Richard didn't choose the Coral Queen Kitchen out of spite, as it was where he usually ate lunch, but it would have been a good way to stick it to Dorothy. Coral Queen Kitchen was a no-frills diner that specialized in fried, greasy foods and it was usually jam-packed at lunchtime. Today was no exception, and he and Dorothy had to wait in uncomfortable silence for a table to open.

Dorothy didn't complain though, which Richard found unsettling. Surely she would have preferred something classier or at least lighter. He'd never seen her eat anything as common as fried chicken, much less a chili dog or biscuits and gravy. But she said nothing until they sat down and then only asked him to pass her the menu on his side of the table.

He already knew what he wanted – fried pork chops – so he took this as an opportunity to observe Dorothy while not having to argue or guard against her. She was undeniably thin – well, she had always been thin, but now she looked positively malnourished. Her hollow cheeks and sunken eyes stirred compassion in him. He didn't want to be the bad guy here. She had followed him down here. This was his fault, at least to some degree.

Richard sighed and sipped the 'coffee' that was actually roasted chicory. He'd developed an unexpected taste for the replacement and drank it at home to save money. Caffeine no longer did anything for him anyway, thanks to his slug. He slept well enough now though – no agonizing pain jolting him awake or slow burning aches keeping him from falling asleep in the first place.

"Don't get the chowder here, I made that mistake once," he advised. Getting ill wouldn't improve her lot any.

She grunted an acknowledgement but didn't look up. Finally she decided on eggs and hashbrowns and bacon after Richard explained to her what hash browns were. A surprising choice, but then again if he hadn't had a decent meal in months he'd probably go for fat and starches as well.

"So… how's it been?" Richard asked once the waitress took their orders.

"Great," she curtly responded. "I assume it's also been great for you?"

He nodded. Life had been pretty good lately, save for the whole 'trapped at the bottom of the ocean' thing. It turned out that selling a huge stake in a company worth millions could not be done overnight, especially if a good price was to be had. He had contacted an agent to find buyers (for a five percent fee) and there was a slow-motion bidding war going on behind the scenes. Richard didn't want to alert his father and invoke his wrath, so he had generated a set of designs for a submachine gun that was destined to fail.

The 'dummy tommy', as Richard called it in his head, was at first glance a pretty solid design – it was a pretty straightforward adaptation of the guts of an S10 turret, but since it lacked the roomy-ish environment of the turret casing it was going to jam consistently after about five or six rounds. But it hadn't moved into production yet as Richard had also specified the requirement of the still hard to find zinc for the frame. This left him with lots of free time to read detective stories and build playing card towers at his desk.

But Richard wasn't going to explain all this to his hopefully soon-to-be-ex-wife. "Let's get down to brass tacks. You sign those divorce papers and you'll get five hundred dollars a month, that's enough to cover a modest rent and put some food on your table." But not much more. He'd be damned if he was going to continue to fund her extravagant lifestyle.

Dorothy frowned. "Five hundred a month is nothing, I know you have more money than that!"

"I do, yes, but the entire point of Rapture is that I don't have to give money to people I don't want to give it to." Richard had been saving a lot now that he was no longer paying the exorbitant rent in Adranos Place.

Dorothy pinched her face. "Well how much is your whore worth to you, hmm? Five hundred dollars a month? That's a pretty cost efficient whore." She crossed her arms and sat back in the seat.

"I know you're new to the whole business thing, and I'll admit it's not my strongest suit either, but openly insulting the person you are dealing with isn't a great negotiation tactic."

Dorothy rolled her eyes. "I'm not insulting you. Just your whore. You're looking well and I mean it. Don't you miss looking well in style?"

"No, not at all." Not being part of high society was amazing. He no longer had to attend dinner parties and cocktail receptions for people he either didn't know or hated. Lupe didn't even really have any friends since Helena disappeared either, aside from that old madame she was in business with, so there wasn't any forced chit-chat either. Elpis Court was perfectly comfortable, despite what Dorothy and his mother may say, and Richard could not genuinely want much more out of life in Rapture.

"Nonsense," Dorothy dismissed with a wave of her hand. "Your roach-infested shack has to be getting old by now, hm? And your whore is a terrible housekeeper, I know that first hand."

Lupe was not enthusiastic about cleaning, that was true. "I have been learning to pick up after myself," he proudly informed her, feeling like a rebel. "I vacuumed yesterday. And did the dishes. I broke a glass and cut my hand. It was very thrilling."

Dorothy looked shocked. "How… unmanly! My goodness, it's gotten that bad?! She makes you clean up after yourself?"

"No, she doesn't make me do anything," he stressed, getting angry that Dorothy was baiting him into deviating so far from the express purpose of this meeting. "And that's not what we are here to talk about!"

The waitress brought their entrees at that moment and gave Richard a little side-eye at his sudden raised voice. Dorothy tore into the potatoes immediately and didn't reply to Richard. He slowly cut his pork chop. Now that he was no longer coping with Dorothy on a daily basis he was capable of generating mercy. She was so hungry. No one should have to be hungry when it could be helped.

"Dorothy, I don't like seeing anyone suffer, you included. Please, for your own sake, agree to a divorce. I'll double it. A thousand dollars a month. That's more than enough to live comfortably on. You're only twenty-five. You can get married again, if you wish. Or work. Or anything. But Dorothy, you must move on. I'll help, I owe that much to you," he gently said while she scarfed down her lunch.

"Don't patronize me," she said once her mouth was clear of food. "A thousand dollars a month? That's not nearly enough money for me to have my marriage fail."

"It's already failed. It failed the day you decided you couldn't treat a crippled man with a shred of dignity or respect. It's dead, deader than this pig I'm eating. It's time for you to face reality."

"It's time for you to face reality, Richard," Dorothy scowled at him. "You can't play house with our old maid for the rest of your life. You want to talk about indignity? You are making a complete fool of yourself. Everyone thinks so."

Richard doubted that, but he also didn't give a tinker's damn. He was growing sick of this conversation very quickly as her needling was sitting up his bile. "What is it going to take, huh? Name your price, Dorothy. I need to put you behind me."

She visibly reddened at his last sentence. "Listen here," she lowly hissed at him. "You dragged me down here. You wanted to come here, not me. I came because I was your wife and that was my role. You do not get to discard me like a used up whore. You're not going to abandon me. You do not have the right to 'put me behind you'."

Richard frowned, his appetite lost. "You didn't come here to negotiate, you came here to try to convince me to come back." I guess I'm the idiot here, really, for expecting her to have matured some in the six months.

She said nothing and went back to her food, clearly too hungry to continue her tirade.

I don't have to put up with this, he reminded himself. I have zero obligation to her. But he did. She was right, at least partly. While Rapture may have sneered at moral accountability, he would not stoop to that level in pursuit of what amounted to a fraction of his income. "You're right," he cautiously said. "I can't abandon you, despite how much I want to."

Dorothy flashed her eyes at him briefly, then went back to her eggs.

"Even if you won't consent to a divorce, I won't have you starving to death on my conscience." He took his wallet out from his jacket. "Here, I've got… ten dollars. Alright, that's not that much. Do you still have access to our old bank account?"

She nodded, mouth full of food.

"I'll have forty dollars deposited in it each week until the divorce goes through." That was what they had been paying Lupe. He found that to be fitting.

Dorothy sighed, the fight knocked out of her by the harsh reality of her current situation and the lifeline Richard was throwing her. "That's not much."

"No, no it's not." It was a pittance. Admittedly Lupe had room and board with them, but still. One of the many reasons that he was content to leave high society was that keeping a modest profile in Elpis Court would make him less of a target in the event of a bread riot. Richard had read his history and did not care to have molten gold poured down his throat. Slug or not, that would sting something awful.

"How am I supposed to live on that?"

"You're not. It's meant to keep you from starving to death, nothing more than that." Maybe sleeping on the streets will improve her disposition. Richard was tempted to leave the ten he had on the table and just leave right then and there, but Dorothy was likely to pocket the cash and run and he didn't want to stiff his favorite lunch place. So he watched her finish her plate. He gradually regained some of his appetite and ate most of his lunch in silence.

How will I get rid of you? Richard pondered while staring at Dorothy. And how will I do it without guilt?

Would You Kindly Imagine A Pagebreak Here?

"No? Nothing like that?"

"Nah doll, it's not something working girls use," came Mimi's reply on the other end of the line.

"No, I suppose not," Lupe conceded. She had several customers in the last few weeks ask for a 'male replacement' or 'false member'. After Lupe figured out what they meant she got on the horn with Mimi, her supplier. "Could Maurice make some?"

"Oh, probably. Draw what you want him to make, as specific as possible, different angles. He needs directions, he's not a creative type, but he can make you whatever it is you want." Mimi's husband made damn near everything Mimi sold that wasn't clothing.

"What do you suppose they should be made of? Metal?"

"I'm not sure, I'll think on it. I got a customer waiting, I've got to book, talk to you later."

"Goodbye," Lupe said and hung up the line. I shouldn't have to tell a man what a willy looks like for goodness sake, she thought and pulled out a sketchbook from underneath the counter. It was a Tuesday afternoon and slow at her shop so she had the time to work on it. She got comfortable on the padded stool and poured herself a cup of pine-needle 'tea' to invigorate herself before diving in.

Lupe found that she was starting to have some growing pains for her business. Unlike Mimi, who catered to professionals with fairly stable demands and routines, Lupe's clientele was always on the lookout for something new and trendy. She realized she was going to have to start offering new products on a regular basis in order to keep her customers interested, so any feedback she received from her customers was valuable for generating new ideas.

I'll just draw Richard's, heaven knows I've seen enough of it to be able to draw it from memory. But the more she thought about that, the weirder of an idea it seemed. I don't want him to be inside other women, even if it's just a facsimile. Maybe I will just make a cylinder with a little bulb on the end of it? No, then it would be like making love to a robot, which I don't care to do and I doubt many women would.

"This is harder than I thought," she said to herself after scribbling out a failed start. She had decided to model it as a composite of penises, but trying to picture an average but hypothetical one in three dimensions was straining her creative abilities. That's why you are an amateur, she told herself. A professional artist would be able to draw a dozen tallywhackers without breaking a sweat.

The bells she had over the door tinkled and Lupe looked up. Upon seeing her visitor her hand went for the small pistol she kept behind the counter, but she didn't show it.

"Fitting sort of shop for a whore," Dorothy loudly proclaimed as if it wasn't a viable and successful business.

Lupe just nodded and kept her hand on the gun. At what point am I allowed to shoot her? There are no witnesses either. Oh, please don't make you shoot you! Lupe had anticipated this confrontation, however, hence the pistol at the ready.

"Well, I don't want to spend more time in your filthy den of sin longer than I have to, so I'll get to my point," Dorothy drawled. "Your time with my husband is nearly up, so you may want to plan accordingly."

Lupe cocked an eyebrow. "Is it? Why do you say that?" She hoped she was keeping her sarcasm out of her voice, lest she enrage Dorothy and be attacked with one of the (very soft and user-friendly) dressage whips that Dorothy was curiously inspecting.

"Richard is giving me money again. Now, why do you suppose he would do that?"

The answer was evident by looking at her. Rapture was not kind to the destitute. Lupe found it hard to believe that Dorothy would deign to find employment. He gave you money because he feels bad for you, that's why. He's got decency. "No, why would he do that?" Lupe feigned ignorance, curious as to her answer.

"Because he still loves me, you idiot," Dorothy delineated for her. "Why else would he care, hm? Who bothers to support someone with their own free will if they don't love them?"

By your logic he loves me then. But she dare not aggravate Dorothy, whose sanity seemed to be hanging by a thread. "How much money is he giving you?"

"Oh, loads," she dismissed. "He even said he was going to start paying rent on our old apartment again soon as well, but I need to finish out the lease on my current place. It's in Olympus Heights, and I don't want to leave a bad impression with the lease company there. Your reputation is all you have, really, not that I'd expect a gutter whore like yourself to understand."

Lupe wasn't particularly adept at reading people, but Dorothy's lies stank more than the sour body odor that was clinging to her. Sister, they'd toss you out on your skinny rear if you so much as looked at anyone in Olympus Heights smelling like you do. "Thankfully I have my shop," Lupe found herself saying.

Dorothy laughed. "Yes, and your health!" She laughed again, borderline maniacally.

Lupe's hand was sweating on the handle of the pistol. "If that's it, you'll be on your way then?" Every second Dorothy spent in her shop made her increasingly nervous.

"Glady. I cannot stand to be in this dingy store a moment longer," Dorothy loudly said and Lupe wondered what she was trying to accomplish with the near shout. On her way out she knocked over a display of massage oils.

Lupe swore and hastened to the scattered bottles. Fortunately only one had broken. What is she getting at? Surely she knows I'm going to discuss all this with Richard and he'll tell me the truth of it, that's he's giving her a hundred a month or whatever the truth is, Lupe thought and sopped up the oil with a towel. If she's trying to get me upset it won't work. Does she think she's going to scare me off at this point? She's got to know how futile it is, unless of course she really believes it.

That was a terrifying thought. If she's delusional enough to think she's going to get Richard back, then she's around the bend. Who knows what she'll do? Due to the fake (and then double faked) letter from the doctor Dorothy still thought that Lupe was doomed to die from radiation poisoning as evidenced by her crack about Lupe's 'health', but sooner or later she was going to realize that wasn't going to happen. And then what? The letter had bought time, that was all.

Richard had installed a custom turret system in both their home and in her shop for some protection. She only armed the one in the shop when it was closed and it only fired non-lethal bbs (Lupe didn't want someone to die over false members) but the home system was lethal. Richard had programmed it to find Dorothy – and only Dorothy – to be a hostile target with her biometric data he had in his office.

Lupe both wanted Dorothy to try something at home so this leaden fear for her life would be over and didn't want her to try anything because she already felt bad enough about driving Dorothy apparently mad. How much easier this would be if we could just leave town, she wistfully thought. Damn this place.

She was too perturbed over Dorothy's bizarre behavior to finish her design and the few customers that filtered in did little to take her mind off the problem. She's got to find something else to do other than worry about me! Lupe almost called Richard to talk about it, but she didn't want to discuss this over the line as an operator could always eavesdrop.

At ten to six Lupe called it a day. She put the day's earnings in her purse to deposit in the bank on her way to the train station, put her pistol in her coat pocket, and locked up. A branch of her bank was on the end of the block, which was her first stop before heading to the Atlantic Express station.

It was her habit while waiting for the train to not sit close to the track nor to have her back to it, lest someone whose marriage she blew up throw her into the path of the train. Lupe scanned the crowd, but Dorothy was nowhere to be found. I wonder where she's living these days. Lupe lit a cigarette, feeling ill at ease and wishing she was home.

"Ladies and gentlemen, my good fellow citizens of Rapture, those with their eyes to the horizons of the future, I'm here to show you the latest and greatest and most amazing thing you've seen since you took your bathysphere down here in the first place!"

Lupe turned her head in the direction of the noise. Hucksters and barkers were not a rare sight. Usually she ignored them, but she welcomed the brief distraction over her current woe. This huckster was better dressed than most of their lot – his suit was clean and his dark brown hair wasn't too thick with pomade. He stood on top of a wooden box on which Lupe couldn't quite make out the painted letters, but she could make out a couple of 'F's stenciled on it.

He didn't grab too much attention, however, as most people were also used to this aggressive street marketing. But that didn't seem to worry him. "Of course, actions speak louder than words, so –" he extended his right arm and a short flame erupted from his bare hand.

Lupe gasped, as did the several others who had been watching him. Their gasps – and even a single shout – garnered the attention of everyone else in their seats. Lupe felt an urge to flee. This is worse than a gun! My God! What fresh hell is this?!

"Now don't you worry folks, it's nothing that can't be cooled down," the barker joked and with a flick of his left hand a blast of air so cold and icy it was frosted came out.

Lupe dropped her cigarette on the floor in shock. Everyone was now enraptured by the display and the barker, seeing that now had their undivided attention, made his pitch. "This power – and a whole lot more – can be yours starting today! They're called plasmids and they are powered by ADAM! For sale only by Fontaine Futuristics! Get yours today!"

Lupe felt sick. There's not enough turrets in the world to protect me anymore!