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Written by: Cadence Daly
Disclaimer: All characters and situations from Gilmore Girls are properties of Amy Sherman-Palladino, Dorothy Parker Drank Here Productions and Hofflund/Polone in association with Warner Bros. Television. No copyright infringement intended.
A/N: This story is AU with respect to the Gilmore Girls timeline, because I find it inconceivable that Lorelai never went into the diner before 1996.
Sincere thanks to George Eliot for the beta.
Disclaimer: Amy Sherman-Paladino created these characters and settings, not me. I don’t know who created Rice Krispies™, but once again, it wasn’t me.
It was a Saturday evening in early November. Luke stood behind the counter of his diner, estimating the week’s receipts and calculating how much longer before he’d be able to afford a larger refrigerator for the kitchen and an upgrade from the second-hand grill he’d been cooking on since he started the business last March. And he really needed to find a new produce supplier. Plus he thought he should start making his own muffins and other baked goods, because Weston’s was raising their prices again and he knew for a fact he could save substantial money doing it himself. And speaking of doing it himself, it was time he hired another employee, at least part-time, to help out during the lunch rush (easily the diner’s busiest time of day) and cover things when Luke had to go to the bank or run other errands…
“Got any more pie, Luke?” asked Kirk from the corner table. He had been sitting there for thirty minutes, eating his dessert with a glass of milk while reading an Incredible Hulk comic book.
“Sorry, Kirk. You got the last piece.”
“Darn.” Kirk turned his attention back to his comic.
“I’m going to be closing up soon, Kirk. You about done with your milk?”
“Uh, five more minutes, O.K.? I just want to finish this story…”
The door crashed open and in came Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, blown in on a chilly gust of wind, eyes shining, cheeks rosy, hair disheveled, a trail of brown and yellow leaves swirling in their wake.
“Holy hurricane, Scarecrow, it’s blowing like crazy out there! It’s howling like a lunatic! It’s blustering like a banshee! It’s whistling like a wolverine! It’s…”
Rory, playing straight man, looked up at her mother. “Windy?”
“Well…yeah.” Lorelai was momentarily deflated, and Luke ducked his head to hide his sudden grin. “Oh, hey, Kirk,” she called as she noticed him across the diner. “How’s Dr. Bruce Banner tonight?”
“Teetering on the brink,” Kirk replied darkly, shaking his head.
“Yeah,” Lorelai agreed, “There’s a lot of that going around. I can totally relate.” She shrugged out of her coat and helped Rory off with hers, laying them across an empty table as they approached the counter.
“Duke, we need coffee!” she shouted. “We need to decompress from our day in the trenches, Rory with the crème of high society in Hartford, and me with the rudest, most demanding fertilizer salesman in all of New England.”
Luke looked at her carefully. “Someone tried to sell you fertilizer?”
“No, silly. He checked into the Inn late this afternoon and proceeded to make my life miserable with a series of fuss-budget-y complaints about his room and requests for extra towels, more soap, different stationery, a higher wattage bulb in the desk lamp — honestly, this guy makes Taylor look mellow.”
“Are you pretty much working the front desk at the Inn full time now?” he asked.
“No, I’m still making my mark in the exciting field of Housekeeping, but Mia is letting me fill in at the front desk occasionally on nights or weekends. Anthony had a family reunion to go to in Bridgeport today, so I got to practice my customer service skills on Mr. Wisniewski. That’s O.K., though, it’s all material I can use when I write my best-selling tell-all book about the dirty secrets of the hotel industry.” She smiled down at Rory, then abruptly jerked her head up. “Hey, aren’t you supposed to be serving us coffee?”
She had first shown up in his diner last summer, and it had taken only a short while for them to settle into their roles in this particular comedy; she played the caffeine fiend with a brilliant smile who openly flirted and always got what she wanted, while he was the disapproving grump, the almost immovable object to her completely irresistible force. Except for the times when it took too much effort to hide the smile that lived just beneath his scowl, he felt he played his part well.
Luke scowled at her now, jerked his head toward Rory, “Coffee’s not good for you, and she’s too young for coffee, anyway.”
“Make hers hot chocolate, then. Mine, however, needs to be the real thing.” Luke poured her coffee and retreated to the kitchen to get the cocoa mix.
Lorelai knelt down in front of Rory, rubbing her arms and massaging her small shoulders.
“O.K. now, Ludmilla. This is your last vault of the event, and that Romanian chick is just two tenths of a point ahead of you. You can do this; focus on your follow-through, concentrate on your form, and let the landing take care of itself. Ready?”
Rory nodded seriously, shook out her arms, then each leg, tipped her head side to side to loosen her neck muscles. She walked carefully back to the door, turned, took a deep breath and let it out, and took off running across the diner toward the counter. Just as she reached it she planted her hands on top of one of the stools and gave a mighty jump. Lorelai caught her under her arms, lifted her up and plopped her onto the seat. Rory raised her arms triumphantly and grinned up at her mother.
“Woohoo, and the crowd goes wild! By far it’s the best vault of the night, she got terrific height on her jump and really stuck the landing! Certainly this will score high enough to put her into contention for the gold medal!” Lorelai turned to Kirk. “Kirk, how do the judges score this?”
Kirk, watching thoughtfully from his table, said, “Judges give the vault a 5.9. We had to deduct a tenth of a point because she didn’t keep her toes pointed. Still, a good enough score to put her in the lead.”
Luke walked in from the kitchen just in time to hear the end of this exchange. Rory beamed up at him and said, “Did you hear that? I still have a chance for the gold medal!”
“Congratulations,” he growled as he placed a mug of hot chocolate in front of her. “You know, there’s no running allowed in my diner.”
Lorelai rolled her eyes at him. “Well then, why do you hold gymnastics meets here?”
Before he had a chance to respond, she continued. “Hey, do you still have the “Rory Throne” back there? In spite of recently reaching the exalted age of six, she still isn’t quite tall enough to sit here without a boost.”
Luke reached under the counter and pulled out his three-inch thick, four-year-old Durbin Brothers Hardware Supply catalog, left over from the days before the place was a diner. He walked around the counter and slipped the book underneath Rory as Lorelai lifted her up. Resettled on her higher perch, Rory reached for the cup of cocoa.
“Where’s the whipped cream? We want whipped cream,” said Lorelai.
“You want whipped cream?” Luke repeated. “You trying to induce a heart attack in a six-year-old?”
Rory nodded. “And a straw, please,” she added.
Luke delivered the requested whipped cream and straw, then began his nightly clean-up routine. While his back was turned, Lorelai quickly poured a small amount of coffee from her cup into her daughter’s cocoa, which she stirred slightly with the straw. As she saw Luke start to turn back toward them, she covered her actions with rapid chatter.
“Rory spent the day with her grandparents in Hartford, attending the Daughters of the American Revolution Annual Autumn Harvest Festival Children’s Carnival and Silent Auction.” She paused and took a deep breath. “Whew! It’s exhausting just saying all that. I can only imagine how grueling it must have been to actually experience it! And don’t they know how wrong it is to auction off children? I hope your grandparents had enough sense not to put you up for auction! ”
“Mom,” Rory dragged out the word with exaggerated impatience and gave her mother an eye-roll. “They weren’t auctioning any children. They were auctioning stuff.”
“What kind of stuff, Rory?”
“I don’t know. Grown-up stuff.”
“Sounds dreadfully stuffy and dull,” said Lorelai in a snooty English accent, her eyes twinkling at her daughter.
“It wasn’t that bad, Mom.” Rory grew animated remembering the carnival. “It was fun. There were games, and a man with a moustache who talked in a funny accent did magic tricks, and there was a petting zoo, and prizes, and lots of good food. Grandpa ate a hot dog!”
“Really? Richard ate a hot dog? That must be a sight to behold. I bet Emily didn’t eat one, though, did she?”
“No.” Rory looked up at her mother. “Grandma didn’t like my clothes.”
Lorelai was aghast. “How could she not like your clothes? You are adorable! Don’t you think she’s adorable?” she asked Luke, who was making a leisurely attempt to clean the coffeemaker while he listened in on their conversation.
Luke surveyed Rory’s outfit — a plain white long sleeved t-shirt under bright orange overalls, with “KISS ROCKS” spelled out on the bib in black sequins.
“I think she looks great — very seasonal — although I can see where your mother might not appreciate the sentiment.”
“Totally uncultured, my mother,” Lorelai sniffed with a wave of her hand. She took a long sip of her coffee, and looked at her watch.
“Hey kiddo, finish up your hot chocolate. We need to get to Doose’s Market and get our supplies.”
Rory, who had been poking holes in the blanket of whipped cream with her straw, brightened and spoke directly to Luke.
“We’re baking tonight! Mia’s letting us use the kitchen after the dinner clean-up is all done.”
“Oh yeah?” he said. “What are you baking?”
“Rice Krispy Treats.”
Luke cast a sidelong glance at Lorelai. “Doesn’t really qualify as baking, does it?”
“Wow, for a guy who makes his living preparing food, you sure don’t know much.” She adopted a patient tone. “You see, grasshopper, you need a wooden spoon to stir the cereal into the melted marshmallow-butter concoction, and it is a well accepted culinary principle that anything which requires the use of a wooden spoon is considered baking.”
At that moment a screaming gust of wind rattled the diner door in its frame. Two of Taylor’s plastic zinnia pots came crashing past the front of the building, hop scotching over each other, buffeted along by the increasingly shrill wind. All four occupants of the diner looked up in surprise at the noise, and Lorelai stood up and began putting on her coat.
“We’d better get a move on, Rory. I want to get back to the Inn before the weather gets any worse, or we’ll be making our rice krispy treats in Oz.”
“But Mom, I’m not done with my hot chocolate yet.” Rory widened her blue eyes at her mother and pushed her lower lip out in a practiced pout.
Lorelai smiled. “You’re getting very, very good at that, missy. O.K., you stay here and finish your drink, and I’ll run over to Doose’s, pick up the goods, and be back in 10 minutes. O.K., sweetie?” Rory nodded and slurped her cocoa through the straw.
Lorelai looked over at Luke. “That O.K. with you?”
“Sure,” he nodded.
“All right, I’ll be back in a flash.” She grabbed her purse and headed out the door.
Kirk pushed his chair back and stood up, leaving some money on the table.
“I’d better go home and help Mother move our porch furniture inside. Last big wind we had, our chaise ended up in Mrs. Cassini’s roses.” He left the diner.
Luke walked over to wipe down Kirk’s table and carried the dirty dishes back into the kitchen, snagging Lorelai’s empty coffee cup as he went past. He re-emerged and started wiping the counter on either side of Rory’s cup.
Rory spoke. “This is really good hot chocolate.”
“Good, I’m glad you’re enjoying it,” Luke said. There was a moment of silence.
“You know, my mom put a little bit of her coffee in it.” Rory looked up at Luke with an appraising glance. Luke sighed deeply.
“Yeah, I know.” He smiled the tiniest of smiles at her then, and Rory giggled.
At that moment the lights flickered off and the drone of the exhaust fan back in the kitchen whispered off into complete silence.
“Oh, oh,” said Rory in a small voice.
Luke responded quickly. “Rory, stay right where you are, O.K.? I don’t want you to fall off that stool in the dark. I’m going to get the flashlight from the kitchen, O.K.?”
“O.K.”
Luke listened for any hint of little girl panic in her voice, but heard none. He mentally added “Back-up Generator” to the list of things he hoped he could afford soon, and carefully felt his way through the doorway into the kitchen, readily finding the flashlight on the counter just inside. He pushed the switch and a ghostly light spilled out, illuminating the kitchen with a soft yellow glow.
Luke turned and stepped quickly back through the doorway, swinging the beam over the counter until he found Rory, who squinted her eyes a bit and waved. Luke let out his breath in a sigh of relief; he hadn’t realized he’d been anxious.
He lowered the light so it wasn’t shining directly into her eyes and went around to the other side of the counter, where he lifted Rory from the stool and set her down on the floor. Without a word she put her hand in his, and together they went over to the front of the diner to look out the windows, surveying the street and town square.
“Looks like the whole town is blacked out,” said Luke.
“How will Mom find her way back here in the dark?” asked Rory. Luke gave her hand a quick squeeze.
“Well, we’ll just have to get this place lit up enough so she doesn’t have any trouble seeing it. Come on and help me find some candles.”
They walked back into the storeroom where Luke lifted Rory up to sit on the worktable.
“Here, you hold the flashlight and point it up here, at these shelves; I’m pretty sure I’ve got a box of utility candles here somewh– aha! Here they are. Now we need matches.” He picked Rory up and carried her, still clutching the flashlight, back into the kitchen where he retrieved the long kitchen matches.
“Where do you think we should set these up?” he asked.
“Over by the window, so Mom will see them,” Rory said. “I think that will be best.”
“Over by the window it is,” agreed Luke.
Once back at the front of the diner Luke set Rory down and cleared off the table closest to the window, moving the napkin dispenser, salt and pepper shakers, and menus over to the side.
“How many candles do we need?” He looked down at the girl.
“All of them.” She looked solemn.
“All of them?” he asked. She nodded.
“O.K., then. Help me unpack.”
He opened the box and worked with Rory to pull the candles out of their compartments and line them up on the table; there were ten candles in all. Then he pulled out a long kitchen match, struck the head on the bottom of the box, and carefully handed it to Rory.
“Will you do the honors?” he asked.
She took the match from him and, with all the concentration and seriousness that children bring to the execution of Very Important Tasks, began lighting each candle. When she was done she blew out the flame on the match and handed it back to Luke.
“You have to be careful with matches, even after you blow them out,” said Rory. “The black end is still hot enough to burn.”
“That’s a very good safety tip,” said Luke. He laid the match across the top of the empty candle box. “It should be safe enough there for the time being.”
He pulled a chair out from the table and sat down. Without hesitation Rory climbed up into his lap and leaned back against his chest.
They sat quietly then, each straining to see signs of movement outside, but really seeing only their own images reflected back in the glass: a man and a little girl sitting at a table in a diner, a row of lit candles lined up like soldiers, each candle wick flickering in the darkness.
It had grown quiet outside. The wind’s howling had died down, as though the storm’s only purpose was to plunge the town into darkness, and with that accomplished it was off to attend to business elsewhere.
Luke was comfortable with silence, had been most of his life. He was surprised that Rory was at ease, though. In his admittedly limited experience with kids they were always a lot more fidgety, chattering endlessly about nothing at all, jumping around with too much awkward, nervous energy that usually resulted in a spilled drink or broken plate. Maybe quiet moments like this were rare for her (given who her mother was and how much caffeine she consumed) and Rory was struck dumb by the novelty.
He watched the Rory reflection in the window. She seemed to be mesmerized by the reflected movement of the dancing flames; her eyelids drooped slightly, and Luke felt her relax against his body. It occurred to him that she might fall asleep, and he wrapped an arm around her to prevent her from relaxing right off his lap. The action snapped her out of her drowsiness, and she began fiddling with his wristwatch.
“I like your watch,” she said. “It’s bigger than my grandpa’s watch. His watch is real thin, which he says means it is very expensive. It’s made out of gold, and is really shiny.” She stroked Luke’s leather watchband. “I like the way this feels.” Her finger traced the edge of the crystal. “Grandpa doesn’t like me to play with his watch.” She glanced up at Luke’s face. “I leave fingerprints,” she said gravely.
“You can play with my watch, Rory. I don’t mind fingerprints,” he told her.
Rory went back to tracing the face of the watch, peering at it intently.
“Duke, when do you think my mom’s coming back?”
“I’m sure she’ll be here soon. She’s probably standing in the market waiting for Taylor to find his flashlight so she can pay for her Rice Krispies and leave.”
“And marshmallows,” Rory added.
“And marshmallows,” Luke agreed. “I’ll tell you what. We’ll wait five more minutes, and if your mom’s not back by then we’ll put our coats on, take our flashlight, and walk over to Doose’s to find her.”
Rory nodded. “O.K,” she said.
Luke hesitated a bit, then said, “Rory, can I tell you something?”
“What?”
“My name’s not Duke. It’s Luke.”
She turned around in his lap and looked up in complete surprise. “It is?”
“Yep. Luke, not Duke.”
A perplexed look crossed her face. “Does my mom know?”
He had to chuckle at that. “Well,” he said, “I’ve corrected her a few times when she called me Duke, but she still does it. I think maybe she’s trying to tease me.”
Rory relaxed at that. “Yeah, she likes to tease.”
They settled into another silence until Luke decided time would pass more easily if they found something to chat about.
“So, big day in Hartford, huh? You had a good time?” he began.
“Yeah.”
“Do you see your grandparents very often?”
“No,” Rory replied, and hesitated just a bit. “Not so much.”
Luke, like everyone else in town, knew enough about Lorelai and Rory’s circumstances to suspect this was not a good line of questioning. He decided to go for the silly.
“So…are you married?”
Rory launched into a fit of giggles. “I’m only six!” After a moment she said, “Besides, I’m not ever getting married, ‘cause I’m going to be an independent woman with a career, and I won’t need a man to take care of me!” She spoke these words in the singsong cadence of one who has memorized a particular verse of poetry without really understanding the meaning behind the words.
Luke stifled a laugh, although he suspected that the expressed opinions were held with complete conviction in her home. A dozen responses occurred to him, but in the end he just said, “What if you fall in love?”
“What?” she asked, but he shook his head.
“Never mind,” he said.
“Are you married?”
“Nope, ‘cause I’m an independent man with a career who doesn’t need a woman to take care of me,” he told her with a smile. She smiled back, but he could see puzzlement in her eyes. She was processing the fact that the words she had parroted just a moment before sounded odd coming from him. She was quiet for a moment.
“Do you think you’ll ever get married?” she finally asked.
“Hard to say,” he said. “I suppose it’s possible.”
They lapsed into silence again. Rory moved her attention from Luke’s watch to his hand, moving her finger back and forth across an area of scar tissue in the flesh between his thumb and index finger.
“What’s this from?”
“That’s where I got a fishing hook stuck,” he said. She recoiled as if from a burn.
“Did it hurt?”
“You bet it did.”
“Does it still hurt?”
“No, it was a long time ago.” Rory gingerly touched the scar again, softly.
“Do you ever go fishing?” Luke asked her.
“No! Yuck! We don’t like fish.” She wrinkled her nose.
“O.K.,” he said. “So I should never invite you to go fishing with me, right?”
“Right.”
“So what do you and your mom do for fun?”
“Lots of stuff. We play games, and make up stories and act them out, and go roller skating, and make snow bears…”
“Wait a minute.” Luke stopped her. “You make snow bears?”
“Yeah, last winter out on the lawn we built the Mama Bear, the Papa Bear, and the Baby Bear out of snow. They were so cute, and they lasted almost a whole week, but every day they got a little shorter, ‘cause when the sun came out they got melted.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to see that,” Luke said. “Sounds like you really know how to have fun.”
“Yeah, we do. Emily says Mom acts too much like a child, and not enough like” (and here Rory made air quotes with her little fingers) “a ‘proper mother’.”
Luke snickered. “You call your grandmother Emily?”
“Well, when I’m with her I call her grandma, but me and Mom call them Emily and Richard when we’re at home. Mom says she’d rather be my best friend than be my mother, because best friends have the most fun, and mothers just mess their kids up.”
“Rory, I’m not sure that makes sense,” Luke told her. “Most mothers love and take good care of their kids.”
“Yeah, I know.” Rory sighed and began fingering his watch again. “Du–Luke, I think it’s time to go look for my mom now…” but as she spoke these words the diner’s door flew open and Lorelai herself entered with a flourish, a plastic grocery bag swinging from her fingers.
“Look no further, kid, because your mom is here!”
“Mommy!” Rory launched herself off Luke’s lap and into her mother’s arms. Lorelai hugged her daughter tightly, and Luke saw a hint of fear pass out of her eyes, replaced by relief. He suspected that the past 20 minutes had been uncomfortable for her.
“You wouldn’t believe how much trouble I had getting this stuff,” she said, releasing Rory. “Taylor and I were the only people in the store, and the lights went out just as I got to the cereal aisle. Taylor positively screamed like a little girl, and then got all blustery, told me not to panic, said he would find a flashlight and escort me to safety! Hah!
“So then after he finds the flashlight and we get to the checkout counter, he discovers he can’t get the cash register open, because of the whole no electricity thing, so he has to figure out what I owe him using pencil and paper, and just between us, I think it’s been a while since Taylor had to do any arithmetic the old fashioned way. And then I didn’t have the exact amount in cash, and once again, since he couldn’t get the cash register open there was no way to give me my change. I tried to tell him it was O.K., but you know Taylor, he is so Mr. Correct Businessman, he had to handle the transaction completely above board and by the books, because otherwise Stars Hollow will become just another corrupt enclave of shady crooks and shysters, and decent people won’t stand a chance, and he’s on the front line of the fight to make sure everything is done ‘properly’.” She made air quotes with her hands and Luke almost laughed out loud. He smothered it by clearing his throat.
Lorelai took a deep breath and smiled at him. “So, everything O.K. here?”
“We lit candles for you, Mom, so you could find your way back in the dark. See?” Rory pointed to the table.
“Well, it sure worked, ‘cause here I am,” Lorelai told her. “I felt just like I was the H.M.S. Pinafore, and the diner here was the lighthouse beacon welcoming me into port!”
And then, like an ironic punctuation mark to conclude the moment, the lights came back on. They all stood blinking in the sudden brightness, but Rory had the presence of mind to shout “Hurray!”
Luke stood up and in one great breath blew out all the candles on the table.
“Let us help you clean this stuff up,” said Lorelai, but Luke held up his hand.
“No, that’s O.K., I’ve got it. It’s getting late, and you ladies still have some baking to do tonight, if I’m not mistaken.” He started putting the candles back into their box.
“Well, if you’re sure…” Lorelai began, then turned to help Rory into her coat. She smiled over at Luke.
“Thanks for taking care of things here, Duke. Hey, how about we stop back tomorrow and bring you some Rice Krispy Treats, sort of a thank you gift?”
“Looking forward to it,” Luke said, smiling back at the two of them.
Lorelai smoothed Rory’s hair. “Come on, Munchkin. Let’s go home. You carry the marshmallows, O.K.?”
She swung the child up onto her hip in a well-practiced manner, grabbed her purse and the bag of groceries, and opened the door. Rory smiled at Luke and raised her hand in a wave. Just as they stepped through the opening Rory whispered loudly into her mother’s ear.
“Oh, Mom? His name is Luke.”
fin
Sincere thanks to George Eliot for the beta.
Disclaimer: Amy Sherman-Paladino created these characters and settings, not me. I don’t know who created Rice Krispies™, but once again, it wasn’t me.
It was a Saturday evening in early November. Luke stood behind the counter of his diner, estimating the week’s receipts and calculating how much longer before he’d be able to afford a larger refrigerator for the kitchen and an upgrade from the second-hand grill he’d been cooking on since he started the business last March. And he really needed to find a new produce supplier. Plus he thought he should start making his own muffins and other baked goods, because Weston’s was raising their prices again and he knew for a fact he could save substantial money doing it himself. And speaking of doing it himself, it was time he hired another employee, at least part-time, to help out during the lunch rush (easily the diner’s busiest time of day) and cover things when Luke had to go to the bank or run other errands…
“Got any more pie, Luke?” asked Kirk from the corner table. He had been sitting there for thirty minutes, eating his dessert with a glass of milk while reading an Incredible Hulk comic book.
“Sorry, Kirk. You got the last piece.”
“Darn.” Kirk turned his attention back to his comic.
“I’m going to be closing up soon, Kirk. You about done with your milk?”
“Uh, five more minutes, O.K.? I just want to finish this story…”
The door crashed open and in came Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, blown in on a chilly gust of wind, eyes shining, cheeks rosy, hair disheveled, a trail of brown and yellow leaves swirling in their wake.
“Holy hurricane, Scarecrow, it’s blowing like crazy out there! It’s howling like a lunatic! It’s blustering like a banshee! It’s whistling like a wolverine! It’s…”
Rory, playing straight man, looked up at her mother. “Windy?”
“Well…yeah.” Lorelai was momentarily deflated, and Luke ducked his head to hide his sudden grin. “Oh, hey, Kirk,” she called as she noticed him across the diner. “How’s Dr. Bruce Banner tonight?”
“Teetering on the brink,” Kirk replied darkly, shaking his head.
“Yeah,” Lorelai agreed, “There’s a lot of that going around. I can totally relate.” She shrugged out of her coat and helped Rory off with hers, laying them across an empty table as they approached the counter.
“Duke, we need coffee!” she shouted. “We need to decompress from our day in the trenches, Rory with the crème of high society in Hartford, and me with the rudest, most demanding fertilizer salesman in all of New England.”
Luke looked at her carefully. “Someone tried to sell you fertilizer?”
“No, silly. He checked into the Inn late this afternoon and proceeded to make my life miserable with a series of fuss-budget-y complaints about his room and requests for extra towels, more soap, different stationery, a higher wattage bulb in the desk lamp — honestly, this guy makes Taylor look mellow.”
“Are you pretty much working the front desk at the Inn full time now?” he asked.
“No, I’m still making my mark in the exciting field of Housekeeping, but Mia is letting me fill in at the front desk occasionally on nights or weekends. Anthony had a family reunion to go to in Bridgeport today, so I got to practice my customer service skills on Mr. Wisniewski. That’s O.K., though, it’s all material I can use when I write my best-selling tell-all book about the dirty secrets of the hotel industry.” She smiled down at Rory, then abruptly jerked her head up. “Hey, aren’t you supposed to be serving us coffee?”
She had first shown up in his diner last summer, and it had taken only a short while for them to settle into their roles in this particular comedy; she played the caffeine fiend with a brilliant smile who openly flirted and always got what she wanted, while he was the disapproving grump, the almost immovable object to her completely irresistible force. Except for the times when it took too much effort to hide the smile that lived just beneath his scowl, he felt he played his part well.
Luke scowled at her now, jerked his head toward Rory, “Coffee’s not good for you, and she’s too young for coffee, anyway.”
“Make hers hot chocolate, then. Mine, however, needs to be the real thing.” Luke poured her coffee and retreated to the kitchen to get the cocoa mix.
Lorelai knelt down in front of Rory, rubbing her arms and massaging her small shoulders.
“O.K. now, Ludmilla. This is your last vault of the event, and that Romanian chick is just two tenths of a point ahead of you. You can do this; focus on your follow-through, concentrate on your form, and let the landing take care of itself. Ready?”
Rory nodded seriously, shook out her arms, then each leg, tipped her head side to side to loosen her neck muscles. She walked carefully back to the door, turned, took a deep breath and let it out, and took off running across the diner toward the counter. Just as she reached it she planted her hands on top of one of the stools and gave a mighty jump. Lorelai caught her under her arms, lifted her up and plopped her onto the seat. Rory raised her arms triumphantly and grinned up at her mother.
“Woohoo, and the crowd goes wild! By far it’s the best vault of the night, she got terrific height on her jump and really stuck the landing! Certainly this will score high enough to put her into contention for the gold medal!” Lorelai turned to Kirk. “Kirk, how do the judges score this?”
Kirk, watching thoughtfully from his table, said, “Judges give the vault a 5.9. We had to deduct a tenth of a point because she didn’t keep her toes pointed. Still, a good enough score to put her in the lead.”
Luke walked in from the kitchen just in time to hear the end of this exchange. Rory beamed up at him and said, “Did you hear that? I still have a chance for the gold medal!”
“Congratulations,” he growled as he placed a mug of hot chocolate in front of her. “You know, there’s no running allowed in my diner.”
Lorelai rolled her eyes at him. “Well then, why do you hold gymnastics meets here?”
Before he had a chance to respond, she continued. “Hey, do you still have the “Rory Throne” back there? In spite of recently reaching the exalted age of six, she still isn’t quite tall enough to sit here without a boost.”
Luke reached under the counter and pulled out his three-inch thick, four-year-old Durbin Brothers Hardware Supply catalog, left over from the days before the place was a diner. He walked around the counter and slipped the book underneath Rory as Lorelai lifted her up. Resettled on her higher perch, Rory reached for the cup of cocoa.
“Where’s the whipped cream? We want whipped cream,” said Lorelai.
“You want whipped cream?” Luke repeated. “You trying to induce a heart attack in a six-year-old?”
Rory nodded. “And a straw, please,” she added.
Luke delivered the requested whipped cream and straw, then began his nightly clean-up routine. While his back was turned, Lorelai quickly poured a small amount of coffee from her cup into her daughter’s cocoa, which she stirred slightly with the straw. As she saw Luke start to turn back toward them, she covered her actions with rapid chatter.
“Rory spent the day with her grandparents in Hartford, attending the Daughters of the American Revolution Annual Autumn Harvest Festival Children’s Carnival and Silent Auction.” She paused and took a deep breath. “Whew! It’s exhausting just saying all that. I can only imagine how grueling it must have been to actually experience it! And don’t they know how wrong it is to auction off children? I hope your grandparents had enough sense not to put you up for auction! ”
“Mom,” Rory dragged out the word with exaggerated impatience and gave her mother an eye-roll. “They weren’t auctioning any children. They were auctioning stuff.”
“What kind of stuff, Rory?”
“I don’t know. Grown-up stuff.”
“Sounds dreadfully stuffy and dull,” said Lorelai in a snooty English accent, her eyes twinkling at her daughter.
“It wasn’t that bad, Mom.” Rory grew animated remembering the carnival. “It was fun. There were games, and a man with a moustache who talked in a funny accent did magic tricks, and there was a petting zoo, and prizes, and lots of good food. Grandpa ate a hot dog!”
“Really? Richard ate a hot dog? That must be a sight to behold. I bet Emily didn’t eat one, though, did she?”
“No.” Rory looked up at her mother. “Grandma didn’t like my clothes.”
Lorelai was aghast. “How could she not like your clothes? You are adorable! Don’t you think she’s adorable?” she asked Luke, who was making a leisurely attempt to clean the coffeemaker while he listened in on their conversation.
Luke surveyed Rory’s outfit — a plain white long sleeved t-shirt under bright orange overalls, with “KISS ROCKS” spelled out on the bib in black sequins.
“I think she looks great — very seasonal — although I can see where your mother might not appreciate the sentiment.”
“Totally uncultured, my mother,” Lorelai sniffed with a wave of her hand. She took a long sip of her coffee, and looked at her watch.
“Hey kiddo, finish up your hot chocolate. We need to get to Doose’s Market and get our supplies.”
Rory, who had been poking holes in the blanket of whipped cream with her straw, brightened and spoke directly to Luke.
“We’re baking tonight! Mia’s letting us use the kitchen after the dinner clean-up is all done.”
“Oh yeah?” he said. “What are you baking?”
“Rice Krispy Treats.”
Luke cast a sidelong glance at Lorelai. “Doesn’t really qualify as baking, does it?”
“Wow, for a guy who makes his living preparing food, you sure don’t know much.” She adopted a patient tone. “You see, grasshopper, you need a wooden spoon to stir the cereal into the melted marshmallow-butter concoction, and it is a well accepted culinary principle that anything which requires the use of a wooden spoon is considered baking.”
At that moment a screaming gust of wind rattled the diner door in its frame. Two of Taylor’s plastic zinnia pots came crashing past the front of the building, hop scotching over each other, buffeted along by the increasingly shrill wind. All four occupants of the diner looked up in surprise at the noise, and Lorelai stood up and began putting on her coat.
“We’d better get a move on, Rory. I want to get back to the Inn before the weather gets any worse, or we’ll be making our rice krispy treats in Oz.”
“But Mom, I’m not done with my hot chocolate yet.” Rory widened her blue eyes at her mother and pushed her lower lip out in a practiced pout.
Lorelai smiled. “You’re getting very, very good at that, missy. O.K., you stay here and finish your drink, and I’ll run over to Doose’s, pick up the goods, and be back in 10 minutes. O.K., sweetie?” Rory nodded and slurped her cocoa through the straw.
Lorelai looked over at Luke. “That O.K. with you?”
“Sure,” he nodded.
“All right, I’ll be back in a flash.” She grabbed her purse and headed out the door.
Kirk pushed his chair back and stood up, leaving some money on the table.
“I’d better go home and help Mother move our porch furniture inside. Last big wind we had, our chaise ended up in Mrs. Cassini’s roses.” He left the diner.
Luke walked over to wipe down Kirk’s table and carried the dirty dishes back into the kitchen, snagging Lorelai’s empty coffee cup as he went past. He re-emerged and started wiping the counter on either side of Rory’s cup.
Rory spoke. “This is really good hot chocolate.”
“Good, I’m glad you’re enjoying it,” Luke said. There was a moment of silence.
“You know, my mom put a little bit of her coffee in it.” Rory looked up at Luke with an appraising glance. Luke sighed deeply.
“Yeah, I know.” He smiled the tiniest of smiles at her then, and Rory giggled.
At that moment the lights flickered off and the drone of the exhaust fan back in the kitchen whispered off into complete silence.
“Oh, oh,” said Rory in a small voice.
Luke responded quickly. “Rory, stay right where you are, O.K.? I don’t want you to fall off that stool in the dark. I’m going to get the flashlight from the kitchen, O.K.?”
“O.K.”
Luke listened for any hint of little girl panic in her voice, but heard none. He mentally added “Back-up Generator” to the list of things he hoped he could afford soon, and carefully felt his way through the doorway into the kitchen, readily finding the flashlight on the counter just inside. He pushed the switch and a ghostly light spilled out, illuminating the kitchen with a soft yellow glow.
Luke turned and stepped quickly back through the doorway, swinging the beam over the counter until he found Rory, who squinted her eyes a bit and waved. Luke let out his breath in a sigh of relief; he hadn’t realized he’d been anxious.
He lowered the light so it wasn’t shining directly into her eyes and went around to the other side of the counter, where he lifted Rory from the stool and set her down on the floor. Without a word she put her hand in his, and together they went over to the front of the diner to look out the windows, surveying the street and town square.
“Looks like the whole town is blacked out,” said Luke.
“How will Mom find her way back here in the dark?” asked Rory. Luke gave her hand a quick squeeze.
“Well, we’ll just have to get this place lit up enough so she doesn’t have any trouble seeing it. Come on and help me find some candles.”
They walked back into the storeroom where Luke lifted Rory up to sit on the worktable.
“Here, you hold the flashlight and point it up here, at these shelves; I’m pretty sure I’ve got a box of utility candles here somewh– aha! Here they are. Now we need matches.” He picked Rory up and carried her, still clutching the flashlight, back into the kitchen where he retrieved the long kitchen matches.
“Where do you think we should set these up?” he asked.
“Over by the window, so Mom will see them,” Rory said. “I think that will be best.”
“Over by the window it is,” agreed Luke.
Once back at the front of the diner Luke set Rory down and cleared off the table closest to the window, moving the napkin dispenser, salt and pepper shakers, and menus over to the side.
“How many candles do we need?” He looked down at the girl.
“All of them.” She looked solemn.
“All of them?” he asked. She nodded.
“O.K., then. Help me unpack.”
He opened the box and worked with Rory to pull the candles out of their compartments and line them up on the table; there were ten candles in all. Then he pulled out a long kitchen match, struck the head on the bottom of the box, and carefully handed it to Rory.
“Will you do the honors?” he asked.
She took the match from him and, with all the concentration and seriousness that children bring to the execution of Very Important Tasks, began lighting each candle. When she was done she blew out the flame on the match and handed it back to Luke.
“You have to be careful with matches, even after you blow them out,” said Rory. “The black end is still hot enough to burn.”
“That’s a very good safety tip,” said Luke. He laid the match across the top of the empty candle box. “It should be safe enough there for the time being.”
He pulled a chair out from the table and sat down. Without hesitation Rory climbed up into his lap and leaned back against his chest.
They sat quietly then, each straining to see signs of movement outside, but really seeing only their own images reflected back in the glass: a man and a little girl sitting at a table in a diner, a row of lit candles lined up like soldiers, each candle wick flickering in the darkness.
It had grown quiet outside. The wind’s howling had died down, as though the storm’s only purpose was to plunge the town into darkness, and with that accomplished it was off to attend to business elsewhere.
Luke was comfortable with silence, had been most of his life. He was surprised that Rory was at ease, though. In his admittedly limited experience with kids they were always a lot more fidgety, chattering endlessly about nothing at all, jumping around with too much awkward, nervous energy that usually resulted in a spilled drink or broken plate. Maybe quiet moments like this were rare for her (given who her mother was and how much caffeine she consumed) and Rory was struck dumb by the novelty.
He watched the Rory reflection in the window. She seemed to be mesmerized by the reflected movement of the dancing flames; her eyelids drooped slightly, and Luke felt her relax against his body. It occurred to him that she might fall asleep, and he wrapped an arm around her to prevent her from relaxing right off his lap. The action snapped her out of her drowsiness, and she began fiddling with his wristwatch.
“I like your watch,” she said. “It’s bigger than my grandpa’s watch. His watch is real thin, which he says means it is very expensive. It’s made out of gold, and is really shiny.” She stroked Luke’s leather watchband. “I like the way this feels.” Her finger traced the edge of the crystal. “Grandpa doesn’t like me to play with his watch.” She glanced up at Luke’s face. “I leave fingerprints,” she said gravely.
“You can play with my watch, Rory. I don’t mind fingerprints,” he told her.
Rory went back to tracing the face of the watch, peering at it intently.
“Duke, when do you think my mom’s coming back?”
“I’m sure she’ll be here soon. She’s probably standing in the market waiting for Taylor to find his flashlight so she can pay for her Rice Krispies and leave.”
“And marshmallows,” Rory added.
“And marshmallows,” Luke agreed. “I’ll tell you what. We’ll wait five more minutes, and if your mom’s not back by then we’ll put our coats on, take our flashlight, and walk over to Doose’s to find her.”
Rory nodded. “O.K,” she said.
Luke hesitated a bit, then said, “Rory, can I tell you something?”
“What?”
“My name’s not Duke. It’s Luke.”
She turned around in his lap and looked up in complete surprise. “It is?”
“Yep. Luke, not Duke.”
A perplexed look crossed her face. “Does my mom know?”
He had to chuckle at that. “Well,” he said, “I’ve corrected her a few times when she called me Duke, but she still does it. I think maybe she’s trying to tease me.”
Rory relaxed at that. “Yeah, she likes to tease.”
They settled into another silence until Luke decided time would pass more easily if they found something to chat about.
“So, big day in Hartford, huh? You had a good time?” he began.
“Yeah.”
“Do you see your grandparents very often?”
“No,” Rory replied, and hesitated just a bit. “Not so much.”
Luke, like everyone else in town, knew enough about Lorelai and Rory’s circumstances to suspect this was not a good line of questioning. He decided to go for the silly.
“So…are you married?”
Rory launched into a fit of giggles. “I’m only six!” After a moment she said, “Besides, I’m not ever getting married, ‘cause I’m going to be an independent woman with a career, and I won’t need a man to take care of me!” She spoke these words in the singsong cadence of one who has memorized a particular verse of poetry without really understanding the meaning behind the words.
Luke stifled a laugh, although he suspected that the expressed opinions were held with complete conviction in her home. A dozen responses occurred to him, but in the end he just said, “What if you fall in love?”
“What?” she asked, but he shook his head.
“Never mind,” he said.
“Are you married?”
“Nope, ‘cause I’m an independent man with a career who doesn’t need a woman to take care of me,” he told her with a smile. She smiled back, but he could see puzzlement in her eyes. She was processing the fact that the words she had parroted just a moment before sounded odd coming from him. She was quiet for a moment.
“Do you think you’ll ever get married?” she finally asked.
“Hard to say,” he said. “I suppose it’s possible.”
They lapsed into silence again. Rory moved her attention from Luke’s watch to his hand, moving her finger back and forth across an area of scar tissue in the flesh between his thumb and index finger.
“What’s this from?”
“That’s where I got a fishing hook stuck,” he said. She recoiled as if from a burn.
“Did it hurt?”
“You bet it did.”
“Does it still hurt?”
“No, it was a long time ago.” Rory gingerly touched the scar again, softly.
“Do you ever go fishing?” Luke asked her.
“No! Yuck! We don’t like fish.” She wrinkled her nose.
“O.K.,” he said. “So I should never invite you to go fishing with me, right?”
“Right.”
“So what do you and your mom do for fun?”
“Lots of stuff. We play games, and make up stories and act them out, and go roller skating, and make snow bears…”
“Wait a minute.” Luke stopped her. “You make snow bears?”
“Yeah, last winter out on the lawn we built the Mama Bear, the Papa Bear, and the Baby Bear out of snow. They were so cute, and they lasted almost a whole week, but every day they got a little shorter, ‘cause when the sun came out they got melted.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to see that,” Luke said. “Sounds like you really know how to have fun.”
“Yeah, we do. Emily says Mom acts too much like a child, and not enough like” (and here Rory made air quotes with her little fingers) “a ‘proper mother’.”
Luke snickered. “You call your grandmother Emily?”
“Well, when I’m with her I call her grandma, but me and Mom call them Emily and Richard when we’re at home. Mom says she’d rather be my best friend than be my mother, because best friends have the most fun, and mothers just mess their kids up.”
“Rory, I’m not sure that makes sense,” Luke told her. “Most mothers love and take good care of their kids.”
“Yeah, I know.” Rory sighed and began fingering his watch again. “Du–Luke, I think it’s time to go look for my mom now…” but as she spoke these words the diner’s door flew open and Lorelai herself entered with a flourish, a plastic grocery bag swinging from her fingers.
“Look no further, kid, because your mom is here!”
“Mommy!” Rory launched herself off Luke’s lap and into her mother’s arms. Lorelai hugged her daughter tightly, and Luke saw a hint of fear pass out of her eyes, replaced by relief. He suspected that the past 20 minutes had been uncomfortable for her.
“You wouldn’t believe how much trouble I had getting this stuff,” she said, releasing Rory. “Taylor and I were the only people in the store, and the lights went out just as I got to the cereal aisle. Taylor positively screamed like a little girl, and then got all blustery, told me not to panic, said he would find a flashlight and escort me to safety! Hah!
“So then after he finds the flashlight and we get to the checkout counter, he discovers he can’t get the cash register open, because of the whole no electricity thing, so he has to figure out what I owe him using pencil and paper, and just between us, I think it’s been a while since Taylor had to do any arithmetic the old fashioned way. And then I didn’t have the exact amount in cash, and once again, since he couldn’t get the cash register open there was no way to give me my change. I tried to tell him it was O.K., but you know Taylor, he is so Mr. Correct Businessman, he had to handle the transaction completely above board and by the books, because otherwise Stars Hollow will become just another corrupt enclave of shady crooks and shysters, and decent people won’t stand a chance, and he’s on the front line of the fight to make sure everything is done ‘properly’.” She made air quotes with her hands and Luke almost laughed out loud. He smothered it by clearing his throat.
Lorelai took a deep breath and smiled at him. “So, everything O.K. here?”
“We lit candles for you, Mom, so you could find your way back in the dark. See?” Rory pointed to the table.
“Well, it sure worked, ‘cause here I am,” Lorelai told her. “I felt just like I was the H.M.S. Pinafore, and the diner here was the lighthouse beacon welcoming me into port!”
And then, like an ironic punctuation mark to conclude the moment, the lights came back on. They all stood blinking in the sudden brightness, but Rory had the presence of mind to shout “Hurray!”
Luke stood up and in one great breath blew out all the candles on the table.
“Let us help you clean this stuff up,” said Lorelai, but Luke held up his hand.
“No, that’s O.K., I’ve got it. It’s getting late, and you ladies still have some baking to do tonight, if I’m not mistaken.” He started putting the candles back into their box.
“Well, if you’re sure…” Lorelai began, then turned to help Rory into her coat. She smiled over at Luke.
“Thanks for taking care of things here, Duke. Hey, how about we stop back tomorrow and bring you some Rice Krispy Treats, sort of a thank you gift?”
“Looking forward to it,” Luke said, smiling back at the two of them.
Lorelai smoothed Rory’s hair. “Come on, Munchkin. Let’s go home. You carry the marshmallows, O.K.?”
She swung the child up onto her hip in a well-practiced manner, grabbed her purse and the bag of groceries, and opened the door. Rory smiled at Luke and raised her hand in a wave. Just as they stepped through the opening Rory whispered loudly into her mother’s ear.
“Oh, Mom? His name is Luke.”
fin
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