The Bellagio Peregrination Chapter 3
Disclaimer: I don't own this show. Chuck Lorre owns this show.
Note: In my universe, physicists go to big media conferences in Vegas and get all kinds of ridiculous comps and the president of CalTech has drinks with basic cable people. 'Cause it's fun! Had to post Chapter 3 because I'm very impatient to post Chapter 4. After which; hijinx!
Chapter 3
There were still a few hours until the banquet. Penny was dying to explore or go swimming, but she also wanted to stay out late so she opted for a short nap as Sheldon worked on his laptop. He was shy and quiet when Penny announced she was going to take a sleep for a bit and spared her one hesitant glance. If he was trying to make himself less appealing, he was failing miserably.
The greatest thing about Sheldon, Penny decided, was that anything he did that happened to be appealing to women was guaranteed not to be by design.
While napping, she had a nightmare about zombies. But in the end she managed to save Sheldon. And the moment she took her hatchet through the skull of the last staggering corpse and clasped Sheldon's hand in hers, all the scary massacred zombies turned to live mewling kittens. Which in reality, would be a logistical catastrophe. But in the dream, it was pretty sweet.
Knock knock knock.
"Penny."
Knock knock knock.
"Penny."
Knock knock knock.
"Penny."
Penny woke with a happy sigh. "Come in!"
He opened the door and she stretched on top of the covers like, well, a soft kitty. Sheldon shuffled in the doorway and avoided eye contact.
"The banquet begins at six o'clock," he said. "It is now four o'clock. Calculating the time it normally takes you to prepare for a night out and allowing for the possibility that you might further consider this a quote unquote special occasion, I estimated you might want approximately two hours to, as you put it, primp."
She rolled over onto her stomach and leaned on her hands. "Thanks. That's perfect."
He was tracing his finger along the door jamb as if searching for something. "Very well."
"Hey, what're you wearing?" She said, sitting up.
He blinked and looked down at his Green Lantern shirt. "Clothes?"
"I mean tonight."
He rolled his eyes. "As per your instance, I am wearing the black suit you picked out for the ill fated Chancellor's Award ceremony. Although I had to have it let out. It didn't fit."
"Oh yeah," she said. "You've bulked up a little since then."
"I have not bulked up!"
"Meant that in a good way, sweetie. Looks good on you. Got a little...meat on your bones!" She made an attempt at a comical growling sound and flexed. Sheldon blinked at her. She coughed. "Okay. Good. I'll just start getting ready then."
Hair first. Then make-up. Then dress.
She unpacked the dress and hung it on the bathroom door, clapping her hands in excitement. The dress was a sleeveless boatneck cocktail number of vintage black lace overlaying pink taffeta. It was like something Audrey Hepburn would've worn. She'd found it months before in a shop in Silver Lake and not yet had a reason to wear it. She'd been able to afford it because there were a couple of small tears in the hem that she was able to fix herself. The shoes were black platforms. Classic.
Knock knock knock.
"Penny."
Knock knock knock.
"Penny."
Knock knock knock.
"Penny. Are you decent?"
She opened the door. She was about to quip "never" in answer to his question, but all that came out was a surprised squeak because he was wearing his black suit. Her hair was only half-done and she was still in her sweatpants. It had taken her twenty minutes to decide on lipstick. Of course, he was already dressed and ready to go. And, in her opinion, he looked even better than he had the first time he'd worn the suit.
She eyed him up and down. "Yes. Decent."
"Penny, President Siebert wants to speak with me before the banquet begins-"
"Oh, no problem. I'll meet you there later."
"And you know where the conference is..."
"Yup. Tower Ballroom."
"Very good. They'll have your name at the door." He checked his watch. "I'd better go."
"No problem."
The situation felt oddly domestic with the shared suite and her getting ready in the bathroom, him in his suit... She had a wild impulse to kiss his cheek as if they were husband and wife getting ready for the evening.
Her phone rang and she grabbed it off the bathroom counter. It was her mother. She winced. "Better take this." She nodded at him. "See you in a bit."
He gave a little wave and left.
Sheldon stumbled into the elevator and pressed the button for the Lobby. He could not quite believe he'd actually told Penny about Soft Kitty Face and his weakness for same. No one knew about Soft Kitty Face. The only facial expression in existence which effected him more than Soft Kitty Face was Penny when she cried. He shuddered. Nothing was worse than when Penny cried. He considered it the emotional equivalent of Magneto whenever he attacked Wolverine and held him suspended above the ground; his normally powerful adamantium claws utterly paralyzed. Or maybe the metaphor was problematic. It wasn't necessarily that his powers were rendered paralyzed so much as without utility. He had no tools to deal with emotional distress.
Duh, somebody somewhere would've said. Somebody he would no doubt look down upon.
All he had for Penny when she cried was a "there there" and a hot beverage.
He was already stepping into the lobby, reaching into his pocket for his phone, before he realized he'd left it in the room.
"Drat."
And back into the elevator.
See? He wanted to say to Penny. This is what happens when you examine emotional ambiguity too closely. Dichotomy indeed.
Dichotomy actually referred to division. He supposed she'd intended dichotomy to mean a contradictory situation. Two seemingly opposed states of being.
Connected and disconnected. Wave and particle.
"Perhaps she should've said duality," he muttered at the elevator.
Back in the hotel room he found his phone next to his laptop. Penny's door was slightly ajar and when he passed it, intending to leave, he heard Penny shrilly exclaim, "I don't know what I'm doing yet!"
She was obviously on the phone. Sheldon froze. He racked his brain. What was the social etiquette? He should leave, yes? Eavesdropping was frowned upon. On the other hand, Penny was clearly in distress…
"Five thousand dollars… I know. I know that, mom. Because I wanted to believe in my brother, okay? You know how he can be. He was so convincing. He was all straight and narrow, you know? And I never thought… Yes, but he's never done that before! Not to us. Mom, please don't…"
Then she started crying.
Oh dear.
"I have to be out by the end of the month… I tried. No, I can't right now, I'm in Vegas." She was talking through her crying. Sheldon had never seen or heard her this upset before. He disliked loud fights. He disliked Penny's tears even more. He was experiencing a peculiar psychosomatic reaction that made him unable to move.
So it is a paralysis.
He felt his facial muscles spasming.
"No, I'm not wasting money," she said angrily. "I haven't even had to pay for anything. I'm not lying. My friend Sheldon got a free trip… Because he's a really great friend and he let me come along. No, it's not like that… Yes. I know. I know. Well, what I want to do is go back to school. I want to take business classes. Because I want to start my own… Why not? I know but…maybe… I might, I don't know. Do they even have jobs around Omaha right now? They don't have jobs here and it's L.A. I know. Of course, I will if I have to but… But I could… I-I… Mom…"
Her voice broke. "Mom, please don't call me stupid."
Sheldon felt that squirming parasitic monster in his stomach; that thing that made him sad or happy or mad when he himself wasn't sad or happy or mad. That thing he was constantly trying to both fight and learn how to understand.
Empathy.
And suddenly the weight of five years worth of disparaging Penny's intelligence came crashing down on Sheldon's head. He felt a bit sick.
"I have to go… I'm meeting Sheldon and I have to get ready. I know that, but this is important too. Well, it's important to him. No! Oh my God, goodbye!"
The end of the phone call seemed to jerk Sheldon out of his paralysis and the motivation of adrenaline drove him right out of the room.
He stood, blinking in the hallway, before a server with a cart full of room service asked him to move.
Into the elevator.
His phone vibrated. It was from Siebert. On second thought, he should meet Siebert at The Bellagio's Bank nightclub. As soon as possible.
That was something to do anyway. That was a protocol to follow. Go to The Bank and meet Siebert.
His hands were still shaky.
"Why are you crying?"
"Because I'm stupid!"
"That's no reason to cry. One cries because one is sad. For example I cry because others are stupid. And that makes me sad."
Sheldon Cooper had two definitions of stupid.
There was the sort of stupid that referred to anyone significantly less intelligent than he.
Which was everybody.
The second kind of stupid referred to the mass of people significantly less intelligent than the average. The global average specifically.
The first definition could refer to somebody like Howard Wolowitz. Howard Wolowitz had a master's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Rationally, Sheldon knew very well that a person couldn't accomplish such a thing and go on to become an engineer for NASA with a level of intelligence similar to that of say, Snookums, or whatever the girl on that awful show Penny liked was called.
The second kind of stupid referred to somebody like Zack.
Penny he considered "stupid" according to the first definition. But not according to the second. She was about average, he supposed. It was rather difficult for him to honestly judge the intelligence of normal people.
Not that he'd ever bothered to make himself clear on the subject. He also tended to lump the two kinds of stupid together into one big stupid glob.
It was different for Leonard, Raj, and Howard, he now realized as he wandered in the general direction of The Bank. They could take his crap because they knew better.
He'd always thought Penny knew better.
Besides which, he'd (quietly and only to himself) acknowledged that maybe the social scientists were on to something in their theories of "emotional intelligence." Although the term made him shudder. And if that was a valid paradigm, well then Penny was a genius and the rest of them were blithering idiots. But it was a frightening thought.
It was true that Penny had previously revealed to him insecurities as to her intelligence. But again, she had been comparing herself to three PhDs. And Howard.
"You thought the opposite of stupid loser is community college graduate?"
The salient point was that Penny's mother apparently thought she was stupid by mainstream standards. Which, if the most basic tenants of psychology were correct, meant that Penny probably thought she was stupid too.
To Sheldon, for whom the gifts of a first rate mind were to be treasured above all else (though loyalty to the meemaw was toe to toe), to know that Penny who he cared about very much might think she was truly unintelligent when she wasn't... Well, it was an honest to Spock crisis is what it was. Penny wasn't stupid. She lacked ambition, sure. She was lazy most of the time. But she was creative and capable. She was warm and loyal. She would kick a large man in his nether regions just to win you back what amounted to imaginary possessions. She would take care to have a DNA laden napkin signed by your hero and be more pleased by the reciprocal hug than by the four hundred dollars in gift baskets. She would take you to Stan Lee's house. She would make you spaghetti with the little hot dogs cut up in it. She would sing you "Soft Kitty" and rub VapoRub on your chest even though, at the time, she barely knew you...
She might even be willing to fight zombie hoards at her own peril to save you.
Penny...
The Bank was all purple lights. It was cat-walks and unpleasantly pulsating music, but half empty because it wasn't even six o'clock yet. He spotted Siebert and some other men sitting on two upholstered benches. Siebert saw him and waved him over. Sheldon glanced around, half hoping actual zombies would emerge from beneath the dance floor.
There was more to Penny's phone call. A lot more.
"! There's our guy!" Siebert thumped him on the back to his chagrin and gestured to two young men dressed much the way Sheldon normally dressed when he wasn't wearing a suit, and one older white-haired man smoking an cigar. "Want you to meet some friends of mine!"
One of the younger men hopped to his feet. His hair was spiky and he had a goatee.
"Mad scientist guy!" The Goatee said. He was wearing a Captain America shirt and tight fitting jeans. Sheldon disliked him immediately. "Awesome! I've seen all your YouTube videos!"
Sheldon glared. "Ah, excellent. My cultural contributions are equal to that of a squirrel on a surfboard and a twelve year-old boy who can excrete milk from his tear ducts."
Penny had said she would be "out within a month." That could only mean she was getting evicted. So that was a problem. Fortunately, problems could be solved.
"Cooper, this is Ben from G4," Siebert said, clapping the spiky haired man on the back.
"You watch G4?" Ben said. His teeth were far too big.
"No."
"You game much?"
Sheldon just stared at him.
"He does from what I've heard." Siebert said. "Trust me!"
"Look," Ben said. "G4's thinkin' about adding more science based programming. We're thinkin' there's a big crossover audience. Like you! Right now we're doin' a big sponsorship for the new Mystic Warlords of Ka-ah online-"
"The Mystic Warlords of Ka-ah online game is a travesty," Sheldon snapped. "I would explain in detail why, but I don't care enough to continue speaking to you."
"Did I tell you he's a character?" Siebert was a bit intoxicated. "C'mon, Cooper, loosen up. We'll get you a drink. Trust me, you don't want to go to one of these things sober. Richard Dawkins is here. He'll talk your ear off."
"Physiologically impossible," Sheldon muttered. "Also, I don't drink."
Penny had given the sum of five thousand dollars to her brother who had absconded with it, from what he could gather. No doubt, that was related to her impending eviction. Penny really needed to stop giving large sums of money to irresponsible men.
Siebert introduced him to Nate who was wearing a shirt that said "American as" and then the logo for Apple Computers and the symbol for pi. Nate was from an educational show about space and physics that Sheldon sometimes watched when he felt like mocking something in the style of Mystery Science Theater. Nate shook his hand but didn't speak. He reminded Sheldon of Raj around women.
"Um…big fan," Nate finally managed to say. "Seriously."
Penny wanted to go back to school. Possibly to study business. Sheldon thought this was a potentially good idea. Except that Penny had never displayed what one might call "follow through." Although she had continued to work at The Cheesecake Factory for the entire time he had known her. If she could display that sort of commitment to school she might have something. He wondered if she wanted to study business to learn better how to run her Penny Blossoms venture.
Siebert introduced him to Roger Whitman. Roger Whitman was the man smoking a cigar (because smoking indoors was inexplicably legal in Las Vegas) and he was blowing smoke in everyone's faces much like Ricky the monkey.
"Roger's from Belnam Books," Siebert said. "They've been publishing some science titles lately. They're very interested. Gentlemen, why don't we get a round?"
"I don't drink alcohol," Sheldon muttered again. But already a cocktail waitress had appeared. It took a tedious number of words to convince them he only wanted a Coke in a tall glass with a lime wedge.
Was Penny still crying? His phone was silent… Was that good or bad?
Roger the editor said, "So what kind of experiments are you at work on right now? I know everyone's very interested since that paper Stephen Hawking has spoken of, right? Anyway, that's what Siebert here tells us."
Sheldon was about to open his mouth and (figuratively) bite the man's head off when Nate said, "He doesn't do experiments. He's a theoretician."
"He is correct," Sheldon said. He checked his phone in case he'd received a call or text and hadn't felt the vibration. Nothing. He ignored the conversation and knocked out a text to Penny. He had the urge to tap out "you're not stupid" but instead he wrote:
Everything alright?
Roger went on about niche markets, appealing to a wider audience, internet marketing… Sheldon tuned out until Nate leaned over and in a conspiratorial whisper asked him a very technical question about his Higgs Boson paper. Sheldon tried to answer properly over the noise of the music but from his seat across from Nate it wasn't very comfortable. Ben was sitting next to Nate playing with his phone, looking bored.
Sheldon stood and waved a hand at Ben. "You're in my spot."
Ben blinked at him and said to Siebert, "Is this a mad scientist thing?"
"I am not a mad scientist, my mother had me tested. Get up. You're in my spot."
Ben shrugged and moved.
Sheldon was scribbling equations onto cocktail napkins as Nate hammered him with questions and praise when Sheldon's phone vibrated. His photon turned into a squiggle and he whipped out his phone.
Penny had texted: Yes, great! Almost ready –see you soon :-D
Sheldon frowned. How could she be crying one minute and pretend to be happy the next? Women were odd.
The cocktail waitress reappeared with their drinks. Roger Whitman took his martini and said to her, "Easy on the water I hope, doll?"
"Oh, sorry. I don't know, I didn't make it," she said.
"Guy's a physicist," Whitman said, nodding at Sheldon. "We're from a science conference."
"Oh... That's nice." The waitress looked uncomfortable. She handed Sheldon his Coke.
"You know what a physicist is?"
"Yeah, sort of-"
"Sure you do, doll. Why don't you spend some time with us, huh?"
Siebert looked edgy. Whitman put his arm around the waitress's waste. "C'mooon, babe."
The waitress rolled her eyes and eased out of his grasp. "Sorry, sir. Can't do that." She nodded at the group of them. "Have fun at your science thingy."
Whitman cackled and watched her walk away. "Science thingy! Aw, that's how I like em', huh? Dumb and pretty."
The cocktail waitress was blonde. When she turned around for one insane moment, Sheldon looked at her and saw Penny's face.
Sheldon set down his Coke and got out of his seat and then just stood there uncertainly. He loosened his tie.
Whitman was cackling. Sheldon licked his lips. This was the time to be a gentleman. He should say something. Stand-up for Penny. And women like Penny. He should cut the man down. Easier vocalized than enacted. Sheldon was also notoriously untalented at trash-talk. The men were all looking up at him.
"Cooper?" Siebert said. "Problem?"
"Yes!" Sheldon said. He licked his lips again and pointed at Whitman. "You... You are...unevolved!" It was the worst thing he could think of to say to somebody really. At least on the spot. "You are a discredit to academia and...and to humanity!" He started to walk away and turned back, leaning down to hiss, "Also traditional publishing is on its way to implosion! I'm going to self-publish an e-book!"
Siebert shouted after him as he stalked out of the nightclub.
Penny had said on the phone that she might move back to Nebraska.
Sheldon could not allow that to happen.