Tonyboy—Well, I don't know if I'd blame the police, personally. I think I'd blame the CEOs and the bigwigs of the fast food chain company. The police are only doing their jobs, while the CEOs know about what's going on and they could stop it.
chef13--Hehehe. Thank you! That was a fun part to write, indeed, but I think I have more plans for our sweet little Kennedy. Also, thank you for telling me that you liked the Police part...It's nice to hear stuff like that. Thanks, again!
roitgirl027--Nope...I go by my lonesome. Johnny Rocks:)
Cathy—I almost forgot about dear old Peg! She was one of the most mature characters, not to mention, one of the kindest, too. A motherly and loving influence on Edward, Peg was also one of the only people who loved and accepted him into her own world. But now, of course, Peg Boggs has long since died.
Not Even Human...Help!
Victoria stepped into the diner, just like she did every Friday morning before heading off to work, and, by reflex, picked up a newspaper from the metal stand, put it under her arm, and sank down at a counter seat…just like every Friday morning.
One thing that was not like every Friday morning, and that thing was girls. Oh, yes, many pretty girls were chatting, gossiping, joking, yawning, and, to a restrained degree, eating. Not a man was in sight; just young women. Though this was unusual, Victoria shrugged it off. She had no personal feelings about the matter—what was it to her? She guessed, absentmindedly, that maybe some teen heartthrob was appearing down at City Square. But the whole abnormality escaped her, the minute she felt her stomach growl for food.
The young lady unfolded her newspaper and read. Victoria didn't look up, but she saw something white and grease-stained walk her way—something she thought was an apron. Presuming that it was Louis, the stout, bright-faced manager, she said…
"Hey, Louis, how's life treating you?" Victoria said, her face hidden in the newspaper.
Victoria made her voice especially warm and friendly (usually Louis would answer her back, in that booming, bubbly voice of his) but this time the only reply was silence. She shrugged it off.
"I'll have my usual, thanks, Louis." She said, still reading. "Hey, why are you so quiet toda—?"
Victoria looked up to see Edward. Her heart abruptly stopped, she gave a small whimper, and almost fell off her seat, in a truly ridiculous kind of way.
"Good morning, can I take your order?" Edward said, calmly.
The diner uniform would have made any other man look horrible, tacky…but it actually made Edward look formal and gentlemanly, in a very bizarre way. It took Victoria a few minutes to recover from shock.
"Why, you little…Look at you! You have a job! That's great, Edward, really I knew you could do it! Did Kennedy give you a hard time, though? If he did, I'd be happy to slap him for you, but…" She held her heart, "Oh, just…Never do that to me again, Edward."
He smiled, "I didn't mean to scare you."
"Oh, no, it's okay, Edward…" She said, putting down her paper, "Well—Anyway, well, I would like a cappuccino, please. Thank you, Ed—"
Victoria looked around and saw all the girls leaning on the counter, bending towards Edward. Their eyes wide with puppy love, they followed his every move. They flipped their hair, desperately, in hopes to draw his big black-ash eyes towards them. They pouted their glossy lips in a sort of childish longing, and gave red-hot, murderous looks to an utterly unconcerned and quite oblivious Victoria (who seemed to be talking to the object of their affections).
"Hey! Victoria!" Yelled a fat, grease-stained man with a faint New Yorker accent," Have ya met my new boy?"
A man as round as a doughnut, as red faced as cherry, and as gruff-voiced as a dog, came bounding toward Victoria and Edward, with a crescent-moon smile shining out of greasy lips. Victoria pushed up her twinkling glasses, turned her seat around, and smiled.
"Good morning, Louis!" She said, "And, yes, I have!"
"Ain't he great? Look at the place! Have you ever seen it so packed, huh?" Louis the manager came up and leaned up against the counter, "Ha! Ha! You'd think we have some sorta movie star, wouldn't ya? Man, you have to fight these girls off with a stick, don't ya, Ed?"
Edward smiled shyly, blushed cotton candy pink, and went off to work again.
"He's a great guy. Not just a pretty face, either—he works hard. A good worker. Does what he's told, and you don't have to tell it to him twice. "Louis smiled an oily smile, "Yeah, good guy, good guy! Well, see ya, Victoria…I gotta go take orders. See ya, Victoria."
Louis shook his balding head, chuckled, and waddled off into the steamy kitchen.
"Bye, Louis." Victoria said, turning her eyes to the gray newspaper. But she couldn't stop a smile from hosting her face. After that moment, the sun shone more golden and warm, the city smog thinned, the air went fresher, and, overall, the world was happy and sublimely proud. Good for Edward!
Victoria Emerson had that same smile on her face all day, and, no matter what effort she put into it, there was no way of getting it off. Lord knows, she did try very hard to get rid of it and be sober—but it was like a strong wine stain, stubbornly sticking onto the ceases of her face.
The clear, decisive sound of a slap came from down the hall, and, thus, the bright smile vanished.
She hissed, tiredly. It was too late for Kennedy and his late-night shenanigans. You see, Ken had new a girlfriend about each couple of weeks— the old girlfriend normally leaves him on the account that he's cheating on her with another girl, who'll eventually become his girlfriend for the next week. It was a never-ending cycle, and Victoria, who lived in the next building adjacent to Dr. Boggs and Edward, heard much of it. Unfortunately, she had free access to this man's personal drama simply because the mail lockers were in the same building as Ken's apartment.
"I've heard that before!" The girlfriend screamed at Ken.
Victoria looked in her pea green carpet purse for her mailbox keys. Frankly, she wasn't quite up for watching them have a go at each other tonight, but Victoria wasn't going to let them stop her from getting her mail. She cursed her luck, as she struggled to find her keys in a pile of clutter.
Ken must have said something offensive, because the girl gasped, gave him a lip-splitting slap on the face, and stormed out, dropping the flowers he had given her on the floor. Dr. Boggs noticed Victoria, and immediately he wished she'd leave. She had always been in the background, silently getting her mail and giving him judgmental glances, whenever something…like this happened.
Kennedy kicked the flowers, making rose petals fly all other the place. He snapped, "You find that funny?"
"I'm not laughing." Victoria looked up, sober to the marrow in her bones.
Ken looked down at the bouquet of flowers and winced. He paid good money for those flowers—why did his temper always make him do stupid things? He snapped again, "Lost your keys?"
"Yes, I think…oh, no, here they are!" Victoria almost jumped for joy, relieved to be free from the situation. She stuffed her mail in the bag and began to escape the scene. But Victoria stopped in her tracks—
Victoria swallowed her anger, "…You know, Dr. Boggs…"
"Look, stop calling me that! I'm Kennedy, not Dr. Boggs…for Christ's sake." He hissed picking up the flowers, and giving her an annoyed glance.
Her eyes narrowed, feeling hurt and insulted, "I'm sorry, but I couldn't but notice that that was the tenth girl this month or so."
He crossed his arms, "And?"
"What do you mean, 'And?" She paused, sweaty hands grabbing onto her knitted bag, "I mean—don't you see—at all? Are you so blind not to see it's just not healthy? Ken, they seem not to care about you, and you don't care about them. Really, it's no wonder these girls dump you, if you can't be true to them, you know!"
He hated been told what was right and wrong—and somehow Victoria always seemed to be doing just that. Part of him, he admitted, told him she was right, and another (more stubborn) part of him said she was wrong, wrong, wrong. He snarled, "Sometimes, they're the ones who cheat on me. I'm not as much as a jerkoff as everyone thinks."
Silence. Kennedy smiled. Ladies and gentlemen, the score is Victoria 0, Kennedy 1…
Victoria frowned and drooped her curly head, as she felt her eyes sting and her joints ache from the day's work. But she, as herself, always persisted, "You're only setting yourself and them up for disappointment. And, as a matter of fact, yes—you are as much as a jerkoff as everyone thinks, Kennedy. I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just telling you the truth." She looked at his angry red face, "And I can see you don't like what I'm saying, so I'll leave you alone."
He shouted before she could get up the stairs.
"Look, you're the one who is putting all this crap in Edward's head, not me!"
She growled, praying that lighting would strike him dead, "Hardly, Kennedy. I'm helping Edward. He just got a job today, which I think is better than being your servant."
"Edward got a job?" He scoffed. Oh, what a wonderful liar she was, he thought.
"Yes. Down at the diner…He's not going to be at the apartment tonight, I assure you. He's able to think and work for his own benefit," Victoria said, "Edward shows the signs of a abusive childhood, so do him a favor and leave him alone, please."
Abusive childhood? Edward probably didn't even have a "childhood" in the physical sense. He must have been the same as he was when he was created, and probably would stay the same forever. But what did Victoria know? To her, Edward was someone much different than who he really was.
"Wait… what?" Ken said, taking her seriously, "You really mean he has a job? What?"
Victoria nodded, quickly.
"I mean, did you help him to get one?" He said, skeptically, crushing a rose petal under his heel.
"No, he did it himself." Victoria said, proudly, "I only gave him the idea."
Well, Ken couldn't but feel a little thankful— and then later, guilty and ashamed. She was just trying to help, of course. Edward working meant more money and less stress on himself to get the bills paid, and he suspected that Victoria knew all that. He shook his head, bent his face into a deep frown and, annoyedly clicked his tongue. He said, perhaps too sharply, "Oh, that was nice of you."
"I don't need sarcasm right now, thank you." Victoria grumbled, as she walked away.
Ken shook his head, "Yeah. I wasn't being sarcastic."
Victoria looked at him, immediately suspicious. What was he up to? What is he getting at? Kennedy Boggs never just said thank you for anything. Especially not to Victoria. They were opposites, if one did one thing, the other did the precise opposite—if she said sorry, he would snarl insults. Miss Emerson scanned Dr. Boggs' face, but all she saw was a calm, cool, collected countenance. This confused her.
Then, Ken said something that made Victoria almost kill him.
"Well, I have reservations at a restaurant. And my date ran off… Do you want to come?"
Victoria's head shot up and she adjusted her glasses, furiously. Had he forgotten all those things he called her? Her immediate response would have been "No!" if he hadn't offered her the ruined flowers.
"Not like a date!" He gave the loudest and most desperate pretext in the universe, " …Just, you know, so I can apologize for what I've said…"
"Well," She huffed, "That's okay, Kennedy. I wouldn't want you to put up with a 'heinous bitch' like myself." She felt her face burn with anger and her fists long to smash him in the nose.
"Yeah." Ken said, "I'm sorry that I, you know, said that." Kennedy grumbled, "Come on…at least it's free food for you. Look, I just need—"
"You need help."
"Yeah, I know."
Victoria felt like strangling him, but she couldn't really justify her hatred and anger, after all Kennedy was trying to make things better. Victoria Emerson knew at least fifteen scriptures about forgiveness, but she still felt like butchering him, Norman-Bates-style, and casting his bloody, beaten remains off a bridge.
Ken kept impatiently looking at her, holding his stash of bruised roses.
Well, there Victoria was, in a perfectly nice restaurant, sitting across from possibly the most screwed up bastard in the universe, Doctor Kennedy Boggs. How splendid, how utterly and completely and outrageously splendid.
So, Victoria dear, remind me…why am I hear again? She kept asking herself, silently glaring across the table to her nemesis.
The first few minutes were caked in hellish silence. It was rather sweet of Kennedy Boggs, in a way, but she reminded herself that Ken was a man who had supported waste to be dumped illegally in the ocean. He is a bad man, she kept that mantra ringing in her head. She kept list of his wrong doings; the Nepalese Rebellion, that rapist robot, and abusing her friend Edward—
"I need help."
"I'm definitely on the same page as you there, sir."
Ken frowned, but he just looked back to the menu, silently. This was not like Kennedy Boggs, not at all. Usually he would have blown up like a Hawaiian volcano, but, no, he only sat there looking at the menu. She tapped her fingernails on the table, rather pleased no comeback came from him. He was improving.
"…You know something that's been bugging me all week?" Kennedy Boggs said, still reading the menu.
"No, what?" Victoria asked, crossing her arms.
He put the menu down, and weaved his hands together. Ken looked her straight in the eye, and, to her shock, Dr. Boggs' brown eyes advertised seriousness and a sobriety—and even, hidden deep, deep within the brown forest, a bit of guilt.
"When you told me to be more like Edward," Ken said, "It's been bothering me, you know? What you said really pissed me off at first…but I'm a wreak, a fucking wreak."
Kennedy sagged down in his chair, shut his eyes, and breathed very heavily. She did the opposite as usual and sat upright, perfectly in posture, as she carefully observed his actions and reactions.
Dr. Boggs certainly was a man to be reckoned with, but Miss Emerson assumed that he would've made many efforts to disguise his insecurities. But, there he goes, and tells all his faults to her face, like she was his personal psychiatrist. This out of character, and she couldn't but help to feel a slight pang of slimy suspicion.
"Yes," Victoria said, still trying to get her head round the whole situation, "Well, like I've said before—"
"I've been acting like a fucking idiot." He weakly interrupted.
"Indeed you have." She said, sipping her water. She frowned, trying to detect something she couldn't put her finger on exactly.
"What the fuck do I do, though?" He said. Ah, there we go—swearing Ken came back.
She bobbed her head a little, lazily looked over the menu, and, as if she didn't care a single toss on the subject, said: "Stop being so cruel to Edward, stop treating women so disrespectfully, and stop looking for women who want disrespect. Stop drinking, stop being so rude to me, stop watching so much television, stop eating fatty foods, and, for goodness sakes, start being more of a human being, Ken."
"More human? I am as human as you are." Ken said, his voice so low it barely made its way to Victoria's ears.
"There's more to being human than simply being flesh and bone, Kennedy." She said, not looking at him.
"That's a lot to fix, though,"
"Only because you've done a lot of damage." She retorted, primly, as she took another sip of water.
Ken looked up, with a blank, soulless face—"I hate life."
"Well, then, I must say you're not really making your situation any better." She parried, giving him a stern, motherly gaze.
Finally Kennedy exploded, but only by pieces, first it was a mumble, then a hiss, than a growl, then a shout—Dr. Boggs' rage boomed out of every word. "You just use your religion as a crutch, Victoria! You are as ruined as any of us…You know that and I know it! You don't know about what I went though—I lost my mother, okay? When I was nine. You don't know what it's—"
She slammed her hand on the table, making the glasses and silverware tremble over the red cloth. Victoria's eyes were closed and her eyes leaked with a few tears. Kennedy was hushed, as he just noticed that he had drawn some attention to himself in the restaurant, and also because he successfully made Victoria cry.
Darkly, She said, "How dare you? I lost my mother and father, when I was only six."
Ken's jaw dropped, as he felt his anger quickly leave him. "Oh," He said, feeling his soul beg for forgiveness, "God, Victoria—I really didn't mean—"
"You meant it," Victoria hissed, "You meant every word. You say you're hurt, but I can see you have no problem hurting others—The reality is that you know nothing about my life! So, immediately, you try to hurt me! Why? I want to help you!"
"Please—I need help!"
"I know! Stop saying it, because I know! You have to be open for help, before you actually get it!" She got up and began to leave.
Edward picked up the phone, "Hello?"
A shrill, frilly voice screamed over the phone line, "Hey, Eddie!"
Ed heard a chorus ofcheering voices on the other end, and it took him some time to identify the voice with Aunt Jillian's squeaky sqeal of a voice. He waited for the booming uproar to calm down...
"Hi, Edward! We're missing you a lot!" Lucy Walters, whose voice sounded less childish and moremature by the second.
"Edward- Tell me honestly, have you been doing exactly the opposite of what Ken says, dear?" Came Molly Walters concerned, steel-hard voice, "If you have, you're doing the right thing, dear. Stay away from drugs, Edward."
"Hello," Edward said, his voice soft but strongly happy to hear them, "I've missed you too!"
Then...the onslaught of endless questions started, leaving poor Ed very defenseless. "Do you like the city? What's it like? Is Ken being...well, are you okay? Have you seen any shootings yet? What's happened to your voice? Do you have a cold? Hey, do you have a girlfriend? Have you stayed away from drugs, Edward. I hope so...What kind of apartment are you living in now? How many people can stay in it?"
His head spun like a spin top toy, but he enjoyed it very much. Just to hear their voices, even if he didn't understand it- was just a wonderful thing for Edward to come home to after a hard, laborious day at work. They were, he thought, his adopted family and he had a certain, unique admiration for them all.
Then, Jake Walters, the father, stopped the ruckus on the phone and... said something that caught Edward's attention, "Hey, Edward, we're coming up toUrban for this Christmas. Just thought we could have a nice family vacation, you know, to see you, Ken, and the city."
He smiled, "That's great!" But...honestly...asEdward looked around the tiny bachelor's apartment, he greatly doubted a huge, king-sized family such as the Walterses could actually cram themselves into this place. Nervously, he bit his lip, and twirled the phone's cord around hiswhite fingers.
"We need to see you, baby!" Jill said, energetically, "Things just haven't been the same, honey, they haven't been the same! So, tell Kennedy we're coming...We're going to stay in a hotel nearby, hon, so no fret, kay?"
Edward's tense chest relaxed, as he was greatly relieved at hearing this information. And then, Edward endured another line of questions from the Walters.