UPDATE! Thanks so much for the nudge to get this story moving. I hope you like this next chapter! :)
Chapter Ten
"Hey, Officer B.B.," the Cat said, slinking up beside Kochanski. "I don't get it!"
"That's a change," she muttered, scanning her eyes over the impeccably dressed and coiffed crowd from her vantage point by the bandstand at the center of the marble promenade. Lister had parked himself by the open bar, claiming to be parched after their long hike through the grounds. Kryten was engaged in a rather animated conversation with one of the house droids…something fussy about vacuum attachments. But Kochanski…
She'd grown up among gatherings like this, absorbed from early childhood the mannerisms and affected ennui of the rich, the spiteful, and the perpetually bored. There was a time she would have schmoozed right in, effortlessly asserting her dominance among the established cliques with a few backhanded criticisms against the style choices and accessories of each queen bee, a passive aggressive smile fixed firmly to her face.
But now…
These people, the attitude they projected… It all seemed so alien to her, so strange. Had her time alone in space really affected her this much? Had her experience being the last human alive altered her perspective to the point where…
…where, she no longer fit in?
"Yo, are you even listening to me?" Cat's voice broke in on her thoughts. "I am trying to tell you about my suit!"
"Sorry, I'm sorry, Cat," Kochanski said, shaking herself out of her odd musings. "What were you saying?"
But, the Cat just went on talking, following his own one-track thought.
"It looks so dangerous, too!" he said, picking at his lapel. "And, still, not one of these women here will give me so much as a smile! I just don't get it! Are they sick?"
"No, Cat, they're not sick," Kochanski said.
"Robots, then?"
"No, they're not robots." She shook her head, and almost smiled. "Cat, if you want this crowd to take any notice of you, they first have to think you're somebody worth noticing."
"I am somebody worth noticing!" Cat exclaimed.
"No, no, I mean somebody famous – important. Someone who can make them seem important by association."
"You lost me, Bud Babe," Cat said. "Hey, maybe if I found a pair of skates and a megaphone—"
Kochanski let him ramble for a moment, a rather amusing notion blooming in her brain. A notion that, if it worked, would not only help her feel better about herself, but possibly benefit their mission as well. After all, what was good for the mission was good for the Wildfire, and satisfying the Wildfire could only increase Kochanski's chances of finally getting home to her universe, her Dave…
"Cat, stop," she said, resting a hand on his arm until he closed his mouth and met her eyes. "You're going about this from the wrong angle. Making a splash with a group like this…it's not about noise and flash. It's all about attitude. Presentation! Here, let me show you."
She waved a hand in front of her face, hoisting her expression into a patented 'social smile'.
The Cat started to mimic her smile, his white fangs looking rather dingy in the orange-greenish light, but Kochanski shook her head.
"No, not you," she said. "Only I should smile. You want to look sort of distant. Distracted. Like you have better places to be and can't be bothered wasting your time with these people."
"Like this?" Cat asked, shifting his stance and staring out at the curving dome, as if waiting for a taxi to show up.
"Eh… Good enough," she said. "Now, I don't want you to talk. Just keep looking bored and disdainful and follow my lead. Ready?"
Cat glanced down at her over his nose.
"Hey, that's pretty good," she said. "OK, here we go."
She picked out the nearest queen bee, met her eyes, then strode straight past her table, holding up her hand in a little wave to a random spot just ahead.
"Alan! Emma!" she cried.
About fourteen heads turned toward her.
"Psst!" the Cat hissed. "Who are Alan and Emma?"
"They're just popular names," she whispered back. "I knew twelve Emmas at school, and at least eight Alans. I could have called out John and Missy and it would have been the same thing. Now, just keep quiet and follow me!"
She straightened her shoulders, shifting into full-on schmooze mode.
"It's so wonderful to see you both again! Remember, we met in the islands last season?" she said loudly, beaming at the furthest couple and making a show of walking past the others before snagging a seat at the table. The Cat remained standing, looking as bored and distanced as he could. "You simply won't believe who I've managed to persuade to join as my plus one – but I'm sure I don't have to introduce him to you! You're always so up on the latest designs!"
"Oh, is he in fashion, then?" Alan asked, looking the Cat up and down.
"Alan, really! How can you even ask that?" Emma scolded, terrified of looking stupid in front of someone she ostensibly 'should' recognize. "Surely even you must be familiar with this man's work."
"Wasn't he the featured artist at Mars Fashion Week last month?" another woman spoke up, moving toward them from a different table. "Yes—I bought a pair of your shoes!"
"I have the hat," someone else said, and Kochanski leaned back in her chair, her smile twisting into a satisfied smirk as a crowd of women, and a few men, quickly formed around the delighted Cat, all of them fighting for the attention of this apparent celebrity.
"Guess I haven't lost my touch after all," she muttered to herself, checking her nails, then letting her eyes drift over to the main table, where Rimmer's parents seemed to be holding court. Rimmer himself, though, was nowhere to be seen…
Rimmer trailed Frank's children like a lioness stealthily stalking an infant wildebeest, on the lookout for larger game. In this case, Frank's wife, Janine.
Janine Rimmer had once been a popular fashion model – a career she had given up shortly following her marriage. Long ago, her sylphlike figure had graced the huge, holographic billboard outside young Arnold's dorm window, back at Io House.
Well, it hadn't been just outside his window…he'd had to use computer-enhanced binoculars to see it, right at the turn-off by the dome's only shopping center…but her image had haunted his pre-teen dreams just the same. His young imaginings had extended no further than handholding, now and then a kiss, but his boyish crush on his stunning sister-in-law had lingered far into adulthood.
He hadn't attended the wedding, hadn't even known he had a niece and nephew. To tell the truth, it had never occurred to him to ask after his brothers' families at all. He'd always been too wrapped up in his own career, his own driving need to prove himself…
And yet, here they were, right in front of him: two children. The living, breathing offspring of Frank and his famously beautiful wife. Further evidence of his brothers' total success in life…and how he, Arnold, remained a failure even after death…
Rimmer had no idea what he would say if he saw Janine now. Most likely, he'd end up tongue tied and slink away before she even noticed he was there. Actually, he didn't know why he was bothering to even—
"Mummy! Mummy!" the children started peeping, and Rimmer froze in place, his 'heart' thumping in his throat.
A woman with short-cropped brown hair peered over her wineglass, her heavy – though expertly applied – makeup unable to cover the weariness in her red-rimmed eyes or the red flush from the alcohol that colored her rounded face. Her loose clothes draped elegantly over her thickset frame, and emerald jewelry twinkled in Jupiter's orange light.
She sighed and drained the glass, setting it down on the private table where she sat alone beside her nameplate, overlooking the chattering crowd. A man in flashy clothes seemed to be drawing a great deal of interest, but she had other concerns besides finding out the whos and whys of his apparent celebrity.
"Don't tell me," she said, glancing down at the children. "Your father's been detained…again. Did he even manage to get the seating chart changed so we can at least see each other during the dinner?"
The children were too full of their own exciting news to listen.
"Mummy, there were intruders on the grounds!" the girl exclaimed.
"I'm sure there were, honey," the woman mumbled over her daughter, preoccupied by her own dark thoughts as the children continued relating their recent adventure. "I don't know why we even bother to show up to these so called 'family' events. No one here needs me, Frank least of all. If he's just going to disappear the moment we arrive—"
"Daddy didn't disappear," the boy said, picking up the thread of his sister's story. "He let us work the security controls! Well, sort of. We didn't get to shoot the lasers, though."
Janine pinched her nose, only vaguely aware of what the children were saying.
"Look, Mummy can't play right now, sweetie," she said wearily. "Why don't you and your sister go explore the garden? Make sure you keep out from underfoot."
"But, Mummy—" the girl whined.
"Please! Let's not get shrill," Janine winced.
"Mummy, you're not listening!" the girl shrieked. "The man's standing right here!"
"Hmm?" the woman said blearily. "Who's where, Cinthy?"
"One of the intruders!" the girl exclaimed, grabbing Rimmer's arm and dragging him toward her mother's table. "See?"
Rimmer jolted out of his gape-mouthed stupor, too startled to pull away from the girl's powerful grip.
"Daddy called this one Cousin Fletch," Cinthy said. "But the ones with him looked even weirder!"
"One of them said he was a Cat!" the boy announced.
"Why don't you let the man speak for himself, Jamey," the woman said, swaying slightly as she stood and squinted at Rimmer's face.
"We've met before, I'm sure of it. Janine Rimmer," she said, and held out a hand, which he took, still unable to stop staring. "I'm sorry if my children bothered you. They're usually better behaved."
"Oh, my God…" he gasped. "Oh, my God, it is you. This is really...you! I…I didn't see it at first, but now…"
He pulled his hand away and scanned the crowds around them, wrapped in an uncomfortable sense of dislocation.
"But…but this doesn't make sense. Frank's life was always so perfect: perfect grades, perfect career, perfect wife… Yet... Yet you seem so...so..."
"Oh yes," she said. "That's the Rimmer party line, isn't it? Here we are, top of the ziggurat: rich, successful, ambitious... Everything's perfect, all the time. And if you're not happy with that…"
She poured a fresh inch of wine into her glass and raised it toward Rimmer before drinking it down.
"So, where is Frank, anyway?" she asked, lowering herself gracefully back into the chair. The children climbed into a pair of chairs opposite her and began battling over the bowl of breadsticks at the center of the table. Rimmer glanced at them, wondering if he should step in, but Janine seemed oblivious. "Still schmoozing it up with the generals, I suppose? I told him not to sign up for this new project, that his children barely see him as it is. But, Frank is so utterly fixated on making captain before forty, like his brother, he volunteered just the same. What could I possibly say?"
"I...wouldn't know..."
Rimmer frowned, his thoughts and feelings reeling within him. This was not what he had expected to find: a lonely woman in obvious distress, two anxiously competitive children vying for just a moment of real attention...
It was all too familiar. All too real...
He felt his Ace persona twitching like a reflex, itching to take over, to comfort his brother's wounded family with a few smoothly spoken assurances... It would be so easy to slide back behind the mask, to let Ace take his place in the driver's seat…
But...
Something blocked the way, something deep and strong. A very old, very slow burning anger, rising and swelling like a spring tide. For most of Rimmer's life, this simmering anger had been directed inward, feeding a self-loathing so powerful it had, at times, threatened to overwhelm him completely. But now, after seeing the withering effects of his family's subtle, if insidious, dynamics on Janine, on her children...
Rimmer straightened and stepped forward. Awkwardly, he reached out and covered his sister-in-law's elegantly manicured hand with his.
"I'll go find Frank for you," he said, meeting her eyes. "You just stay here. OK?"
Janine looked back at him, her forehead creasing.
"I know I know you," she said. "What was your name again? Fletch? Fletcher?"
Rimmer shook his head.
"No," he said, and tapped at his nametag. "No, no, nope-a-roonie. My name is Arnold. Arnold Rimmer."
"Arnold?" Janine repeated, and shook her head. "Impossible. Arnold's just a boy."
"That's right, I was," Rimmer said, his expression hard and distant with memory. "But, not anymore. I've been gone a long, long…long, long time. But, I'm back now."
He smiled a very small smile and patted her hand.
"Hey, kids: save me a breadstick," he said, stepping away from the table and shooting the family a quick wink. "I'll be back for dinner."
Cinthy and Jamey stared curiously after Rimmer's departing back.
"Who was that, Mummy?" Cinthy asked. "I never heard of an Arnold Rimmer."
"I'm not really sure," Janine said, the dark shade that had fallen over her eyes seeming to lift just slightly. "But he seemed…nice…"
To Be Continued...