"Hey Richie," Richelle said that night as the two spent the time rattling the dice to their games again to further annoy the people sleeping down the hall, "Is there anything good showing at the movie theater in this poor excuse for a town?"
Richie nodded his head, "Yeah, I think so, they've got one of those movies where an evil doll comes to life and starts killing people."
"Sweet, maybe we can go see it tomorrow," she said, "What time is it?"
Richie looked at his watch, "12:15."
Richelle got up and went over to Richie's TV set and turned it on and after quickly flipping through the channels, concluded there was nothing good on and turned it back off.
"I still think we should sneak out of this joint and get on my bike and ride around till the sun comes up," she said, "I'd like to see what this town looks like through the night."
"Like the daytime except it's dark," Richie commented.
"Don't be a wiseass," Richelle warned him as she returned to the center of the floor where he sat.
"Sorry."
"I don't know how long I'll be able to stand this place," Richelle said as she picked up the dice and shook them.
Richie looked at her and asked, "The loft, or Seacouver in general?"
"Both I suppose, it's very…claustrophobic inducing, don't you think so?" she asked.
Richie shrugged his shoulders, "I never thought about it I guess."
"You can't do anything around here, even with Connor backing us we have to sit up in this damn room all night and contain ourselves like a quarantine."
Richelle ran her hands over her face as she stood up, "I'm tired."
"Me too," Richie said as he put the game away.
Richelle headed into the bathroom, leaving the door slightly ajar to throw her clothes out as she changed for the night; Richie wandered right into the barrage of flying laundry, first out flew Richelle's T-shirt, then her jeans, and then her bra which Richie unintentionally caught. The garment in his hand, Richie held it up and got a better look at it.
"Well I sure as hell hope you're not going to ask to borrow it," Richelle said as she came out in an oversized Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle nightshirt. He looked at her, his eyes wide and him without a damn idea what to say, but she had plenty to suggest, "Put that thing down, titmouse, it's too big to fit you anyway."
Embarrassed beyond belief or words, Richie dropped it on the floor and let it lie there and he backed away over to his bed, took off his boots and crawled in on the left side.
"Hopefully tomorrow there'll be something better to do than there was today," Richelle said as she headed over to the other side of the bed.
"Yeah well if you hate it here so much," Richie said, "Why don't you go back to New York?"
"Don't tempt me or I will, and I'll take you with me," Richelle warned him.
"Oh shut up and go to bed," Richie told her.
Richelle reached over and pinched him so hard he yelled; he responded by kicking her. Richelle picked up her pillow and whopped Richie over the head with it. He wasn't about to admit defeat so he picked up his pillow as well and they took turns beating each other over the heads with their pillows.
Tessa covered her mouth to stifle a yawn as the three adults gathered in the kitchen the next morning. Duncan looked at the clock and said, "It's already eight o' clock, I wonder what's keeping the gruesome twosome today."
"They're probably relaxing, doing what I do when I want to relax," Connor said.
"What's that?" Tessa asked.
"It's Saturday morning, they're probably sitting around in their underwear drinking beer and watching cartoons," Connor told them.
Tessa and Duncan both went through expressions of reaction that were completely different from one another and yet there was a similarity in them; disbelief at what he said.
"I'll go look," Connor said.
As Connor neared Richie's bedroom he could hear both teenagers yelling about something. He opened the door and saw both of them, Richie in his jeans and bare-chested and Richelle in a T-shirt and her underwear, sitting at the foot of Richie's bed; sitting being a term best used lightly, both were bouncing up and down throwing blind punches into the air as they watched something on the TV.
"Come on, Jason, kill them!" Richie shouted at the TV.
"Come on, Tommy, kick his ass!" Richelle offered in response.
"Well now," Connor said with a smirk on his face, "I can definitely see the family resemblance." The two turned their attention away from the TV for a minute to look at him, "How's it going?"
"Fine," the two of them answered.
"Yeah well you better get your clothes on soon and come out before Duncan insists on coming in," Connor told Richie and Richelle.
"Anything we got he should be old enough by now to know what it is," Richelle insisted.
"All the same, put your clothes on," Connor made one last remark right before he headed out the door, "Don't make me get the hose!"
"What was that about?" Richie asked after Connor had left.
"Don't ask," Richelle answered.
They finished getting dressed and a short while later came out of the bedroom and showed their faces in the kitchen.
"Morning everybody," Richie said.
"Yeah yeah, what he said," Richelle dryly added as she made a beeline over to the fridge and stuck her head in it.
"Well, how did you two sleep last night?" Connor asked.
"Fine," both teenagers answered.
Richie collapsed into his chair at the table and Richelle grabbed a jar of jelly out of the fridge, swung around to grab the bread and a knife and seated herself between he and Connor.
"So Richelle," Tessa said, trying to think of something to say, "What do you two have planned for today?"
"Well this afternoon we're going to check out a movie at the theater," Richelle answered as she scooped out large chunks of jelly and smoothed them out on her bread, "Before that, I think we're just going to take in the whole city and see if there's actually anything around here that's worth our time. But in all honesty I think somebody could just do everybody a big favor if they nuked the whole place."
Duncan would've had something to say in return to that but he was too tired and just let it go.
"Okay, so we've basically been around this whole damn city about twice now," Richelle said to Richie later that morning, "And frankly, I still haven't seen one redeeming quality about the whole damn place."
Richie shrugged his shoulders and said, "I guess it just has to grow on you."
The two walked over to a mesh fence and looked in at an empty baseball field as they spoke. The sun had gone under a bunch of gray clouds earlier that day, only adding to the overall depressing feeling they were experiencing.
"Like a wart?" Richelle replied, "Like I said, you've lived here your whole life, you don't know any better."
"Yeah well I still don't get what's so important about New York," Richie told her.
"You would if you ever went there," Richelle said.
"Maybe…"
Richelle dug her fingers out of the mesh diamonds in the gate and asked Richie, "What time is it?"
He looked at his watch and answered, "About noon."
Richelle headed over to the street and sat down at the curb, "Well this is certainly becoming a barren source of amusement…what're we going to do now?"
"I don't know," Richie responded as he collapsed on the ground beside her.
They heard a horn honking nearby and looked up and saw Connor pull up across the street.
"What're you doing here?" Richelle asked as they headed over to his car.
"I've had about enough enlightenment from my cousin for one day," Connor answered, "I thought I'd find you two around somewhere."
"So why come to us?" Richelle asked.
"I seem to recall you two mentioning something about a movie later today," Connor said.
"You coming with us?" she asked.
"Anything has to be better than sitting around the house listening to Duncan complain," he answered.
"Complain about what?" Richie asked as they got into the car.
"You got a dictionary?" Connor replied.
Duncan had gone out for a while leaving Tessa alone, during which time she made the rounds going about the loft collecting everybody's dirty laundry. She gathered up everybody's except for Connor's, which since he was staying on the couch for the time being, he'd taken the liberty of dumping in Tessa and Duncan's bedroom.
Tessa picked up Connor's jeans, two of his shirts and his jacket and put them on the bed to sort through the pockets to make sure nothing wound up in the machine that shouldn't have. The jeans were cleared but she felt something in the breast pocket of Connor's jacket. She opened the pocket and pulled out a bunch of photographs.
Curiosity got the better of Tessa, not having known much about Duncan's cousin, and she went through the pictures one by one to see what they were, and she was surprised by what she saw. The first picture showed two people standing facing the camera, their hands over their eyes to shield them from the sun. As a result, half of their faces were hidden but Tessa was able to clearly make them out as Connor and Richelle. The next picture showed the two of them again, this time wearing dark sunglasses, standing side by side at the entrance to Coney Island, then another of them, on the Cyclone, and another at the Statue of Liberty, there were pictures of the two of them at landmarks and tourist sites all over the country. It looked to Tessa like the two of them were having the time of their lives.
Tessa heard the door open and Duncan come in, and she went out to meet him with the pictures in hand.
"Where have you been?" Tessa asked.
"Out," was his only answer.
"See anybody?" she asked.
"A few people," Duncan answered, but didn't expand on it.
Tessa all but shoved the pictures in his face. "I found these in Connor's pocket while I was getting the clothes ready for the wash."
Duncan took the pictures and looked at them, at first like he didn't know what they were. Then it started to become clear to him, and he started shuffling through all of them, and it still seemed he didn't like what he saw.
"Obviously this girl means very much to Connor," Tessa said, "It would seem he even considers her as part of his family."
Duncan put the pictures down in apparent disgust and said only, "Maybe."
"Maybe…how can you be so blind as to what's right in front of you?" Tessa asked, "He clearly thinks of her as much as his daughter as we think of Richie as being like our son, whether we admit it or not. Why do you go to so much trouble to despise her?"
"I do not, she's the one that hates me," Duncan said.
"And what have you done to counter that?" Tessa asked, "You yell at her, you threaten to throw her out, why should she like you?"
"Of course I'm not saying that living with Mac and Tess doesn't have its ups and downs," Richie told Richelle later that afternoon as they headed to the theater.
"I had guessed as much," Richelle replied, "I noticed when we first met, let me guess, they told you to put on something decent before we got there, right?"
"Well yeah…but you were dressed the same way," Richie realized.
"I have a valiant excuse for that," Richelle said, "I only brought three changes of clothes with me and that was the last clean pair."
They pulled up to the curb beside the movie theater, and Connor pulled up beside him in his car.
"Well, I hope this movie's good," Richie said as they headed in.
"Anything's got to be better than staying home and listening to Duncan complain about everything," Connor replied.
They headed into the lobby and got three tickets for the movie but found out it wasn't due to start for 15 more minutes.
"This is one reason why I hate theaters," Richelle said as the three of them sat down in the lobby and waited, "When they advertise a time they never bother to tell you if that's when the movie starts or when the previews for other movies start."
Richie and Richelle sat down beside each other and Connor sat down across from them on the other side of the theater's 'waiting room'.
"So what else do those two hicks do to you?" Richelle asked Richie.
"Nothing particularly awful," Richie said.
"Try to stuff some damn culture into you, do they?" she asked.
"How did you guess?" Richie asked.
Richelle gestured with her thumb towards Connor, who was looking the other way at something.
"Him?" Richie couldn't believe it, "I thought he was cool."
"For the most part he is, but he does occasionally insist on dragging me off to some God awful show…opera, Shakespeare crap, you name it," Richelle responded as she turned in the chair and elevated her legs on top of the one next to her, "They make you sit through that stuff?"
"Some of it," Richie said, "I usually wind up falling asleep."
"I should be so lucky," she replied.
"Yeah? They make you sit through that Midsummer Night stuff?" Richie asked.
"That movie where everybody runs around the woods naked in long sparkling wigs?" Richelle asked as she turned to look at him, "Oh yeah, I saw that one, that wasn't so bad."
"Well I think I've had enough culture for one day," Connor said as he got up, "Let's go find a seat for the movie."
"Think it'll be any good?" Richie asked.
"Doubtful," Richelle told him as they headed for the movie room, "I've seen every living killer doll movie there is and none of them are ever scary."
Two hours later the two teenagers walked out of the theater room with wide eyes and they never walked more than an inch away from each other. Connor walked out alongside them and said, "Well that was mildly entertaining."
"Yeah," Richie and his sister replied in unison, their eyes still the size of doorknobs.
They pushed past the crowd of everybody else walking away from the same movie and found their way back towards the lobby.
"Well I think we've avoided Duncan long enough," Connor told them and checked his watch, "We better get back soon or they'll have a search party out after us."
"Yeah," the two teenagers said again.
Richelle turned her head and said, "I have to go to the bathroom first." And she pulled away from Richie and headed over to the ladies room and the door closed behind her. Richie hadn't moved from where he stood, only turned around so he was facing the opposite wall. The restroom door swung open again as Richelle reached out, grabbed Richie by the arm and said, "You too," pulling him into the women's room without so much as a word of protest from her brother.
"You guys coming?" Connor asked as they got to the curb and reached their vehicles.
"We'll catch up," Richelle told him.
"Suit yourself," he replied as he got in his car and headed back for the shop.
"So what're we going to do now?" Richie asked.
"You know Richie, I had an idea earlier," Richelle told him, "When we were talking earlier about culture and all that stuff, it gave me a great idea."
Richie made a weird face, "What's that?"
"I'll explain it to you later, where's the library, or does this city even have one?" she asked.
"Yeah it's…it's uh…." Richie tried to point the direction but couldn't, "It'd be easier to get there if I drive."
Richelle grinned at him, a knowing grin that had her mouth been open, she would've resembled Alice's Cheshire cat, "You just want to see what it's like to be up front on this thing," she said, indicating her bike, "Alright, but put the helmet on first, last thing we need is you wiping out and splattering your brains all over the side of the road."
"Assuming I have brains, right?" Richie asked as he put on her helmet.
"No, that's Duncan," she told him as she straddled the seat and positioned herself behind Richie, "Alright, let's get the hell out of here, daylight's burning."
And off they went, halfway through the city, turning this way and that, occasionally having to make a few turns back because of traffic, or construction, or something else. Finally they reached the Seacouver Public Library and headed in.
"Do you have a card?" Richelle asked.
"No," Richie answered.
"Never mind, I'll get one," she said, "Where do they keep the nonfiction?"
They passed through the main room, first making their way past all the fiction shelves and then the biographies and then reached the nonfiction in the back, which was subdivided by categories of nonfiction, and they found what apparently Richelle was looking for near the far back. A full bookcase dedicated to poetry, poems, literature and comedy.
"What're we doing here?" Richie asked.
He looked and saw Richelle reaching up to the top shelf and pulling down a bunch of plays and humor books, and she said, "If it's culture that MacLeod is so damn hung up on, we'll give him culture alright…" Some of the books were falling off the shelf and just missed hitting the two of them. "We'll give him a dose of his own medicine and see how he likes it."