I want to make it clear that I was watching this show when ALF was popular and it never occurred to me in all of those years that Mr. Peabody had a canon first name. Apparently he does, though!
"Um… Mr. Peabody….?"
"Yes, Sherman?"
"This isn't yogurt you put in my lunch," the boy reached into his brown lunch bag and pulled out an orange plastic can of cat food.
"That certainly isn't!" the dog attempted to laugh this off, tossing it absently back into the fridge and pulling out a strawberryogurt. "Have a good day at school!"
"Morning…" Rigby yawned on her way out of her own guest room, dressed in an older cotton bathrobe, and reached into the refrigerator, pulling out the same can of cat food and beginning her search for a spoon.
"There's no way… Not when she does that," Peabody whispered to himself as he watched her go about eating it as though it were indeed a yogurt. He cringed with every bite she took after her search for a spoon ended in victory, knowing the exact process that went into making such things.
"Thanks for lunch, I'll say hi to Penny's mom!"
"You tell her… I said hello!" Peabody called out as Sherman bolted out of the apartment, lunch bag and backpack in tow. Peabody's arm, from where it had been waving, fell as he turned to the cat, who looked up at him from the newspaper with a spoon in her mouth.
"I only started eating it because I was a starving artist and found out I liked it," she shrugged through a mouthful of the stuff. "Not a cat thing. Well, maybe. But it's cat food. It has my name on it!"
"I see. I… Believe I owe you an apology. Sherman explained what happened to me the other night. I'm sorry that I assumed otherwise."
"He's not in trouble, is he?" she took another spoonful of the stuff, and Peabody shook his head, doing anything but looking anything towards her.
"I think he more than knows what he did wrong. Thank you for trying to save him. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it."
"He's a good kid. Scrappy, but good," she chuckled.
"I have to make a trip to my library, so please excuse me," he stepped back out of the kitchen, shuddering to himself along the way as he heard her scrape against the can of cat food.
The first thing he went through was his book of contacts, flipping through any names that popped out to him.
"Married… Married… From the seventeenth century… Hun… Hates children… Sainted, so that'd only make it awkward down the line… Married…" he leaned back in his chair and thought to himself, wishing he'd poured himself a bloody Mary before beginning the entire affair. "When did all of this happen…?"
He thought back to the cat food eater in the next room, and tapped his pen on the now-lengthy list of now scratched out names, "…Sherman does seem to like her… It'd be worth it to try. For him."
Within minutes the dog, admittedly to himself a bit rusty on dealing with such things, had a stack lined up next to his leather sitting chair. He skimmed book after book, taking note from the images and advice he could.
"Shared interests... Discussion topics… Interesting news stories… This should do…" Peabody muttered to himself as he flipped through a stack of flashcards while walking down the hall and down to his elevator. Riding a floor down, he opened it and found the black and white cat busy at work on the floor, flicking specks of yellow and blue paint on another large canvas while not minding the color that coated her.
"Should I go?" she asked, looking left and right as she noticed the stare from the dog.
"No, no, you're hard at work. And you look so…" a quick glanced down at a list of complimentary adjectives; nothing fit. Absolutely nothing, "…Hard at work!"
"…All right…."
"Would you like to, if it's possible… Go out for dinner this evening?" Peabody asked, clenching the note cards just a bit too tightly. "As an apology for how I acted earlier."
"The cat food bothered you that bad?" she laughed.
"No! No! Nothing about your being a cat bothers me, I assure you. I just thought it'd be a nice date."
"Nice what?" Rigby's head shot up from the canvas.
"Nice date to go out. It's… Bastille Day. It's the proper way to celebrate."
"I thought that wasn't until July."
"French-Canadian Bastille Day," Peabody replied quickly, flashing a pointy-toothed grin.
"…All right. I mean, if you—"
"Wonderful. It will be formal wear. Please be ready at seven," the dog's posture was stiff as he turned and walked out, and Rigby stood there for a moment before shrugging and resuming her work, not knowing the genius had been reduced to groaning and cursing to himself while riding back up the elevator.
"A babysitter? Come on, Mr. Peabody… I think I'm old enough. I'm almost nine," Sherman rolled around on his father's bed while the dog ran a comb through the fur atop his head and then adjusted the red bow tie he was wearing in the mirror. This was in addition to a light blue shirt and a darker blue jacket.
"It's just for a night, Sherman. Now, honestly—How do I look?"
"Kinda like you're gonna puke."
"Perfect! A few of the books said that would be normal. Slightly increased pulse, voice cracking, increased clumsiness…. No sweaty palms, but I'd need them for that to happen. It's every hallmark of—"
"Puberty?"
"That too," Peabody replied, still fussing with his bow tie. "She should be ready in about twenty minutes. At least according to resea—"
"Ready!" bellowed a voice from outside.
"Then again, there are always those who break the bell curve…" Peabody murmured. "Sherman, wish me luck!"
"No staying out past curfew!" was what Sherman answered with warningly, sprawled out on his father's bed still, letting his head hang over the edge of it.
"Now…" Peabody immediately walked up to the babysitter, a disinterested teenage girl with a mouth full of metal braces and a cell phone seemingly glued to her hand. "Sherman has ancient Mayan for half an hour tonight, an hour of violin lessons, time for a brief snack and some recreational mathematics, and then bedtime by… My…"
"I hope this is fancy enough," Rigby stood there in a sleeveless green gown, sequined on the top and then remaining fitted all the way down. "I won't lie… I ran back to my place to get this. It's an old bridesmaid dress. I just figured it would do after you told me it was "formal"."
"You look stunning," the dog answered, and, much to his surprise, very much meant it.
"Okay, sure," came the babysitter's delayed response, and without even looking up from her phone, she held out an expectant hand. Peabody laid a few crumpled bills in the hand of the babysitter, and led Rigby out by the arm. He looked over his shoulder once more to see Sherman, from his room, giving him a thumbs up.
"Allow me," the genius opened the door to the building on their way out, and Rigby walked out after a moment of pausing.
"This is a lot different than you from yesterday."
"Really now?"
"I sort of thought you were going to eat me!"
"I definitely thought about it!" Peabody blurted out. This was followed by a strained laugh as he reached for the handle of the limo that had pulled up for both of them. "Joke. That was a joke. Right this way, please."
"…Righttt…." Rigby climbed in, and Peabody took a seat beside her, making sure to remain the proper distance from her on the seat—Not far enough to seem incredibly distance, but not close enough to seem presumptuous.
Now was the time for small talk, according to several articles he'd perused.
"So you… Go by Rigby mainly?"
"Well, I'm Kim to a lot of people."
"Kim. That's got a nice, simple ring to it."
"How about you? Anyone just call you "Mister"?"
"Oh, that's just a title, it's not my complete name," Peabody chuckled. "My first name, it's Hector."
"Hector?... Hector? I just kind of figured it was a name like "Mr. Buttons". No one ever calls you that?"
"Sherman tried once, as a way to get under my skin, and only once."
"Hector. It's not bad. But I guess I can see why you'd want to be Peabody," she sat back in her seat, her paws folded over each other.
It was nice, the way she said it, thought the dog as he tried to hide the wagging of his tail.
"I thought you'd have to live in a palace to eat in a place like this!" Rigby laughed with disbelief as she wandered into the restaurant with her companion.
"We're preparing to open up a French satellite in mid-January," Peabody walked with his arms folded behind his back, occasionally looking over to the dumbfounded express on the artist's face.
Rigby stopped looking at the frescoes illuminated by the candlelit walls long enough to stare at the dog, "This… This is yours?"
"I designed the menu myself, too. And the interior design."
"That's… Unbelievable…" her arms fell to her sides, and Peabody thought to reach out for a moment, only to be taken by surprise by one of the chefs, a large man in a classic white hat and apron, who ran up to them excitedly and ushered them to a back table.
"It was a fun challenge. I'm proud of most of the things on there, but I really recommend the mussels." said Peabody as they were led to their table.
"Where do you find time for it all?" she asked as he slid in her chair for her.
"Well, there's a lot of balancing to do… But we do those things for what we care about, don't we?" he took his own seat and took the initiative to order a bottle of wine for them, in French, as the waiter came to the table.
"I'm going to find something you're bad at, yet," Rigby chuckled as the wine was poured for them.
"Bad at doing things badly, so said Mr. Jefferson," Peabody raised the glass to her and grinned.
A lull in the conversation—a perfect opportunity for getting to know one another better, he'd read in one of the books.
"So how did your mother go about finding you, if you don't mind my asking?"
"Adoption center in Akron. For humans. I ran away from the pet one… They found me drawing on the walls, she went to photograph me for a local newspaper after the news stations showed up… I guess she felt bad that the news had made it into a circus... Wanted to try to protect me from some of it," Rigby answered, sipping her own wine. "How'd you even get out of the system?"
"Basketball and engineering scholarship to Harvard," he replied, and Rigby choked her wine down, hard.
"My mom tried everything to get me to get into a school… You must have been really something for them to accept you!"
"I have a dogged tenacity…"
"…Can I ask you something and have an honest answer?"
"I'm always honest, even if it's not something a person necessarily wants to hear. It's vital to the development of anyone to receive constructive feedback."
"Why me? I mean, I must seem like the most uneducated hick this side of Jersey to you. The closest I've come to any sort of degree is when I got certified in CPR—And even then I just barely passed!"
"Education can come from anywhere. I've taught myself plenty on my own. There are many things that don't necessarily take away from you as a person, and that includes education."
"…I think that's one of the nicest things anyone's ever said…. I gotta admit, when I first met you in person…. I thought you were kind of… What's the word for "snob" but bigger?"
"Pretentious," the dog answered.
"Yeah, that's the one! Well, I still think you are… But you're also probably one of the most humane people in this town…"
"…Why, thank you," was all he could muster.
"Hey… I know we just got here, but… Can we maybe go somewhere else? I kinda feel like we're being stared at. It's giving me some serious flashbacks..."
"We most likely are," Peabody sipped the wine that had been brought to them. "You get used to it after a while. This is nothing compared to when Sherman was a baby. Let's just say that there's a reason we don't watch that much television."
"Well, you may be used to it, but there's a reason I keep to myself in my home."
He watched Rigby shift worriedly in her seat, and then nodded and hopped off of his chair, "Shall we? Did you have an idea of where you'd like to go?"
"One, I guess, actually…" said the cat meekly, gratefully taking the hand extended to her.
"I have to admit… The last place I'd imagine you'd want to go to would be near water," Peabody waved the limo off, and they were left alone on the shore of the beach.
"I used to love the ocean. It reminds me of Fiji."
"Fiji! What a wonderful place… I taught there a semester at a local school. Such wonderful children. A bit mischievous, but aren't they all?"
"Of course," she chuckled, "So I'm guessing that's what you're going to go back to doing when Sherman goes off to college?"
"Maybe. I know I have many years before that, but I've been evaluating what I might possibly do, in all honesty. I went to college at two, but I realize Sherman's a human so it's different, so he might not be able to go until thirteen, fourteen… There are so many options, but at the same time…"
"Don't know how you'd go back?"
"..That's right."
"Well, hey, if you ever need a dance partner, let me know!" said Rigby. "I think a few more lessons and I'll be caught up to you."
"I don't think I'd mind tutoring you," Peabody answered. It must have been the tone, because Rigby's eyes widened a bit as he said this, and her walk down the beach slowed a bit.
As they walked back, now towards a taxi, Rigby was silent, staring ahead. Peabody's mind started to go over the multiple reasons for this… Falling short each time or coming to an inconclusive answer.
"Did I say something?" he finally asked when they were halfway back to the penthouse, finding he'd exhausted all other options.
"Oh? No. I'm just tired I guess," Rigby laughed this off, and continued her looking out the window of her side of the cab, enjoying all of the new, vibrant neon signs that filled the city and passed them.
It was when they got to the penthouse that Peabody, having opened and closed the door for Rigby, reached down to a potted plant, noticing one of the flowers in bloom, in spite of the recently frigid winter.
Perfect, though the dog. Both spontaneous and to the point. He couldn't have done better had he staged it all.
Sherman was fast asleep, and the babysitter left with more than a shrug, leaving a half-eaten pizza out on the table.
"Can I make you something to eat? A drink?" asked the dog as the cat walked towards her room.
She shook her head absently, "What? No, no thanks… I... I had a really great time tonight."
"As did I," the dog shifted on his back paws for a moment, and finally revealed the flower. "I was wondering if you'd maybe consider—"
"I've got a boyfriend. I'm sorry!" Rigby rattled off quickly, and slammed the door behind her.
"…And another element has been thrown into the equation," the dog muttered, and stood there for a moment, by himself, in the hallway, tail lowered.
It'd been a good many years since he'd faced any rejection at all. He'd forgotten what it felt like…
And then he remembered.
It stung.