Ch4: Danny + Mindy: just our luck
Danny knocked at her door, finally. He was so late. No flowers. This date was not going as planned. Maybe when she opened the door, he would suggest they just stay in, order take-out and watch any movie she wanted.
Mindy opened the door, "We gotta go, we're going to be late for the show!" She grabbed her keys and locked the door quickly. Danny didn't have the heart to back out. She obviously spent some time getting ready and was dressed to impress.
"You…look…damn," he started with a smile, "beautiful." He looked her up and down with appreciation. Mindy was wearing a knit blue sweater sweater dress which hugged her curves in all of the right places. She smiled.
"Thanks, you look nice….but we are going to be so late!" They hailed a cab and he opened the door for her and scooted in next to her. Mindy gave the cabbie the address to the off, off-Broadway theater. Mindy looked down at the seat and noticed Danny's finger was in a splint. A surgeon who broke his finger? Not good, not good at all.
"Danny, what the hell…?" and she pointed to his hand, horrified.
"I was going to block a pass, but….well let's just say Biyach got the last laugh," he trailed off. "Jeremy is doing the C-section but I brought my pager in case he needed help."
Mindy pressed her lips together to avoid smiling. She did not know there really was a Biyach.
Mindy and Danny sat in the taxi as it sped toward the theater. The taxi turned right and came up to a crowd of bicycle protesters blocking traffic intentionally. The taxi grounded to a halt.
"I can't believe this is happening!" said Mindy.
"Maybe they're all going to Sirens of Trojan," said Danny.
"What?"
"Sirens of Trojan."
"No, Sirens of TITAN, Danny, you know the Kurt Vonnegut book? Not like the condoms."
"Sounds like a real uplifting musical," said Danny being snarky. "Anyway," he said, "I thought it was Trojan, not Titan".
"No, it's a moon of Saturn. I took an astronomy class in college, and I've always been into planets."
"Me too," Danny said. "I always liked Pluto the best. It was like the little planet that didn't get any respect, but it still hung with the rest…it even got ahead of Neptune every few years."
"Whatever…you know Pluto is so not a planet!"
"Yeah, right."
"No, seriously, they took it away like way back in 2000 or something."
"You can't just de-planet a planet."
"You'd better believe it."
"How did I miss that?"
"You were so busy then, you never had time to watch the national news," said Mindy.
"Mindy, you know I only watch local news. Remember the women's health segment you dumped on me? We'll take this up later," said Danny, still not believing that Pluto no longer counted as a planet.
The taxi still remained at a stand-still. Mindy rolled down her window.
"Let's go, let's GO," screamed Mindy at the bikers.
"C'mon!" yelled Danny.
Suddenly, Danny noticed one of the bikers wearing a jersey, looking too familiar. It was definitely a SoHo ho's jersey. Biyach.
"Hey Biyach!" he yelled out the window.
"Danny!" said Mindy, shocked.
"It's ok, I know her," he responded.
"Whatcha want?" said Biyach.
"It's me, you know, Danny, from the basketball game!"
"Haeeey, Lil' D, how you doin'?" said Biyach, flirtatiously.
"Not so good. We need to get to the theater!" Then he mouthed "first date," silently as he pointed to Mindy with his splinted finger. "You owe me one, Biyach!"
"Little D, you had a lot of heart out there on the court…I'll get you there," and then to the fellow bikers, "Let's move it girls…Dr. Danny's gotta first date."
The bikes began to part as the theater came into view.
"Thanks."
"Anytime Lil' D."
As the taxi began to speed towards the theater, Danny called out, "Hey Biyach, is Pluto really not a planet?"
"Where you been, bro? Pluto ain't been no planet since 'Oh six'!"
"You weren't even a resident then," said Mindy.
"Mindy, I was your chief resident, so I was busy. Pluto not a planet? I still don't buy it," said Danny.
The taxi screeched to a halt in front of the small, hole in the wall, theater as Mindy and Danny hopped out. They snuck into their seats in the middle of the first act, as Salo the robot was singing the theme song of "Titan up and lighten up".
"Is this supposed to be a comedy?" asked Danny.
"Hey, this was a cult classic novel," said Mindy.
The couple settled into the musical, as the chorus of Tralfamadorian dancers tap-danced and sang songs to awkward Vonnegut lyrics. Just as the the climax of the novel musical was approaching, the audience was silent (with a combination of anticipation and boredom), and suddenly Danny's pager began to beep. He tried to grab his pager and turn it off, but his broken finger interfered, and it scooted two rows ahead and kept beeping. Beep-beep-beep-beep.
"Mindy," Danny whispered. "Help me find the pager!" He got out of his seat and was waving his arms under the seats, searching for the pager.
"Ugh," Mindy covered her face with her hands. "This could not get any worse." She rummaged through her purse, some of the contents spilling out, found her phone and started crawling under the seats. She put on the phone flash light.
"Hey, man, turn off the phone!" someone hissed behind her.
"Just…a minute, sir!" She suddenly looked and saw Brendan and Duncan Deslaurier sitting behind her.
"Mindy, is that you?" asked Brendan.
"Uh, no, I think you have me mistaken for someone else," Mindy said in a high falsetto voice. As Mindy tried to cover her face so she wouldn't be seen, she spotted the pager under the seat. She reached over to get it when she heard a rip and felt her dress ripping. Crap. This night could get worse. She grabbed the pager and hauled ass to the ladies bathroom, clutching her ripped dress awkwardly.
She texted Danny:
Got your pager.
Get to the exit without Brendan and Duncan seeing you.
Meet me by the ladies bathroom.
Fashion emergency!
Danny crawled down the row and up the aisle, drawing bemused expressions from the other theater patrons.
Then, he met Mindy at the ladies' bathroom door, drawing more than a few annoyed looks from women exiting the bathroom.
"Mindy, this is a little forward for a first date," he joked as he noticed her basically holding up the back end of her dress with a sizable tear.
"Zip it, Danny!" snapped Mindy.
"I think it will need much more than a zipper to fix that!" He said, forcing a reluctant smile from Mindy. "Here, take my jacket."
"Let's just go back to my place so I can change," Mindy said flatly taking Danny's coat. "Thanks for letting me use your coat. Oh, Jeremy paged you to say that the delivery went just fine."
They grabbed a cab back to Mindy's place. As they walked up to the door, Mindy reached for her keys in her purse, but couldn't find them. Where were her keys? She vaguely remembered some stuff spilling out of her purse during the show and wondered if she lost her keys there.
"This would never happen to Beyonce and Jay Z…." she mumbled. "Danny, I think I lost my keys at the theater!"
She dumped her purse contents out on the ground in frustration. Out came receipts, pens, a pound cake, two defunct pagers, a few rainbow-dyed rabbits' feet key chains, a beanie baby, a pair of Mickey Mouse ears, and a pair of Groucho Marx glasses… but no keys. Danny looked on inquisitively.
"Don't ask…I haven't cleaned out my purse since I was Mouse-o Marx for Halloween," said Mindy.
Jokingly, Danny put on the mouse ears and Mindy put on the glasses, and they started crawling around looking for keys, when her skirt ripped again, un-noticed by Mindy or Danny.
Another tenant opened the door to the building to exit, only to see the Mindy and Danny crawling around on the floor looking for keys. The tenant overheard only part of Mindy and Danny's conversation about the basketball game earlier that day:
"I can't believe Biyach bent it that way," Mindy had been saying.
"Yeah, I had been on her two-on-one before it happened," he responded.
The horrified tenant tried to sneak around the pair when they turned around, one in Mickey mouse ears, and the other with Groucho Marx glasses in a dress that was torn on the backside.
"Back off! Back off!" The tenant screamed, reaching into her coat pocket for the pepper spray…