She didn't get home until nearly twelve hours later. As she approached the front door of her apartment she noticed a man from the hotel waiting for her with her luggage. At least one thing had worked out in the end.
His eyes avoided making contact with her face. She signed for her things without taking an inventory, thanked him for the delivery, and walked inside. She felt utterly defeated.
She was still wearing the blood-spattered, wine-soaked dress from the night before. She had torn it all the way up to her knee on the left side. She checked her appearance in the small, metal-framed mirror in her hallway and laughed – she looked like she had single-handedly taken on a bar full of Klingons… and lost.
The doctors at the walk-in clinic in Palo Alto had worked wonders putting her nose back together and getting rid of her headache, but there was little they could do for the bruises. She had deep purple circles under both eyes and across the bridge of her nose which were sore and gave her a raccoon-like appearance. She wondered how she would explain this to her students the tomorrow. She wondered how she would explain it to her boss.
She groaned, thinking again about how this would reflect on her, the diplomatic school, Earth…
Her PADD had arrived with the rest of her things from the hotel and she was afraid to check it. She hadn't spoken to anyone she knew since the incident the night before because she had left her PADD in the hotel room, but she had a very keen sense that they all knew what happened at the banquet. She had seen the security camera footage all over the news on the holo screens in the clinic waiting room. So she watched the event play over and over again, both in real time and in slow motion, and watched other patients in the waiting room give her sidelong glances but mercifully they said nothing.
She watched it in loop repeatedly. The Tellarites were yelling, the waiter was panicking, she was panicking, Giles was scrambling, the ambassador bumped into the waiter, the waiter dumped the drinks on her, the waiter yelled at John, John took an appallingly aimed swing at the waiter and accidentally hit her, and the ambassador appeared to choke John into submission in some peculiar way. She couldn't quite tell what happened from the angle, but it really looked like he pushed some sort of kill switch on the side of John's neck and turned him off like an appliance. As it turned out, John wasn't dead, which was good. Her already low opinion of him had been completely obliterated, but she wasn't callous.
She was fuzzy on the details immediately following what the news media had christened "the punch." She had fainted for a few brief moments and came to sitting on the floor with Giles tilting her head back to slow the flow of blood from her nose. Questions were flying in from all directions and she managed to ask Giles to get her a shuttle cab, which he swiftly did. On her way out of the back entrance to the banquet hall, reporters had already lined up like jackals, asking if she was pressing charges and how this would affect Congressman Molineaux's campaign. She was going to ask the driver to drop her by the hotel to collect her things, but camera crews were already starting to swarm the vehicle and she just begged him to drive to a walk-in emergency clinic instead. The driver had been kind enough to let her use the com link in the cab to call the hotel and ask them to deliver her things to the apartment the next day.
Her PADD began to ring and she checked the screen. Her mother was calling, and she had 107 missed calls and 192 messages. They were from a motley crew that included her mother, John, Giles, Vera, two of her students' parents, her Aunt Janet, and more than a dozen numbers she didn't recognize but were listed as various news outlets and the Tellarite embassy. She gulped.
Her PADD continued to ring and she was about to answer it when a second call chirped. The Vulcan embassy. She stared at her PADD with expressionless eyes and then shut it off. She would deal with this after she took a shower and had a nap.
Sarek sat in his office at the consulate with his hands pressed against his forehead in a steeple position. He had experienced a series of cascading events following the unfortunate incident at the interplanetary conference banquet. It was morning now and he had not returned to his lodgings. He often found it helpful to reflect after any kind of gathering as a means of organizing events in his head in a more logical way. The gathering from the night before was proving moderately challenging to comprehend.
The observatory security team stepped in almost immediately after he had felt compelled to neutralize Congressman Molineaux. He and Giles both stayed to answer their questions and afterward he spoke with the police and a handful of reporters.
Giles had advised him against speaking with the media. Humans seemed to have a requirement for about waiting until well after an incident to put together an official version of events in what they termed "press releases." He imagined it was a way of mitigating embarrassing remarks or misinformation, but Sarek was Vulcan, and Vulcans were not often prone to speaking imprecisely or about facts and events they could not confirm. He told them what he knew and what he had observed: nothing more, nothing less.
The door to his office suite was open and he could see the news projections on the central holographic viewing screen in the lobby. The events of the night before had been the main topic of focus on every outlet since it had first been reported. One thing he had never been able to understand about humans was their ability to fixate on one event while ignoring all others. Humans were so easily distracted by the most irrelevant things.
Of all the things that occurred at the interplanetary conference, this was the one they chose most worthy of news. Of all the events occurring throughout the entire Federation, this was the one they cared about most. All other news had been relegated to quickly scrolling text at the top of the screen.
Three days ago, Starfleet raised the threat level based on intelligence that Romulans may have encroached on the designated Neutral Zone and may be continuing to do so. It had caused a mild panic and the news covered only Romulan-related topics, from explaining all the declassified material about their weapons capabilities to analyses of maps of the Neutral Zone border. One news station had aired a three hour long segment where seven hardly qualified individuals extrapolated a simple Starfleet press release into a full on invasion, mostly accusing Starfleet, the Federation, and the Terran government of doing nothing to protect the citizens of Earth. But that was all forgotten now, in light of a minor physical altercation at a diplomatic conference.
It had been unfortunate and he would have preferred not to be involved. He abhorred violence, but it was logical to employ a small amount of it against an individual to prevent that individual from committing further acts of aggression. The nerve pinch had subdued Molineaux, but not before he struck Miss Grayson, the woman from the aquarium.
Sarek was uncertain the degree to which he contributed to her injuries. He had moved too quickly and misjudged the beverage server's speed and direction of travel. Their collision caused the server to then collide with Miss Grayson, which caused her to be in the proper position to be struck. Taking responsibility was illogical, because it was Molineaux who had instigated the fight and Molineaux who had resorted to using his fists, but his knowledge of human behavior caused him to believe Miss Grayson may not see it that way.
While they had waited for the investigators, Mr. Marcus explained that he knew Amanda Grayson on a personal level and that she was a teacher at the diplomatic school and was romantically involved with Congressman Molineaux. Marcus had recommended the consular office should call her and make a formal apology. While he admitted he was not responsible, he could not deny he had a role in the outcome, and he agreed. Marcus gave him the information and he had tried twice, unsuccessfully, to make contact.
He was beginning to tire. He hadn't slept in four days and his fatigue was no doubt contributing to his inability to relax his mind. He was the only one in the office. Humans observed holidays on the sixth and seventh days of their so-called seven daylong weeks. Remarkably inefficient.
His Vulcan staffmembers often worked Saturdays but commonly reserved Sundays to attend to personal matters.
He turned to the console on the left side of his desk and was about to attempt to reach Miss Grayson a third time at the number Mr. Marcus had provided when he heard someone enter the common suite of the adjacent room. Moments later he heard a gentle knock on the door.
"Ambassador?" asked Giles.
"Enter," he replied, turning his chair to face his secretary.
He motioned for him to sit in the high-backed chair across from his desk, and Giles did, slumping slightly with obvious exhaustion.
"Everything is about as good as it can be under the circumstances. The police will use me as the point of contact if they have any further questions. I arranged for your belongings to be moved from your hotel lodgings back to your private quarters here."
"Thank you for your diligence in this matter, Mr. Marcus," he said, nodding.
"The Vulcan consulate has no public relations secretary and I'm not really an expert in that particular area," Giles continued. "You may want to think about getting one, considering the volume of calls that are coming in. I started filtering my incoming calls and messages about four hours ago. I stopped counting when my inbox hit over two thousand."
"Have you received any word from Congressman Molineaux's office or Amanda Grayson?" he asked.
"No. I'm guessing Molineaux is probably going to take the weekend off to get with his people and come up with a way to spin this, as if anyone is going to believe that punching your girlfriend in the face in the middle of a racist tirade is excusable," he added, anger rising in his tone.
"Well, I would prefer to send a message to the congressman's office before tomorrow to explain our position on this incident. I believe it is unwise to pass any judgment on his actions but don't want to give the impression that I have anything to apologize for. Can you draft whatever you think is appropriate and send it out by the end of the day?"
"Certainly," Giles replied, his face falling at the prospect of achieving a twenty-four hour workday over the weekend.
"After that, you may return home," Sarek said, noting his subordinate's dismay.
"What would you like me to say to Amanda- uh, Miss Grayson?"
"I have tried to reach her also but have been unable to do so. Do you have better contact information for her?"
"No, just the one mobile number and her home address."
Sarek weighed his options. In his experience, putting off apologies in emotionally charged species often lessened their impact proportionally to the amount of time between the offense and the apology. Giles seemed to sense what he was thinking.
"I can go with you to meet her in person after I send the message to Molineaux's office, if you prefer."
He considered was what both logical and appropriate. It seemed likely to believe she wanted privacy in the aftermath of a widely publicized incident; however meeting her in person to apologize could make a substantial statement.
"You seem to have a degree of familiarity with Miss Grayson. Do you have any insight into what she would prefer?"
"She's pretty level-headed. I apologized to her profusely at the banquet before I put her in a shuttle cab. She was probably still pretty rattled but she tried making it clear that it wasn't anyone's fault but Molineaux's. I still think you should apologize, just to convey the point clearly."
"Very well," he said. "Can you call for a shuttle and send me her address?"
"You don't want me to go with you?" he asked, trying in vain to keep the relief from his voice.
"As you said, you've already apologized. Now it is my turn to make amends."
Giles left his office and a short time later, Sarek collected his heavy overcoat from the closet and went downstairs to wait for the shuttle.
She stepped out of the shower, gently toweling around her face, which was still tender. She wiped the condensation from the mirror and looked again at her wrecked face and sighed. She was in the middle of putting toothpaste on her toothbrush when the buzzer to her door rang.
She cursed under her breath and looked for clothes to put on. The buzzer rang again. I'm coming, she thought, trying her best to suppress her annoyance. She was in the middle of putting her underwear on when the buzzer rang a third time. She stumbled, barely catching herself on the metal dresser.
"I'm coming," she snapped, this time aloud.
She grabbed her bathrobe and cinched it tightly around her waist. She peered through the peephole. Vera.
She unlatched the lock and let her in. Vera didn't make it inside before she began swearing about John.
"That bastard! Look at your face!"
"Yeah…" Amanda moaned, unsure of what to say.
"Tell me you're pressing charges. Tell me he's dropping out of the election. Tell me he's going to prison. Tell me-"
"I don't know yet. I don't know anything. I'm just trying to take a step back for a day or two."
"You can't let him get away with this," Vera protested.
"I'm not. I just want to make sense of everything that happened last night before I jump into something."
"But it's been on the news all night. I tried calling-"
"Yeah, I know," Amanda said, cutting her off more forcefully than she intended. "I'm just tired. I haven't slept, my face hurts, and I kind of just want to be alone."
"Yeah, yeah, I get that," Vera said, frowning.
"Don't take it the wrong way…" Amanda pleaded, beginning to feel guilty.
"No, it's fine," Vera added. "You need rest. I'll get out of your hair and continue to mislead reporters away from your door. Good thing we live in an out-of-the-way dump and the landlord's too lazy to repaint the apartment numbers."
Amanda felt an enormous burst of gratitude and hugged her friend.
"Do you have that black dress I loaned you?" Vera asked.
"Yeah, it's still packed with my stuff from the hotel. You need it now?"
"If it's not too much bother. I ditched the Denobulan guy. He was goofy. Anyway I got invited to an art gallery tonight and it's my lucky dress."
"How is it lucky?" Amanda asked, turning and stooping to open her luggage which had remained in the entryway.
"Every time I wear it I meet the most amazing men. I wanted it to be lucky for you too, so you could get rid of John "Jackass" Molineaux and find some interesting guy with a lot of money and rich-people hobbies."
"If I did that, I'd have to move away from all of this," she said with a fake smile, waving her hand around the room.
"So I take it you didn't meet an interesting guy with a lot of money and rich-people hobbies?"
"No, no one like that. I didn't meet anyone. I spent the whole weekend avoiding people," she said, finally locating the Vera's dress in the bottom of her suitcase.
"Wait, that's not true," she corrected, holding up a finger to her mouth in a thoughtful fashion. "I met a Starfleet admiral who looked like he fantasized about skinning me alive while we chit-chatted and the Vulcan ambassador to Earth. Which one do you think is going to come beating down my door to sweep me off my feet?
They stared at each other for a few seconds and burst into laughter simultaneously.
"You're funny," Vera dismissed, taking the dress from her.
"Yeah, a real barrel of laughs," she said, wincing at the pain caused by crinkling her nose during her fit of giggles.
Vera left and promised to come by tomorrow evening and Amanda returned to the bathroom to finish brushing her teeth. She got dressed in athletic pants and a t-shirt and laid down on the bed to take a nap. Almost immediately, her door buzzed again. She didn't move and silently prayed for whomever it was to go away, but it rang a second time. She sighed, got up, walked to the door and peered through the peephole. John.
She waited for a minute and took a deep breath. She began to feel angry. The door buzzed again and she ripped the door open.
"What?" she growled.
"Oh- oh my God," he said, staring open-mouthed at her face.
He was holding flowers and looked rather tired.
"Go away," she said, closing the door.
"Amanda, wait, you don't understand-"
"What's to not understand?" she asked, pulling the door back open. "You get drunk and scream racist garbage at an interplanetary conference at the top of your lungs in a crowded banquet hall full of a rather diverse group of people, then punch me in the face and act like I don't understand?!"
"The way I acted was so-"
"Out of line that it practically puts you in another galaxy? Listen, John, you're the one who doesn't understand. I don't have time for you anymore. And that's fine, because it's not like you ever had a lot of time for me either."
She tried closing the door again but he blocked it with his foot.
"Get off my porch or I'll call the police," she said in a low growl.
"Considering I'm on my way to have lunch with the San Francisco police chief, I don't know what the police would do," he said, shrugging and giving her a sheepish smile.
"You are unbelievable! First you're begging me to forgive you and now you're threatening me?"
John took a breath and opened his mouth to say something else, which was muffled by her slamming the door in his face. He rang the buzzer again and again and she sank down on her couch and considered her next move. After about five minutes the buzzing stopped and she relaxed. She was so tired.
She began to doze when she was startled awake by his knocking on her sliding glass door on her back patio. He must have climbed the fire escape. Maybe he thought it was romantic. She happened to think it was desperate and extremely creepy. She gulped and tried to look serious as she walked to her back door.
"Amanda, we can get past this. Please, just give me another chance."
She took a deep breath.
"No," she said, trying to force her voice to stay calm.
"What happened- that's not who I am," he insisted, pressing his hands against the glass.
"Whoever you are, you're not someone I want to be involved with," she said, her tone growing more dangerous.
"Please, it's cold out here, just let me in."
"Go away, now. You're just embarrassing yourself. I'm still considering pressing charges from the banquet, and I know what that would do to your campaign, as if it weren't probably already in the toilet."
Those words seemed to have a magic effect on him and he left. She started closing the vertical patio blinds and realized that her hands were shaking. John wasn't dangerous, was he? Sure, he had done a number on her face, but that had been an accident. She felt a growing anxiety as she flopped back down on her couch.
She stared at the pictures on the fireplace mantel. The one of her and John at Big Sur was still face down, but the frames were all still lined in obsessive little rows. She stood, walked over to the fireplace, and quite irrationally began adjusting their positions until they were completely askew. She wanted John out of her life in every sense of the word, and disorganizing his organization made her feel a little better. She moved on to the knickknacks on the bookshelf, turning trinkets every which way.
Her doorbell buzzed again and her heart sank. She felt a strange rush of paranoia, thinking that he was watching her and wanted back into her apartment to fix her mess. And that made her angrier than she had been all day.
She stomped over to the door, flung it open and yelled, "I said 'go away!'"
The person standing there wasn't John, but the Vulcan ambassador.