"Yeah…" Quinn says.
In response to what, she's not quite sure.
She's pretty sure Rachel was talking about Finn, but somewhere along the way she's started talking about Kurt, maybe, or it could be that Finn was curt with her about something, Quinn really isn't sure, because she really hasn't been listening.
She keeps pleading with her mind to focus on the sense of Rachel's words, rather than just the sound of them. She keeps ordering her eyes to move from her fingers to her face. And it's quite a battle - like she's suddenly six again at a wedding or a funeral or a birthday party with too many adults at it.
You have to look people in the eye when you say Hello, Quinnie.
She was afraid then. And she's something like afraid now. Maybe she's going crazy. Maybe the ring's right there and she just can't see it.
Because she just cannot believe that thing is gone.
Once, after a particularly frustrating session of Not another teen wedding in the bathroom at McKinley, Quinn started a journal just to write in it:
If Rachel Berry lost all her fingers she would put that ring on a necklace. If she lost her neck she would worry about the ring.
Quinn coughs into her napkin. Rachel's definitely talking about Kurt, because she's sure she heard her say Blaine – or was it lame? She frowns, then smiles hastily, and decides to throw herself at the conversation before she can get lost again. She opts for the first Kurt-related statement that springs to mind, and unfortunately that statement is: "I don't think Kurt likes me."
It's reflective, and without aggression, certainly not intended to distress Rachel. But she seems to take it like a knife to the chest.
"What?" she exclaims. "Of course, Kurt likes you. What are you talking about?"
She's clutching at the collar of her shirt and waiting for an explanation.
Quinn shrugs. "It's no big deal, I just don't think he's - "
"No big deal?" Rachel shrieks.
Quinn jumps in her seat, shushes her instinctively, feels bossy.
Rachel rolls her eyes, but the volume is lowered when she speaks again. "You take that back immediately," she says, "or I'm going to text him and tell him you said it." She already has her phone out of her purse. She taps a couple of buttons and her eyes widen. She looks up at Quinn and says, "Oooh he should tweet you a haiku."
"He should what?" Quinn asks. She does know what a haiku is, and what a tweet is, but somehow she is still puzzled by this proposal.
"He tweets people haikus," Rachel repeats. She smiles giddily at her phone. "Isn't it cute?"
"Yes…" Quinn agrees uncertainly.
Rachel is too busy with her phone to see the expression on her face, and it's probably a good thing. "Okay," she says, with great excitement, "This is the last one he tweeted me – I've had three – Blaine's had seven – I'm a little jealous, I won't deny."
She clears her throat, breathes in, sits up straight, and asks if Quinn's ready, and Quinn nods, lifts her glass to her lips, thinks All this for seventeen syllables.
"You will tread the boards," Rachel reads, looking down her lashes, and making the kind of face you make at puppies, "But in my heart you are still," She pauses for effect, "And still my soul's mate."
Quinn swallows her wine funny. She coughs. She says "Soulmates, huh?" She wants to say I never ever want to hear the ones he tweets Blaine.
Rachel confirms, without a hint of irony, "Yes! And no soulmate of mine could ever hate you."
"Well, I never said hate," Quinn objects. "He just acts like I'm harsh – judgmental – maybe by his standards I am." She quotes herself, "'Suicide is selfish,'" rolls her eyes, whether at herself or at Kurt she's not sure. "He wouldn't like 'Bisexuality isn't real' either".
"Well that would be a little hypocritical," Rachel says, "Since he's said as much himself."
"He… has?" Quinn asks. She's greatly unnerved. She's not sure why it's okay for her to say it, but weird as hell for Kurt to have said it too.
Rachel tilts her head, lifts a hand and turns it from side to side. "To be fair it was fueled by a jealous rage, but I don't think you ever want to be arguing you're better than somebody else because of a jealous rage. I mean unless you're Bette Davis. Nobody does a jealous rage like Bette Davis."
Quinn smiles. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. She's seen that.
"Do you think I'm wrong?" she asks. "I mean I know you disagree with me… but do you think I'm wrong to think it? That it's just..." The smile is gone. She swallows. It's strange and empty, like she thought she had something in her throat but didn't. "Do you think I'm wrong to think it's just not trying hard enough?"
Rachel leans forward in stages – one to the left, two to the right, three her elbows are on the table. "I think it might hurt people to say it," she says softly. "Like Brittany."
Quinn's face floods with heat, her eyes prickle. She feels bad – she feels terrible, actually. She would never want Rachel to think she was trying to hurt people. She's not that girl anymore. Sometimes she pretends she never was.
The urge to spill about Julie-Anne and the twinkie is nearly overwhelming.
She bites her lip briefly, taps a nail against the rim of her glass. "I don't want to come off like a bigot. I mean, I do think Brittany loves Santana. It's just that I…" She trails off, searching for the right words – searching, in fact, for the right thing to put into words in the first place - and just as she does the waitress appears with the entrées and she is glad to be able to stop looking and start eating.
Quinn thinks that's why people go out to eat instead of just going out. So they will have something they can do when they don't have something they can say.
The fish is good, the lentils are okay. Rachel is in the crazy kind of raptures over her pasta. She keeps trying to convince Quinn that the mushrooms taste just like parmesan, only better, and Quinn keeps coolly skeptical.
"Nothing against mushrooms," she says, "Although I've gotta say, technically they're fungus, and technically fungus is seriously disgusting, but there's no way they can replace cheese."
"Okay, now you're coming off as a bigot," Rachel huffs, "You haven't even tried it!"
Quinn laughs around a mouthful of fish and swallows quickly. "Rachel, how many times?! Food is not the great moral challenge of the 21st century."
"Well sure it's not," Rachel says, spearing a slice of mushroom and cocooning it in tagliatelle, "If you're a big cheese bigot."
Quinn's covering her mouth, laughing, trying to get her lentils down, when Rachel holds her fork out and commands, "Eat it!"
Quinn hesitates. Does Rachel actually want her to eat it off her fork? Is this a whole 'Here comes the airplane' deal? She's extremely uncomfortable about being fed in public, and even more uncomfortable about the idea of putting her discomfort aside, leaning in, opening her mouth, and finding that that's not what Rachel really intended at all. This situation has humiliation written all over it. Rachel is waving the fork around dramatically and giving her a lecture on the use of fungus in the production of certain cheeses. After a particularly violent flourish, sauce flicks onto the table-cloth and the stem of Quinn's glass, and Rachel squeaks, like she's just remembered she's holding the thing, grabs her spoon and starts unloading the little bundle onto Quinn's plate.
Quinn smiles, closes her eyes for a second. Crisis averted. She eats the mushroom tagliatelle and tells Rachel it's close, but no cigar.
(It's not even close, who is she kidding?)
Rachel is beaming and saying "See, veganism doesn't have to hurt!" and Quinn says, "Are you trying to turn me now?" and immediately regrets it even though Rachel laughs, and asks "Is it so wrong to want you on my side?!"
Quinn acts quickly. Her mouth is full in no time and all she can do is smile and chew.
It's okay, anyway – Rachel's phone sings do re mi, and she pounces on it, apologizing as she does. "I know it's really rude," she says, "But it's all in a good… oh."
Her face falls, and she looks up at Quinn. "Kurt says he can't tweet you a haiku because he doesn't know your twitter, so what's your twitter please?"
"I don't have one," Quinn says.
Rachel narrows her eyes.
"What?" Quinn asks. It's true. She doesn't have a twitter. She didn't realize it had attained facebook status already. "Is it, like, necessary to have a twitter these days?"
Rachel considers. "Well, yes, if you want haikus. Or if you want to be a star. Social media is crucial. Our first task in Media Management was to set up a facebook and a myspace and a twitter and a blog and a youtube channel, but you know, I was ahead of the game there. I've had a youtube channel since youtube was invented - " She grins, closes her eyes, and Quinn feels her cheeks coloring already. "But you would know that – being one of my biggest fans."
Quinn shakes her head. She's speechless – literally. The thoughts are there, but she can't make the words come out. She wants to say: I was your biggest fan. I never liked you, but every hit was mine – every one – since you were invented - over and over – always.
She breathes in sharply and silently acknowledges she's probably a little drunk. She reaches for her glass and sucks down the last drops in it.
Rachel's still talking: "Anyway, Kurt and I are having this little competition, to see who can get the most followers on twitter, via our youtube videos, and even though he's still back in Lima, and not at the country's premiere performing arts academy, he's winning, which just goes to prove how much of an equalizer the internet is in this modern age." She shrugs, rolls her eyes. "Well, either that or how much more people like Kurt than me."
Quinn smiles. Rachel's telling her she must get a twitter. And she will – she might – maybe. But if she does she won't be following Kurt Hummell. She doesn't need his haikus. She has enough poetry of her own.
Right now she's thinking:
So quickly –
a hand on the small of my heart.
We start to mean something
I never meant
and I am spent.
You have taken my value
and I'll tell you I –
She blinks. Rachel's face is all crumpled. Her head is in her hands, she's telling her she has to sing on Monday morning and she has no idea what song to choose.
"Why don't you do Rain On My Parade?" Quinn suggests, "Just to show Thibodeaux you've broken the curse."
"What if I haven't though?" Rachel asks anxiously.
Quinn smiles at her lentils. She's still blinking. She feels bleary. She's not going to dignify that with a response.
When she looks up Rachel's shaking her head. "No, it's too safe. I mean, that's exactly why I chose it for my audition – it was safe. Everyone in there will be expecting that or The Hills Are Alive. I want…" She hesitates. "I want to make them all think they were wrong about me."
Quinn tips her head to one side, sets her fork down. She asks "Wrong how?"
"Just wrong," Rachel says, not looking at her.
Rachel takes two mouthfuls before Quinn returns to her lentils and says casually, "Why don't you do that song you sang last Christmas when we were putting the special together?"
That song.
Quinn's not sure why she wants to pretend she can't remember the title.
Rachel looks puzzled. "Extraordinary Merry Christmas?" she asks haltingly.
"No," Quinn says, a little too quickly, perhaps. She's not a Grinch or anything, but there's something about that song that turns her stomach. "The other one," she says. And in a small voice she doesn't like: "The one about the river."
Rachel looks at Quinn thoughtfully. Then she looks at the tablecloth thoughtfully. She says "Really?" and "Artie was so down on me about that one."
"Artie doesn't know what he's talking about," Quinn says absent-mindedly. She smiles, softens, "Or more precisely, he was looking for something different – something with commercial appeal - " she takes Rachel's word " – something safe."
Rachel smiles and says "I miss Artie."
Quinn's not sure if she didn't get the point or if it was just so obvious she didn't feel the need to communicate that she got the point. She says, again absent-mindedly, "I miss Artie too."
"You do?" Rachel asks. She sounds relieved.
Quinn nods then shakes her head, smiles with both. "You know we were becoming such good chair buddies I was kind of bummed when I could walk again."
"I wasn't," Rachel says. She shudders – or she mimes a shudder – no – and she mimes a shudder. Rachel always goes the extra mind to body mile, Quinn thinks.
"The thought of you never dancing again was just…" Rachel shuts her eyes, puts both hands up like Stop, and starts saying "And the thought of it being because of - "
"Because I chose to take my eyes off the road," Quinn interjects primly.
"Don't say that," Rachel pleads.
"Why not?" Quinn asks. She starts shoveling lentils onto her fork and takes a cheerful mouthful. "It's what happened."
"It makes it sound like you think it's your fault."
"You think it's your fault," Quinn says, amused, "And you weren't even there."
Rachel puts her elbow on the table and her forehead in her palm. "I told you to hurry," she moans.
"And that still wouldn't be relevant even if I'd chosen to speed."
Rachel's hand is covering her eyes now. She peeks out crossly. "You make it sound like nobody ever does anything because of somebody else," she says.
Quinn is quiet. She eats her lentils. She waits until Rachel has gone back to her tagliatelle. Then she asks, "Why didn't you just get married that day? You got everyone dressed up – the flowers – the cake. Why didn't you just do it without me?"
"What do you mean?" Rachel asks, like she genuinely doesn't understand the question.
Quinn gives her a clue. "You were going to do it without me when I said you shouldn't do it at all."
Rachel squints. "I couldn't get married while you were nearly dying on the side of the road," she says in disbelief.
Quinn opens her mouth. She pauses. Then she shrugs. "You didn't know that though," she says, "Not for hours, right?"
Rachel's expression does not change.
Quinn shrugs again. Or maybe it's a stretch. Maybe it's just an excuse to move. She feels uncomfortable. "For all you knew I could have just stopped for a mocha," she says.
"No," Rachel replies softly, like that's the last word on the matter.
She pours herself more wine, and nearly knocks her glass over.
Quinn thinks this place should have lighter wine bottles too.
"Anyway, I'm sorry I ruined everything," she says, even though she's really, really not, and Rachel knows she's really, really not, and maybe these days Rachel's not even all that sorry herself, as impossible as that once seemed.
Rachel doesn't say anything. Quinn can't quite bring herself to look up. She's spearing individual lentils with the prongs of her fork. It's difficult and requires much of her attention. "I can't believe I was just lying there like a lump for nearly a week," she says flippantly, "So lazy."
"Stop," Rachel says, and she sounds so serious.
Quinn can't help laughing.
"Stop," Rachel says again, only sharply this time.
Quinn is silenced. Her eyes are wide. If Rachel had raised her voice any more she would actually have been yelling at her.
"I came in to see you every day that you didn't wake up," Rachel says through gritted teeth, "I promise it wasn't funny."
Quinn feels the color drain from her face. She imagines herself in grayscale with dots for eyes and no mouth. "What?" she says in something far too close to a whisper. "Why…"
She hesitates, and Rachel begins to look like she thinks that was a question and she might have to reply. Quinn finishes quickly, "Why didn't you tell me?"
Rachel tips her head to one side. "You were in a coma?" she asks, like maybe it's funny after all.
"No, I mean…" Quinn blinks rapidly. She has that feeling again. The one she had when Rachel first arrived. Her right knee is shaking under the table. "After," she clarifies.
Rachel looks down, shrugs half-heartedly, then looks up again. "I guess it seemed sort of…" she takes several seconds to choose a word, goes with "Boastful."
Quinn raises an eyebrow. Just one. The other doesn't seem to be working.
Rachel rolls her eyes and waves a hand. "Like I'd be saying 'Oh, well I was there the most, so I must care the most.'"
Quinn says, "That argument is sound." Premise, inference, conclusion, she thinks, premise, inference, conclusion.
Rachel looks very uncomfortable. It probably has something to do with Quinn's gray face. She still has lots of wine left in her glass and Quinn has none. Rachel takes a sip and says "I figured your mom would mention it," adds, "maybe," as an afterthought.
"No," Quinn says. She feels bereft. She feels like she's just hanging. Like a sentence without a period on the end of it or a name with no upper case to start it up.
"We had some good chats," Rachel says, bubbling along again, "Well not so much chats – more her crying convulsively and me listing your many virtues and talents. Which…" she frowns, "only seemed to make her convulse more."
"It was… it was kind of you," Quinn stutters. She's thinking Virtues, talents, conclusion, virtues, talents, conclusion.
Rachel's saying, "When I came on the Friday they told me you woke up and you couldn't see anybody yet. I left cupcakes with the ward sister."
She's saying something else when Quinn says, "I ate those cupcakes."
Rachel's brow furrows. "Were they good?" she asks softly. "I used real butter and everything."
"They were the best cupcakes I had ever eaten," Quinn says. She's not sure if that's true. She honestly can't remember what they tasted like. She would have paid more attention if she'd known Rachel Berry baked them for her.
Rachel Berry baked them for her.
It's the strangest thing that's been true in a long time.
Quinn is busy marveling. It takes a lot out of her. Everything takes a lot out of you when you're intoxicated, she reminds herself, so she's busy marveling – it's taking her a little longer than it otherwise might – it's been who knows how long and she's still swallowing quick feelings and straining for the sense memory – the cakes – what did they look like - how did they taste – how did they feel in her mouth – what was it like –
She closes her eyes. She smiles. She is busy. Otherwise she would have noticed that Rachel stopped talking, she would have noticed the worry etching itself across her features at least a full minute before she says, "Quinn, where's the bathroom?"
Quinn opens her eyes. She considers the question. She's already reproaching herself for not knowing the answer before she realizes she's never actually been here before, so Rachel's guess is as good as hers.
She looks behind Rachel and then from side to side. Then she looks behind herself and sees a sign. There's a couple literally sucking face at the next table – Quinn's surprised she didn't hear the smacking sound.
She turns back to Rachel and gestures to the far left corner, "It's down that way," she says.
Rachel flutters past her, whispering "Thank you."
Rachel's not sure what happened. One minute she was fine, then the next minute she sort of needed to pee, then the minute after that she needed to pee in the same way you need to throw up.
She presses the flush, presses her face against the tiles on the back wall of the stall as she does, wonders why on earth she asked Quinn where the bathroom was when she was staring right at the little man and the little lady in their little Punch and Judy outfits.
She's a fool.
I'm a fool, she thinks, miserably, with a smile.
It takes her thirty seconds to get out of the stall. That may not seem like a long time, but it sure is when you're beginning to think you may actually be trapped. This has long been one of Rachel's nightmares: being stuck in a small space, no escape. She used to sing, sometimes, in her dreams, as loud as she could, long, belted notes to get her out of there.
It worked more often than not. Her brain imagined her mouth opening and then her mouth would open, and what would come out was something like the way the victims in horror movies scream.
She knows this only because papa would always run in to wake her and hold her while she came back to the world, and he would always tell her he thought something terrible was happening to her, and she would always tell him she was just belting out Christina Aguilera's The Voice Within or Evergreen by oh please she didn't need to specify. She knows this only because papa would always run in to wake her and eventually she insisted on hooking up a camera to capture the moment – and also to settle the dispute as to whether she was singing or screaming.
The Girl From Ipanema is playing. Rachel is sure it wasn't playing in the restaurant, but then she has been in here for a length of time she is completely powerless to determine. She hums along.
Mm, mm mmmm, Mm Mm mm mmmm…
The hundred and somethingth time she jiggles the latch the door swings free and she falls with it, stumbles over to the basins with a sigh of relief.
They're a couple – a couple of basins – Rachel puts a hand into each and leans down slowly, till her chin is resting on the polished wood between.
She feels hot. She feels overwhelmed.
This is alcohol, she thinks, and she thinks she's lucky Quinn chugged down the better part of the bottle before she could get to it. At least she thinks she did. It's true what they say: it's hard to stop once you've started, and anyway, she needed a drink, or she felt like she thinks you'd feel if you needed a drink – she feels hot, she feels overwhelmed.
She sort of wants to crawl into one of the basins and take a nap. It seems like it would be big enough. But then, it also seems like it would be soft, and that can't be right.
Rachel frowns. She knocks on the side of the right basin. She sings to it.
"When she walks, she's like a samba, that swings so cool, and sways so – "
Somebody comes in and she stands to attention, turns the faucet with such vigor that the water splashes onto her top. She glances back at the extremely tall, rather rotund lady who is asking her if she's all right.
"Yes!" Rachel says brightly. "I'm very well, thank you! Thank you for asking! You too!"
The lady nods with a bemused little smile and heads for a stall.
Rachel sighs. She shuffles over to the drier and sticks her hands under it. It comes to sound-drowning life, like magic, and she sings gently into its warm buzz "Oooh but I watch her so sadly…"
