Date: Late October 1992.
Location: Malibu / New York / Hartford.
Event: The Family Dynamics.
Part 1: The Housekeeper
Charlie Harper's kitchen had not been this clean since the day the house was built.
It was Sunday morning. George Sr. and the boys had gone down to the beach to run sprints in the sand. Mary Cooper was wearing bright yellow rubber gloves, aggressively scrubbing the stainless steel refrigerator with industrial bleach.
Suddenly, the front door unlocked.
A sturdy, imposing older woman wearing a flannel shirt and carrying a ring of keys walked into the house. She stopped dead in her tracks, staring at the Texas mother scrubbing the fridge.
"Well," Berta crossed her arms, a slow, deeply impressed smile spreading across her face. "I don't know who you are, lady, but you're getting stains out of that fridge that I haven't been able to remove since 1986. You want a job?"
Mary paused, wiping her forehead with the back of her wrist. "I am Mary Cooper. George's wife. Who are you?"
"I'm Berta," the housekeeper said, walking into the kitchen and inspecting the gleaming countertops. "I clean up after the degenerate who owns this house. Usually, when he brings a woman home, they just leave empty champagne bottles everywhere. You're my favorite one yet."
"I am happily married, thank you," Mary said sharply.
Charlie Harper stumbled out of his bedroom a moment later, wearing his silk robe and holding his head in pain. He stopped, looking at Berta and Mary standing in the same impeccably clean kitchen.
"Oh, God," Charlie winced, leaning against the doorframe. "There are two of you."
"Your friend here is a miracle worker, Charlie," Berta noted, grabbing a mug. "She sterilized the coffee maker. I didn't even know it was silver underneath the grime."
Mary sighed, peeling off her rubber gloves. "Look at my family, Charlie. George is fighting with millionaires. Georgie is carrying the weight of three other boys on his shoulders. If I don't keep the kitchen clean, the whole house falls down."
Charlie walked over and poured a cup of coffee. He didn't offer a sarcastic joke. He just looked at the Texas mother, and then looked out the window at George Sr. tossing a football with the boys on the beach.
"George is a lucky guy," Charlie said quietly. "I've got a house on the beach, a Mercedes in the driveway, and a different girl every weekend. But if I dropped dead tomorrow, Berta would just pawn my television and take a long weekend."
"Damn right I would," Berta agreed instantly, taking a sip of coffee. "You're going to die alone, Charlie. I've been telling you that for years."
Charlie didn't laugh. He looked around his massive, empty beach house.
"You know..." Charlie muttered softly, staring into his coffee mug. "I've been thinking. Maybe LA is getting old. Maybe I need a change of scenery. Someday."
Berta snorted loudly.
"Yeah, right," Berta smirked, pulling a cigar out of her flannel pocket. "You move to Texas, I'll come visit. Somebody's gotta make sure you don't die in a ditch. Until then, stay out of my way while I mop the floors."
Part 2: The Network Check-In
Later that afternoon, while Charlie took a nap on the deck, Mary walked into the guest bedroom and picked up the telephone. She needed to speak to the only other person in her family who understood the absolute necessity of maintaining order.
She dialed a New York area code.
"Hello?" Monica Geller answered on the third ring.
"Monica, it's Mary," she sighed, sitting on the edge of the bed. "Please tell me the boys didn't completely destroy your grocery budget when they were there."
"Mary! No, they were wonderful!" Monica's voice buzzed with hyper-organized excitement. "Larry Allen actually helped me re-caulk the bathtub. He has surprisingly delicate hands for a giant."
"How did you feed them?" Mary asked desperately. "I am out of my element in California. Half the food here is green, and the other half costs twenty dollars a plate."
"Bulk pasta and heavy cream," Monica answered instantly, shifting into full chef mode. "Don't bother with delicate proteins. You need dense, heavy carbohydrates to slow them down. Oh, and I'll mail you my secret tile grout recipe. It kills everything."
"You are a lifesaver, Monica," Mary whispered, gripping the phone like a lifeline.
Part 3: The Transcontinental Fax
Meanwhile, down the hall in Charlie's home office, Sheldon was entirely ignoring the Los Angeles sunshine.
He was standing in front of Charlie's commercial-grade fax machine, watching a single piece of paper slowly print out from the tray. He snatched it up.
It was from the Gilmore estate in Connecticut. It was a photocopy of a hand-drawn map of the Caltech campus. There was a large 'X' drawn over the physics building, and an arrow pointing to it with a neat, handwritten note:
*"I may have asked my grandfather to make a few calls to your father's hotel itinerary to find out exactly where you were staying. Since you are currently auditing classes at Caltech, I assume you are trying to prove you can dominate the West Coast. Do not get comfortable, Sheldon. The Ivy League is waiting. - Rory. P.S. Your margin of irrationality equation was brilliant. But still lonely."*
Sheldon stared at the paper. His right eye twitched.
She had tracked him down. She had utilized Richard Gilmore's massive network of billionaire influence just to figure out which university he was visiting. She was eleven years old, three thousand miles away, and she was matching his obsessive intensity step-for-step.
"She is a menace," Sheldon whispered to the empty room.
But as he looked at the compliment at the bottom of the page, a very small, entirely involuntary smile crept onto his face. He quickly suppressed it, grabbed a blank piece of paper, and began furiously drafting a response about the structural flaws of Yale's physics department.
[Quest Update: The Side Quests]
* Charlie Harper: Existential Seed Planted.
* Friends Crossover: Monica Geller Logistics Support Active.
* Sheldon & Rory: Transcontinental Fax War Escalated.
* Next Objective: The California Call (Serena van der Woodsen).
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Drop your Power Stones! Goal 100 for one extra chapter