Mercedes rang the doorbell and had to wait only a few seconds before Burt Hummel answered the door. "Hi, Mr. H," she greeted with a smile.
"Hey, Mercedes," he replied, moving aside to let her in. "At the risk of giving you déjà vu, Kurt is in his room, so just go on down."
She laughed. "We did kind of have this exact conversation yesterday, didn't we?"
He just shrugged and gestured her onward, a man of few words, as usual.
Making her way down to the basement, Mercedes felt a stab of anxiety as she beheld her friend. Kurt was dressed normally today, which is to say that he looked like he'd just stepped off the cover of some high-fashion designer's latest catalogue, and his hair was the picture of perfection. His eyes, however, were streaming tears. The flood was barely held in check by the soggy-looking handkerchief in his hand as he read through what appeared to be a letter.
"Kurt?"
He looked up, seeming a little startled to find her there even though she had not been making any attempt at stealth in her descent of the basement steps. Dabbing at his puffy eyes, he glanced at the clock on his bedside table. "Mercedes. Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't realize the time," he apologized, his voice sounding hoarse and nasally. "I promised I'd give you your facial at noon, didn't I?"
"Forget about that. Why are you crying?" she demanded, sitting next to him and tenderly stroking an errant teardrop from his cheek. "Your text said things went pretty well with your dad yesterday. Did something happen?"
Kurt laughed, blinking hard as more tears slid free of his control. "Pretty well? Oh, Mercedes, things went so much better than well. Here, read."
She accepted the page he shoved into her hand, a puzzled frown on her face as she read aloud: "May 6th, 1991.
My Dearest Burt. Paris is the most amazing city! Color and beauty pouring out of every part of it and I've done enough sketches since I got here last week to wallpaper the entire Lima city hall! Everything around me is charged with energy today, so full of life and promise that I felt I would be betraying the city's very soul if I did not get out and become a part of it.
Oh, I can just picture the look on your face as I say that. A city with a soul, you snort, as if such a thing could really exist! But it does and one day very soon I will tell you all about it, face to face.
Yes, you read that correctly. In one month's time, Karen Marshall will once again become a full-time resident of Lima, Ohio, USA. Now you might think, after all my gushing letters detailing the wonders of Europe, that this would be a sad fact for me, but it isn't. As much as I will miss the glamour and excitement, I have learned a few things about myself on this trip. And perhaps the most important is that this little globe-trotter is a homebody at heart. (Shh, don't tell anyone!)
Yesterday evening, I stood on a picturesque little balcony looking over the City of Lights, the Eiffel tower gleaming like a beacon in the distance. Surely the most romantic view in existence, and yet I found myself incredibly homesick and wishing with all my heart that I was really looking at a simple little tire shop, run by a cute, blue-eyed boy with a shy smile and grease-stained coveralls."
Kurt stopped her with a hand on her arm, his face flushing. "It gets really mushy after that."
"Your mom wrote your dad love letters from Paris!" Mercedes breathed. "And he kept them for all these years. That's so romantic!"
"I know," Kurt sighed happily. "Dad gave me a whole series of these letters to read and they're all completely wonderful. I can almost hear my mom's voice when I read the words."
Mercedes carefully folded the page and handed it back, awed by how much she knew these letters would mean to her best friend. "That's wonderful, Kurt. I'm so happy for you."
"I knew Mom had been to France," he said, stroking the page with tender fingertips. "I can remember her telling me stories about it, but I just thought she meant on a vacation or something. Somehow, when you're little you assume your parents have spent their whole lives together. I never knew that she'd actually lived in Europe, by herself for a whole year after graduating from college."
Mercedes was shocked. "Your mom and dad spent a year apart?"
He nodded. Putting the letters carefully back in their shoebox, he turned to face her and took both of her hands in his; eagerly filling her in on the family history lesson his dad had shared with him the previous night.
"Wow," she breathed when he had finished. "Your dad was like a knight in shining armor or something. And here I thought that nothing romantic ever happened in Lima!"
"Isn't it amazing?" he agreed, eyes shining.
Mercedes smiled. "What's really amazing is that your mother chose living here with your dad over spending her life in Paris."
Kurt shrugged, unable to fully hide the pride he felt in that. "What good is a city you love if you don't have the person you love there to share it with you?"
"You're right, and she definitely made the right choice." Impulsively, she hugged him. "I don't even want to think about a life that might have never had you in it!"
The blush returned, fiercer than before, but Kurt was clearly flattered. Pressing a hand to his overheated cheek, he laughed. "Maybe we'd better get started on that facial. I should give myself one too; otherwise I won't be fit to be seen in public for at least a week."
Realizing that Kurt was not ready to talk in depth about his mother, still struggling to accept the reality of having a new tangible connection to her, Mercedes allowed his change of subject. "Sounds good to me. Can we start with some of that deep-pore cleanser that smells like watermelons? And is it okay if we use some of your aromatherapy candles?"
"Of course. You can have whatever you like," Kurt promised magnanimously. "You won the facial of your choice yesterday and that means you are getting the full Chez Hummel special."
"Do you want me to do your manicure first? After all, with self service you don't get the neck massage."
Kurt perked right up. "You wouldn't mind?"
Mercedes grinned. "Roll up those sleeves and hand me the cuticle oil, baby. I got this."
For half an hour, she trimmed, buffed and shaped. By the time she started the hand and arm massage, Kurt looked as contented as a cat lying in a sunbeam with a saucer full of cream. He sat with his face resting in the palm of his left hand, eyes half-closed in bliss as Mercedes gently rotated his right wrist and kneaded the muscles in his forearm. "You could become seriously rich if you offered this service at school," he said dreamily. "Doing hand-massages for the Cheerios alone could probably put you through college."
She laughed. "I'll think about it. So, did you and your dad decide what to do for the guys' night you texted me about?"
"Promise you won't laugh?" he asked, pulling his right arm back and offering the left.
Mercedes turned his hand up and began kneading her thumbs into his palm, smiling when Kurt made a sound that was suspiciously close to a purr. "I promise."
"There's one more week left out at Birch Park before it closes down for the winter," he said, clearly a little embarrassed by the choice.
Birch Park was a carnival and midway that had been a standing attraction for Lima families for well over half a century. It was closed during the winter months and rarely attracted much of a crowd this late in the season, but they had games and food and a few simple rides that still attracted a sufficient number of customers to keep things running.
"Dad and I couldn't agree on any kind of ticketed event and since the point of the whole thing is supposed to be spending time together, the walk and talk atmosphere of the park didn't seem like such a bad compromise. We're going on Tuesday afternoon, after school."
"I think it's a great choice. I love that place," Mercedes told him with an approving grin. "Me and my whole family used to go out there every summer. You and your dad will have fun."
Kurt nibbled his lower lip in thought. "I don't suppose you want to come with us?"
"Wouldn't that kind of defeat the purpose of male-bonding?"
He sighed. "Maybe. I'm just afraid that we'll go all the way out there and then spend the entire evening being completely awkward with each other. We haven't been to Birch Park since my mom was still alive. What if the whole thing is a big fat failure and we just wind up feeling bad because we can't find anything to talk about?"
Reacting to the distress in his voice and the sudden tension in the arm she held between her hands, Mercedes dug her fingers in harder, forcing him to relax and said, "Well, maybe I could talk one or two of the other Glee kids into going out there with me and we could, sort of, accidentally run into you and your dad there."
"Would you?"
His big eyes gleamed like jewels, filled with an intense pleading expression that Mercedes suspected would be capable of melting even the stone-cold heart of Sue Sylvester. Her own, far softer heart had no chance against it at all. "I'll be there."
Kurt pulled his hand free of her grasp and stood, throwing both arms around her. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" he gushed, making his best friend laugh.
"But, Kurt, what if you don't need us? Suppose that you and your dad really do have a great time and you don't want company."
He considered that. "Send me a text and I'll let you know how it's going, so you know whether to approach or not."
"Okay, but you should use some kind of secret code word," she coaxed playfully, "in case your dad sees it."
"Um, how about you text me the word McQueen? I'll respond with A. L. or S."
Mercedes nose wrinkled. "Huh?"
"A for Alexander, meaning everything is perfect. L for Lightning, meaning get over here and stage an intervention as fast as you possibly can. S for Steve, meaning the situation has gone critical and the Great Escape is required."
Mercedes raised an eyebrow. "The Great Escape?"
"Dad's favorite movie," he explained. "We watch it every year on Father's Day. Lightning is in case Dad is driving me crazy. Steve is in case I'm driving him crazy. Get it?"
"It really worries me that I do."
Kurt smiled sweetly at her. "Thanks, Mercedes." Wiping his hands off on a soft towel, he gestured her toward the comfortable lounge-back chair he had pulled out especially for her. "I think it's your turn for some pampering now. Prepare yourself for the facial of your dreams and a neck and shoulder massage so good it will turn you into my willing servant for life."
She laughed. "Oh, I think it might already be too late on that last part."
TBC