Lorelai sat and watched him go. She didn't think she'd been alone in this apartment before. She bounced on the bed, lifting her rear slightly and settling herself down on the mattress. It was good mattress, she thought, springy. She tucked her legs up under her and let her eyes explore the walls, the slick wood surfaces—the interior was dark, soft wood, inviting, warm. This, she thought, is a comforting place; this is a Luke place. She nestled herself back against the wall and closed her eyes. She wanted to call Rory despite the bad service. This whole afternoon was turning out very oddly and she wanted the sound of her daughter's voice to even out the waves in her brain and to tell her what to look for, to ask for details and further lines of questioning. And mostly, she wished she weren't still wearing the bra because it was starting to dry and itch like a motherfucker.
Luke slapped together a few sandwiches while Caesar puttered—though puttered was too active a phrase for what Caesar was currently doing—about, threw a few Danishes on a plate, poured some more coffee, and plated some pie—as this was, of course, Lorelai—and loaded up a tray. He racked his brain for possible topics of conversation that would not involve the computer or the baseball bat or the reason he'd so intimately acquainted those two objects with one another. At the moment, there was nothing. Well, nothing except for the panties, and that was not an area he felt comfortable revisiting. Caesar shut down the generator and Luke walked back to his apartment in the dark.
When Lorelai heard Luke's step on the stairs, she was in the process of extricating herself from her bra and adjusting her eyes to the dark. Panicked, she yanked it off, rose, and shoved it under the bed as she dropped to the floor.
"What are you doing on the floor?" he asked.
"Well, we're in the middle of the storm."
His expression clearly said, "and?"
"It just makes more sense to be sitting on the floor when there's a storm like this one going on, in case, you know, something heavy were to fall, we won't be in the line of descent." She was hardly aware of the words coming from her mouth at the moment, only intensely aware of the bra just behind her, under Luke's bed.
"Here. Food. Eat."
Lorelai bit back a retort and did as she was told. She made her way slowly through the chicken sandwich, watching him as he ate. His jaw was tense, and he didn't meet her eye. She pulled off the crusts of her sandwich and deposited them on his plate. "They make your hair curly, you know," she told him, and he grunted. She reached for a Danish.
"So, how are you? Really. Just curious, what with the computer bashing. And also, the car assaulting. You doing okay?"
"Me?"
Lorelai snorted into her coffee cup. "No, Harvey, the six foot rabbit sitting beside you. Yes, you."
He looked at his hands, nodded. "Fine. I'm fine."
"Really, fine. So you're not experiencing any pangs of any sort? Relief, regret, remorse, guilt, any kind of pangs?"
"Pangs?"
"You know, pangs. Something, some sort of emotional thing that hits you when you least expect it, when you weren't really thinking about it. Therefore, when it hits you, it's so sudden that it's very overwhelming. Like hunger, when all of a sudden, you're hungry, and you didn't realize that you'd been hungry, but you'd really been hungry for a while, and you've only just noticed that you're hungry. Then all you can think about is that you're hungry, and it's just sitting in your stomach not going anywhere. You know, pangs. They're called pangs."
"I know what pangs are, Lorelai, I'm just not having them," he said shortly.
"No pangs, then."
"No pangs, no pangs of any kind."
"Good. Good, no pangs is good."
He paused. "What about you? You having any pangs?"
"Me? Pangs?"
"No, Harvey the rabbit. You, pangs."
"What kinds of pangs?"
"Relief, regret, remorse, guilt, any kinds of pangs."
"Huh. Ah, no. You know. There are several kinds of pangs. It's a funny word, isn't it, pangs? It's interesting that every time you say a word it just ceases to have any kind of meanings. Pangs. Pangs. Pangs."
"Lorelai."
"Pangs. Pangs. You know, there are lots of words like that. Pangs, hangs, fangs…"
"Lorelai."
Lorelai sighed. "I have some pangs." He looked at her. "Too many things. Parents. Life. Inn."
"You want to talk about it?"
"Oh, no. Because talking about it would mean I have to think about it, and I've decided that given your computer has been grand slammed to the great Best Buy in the sky, that a power outage is the perfect opportunity to do as little thinking as possible. Really, thinking is what gets you to a place where all you can do is think. All you can do is think, think, think, and the worries come and they just keep compiling and growing and the worries keep coming, and suddenly all you can think about is all the worries that you have and the worries that you haven't thought of yet and the pressure in the brain, it just gets to be—"
Luke put out his hand, touched Lorelai's wrist. "Lorelai."
She looked up at him and locked eyes with his. She nodded. "I know, sorry."
"Don't apologize."
She rubbed her eyes. "Man, I'm tired. Are you tired? Am I getting old? Don't answer that."
"You know, if you drank less coffee, you could slow down a little bit," Luke said.
Lorelai looked at him pointedly and chugged half her coffee cup. "Blasphemer," she said.
They sat in silence for a moment. Lorelai stuck her finger in one of the Danish and licked the jam. "Jam is good." She let the sentence ring in her brain a moment. "This is what my life is coming to, Luke. The only coherent statement I'm capable of making is 'jam is good.'"
Luke regarded her in silence a moment. "I might be having pangs."
Her face softened. "Luke, I'm so sorry. About Nicole, you know, that's not what you deserved."
"Shit happens, you know? What are you gonna do?"
Lorelai put her coffee cup down and placed her hand on his, her eyes full. "You can admit it. That you're going through it. Not assault cars, not beat up your computer. Talk about how you got divorced in a Mailboxes Etc. and had to be fingerprinted like Kirk."
He stared at their hands together until discomfort began creeping up his neck. He felt exposed, naked. His eyes wandered. "Lorelai?"
"Yeah?"
"There's a bra under my bed."
"Oh, shit," she said, scooting back to hide it with her butt. "I'm like a lingerie-shedding snake today."
They looked at each other over the tray of food and began to laugh.