Chapter 2 - Private Collection

As she walked home in the rain, she wondered what Fry would say to her when she got indoors. As she pushed the front door open, the only thing she could hear was the TV playing and the baby crying... but where was Fry? As she couldn't see him, she began to call out his name. "Fry? Oh, Fry?" She kept calling louder and louder, so she'd get a reply of some kind... but nothing. "Fry where are you... answer me?"

Not even the helpless Fry would collect a baby from its sitter, and just leave it at home alone. Then she heard a booming, tumultuous noise coming from the bathroom. CCRRAAASH!

She swiftly darted over to the bathroom, to see if Fry was OK, for if there ever was any sort of crash in the house, Fry usually had something to do with it. This time, not just the entire bathroom ceiling had fallen over the top of Fry, but also the obese landlady from upstairs.

The moment the fat landlady had decided to take a bath, Fry had also decided to go to the toilet, or it could have been vice-versa. This meant that there was also an obese, bathing beauty who was awaiting Leela's help, as well as the lazy slob.

From underneath all the rubble and sawdust, the only thing Leela could hear, was a tiny squeaking voice, like a mouse, coming from under all the mess on the floor. "Leela, Leela help me," pleaded the little voice. "Get the fat mamma off me." And, as always, Leela was ready to help Fry, who forever needed rescuing.

Leela attempted to lift the heavy rubble, that used to belong to her late ceiling - or the landlady's late floor - and put most of it to one side of the room. After she had just about managed to pull them both out from underneath the mess, she gave the landlady a blanket to cover herself with, as she didn't have any clothing to fit her. The fat lady then went upstairs to her own apartment, and got the Frys an appointment with the builders for one month's time. She, herself, also needed a new bathroom fitted into her home, but as the plumbers couldn't supply her with a new bathroom, until it had a floor; she too had to await the arrival of the builders.

The fat landlady always complained that all workmen charged too much money, for too little work, moaning and groaning, usually because she was always the one that had to pay their bills. The date the builders had given her also seemed to mean that there would be rubble in the Frys' bathroom for another month. But, at least they should feel lucky that the toilet hadn't smashed to pieces, unlike the entire bathroom of the lady's upstairs. This seemed to mean that, for now, there was a gigantic hole in their ceiling, which also meant that the lives of the whole household would be disrupted for a month, until the builders could find it in their hearts to arrive and rebuild the entire place back up again.

A month had past since that calamity. The appointment with the builders seemed to have been arranged for the same day that both Leela and Fry were supposed to be on a three day sleep-in special delivery. This meant that one of them had to stay home for at least five days to keep an eye on the workmen, for that was how long the work would take. Leela had taken a week off her holiday entitlement to make sure that there was constantly somebody at the apartment, as Fry was extremely eager to get his hands on the controls, and captain the ship for two to three days.

Fry tried his best to assure Leela of the safety of the ship in his hands. ''Don't worry Leela, I can command the ship for a few days, and I promise I won't drink and drive." They gave each other a little goodbye kiss, and Fry was off like a shot.

As Fry had left at 9am, and the builders wouldn't be coming until 9.30am, it left her a little time to tidy up a couple of the rooms that the workmen might possibly pass through... except the bathroom, of course. She never really had much time to do that much housework nowadays, as most of her cleaning was limited, due to other chores that came her way: mostly scrubbing down the spaceship, and a handful of other time-consuming little duties.

After she completed any work that needed to be done in her home, she went over to her just awoken baby and began to sing Rock-a-Bye-Baby to Alison, in order to get her back to sleep. But, she was suddenly disturbed from doing that, by somebody knocking at the door. She knew who it was immediately... after all, the fat lady had made an appointment for 9.30am, and it wasn't even a couple of minutes gone that.

When Leela answered the door, she stood there, almost paralysed for several seconds; her jaw dropped wide open and her eye practically popped out, in temporary shock. Although there were two workmen standing there, who both wore dirty blue jeans, dirty white T-shirt, safety helmet, and a yellow tool-belt wrapped around their waists, one of them, seemingly the head workman, carrying a big metal toolbox in one hand and a stash of forms in the other, was Leela's secret fling!

"It's... you," the stunned mystery guy managed to spurt out, still completely mesmerized by seeing her again.

"It's... you... too," repeated Leela, in a very slow and similar tone.

As they stared at each other, the assistant workman took it upon himself to intrude on their scene. "Do you two know each other by some strange chance?" he asked. "Because I'm me, my name's Chuck, and I'm here to do a job... not to watch two people gawking at each other... Now, fallen ceiling, wasn't it?"

"Umm... ahhh... yes, that's right," stammered Leela. "Right this way."

Only Chuck followed Leela through the hallway and into the bathroom, where the rubble lay. He took a long look at it, then shouted to his supervisor, still waiting at the door, "I think It'll take till noon to clear this mess away, if we start immediately. Then we can start rebuilding it, what do you think, Harry?"

Leela made her way back to the front door and enquired, "So that's your name Mr Mystery Fella... Harry?"

"That's right," he finally answered. "Now, all I have printed on my forms, are Mr P and Mrs T L Fry, apartment 1I. Now, are you going to tell me your first name, or shall I try to guess what the T and L stands for?"

"My name's Leela, Turanga Leela. Now, come on in if you're going to get any work done. Besides, I've still got a baby to get to sleep, and you're disturbing me." Harry apologized, for their interruption, then joined his workmate in the bathroom.

Later on during the day, if one of them wanted to use the bathroom, they each had to throw the other two out, and keep their fingers crossed that the landlady from upstairs wasn't watching through the ceiling. When it was finally Harry's time to use the bathroom again, just before lunchbreak, Leela and Chuck did their rightful duty of waiting outside.

It was just then, that the workmate took it upon himself to reveal his unsuspecting friend's big secret. "I thought I ought to tell you this, because you're the only purple haired lady, and cyclops, I've ever seen in my life... I was on a double-date with Harry, and his voluptuous, blonde, bimbo wife, Carol, last week, together with a girlfriend of mine. We were sitting at a bar in a club, when Carol just happened to mention that about a month ago Harry had started to do a private collection of nude paintings and drawings of her. Well, she then added that with all these pictures, he'd asked her to wear a long purple wig, and had joined her eyes together to make a kind of cyclops We all just laughed it off; thought he had a secret love for mythology or something."

As Harry walked out of the bathroom, the caught-in-the-act look on Chuck's face was all it took to let his supervisor know that he had just been snitched on. He looked at Leela slightly embarrassed. "OK, how much exactly has he told you?" he asked, curiously.

"Your friend has been telling me all about your so-called... private collection," she smiled, craftily.

Noticing that they needed to be alone, Chuck decided to go to lunch by himself. "I think I'd better go," he announced, leaving them to sort their situation out by themselves.

Leela chuckled, as Harry went bright red with embarrassment. "You don't have to be afraid, I actually take it as a compliment."

"Really! I thought ya'd be angry, ya know how women get, nowadays."

Leela got slightly pissed off with that remark, raising her voice to indicate displeasure. "What do you mean, 'ya know how women get, nowadays'? Don't you know all women are different, therefore we all think differently?" She saw him looking a little apologetic with shame, therefore calmed herself down.

She still seemed to be very inquisitive about his previous actions. "Mind you, I would like to know why you made an art collection of naked ladies imitating me though, just out of curiosity? I mean, we both got dressed under the sheets, so you couldn't have seen much to paint, and even if we possibly did have a night of affection, we were both so drunk that neither of us were able to remember any of it anyway."

Harry rubbed the back of his head, feeling nervous about how to approach this. "That's just it, ya see... I wanted to remember ya exactly how I last saw ya... plus whatever I imagined ya might look like underneath the sheets. I s'pose the guessing part's the most exciting... huh?"

Leela felt very much infatuated by him, yet she tried not to show it and stood there silent.

He therefore decided that his best policy was to continue with explaining his true feelings to her. "You amazed and mystified me in a way I've never been touched by a woman before. Please forgive me, but I always imagined that a cyclops would be a grotesque, gruesome monster, but when I saw the angel lying before me, I guess I just fell in love with ya face. I'm sorry, but I never wanted to forget ya, so I felt that if I put ya on canvass, I'd have ya forever."

Flattered, she queried, "Can I ask, that without knowing my name, what did you, by chance, name your collection?"

"I had to make up a name for ya myself, so I chose Violet after the colour of ya hair."

Leela gave out a small chuckle, but soon got back to her interrogation. "You never did find out what I really looked like underneath those sheets, did you?"

The married man's heart began to pump faster, at what the married woman seemed to have proposed. "Was that an offer, because if it was, well we haven't got long before Chuck gets back from his lunchbreak?"

"I didn't say anything about doing that with you," Leela giggled, coyly.

"Well, you certainly seemed to hint it."

Her adrenalin began to flow as fast as her companion's, as her pulse started to race as fast as her fancy. She soon found herself breathing heavily, joining Harry in the silly uttered conversations appearing as her blood pumped harder. "Ohhh... why are you so hard to resist," she finally blurted out, when she could help herself no more. She grabbed hold of his face, and smothered its entire surface area in dozens of little kisses.

As he grabbed and kissed her back, between his smooches, he managed to whisper, sensuously, to her, "Forget about Chuck, what time's ya man coming home?"

"No, we mustn't forget about Chuck, he'll be here in about half-an-hour, but Fry won't be back for another two to three days now."

He took hold of her even tighter. "Does that mean I can come back in the evenings too, so we can have the nights together as well as the days?"

Leela's reply was hungry, "Ohhh yes! Harry, kiss me, so I'll remember you this time, make me feel like a... satisfied woman, a wanted woman!"

While still holding her tightly, he pushed his lips to hers passionately, as she did likewise. They both fell to their knees, and just did it, there and then, outside the bathroom door.

After Chuck's workshift had finished at 5pm, Harry stayed behind with Leela, as Fry had left his beautiful, yet lonely, wife in the clasps of an equally attractive, lonely man. As her new friend was now her guest though, she had sat him down next to her on her three seater burgundy couch, and made him comfortable with coffee and doughnuts.

While talking to each other about themselves, they gradually got on to the other people in their lives. "I know ya have a six month old daughter, because she's in the bedroom, but I don't know much about ya husband, except that he's a compulsive gambler. Tell me about Fry, and then I'll tell you about Carol."

Leela took a deep breath, ready to list the details and faults of her husband. "Well, he's not just a compulsive gambler, he's completely obsessed with his toy robot, Bender. Everything Bender does, he seems to do exactly the same: Bender gambles thousands at a time, he gambles the same amount; Bender has to drink to stay sober, but Fry's now turning into an alcoholic; Bender chases and chats up robot babes, without being the proud owner of a wiener, and as for Fry, well he just says he enjoys the variety; Bender never lifts a finger for the delivery service we all work for, and other than captaining the ship for the next couple of days, because that's usually my job, Fry's really idle and lazy."

Harry cut in, "OK, I think I get the picture. Is that him over there?" He pointed to a large framed wedding photo, hanging on the wall.

"Yeah, that's him, but I still don't know much about your wife, except that she's a curvy, blonde bimbo... Carol was it?"

"That's right, and she's very similar to your Fry in many ways, too. For a start, she's always in that casino, spending every last penny in my pocket, and I, like an idiot, work all the God-given hours to feed her gambling habit." He began to spill out his wife's life-story, like Leela did Fry's. "And not just that, but she's also an alcoholic. She'll sleep with anyone who'll buy her a drink... and that includes both men and women!"

He took a long sip of his coffee, then continued, "I work my socks off to afford her. She's completely useless, ya know. She acts like a 5 year-old in furs... I really can't talk to her at all. Ya know, I only got her to pose for those paintings by offering to buy her a red hover car."

While looking into her half-empty mug, she felt that there were a couple of things she forgot to mention. "You're right, your Carol seems very similar to Fry, despite just a couple of carnal wants though. Fry isn't quite an alcoholic yet, not unless Bender gets his way with him. Oh yes, and I don't think either of them are into boys... not that I know of, anyway."

"Well, aren't you the lucky one. Carol entertains all sorts, every day of the week. She'll probably be entertaining several of her so-called friends she's found in a casino or bar somewhere to an erotic party of some sort tonight, as well."

He then went onto a little secret of his own. "To tell ya the truth, I haven't had any real affections for her in months, her antics have turned me off her in that way. I sometimes sleep at Chuck's place to get away from her, unless, of course, I find somewhere else to crash out, like tonight, here with you. But Chuck needs privacy of his own, so I can't always use that as an escape.

"I suppose you're going to ask why I continue to stay with her... but I can't really answer that. Maybe it's because I feel she's vulnerable, and I'm somehow responsible for her in some way. I don't know, that makes me sound like her father or something... rather than her husband."

He paused for a few seconds, then his face seemed to light up with a thought that entertained him. "Anyway, I've gotta get her to pose for that Violet collection you've been hearing so much about."

They sat in silence for a moment, pondering what life had been like to them. Leela was still confused, and needed a further explanation. "But, how could you two have fallen out of love with each other after just one year?" Leela asked, curiously, as she finished off her doughnut, bringing a napkin to her lips, cleaning off the crumbs and sugar.

He swallowed hard, as he prepared to tell her all. "I was the fool who married the beautiful woman he picked up in the casino, not thinking about the consequences. But, if what you're really asking is: 'why don't I do it with her anymore?' Well, not only am I turned off with her goings on... I'm also frightened... in case I catch something from her. I mean, I'm not 35-years-old yet, and I don't wanna go mad before my time, like I heard some of these diseases can do to you."

Leela looked extremely shocked, as she was only 33-years-old herself, yet wondered why she'd never thought of it before. "Do you really think it's something worth worrying about? I mean, as far as I know, Fry sleeps around like crazy, but I've never noticed anything strange down below."

Harry felt a little perturbed, realizing the situation. "Don't you think you ought to have a check-up, or something?"

"I suppose you're right," she concurred, absorbing everything he was saying to her, realizing her own carelessness. "Maybe I'll go and have a test for any sexually transmitted diseases tomorrow, while Fry's still on his special delivery. Harry, I'm sorry... I didn't realize... it just never crossed my mind that he could have given me something, or that I could have possibly given it to you... not until you just mentioned it anyway." She suddenly felt extremely guilty about not realizing the possibility, feeling that she had failed not only herself, but someone else as well. Harry, however, put his arm around her, comforting her selflessly, knowing the fear and anxiety that would be going through her mind.

Harry slept with Leela overnight, in her conjugal bed, keeping her company - Carol wouldn't have noticed he was missing, anyway, and it would also mean that Chuck wouldn't have his privacy invaded again. He stayed for breakfast at her apartment, then he left bright and early to pick up his assistant, and the company hover van, which was kept at his friend's apartment.