future of the Buckley business empire. That was one of the reasons Charles Buckley had divorced her, and why he sometimes tried so hard to deny the existence of her children. It was also the reason the Buckley children could manage to stay together. Marianne was the one thread that stubbornly bound them together.
. . .
The story of how Charles married Marianne was a simple but legendary family myth.
It was Marianne's spirit that attracted Charles. She liked to challenge him as much as she liked to challenge his children. Nobody had put Charles through such hell, but nobody had also ever made him that happy.
"You're man enough to go to church every Sunday," she told him one day as they were walking past a church, "but I bet you're too scared to marry me."
Charles laughed. "I've married women before you, Marianne."
"Yeah, but you've never married me," Marianne said challengingly. "You're too scared to."
Well, Charles was intent on proving her wrong, and that was how they wound up getting married.
. . .
"I never knew Coke started out as medicine," Clara Carter said as she read about the beginnings of Coca-Cola. "That explains why my mother always gave me Coke whenever I was feeling sick. The things ya learn."
Some people were looking at her because of her strange accent. In all honesty, Lelouch couldn't quite get over it, either – but it was something he kind of liked about Clara Carter. It was so different from the slithery drawls he was used to hearing.
Speaking of drawls, Lelouch was pretty sure that Suzaku had an extreme weakness for Euphemia's. Her voice had a strangely hypnotic effect on Suzaku.
"Suzaku, darlin', look at that ad," Euphemia said as they looked at the bottling process. "Isn't that amazing, that calligraphy. It was written by hand. You don't see that much nowadays."
"No," came Suzaku's very zombie-like answer. Lelouch doubted he cared about the Coke advertisement's calligraphy. Most people didn't, but it was like he was letting the honey from her words drip all over his consciousness.
Now that Lelouch thought about it, the only person who didn't really have a weakness for any particular accent in the family was Cornelia.
Of course, she had a weakness for sports where everyone else just didn't care.
They continued through the exhibit. Schneizel and Charles were locked in deep and quiet conversation about the state of the advertising company. Apparently Schneizel's German art critic mother had procured a new client for them.
"It's a beer company," Schneizel said. "The ad is to be in German."
"Ah, I see, I see," Charles nodded. If it had been any other child proposing the idea of promoting a German beer company, then Charles would have said that no Buckley was going to help support "socialist foreigner alcohol." Charles had grown up in the final years of World War II, and he hadn't quite lived it down yet. That didn't answer the question of how he wound up marrying a German art critic.
Anyway, maybe it was for the best that the advertising company wound up in Schneizel's hands.
Once they were done with the history of Coke, they wanted to go into the 4D movie, but the attendant stopped them at the entrance to the theater.
"Do you have back problems, sir?" the attendant asked.
"That's none of your business," Charles snapped.
"Yes, he does," Cecile politely answered for them.
The attendant shook his head. "I'm sorry, sir, but people with back problems are not permitted in the theater."
It made Lelouch wonder just how intense a 4D movie about Coca-Cola could possibly be that a hobbling old man with back problems, people with heart conditions, and pregnant women wouldn't be allowed inside.
It wasn't really a question of intensity or excitement. During the 4D movie, you sat down in a chair that provided the 4D experience. There was a part of the movie where a dragonfly flew behind you and stung you. A little plastic cylinder in the chair would fly out and give you a mean little shock right between the shoulder blades. They fixed it after people complained that the shock was actually giving them pain, but when the Buckley family was visiting the World of Coke that day, it hadn't yet been fixed. The World of Coke didn't want to get sued by Charles Buckley.
"I'm very sorry, sir," the attendant apologized again. "If you would like, I can keep you company while your family goes inside to see the 4D movie."
"No, we're just fine, thanks," Charles said. "We'll go to the tasting station. Thank you."
So that settled that.
"Your dad's a real piece of work, you know that?" Clara Carter said as she was gulping down some Chinese watermelon juice-soda. "Christ. He couldn't just wait outside. And then he had to be a real snob about it, too."
"Don't say that so loudly," Lelouch hissed as he got some pineapple juice. "Or you'll make Dad even more pissed than he already is."
"Your dad needs a goddamn smack in the mouth," Clara Carter said. "He needs a reality check."
They heard a loud sputter from beside them. Euphemia was giggling as Suzaku dumped whatever was in his cup in the drink basin before quickly departing for the regular Coke station.
"What was that?" Clara Carter asked.
"Probably Beverly," Lelouch said. "Hey, Clara, you should try some."
"Christ, no."
"Hey, Schneizel," Lelouch said, turning to his brother, who was sipping on something that looked like Fanta. "What's up with Beverly? You should know."
"I don't," Schneizel replied, shrugging. "Cecile might. Beverly's an Italian thing."
"Cecile's French."
"She's worldly," Schneizel said. "Her parents are very knowledgeable."
Lelouch had never met Cecile's parents. He wondered if they were invited to Uncle Vladimir from Bulgaria's funeral. Funerals were a good excuse for a bunch of family you never knew you had to get together. He made a mental note to ask Schneizel that question later.
Cecile was busy patting Suzaku on the back. He was choking from trying to inhale so much Coca-Cola at once.
"I can't breathe," he gasped in between coughs.
"That's the carbonation," Cecile said. "Try to breathe in through your nose."
"My nose feels like it's going to catch on fire," Suzaku heaved. "Oh, god." He gasped for air. "What is up with that Beverly drink?!"
Cecile shrugged. "I don't know. I'm French."
. . .
Beverly was actually a non-alcoholic aperitif that was served before a meal to help aid in digestion in Italy. It was not intended to be an all-purpose soda drink, and production of the drink was actually discontinued. In that sense, it probably shouldn't have been at the World of Coca-Cola's tasting station, but visiting tourists loved to tell their friends how nasty it tasted. It could be argued that Beverly alone was a major factor in whether or not tourists visited the World of Coke.
Ironically, Clara Carter's maternal grandparents drank aperitifs with their meals. Clara Carter had no idea what an aperitif was. She just said that her grandparents drank a shot of weird-looking booze before they ate. Even if she did know what an aperitif was, she'd most likely still hate Beverly anyway.
Like many Americans, Clara Carter was accustomed to sweet tastes. That went doubly for all members of the Buckley family. Suzaku was probably the only exception. He didn't like sweet things. He liked salty and savory flavors, and putting wasabi or Sriracha sauce on anything that looked remotely bland.
Charles Buckley called him out on it. "Why can't you just eat the pasta the way it is?" he demanded during one unfortunate collective family dinner that was to occur later in the week. "Why do you have to spray that red devil rooster sauce all over it?" He ordered Viletta the caretaker to confiscate it on the grounds that he had suspicions about its origins.
Charles Buckley would then look up Sriracha sauce on the internet (after asking Viletta the caretaker how to use the internet), and he would then confront Suzaku later that night over its origins. "Chinese Communist devil sauce!" he would declare angrily in a fit of half-blind senility.
In actuality, Sriracha sauce came from Thailand, which was neither Chinese nor Communist. Thailand was in fact a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Of course, Charles Buckley did not know this. He was too busy frothing at the mouth over Suzaku's alleged devil Communist rooster sauce.
However, that was another story for another time. For now, Charles Buckley was of relatively sound, if not senile, mind.
. . .
The ride back to Schneizel's house was very uncomfortable. It had nothing to do with the plush leather seats in Schneizel's zippy BMW. It had everything to do with Carlotta.
"Carlotta messes the whole thing up. A funeral can't excuse the conditions of the restraining order," Schneizel said. Carlotta was not allowed within 200 feet of Schneizel. "Dad can't just leave her alone at home? She has to be watched like a little kid all the time?"
"To be fair, she acts like one," Lelouch quipped from the backseat. Schneizel ignored him.
"Do you think you can talk to your father?" Cecile asked.
"Did you see him at lunch? He nearly lost it over drink orders. He's getting more senile and volatile by the day."
"Maybe we should hire a lawyer or some cops, then. Bartley owes us a favor, anyway."
Bartley Aspirus was the overweight, bald attorney of Schneizel and Cecile. He was technically one of many lawyers who worked for Schneizel's advertising firm in the event that anyone was foolhardy enough to sue a Buckley business. Bartley was an alumnus of Duke University's Class of 1973. He wore hideously obvious toupees and white suits and had a lilting Southern accent.
Clara Carter snorted. "What are you gonna do? Make her stay 200 feet away from the goddamn burial site?"
Schneizel chuckled. "Of course not, Clara. I'm going to make her stay 200 feet away from the burial site with two armed police guards flanking her."
Cecile sighed. "Honey, please, be reasonable… it really should be four police guards and a K-9 unit."
. . .
In any case, Bartley was contacted when they arrived home. He said he would look into the four police guards and the K-9 unit after speaking with Carlotta's attorney.
"If he starts being stubborn, Bartley, tell him this," Cecile said. "I don't take kindly to those who deny me a rightful claim."
Lelouch was pretty sure he just uncovered one of the reasons Schneizel had married Cecile, right there. It also explained why she sometimes gave him the creeps.
"Got it, Miss Cecile. I'll be sure to tell him that," Bartley drawled from the other end. "Y'all take care now!"
"Good-bye, Bartley," Cecile said, hanging up. "Such a sweet man."
"Someone should tell him to stop wearing those hideous toupees," Lelouch said as he munched on some celery.
"Oh, God, you should have seen him at Valentine's Day. Awful," Cecile said, making a face. "I don't know when Schneizel's going to break the news to him. Everyone keeps telling him they look fine because they don't want to hurt his feelings."
"It's not that so much as the sputtering embarrassment and self-deprecation that follows," Schneizel said. "It'll make you cringe more than seeing his toupees."
Clara Carter mouthed "suck up" to Lelouch. He clicked his tongue in agreement. Most people who worked under Schneizel tended to be that way.
"You remember the cologne discussion, dear? He wouldn't stop talking about it for months afterward. He even brought in samples for people to sniff. I had to talk to him about that, and it just made everything worse."
"Is that why you made me pick out that cologne at Lennox that one day?" Cecile asked, baffled. "I was wondering what happened to it. I thought it was for you."
Clara Carter looked like she was about to explode from all the things she wanted to say on the matter. It was Lelouch's stern and almost pleading look that made her hold her tongue.
"Anyway, that's all in the past now. We should focus on the here and now," Schneizel said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Lelouch, you know who Uncle Vladimir is, don't you?"
"Should I?" Lelouch asked.
"Not really," Schneizel said. "In fact, I had to dig around in Dad's old company records to find out anything about Uncle Vladimir."
"Oh," Lelouch said lamely. "Why did you even ask me, then?"
"It was rhetorical," Schneizel replied.
"It was pointless."
Schneizel ignored him. "Uncle Vladimir is actually a very distant cousin of Dad's. He worked for him in the late 70's, but once he found out his relation to Dad, he immediately quit and ran away to Savannah. He only recently returned to get his shingles treated. He actually died on the way to the dermatologist. Collapsed right in the waiting room."
Vladimir's distant relation to Charles confirmed the presence of Bulgarian heritage in the Buckley family tree. Charles Buckley was actually one-sixteenth Bulgarian. He hadn't figured it out yet because of his half-senility, but what he had figured out was that he felt a very powerful and mysterious bond with Vladimir. When the medical office contacted Charles after a lengthy but not particularly extensive search into Vladimir's background, and told him Vladimir was dead, Charles felt as if a brother had been lost.
The same couldn't be said for Vladimir, actually. He had only exchanged two sentences with Charles Buckley in his entire lifetime, and he spent a great deal of his years cursing his distant cousin's existence.
. . .
Vladimir was the same age as Charles, coincidentally. He'd been born in the late years of World War II, just before the People's Republic of Bulgaria was formed. He was a small man with shockingly platinum blond hair. Vladimir adored his country. He even received his degree in History with the highest honors during his university studies in Bulgaria. Some would say that Vladimir was married to history. He never sought out permanent female company.
Nevertheless, when Vladimir was in his thirties, he became involved with a woman who, it turned out, was vehemently opposed to the socialist regime in Bulgaria. She wrote a pamphlet that said some unpleasant things about the government at the time. Vladimir had no idea about the pamphlet. He was a normal law-abiding citizen. Still, the government went after him in light of his connections with the author of the pamphlet, so Vladimir managed to flee to Greece and board a ship headed for America. Some way or another, Vladimir wound up in Atlanta, virtually penniless. He landed a low-paying job as an assembly line worker at Charles' men's apparel company.
He only met Charles twice. The first time, they bumped into each other on the way to the bathroom and exchanged mere pleasantries and harumphs. There were lots of harumphs. Most of them came from Charles.
The second time, Vladimir was collecting a cheap medal made of fake metal compounds and plastic from Charles in recognition of his above-average contributions to the quality of Buckley-made ties.
"Congratulations, good sir," Charles had said noncommittally. That was when he first looked into Vladimir's eyes and felt that powerful and mysterious bond. He shook his hand with emphatic firmness. "Thank you for all your service to the Buckley name."
That was also the first time Vladimir had a seething suspicion that Charles was perhaps related to him, even if only by a slim fraction. Vladimir secretly hated Charles. This was because Vladimir was a decent human being. And it made him quite nauseous to think that the womanizing, chain-cigar-smoking, scotch-drinking, greedy, arrogant behemoth before him could possibly be related to him.
So Vladimir retreated to the archives and did far more research into his family background than the medical officers would decades later. He found out, indeed, that he and Charles had a common Bulgarian ancestor. Charles' great-great-great-great-great grandfather had actually left the family behind to set sail for the New World all the way back in the late 1700s.
In any case, Vladimir was completely horrified and he immediately quit his job and fled as far as his meager earnings and hitchhiking would take him – that place being Savannah, Georgia. He went on to open up an overpriced sweets shop in the historical district of Savannah that sold some really terrific chocolate gopher turtles. A chocolate gopher turtle was a nauseatingly sweet mixture of toasted pecans, caramel, and chocolate that vaguely resembled the back of a very small and chocolatey turtle. Vladimir made good money off of his overpriced and tasty chocolate gopher turtles. He donated a lot of this money to charities for assisting the impoverished, promoting safe and reliable Bulgarian immigration, and almost any kind of major movement that promoted equal gender and societal rights.
Anyway, Vladimir had a history of dermatological problems that continued throughout his middle-aged life. It finally culminated in a very severe case of shingles. Vladimir reluctantly accepted the fact that he needed medical help in Atlanta, so he had a friend drive him there. As he was in the waiting room for his appointment, he experienced a sudden heart attack and died.
It wasn't a particularly well-known fact at the time, but Vladimir had actually died a socialist. He'd grown up surrounded by socialism in the People's Republic of Bulgaria, but Vladimir never thought much of it until he met Charles Buckley. Vladimir had a lukewarm relationship with capitalism up until then. Charles was the catalyst for his conversion.
If Charles knew about Vladimir's socialist beliefs, he wouldn't have been so eager to pay for Vladimir's rather expensive funeral.
. . .
"Why are we burying somebody we don't know anything about?" Lelouch demanded. "Wouldn't it be more appropriate to hand him over to his family and have them bury him in Bulgaria?"
"Yes, actually," Schneizel said. "Uncle Vladimir stated in his will that he wanted to be buried on his beloved Bulgarian soil."
"Then why is the funeral here?" Lelouch asked.
"Dad paid some people," Schneizel said. "He paid them a lot of money."
Lelouch couldn't even get past his disbelief to ask Schneizel why their father had illegally bribed some officials just so he could bury a man he'd barely talked to, but at the very least, he now understood why Vladimir's relatives seemed so mad at the pre-funeral planning family reunion luncheon.
"The hell is wrong with your father?" Clara Carter asked, breaking the silence.
Nobody really knew how to answer that question.
It was because there were just too many answers.
. . .
"I have a confession to make."
Lelouch turned to Clara Carter. "What is it?"
Clara Carter almost looked guilty for a second. "When I first heard about your family, I thought your dad owned a cotton plantation."
Lelouch looked at her for a very long time in silence.
"Well we don't," he finally said. "We buy our cotton from local farmers."
"The hell's that look for? You think I'm dumb?" Clara Carter retorted.
"No, no. I'm just… never mind."
"Hey, don't get a big head! You've screwed up around Boston."
That was true. Taxi drivers constantly sabotaged his attempts to get anywhere because he acted like he barely knew what he was talking about. He also tried to fake a Boston accent and failed very miserably in that regard.
Anyway, that wasn't the point. "Yeah, but I didn't think you guys worked in factories canning food for the soldiers," Lelouch said.
"No, but you did ask me if we sometimes dumped tea into the harbor for fun."
There was silence between them again.
"Good night," Lelouch finally said.
"Good night," Clara Carter agreed cheerily.
Poor, poor Vladimir.
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