Chapter Text
Chapter Five
"Wednesday…"
The word was dripping with indignation and disgust, and without even uttering a single other word Logan knew that he was perfectly communicating his disapproval with the situation. It might actually be impressive - that is if the woman standing across from him wasn't able to completely and perfectly communicate hers without a single word whatsoever.
"Yes," Gypsy replied in a deadpan tone after shooting him a look that could knock him over dead. She wiped at her oil cover hands with a rag and continued to glower at him as she went on. "At the earliest."
"You're not going to be able to finish my car until Wednesday?!" Logan asked through a furrowed brow. "What could possibly be keeping you that busy? Do the ten people who live in this town even own enough cars to keep your schedule that full?"
The woman in front of him only continued to glare at him, though Logan couldn't bring himself to care at the moment. It might be true that you could catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, but it was also true that it was the squeaky wheel that got the grease. And, in Logan's experience, sometimes the only way to get what you wanted out of people was to make it entirely clear that you would not accept anything less.
The subject of his scorn, however, didn't seem to be as pliable as Logan would like her to be. As soon as she was finished glaring daggers at him, she started lowering herself to the ground, settling herself on a wheeled creeper seat.
"My schedule isn't the problem," she said before sliding herself under a rusty old Ford pick up, one that might actually make a decent classic if it had a new coat of paint and some body work done on the bumpers. "It's not my fault you decided to buy a car with parts that are impossible to find. I have to special order them. I can't get them here until Wednesday… at the earliest."
"So you're saying it could be longer than Wednesday?!" Logan asked, ducking his head low to make sure that she was able to hear his displeasure from underneath her for wheeled metal fortress. "Look, that's not going to work for me. I need to be back on the road as soon as possible. I have a very important job with very important people waiting on me in New York. What is it going to take to make this happen? Double your fee? Name your price."
Logan was met with a belaboured sigh and the sound of a wrench hitting concrete ground below them. The wheels of Gypsy's creeper rolled over the ground as she pulled herself back up from underneath the vehicle she was working on, and the look on her face as she became visible once again was anything but inticed by Logan's offer.
"What part of 'I don't have the part' don't you understand?" she asked. "You can double my fee if you want, but it won't make the carrier plane get here any faster."
"Fantastic…" Logan sneered. "Thanks for your help."
Gypsy only shrugged, entirely unphased by his displeasure.
"Maybe you should consider this moment the next time you decide to buy a car…" she said. "I've never run into this problem with a Tahoe."
Logan felt a shiver run up and down his spine. A Tahoe… this woman was seriously standing in front of him suggesting that instead of the first class sporting vehicle parked next to them - the one that was practically bullet proof, the one with a V12 engine and 621 horsepower, the one that happened to be the most capable off-roading vehicle in the world -instead of that vehicle he should have purchased a Chevy Tahoe.
Not for the first time, Logan was starting to doubt this woman's capabilities as a mechanic.
"Do you have any idea how valuable this car is?" Logan asked. "Are there any other reputable mechanics nearby? Ones who have the capability to repair my car in a reasonable amount of time? Ones that understand that this is one of the most elite and coveted sporting vehicles on the market? The best that money can possibly buy?"
"And yet you still ended up wrapped around a tree because of one little patch of ice…"
"Who do I have to call to get my car fixed by the end of the day?"
"Father time."
Logan glared at the sound of the woman's quip, but - as seemed to be the theme with her - Gypsy was completely unphased.
"I've already made every call I could possibly make," she continued. "I've called all the mechanics in the area. I've even reached out to the Mercedes dealerships. No one keeps the part in stock. Anyone you take it to will need to make a special order. Not to mention the fact that it will probably take even longer because you will need to wait for another tow and you'll be further down on their priority list. But it's your call."
He took a deep breath. White hot anger was still bubbling under his skin, but at this point the rational part of his brain was beginning to accept the fact that the woman was right. Still, at this moment that was only serving to piss him off even more.
"Fine," he bit. "Do what you have to do. I'll talk to you again when the part arrives."
"Can't wait…" said Gypsy as Logan pivoted on his heel and started walking away from Hughes brothers and toward the small diner that his host for the previous evening had pointed out to him before they went their separate ways.
As lovely as the young woman had been, Logan couldn't bring himself to even consider sleeping in her home until Wednesday. First of all, he couldn't stand the idea of being such an intrusion on someone that he didn't even know, and - perhaps even more importantly - the idea was totally and completely awful to him.
Before last night, the last time Logan had slept on a lumpy couch must have been in college. And at that point in his life, he most likely had the benefit of being completely loaded when it happened - so loaded that the discomfort would have been entirely unnoticeable to him and he would have been able to fall asleep with just the blink of his eyes. Last night he hadn't been so lucky. It was hard to get loaded off of a total of four light malt beverages, and even if there had been something better to drink in the house, he still probably would have thought better of doing such a thing with a kid sleeping upstairs.
The kid. The kid was also a problem, a much bigger problem than the lumpy couch. That kid was probably the entire reason why Logan hadn't been able to charm his way off of the couch and into the bed the night before to begin with. His brief attempt at flirting had been shot down faster than a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, and were Logan not so confident in his… eligibility… his ego might have been slightly bruised by the brush off. Though, if he was being honest with himself, he was slightly put off about the fact that he hadn't been able to turn lemons into lemonade last night. It just added insult to injury.
Suffice to say, staying with Rory again wasn't an option. Staying in this town again wasn't an option, truth be told. And while it was an annoyance to have to leave his prized G Wagon behind in a strange town for a few days, it wasn't like he was trapped. He had options. He just needed to think for a moment about what the best option might be.
As Logan made his way down the sidewalk, he pulled out his phone. His finger hovered over the name Keith Ramirez, the man who had managed to become Logan's unofficial personal chopper pilot over the last couple of years. They were around the same age, and he'd been hired onto the HPG fleet shortly after Logan had returned to New York after his post-collegiate tour in London. They got along well. Keith was a fun guy, personable, with some pretty amazing stories about his time in Afghanistan. Logan liked him. And he knew that he would drop whatever it was he was doing to give Logan a quick lift back to the city - despite it being the weekend. And Keith knew that he could trust Logan to make the unexpected trip more than worth his while.
The only problem, of course, was figuring out how to get him there.
As far as Logan could tell, the only open space in town large enough for a helicopter to land on was effectively ruined by a giant gazebo sitting smack dab in the middle of the open grass. There might be a school or some other large building with a flat roof that could potentially work, but he couldn't be sure. And Logan wouldn't even know where to begin arranging that or who to talk to about it if he could be.
As much as the idea of getting back to New York as quickly and efficiently as he could was appealing to him, he was beginning to think that his only option was to call a car and make the drive, a drive that would probably take twice as long to make if the roads were really still as big a mess as his news apps were making them out to be. Still, a slow drive home tonight was far more superior to a few more days stuck in Pleasantville.
He was going to have to call Frank, but just as he was about to hit the little telephone icon next to the man's name, his phone started to vibrate in his hand and the name 'Shira Huntzberger' flashed across his screen in white block letters. He groaned, his eyes finding their way all around the circumference of their sockets. But in the end, he accepted the call, knowing that getting whatever it was she wanted to talk about over with was probably better than putting it off.
"Hi, Mom," he greeted curtly, trying to shove down his annoyance at the disturbance but not being very successful.
"Oh good. You're alive," she responded, her tone of voice far more matter of fact than most worried mother's might be.
"Last I checked," Logan replied with a sigh. "Though I haven't looked in a mirror in a while. So, I can't guarantee there's a reflection."
"Don't be smart," Shira scolded, pulling out one of her more commonly used critiques of Logan's personality.
All his life he'd never really underwood that particular request. He'd heard it too many times to count, not only from his mother but also from his father, his grandparents, aunts, uncles, even a handful of teachers. Wasn't 'being smart' supposed to be a good thing? And while he knew that the phrase really meant 'don't be sarcastic,' he still found it odd that so many people phrased it that way.
"What do you need, Mom?" Logan asked, disguising the sigh in his voice to the best of his ability.
"I don't need anything," she responded. "I was just calling to make sure you weren't dead in a ditch somewhere after you rushed off into an ice storm in the middle of the night last night."
Logan winced. He wasn't quite dead, but he was still uncomfortable with how close his mother actually was to the reality of his situation at the moment. After all, he had wound up in a ditch in the middle of nowhere. And he'd wound up there after insisting to her - rather arrogantly - that such a fate was a near impossibility. Admitting that to her, however, was the last thing he wanted to do.
"I'm fine, Mom."
"So you're home then?" she asked. "I called your office first - because you said you were going into work today - but your secretary said you hadn't made it in..."
"I'm…" Logan trailed off, suddenly suspicious. Perhaps it was paranoia, but he couldn't help but feel like his mother would know he was lying to her if he said that he'd made it back to his apartment without incident. Shira had a way of knowing things, a way that was slightly terrifying if one thought too much about it. "I actually decided to pull off the road and get a place to stay. Traffic was horrible, and I was getting tired."
It was a lie, but it was a lie that would be much harder for her to catch him in.
"Oh," said Shira. A tone of clear disappointment was threaded through her voice, and though she tried to hide it, Logan saw through her right away. It seemed that perhaps he was right to be suspicious. "Well… when do you think you'll be back in New York?"
Logan had to hold back a sardonic laugh at the question. If only she knew how complicated the answer really was.
"I'm not sure," he said before turning his neck to look left and right and crossing the street over to the snow covered town square.
"You're not sure?" Shira asked, the edge starting to creep into her forcefully calm demeanor. "What do you mean you're not sure?"
"I mean…" said Logan with a sigh. "That I'm not sure…"
It was, after all, the truth. His mother had just unceremoniously interrupted his attempts to figure out just exactly how long he was going to be here. He was just as in the dark as he was at the moment. Though, now his mind was on an entirely different set of concerns, primarily concerns about why his mother was so concerned about his whereabouts to begin with…
"Well, do you think you'll be back by tomorrow?!"
Logan paused for a moment, his feet suddenly as frozen as the powdery white snow all around him. The desperation in his mother's voice was growing by leaps and bounds with every word, and her behavior was a far shot from a woman who was simply concerned about whether or not her son had made it through the night without incident. At this point it was undeniable. She was up to something.
"I'm not sure…" Logan repeated with the slow and firm candace of a man speaking to a five year old whose hand had just been caught in a cookie jar. He started walking again, drawing closer to the diner and hot coffee waiting for him in the distance and the large group of people who - for reasons beyond his understanding - had started gathering in the street in front of it. "The roads are still shit. The weather for the rest of the day is dicey…"
"That's no excuse!" said Shira, a far cry from the concerned mother who had bid him farewell the night before.
"I'm sorry?" Logan asked.
"You're a man of means, Logan. Surely there are plenty of ways for you to find a way safely home by the end of the day today."
"Why do you care so much, Mom?"
"Because! I - " Shira interrupted herself, probably realizing that her frantic and desperate tone was not doing her any favors in pushing through whatever motives she obviously had. "I only want to make sure that you're able to get home safe and sound, and that you're able to get back into the office to take care of things. I know there was an issue that you were worrying about and I remember how your father used to get when he wasn't able to take care of things as soon as possible. That man's blood pressure could cook a chicken. I don't want that for you. That's all."
"Uh huh…." Logan replied with furrowed brow and a terse nod.
"And…"
The single word sent shivers down his spine.
"That lovely girl I introduced to you last night? Odette? She'll be coming into Manhattan tomorrow morning. And I just thought it would be so lovely if you could take her out for a nice dinner."
"Mom…"
"She's only been to New York once before, you know. When she was a teenager. And as lovely a time as she had, I'm sure it would be much nicer for her to get to see the city as a young single woman…"
"Mom…"
"She's traveling with her parents. And they are lovely people, so I'm sure they're having a lovely time. But… it would be even better for her to spend some time with a handsome younger man… You could take her to that place in the MOMA. She loves art. That would be just -"
"Lovely?" Logan asked.
Logan didn't need to see his mother's face to know that she was unhappy with his interruption. He could picture it now, her pursed lips and narrow eyes, the slight twitch that sometimes appeared on top of her cheek bone when she was trying particularly hard to not blow her ever-so-pleasant persona. There were few people in this world who were as talented at bringing out that particular look on his mother's face as Logan, and the vast majority of them shared his last name.
He knew that at this point Shira was just a single pin prick away from losing it on him, but he couldn't really bring himself to care. Since his thirtieth birthday, his mother had been growing ever more bold in her attempts to meddle into his love life and find him a 'suitable' woman to shackle himself to and pop out a couple of kids - namely sons - with. Now that he was thirty-five and his age could officially be rounded up to forty, her bold attempts had started to become shameless and desperate. And Logan's mild annoyance was starting to become active resentment.
The idea of entertaining his mother's attempts to course correct his life was entirely unfathomable to him. The idea of marrying one of these women - these hand picked women - who were vetted and groomed by his mother and living out some sham of a life with them was nothing short of disgusting to him. He had no desire to live a life that his parents approved of. His parents approved of their life, and as far as Logan was concerned their life was a life to be avoided at all costs. He wouldn't put himself through the endless loveless soulless torture that his parents put themselves through on a daily basis. And he definitely wasn't going to be responsible for putting an innocent child through it.
Marriage was nothing more than smoke and mirrors, broken mirrors at that...and the kind of smoke burned your eyes and lungs.
"You're not getting any younger, you know," Shira sneered. Apparently, the conversation was no longer fun and games. "Right now you're still young, so you think you have all the time in the world. But I'm here to tell you that one day you will blink and you'll be fifty-five years old, wondering how you let your life pass you by, without all these gorgeous charming young women just lining up to have a chance with you. Then what will you do? Who will you have? Who will take over as the Patriarch of this family? Have you ever thought of that?!"
"Didn't Larry King have a kid when he was like… seventy?"
"Logan…"
"I think David Letterman did too…." he continued. "Maybe not quite seventy. But he was old. Rod Stewart… he's like… assembling a whole army of kids."
"Would it kill you to take something seriously for once in your life?"
"I assure you, Mom," said Logan. "I take plenty of things seriously. What I don't take seriously is idea of my mommy setting me up with women that I don't even know. I can get my own dates. In fact, I'm quite adept at getting my own dates."
"Oh you don't have to tell me…" said Shira. "Page six has kept me very informed. That last girl you were photographed with was a real keeper. That twenty-year-old Kardashian wannabe? What was her name again?"
"She's twenty-nine. I'm not a pervert. And her name is Sequoia."
Silence fell over the line for the briefest moment.
"I don't even know how I'm supposed to respond to that."
Logan didn't need her to respond to that at all. In fact, he didn't need this conversation to go on any longer than it already had. Plus, as he was approaching his destination, the noise from the crowd gathered in the street was starting to grow louder and louder, making it more and more difficult to focus on the conversation at hand to begin with. Three children dressed in period clothing were standing in front of a crowd reading aloud from three large books held in their grasps.
"...our brave town militia learned that a powerful British general was riding through the area…"
The noise didn't, however, deter his mother from continuing to voice her concerns over his lifestyle.
"Will you please just make sure that you get home by tomorrow evening?" she asked with a sigh. "They aren't going to be in the city for very long. Only a couple of days. Consider it my Christmas present. One evening with a nice girl. When was the last time you spent an evening with a nice girl?"
At that very moment, Logan came to a stop among the crowd of people and his eyes landed on the familiar sight of Rory's long brown hair poking out from the hat-covered heads around her. She was standing on the other side of the children, a bemused smile on her face as she watched them recite their lines.
"BRAVE OUR SOLDIERS ARE!"
"You know… maybe you'd be surprised."
"I doubt it," Shira grumbled.
By this point, the heads of everyone within five feet of him were turning around to flash him nasty and reproachful looks as he talked into his cell phone. Having lived so long in Manhattan, he couldn't remember the last time he was chastised for talking on a public sidewalk, but it had been long enough that it hadn't even occurred to him that it might be considered rude.
"Look, Mom, I have to go."
"Just tell me you'll be home by tomorrow. I'll let Odette know that you'll pick her up at seven. They're staying at The Plaza…"
Shira continued to rattle on, and Logan took a deep breath. If he thought talking on the phone in this crowd was frowned upon, certainly screaming into it would definitely be a major no-no. One thing he knew for sure, though, was that he needed to put an end to this conversation - and this mother's delusions - now.
"I'm not going to be home by tomorrow, Mom," he said, shocking even himself with the declaration. Yet, strangely, the words kept coming. "In fact… I might not be home until Wednesday. Maybe longer. I… I'm not sure."
"Oh yes you will be home, Logan Huntzberger… You can't avoid the city forever, you know. You have a job to get to. You can't very well ignore work to…"
Logan's attention once again drifted away from his mother's ramblings. His eyes were still firmly planted on Rory across the crowd and the way that the cold winter air made the skin on her cheeks turn rosy pink and how her breath was turning into wispy clouds as it escaped her lips and touched the freezing cold temperatures around them.
He watched as she leaned over to the blonde woman standing next her with an expensive camera in her hand and the unmistakable sight of a press badge handing from around her neck. Rory whispered something in the woman's ear and pointed in the direction behind them to where a young woman dressed in a beautifully made but extremely low cut Georgian dress was walking toward them. The photographer immediately started moving toward the… actress… and started flashing pictures at Rory's bequest.
It was then that an idea came to him, an idea that would solve all of his problems. His mind flashed back to Rory's comments on their walk, the way she's been so annoyed at the town paperboy and how she'd told the stren looking Asian woman from the antique store that she owed her another paper. He flashed back to the books on her shelf, the journalism books, and the way that he'd started to suspect that she was more than a mere receptionist at an Inn. Watching her direct the press photographer now, there was no denying it.
Rory Gilmore was more than a receptionist at an Inn… much more.
"I'm not ignoring work!" Logan interrupted, not even sure if his mother was still on that particular tear, but also not really caring at the same time.
Across the way, Rory turned back around, meeting his gaze across the crowd of people. She sent him a smile as their eyes met, a kind smile that sent a shiver of something up and down Logan's spine. He responded in kind, lifting up his hand to give her a small wave of recognition, and cleared his throat before returning his attention to his mother.
"There's a small paper here that I think I might want to acquire."
TBC…