"I cannot believe Denny's is closed. What the fuck kind of Denny's closes?"
"I still haven't a clue what a Denny's is."
"It's the place to be when you're drunk as hell in the middle of the night. We are literally their target demographic. And they're closed."
Damn. Tahani wants to go to the place to be when you're drunk as hell in the middle of the night. She could use the pick-me-up. Neither she nor Eleanor had any idea where to go after they saw the closed sign on the Denny's door, and now they were just wandering aimlessly along the river.
It feels appropriate.
"What is that?" Eleanor stops midstride, and Tahani does the same. At first, the silhouette in front of them is utterly puzzling—it looks like one big person, but somehow wrong.
Tahani is about to ask if it's some sort of beast and then the image falls into place.
It's two people standing very close to each other, and one of them is standing on their hands.
"Janet? Jason?" Eleanor recognizes them first. Why Jason is walking on his hands is anyone's guess, but it's definitely them.
"Eleanor! Tahani!" Janet rushes up to them with a sense of urgency that Jason evidently doesn't share. "Have you two seen Chidi? He's lost."
"How's he lost?" Eleanor says with a little laugh. "Nerd."
"The better question is how is he not lost all the time," Janet says. "Seriously, that guy's brain is a mess. But he sounded really scared, so we should track him down."
"And he's not answering his phone," Jason adds from his position staring down at the sidewalk.
"Get up," Eleanor says, shoving his legs and forcing him to lose his balance, which until now has actually been quite impressive.
"Can we at least keep playing SURPRISE! while we look for Chidi?" Jason asks, happily springing to his feet again.
"How does it work?" Tahani has no idea why she asked this; she really has no desire to play whatever acrobatic-based game Jason has obviously just now invented, but she has a reflex against saying no to people. Even Floridian idiots, apparently.
She really did not mean for Jason to launch into the most convoluted set of instructions Tahani has ever had to suffer through, and she's had to read the full hundred-page guidelines for how to walk the Met Gala's red carpet. She's sobering up a little—she has been since she and Eleanor swapped one too many depressing childhood stories—but she still stands no chance of following more than a couple fragments of Jason's instructions.
"And then, you have to pick a bug."
"What."
"You have to pick a bug: Worms or pillow bugs, which Janet told me are also called pill bugs, which is dope but not as cozy. Anyway, you have to lift up a bigass rock and count how many bugs are under it. If your bug has more…"
Tahani is trying to look for Chidi, but there's no trace of him, so instead she's letting her mind wander back to what Eleanor was telling her at the bar, how many times she must have introduced herself, what they must have thought of her…
"And if you call Dishwasher, you can basically do the opposite of all that."
They had turned on each other pretty easily in the car. They were once supposed to be used to literally torture each other. And yet…
"BUT if you don't want to do all that, you can get out of it by finding something metal and putting your tongue on it within ten seconds. Note that you should not play this game if it's too cold outside. Got it?"
Neither Eleanor nor Tahani respond.
"Does it… work?" Eleanor, who apparently been paid at least a little attention, asks eventually.
"Yeah, and it's great."
"Look, we should really just focus on finding Chidi." Bless Eleanor and her complete comfort rejecting people.
Jason nods seriously. "Okay, then new rule: whoever finds Chidi gets a billion points."
"Look, I don't know if I'm really in a gaming mood," Eleanor confesses. At least Tahani isn't the only one who got bummed out at the bar.
"What's wrong?" Janet asks. "Is the idea of being destined to spend eternity in hell still bothering you?"
Eleanor shakes her head. "No. Well, yes, obviously. But right now, I'm still thinking about my mom. I'm happy for her. I am. I don't want her to be the person she was. I don't know. I just wish…"
No one knows what to say; even Jason seems to grasp the gravity of the conversation.
"If it helps…" Janet hesitates, as though she's not sure how to proceed or whether she should at all. "She wishes, too."
Eleanor gives her a sideways glance, and Janet continues: "She thinks about you. A lot. All the time." Janet struggles again. "She… I don't know. Human emotions are so complicated. She feels things she doesn't even know she's feeling. She wanted to find you again, but she also never wanted you to know what she'd done. I don't think she thought you'd ever forgive her. I don't think she forgives herself. But she does love you, Eleanor. And she doesn't think Patricia is more deserving of her love than you."
Eleanor doesn't speak. Even in the dark, Tahani can tell she's blinking back tears.
Tahani herself feels a pang of envy. "I don't suppose you can tell me the same thing? That my parents didn't love my sister more than me, either?"
"Of course I can!"
"What? Really?"
"Yes! After 802 reboots, I am capable of lying!"
Tahani feels her face drop, unamused, while Eleanor stifles a little laugh and gives her a sporting pat on the back.
"Okay, run me through the rules one more time," Eleanor says.
"It's actually quite simple in practice," Janet says, providing much-needed confirmation that the game is in fact playable.
"Yeah," Jason agrees. "Let's just start and we'll tell you what to do."
A few minutes in and Tahani is certain Jason is changing the rules. She's still not fully paying attention, though, and Janet takes notice.
"Are you alright?" she asks Tahani as Eleanor and Jason race ahead to pick up rocks. Or whatever. "You look sad."
Tahani doesn't know how to explain it, the way she was used to feeling lonely around friends, the way this whole situation felt fragile despite their alleged 500-year-old bond. She starts to say something, thinking maybe the words will come, but they don't, and she's left looking inarticulate and foolish.
If that's what Janet is thinking, she doesn't show it. "You can talk to me." She puts one hand on Tahani's shoulder in a way that is so flawlessly comforting that it almost feels calculated. "The penalty for 'bringing down the vibe' in this game is fifty points, but I won't tell anyone."
"Janet," Tahani starts cautiously asking the question that suddenly feels very, very important. "Do you get paid to do… whatever it is that you do?"
"There is no meaningful form of currency in the afterlife."
"There's no special… Janet money? What do you get out of it all?"
"Are you concerned that my fondness for you all is not genuine?"
That is exactly what Tahani is trying to figure out, although putting it in so many words doesn't make her come off well. Trying to be subtle is probably futile, Tahani knows. Janet has witnessed all of their most personal inner thoughts, their best and worst moments. She already knows how many people in Tahani's life have been paid to care about her, how insincere she herself had been to most of her friends, how Tahani really had no idea how to navigate a real friendship.
So, she nods.
"It's what I was programmed to do. It's my life's purpose. Eight hundred reboots ago, I don't know if it would have been genuine. And I don't entirely know what it is now. But it's not just machinery. Sometimes, I don't even like you." Janet says that as though it's supposed to be comforting, but when Tahani pulls away, obviously not finding it so, she explains further: "Like in the car today. When everyone was angry and yelling at each other. That wouldn't have used to have bothered me. I wouldn't have been a part of it. But now you guys can drive me crazy sometimes. And that makes the majority of the time when I do love the company of my four humans feel more real."
Tahani understands. She leans in to Janet.
"I don't think the way I care is the same as the way you humans do. But I know it's real."
They'll navigate together.
"Do you get points for saving the vibe, Janet?" Tahani asks. "I think you should."
Tahani is finally getting the hang of SURPISE! when Jason drops a new rule on them.
"Oh, dip! Chidi just got a thousand points!" They follow where he's pointing to see Chidi waist-deep in river water.
"What the fuck," Eleanor says.
"Jumping in the river. That's pretty baller. That's a thousand points, at least."