Despite the sheer excellence of her accommodations, Faye woke quite early the next morning. Most likely she just wasn't used to hearing water sloshing in close proximity while she slept. But in any case, she was awake, and less groggy than usual. As she wandered into the bathroom, she heard voices, made faint by the barriers of glass and metal and water.
Her reflection blinked back at her through thick black eyelashes as she washed her face. There was toothpaste, but no brush. After a moment's hesitation, she squirted a little onto her fingertip and made do as best she could.
The rumbling of a truck startled her for a moment. She wasn't used to hearing land-bound vehicles, and they were ridiculously loud to have such pathetic engines. She heard the voices again, and she strained to distinguish the one that she very much wanted to hear.
There it was: deep, manly, spoken with a mild air of authority. Providing an accompaniment was a female voice, sweet and low and drawling. Faye had to fight down a sudden wave of jealousy by talking to herself. "He doesn't like you…and Mak's a great person…no reason to get pissed off with her. No reason to be upset…just because he has everything…and you have nothing…" She shook her head sharply, trying to shake away the negativity.
A quick search of the dresser drawers produced a pair of black denim shorts and a custom-designed T-shirt, obviously a server's uniform. Having nothing else to wear and unwilling to put on her usual clothes for fear of more solicitations, she slipped into the clothes, which fit her quite well. She couldn't wear her heels with this getup, but it was only 8:30 a.m., and it wouldn't kill her to go barefoot. She wandered out and up.
As she had been able to predict earlier, Jet and Mak were on the wooden dock, talking and laughing with an old man, who in turn spoke with them in a friendly, though not quite informal, manner. He seemed to regard the restaurateurs as his superiors, and often punctuated his sentences with a humble bow. Mak constantly pressed him to come in, but he just as consistently refused.
Faye's entrance forced a lull in the conversation. Jet beckoned her forward, and she came to stand by his side. He clapped his metal arm around her shoulders, presenting her to the older man. "Here's our early bird! Senor Lopez, this is Faye Valentine. Faye, Hector Lopez."
"Ah, Mees Vah-lund-tin." The older man kissed her hand reverently. "Meester Negron, he tell me so much about you. I am glad to meet you this once."
"Negron?" Faye repeated in some confusion.
"Black," Mak whispered helpfully.
She thought for a moment before realizing that the man was Latino in origin. Mr. Lopez, meanwhile, was handing a slip of paper to Jet. "There are feefteen cases, Meester Negron. I catch them last night. They are very fresh."
"Of course." Jet handed the man a stack of bills. "And there we are." He looked back at the two women. "Someone want to give me a hand with all these oysters?"
Mak immediately bounded forward, climbing into the truck and wrestling down a wooden crate. Faye advanced cautiously, trying not to be in the way as the pair began to tote their heavy cargo back into the ship. Mr. Lopez touched her arm timidly. "Mees Vahlundtin, you…are Meester Negron's amiga? From long ago?"
Guessing that he meant 'friend' and not 'woman', she nodded.
"Bountee hunter? You knew Spuh…spuh…"
"Spike?" she finished.
"Si. Meester Speeghul. Meester Negron, he tell me so much about you, and him, and a muchacha…Eduarda."
"Ed!" she said excitedly, but stopped upon actually hearing what he had said. "Jet told you…about us?"
"Si. Meester Negron, he care very much. He is sad when he talk about his amigo y amigas. But he is so kind. He feed many people. He buy my food when no one else would." The man paused in counting the bills and smacked his free hand against his thigh. "Thees, see?" He shook the money at Faye. "Thees is his way! He always give too much! Too kind. He is a good man. He deserve good woman." The older man stepped out of the truck and unconsciously, Faye offered him her hand. He accepted as he shuffled down the stairs. "I give him the money back. And then I go home and hug my family." He pinched her arm in a fatherly sort of way. "You should hug people you care about too, Mees Vahlundtin. Tell them you care." He shook the money again. "I must not take his money."
Mak came out and chuckled at the stooping man. "Did he give you too much again, hon?" At the acknowledgment, she laughed. "But you know, that's just his way. And you know he ain't takin' it back. Just come on in, have some breakfast and keep it."
"I cannot." Mr. Lopez visibly swelled with unconscious pride. "It would be wrong."
Mak roared with laughter. "Have it your way, then." She looked at Faye. "Wanna help me bring in a few cases? We'll only have to move about five. Jet usually gets all the rest before I can get back out here."
Faye agreed, and walked around to the back of the truck as Mak went climbing right up. Faye grinned as she watched the older woman move. She's just like Ed…so full of energy and always so happy. The smell of fresh oysters filled her nostrils, and though they had never been her favorite sort of seafood, she couldn't help but wonder what they would taste like, steamed and rich and floating in soup broth.
"Catch!" Mak shouted, pushing a crate. Faye caught the rope that that was securely bound in one end, using her legs for balance. It was quite heavy and took some skill to manipulate. "How many oysters are in here?" she yelled above the engine's grumbling.
"Prolly a good 15 dozen per crate," Mak grunted, carefully stepping off the flatbed. "We go through 'bout ten of the crates the same day that we buy 'em. All the rest go into soup." The women slowly wended their way back into the restaurant, slowing down even more as they maneuvered down the stairs towards the pantry labeled 'fresh'. Inside was Jet, and Mr. Lopez, who was vainly attempting to return the excess money. "Meester Negron, I cannot. You must take it back."
Jet shook his head, amused but firm. "We go through this every time, Mr. Lopez. I gave it to you for a reason, and I don't want it back."
"But it is not right."
"It's perfectly right. You give me fresh food, and I sell it at a profit and have satisfied customers, who bring me more people to make satisfied customers out of. You should be compensated well for your time. Do you want breakfast?"
"No, sir."
"Well, Hector, I'll see you when you come back from your next fishing trip." And Jet turned around to continue with the inventory.
Mak grinned as she and Faye struggled into the room. "Told ya."
The women managed to bring in three more crates before the truck was empty. Jet shooed them out of the storeroom, telling them that if they were that desperate to be productive, they could scrub and mop the bar. So they did, grabbing two buckets, a long-handled scrub brush and a mop. A few minutes later, Faye was wrinkling her nose at the smell of the bleach. When Mak saw her, she laughed. "You'd better put an apron on, hon, or change shorts. This bleach'll ruin 'em."
Faye decided to go with the first option, tying a dingy cook's apron around her slim body. "How do you know Jet? How did this restaurant get started?"
"Let's see." Mak drummed her fingers as she watched Faye attack the tile floor. "About a year ago, this ship landed in this here bay, pretty close to this dock. See, Sunset wasn't quite as developed as it is now, so it wasn't too big of a deal. Anyway, Jet hired about six wreckers to take out all the engine parts, and a few designers to change the ship around and get it up to code to be a restaurant." She paused as she poured herself a shot of Sprite with the bar gun. "Everybody 'round here thought he was crazy, trying to make a restaurant out of a damn ship. But see, it was a good idea. While everyone around us is paying for the land, and usually the rental or the mortgage on the building they got, Jet only pays for that dock outside. All the rest of the property is his, and he don't pay for the water."
"So by comparison, he's already ahead."
"Yep. Scrub harder, baby. Those stains, they'll come up. Just need some elbow grease." Faye complied and Mak continued. "I used to work in Neon. But see, once you get my age, it gets hard to find work as a bartender. They don't mind older men bartending cuz it makes 'em look respectable. But they don't like older women, they want cute girls like you. Y'know, mid-life crisis. So when I'm the best bartender in the house, but I'm getting my shifts taken away for some sun-bleached piece o' ass, y'know, writin's on the wall." She stopped to gulp down her soda. "So one day, I see ol' Jet here cleaning up the outside of the ship from the balcony of 'Seabreeze' – where I used to work – and I think, 'Hell, if he's doing what I think he is, he's gonna want some help.' So my shift got over and I went on down to Sunset where he was, and started talking with him, and he told me he was a bounty hunter, but he had given it up and was gonna start a restaurant. And I said, 'Oh hell yeah, you're gonna need my help.'" The women both laughed.
"So I asked him what he knew about restaurants? And he said, 'Not shit.' So I told him to come up to Seabreeze for a few minutes and see how they ran the place, and see if that's what he wanted to do. And he did, the next day. He liked the food, but he wasn't real fond of the atmosphere – said it was too snooty for him. So we went to a few other places around, and he got ideas, and took notes on what he liked and what he didn't, and we went to some different places in Sunset to see how he could beat them at their game too. And I helped him make the menu myself." Mak looked over the counter again as Faye waged war with the dirty grout. "Hey, use the edge bristles to scrub those cracks, and then let it set for a few minutes. Dirt'll come right out."
Faye nodded and continued to clean as Mak related Jet's struggle for recognition and legitimacy; apparently the Better Business Bureau had a little bit of hostility towards nearly everything 'Sunset'. "But we did it, and without any bribes, either," she finished proudly. "Looks like you're done. Sit down, and I'll mop."
Faye did, dwelling on the word 'we' for a moment. It was quite plain that Mak held a position of importance in this business, and that Jet considered her his equal as opposed to his employee. The green-eyed snake bit her again, and she fought the resulting agony that arose. There was no denying that Mak was damned beautiful. And the Jet Black that she had known had always been a lonely man…
"How 'bout you, Faye?" Mak asked "How did you meet him?"
How, indeed? I was running from the law and the first time I spoke to him, I was handcuffed in a john? Faye coughed nervously. "Let's just say it wasn't near as cordial as when you met him."
"Lemme guess. You were a bounty?"
"Yeah."
"No shit?" Mak stared at her anew. "I was just kiddin'. Damn, if you were one of his bounties, you musta done somethin' really bad. He told me the reason he never made much money was cuz he only went after really big catches, so by the time y'all caught 'em, the money would all be going to gas and food and ammo, and there'd be none left."
That was partially true. Faye was grateful, and deeply so, that Jet hadn't revealed the true reason why the Bebop's crew was always so poor: her penchant for taking things that weren't rightfully hers and a rather troublesome gambling addiction. "I…was in trouble for a debt that I owed some time ago. How old are you, Mak?" She regretted the bluntness of the question immediately and added, "If you don't mind me asking such a personal question."
"It's alright. I'm 'bout…" The woman paused in the middle of her cleaning, face twisting as she did some mental calculations. "…'bout 47."
"I'm 71."
"Really?" Mak gawked. "Day-uhm. How you keep lookin' so good? I didn't think you were a day over 23."
"I was cryogenically frozen around the time that I was 17."
"You kept real good."
Faye smiled sadly. "Some days I wish that I could age a little."
"Yeah, must be hard to see your friends getting older, even dying, maybe, and you're stuck in time. I had a few friends who were frozen too. They didn't handle it real well after waking up."
"Yeah?"
Mak bit her painted lips, clearly weighing the wisdom in speaking further. Her voice was low when she began again. "They killed themselves, Faye."
The room took a sudden spin. Faye clutched the bar before she spoke again. Her voice was also low, tinged with fear. "Why?"
The older woman shook her head as she dunked the mop. "It's hard to live forever, y'know. Three of 'em just got bored. It's no fun to live forever if you gotta work forever because of it. Two of 'em got married, but their husbands left 'em cuz they couldn't take seeing themselves getting old and broke down while their wives stayed young and beautiful for fifteen years. That sounds funny, I know. But it's rough on the ol' ego when you can't get it up and your wife still looks like jailbait. You start getting suspicious of her and everything she does and everywhere she goes, day in and day out. You can't live a happy life like that. And the last one…she was on a space exploration mission that required twenty years of her life to be spent in space doin' research on stuff that people couldn't even use at the time. When she got back, her children were grown and older than she was. None of the scientists that she was workin' for even remembered who she was. Her friends had forgot her. All that work she did was just put into a computer and stored away. She just got lonely after a while, and tired of livin' for nothing." As she finished, she squeezed out the mop in the bucket's contraption and reached for the squeegee. "But let's not keep talkin' 'bout that death stuff. You wanna grab that board behind the bar? There are some markers right near it, and some stencils too."
Faye obeyed, only too glad to change the subject. "What do you want me to do with it?"
"Take the stencil that says 'oyster' and fill it in, and write something on there 'bout a dozen oysters for three wulongs."
So she did, deciding on a silvery marker with a sparkly pink one set aside for the innards of the oyster stencil. By the time she was done, Mak had also finished with the floor. She came over to examine Faye's handiwork. "Looks super. I'll bet Jet's done downstairs. Why dontcha talk to him for a while? I gotta get cleaned up since I'm gonna work the floor today."
Faye took the hint, removing the apron and heading towards the stairs. But she stopped as Jet came marching up, looking…hmm. He wasn't quite as dapper as he had been the day before, but he still looked great in an oxford dress shirt and black slacks. He gave her a smile. "You gonna work today?"
She looked down at herself, having forgotten that she was pretty much dressed to work. The anger from last night had all but fled in the face of his generosity, and she admitted to herself that she was actually semi-curious about making an honest day's living. "Sure, why not?"
"So how do you run this place?" Faye asked over the hum of the blender.
Jet didn't answer immediately as he prepared a mango puree, instead offering her a few chunks to nibble on. Once the machine stopped, though, he began to speak. "Trial and error, and sending out my servers to other restaurants to determine strengths and weaknesses. I have a consulting firm on staff, but I use them primarily for accounting purposes. I've found that they don't know very much about the food service business."
"You seem like you're doing pretty well, for a newcomer to the field."
"Funny. They said the same thing." He left her for a brief time to load an ice bucket, and continued upon returning from the back of the house. "They're a little pissed off with me, because I wouldn't take their advice, and was successful anyway. I'm making them look bad." He grinned. Obviously he wasn't too sorry about it.
"How is the ship supported?"
"On about two thousand separate bolts and three tons of concrete. It goes down about thirty feet into the sand. That way, when hurricanes come, the ship just sits here."
"But the water doesn't eat the hull?"
"Nah. The submerged part of the ship is covered with a layer of plastic. Saltwater has a hard time getting through." He sneaked a quick glance at her, trying to figure out why she was asking so many questions about his business. Small talk aside, there was really no clear reason as to why she should be so terribly interested.
"What determines your menu? Demand?"
"Sometimes. For instance, I've found that there are only so many racks of lamb that we can sell in a month, and lamb's not a meat you want to just have sitting around. So I order about twenty less than we can normally sell over two months. That way, people who couldn't get one the first time around come running back in the place as soon as they hear we've got more."
"But they're so expensive."
"True, but you'd be surprised how many we sell. Especially to people who just came from Neon because it was too expensive to eat there."
"Would you ever consider setting up a shop in Neon?"
"No way. Not only would it cost too much to get started, but they don't treat people right in that place. You know that Mak used to work in a restaurant in Neon, right?"
She nodded.
"I heard somewhere that the restaurant that she used to work at lost a lot of business after she left. She was pretty much the brains of the place, and they didn't even realize it." He began to cut up citrus for garnishes. "I'm damned lucky we met. She deserves most of the credit for how successful this place's been." He didn't look at Faye while he was speaking, and it was just as well. Otherwise he might have seen her draw her fingers across her eyes in a suspicious manner. "I met Senor Lopez through her. He was a fisherman that they ran out of Neon some time ago, and he had good quality seafood to sell, with no one to sell it to. I started buying his food exclusively about four months ago. Now, whatever he's got on hand for the week, I buy all of it as soon as he can get it in the truck."
"Why? You don't even really know the man that well, do you?"
"Well, no." He scooped up the quartered pieces and arranged them before washing his hands and filling the sinks with hot water and cleaning solutions. "But think about it, Faye. I could buy my seafood from a corporation and risk the food being freezer-burnt, rotten, or not coming at all. Or I could buy fish that came out of the ocean three hours ago, and help out a man who really needs it. Which would you rather do?"
She scowled at his aggravating humanitarianism. "Who cares, Jet? It's not your responsibility to go around saving everyone. This whole 'knight in shining armor' act is going too far, don't you think?"
He gave her a slightly peeved look. "Now what was that for? Believe it or not, it doesn't hurt to actually help out other people, Faye. But anyway, we -" He caught a quick glimpse of her face and the sentence ended abruptly. "What's wrong with you?"
"Who's 'we'?"
"'We' is myself and Mak." His eyes slowly began to show comprehension of the underlying issue, and his mouth curled in an incredulous smile. "Faye Valentine, you're jealous!"
"And what's so funny about that?"
"Well –" He sobers up quickly, she thought. "Nothing, really. But I can't figure out why, for the life of me. It's not like you couldn't get just about any man you looked at for more than two seconds."
Except the ones that I really wanted. They were always crazy about some other woman. She tried to change the subject, lamely. "Are you working the bar tonight?"
"Yeah, Mak's gonna be the manager for the next two days. Then I'm sending her on vacation for about a week and a half. She wanted to go someplace on Earth and just lay around, so I have to make sure of the hotel arrangements and get her paycheck forwarded." He looked up in surprise at Faye's exasperated sigh. "What now?"
"I was just thinking," she replied caustically, "that very few employers would bother themselves about their subordinates' vacation needs, or waste money by paying them while they weren't actually working." She didn't say anything else, but she didn't need to. The implied accusation was quite clear. Jet shook his head, dismayed at her sudden attack.
"Don't be jealous of Mak, Faye. Believe me when I say that woman works hard. For the first seven months that we were in business, she spent most of her time developing an inventory system that would work, so that I would know where in hell all that food was going. I can't tell you how many times she's slept here after working a late bar shift, balancing all the money, and then helping me getting things straightened out so I could open on time in the morning."
Faye's eyes flashed dangerously. "She's slept here?"
Jet cursed himself upon hearing the wrath in her voice. Damn it, I'm just making this worse! He tried one last time. "Yes, Faye, she's slept here. Because I wouldn't let her walk home by herself at 3 a.m. after she'd been helping me out in my own restaurant. I wouldn't be in business right now if she hadn't been there with me every step of the way. So when she wants to go on vacation, you're damn right I'm going to pay her. And I've given her a corporate card to use when she gets where she's going." He stopped setting up to look at her piercingly. "Some of us still believe in the power of gratitude, you know."
She winced, and he sighed silently, intensely relieved. Bullseye.
There was no conservation between them until Mak returned, decked out in a light blue cotton blouse and black pants similar to Jet's. She made a face upon seeing the scene. "What are you two doin', playing Statue?"
"Huh?" Faye asked, bewildered.
Jet laughed. "She wants to know why we're not talking."
Author's Notes:
1. Whoops. I know that I promised Jet/Faye goodness this chapter, and I haven't delivered. But I wanted to give a little more information on the restaurant, and provide a little more back story on Mak, since so many of you seem to like her. So, things just got a little out of hand and I found myself with three enormous paragraphs on my hands in no time flat. Forgive me. ;;;
2. Chapter title comes from a song by Frida, one of the female members of ABBA. Although it wasn't what I originally wanted for the title (curse you, short-term memory!), it definitely struck me as appropriate, considering that it's the raving of a spurned and paranoid lover. And it's got a kick-booty beat.
3. Faye's age came about as a result of these calculations:
She's 17 when she originally is put to sleep as a result of her accident –
She sleeps 50 years and wakes up, making her 67 –
If she doesn't meet the Bebop crew immediately, possibly six months going by, she might be with the original crew at age 68 –
Most likely she spent a good year getting to know them, hence 69 –
And she's been looking for Spike for two years, which would make her 71.
These calculations are quite likely to be wrong. See if I care.
4. Senor Lopez's voice is based on the enunciation of a Brazilian gentleman that I know, with a little bit of an exaggeration. But if you have a problem understanding what's he saying, trying pronouncing it exactly how it's spelled.
The Jet/Faye togetherness is coming. I promise! I promise! And thanks for all of the kind feedback so far!
