This chapter exists somewhere between the opening chapters and the main plot of the story (which follows the first movie's storyline)... Well, obviously. I mean, it's just a weird little idea that came to me and I built a chapter up around it to act as a transition. Also, I liked the title.

So anyway, don't take this chapter too seriously. It's supposed to just be a bit of silliness before the main story starts. And an excuse to slip in some backstory.

I'd appreciate some feedback, as always. :)

Enjoy!


I guess I had subconsciously known that I'd be staying with the Newark branch much longer than just my night of target practice in Central Park. I could never guess that my transfer was permanent, however. Like, set-in-stone permanent. Dig in your heels permanent. Make yourself a nice cozy nest and settle down permanent.

That last thought really made me anxious. Claustrophobic.

My dad had been in the navy and I'd lived the life of a military brat seemingly forever. My first memories are of riding my bike past the officers' houses on Captains' Row and boasting if my dad ranked higher than some other kid's parent. And my mom always told me that my first steps were down a marina dock, straight toward the edge; my dad caught me before I could fall. He's always caught me before I could fall. Terrifying early days of puberty: dad was there. Getting my heart broken for the first time ever: dad was there too; we were only at that base a few months, we got transferred when dad threatened to beat in the little cretin's face. And dad was there on the most harrowing day of my life, two years ago... but I don't want to talk about that.

I'd rather focus on watching the Price is Right with Red Hot right now. Well, the Price is Right along with about seven other programs. He refuses to watch tv anywhere but his room, so here we sit.

I can't say HB and I had become friends because I don't believe he knows the meaning of the word. Either that or he just has his own way to go about categorizing his relationships. We did however end up meeting up several times a week since I became a perpetual fixture here in Newark.

I'm like a piece of furniture in HB's life, and I don't quite know what room I belong in because I'm an arm chair but I want to be an end table; or I'm a weird color or something...

I don't even know where I was going with that metaphor. Analogy? Whatever.

I don't know where I'm even going. Probably nowhere, since I'm stuck in Newark until the fucking end of days. So I'll just sit here, misplaced arm chair that I am, and watch idiots bounce around a Drew Carey that looks like he wants nothing more than to end it all.

"I'd like to see Drew Carey go postal." I think out loud. Red Hot makes a noise through his beer can.

Time passes. People on the screen make foolish choices. It makes me feel an uncomfortable sense of fraternity. The navy-haired arm chair sitting beside HB opens her mouth again and absentmindedly asks how the other felt about their mission last night.

"Mermaids..." Red Hot starts a little wistfully, "Proof you can never trust a pretty face. I'm sure you can commiserate, huh Sweetness." The navy-haired arm chair turns a little red... Ok, that's enough of that silliness; it's starting to feel too real. I turn red.

He's kept calling me that name, kind of a play on the whole 'Red Hot as in the candy' thing; it always makes me blush a blistering shade of red. I can't get used to it. And by 'it' I mean both the name and that fact that it makes me feel like a schoolgirl again.

"That's your full week's worth of analysis, is it?" I ask lightheartedly while I attempt to recover.

"A lifetime's." He responds ever so smoothly, raising his eyebrows and taking a mammoth-sized sip from his beer can.

"I'd discourage the eleven AM beer if we hadn't already been up for hours." I mused, then quickly course corrected, "Then again, 'there's no wrong time for a beer.'" I quoted.

"Now you're learning." HB responded with a rare smirk.

"Cheers, Red Hot." I continued, holding up the glass of Jack Daniels next to me.

"Cheers, Sweetness." He echoed, this time with an even rarer smile. The clink of our drinks rang into the ensuing silence.


"I never like any of the people that make it to the showcase." I said the next day but in the exact same position on Red Hot's couch from twenty-four hours ago. Some hilljack spun 85 cents on the wheel and hooped and hollered his way over to the winner's spot.

"I mean, why couldn't old Gramma Blue-Hair there have won?" I wondered with the slightest indignation, "Fate is conspiring against those most deserving of good old out-of-the-blue, inexplicable luck... and rewarding the inbred masses instead." I sighed as the winner continued to gallop his way over to the showcase.

"You think too much." HB said with a swig from his third beer that morning and a belch, "Stop thinking so much."

"When we're dead." I replied off-handedly, intent on the showcases. First one couldn't be more than $25,000: it only had one vacation, and no sail boat. The latter would be in the second showcase. I told HB this, adding that I'd wager my second-best pistol on it. I wasn't wrong.

"Good thing you were right," He commented, "With only one pistol you'd only be half as good as you are."

"Just as good looking though." I cracked right back. I think the noise he made was a noise of agreement.

The show ended: a clean sweep for Billy Bob McFucks-His-Cousin. Drew couldn't suppress a massive sigh of relief as he closed with the customary advice of getting your pets' various baby-making parts fixed. I couldn't usually hear it over the counterintuitive whooping of all the people that hadn't won anything still in the audience; but today, surrounded by a veritable herd of cats, I noticed. I shivered, fretful for the first time in HB's room ever. I focused back on him, who had questioning eyes glinting back into my perplexed face.

"Are any of your cats fixed?" I asked him. A long pause.

"What?"

"Fixed." I repeated, a little dumbfounded by any other polite way to put it, "You know. Snip snip?" I threw manners out the window and pantomimed a pair of scissors with my fingers.

"What? No!" He barked rather incredulous with my crassness, moving a tomcat protectively behind his back and away from me.

"Well we need to get on that."

"No." He said. I gave him a look, "No." He enunciated with the verbal force of putting his foot down.

"But Drew Carey said to." I whined, hiding behind false pretenses, "Please stop letting your cats multiply like a hive of pixies on aphrodisiacs?" I implored with more truth to my actual intentions. Things... breeding unchecked; the thought made me all oogily. Squirmy.

HB gave me a withering stare but I countered with the piteous saucer-eyed look of a five-year-old.

"Oh fine. Go on and deny my cats the one joy they have in this life." He conceded, hands in the air.

"Aw, they'll still have you." I cooed indulgently, "You are such a joy."

I was trying to be funny, but I don't think anything was going to distract him from the thought of what he'd just agreed to.

"Sorry little guy." HB said gravely as the same tomcat walked nimbly back onto his lap, "You know I can't say no to her."

Well that was a weirdly earned sense of accomplishment.