I'm doing fine. It was a hard week. How are you? Glad to hear it. Dad and Mac are home from Silicon Valley, and they caught the hacker. It's actually a funny story, the secretary spilled coffee on the documents and thought she was going to get fired, so she replaced them by memory. There was no hacker to begin with!
Anyway, yes, I called Nicole's store and got her number. Then I called her, and surprise of surprises, she answered. I was honest about who I was, I didn't try to pretend I was a sales market rep to find out more information about her. I just apologized for everything. Nicole was quiet for a long time, then she responded, "I thought I told you to lose my number," but she didn't hang up. I made up an excuse about seeing an ad for her store but I'm pretty sure she saw through the whole ruse. She started to laugh at my self-effacing jokes, and we ended up talking for an hour. She loves Menlo Park, but hates her neighbors. She loves her shooting range, and it just opened after a year of renovation. She asked me how my life was going, and I said okay. I haven't told her about Logan yet. I'm not ready to have another person pity me for having a catatonic husband. But, we hung up on non-awful terms. I think I'll call her back this Wednesday.
Yesterday I got a call from my insurance provider, and they said that this week they're cutting off my insurance. From now, I'm going to have to white-knuckle my way through the payments at full price, which sucks because I was already cutting corners without Logan's paycheck. Basically all I spent my money on for the last year has been Chinese food, coffee, and rent, and now it'll be double with the full-price medical bills. Dad says he can try to go make nice with Clyde Pickett so that we can get on the Casablancas plan, but I'll probably just talk to Dick. I haven't seen him in a while, but with spring break gearing back up, I'm sure I'll see him attempt to make a comeback on the Dog Beach scene, tearaway pants and all. Now that I think about it, I haven't seen Dick since he walked into the hospital two days after Logan's assassination attempt, all the color left his cheeks and burst back out from whence he came.
At the time, it was funny. I mean, Dick losing his version of composure? It seemed impossible. But he must have been in some serious shock. Losing his father and best friend on the same day? Not to mention his mom was never around, his stepmom was killed by the Irish mob, and his brother was a murderous freak who threw himself off the roof of the Neptune Grand. Maybe Richard Casablancas, Jr isn't as moronically inclined as I thought. Did Logan ever tell you that they would stay up to four am playing video games in his bedroom? And this was in high school. They were really close. They are really close. I have to stop referring to Logan in the past tense. Wallace tells me that it's unhealthy to assume that he's already dead when he isn't. Anyway, I need to get in touch with Dick.
I got your voicemail, and I did cry after listening to it. I was driving on the highway back from one of Kane High's basketball games, courtesy of Wallace, and I was thinking about what would happen if I couldn't make the payments and they had to pull the plug on him. Then I would be listening to the voicemail and it would fill up my heart with nostalgic bittersweet emotion. But instead, I'm listening to him call me the toughest person he ever met and finally hearing what I had been hoping for all along, that he didn't just want to protect me, he respected me and my life's mission, and I'm thinking oh my god if I don't find a way to keep him alive how will I ever respect myself? When the only person's life whose admiration and trust I need is in my charge, how will I ever forgive myself if I fail? I had to pull over to the side of the road, because the fat tears in my eyes could threaten to spill into my heart and poison it forever.
I don't think I can do it. I mean, how long can I keep him alive anyway? The facts are in, Logan's going to die soon whether or not I can help him. Even if I get him to the end of spring break, there's no chance he'll go beyond that. Jane, his vitals are stable but he hasn't healed quickly enough. His lungs will probably always be damaged, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was brain damage which makes him a vegetable. That is, if he lives. And why the hell shouldn't I use past tense with Logan? He's basically already dead. I go and see him every single damn day, and he doesn't do anything. He doesn't tremble his arms or blink his eyes or have any signs of life typically recognized by the educated public. I talk to him and read to him and play music for him to see if anything - anything works. But what I'm talking to is a corpse that used to be my husband! No, I don't want a tissue!
I'm sorry for raising my voice. It's not like me to overreact. I'm sorry. It's been a long, bad week. I found out that I'm probably going to be forced out of my building. Yeah. Also, Leo left me a drunken voicemail asking me to join him in Virginia. D'Amato? My ex-boyfriend? Logan probably told you about him. I'm not going with him. I'm technically still married to the love of my life. But I don't blame him for calling, drunken times happen. It did shake me up, though. I did very briefly consider it. Leave the old life behind, adopt a fake name like Diana Tremaine, and fake ID my way through the pizza bagel industry until I was the queen of the pizza bagel empire. Or something along those lines. For that one split-second, I was happy, not because of Leo, but because I could ignore the hellish chaos that is my everyday life.
What else sucked about my week? Dad accidentally sent me a text meant for his girlfriend. Yes, that kind of text. Her name is Beth Frasier, and she works at Neptune American Bank as a teller. Their story's kind of a meet-cute, they got into a screaming match when he was trying to cash a four month old check, and she asked him if he was a criminal. Admittedly, she was new and he kept forgetting to cash the check, but he left angrily and then they bumped into each other the next day and he asked her on a date. They seem happy, but I still have 15-year-long reservations with mother figures. Luckily, Beth isn't trying to be a substitute mom (thank god, I'm an adult!), she's just trying to navigate our dad-daughter relationship that involves solving crimes and sacrificing ourselves for each other. She has a Shiba Inu named Linus, who hates Pony, so I've only met Linus once. But Beth talks about him all the time, and it's starting to get on my nerves. I wish Dad wouldn't bring her around to Mars Investigations all the time, but I've already ruined enough of his romantic pursuits and he's never said a thing about my thrice-accused-of-murder husband. Though to be fair, I was the one who accused him all three times. I think that should be another item on the "how to become Veronica Mars" checklist, accusing your boyfriends of various crimes. Too bad I never got close enough to Piz or Leo to accuse them.
On another note, Matty's off with her mom for the weekend. I guess Renee felt guilty she hadn't done anything to console her daughter after Sul was murdered, and these last few mother-daughter trips are her way of apologizing. Or it could be an apology for letting Matty become so close with Penn all those years. Either way, I'm really happy for her - that's got to be a Mars family first, mom apologizing for abandoning her child. She really deserves support, especially from someone who isn't me. But it does kind of piss me off that Renee gets to drag Matty away after all that time, and suddenly everything will go back to normal? How does that work? My mom was a lovely little alcoholic and even after I paid for her rehab and promised her everything would be okay, she stole all of our reward money and started another family to whom she is deeply loyal. But I guess if Renee can do it, my mom just thought I wasn't worth the apology!
It's been a bad week, like I said. And I need to call Dick Casablancas.