Three Tests (Two Fails, One Pass)
Posted on 20 Aug 2023 @ 7:49pm by Commander Calliope Zahn
Edited on on 06 Feb 2024 @ 10:11pm
Mission:
M4 - Falling Out
Location: Obsidian Command, Promenade, The Grotto
Timeline: M4 D1 evening, immediately following "Undeterred"
2921 words - 5.8 OF Standard Post Measure
Stepping down into the reception area of the Grotto felt like they had completely left the station and emerged in an Earth venue— the lighting, the atmosphere, the false window panes... the imperfections intentionally molded into the plaster facade, even the fluted wooden pedestal of the maitre d, which, if it wasn't authentic, it was a very good recreation of an antique. The man behind it even had a waxed mustache, the ends upturned over a pinched upper-lip that Calliope found kind of cat-like. When Lance pronounced that he had reserved a table and gave his name as Quinn, the maitre d in return gave his name as Leonidas and welcomed them with perfect congeniality, leading them "right this way please."
The dining area was designed to feel like a space over a wharf, a light breeze moving through the hidden environmental vents, the evening water in the holographic mirage sparkling in the last of the never setting sun. The built and furnished aspects of the establishment blended seamlessly with the illusions of space and implied environment. Although there were other diners at the tables they passed, each table was an island unto itself, artistically cordoned off by delicate lattice screens and potted shrubbery, perfectly trimmed and very real. Calliope had to reach out and pinch off a tiny green leaf to be sure, knowing that fixed hologram furnishings wouldn't have gone to the kind of detail that left chlorophyll on your fingers when you broke it or that would account for the savory scent that this one had when crushed.
Lance looked at her askance as she plucked a leaf and pinched it in half in her fingers. Why was his wife pruning the topiaries? And why the dickens was she sniffing the clipping? While he was perplexed, the head waiter pointed them to their table and Lance allowed him to draw the chair for Calliope while assuming his own. Another server arrived with sparkling water and food and drink menus on little panels.
"This is Henri," said the Maitre d. "I leave you in his capable care for the evening."
Calliope smiled brightly at Leonidas and thanked him. She turned the menu Henri passed her in her hands. It had a paperlike surface, but the paperboard-like inside was a thin electronic padd. It was electric ink, capable of being changed and updated on the surface and frozen in place, and not true pulp and veneer.
"What should you care to drink, my love? Oh, what of this," He tapped on the line, "the Brunello di Montalcino? I'll order us a bottle."
"No," Calliope replied. "Not unless you plan to drink it all. I only want the one glass. Muscatel, thank you, Henri." She handed the young man her drink menu. Although she’d examined its make and texture and design, somehow she hadn’t read it.
“Ah, I’m afraid we don’t have any Muscatel to hand.”
Lance looked relieved. Muscatel had become nothing more than a common housewife's over sweet entertaining sherry. It would of course be far below the standards of the Grotto to serve it.
“Oh.” Calliope adjusted. “Do you have any Riesling?”
“We do, in fact.”
Lance's disgust rose once more, disliking her palate. Still, his goal in coming was for Calliope to be happy, and perhaps, should the evening progress as he hoped, after one glass, she might have want of a second, or even a third if things were going especially well. He could muscle through the inferior swill and chase it later with something from his own cabinet. "A bottle of Riesling, if you would. Your finest vintage." For whatever difference that might make.
"Very good, Sir." Henri collected the menus and stepped away.
Calliope looked at him oddly. "You hate Riesling."
"Hmm? I have come to like it well enough," he said, resigned to a certain indifference.
Calliope leaned her forearm on the table as if she were being challenged and raised her voice. "Henri, would you come back, please?"
The recall of the waiter cut across the pseudo dining pier, through the gentle ambiance, and brought his return, as he'd not had the opportunity to get very far.
"Yes, Madam?"
Calliope watched as Lance mouthed the words, 'what-is-it-now?' She motioned at him with a flourish of her hand. "He doesn't want the Riesling," she said.
"No, no." Lance sighed. "The Riesling will be fine, I assure you."
"It's not fine." Calliope said. "Order something you want to drink, Lancelot."
"I want the Riesling, dear. I want what it is that you desire. That is what I would like most of all. If they had the Muscatel, I would order you an entire bottle of it just the same. A case if you pleased." Although it was a small mercy they didn’t carry such mediocre fare. Uncertain as to why Calliope was being so difficult all while he capitulated to her every whim, his indifference was now tinged with the frustration he held gated behind gritted teeth.
"Lance," Calliope said gently, but with insistence. "Please. Please, for the love of all that is holy, stop trying to humor me."
"A second bottle, then!" Lance declared, coming to a solution. They should both have something they liked and could potentially share. "The Riesling and the Brunello di Montalcino."
"We're not going to drink two bottles of wine."
"There's no limits, Calli. It's our anniversary—"
"A very happy anniversary to you both," Henri wished them politely, still smiling mildly, though concern was in his eyes.
"Thank you Henri," they both said simultaneously, without looking away from one another, the matter at hand still unsettled.
"What difference is a few hundred credits?" Lance continued, slightly hushed and clearly embarrassed.
"It's not about the money," she replied in an equally hushed tone, then updated the waiter— "Riesling by the glass for me and the bottle of Brunello for him, please, Henri."
Henri remained, uncertain if the matter was completely settled, waiting for the husband to concur.
Lance's jaw was working as if he wanted to say something further, only propriety restrained him. He felt incredibly silly, ordering his wife a glass and himself a bottle when he had intended to share a vint with her. But with her being positively stubborn on the matter, to retract from the point at which he found himself presently seemed impossible and he gave Henri one sharp side nod, if for no other reason than to make the awkward moment end.
"Very good." Though much older than this handsome pair, Henri had another such couple across the room, who were weekly patrons and generous with their gratuities. He had come to the conclusion some time ago that there were some people who were happiest when they were unhappy, or perhaps simply enjoyed the continuing conflict within a relationship as though it were a kind of sport, and he wasn’t about to judge. "I will return momentarily." Henri left the couple to contemplate the dinner menus and one another.
Quietly lifting the menu, chin raising and falling as he scanned it up and down as if taking its measure, Lance examined the four offerings for each course.
Meanwhile Calliope was staring off into the vast expanse of simulated calm bay water, resting her chin in her hand. She imagined the Sunrise couple, on that ghastly Korix shore, and the way they seemed to understand one another without words, the way they held hands unabashedly, as if they were somehow tuned to some frequency where they shared a single soul between them. Although she'd met her share of stable, loving couples, she was uncertain she'd seen any other pair so tightly bonded as Wallace and Xeri, and she had to wonder if there was any way aside from a daily regimen of starvation, death, and torment that would produce such a marked effect on a couple. She knew for certain Lance would never look at her with the kind of implicit adoration and admiration that Major Wallace had for Chief Xeri. If she were honest with herself, when he gave her any adoring glances, she knew Lance was tamping down some other measure of disdain or disappointment in her, even if just subconsciously.
Lance looked up from his scrutiny of the menu to find his wife's lovely face in profile as she gazed out onto the horizon in the display windows. Observing that Calliope's menu was still on the table untouched all this time, Lance felt uncertain. Often she liked to share the appetizer course, and other times order one of each and sample some of his. He hardly wanted a repeat performance of the drink order fiasco, and so decided to confront the matter before Henri returned.
"Is there anything on the appetizer menu to which you are strictly opposed?" he asked. "Shall we order two of each course and sample one another's selections?"
"I thought you said it was 'uncouth', scraping half and half onto one another's plates, when the chef has artfully and painstakingly prepared them as he had intended?" Calliope paraphrased Lance's words to her when she had in the past invoked the sampling approach.
"Well, it is."
"Lancelot..." Calliope folded her arms over one another on the table, leaning in halfway across the small table. "Do you find me uncouth?"
Lance matched her lean, closing the space between them. "You are, but it's endearing, you know."
"Endearing?" she echoed, teasingly. She knew he wouldn't actually kiss her over the table. Not even her pheromones would bring him to that level of public display of affection.
"Quite..... Endearing..." At her seeming mirth, Lance mirrored her smile. He felt lightheaded and the wine hadn’t even yet arrived.
Meanwhile Calliope withheld her own parallel revelation, turning the word over in her head: Endearing.
She often made similar exceptions for the behaviors she couldn't stand of Lance's. For fifteen years, she'd found his sharp humor and social ineptness 'endearing'. She knew she was only a hair's breadth away from the pattern of denial that would allow her to fall back into that willful blindness once more. If only the thin veneer hadn't been broken over the fate of the entire Korix system, she might have forgiven herself for letting optimism paint over his acerbic disgust in everything he found beneath him... not even excepting her.
They both reclined again as Henri returned. As the waiter poured her a glass of Riesling and uncorked and poured Lance his Brunello, Calliope considered Lance and herself and the sorry state of how they had both come to endure the things they couldn't stand about one another. There had to be a better way to go about it. A way that looked more like the total integration and real acceptance Wallace and Ibis seemed to have, rather than the willful ignorance she’d been practicing, or the grin-and-bear-it self martyrdom Lance operated under. She knew she wanted that, or at least something approaching it.
"Are you prepared to make your selections?" Henri asked.
"We need a little more—" Lance began.
"Lance. I have an idea," Calliope broke in, having forgotten some time ago her internalized determination while on approach to the restaurant, when she’d vowed silently to allow Lance to lead the evening.
Lance couldn't resist the sparkle that came back to her eyes. It seemed she was happiest when she was complicating any affair. He decided to humor her. "Let's hear it then."
Biting her lip with playful anticipation, she leaned her elbows on the table and folded her fingers together to rest her chin on. "It's an anniversary challenge. You order what I like, and I'll order what you like."
In spite of her irresistible devilish grin, Lance frowned. "Must we also partake of what we believe to be the choice of the other?"
"No, of course not. We'll be ordering for each other."
Henri looked between them and bit his own lip. Such was a dangerous game.
But Calliope carried on with it, despite the lack of any clear agreement on the part of anyone else. "For the appetizer, my husband will have the seared ahi tuna, but tell the chef to go lightly on the spices, and to set the sauce dressing to the side."
Lance raised a finger to interject his distaste for the texture of—
"He also doesn't want the pistachio crumble. It's the texture. If there's a pistachio creme that would suffice, otherwise leave it off."
The glove had been thrown down. Lance cleared his throat. "Seeing as it's more typically street food, of which your chef has for some reason seen fit to incorporate in this menu, my wife will have the chicken satay."
"Ooh..." Calliope approved tonally.
"I should hope it doesn't come on a skewer."
"I assure you Sir, it does not. "Henri clarified.
"Very good. I shan't have us degreasing our fingers on our evening wear. As for the salad course, my wife shall enjoy salad de couscous, and for the main course," Lance continued, deciding he was on a roll, "Let her have the braised mushrooms au gratin."
He spun the menu around and handed it to Henri off the tips of his fingers, looking back to Calli as if to say check-mate. This was a game he was good at, having studied Calliope on all of their vacations together, and dining out as often as they had.
Calliope appeared amused and took up the remainder of the challenge. "My husband will have the cucumber soup." Nearly tasteless and blended to an even consistency it was, after all, the nearest thing on the menu to Vulcan plomek soup. Only plomek soup was at least served room temperature, if not hot... "For the main course, he's likely to appreciate the pineapple pork medallions and asparagus. Please leave off any cracked pepper." Calliope sat back to take a sip of wine and allow Henri to collect the menu from the table in front of her.
As Henri left, Lance said neutrally, "I had been considering the duck confit."
Calliope unfolded her fancy origami’d presentation ready napkin and pointed the tines of a fork in his direction. "Only you thought it might be too greasy. But on the other hand, the pork might be too dry for your tastes. It was a toss up. Don't worry, I'm sure the chef knows what he's doing. And if the medallions are too dry," she said with another devilish smirk, "I'll trade you my mushrooms."
"I despise mushrooms.” Lance shivered. “Such a spongy texture. The very idea of consuming spores is simply abhorrent."
Calliope set the wine glass on the table, turning it from the lip around in a circle with her thoughts. "We've gotten to know one another surprisingly well for not having shared an address all these years."
"Indeed we have," Lance punctuated her statement in a kind of noble victory, his voice low and sure. "Evidence of a healthy relationship." He said it as if the matter were settled. While it was hardly laboratory procedure, a test of her own devising had been passed and they were verifiably well. Lance felt ready for whatever curve she might throw next.
"I was thinking maybe we could talk to Ethan. Together."
"Your shrink?" Lance rebuffed, then attempted to recover. "That's quite alright, should you continue to engage Doctor Walker you may count on my not being an impediment to your sessions. I shouldn't wish to intrude." If she resumed her sessions, it would certainly save himself the trouble of listening to her ever oscillating thoughts. A healthy, well adjusted woman was the goal, after all, and he had nothing to share for his part.
Calliope nodded and quieted again. She couldn't make Lance talk to Ethan with her any more than she could rightly drag him to church services with her. Something he had also avoided when she had brought it up, agreeing only vaguely that she should attend first, ‘just to see’, without outright declining. His answer to both was more or less the same— a very British upper class dodging non answer that amounted to 'no' by default. His response surrounding her question for her fertility treatments came to the same lack of conclusion. She expected he would be avoidant for years until the time for such decisions had passed and elect ‘no’ by default on that count as well. Maybe if Ethan could guide some of the discussion, Lance could be made to see he was putting her off in perpetuity.
"Consider it? For me?" Calliope pressed, dark eyes searching him.
"There's no point in me physically attending to support you. You know that I support you."
Calliope twisted her rings around her finger. "I know you do, Lance. It's just... I just can't go to church for the both of us. And I can't go to therapy for the both of us..."
"Well, I have need of neither." Lance took a sip of his own wine, appreciating his selection. "So I'm not sure how it is precisely that you’ve come to the conclusion that it is for 'us' that you're attending such things."
"No… I guess I came up with that myself. I guess you're right," Calliope acquiesced, her head turning once more to stare at the impression of the sea.
"I usually am," Lance intoned pleasantly.
