Chapter 10: The Grasshopper Experiment
Despite her misgivings, Eleanor had agreed that Penny could invite the guys over so that they could help Penny practice for her upcoming solo shift at the Cheesecake Factory's bar. Eleanor had carefully squirreled away all her translation work. Sheldon might have written it off as esoteric pagan literature, but she didn't want to risk one of the others asking about it. So, she was just another customer for Penny's at home bar.
"I'll have a Slippery Nipple," replied Howard when Penny made the mistake of asking him what he wanted.
"You're cut off," replied Penny.
"Penny, do you know how to make a Slippery Nipple," asked Eleanor, drawing everyone's attention to her.
"Yeah it's 3/4s butterscotch schnapps and Irish cream liqueur in a shot glass."
"Do you have the ingredients to make it?"
Penny frowned, "Technically…Honey what's the point you're trying to slow roll me to?"
"That there will always be customers like him so you're better off learning how to deal with them now in a controlled setting. Also, Wolowitz is likely the only one of us who can confirm if the drink tastes right after you've made it."
"Damn it," Penny cursed, "Fine. I'll make the damned drink. Sheldon, you're on deck after that."
"I'll have a Diet Coke."
Penny sighed, "Could you order a cocktail please? Eleanor is right that I need practice."
"I'll have a Virgin Cuba Libre."
Penny sent Sheldon a dead look, "That's a rum and coke without the rum."
"Correct."
"So, a Coke?"
"Correct. Diet please."
"There's a can in the fridge," she turned to look at Eleanor who was smirking, "What?"
"I just find it amusing that by not getting an actual alcoholic drink, Sheldon has volunteered to be the designated driver in this simulation. Leonard, didn't your roommate agreement with him have you driving him everywhere because he couldn't?"
Leonard was a bit surprised that Eleanor had asked him a question. She generally tried to avoid engaging with him since the Star Wars snafu…which hadn't been his best moment if he was honest. He decided to take the olive branch and respond.
"Yep," he replied with his own smile, "Sheldon, the social convention is that the one who stays sober is responsible for arranging transportation back from the bar. Thanks for volunteering buddy. Penny, could I please have a Gin and Tonic."
Sheldon looked like he was trying to figure a way out of that particular social convention.
"Oh, and Penny," continued Eleanor, "Do make sure you charge him for the actual Cuba Libre if he orders this at the bar and not the Diet Coke."
"That is evil," whispered Raj to Wolowitz who nodded.
"Alright, Leonard, one Gin and Tonic. Eleanor, you're up next."
Eleanor frowned as this would be her first time drinking. She flipped through the cocktail book, "Do you want me to ask for one I'll be drinking a while or one that'll be quick?"
"Quick. I don't have work today and you set your own hours now so if you get plastered, I can take care of you," she replied with a smile.
"Irish Car Bomb."
"I don't have the Guiness for that. But it would be a half pint of Guinness, a shot of Baileys cream with a bit of Jameson mixed in. Then I'd hand you both and you're supposed to drop the Baileys/Jameson shot into the Guinness and chug."
"Why," asked Sheldon, "That seems a bit involved for a drink."
"Something about the Baileys and Jameson causes the Guinness to react. I don't know what though."
Eleanor could tell the guys were interested in the reasoning behind that so made a mental note to make sure Guinness was on the list for next time.
"Next option Eleanor," asked Penny.
"We're not doing pitcher drinks are we," she asked.
"Nope. Need to practice variety. We can cover pitcher drinks later."
"Damn, that rules out Sangria which sounds good. Pimm's Cup?"
"Honey, your British is showing. Also don't have the Pimm's or the cucumber to garnish it with."
"Dark 'N Stormy?"
"That one I can do. Rum and Ginger beer, right?"
"Yep, but I'm not telling you the order or the glass."
Penny pulled out a highball glass and remembered to pour the rum first then the ginger beer. She garnished it with a lime wedge and put a straw in it before handing it over to Eleanor who gave her a nod. Eleanor took a sip. She could see drinking this on occasion. Though she did want to try the fruitery drinks like the Sangria and Pimm's Cup sometime.
"Raj, what about you?"
"He doesn't know what he wants," replied Howard after hearing Raj's whisper.
"I can make a mean Grasshopper."
"He'll go with that."
A few minutes later, Penny served Raj the Grasshopper and Raj wandered over to the couch. Then he took a sip.
"Guys, what am I going to do," he began, "My parents want me to go on a date with Lalita Gupta. She's a girl. It'll be an awesome date with me just sitting there completely mute while she's trying to talk to me. Fan-fucking-tastic. And this is the first step toward a marriage where I won't be able to say a damned thing and divorce is frowned upon in my society. Seriously, what am I going to do?"
"Go on the date, be mute and let her call it off as she undoubtedly will when you can't hold a conversation," snarked Eleanor, who was quite enjoying the fact that Raj hadn't realized he just spoke in a room with two women in it.
"But if I do that Eleanor, I'll never get another date again."
"Who set this date up for you," she asked.
"My parents and her parents."
"Ignoring societal conventions in your homeland for a moment, do you really want to go through with a marriage that's dictated by your parents? And if not, what are the consequences?"
"They'll probably cut off my pocket money if they realized I sabotaged the date but no I don't want to go through with a marriage dictated by my parents. When I marry, I want it to be for love. Is that too much to ask?"
"Wouldn't know myself as I never thought that far ahead. Didn't think I'd be alive that long. But seriously go to the date and get her to call it off. You'd have done your duty, and Lalita will likely tell her friends how bad it was which will make it harder for your parents to arrange a marriage within their circle of acquaintances. That will leave you free to continue the life of a bachelor until such a time when you find your one. After all, I doubt that one bad date will make it hard for you to have another one out here in Los Angeles. How many people are there in this town, roughly, Sheldon?"
"Easily 3 million," replied Sheldon whose lips twitched into a smile as he figured out what Eleanor had realized.
"Precisely," continued Eleanor nodding her thanks to Sheldon, "So let's assume at least half that are female and half of that are in an acceptable age range. That's still over 500,000 women. That also does not include tourists or those that come into town for the Oscars, movie premieres, Dodger baseball games and Laker basketball games. You can probably add a few more thousand to the number once you account for college athletics too.
"Penny, could you make Raj another Grasshopper? I'd like to try…damn Mimosa's a pitcher drink…umm, a Mai Tai?"
Penny seemed to realize that both Raj and Eleanor had lost part of their verbal filters after they had imbibed alcohol. She was about to tell Raj about that when she noticed the frantic looks from Leonard and Howard telling her not to mention it.
"I'll have to double check the ingredients Eleanor but sure I can whip Raj up another Grasshopper."
"Thank you, Penny, this drink is absolutely divine," replied Raj.
"I still want a Pimm's cup or a Sangria," Eleanor admitted, "It'd be fun to eat the pieces of fruit once I've drunk the drink but a Mai Tai's close right?"
"I think so," Penny admitted with a shrug as she exchanged Raj's empty cocktail glass for a fresh Grasshopper.
"Eleanor, are you sure about this plan? I don't want this to bode ill for my future pursuits for true love or ruin Lalita's own."
"I'm reasonably sure. She's unlikely to want an actual marriage anyway if her parents are the ones setting her up with you through the help of your parents. As long as you pay for dinner and don't act like a complete arse and maybe carry a whiteboard with you so you can write a partial explanation for your mutism, she shouldn't be turned off of love. Unless of course, she's asexual or lesbian in which case, nothing you do would make the date any better for her as she'd want nothing to do with it in the first place."
"But how would I explain that I called her back to set up the date? I mean…I didn't do it. Leonard was being a jerk, stole my phone and used a highly racist accent to imitate my voice to do it but still?"
"A meddling old pervert who liked to give out candy to children once told me that 'the truth, is a beautiful and terrible thing and should therefore be treated with great caution,'" she mimicked an old man's wizened voice for a moment, "In this case sod that dissembling evasive goatshit. Tell her the truth and throw Leonard in front of the bus."
"Hey," protested the man in question.
"You're not a horse," observed Eleanor dryly as she sipped her new drink, "Besides it's rude to steal someone's phone and make arrangements on their behalf. By making it acceptable, you've opened the door for others to do that to your phone. I'd be afraid, Leonard. I'd be very afraid."
Leonard gulped. He didn't like the evil gleam in Howard's eyes or the promise of retribution in Raj's. Eleanor took a long pull of her drink and turned back to Raj.
"What you need to do between now and your date is find a lawyer who's familiar with your society's customs as well as laws. You need to know what precisely your parents can do with regards to your romantic and sexual lives. They can clearly arrange dates that in their minds should lead to marriage, but can they force a marriage? Can they disown you for not getting married and popping out sprogs in a good order? Does your future bride have to be a virgin? You need to know these things so you know what you can do and what you can't do just in case your parents' goodwill runs out.
"You also need to properly secure your assets in a way that your parents cannot access them. Ditto for the other relatives. That will keep your less honorable relatives from bankrupting you and forcing you out on the streets if things go poorly. I don't expect that to happen with this date. If it was a possibility, then there would already be one of those vile betrothal contracts that would see you married regardless of how this date turns out. So, you have time to make contingencies. Take it from someone who didn't because this poor bitch didn't realize they were needed. It's better to be paranoid in this case because while they might not be after you now, they might very well be in the future."
It was a somewhat distracted Howard who ordered a Sex on the Beach as his next cocktail. He didn't even make the name into a proposition for the two women in the group. Leonard was looking at Eleanor trying to figure her out as was Sheldon. Raj pulled out a small pad of paper and pen from his jacket.
"Lawyer familiar with Indian customs and laws regarding marriage. Find out how much power my parents have over my love life, both the romantic and sexual components. Establish separate finances for myself so I have something for myself in case my allowance goes away, and they stop paying my rent and car note. What else, Eleanor? Oh, and Penny can I have another Grasshopper? These are great.
"A Bloody Mary for me this time, sweetie," added Eleanor, as she drained the last of her Mai Tai, "I'd honestly look at your own finances. See how much your parents pay to maintain your current lifestyle and what you would need to maintain it if you have to start paying your own bills. If you can't maintain it or you would be hard pressed to maintain it, you need to figure out what moves you would have to make to get a comparable lifestyle so that you can transition to that if you lose your family's favor."
Raj quickly wrote down another note.
"Anything else?"
"Learn American sign language. While most bloody Americans can't be arsed to learn another language, it will show your parents that you are aware of your selective mutism and are taking measures to counteract it so that it's not a hindrance. More importantly it will give you time assuming of course your parents have any idea of your mutism. Also, you may need to go to a medical professional about that…maybe a psychiatrist like that sexy Harley Quinn chick from that Batman cartoon you guys watch. Only make sure she's not obsessed with clowns and doesn't work in an actual Asylum. Hopefully if she doesn't work there, she'd have better taste in men. Ugh…the Joker is so not a good man. The relationship he has with Harley is clearly abusive and she should turn her pudding into actual blood pudding. Sex with Joker can't possibly be healthy with all those chemicals in his veins. She'd be better off fucking Ivy."
"Agreed," nodded Raj as he wrote down the note about sign language, "Poor Harley obviously loves Joker, but the bastard just takes advantage of her love. She would be better off with nearly any other villain. Of those Poison Ivy's the only one who actually cares about her already and has the capabilities to defend her against both the B Man and Mista J."
"Are there any more points that Raj should be aware of," asked Leonard, having decided to move the conversation away from comic sex before Howard could join in.
"If he decides to use Cyrano here as his interpreter to the fairer sex, make sure there are clear boundaries established, and that Lalita is able to add to those. For example, it might be acceptable for you to engage in a three way as long as you and Howard's naked bodies don't actually touch but it probably isn't for her. Or it might be her that wants it and you two that have a problem with it. Either way the two of you need to have a private discussion about that before you engage Cyrano's services.
"Penny, could I get another drink? Surprise me this time."
"Eleanor, honey, are you still doing okay?"
"Well, my filter's been blown the fuck up but beyond that I feel nice. Huh…apparently, I'm also self-aware enough to realize my filter is gone. Is that why I've gone Harley Quinn with the whole advice stuff? Huh….oh totally dressing up as her next Halloween. Unless you want to be her, Penny. In that case, I'll be Ivy. Oooh, Vodka Martini stirred, not shaken because Bond's a bloody idiot. Thank you, Penny."
"Eleanor," began Sheldon, "What did you mean earlier when you didn't think that you'd be alive long enough to think about love or marriage?"
"Exactly that. I mean…I was set up to be assassinated by a terrorist leader when I was a year old because the scum that spawned me and the political leaders believed some absolute drunk fraudulent bitch's prophecy. Born as the 7th month dies? What fucking seventh month of which calendar? Never fucking specified but sure let's just go with July. Got lucky and the bastard blew himself up. Did my birth parents come back for me then? Noooo, they decided to fake their deaths and abandon me to her giraffe sister, walrus in-law and baby hippo nephew. If they were actually normal it might not have been so bad but of course they couldn't be normal. No, they had to be a perversion of normal.
"It's not fucking normal to make a four-year-old child cook and clean from dusk to dawn. It's not fucking normal to only give the child a piece of stale bread and the thinnest fucking slice of cheese as food. It's not fucking normal to lock the child out of the house at night. It's not fucking normal to let your absolute bitch of a sister set her ill-trained vicious mutt on the child and tree her. It's not normal to encourage your own bloated brat to gather his friends and play Eleanor hunting at school. It's not fucking normal to give your brat two bedrooms while your niece is shoved into the cupboard under the stairs."
She drained her martini and quickly downed the next drink.
"Don't even get me started on the stupid 'elite' boarding school that I was sent to at 11. Who the fuck wears robes daily? Who fucking lets the teachers attempt to kill the students? Who fucking lets the students use each other as target practice? I wasted 5 years of my life there and my life was in danger all 5 years. Safest place in Britain my pert partially drunk arse. It was so safe that I had to fake my own death to escape before the bastards managed to kill me for real."
All four of the guys looked horrified as Eleanor ranted. Penny wasn't much better. She had heard part of it before, but Eleanor hadn't really gone into details about her relatives before now. She went over to Eleanor and helped her get up. Then she walked Eleanor to the bedroom and laid her down on the bed.
"I'll be back in a few minutes, Eleanor…just rest okay. You don't need to talk about that stuff anymore."
She went back out to the guys, "That's going to be last call. I need to be with Eleanor. She told me her childhood was fucked up but…I didn't know it was that damn bad."
[Scene Change]
Back at the guys' apartment, they all sat around the living room. There was an uncomfortable silence.
"I don't suppose that was just a lie," asked Howard hopefully.
"No," replied Sheldon grimly, "Eleanor doesn't lie. She redirects, she leaves out information and she tells things from different perspectives but she doesn't lie."
"Well fuck," cursed Howard.
"It definitely puts things into perspective," agreed Raj, "that childhood was something Dickens could only dream of making up."
"Yeah…" agreed Leonard, "So…what do we do now?"
"Considering I doubt she really wants to talk about her past, we process it and move on. We continue our normal routine and make no mention of it unless she wants to talk about it," said Howard, "It just joins the list of topics that we don't talk about like my dad, Sheldon's dad and your parents, Leonard."
"Does anyone else feel like that's not really enough," asked Raj.
"Well, I let her borrow my Xbox and Knights of the Old Republic. Hopefully that'll help keep her mind off her own past."
"It is a good game," agreed Howard.
"Bioware classic," chimed in Raj.
"Is she enjoying it," asked Leonard.
"I haven't asked yet," admitted Sheldon.
"Maybe a light-hearted game to go with it. Scooby Doo Night of a Hundred Frights was pretty good on that front," offered Leonard, "It's better if she's seen Scooby Doo but I think she could still enjoy it without having seen the old series."
"Lego Star Wars?"
"We should finish with the movies first but those are solid options," admitted Sheldon.
"Simpsons Hit and Run," asked Howard, "The show's not quite as necessary there."
"Thrillville," suggested Leonard.
"That could work. There's no show or movie prerequisite there," mused Sheldon, "Beyond that, we'd have to switch platforms if we're going for lighthearted."
"Something to think about," remarked Raj.
The others nodded and the silence came back.
[Scene Change]
Eleanor woke up with yet another headache. She was really getting tired of those. She downed the potion that appeared thanks to Winky. Penny had wrapped herself around her and was still sleeping as far as Eleanor could tell. So, Eleanor closed her eyes and meditated for a bit while enjoying having Penny close to her. She opened her eyes right when Penny's breathing shifted.
"Honey, are you feeling better," asked Penny as she woke up.
"Had to take a potion," Eleanor admitted, "So…how much did I drink last night?"
"Five hard liquor drinks in less than an hour. You did not pace yourself at all, Honey."
"Ok…apparently, I have an addictive personality. I wonder if that's my fatal flaw?"
"What?"
"All ancient Greek heroes have a fatal flaw, something that usually makes things worse for them. More often than not, it was pride."
"Do Olympians actually have fatal flaws?"
"Not technically. They have flaws but I haven't heard of an Olympian dying from one yet."
"Not to change the subject," began Penny, "But I think we need to talk about last night."
"I didn't bite or hurt you right," asked Eleanor, looking worried.
"No, Honey, you didn't. You did break down and cry once I kicked out the guys and rejoined you in bed."
"I've been doing that a lot lately. I cried when Debbie discovered the glamor charm I wear on my hand."
"Glamor charm," asked Penny, her voice taking on an edge.
Eleanor sighed and dispelled it. Penny grabbed the hand and stared at it.
"Honey, why is the sentence 'I must not tell lies' carved into your hand?"
"Political appointee at the school was a sadistic bitch and used her power to assign detentions to try to make me recant my views on a subject the government didn't like."
"That does it. I'm going junior rodeo on their asses. Where is this sadist?"
She got up and stalked into the closet to find her outfit
"Junior Rodeo?"
"Lasso them, hog tie them and then castrate them. Can probably do it in under a minute. Now where are my cowboy boots and rope? Found them."
She emerged dressed in a pair of form-fitting dark blue jeans over black cowgirl boots. Her top was a plaid button up shirt that was divided into squares (that were several different shades of gray) with light blue lines. Penny had intentionally left the top two buttons undone and tied up the last couple inches of the shirt into a knot about an inch below her chest, so her toned stomach was exposed.
"Um…Penny as incredibly sexy as you are when you're angry on my behalf, you can't go junior rodeo on the sadist."
"Why not," asked Penny, her eyes glinting dangerously.
"Well…I don't think you can castrate a woman. I was being quite literal when I said sadistic bitch."
"Fine, I'll spay her then."
And Penny was apparently dead serious about that which Eleanor was happy about (Eleanor could also feel her Roman self's approval too).
"There's also the small problem that I've already killed her."
"Oh…why didn't you lead with that?"
Penny looked cute when she pouted and was still very attractive in that cowgirl outfit.
"Honestly, I've tried my best to forget about that bitch. Her memories weren't pleasant. She got off on torturing kids and placing kittens into plates a la Dorian Grey."
"That's understandable."
"Still seems like a shame to waste that outfit," replied Eleanor with a smile, "Want to try to go Junior Rodeo on a Giant?"
"Yes," exclaimed Penny looking excited, "I think I'm going to need more rope though."
"We'll take care of it when we pop into Gringotts to see if we can't get some of the bored Goblins to accompany us."
"Get dressed and let's fucking go!"