Chapter Eleven
"What are you doing?"
Greg jumped and spun around to face Bianca, feeling guiltier than he needed to. "I had sent the time machine back to Larry and Balki's apartment. Balki begged me to let him use it to show Larry something on Mypos, I think. So I told them they could use it, but only for an hour. Now I'm back with the machine."
He waited for Bianca to ask him if he needed to be put on crazy meds, but instead she just sighed heavily and nodded. Greg had noticed that Bianca was becoming even more depressed in the past twenty-four hours. She hid it well at first, but now, she wasn't even trying to mask her inner pain.
"Bianca, why don't you get something to eat?" Greg suggested with a smile.
"I'm not hungry," she muttered before turning around and walking away.
As soon as she was gone, Greg quickly entered her other time machine and traveled to the only other person who night know what to do.
"Oh, hello. To what do I owe this pleasure?" Serge drawled as Greg walked up to the front desk at his art gallery.
"It's Bianca. Why else do you think I would be coming here?" Greg quipped, giving him his best 'duh' face.
"Is she okay? She's not done anything crazy, has she?" Serge queried, immediately entering concerned mode. "You know, when I left, she seemed very upset."
"She's extraordinarily upset. Increasingly so. It's not just a one-man job to help her anymore. I need back-up. Any chance you can claim to go on sabbatical from this place for awhile and help me help Bianca?" Greg spouted, not believing his ears as he said the next words aloud. "I need you."
"Normally, I would say 'harrumph' to your idea, but since it's for Miss Bianca, I can only say 'hello sabbatical' and 'goodbye beloved art galleria'," Serge replied, scribbling a note and tearing it off the pad. "Let's go!"
Greg watched as he taped the note to the door, posted the "Closed" sign and entered Bianca's time machine.
"Oh, we have to stop by my penthouse first; I need to pack for my Miss Bianca sabbatical," Serge added.
"Oh, brother," Greg mumbled. Already he was beginning to wish he had never used the term 'sabbatical'. A 'short stay' would have worked much better.
Balki watched as Larry tipped the Maalox bottle to his lips and gulped it as if it were water.
"Balki, when is Bianca coming back? She hasn't been here in days and I need to see her," Larry said, desperation and anxiety in his voice. "We had the machine and Greg said she wasn't feeling well, but he was lying; I could feel it!"
"Cousin, it is cold and flu season, even in the future. Maybe she caught a germ," he replied, saying the last word slowly, knowing how freaked out Larry was about the tiny creatures. "She will come and when she does, we will sit down and have a long talk. Everything will be okay, Cousin. Balki can see the light at the end of the turtle."
"That's tunnel; light at the end of the tunnel, Balki," Larry growled through gritted teeth. "And how can you be so sure? Balki, all these dreams-no scratch that-nightmares we have been having are driving me crazy. If Bianca is having them too, she must think I hate her! No wonder she hasn't come back; I wouldn't come back!"
Balki grabbed the Maalox out of Larry's hands just as he was about to take another swig. "Oh, po po. If there's one thing I know about Bianca, it's that she isn't scared of no bad dreams. She survived her aunt making her life miserable, she invents machines that blow my mind, she was kidnapped by her crazy half-cousin and his hunchbacks Quinn and Alek, watched her friend get shot and she is still okay. Bianca Pierson is one tough cookie cutter. She not going to let silly dreams keep her from what she loves, which is you. You are the Moolinki to her Loaf. The slop to her trough. The bibbi to her bobka…"
"Okay, Okay! I got it! But I still need to see her and I need to tell her face-to-face that…it's over."
"Guess who's going to be staying here for a few days while I'm on sabbatical?" Serge asked giddily as he jumped into the living room to surprise Bianca.
Bianca just looked up at him from her position on the sofa. "You're on sabbatical because of me," she told him, her voice sounding like that of a robot.
Serge recoiled but quickly regained his composure. "Don't be stupid; I'm not on sabbatical because of you; I'm two-tenths Roman Catholic and one-eighth Buddhist. It's my spiritual right! So, how are you?" he asked, bouncing down on the sofa beside her.
"Considering the man I love won't tell his girlfriend the truth because these dreams we're having makes him hate me, I'm peachy," she retorted. "Look, can you just leave me alone for a while? I really don't feel like talking about this or anything else right now."
"Ouch! You really know how to twist a knife in my heart, you know it?" He started to get up, but saw she was looking at a small package on the coffee table with her name written on it. "What's that?"
"I found it at Grandfather's. Why he had a package hidden in his house with my name, I don't know. There's a DVD inside."
Now Serge was curious. "What movie is it? Maybe it's old embarrassing home movies. I could make up some popped corn and we could watch it together."
Bianca shook her head. "I don't know that I want to watch it. The DVD says, 'The Truth: Watch Alone'. Sounds a little hokey and cryptic to me."
Serge gulped. Maybe Bianca was right. Maybe it was best that she didn't watch the DVD. Which only meant one thing: he needed to watch it for her. After all, that's what friends on sabbatical were for, right?
Larry knew he needed to go to sleep, but he was afraid to for fear of what he might dream. "I know what will help: if I watch a movie. One preferably without guns or violence." While Larry might not have liked Greg completely, he had been pleased when Greg gave them a VCR last week as a gift. As he sat on the couch, he leaned down and opened one of the cabinets in the coffee table and looked at the various VHS tapes, also provided by Greg. "No, no, no, no," he repeated, scanning the titles one-by-one. "Well, there's nothing here," he sighed, standing up and realizing his fate. Whether he wanted to or not, he had to go to sleep, which meant probably dreaming some other terrible dream.
"Hey, Cousin," Balki said as they met in the small hallway between their bedrooms and bathroom. "Going to bed?"
"I guess, but the cable is out, so if you're going to watch TV, you'll have to watch a VHS tape. Goodnight, Balki," he answered sadly.
"Goodnight, Cousin," Balki replied.
As soon as Larry was gone, Balki walked over to the mail that lay on the bar and found the package addressed to both he and Larry. Balki had wanted to tell Larry that they had gotten a new movie in the mail, but he knew his cousin had other things on his mind. Taking the movie out of the package, he smiled at the title: "Bianca's Truth".
"A movie with another girl named Bianca!" he exclaimed excitedly before jumping over the sofa and putting the movie in the VCR. "I know this movie is gonna be good!"
Suddenly, a familiar face appeared on the screen, but it wasn't a famous actor or actress. This was someone Balki knew personally, and he was sitting in a chair inside a room filled with books. And he was talking about Bianca Pierson!
Balki listened carefully to what the man was saying, but it didn't make very much sense to him. The only thing that did make sense was the man on the video was saying bad things that couldn't be true. "Cousin!" he yelled, but Larry didn't answer. "He must be asleep already. I guess I can tell him about this tomorrow and he can make heads or snails about it."
And with that, Balki ejected the tape, put it back in the case and got ready to go to bed, leaving it on the coffee table.
