Disclaimer: Ahh, go stick a bean up your nose.
Cindy found Jimmy's bedroom not disappointing when compared to the rest of his residence, but it was in an entirly different way. Jimmy's holographic butler was obviously not allowed to maintain this room, because here there was actual proof that a life-source was making good use of the space: The four-poster bed was unmade, a tangle of sheets, a pale blue Afghan, and a thick, charcoal-gray duvet laying in a rumpled heap; nightstands on either side were littered with books and papers; clothing, both clean and dirty, littered the floor (Cindy grinned involuntarily as she steped over a pair of blue jeans); random tools were lying about and something was in pieces on Jimmy's desk, obviously in wait to be repaired.
Along the wall opposite the large bed, a door stood, its right side flanked by an overly-crowded television stand, packed to the bursting point with the movie cassets and discs that would not fit on the shelves in Jimmy's living room. Walking through it the door, she discovered a small and surprisingly well-kempt bathroom, the clashing buttery-yellow wall colour, terra-cotta floor, and pale-green tiles encompassing the room in a decorative chair-rail and spilling onto the floor of the shower implied the dreaded interior designer had not been allowed past Jimmy's sleeping quarters. (By the half-finished looks of things in the room preivious, he obviously hadn't been allowed in their either and had been kicked out before the project could be finished.)
Disregarding the terrible decore, a misfortunate collection of owners past, Cindy picked through his organized drawers, cupboards, and medicine cabinet until suitable products to wash herself with were found. She felt rather guilty at the waste of water taking her second shower that day would be, but she simply couldn't go about covered in paint – and she had rubbed against something rather foul when she and Jimmy had been forced to turn into that alley way for cover. She turned the hot water tap and prised off her much-too-tight, (She blushed once more as her embarrassing appearance was made manifest.) paint-spattered clothing as the claustrophobic area filled with steam.
Cindy relished the first use of realsoap in over a month, mentally sluicing away the privacy violation she had felt when the unknown Yolkian had passed by, letting it carelessly slip down the drain with the paint. She perhaps got a bit over-excited; she created so much lather she had to leave the water running for an additional two minutes just to rinse all the suds down the drain. It was delicious, though, and the strong scent of musk and nutmeg was ineffable. She towled herself dry with the clean white terry-cloth she had abducted from Jimmy's linin closet before shamelessly raiding his dresser drawers. Out of the few things actually put in their proper place, there was a gray, over-the-head sweater and pair of unmatching jogging pants. As she seized them, she suddenly heard a voice coming from the other side of the door.
Jimmy. It seemed his call had gone through at last, to someone called Nicolette. He didn't sound to happy about it, though. As broken as her French was, the small bits Cindy was able to discern – as well as the acrimonious way he was shouting them – were enough to let her know his accomodations had not been met for something.
Cindy hesitantly cossed the threshhold of the rooms, feeling ridiculously like an eavesdropping intruder, and found Jimmy furiously pacing the floor, still ranting into the mouthpiece in fluid and rapid French. Unnoticed, she fell onto the couch again, catching the odd word of the one-sided argument.
…terrible idea to even…your area…supposed to meet…rules…the stupid egg's fault!
Cindy grinned at Goddard, who had hopped up onto her stomach and curled up contentedly; Cindy was just about ready to doze off herself and wished desperatly the "conversation" Jimmy was having with this myserious French-woman named Nicolette would end soon. Surprisingly, it did; Jimmy clicked the phone off after a parting adieu of "Fixez-le, Nicolette!" just seconds later and threw it away from him disgustedly.
"Fix what?" Cindy inquired, hanging her stockinged feet over the couch's arm again now that Jimmy's rampageous pacing had stopped. Jimmy jumped in surprise. He blinked at her and asked incredulously, "What are you wearing?"
"I asked first," she said calmly, though she was rather irritated that with all his talk of focusing on the problem at hand he would have the audacity to avoid such a simple question. She sat up, disturbing Goddard. "Fix what?"
Still seeming rather shocked at her wardrobe choice, Jimmy reluctantly said, "Nicolette was supposed to be working with Jet to have us transported to Paris."
"Fusion?" Cindy inturrupted curiously.
Jimmy nodded, his grim and disgusted expression returning. "Well, it seems that the two of them have found…ah, 'suitable reasons' for discontentment in their working situation." He paused to let out a low and furious growl. Cindy knew she wasn't helping his mood when she grinned and said, "Thay're having daters' spats?" incredulously, but she couldn't help it. Jimmy's frown deepened.
"That's what I've deduced," he growled. "During the fourteen hours since I last contacted them, they seem to have been able to botch everything from our pick-up to the actual form of transportation. We're just lucky I had a pre-set location for us to be taken to, elsewise we'd have been hitch-hiking to any random spot on the globe." Cindy let him fume for a few minutes more, knowing a limb might be at stake if she spoke too soon, even sacrificing a cushion of the love-seat she was occupying for him to squash himself onto furiously. She absently picked little bits of lint off his shoulder.
"I'm hungry," she suddenly announced some time later, her stomach giving an on-cue rumble as soon as the admission slid from her lips. "What time is it?"
Jimmy sat up guiltily, bringing his watch up to eye-level. "Late. I'm sorry. Reeves!"
It was with a noteable hesitance and reluctance that Reeves popped out of the floor and said morosely, "You called, sir?"
"Cindy is in need of a meal," he said standing once again and scuttling off down the short hall the back of the sofa extended from and in the door to the left, continuing, "I've got to take care of this mess Nicolette has put us in. Take care of her, please. Vox, where is my cell phone!"
The cool female voice of his computer called after, "On your office desk, next to the keyboard." A muffled thanks was shot back. Cindy grinned up at the sullen-looking Reeves.
"Well, Alfred," she said cheerfully, putting her hands on her knees and standing, "I feel in the mood for some macaroni and cheese! How about you?"
Reeves looked rather appaled at the statement, both the incorrect name jab and cuisine choice appearing to be equally repugnant. Cindy knew it was only the expert programming the Jimmy had installed in the hologram that forced him to comply with Cindy's request. She praised Jimmy and his brillance fourteen minutes later when she was blissfully inhaling a large bowl of macaroni and cheese slathered in ketchup (much to the further repulsion of Reeves.) After finishing her own a short while later, she considerately brought another bowl – sans ketchup – to the fervently-working Jimmy, nearly loosing the connection her right ear had with her head to a flying book.
Jimmy, who had thrown it in pent-up frustration, started when he saw what it had almost collided with and exclaimed, "Cindy! I'm so sorry, I just – I – AURGH!" He fell back in the leather, high-backed chair that was stationed in front of the great oak desk that took up more than a quarter of the room.
Walking over and sitting on a corner of the desk, she asked, mildly amused, "Do you wig out like this often?"
"Oh, absolutely," he snapped sullenly, taking his hands out of his face, "because putting myself and every person I could have any humane amity for – adding in, of course, my miscarried attempts to protect them – has become an every-day habit that I just can't seem to break!"
"Just checking." Cindy shoved the container of now-cooled noodles into Jimmy's hands. "It's nice to know you care so much." Jimmy muttered something under his breath, but when Cindy asked what he had said, he brushed it off airily and said he needed to get back to work. She left the lightly cluttered office in predilection of the love-seat once more, contenting herself to flip through random television channels.
She finally settled on a documentary that was half-way through explaining the facinating sleep-patterns of llamas. The wheezy voice faded into the scrupulously accented one of Reeves, who had popped up next to Carl and asked if he would be needing any macaroni with ketchup before he went on his daily llama ride. Libby was feeding another of the creatures under a nearby tree, laughing as Sheen stretched out his neck and pranced around in a poor but hillarious immitation of the animal. Cindy herself was sitting on the park bench she had sought refuge on the day of her graduation, watching with a longing desire to join them.
When Jimmy appeared at her side as suddenly as his holographic sevant would have, she squealed in surprise… but she could not hear it. Neither could she hear the words Jimmy's mouth was forming. It was as though someone had pressed a pillow over her ears. She tried to tell Jimmy this, but her mouth wouldn't form proper words, and he couldn't hear any more than she could.
Jimmy stood, still talking, still inaudiable. He was smiling, but he looked so sad…so, so sad…He began to walk away; Cindy tried to rise and stop him, but her arms were so heavy. She couldn't lift them, and Jimmy was getting farther and father away.
Nick appeared, just as suddenly as Jimmy had, coming one step closer to Cindy with every step Jimmy went away. Cindy couldn't do anything. She was furiously immobile. She stumbled to her feet and ran as fast as she could, but she fell, and each time she tried to rise she would fall again. Half crawling, half dragging herself along, too weak to stand. She just wanted to lie down and go to sleep. Her mother had appeared at her side, though, yelling at her to get up and run… to go farther… to win…
Cindy's legs were scraping the ground, but she felt nothing. She could see her hands were ripped and torn, but pain was not present. She finally collapsed, all strength abandoning her. Her mother stood over her, shouting furiously.
"Get up!"
"I can't," Cindy moaned, but even as she spoke the words she attempted once more to rise to her knees, once more falling back onto the ground.
"Get up! Up, you stupid girl!" Her mother stabbed her in the side with a long stick. "Up! You are no quitter!"
"Ouch!" Cindy said softly, feebly trying to push the stick away, but her mother just poked harder. "Ow, stop it, that hurts!"
"Get up, then!"
"No," she moaned. "I can't – ouch, stop!"
"If misstress would simply be willing to wake herself, I would be only too happy to desist!"
Cindy's eyes snapped open. They took a moment to focus before she was able to discern the fuzzy form of Reeves in the surrounding darkness. "Are you alright, misstress?" (Even in the darkness, Cindy could tell his concern was not entirly genuine.)
"I'm fine, Wadsworth," she said, vocally and physically waving him off. Reeves gave as much of a snort as was possible for a hologram. He dissapeared with a snide mutter about "humans and their nocternal delusions".
Night had fallen and the lights had been extinguished, leaving nothing but the dark to press from all sides – in and out – of the apartment. The luminous face of a digital clock broke through the dark covering and showed the hour to be twenty-three minutes until midnight. Someone had thrown a blanket over Cindy when she had been sleeping; she hugged it tightly around her shoulders as the feeling of oppresion and watching eyes from within the smothering blackness came over her. She stood, shivering slightly, and felt her way around the back of the sofa and down the short hallway.
The door to her left opened with a slight creak. She peered in catiously and say Jimmy's form lying on the four-poster, only half-underneath the covers and rising and falling slightly with each breath. After carefully tip-toeing across the room, she whispered, "Jimmy." When he didn't stir, she whispered "Jimmy" again and gave his shoulder a sharp poke.
Jimmy sat up with astounding speed, startling Cindy and spluttering, "Ahg! Who – what is – Cindy?"
Jimmy rubbed his eyes roughly, clearing the hazey fug of sleep from his senses. Cindy, suddenly feeling very stupid, said, "I'm sorry. Never mind, I just – " He caught her blanket-covered elbow as she turned away.
"No, what is it?" Enough moonlight flitered through the slats in the window blinds for Cindy to see that his blue eyes were alert and filled with concern. She grimaced.
"You'll laugh at me," she muttered, but nevertheless sat on the soft mattress by his feet.
"Most likely," Jimmy agreed, scooting closer to her. "Just tell me anyways."
Cindy sighed. "Well…I had a nightmare…about my mom."
Jimmy chuckled softly before saying, "That's understandable. The time we spent stuck in each others bodies was enough to give me reason to be considerably frightened… You seem to be well-off with her, though, even if she wasn't the one that led you to be top in everything; not many fueding families have enough toleration to buy their child a Mustang."
"It's called a buy-off gift," Cindy sneered, glaring down at the bedspread and picking at a loose thread savagly. "'Please don't go, stay, we love the child-support money you bring in…' Real love all around." She faltered, one of Jimmy's comments registering belatedly. "What did you say?"
Jimmy gave her a confused look. "About what?"
"My speech!" she exclaimed, going red.
Good gravey, she thought, it's bad enough I even said that about him, but…
"You heard it!"
Jimmy looked startled, then nervous. "Well… yeah. Why? Is that so bad?"
"'Is that so bad!'" Cindy squeaked, quite beside herself and blushing furiously. "I don't – I can't believe – how?"
Jimmy had become very interested with the thread that Cindy had pulled out of his comforter. He played with it until Cindy had bored a hole through the top of his head with a peircing stare. He looked up, nervously folding his arms across his bare chest, as thought to protect himself against an inevitable attack.
"Well…" he stammered, beginning to flush as brightly as Cindy, "I was… ah, there, you see, I flew out just before and left right after…"
"And Libby knew," Cindy muttered to herself. "I'll kill her next time I see her, I swear I will!"
"Not on my account, please," Jimmy said, relieved that she had decided to effect her wrath towards her best friend instead of him.
"Oh, it won't be," Cindy sighed, poking at a small hole in the blanket wrapped tightly about her. She absentmindedly noted it was the blue Afghan she had seen occupying the corner of Jimmy's unkempt bed earilier that day. "I'm just so tired of things being kept from me; it'll be collective fury that murders her." A sudden thought popping into her head, she asked, "How do you know Nicolette?"
Jimmy snorted. He scratched his jawbone, looking rather bitter for one who was reminiscing. "Ahh, where to start…"
"The beginning is usually best," Cindy supplied, pulling her legs up to sit Indian style.
"In that case, the blame would once again lie with the government… NASA, actually," Jimmy said. "After they bought my electromagnet, my parents draged me along on a celebratory vacation to France."
"Oh, poor pitiful you," Cindy couldn't help inserting.
"You were the one who asked," Jimmy scowled. "Anyways, it was a couple days into our trip and we were in Paris. My parents left me on my own for a while to do some sight-seeing – "
"A dangerous thought!"
" – so I was sitting outside some café, finishing up the final modifications for Goddard's self-defence update, when some girl came over and started gushing on me." He pulled a wry face, as thought he had smelt something really foul, and imitated in a very high voice, "Ooh, Monsieur Nuetron! C'est un tel plaisir de vous rencontrer! As all stupid girls seem to manage, she made a mess of things, in this case by knocking my drink onto Goddard. He went absolutly berserk. Nicolette managed to pull off another Timmy episode with simple tea."
Cindy winced, remembering only too well the mass destruction Timmy Turner had caused when he unintentionally installed a violent program into Goddard's hard drive—and feeling a small pang of betrayal that she still used her friend's naïve mistake as a definitory term. It was bad enough when they were kids; she was supposed to be an audult now.
"It wasn't pretty," Jimmy confirmed, shaking his head. "She turned out to be a prestigious member of the science academy there, so she was able to smooth the whole thing over. Aside from the fact that she owed me big, I only risked letting her help because Jet and B.T.S.O. agreed to assist her." He broke off, obviously too distressed to continue.
"Why do you keep calling her a girl?" Cindy asked. "How old is she?"
Jimmy, who had been chewing his tongue, looked thoughtful. "You know, I'm not really sure; I never thought to ask. In her twenties, as the very least, but – "
He stopped and cocked his head to one side. Cindy strained her ears and heard it the second time: a soft knock on Jimmy's front door.
Jimmy swallowed and glanced at the lit clock on his bedside table just in time to see the time click over another minute. Midnight dead on. The stranger at the door knocked again, louder this time.
Jimmy slid awkwardly from beneath the covers and snatched up a pair of jeans. He tried to yank them on and exit his bedroom at the same time all in a rush, making him stumble several times, bump his shoulder painfully into the tall footpost of his bed, and finally fall flat on his face. Cindy would have found this all hillarious had the knocking at the front door become increasingly louder and her anxiety risen to a climatic pitch.
By the time Jimmy successfully crossed threshholds, the stranger was practically pounding on the door, threatening to break it loose from the withholding hinges. Cindy carefully, silently threw off her blanket and crept off the bed, reaching the bedroom door just as Jimmy did the outer one. She listened, horrified, to the soft clatters of the saftey chain as it was slid back, the muted click! of the deadbolt disengaging, and Jimmy exclaiming, "Just what do you – wait. No, don – AUGH!"
A/N: I'm really sorry to have kept you waiting so long, but I've been away from home for the past two weeks, first at a youth retreat for my church and, after a 42-hour pit-stop at home (where I was blissfully able to read the new Harry Potter book during the first 11, AHH!), I left for Girl's Camp. (I don't recommend blocking them in like that, by the way. When they say "lights out" at 11, they didn't account for talkative roommates and the party-animals you are ment to share your cabin with who carry on in the dark.)
Aside from extreme sleep deprivation, I've been really anxious to write and hear from all my readers again. However irresponsible it would be of me, I would like to blame the average 4 hours of sleep each night and the deranged condition reppelling left me in for the very questionable state this portion of my story is in. (Especially the cheesy ending. I hope the final line won't seem so bad when it can be properly defended next chapter.)