10

Leonard and Sheldon stood outside the apartment building as a hearse pulled up alongside them. Long and black with white curtains in the back windows, it stopped at the curb and the ignition was turned off just before a driver who stood almost seven feet tall emerged. After the driver's side door opened, the huge hulking figure stood up a few feet from them, took a minute to polish a spot with his sleeve on the roof of the vehicle then came around to open the back. His head was roughly flat, but not completely. It just looked square-like as if someone had shaved off the top of his head to remove his brain and then allow hair to grow over it. His skin tone was odd as well. It was pale, almost white, with vague light grayish to pale green coloring as if he'd been pieced together from body parts of the dead that had somehow healed together. Jovially chuckling and waving to them like a giant kid, he wore a dark blazer that barely fitted his huge shoulders; his sleeves were a bit short for his arms causing his wrists to stick out. His sweater underneath was a dark gray, his trousers a matching shade to the jacket. Turning to the back of the hearse, he lifted the lever to the back of the hearse, and Leonard's eyes widened and feet took a step back as the hearse driver slid out the shelf from the back with someone laying in it.

"Excellent driving, Harold!" Jesse answered from the back end, stretched out his arms and jumped up and on to the asphalt outside the building. Dressed in a matching pinstriped suit, he pulled a wad of bills from his pocket and handed his brother-in-law a hundred dollar bill. "It was so relaxing, I almost fell asleep."

"Well, I told you it was comfortable." Harold mugged and postured a bit.

"Pick me up in the morning again, 8AM!" Jesse pulled a cigar from his interior jacket pocket as Harold closed the back and returned to the driver's seat to drive away from the curb. "Leonard, my old friend…" The eccentric lawyer hopped up on the curb with his cigar in his right hand and looking for a match with his left. "How goes your day?"

"Ow!" Sheldon winced as Jesse struck his match off the top of his head. "Listen you…" He shook his finger at Jesse puffing his cigar. Leonard looked at him to remind of his bet and he drew silent.

"I'm sorry - all questions must be submitted at the end of the tour…" Jesse dealt with Sheldon by confusing him then looked back to Leonard. "Leonard, my boy…" He placed his arm around him as they entered the building as if they were brothers. "The wife said you were looking for me. What's on your mind?"

"Jesse…" Leonard was put off by the guy's sudden friendship toward him but not offended by it. "The guys and I were talking…."

"What's all this "Jesse" stuff?" Jesse stopped before the elevators and was about to hit the button but remembered that Leonard and Sheldon was with him seemed to change his mind and follow them up the stairs. "Leonard, we're friends. I'm going to let you call me by my first name instead of my middle name."

"Jesse is your middle name?" Leonard looked to Sheldon and back to Jesse. "What's your first name?"

"Nostradamus…" Puffing on his cigar, Jesse looked back at them on the middle landing and led the way. Leonard looked to Sheldon once again and back to Jesse.

"Look, Jesse…" Leonard started again. "I've got to ask you about all the strange noises and people in the building."

"Strange noises and people?" Jesse puffed his cigar as they approached the second floor. "I haven't heard anything."

"The trains, the explosions, the scratching sounds, the creaking…"

"Oh, those noises!" Jesse reacted surprised and gestured with his Cuban. He continued to the second floor. "Leonard, my boy, you gotta understand something. I've got two beautiful little girls. Unfortunately, they've never lived in an apartment building, and they really don't know how to act in one, so they're going to behave much the same way as the old family house in Oregon."

"You're from Oregon?" Sheldon reacted very haughty.

"Sheldon…" Leonard reminded him of the bet.

"Drat…" Sheldon drew quiet again.

"Salem, Oregon…" Jesse was quick to point out on the third floor. "Leonard, have you ever seen that beautiful idyllic old estate on the hills of property over Interstate 210?" They ascended the stairs to the fourth floor.

"That creepy, spooky old relic of a mansion filled with bats?" Leonard had driven past it from afar.

"That's the one!" They ascended to the fourth floor. "I own it. Well, I'm supposed to own it. The family and I were supposed to move into it the first of the month, but the property and grounds are stuck in escrow a bit longer and we had to find other lodging here until the mess gets fixed, and since we were asked to leave the hotel…"

"What happened at the hotel?" Leonard had to ask.

"My brother, Chester, tried to have a barbeque on the balcony, and things got a bit…" He played with his cigar as he tried thinking of the right word. "Complicated." He placed his cigar back into his mouth. "Hope they were able to stop the fire before it reached the lobby..." He mumbled briefly under breath. "Anyway, we should be here only a few weeks… two months at the most."

"Oh no… Is he staying up there with you?" Sheldon wanted to know if there was a potential arsonist in the building.

"Sheldon…"

"Drat…" Sheldon drew quiet again.

"I don't know where he's staying." Jesse paused outside the guys' apartment. "I never asked." From over his head, he heard a noise from his apartment over the guys. It sounded like a bowling ball going down a bowling alley. They all tilted their heads up to the noise, following the noise passing over their heads on its destination and then heard the loud crash of bowling pins being struck and scattered. Jesse started chuckling.

"It sounds like my sister, Marilyn, caught the spare!" He started grinning. Leonard commiserated over this eccentric existence, but Sheldon was more willing to end it more quickly.

"Look, I have a 187 IQ, seventeen doctorates, I'm the youngest scientist to ever receive the Stevenson Award, I've studied abroad in Mecklenberg, Amsterdam, Heidelberg and Copenhagen, have published over twenty-two papers in the fields of physics and sub-atomic research…. I am not about to let some lesser-brained lower life-form without a degree or even a doctorate treat me like some stone of phosphorus good for only striking matches." He glared at Jesse busily puffing his cigar deep in thought. Barely listening, Jesse was blindly staring toward Penny's door deep in thought before he acknowledged Sheldon by him.

"Sheldon…"

"Drat, this is hard!" Sheldon drew quiet again.

"I'm sorry, Sparky… you must really open your mouth a bit wider when you speak." He paused to move his cigar back and forth before Sheldon's face. "I didn't hear a single thing you said!"

Sheldon stared at him very annoyed. Jesse just didn't recognize nor cower in his presence like the guys. At that moment, Penny suddenly opened her door upset and exasperated. "Out! Out!" She was calling to someone. "No, not by the window! The door! The door!" Coming around her were two little brunette girls in similar matching outfits. They were the same girls the guys had seen before in the apartment the other morning; they looked like Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez trapped in early prepubescence. At seven years old, little Samantha had beautiful long dark hair with spirited mischief-filled brown eyes and perfect alabaster skin with light pink lips. She wore a dark high-buttoned dress with a dark brown skirt to her knees and high socks with flat-soled shoes. Half a foot shorter, Nikki was five-and-a-half years old, dressed exactly like her sister with two braided pigtails hanging off her shoulders and looking up with two effervescent brown eyes excitedly and mischievously up to her father.

"What are you two little cadavers doing in this nice lady's apartment?" Jesse looked over his progeny, took Nikki by the arm and pulled her up to his eye level like a monkey climbing up her father.

"Exploring…." Samantha looked over all the adult faces. "You said we couldn't play in the basement anymore."

"It's very dirty down there..." Jesse told Leonard.

"They crawled in through my window!" Penny announced exasperatedly. "What kind of kids crawl outside the walls of a building?!"

"Don't all kids like to climb?" Jesse jostled Nikki with one hand and taking his cigar from his mouth with the other. Sheldon made a face to Leonard silently to deal with the matter and turned to head frustratingly into his apartment. Sighing a bit, Jesse jostled his baby girl looking at him then looked down to Samantha. "Listen, girls, I know it's a lot of fun to climb, but you could fall and hurt someone underneath you." He gestured with his cigar. "Now, we don't want that, do we?"

"No, father…" The girls lowered their heads.

"Great!" Jesse placed his cigar in his teeth and dropped Nikki back down to her feet. "Now, go tell your mother I'll be up in a Transylvanian minute." He smiled and chuckled to see them heading up the stairs by Penny's door. Penny and Leonard shared a covert look between themselves.

"They're not normal little girls, are they?" Leonard watched.

"Oh, they're normal enough…."

"You're not going to punish them?" Penny asked.

"Well, I could…" Jesse puffed on his cigar. "But you see, if I tell them not to do something, they're just going to want to do it anyway, but if I explain the consequences, well…." He paused a moment. "Penny, you know, the wife and I were kind of hoping to go out again tonight, and grand-mama went back to Salem…"

"Salem?"

"Oregon…" Leonard pointed out.

"Good memory…" Jesse pointed at Leonard with his cigar. "Anyway, we could use a babysitter tonight. Would you like to do it?"

Penny looked to Leonard and back to Jesse.

"Not for a thousand dollars!"

"I'll make it two thousand then…." Jesse postured with his cigar. "See you at 6:30." He placed his stogie to his lips and turned to prance up the stairs. Penny stood shocked. Babysit those creepy little girls?

"What the hell happened?" She asked Leonard.

"Sounds like you have a babysitting gig…" He grinned and turned to his apartment chuckling under his breath.