AN: Having a few really crazy work days, hence some delays in posts. Thanks for the reviews.
Celeste and Jess had next taken Evie to check out the daycare, as planned, having already made the appointment. Besides Celeste felt like she needed to cool down before jumping into any further strategic planning that concerned Taylor.
They toured the nondescript red brick 1980s building, located about ten minutes walk from the town square, thoroughly. Despite the fact that there weren't too many kids there in the summer, Evie had seemed pretty content playing with some Legos while Jess and Celeste talked to one of the teachers. Then again - she liked Legos wherever she went. However, what turned out to be an obstacle was that they weren't town citizens yet, apparent that playing a role in priority over vacant spots and they seemed to have a waiting list already. Not wanting to frustrate herself with another set of town rules that weren't at their favor at that moment, Celeste decided they'll call once they had more concrete information about their living arrangements. It all seemed to come down to Taylor.
"Let just go check this place on Elm my mom mentioned, okay?" Jess suggested supportively, trying to look past the initial prejudice about Hattie. If he didn't, he wouldn't be much better than Taylor in judging people by their past actions, would he?
"Sure," Celeste shrugged, inside clearly wanting to rant and come up with a fight plan against Taylor, her mind being somewhat distracted. Being against bullies, that she considered also her own brother to be too, ran deep in her, and even if it came to seemingly 'by the book' kind of things like Taylor seemed to be doing.
They passed the firehouse as they walked - the place was already growing on them their gaze now beginning to look at with a differently, noticing the little things. The continued past Luke's and Ms. Patty's, getting a few friendly nods from a couple of people, one of them from one of the wedding guests from a couple of weeks ago, which to left Celeste with surprisingly welcoming feeling, making her for a moment recall why they had in fact come here. The town troubadour playing a song about 'walking in circles' - they didn't stick around to listen, but there was a certain irony about that - in a way they were all walking in circles, looking for something. Soon enough, past Kim's Antiques there was the place Jess had noticed before and her mother had mentioned.
There were about six-seven other kids playing in the yard of the two-storey white Colonial, the yard itself largely placed under majestic oak and maple trees. The house didn't seem to be anything special, but the yard however, was definitely a little out of the ordinary and besides a swing set, there were no traditional elements of most playgrounds. Instead, there were small artificial hillslopes, tree trunks left to be used as tables and chairs, small tiki-tents with live vegetation creating their canopies. Parts of the ground were covered in gravel, some in sand and some with small pebbles, some with shredded tree bark, clearly attempting to achieve some sort of a textural difference. But despite some of the kids being a little muddy from the water play, which consisted of a small water tank with a tap and a rain gutter like slide for the water that went on for about 10 ft downhill and which could be cut off by various obstacles, they really did look happy.
"Well this is different," Jess noted, tucking his hands into his pockets as he observed. It definitely wasn't the bubble wrapped kind of environment most schools in New York seemed to offer.
"I think I've read something about these, they're pretty 'in' in Germany," Celeste commented, as they stepped through its gate. All things baby related had been one thing she'd really missed about Europe - the normality of all things natural and organic, a lifestyle that was slightly less sheltered and more science-based. She'd taken as much as she could to Evies upbringing already - concerning what she ate, at least most of the time, to what she wore, and which toys and books she bought her. And as a concept a daycare like that certainly had its draw to her.
"Hi!" Celeste waved at the two teachers who stood in the shade of one of the trees chatting, watching the kids play, clearly not needing to intervene.
"Hi, how can I help you?" the older woman, who she presumed was Hattie, asked cheerily. She was definitely a people person - lively, a little bubbly perhaps, but definitely the type kids loved.
"We're looking into some daycare options for Evie here, we were wondering if you could tell me a little about what you do and how long of a waiting list you have?" she inquired, trying to hold Evie still, so she wouldn't go off running towards the playground just yet.
"Oh, you can let her go play if you like, she clearly wants to," the woman suggested.
"Well alright then," Celeste relented, adding, "go on Evie." Strangely enough the girl who often was a little shy at first in new places clearly was more smitten by the attractions than afraid of any of it, and trotted towards other kids.
"My name is Harriet Hibbert, but people call me Hattie," she introduced herself, continuing.
"Jess Mariano, this is Celeste," Jess began adding, "I think you know my mother Liz."
"That's right!" she exclaimed.
They continued to discuss for a while the methodologies used in this daycare which seemed to be an adaptation of Montessori pedagogics with leaning slightly more towards the outside learning philosophy.
"So they spend a lot of time out here? How much exactly?" Celeste inquired.
"Well pretty much all day if the weather is nice, we have a nice shade here so there's no reason to worry about the kids getting too much sun. They always have the possibility to play inside, but anyone hardly ever wants to," she explained. "They eat inside and nap there, but most of the classes we do outside too. Even in the rainier months or winter months it really is the matter of having good layered clothing and we always make sure nobody is cold or wet. Sure we're not outside all day in that case but usually we make it a point to explore all types of weather at least for a couple of hours," Hattie explained.
"And how many kids do you have here?" Jess asked.
"15 altogether, but we like it small. Many come here but switch over to the state school at some point because the state only covers 50% of the tuition here, so I can't blame them. Here, let me give you our tuition table," she said, stepping inside the sunroom briefly to get them a printout. "And feel free to check Yelp, we have excellent reviews," Hattie added proudly.
"You don't have some clause about having to be a registered resident for extended periods of time, do you?" Jess inquired, feeling a little humoured by the obstacles the town seemed to be throwing their way.
"Oh no, we don't have that. We actually just recently had the Thompson twins move to Hartford so we have some vacancy right now even," Hattie explained.
The two briefly glanced at Evie, who was happily elbows deep in some mud pies at that moment, and then at each-other.
"Do you think you could hold one of those spots for Evie? I want to look into this real quick before we decide, but if possible we could perhaps do a trial day next Friday?" Celeste explained, knowing they'd be there next week again. She wanted to run the place through google real quick and ask Sarah for some inside scoop, just in case, but other than that she was sold. The place was even located more centrally the idea of walking everywhere, if they did end up getting the firehouse, having a real appeal to her.
"Next Friday should work fine. I'll just give you some paperwork to fill out already, so you can bring those along when you come," Hattie suggested.
Getting Evie out of there was definitely not an easy task, but a good sign at the same time. Celeste had never truly understood the love for all thing sterile some US mom's seemed to have, having seen more than once parents scolding their kids for touching soil or water - sure, hands needed to be washed before eating after something like that, but there was no reason to panic over it. Even she'd grown up playing around in the gardens of their 16th arrondissement's mansion, having gotten lucky, thinking back, with one of the nannies she'd had back then.
"That place seemed nice," Celeste exhaled as they finally walked out of there, having distracted Evie with her water bottle that she was now drinking from in large gulps, clearly feeling parched, while sitting in her stroller.
"Not bad, no," Jess said with some reservations, as he pushed the stroller in front of him, as they now headed towards Maple street, hoping to catch up with Lorelai, Celeste wanting to pick her brain about Taylor.
It took them a good three hours - Lorelai retelling every odd situation she'd ever had with Taylor, most of them involving something or other about the Dragonfly. There was the story about getting the place renovated, and also the one about changing the street names, which thankfully hadn't lasted very long. Luke also pitched in with a few of his own stories.
"So he says he is waiting for counter offers, right? So why don't you guys, or we, give him some? And I mean some really interesting ones," Lorelai suggested with a wink.
"If you'll think that'll work?" Celeste hesitated, still feeling a little unsure how Taylor should be handled. She was actually better at straightforward confrontation when she had all the facts to support her, that scheming to be frank.
"Hey - when you got nothing, you got nothing to lose," Lorelai said dramatically, citing the Titanic.
Finny was quite fond of the colorful stipes of tape plastered across and under Rory's belly, almost creating a smiley face, hence insisting Rory should keep her bump exposed all times, which of course meant that Rory was pretty much waddled around the penthouse in her short sporting shorts and a sports bra, only a light kimono on her shoulder on occasion. She was sure Maya didn't much appreciate her wardrobe these days, her being a slightly more traditional kind of woman, but Rory no longer cared - the 94 degree weather being a lot more than she could take with more clothes on. So there she sat, on the recliner on the porch, most of her day, her kinesio tape smiling at the world or her feet dipped into Finny's kiddy pool.
"Gigi, hi," Rory picked up her phone, seeing her number.
"Hey Rory," she replied.
"I was waiting when you'd call, I already saw your decorator yesterday," Rory commented, having seen the purple haired 20-something know-it-all of a decorator running around their house sighing demonstratively how last year the pavilion grey on their walls was. Clearly the woman had big plans for the upstairs.
"Yeah, I was wondering what your exact moving plans were. I don't particularly feel like hanging out here in Boston on my own, to be honest," Gigi said. Christopher had just left for Tokyo, and Gigi was staying with their housekeeper at their townhowse for now.
"It'll take us about a week to get packed here, but you're welcome to crash if you want. It's a simple pullout in the nursery right now, which we will probably move amongst the first of our things," Rory explained their plans.
"Oh, I didn't mean crash. I have friends there and I could stay at a hotel, but I'd much rather just go crash at my new place," Gigi replied.
For a moment Rory didn't know where to begin. Sure, Christopher was pitching in for her place, having not taken 'no' for an answer, but she still didn't quite appreciate her tone. The girl was 16 years old - a minor - and as long as she was being the responsible one in this family line - there would be no staying at friend's she never met or at hotels. Did hotels even let minor stay at them alone? - she pondered. Honstly she didn't want to know.
Rory let out a deep exhale trying to wrap her brain around what and how she was going to say.
"I'll call you back on Facetime," she simply said, buying her some time to gather her thoughts.
A half a minute later, she did.
"Gigi, I have nothing against you coming to the City a little early, and sure, you can go hang out with your friends but that on the condition that you are back home or our house by 10 PM and always text me back if I ask about your whereabouts. Sure sometimes there may be exceptions but since I am the one responsible for you here if something were to happen to you, finger cross that it won't, these are the things I need you to promise to me. You can't just treat this as a convenient solution so you can party every night or whatever it is you like to do. And I know I am just making assumptions here, but that's the feel I am getting from you when you're asking me things like that. I know you are very experienced in the world, you've lived in big cities, you are used to having money to spend and getting everything you want, but if this is going to work - there's going to have to be some mutual understanding and respect, okay?" Rory lectured.
Rory thought she'd put it well, but she really couldn't be sure. This was the reason why she preferred the written word - she could go over every meaning and comma in her mind a thousand times. Now she was unsure, whether she'd just offended her - and pushed her away so she would never be close to her. She almost expected 'you're not my mother, you can't tell me what to do' come over her lips next. She tried to read her face, but if anything it was a little surprised - they'd probably never exchanged any words that had been that serious.
"But you said no curfew," she attempted to argue.
"I said we'll come to an agreement, and I honestly think 10 PM is very understanding for someone your age in New York. This is what we have to go on for now - if I see that you are responsible enough, we can review these things - but honestly at this point I don't even really know you that well," she replied honestly.
"Why did you even said I could come then? I would've been just as well in a boarding school," Gigi said, ungratefully.
"Wow, Gigi. You know what - go to a boarding school if that's what you think is better for you. And excuse me for actually wanting to get to know you," Rory huffed. Her hormones were clearly making her a little emotional and she didn't want to cry in front of her, hence she simply disconnected the call.
She tried to repeat to herself that Gigi was really just a teenager, teenagers didn't think all that thoroughly about what they said or how they said it.
"Everything okay?" Logan came around the corner, having heard her upset tone across the balcony, as his study doors had been opened, and took a seat by her on the recliner, stroking her back.
Rory was taking deep breaths, trying to calm herself, wiping the occasional tear from her cheek with the back of her hand.
"Gigi is a spoiled, ungrateful…," she shook her head, clearly already regretting ever having decided to do this. She knew that part of the problem was that she had never been in Gigi's position - she'd been just the small town girl from a humble home.
"And she's a teenager," Logan sighed. "And hey, if she doesn't like our rules, she can find herself another place," he added, having caught some bits and pieces of their conversation.
"I know, you're right," she exhaled, knowing herself that her reaction was way stronger than needed.
"And if all else fails we'll just mail her to Tokyo or something, you know like Nermal," Logan chuckled, trying to cheer her up.
"Garfield tried to send Nermal to Abu Dhabi," Rory corrected, chuckling through the last of her tears.
"Well, not much difference these days," Logan chuckled, having just been there some years ago and having a fairly fresh reference.
It was next Thursday and a large portion of Stars Hollow had gathered up for a town meeting. After two very excruciating hours of listening Taylor go on and on about leash laws, the Scarecrow fest organization issues, results of a reception provider's study conducted on the town coverage and whether something should be done about the tourist rush the town was experiencing limiting eating out possibilities for locals during lunch hour, Jess was already shifting in his seat restlessly, wanting to get out of there. It had been ages since he'd been to this things, and beside a slight technological advancement in form of actually having a projector in the room, not much had changed.
"How long will this last, do you think?" Celeste whispered to Lorelai, who was sitting next to her.
"There's no knowing," she replied, as she was munching on a box of popcorn, and offered her some.
Then almost unexpectedly, just as Taylor finished a lecture about town troubadour's playlist, Ms. Patty announced, "Meeting adjourned, people. Good night!" with a deep sigh.
"Taylor, we were supposed to discuss the firehouse," Lorelai stood and reminded him, seeing he was beginning to pack up his things and get ready to leave.
"Oh, that's right," he recalled, reluctantly. "Meeting of town elders, Ms Patty, can you be a dear and go ask William to come back, I doubt he's gotten very far," he added, seeing the other four guys still by the entrance, who seemed to sigh reluctantly and return to their seats. It was already late.
"He'll be here in a minute," Ms Patty replied, having waved to William form the door instead of calling him.
"So, I see we have some competing offers for the property at 18 Park Street, the Stars Hollow 1 fire department. As soon as William will get here, we will listen to all proposals one by one and then we will discuss and decide who gets to have the place," Taylor explained, clearly getting a bit of a power trip out of all of this as he glanced around the dance studio, now left half empty.
Next to Luke and Lorelai also sat Lane and Leo besides him, his nose in a nintendo console Lorelai had bought him when he was sick, and a few rows behind her Babette and Morye.
"Here you are, William, please take a seat," Taylor gestured out a seat for the senior in a red velour tracksuit pushing a rollator in front of him.
The front row now seated five seniors, one worse off than the other, clearly pushing their bedtimes already by the looks of their yawns.
"Well at least this time we don't have to be in a steam room," Luke grumbled to Jess from the corner of his mouth, his arms crossed on his chest.
"Alright, people, let start with the first proposal," Taylor said and stepped aside and took a seat.
"That would be us, Taylor," Babette began in a raspy voice and walked to the front, Ms. Patty clearly eyeing her friend questioningly to what she was up to.
"The floor is yours," Taylor added.
"We'd like to make the firehouse into an adult club, you know, dancers and tight outfits. The building sets the perfect scene and it already has the pole. Some nights would be men's nights and lady's nights. And of course we'd have to apply for a liquor licence as well," Babette explained.
Lorelai tried to hold her laughter along with some others.
Taylor rolled his eyes at their suggestion naturally, as she continued to explain her plans on stage placement and lighting.
"And we're willing to make you an offer of 10 000," Babette finished their proposal.
"Next?" Taylor said as he was making notes, shaking his head.
"That would be me," Lane announced and walked up front.
"Stars Hollow doesn't have a concert venue, and this would be perfect. We could invite bands from all over the country to perform - just imagine Cate Le Bon, Big Thief, The Beach Rats, The Spook School, Svalbard…," Lane trailed off, listing a lengthy number of good but with slightly scary named indie-rock and punk-rock bands. "We could give all the student bands a chance to perform, and in the summer we could even leave the large doors wide open, expand the concert to the street," she added after a while.
"And your offer?" Taylor asked.
"I'd have to talk to the bank of course, but I was thinking maybe 20 000?" she suggested hesitantly.
"Next?" Taylor said, already beginning to show his frustration.
Lorelai walked up to the front without comment.
"A) The inn annex needs more storage space, and B) I was thinking of a hay bale lounge of some sort," she said, taking it a bit too far, knowing Taylor's allergy issues with hay.
"Now come on, people. I can see what's going on here… I haven't hear a single reasonable proposal tonight…," Taylor began to grumble.
"Hey, our proposal is perfectly reasonable, just imagine all that wonderful sexual energy it'll bring to the town," Babette pitched in.
"And besides, you haven't heard all proposals, Taylor, " Luke added gesturing towards Jess and Celeste making Taylor snort.
"And Lorelai, what's your offer?" Taylor asked, reluctant to continue this nonsense.
"30 000," she replied. She really could've used the space frankly though it wasn't really their plan.
"Alright, next?" he asked, rolling his eyes.
Celeste walked up front handing each of the elders a copy of her proposal, including her offer, and continued to talk professionally about how their idea would benefit the city, even mentioning their extra space as a possibility for Rory to come and visit more often, which automatically got favourable audible nods from Babette and Ms. Patty and a few of the elders.
"And what type of specialty bookstore were you thinking?" one of the elders, a man named Alfred, asked.
Celeste knew this was a tricky spot, saying out right that it meant nordic noir and a lot of crime fiction would not exactly show them from the side they wanted at this moment.
"It varies," she replied, "I mean that this depends largely on what our main publisher, the Truncheon, publishes, but their selection has a bit of a dark tonality, Scandinavian style, but it's all very classy," she added briefly, hoping this would be sufficient and not off putting. "But you shouldn't forget that there's the gallery part as well, and as with both books and art, the content will most definitely be changing. And the versatile space offers options for other activities too - imagine a small low-key acoustic concert, a poetry reading, book signings and meeting with fresh authors, maybe some lectures," she added.
"And am I seeing this offer correctly? one, two, zero, zero, zero, zero?" William attempted to read out, squinting his eyes, clearly not having his glasses on him.
"Yes, 120 000 and we have the money ready for the transfer as we speak," Celeste explained.
"You realize fixing up the place is a lot of work, it'll probably take a few more grand, right?" Alfred added.
"Yes, that's accounted for and both my husband and Luke Danes are planning on doing a number of things themselves, even I can hold a paintbrush," she chuckled with a tad of flirt in her voice.
"She's good," Lorelai whispered to Jess, who only smiled at her comment, not wanting to jinx it.
"Any more questions, gentlemen?" Celeste asked herself, taking charge of the room.
"Why is it exactly you two are moving here?" Greg, another elder asked.
"We wanted to try something different than a big city life. I personally want to experience this community this town clearly has to offer, I will be working part time for Lorelai Gilmore and our child will attend Hattie's daycare here, to get a more natural childhood than Brooklyn can offer," Celeste explained.
"And you husband? What does he do, better yet, why isn't he up here talking to us about this?" Alfred asked, clearly being a traditional kind of man.
By then Jess had stood up, unable to take it, and walked up besides Celeste and took a stand. "I'm an author myself and I also edit books for Truncheon," he began. "The reason why we've agreed Celeste should handle the pitching here is that she has a lot more experience in things like this and despite the fact that we are married, I still do consider this her money, for her to do with what she thinks is right," Jess added. While they had no prenup, he never really thought about her or Evie's money as his. He knew it was there, but he tried to think independently from it and so far had succeeded perfectly.
"Elders, please, you can't seriously be considering this?" Taylor budded in, unable to take it any longer.
"What is it Taylor? You wanted competing offers, you got them, now what's the problem?" Lorelai said innocently, unable to hold it in.
"Yes, I wanted reasonable offers - it's only fair that we have something to compre not just a couple of outsiders coming here and changing our town around, causing trouble," Taylor explained, standing up now.
"What trouble? It's two law-abiding citizens with a 1-year-old, what do you expect them to do?" Luke asked, before either Celeste and Jess had a chance to reply themselves.
"Well I don't know," Taylor shrugged. "All I know is that whenever Jess Mariano was in town misdemeanors went out the roof in towns statistics," he added.
"It was 17 years ago!" Jess let out a deep groan.
"So you admit it," Taylor noted, almost victoriously.
"Sure I was a punk, I admit it," Jess said, irritatedly. Frankly he was beginning to rethink this whole thing - surely there must've been any town, somewhere, better than one with this jack-ass.
"Jess, let me," Celeste touched his arm, knowing he needed to calm down.
"Taylor, what is it that you want from us, exactly? We have the money, our offer is clearly the highest, our proposal is decent, it's viable, it supports the town agendas," Celeste asked in a fierce but controlled tone.
"If you were to be chosen as the best proposal, which is still up for discussion by the elders by the way, I'm definitely going to be setting some conditions," Taylor said.
"Elders, is there any doubt that this is the best proposal?" Luke asked the elders himself.
"Luke, that's against procedures. Visitors don't talk to the elders!" Taylor scolded him.
"We think it's the best proposal, though Babette's idea wasn't half bad either," Alfred noted, with a slight chuckle.
"I told-ya," Babette elbowed Morey happily.
Taylor rolled his eyes again.
"So what are the conditions?" Celeste asked Taylor again.
"I want a written apology and a list of all the deeds Jess Mariano committed during his time here in Stars Hollow. This way I know which ones I can cross off as solved," Taylor stated with a sublime smile.
"You keep a list from twenty years ago?" Jess huffed, still unnerved by this whole thing.
"Well if you don't want to do it, you really don't have to. Nobody is forcing you to stay," Taylor shot back.
"Fine, I'll do it, jeez," Jess relented, knowing far too well how much this meant to Celeste. This was ridiculous, but after all it was just a tiny bit of his pride that would be lost in this process, that he could survive.