Rory - Part 4

"If you aren't going to tell me, I have other ways of making you talk." Lorelai twirled a fake mustache and leered.

"You're just going to have to wait, Boris." Rory said, digging through her suitcase.

"You will tell me eventually, da?" Lorelai said in a fake Russian accent, while showing Rory her most compelling pouty mom face.

"When I'm ready," Rory murmured, not telling her mother it could be a while. She wasn't even ready to explain why she wasn't ready to discuss her little hotel room misadventure. "What's your schedule like tomorrow?"

"We need one these at Luke's," Lorelai said, looking around the room before grabbing a plate.

"A casino?" Rory asked, taking plate of her own. They were celebrating the completion of her mother's conference with a day of casino sight seeing and buffet sampling.

"Aren't Danes Vikings?"

"I believe so," Rory said, poking at a small pile of chicken wing looking things with tongs before moving on to something she recognized.

"Don't you have to live on a reservation to start a casino in Connecticut?"

"No, just belong to an officially recognized Native American tribe," Rory told her.

"So, not a Viking."

"Sadly, no," Rory murmured.

"We'll have to return the helmet," Lorelai told her.

"And the opera singer?" Rory asked with a straight face. She'd missed playing straight man to her mother's rambling stream of consciousness craziness the last few weeks.

"Only if we can't fit him in the back seat," Lorelai told her. "Maybe we can find a cute female one for you also?"

"Not going to forget that are you," Rory said, following her mother to a table, her plate full of a variety of snack-like delicacies.

"Not until you explain what happened," Lorelai said. "And tell me if I suddenly have a new daughter-in-law your grandfather needs to have a man-to-man chat with."

"Did he ever have that chat with Luke or Max?"

"No..." Lorelai gave her a puzzled look.

"No hurry then," Rory said, giving her a faint smirk. "The difficulties of Grandpa speaking with her man-to-man can wait."

"Who's paying for grad school?" Lorelai asked.

"I am." Rory reminded her. Her mother was going to need a better plan than threats or bribery to get her to explain her adventure with the Mysterious Blonde, Rory thought.

"Drat!" Lorelai was silent for a few minutes while they both enthusiastically attacked their plates. "Do you know her?" she asked suddenly, pointing to Rory's left.

"Know who?"

"That woman," Lorelai said. "She's been staring, like she's trying to listen to us."

"She looks familiar," Rory said, peeking over her shoulder. "Not sure from where."

"Is she your blonde woman?"

"No," Rory said. "She's lacking that all important hair color, blonde. And she's too tall."

"She's sitting down," Lorelai said.

"I can still tell," Rory told her. "Mine was that tall standing up. There's too much of her."

"Too much how?" Lorelai frowned.

"Just too much," Rory said, at a rare loss for words. She waved her arms around in a vague manner.

Her mother gazed intently at her for a minute before nodding. "Time for a refill," she declared, standing up. "Keep an eye on her while I'm gone."

"Yes ma'am," Rory said, giving her mother a salute worthy of Private Benjamin.

"Why'd you let me eat so much?" Rory asked with a groan, watching her mother fumble with their door. "I feel like I ate a horse. Or at least a large pony."

"You're out of training," she replied, holding the door open. "What happened to the girl who caused Luke to cancel his 'all you can eat' Sunday pancake brunches?"

"I was much younger, Kemo sabe," Rory said, sitting gingerly on her bed.

"Ready to hit the road in the morning, Tonto?" Lorelai asked, joining her.

"Didn't you want to do some real gambling?" Rory asked. "We have the room for the rest of the week."

"Nah, too much like dinner with your grandmother. Some days you almost break even, the rest of the time you loose very badly."

"That's not nice," Rory grumbled. "Grandma feeds us."

"Just like a casino," Lorelai said triumphantly. "But without the amazing buffet. I rest my case."

"How about another show?" Rory asked. "Celine Dion? Or pirates?"

"After watching those poor tigers run around in circles? Celine Dion being chased by pirates might be interesting." Lorelai stood up and started rummaging around in her suitcase.

"They couldn't get approval for her being chased by the tigers and had to return the money," Rory said, "So I don't think the pirate thing got much past the planning stage."

"Rats." Lorelai said, going into the small bathroom, closing the door behind her.

"First thing in the morning?" Rory called out, falling back onto her bed.

"Yes," Lorelai said, coming back out into the room.

"I know who that was!" Rory said, sitting up suddenly as she watched her mother get ready for bed. Grabbing her pillow she hugged it tightly.

"Who?"

"At the buffet," Rory said. "She's the driver."

"Driver?" Lorelai asked, grabbing the remote before slipping into her own bed.

"She drove me to my hotel that morning," Rory said, idly watching her mother channel surf.

"The morning after the night we don't talk about that you don't really remember?"

"Yes, that would be the one," Rory said, sighing dramatically. Her mother certainly wasn't going to forget if she kept bringing it up herself.

"What's this?" Lorelai exclaimed. "Free porn?"

"Mom!" Feeling juvenile, Rory covered her face with her pillow. There weren't any words to describe the embarrassment of her mother watching porn while they shared a room. She lifted the pillow for a moment. And lesbian porn at that. "Change the channel. Please!"

"Well, if you aren't going to tell me what happened I'll have to use my imagination with a little help from this educational channel so generously provided by the hotel," Lorelai said.

"I'm going to need therapy," Rory grumbled, pulling the pillow even tighter around her head, trying to block out the cheesy porn movie music.

"How is that even possible. Is there anyone that flexible?" her mother asked, following a loud moan and even more cheesy music coming from the tv. Rory ignored her, hoping she would fall asleep soon.

Rory kept her eyes closed and pretended to sleep. Her dreams had woken her more than once in an 'illegal in the land of hetero-normative abstinence education' kind of way, ever since her blonde had hopped a plane for parts unknown. She really didn't need to see what her mother was watching.

"There she is again," Rory whispered, as they returned to the car after peering down into the canyon. They'd gotten to the Grand Canyon in the late afternoon. Too late for a donkey ride down into the canyon, they'd signed up for one the next morning. "And she's got a friend with her."

"How come you get groupies!" Lorelai whined. "I want groupies too. In leather, with cool looking motorcycles."

"It's just a coincidence." Rory told her, watching her Vegas driver and a redhead out of the corner of an eye while she steered her mother back to their car. "Let's go find a motel for the night."

"Maybe one groupie?" Lorelai asked, pouting.

"You'll have to ask Luke when we get home," Rory told her. "He might have a no groupie policy in the diner."

"He'll just have to change it," she grumbled.

The rest of their trip seemed to fly by. Roswell to Dallas, then New Orleans to Memphis and Nashville. With Philadelphia to round out their trip before they took the final leg home.

She was going to have to bring Paris to Roswell the next time they had coinciding vacations, she'd decided. It had been an interesting experience, watching her mother wallow in some of the tackiest UFO paraphernalia they'd ever seen. Paris would be the perfect antidote, assuming she didn't get them burned at the stake.

Her mother had been excited by their stop at Southfork, after being steeped in the mythology of J.R. and Bobby Ewing during an insomnia triggered Dallas marathon the year before. Or so she claimed. Rory didn't quite buy it. She suspected a Patrick Duffy crush in high school.

She'd given in though, and had found room in the back seat for the ten gallon hat her mother had insisted on purchasing while they were there. But she'd drawn the line at rounding up eighteen people from their hotel so they could have a big enough group for a chuckwagon dinner at the ranch.

Rory had been looking forward to New Orleans but the weather was hurricane season bad. So they'd eaten at a tv chef's restaurant, listened to jazz in the hotel lounge, and watched a traditional funeral procession pass by in the pouring rain. She wasn't sure if she'd seen a familiar looking redhead across the street or not. And her dream that night took a turn for the weird. She just hoped it was her brain going crazy with marriage metaphors after too much gumbo.

It was hot and muggy in Memphis. Soul food and Graceland were the high points of their two day layover. But at some point, listening to the blues in a small dark club the concierge at their hotel had recommended, she'd started to realize that she was feeling lonely. She loved Lorelai more than she could ever tell her, and their trip, as they Thelma and Louise'd it eastward, had so far been crazy and fun, though not so much with the suicidal impulses, and she would remember it forever, but there was something missing. And the feeling had been growing on her since Dallas.

Every so often, she would have a thought, something insightful or funny, and she would turn to say it to someone, a someone who wasn't her mother. And her breath would catch in her throat as she said it to her mother instead. She'd woken up early several times and, before getting out of bed, had turned to say good morning to the other person in the bed, but they weren't there.

She wasn't sure how to tell her mother that she would rather be with someone else. Especially when she didn't know who that someone else was. She hoped she would recognize them when she saw them and that she wasn't jonesing for a Jessie or a Dean or even the real Jessie or Dean. She didn't think she had room in her personal lifeboat for that kind of drama anymore.

Nashville wasn't what either of them expected. The Grand Ole Opry was more edifice than entertainment. In a lot of ways it reminded Rory of a trip along the Maine coast. Very touristy, but with a southern flair. She didn't tell her mother that she might have seen her groupies at the barbeque pit they ate at after the matinee. Or about another strange dream she'd had the night before.

They skipped Washington at Rory's insistence. She really didn't want to spend the rest of her life at Guantanamo because her mother had gone crazy in front of the White House, the Supreme Court, or on K-Street. Or at any of the other places guaranteed to upset a free spirit like her mother, even if she was born decades too late.

Philadelphia was a two day stop only because they were too exhausted to see the sights in a single day. But it was almost in their backyard so they already knew their way around the city and it went quickly. The only excitement was Lorelai's plan to sampling every known variety of cheese-steak sandwich in the city in a single day, something they almost accomplished, thanks to a cable channel foodie show on Philadelphia they'd watched the night before.

That night her mother claimed to have seen one of the groupies at their second sandwich shop. And Rory suspected the other had been at their last.

"I thought we weren't stopping in New York?" Rory asked after lunch, as they headed north up the Hudson valley on I-87. Emily had called them the night before and had asked them to run an errand for her on their way home.

"Plans change, you know that babe," Lorelai told her, her eyes intent on the road.

"You caved," Rory said, wagging a finger at her mother. "You let Grandma guilt you into doing this."

"Did not!"

"What do you get out of this then?" Rory asked curiously.

"She promised to keep that coat rack," Lorelai said.

"And?" Rory prodded, knowing that wasn't everything.

"She might have promised to steer business to the Inn," she said.

"That's not caving!" Rory said, staring at her mother in surprise. "That's selling out!"

"Is not!"

"Is too," Rory said. "I can't believe you stooped that low."

"I tried to get us out of Friday nights for the rest of the summer," Lorelai said. "But she wouldn't go for it."

"Why are we here again?" Rory asked, looking up at the Gothic mansion through the large iron gate. It was like something out of a horror movie. The kind you don't want to stop at if you ever want to go home again. Shivering, she hoped she was wrong about that.

They'd been on the road for almost two weeks, thirty five hundred miles of semi-leisurely travel since Vegas. Include in the mad dash to meet her mother in Vegas in the first place, and she hadn't been home in almost a month. She could almost imagine the spirit of Star's Hollow calling to her. The summer was almost over and she needed to get home to get ready for grad school.

"To pick up something for your grandmother," Lorelai said. "She doesn't trust Fedex with this package, and we were going to be in the neighborhood anyway, so..."

"Is it going to fit?" Rory asked, looking over at their car, sitting in front of the gate, for evidence of their travels.

"We can tie it to the roof," her mother mumbled, staring at the strange ATM-like keypad next to the gate. "Ah, here it is," she said, pressing several buttons.

"Yes?" A disembodied female voice asked.

"We're here to pick up a package for Emily Gilmore," Lorelai said.

"And you are?" the voice asked.

"Lorelai and Rory Gilmore," she said.

Rory nervously waved in the direction of the keypad.

"Please wait for your escort," the voice said after a long pause. "They will bring you up to the office."

"Escort?" Lorelai looked at Rory, who just shrugged.

There was a high pitched whistle and the gate started to slowly open inward.

• Didn't want to do a travelogue. So only brief glimpses into their trip east.
• Yes, there is some sort of Gilmore/CoW connection. How'd you guess?

© Copyright 2009 Andy Stoffel. Last update: 7/19/09; 10:51:26 PM. This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme.