And The Winner Is...
by TheBucketWoman
Disclaimer: I own no part of LWD, nor do I own the old jokes and such Casey tells.
Chapter Five:
Part One: Derek.
The uniform was dorky. He had to wear one of Good Deal's Official Polo shirts, either in black with green logo or green with black logo. And Khakis—every day that he worked. There was also a badge on a nickel chain with his Official Employee ID, and buttons on his shirt that told customers to ask him assorted things. But he was happy that there wasn't a hat. There was two days of training, and he was given a thick binder full of procedures that he skimmed quickly and forgot about. There was a script that he had to memorize for answering the phone and another one full of things that he had to say to every customer that came to his register. He rarely if ever got to finish the speech because no one wanted to hear it.
The people were mainly okay, at least so far. He found that the greasier he was, the more the problem customers seemed to like him. They were putty in his hands. And his coworkers were mainly likable, too. There was Jacinta, who kept trying to feed him stuff that she cooked, and Jeannine, who always seemed to have a dirty boyfriend story to tell when business was slow. And Brian, even though he usually worked the early shift while Derek worked the late shift, was impossibly cool. He knew where to get cheap concert tickets, and had encyclopedic knowledge of music trivia. Then there was Les. He was...a dork, but mainly okay. He let everyone switch off and run the video game demos once in a while.
Really Derek had only one problem with the place. Late afternoon, every day, like clockwork, the piped in music got cranked to earsplitting levels. One had to talk over the noise. For the most part, Derek thought that he wouldn't have to say much, but then he'd remember the scripts.
"CAN I HELP THE NEXT CUSTOMER?" he'd have to yell.
"HI! WELCOME TO GOOD DEAL, WHERE ALL THE DEALS ARE GOOD. DID YOU FIND EVERYTHING THAT YOU WERE LOOKING FOR TODAY?"
"WHAT?" the customers would say, and he'd have to start over.
After two days of this, he was a little hoarse. This of course, could have happened to anyone; he kept quiet on his day off and went back. Nothing to worry about, he told himself, even though no one else was hoarse at all.
"Wooo, Rookie, listen to you," Jacinta said. "Drink some tea when you get home, papi."
By the end of the first week, he had a nice working case of laryngitis. He got home that Saturday night and his dad got on his case.
"You know this job, Derek?" His dad said. "It ain't working out."
"Dad," he squeaked.
"Don't dad me," his dad said. "Do you hear yourself? Is your memory that bad? It really wasn't that long ago that you were stuck writing in notebooks to communicate, and I wouldn't have thought that you'd be so eager to go back to that."
Derek glared.
"All I'm saying is that you're not ready for this." his dad said. "When you took the job, none of us remembered that they like to blast the music in there. That, coupled with the air conditioning is going to continue to cause you to lose your voice until it just stays gone. You're more susceptible to that than most people. It never did come back all the way after the accident."
Derek did not need to be reminded of this. He was the first to notice that his voice had sounded wrong since the Incident. Casey pretended not to notice, as did Nora and up until now, his dad. Now here was his dad admitting it. He didn't think he could be more depressed than he'd been already, but this was a new low.
"This is pathetic," Derek whispered.
"No, it isn't" his dad said. "You have an injury and you're pushing things too hard too fast."
"Four months?" Derek whispered.
"Clearly not long enough," his dad said. "Maybe I can give your doctor a call and find out what our options are."
Derek looked at his father quizzically.
"I mean therapy or something," his dad said. "This doesn't have to be too bad you know."
"Seems bad enough," Derek whispered.
"You know, this whispering thing you're doing isn't doing you any favors, either," his dad said. "Why don't you go get the laptop? It's gotta beat the hell out of Casey's journal don'tcha think?"
Nope, Derek thought. Both options generally suck.
Casey came home a bit later with ice cream. Somebody'd obviously briefed her on the situation, and she was trying to cheer him up. She waved it under his nose.
"It's Forbidden Chocolate," she sing-songed. Then when she got no response, she got exasperated. "Come on, Derek, normally I could be standing here naked holding this and you'd only have eyes for the ice cream."
He had the laptop next to him on the couch, and it was open to a word processing program.
When have you ever been naked in front of me and holding chocolate ice cream? he typed. Do you wanna test the theory?
"Not tonight," she said.
If you really wanted to cheer me up, you would, he typed.
"Nice try," Casey said. She took a spoonful of his ice cream. "This is so good," she said. She fed him some.
She took a couple more bites for herself.
She kissed the back of his neck with her cold mouth. He wheezed laughter. She put the bowl down on the coffee table and put her cold hand up under his shirt. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand back out, kissing her palm while he was at it.
Think you got all the moves, Miss Thang? He thought as he began to wrestle her, but remembered the laptop was in the way so he moved it to the other end of the coffee table before turning back to her.
She wouldn't kiss him on the mouth.
"Let's get the all clear from the doctor first okay?" she said.
This had all the effect of a dip in the North Atlantic in winter. He pulled away from her completely.
"Derek," she said. He began to get up. She pulled him down again.
"Derek, come on," she said. "Don't be mad. I love you, okay? Sit with me a while." Then she paused and thought about what she said.
"I take it back," she said. "Go ahead and be mad, but stay here with me."
I don't really wanna talk about it. Don't want to hear about doctors. I'm sick of doctors. It's bad enough that I have to quit my job on Monday. I really don't want to think about any of this. I want to make out and I can't do that either, he typed.
"Yeah," Casey said. "It sucks. But it won't be forever."
How do you know that? It could be forever. I remember being in the hospital thinking that it could happen, that I would not speak again, but I guess I didn't really believe it. Do you know how bad I would be at sign language, Casey? He typed. Have you heard my French? I don't do well with new languages.
" 'The window has a headache,' " she quoted, deadpan. He didn't smile.
"Don't jump the gun," she said. "We're not at the sign language stage yet. We may never be. And even if we get to that stage, you won't die. We'll figure it out. But I doubt it'll come to that."
You sure you want to be with the mute guy? He typed.
"If I were gonna leave you," she began. "It would have more to do with your dirty socks on the floor or with your penchant for melodrama. I'm supposed to be the drama queen. You can't have two drama queens in a relationship. Rivers turn red. Plagues of locusts and infomercials rain down on us."
"Do you really want to be responsible for the pestilence and death?" she asked. "Hmmmm? I don't hear you..."
He looked at her in shock, but his mouth, totally against his will, curved into a smile, and he flipped her the bird.
"See? You know some sign language,"she said. "Now eat your ice cream. You'll feel better. Ice cream cures all ills."
Part Two: Casey
The next morning Derek seemed to be trying his best to stay in bed. Casey brought Marti up at around ten to get him moving, and poor Marti collided with him on the way out of the bathroom. He had a towel on and was still quite wet, so when he smacked into her, she got wet too.
"Smer-ek!" she said, holding her arms out in front of her. He looked apologetic and tried to smooth her hair out with one hand and hold the towel for dear life with the other. Then he gave up and headed to his room to put some clothes on.
"At least he was clean?" Casey said. "Do you want another T-shirt?"
"Nah," Marti said. "It'll dry."
"Well," Casey said. "Since he's obviously up, how bout we just go downstairs and find some cartoons on TV."
"Nah," Marti said. "We'll wait for him." She stationed herself outside his door. She did this matter-of-factly, almost shruggingly, even though Casey had a pretty good idea that Marti was worried about him. As much as she tried to deny it, Casey knew that the little girl was a worrier. Casey knew this ever since the time she'd found Marti looking quietly miserable on the kitchen counter while listening to George fight with Casey's mom in the basement. It hadn't been a big fight, but Casey figured that Marti, six at the time, had overheard a lot of fighting before her parents got divorced, and any drama at all made her uneasy. If someone got sick or hurt, Marti had to make it better or Something Bad would happen. When Derek had had his accident, the only way Casey had calmed Marti down was by coming up with a plan for Marti to help him. This was why Casey knew better than to try to get Marti to leave her spot by Derek's door. Nothing would come between her and her Smerek.
"Okay," Casey said. She pulled up a piece of floor. She waited a few minutes, then rapped on his door. "Hurry up in there! Do you have a hot date or something? I'll kick her butt!"
Marti didn't laugh, but then again, Casey wasn't sure she'd ever been funny. Not intentionally anyway. So failing to crack Marti up was not unusual.
"So Marti," she began. "Do you wanna hear a dirty joke?"
"Yeah," she said, eyes wide.
"The kid fell in the mud," Casey said. "Wanna hear a clean one? He took a bath."
Crickets. Maybe she'd left something out.
"What do you do when you see a spaceman?" Casey tried.
"Park in it, man," Marti said, stone faced.
"How bout a riddle," Casey said. "I got one that isn't in that book I gave you."
"Okay."
"Okay," Casey said. "What's greater than God, worse than the Devil, rich people want it, poor people have it and if you eat it, you'll die?" That would keep her busy for a bit. Lizzie had told Casey and Derek that one a few weeks back. It had driven Casey mad for hours, but, she found out later, that Derek had gotten it in two minutes and told Lizzie the correct answer in private, so that Casey could obsess over it for a while. "Give up?" Casey asked.
"Nothing," Marti said.
Dammit, Casey thought.
"Did Derek tell you the answer?" Casey asked.
"No," Marti said.
"Took me forever to figure it out," Casey said.
"You think everything's all hard to figure out even when it's not."
Casey saw the shadow under the door change. "Derek," she singsonged. "I know you're listening at the door. You may as well come out."
He did his best to look indignant when he opened the door.
"Bout time, Derek," Marti said. "You need to eat." If she could reach his ear, she'd be dragging him by it.
Part Three: George.
George called Dr. Trent to pick her brain a bit, see if she knew of a good speech therapy program, and to see if she could possibly check Derek out again. He thought he'd get her office voice mail, but she picked up. They exchanged pleasantries for a minute or two; he was surprised she'd remembered them. Then he brought up his reason for calling.
"How long's he been like this?" Dr. Trent said, her voice turning stern frighteningly quick.
"It got bad last night, but I'd say since Thursday or Friday," George said.
"Bring him in to the ER" the doctor said. "I'll be waiting."
"The ER?" George said. "Isn't that a little extreme?"
"No. Get him in here, now."
Then she hung up.
Crap, he thought.