Chapter 4: Primitive as Can Be

"Mom! Luke's going to be here in ten minutes!"

Rory climbed the stairs to Lorelai's room and found her mom surrounded by a sea of clothing tossed on her bed, dresser, floor, and spilling out of her closet like an avalanche.

"I'm almost finished, Miss 'I Packed for College in Two Hours,'" Lorelai said. She debated between a bikini versus a one-piece – to dress for Luke, or to dress to head off her mother's sarcastic comments sure to come if she wore the fun suit? – and finally threw them both in her suitcase.

"You're bringing a whole suitcase?" Rory said.

"Yeah," Lorelai said. "Aren't you?"

"I put my laptop and my books in my college backpack and everything else in my old one."

"Guess all those years of Tetris paid off," Lorelai said.

"Are you positive that Grandma's house has an Internet connection?" Rory said. "I need to organize this research for the Gazette and send them back by Monday, or no one will ever know about the town's secondary troubadour's stint as a bouncer at Studio 54."

"How much research does that article need? Didn't your overlord—" Lorelai-speak for the reporter who had passed all his research onto Rory so he could go to his family reunion in Key West this weekend – "get the first-hand account from the troubadour?"

"His memory isn't what it used to be," Rory said. "On the plus side, I finally found out what 'chasing the dragon' means."

Downstairs, they heard pounding on the front door, then Luke's voice in the entryway.

"Ahh!" Lorelai cried. Half her wardrobe was still decorating her room, while her suitcase taunted her with its empty, gaping maw. "Stupid empty suitcase! Why don't you auto-populate!"

"You shouldn't have put off packing until this morning," Rory said.

"Well, I'm sorry if my inn is so successful that both Mobil and Greenpeace had to have their conventions at the same inn this year, and I was needed until eight every night to make sure no one put any cyanide in anyone's wine. But that is the business that I have chosen, and I'm sorry if I don't really have time to flit off to the Hamptons—"

"Martha's Vineyard."

"—on a whim because I feel guilty that my mother is going to be alone, when she made it very clear that her divorce is none of my business!" Lorelai slapped a pair of jeans into the suitcase.

"Are you guys ready?" Luke called up the stairs. "Are you here?"

"Be down in a minute!" Lorelai yelled. "Why couldn't she have taken one of her DAR biddies? They could've had the Chardonnay flowing and the Meryl Streep movies playing all weekend."

"Maybe she was trying to be nice," Rory said, and Lorelai rolled her eyes. "Maybe she needs family." Lorelai made a face. "Maybe it'll be fun, and it doesn't matter why she invited us. Maybe you can just swim in the lake, and read, and, maybe, hurry up so we can get there today!"

Rory went downstairs to greet Luke and help him pack up the Jeep. Lorelai eventually descended the stairs, suitcase in tow, and they were on their way.

During the drive, Luke and Lorelai chatted, while Rory read in the back seat. Ever since the test run at the inn, Luke noticed that Lorelai and Rory seemed … subdued, somehow. Not angry; they bickered less, actually, but there seemed to be a thin, tense line of restraint between them.

Rory hadn't turned a page in ten minutes. She half-listened to her mother play-bicker – flirt­ – with Luke for tuning in country music on the radio, and it was all rather nauseating. Dates every weekend, good morning kisses in the diner. Rory liked Luke; it was Lorelai who was getting on her nerves.

To block out the mating rituals, Rory put on her headphones, selected a Lane-mix CD from her backpack, and turned it up louder than she had ever put the volume on her Discman. The familiar bass beat of "Under Pressure" throbbed in her chest and temples, and she'd never heard truer words than David's confusion at the world and poor dead Freddie's fruitless search for love.

'watching some good friends screaming – let me out!'

Dean and Lindsay were still together. Rory had seen them three days ago at Doose's, picking out dish detergent. Cleaning up their happy home.

'keep coming up with love but it's so slashed . . .'

Rory didn't care. It was none of her business. Not anymore. And she shouldn't care. Avoiding them was the right thing to do.

'sat on a fence but it don't work . . .'

She hadn't heard from Jess since her last night at Yale, unsurprisingly. Immature little punk.

'insanity laughs under pressure we're cracking'

Freddie's falsetto howl drilled into her brain, his primal shriek almost wedging loose from deep within her some hidden longing, a deep disappointment in herself that she refused to acknowledge. . . . Rory closed her eyes to the first prick of tears.

The song ended on airy snapping fingers, and she pressed 'repeat,' over and over; she didn't know how long she listened to the same song.

Rory felt the completely disorienting sensation of someone else pulling her headphones away from her head. A different song tinned an inch from her ear; she'd fallen asleep.

"We're here," Lorelai said.

When Luke climbed out of the car, he stared up at the looming Victorian monolith, his eyes flicking from the numerous gables, widow's walk and veranda, manicured garden – and was that their own dock in the back? Maybe he should have packed a tie . . . . He glanced at Rory, similarly slack-jawed over the house; however, he was relieved to see Lorelai glance vaguely at it, unimpressed, and begin unpacking the Jeep.

"Hello hello!" Emily greeted them from the front porch.

"Hi, Grandma!" Rory said. "This house is gorgeous!" She and Emily hugged.

"Yeah, it's really something," Luke agreed.

"Well, I'm glad you could come share it with me," Emily said. "Come, bring your things inside and I'll give you the tour."

As they went inside, Rory made a mental note to bring her old friend Anna Karenina to the elegant English garden, and Lorelai couldn't help but be charmed by the (faux) rustic décor in the oak-paneled foyer.

"Luke, you've got the front bedroom," Emily said. "It's the smallest, I hope you don't mind, but it does have a lovely window seat in the gable."

"I'm sure it'll be fine," he said.

"Girls, you two have the second room on the right," Emily said. "Rory, there's an 'Ethernet jack' behind the desk. I have no idea what that is, but when I asked the realtor if the house had an 'Internet connection,' she told me to tell you that."

Emily showed them the enormous, shiny kitchen, living room with overstuffed Italian furniture, Eden-like backyard that sloped down to the lake where -- as Luke had suspected – a motorboat bobbed, tethered to the dock. Emily took them up the narrow, spiral staircase to the widow's walk, where they took in the 360-degree view of Main Street and the hundreds-years-old woodland beyond.

"This house was built in 1893," Emily said, "and I just adore the sense of history I feel here. We rented so many houses that were far too modern and dull, but this entire neighborhood made me feel like I'm in Our Town. There isn't a mall or even a chain store in the entire town."

Lorelai whimpered.

"You can go without shopping for a week," Luke whispered.

"It's the principle," she whispered back.

"Are there any houses on that island?" Rory asked, pointing to a patch of green in the center of the lake.

"No, that's a nature preserve, with trails and such," Emily said. "I haven't been there in a long time."

"Wow, look at that yacht," Lorelai said, pointing to a hulking white beast, afloat, it seemed, despite the laws of physics.

"That yacht is worth three million dollars," Emily said, clearly finding this distasteful. "It's owned by the Pewterschmidts, and I think it's just obscene, the way they cruise past the marina every day. Some people can't resist showing off their wealth."

Lorelai snorted, and Rory gave her a look.

"Well," Emily said. "Who's ready for a swim?"

TBC