Symbolic Enough (Logan, Veronica, Trina), R
Title: Symbolic Enough
Author: Hiddeneloise
Rating: R
Word Count: 3,441
Summary: When symbolism is all you’ve got, you tend to want to make it count.
Characters: Logan, Veronica, Trina. L/V implied.
Spoilers: Seasons 1 and 2.
Warnings: Eh, some bad language.
A/N: thank you to the fabulous lady_eonen, who, though she doesn’t watch VM, still beta-ed for me and even laughed at the jokes!
Disclaimer: Would I treat them this way if I owned them?
The Neptune Grand. For a swanky hotel, Veronica thought, it was incredibly clinical. It had a feel of an upscale retirement home crossed with a cocktail lounge, which meant it was supremely uncomfortable, utterly impersonal, and cost an arm and a leg. Once again, she was reminded of how provincial this little town of theirs really was. Everything was “grand,” or too large for the small space it occupied, or simply tried too hard. It would be almost endearing if the place didn’t give her the creeps, stained with a thousand bad memories and populated by numerous ghosts.
Veronica was’t afraid of ghosts. She knew only too well that the living were the real threat. For weeks after that faithful night on the rooftop, she had to stop herself from staring at the people she knew. From thinking “are you damaged and psychotic under your normal exterior?”
Logan said everyone’s damaged. Logan should know. It was comforting in a way, except it shouldn’t be, because what it really implied was that nowhere’s safe.
She remembered how it caught her by surprise that he didn’t move out of this hotel after everything went down. Somehow she expected Logan to walk away and never approach the place again. “Where would I go?” he asked her, mildly perplexed. Probably dozens of places, but she didn’t press the issue. This was Logan: utterly unsentimental to the point of oblivion where his surroundings were concerned. She remembered his bedroom at the now-extinct Echolls mansion. It was the only space in the entire house not decorated to death. Compared to the rest of it, the room felt sparse and refreshingly unpretentious: a few posters on the walls (architectural in nature), an obligatory PlayStation, a bed in neutral tones. It was usually in different stages of disarray with Logan’s clothes strewn about and whatever comic books/novels/videogames he was obsessed with at any given time.
His bedroom at the Grand was like that, too: all hotel-minimalism, but messy in a comfortable way. Unlike Duncan’s room that had been personalized by Celeste with extra pillows, throw blankets, various bric-a-brac, and further by Duncan himself with numerous photos (mostly of him and Veronica), Logan’s held no mementos. Because few photos survived the fire, and also because Logan preferred it that way. Veronica suspected this lack of interest in photo memorabilia was, at least in some measure, the result of Aaron’s narcissistic love for his own image displayed all over the former Echolls house. It had been a veritable shrine to the big, important movie star, his retouched face staring from the photographs, posters, oil paintings and framed magazine covers everywhere you looked.
Veronica wondered last summer, too. She wondered why Logan, once alone in that mansion, did not destroy every single image of the father he hated with a brightly burning passion. She was looking for some meaningful psychological reason behind it, but the answer was probably simple: Logan didn’t notice anymore. Aaron’s looming face was ingrained into his psyche from such an early age he has grown immune to its manifestations.
In the end, it was no harder for Veronica to come to this hotel every day now than it was to come to Aaron’s house last summer. They were just places: not good or evil of themselves. Not haunted by their dead. Not marred by the horrible events that transpired. The markings were inside the eyelids on sleepless nights, in sudden flashes of memory, accompanied by sounds that filtered through the white noise. They went with you no matter where you moved.
Vernoica sighed and pushed the door to his suite.
*****
The look on Logan’s face was troubling. The last time she saw it was on the witness stand at Aaron’s trial. The look of hatred so deep it didn’t need loud fireworks to express itself. It was contained, implosive, chilling, and fed on its own energy. Then the look was directed at Aaron, and Veronica saw the man’s shoulders slump a little for the first time during the trial.
Today, the look was directed at a sizable ceramic urn resting precariously on the edge of the coffee table.
If the urn had any feelings, it would have trembled and fallen off the surface.
As if fearing this exact fate, a young redhead in designer clothes and jewelry reached out and picked up the urn. Just in case.
Trina Echolls. It’s been a while and Veronica studied her discreetly. Trina was still vocal. That hasn’t changed. A little sharper around the edges, a little slower in her delivery, but basically still the same “look at me” girl Veronica remembered. Her clothes, her voice, her gestures were loud. God, that over-the-top Echolls body language! Veronica always thought Logan inherited it through genetics, but now she could see it was probably learned, as Trina clutched the urn with the flourish right out of community theater.
“Logan, you can’t do this! Veronica, please, talk some sense into him! I seem to have no luck!” She turned to Veronica, underscoring the plea with a dramatic wave of a free hand.
“I’m doing it. And you can’t stop me.” Logan interceded before Veronica could put a word in.
“Look,” Trina’s voice got that wheedling note that was neither subtle nor particularly effective, “I know you hated his guts, and I don’t really blame you, not anymore. But this is serious. This is his dying wish! You can’t just make a mockery of it. And think: it’ll get out, the tabloids will have a field day, and you’ll be hounded for a very long time!”
Logan’s smile was wide and utterly lacking in warmth:
“How would it get out? There are three people in this room! I don’t plan on telling anyone, and I really don’t see Veronica running to the tabs. Are you contemplating something you are not telling me, Trin?”
Trina sighed in exasperation and was about to parry with a cutting remark of her own, when Veronica finally decided she’s had enough of the cryptic:
“What’s going on?”
Logan run his hand through his hair in that stock gesture of his she knew so well. With his other arm he pointed to the urn.
“This, right there, is Aaron. Or, rather, what’s left of him after the Sheriff’s office released the body. Cremated, per Aaron’s own instructions. Apparently, after mom . . . died,” Logan’s voice hitched slightly on the word, “he made new arrangements for his post-mortem disposal. So very thorough. So very Aaron. So very show business. You want to know how he wanted to be ‘disposed’ of? I’m to ‘sprinkle the remains’ into the Pacific, where he can be with mom for all eternity! . . . I am to do it. Me. Personally. It says so right there in his ‘power of attorney’ thingy, made out to, amusingly enough, his attorney. It’s all there, after the ‘please, resuscitate!’ plea. Sealed with Aaron’s own giant, autograph-perfected, slightly gay signature! Me! He wanted me to do this. His pride and joy. His son and heir. The one and only fruit of his loins. That we know of. And for an encore, I think I’ll do a little musical number. . . .”
“We get it, Logan,” Trina’s voice was surprisingly devoid of annoyance and the look she gave him was pitying. Which, of course, enraged Logan even more, and the way he was eyeing the urn made Trina clutch it tighter to her body.
Veronica sighed and slid down on the floor by the couch to sit next to Logan.
“You don’t want to do it.” It wasn’t not a question, just a statement of fact, which is why she was surprised when he answered:
“Oh, but I do. I do. I want to give him the best ‘burial at sea’ ever!”
“He wants to flush dad down the toiler,” Trina supplied the explanation, and there was a “help me stop him from this insanity” in her voice.
Veronica was rendered speechless. Not because it’s so very unexpected an idea, not because she could still be surprised by the intensity of Logan’s hatred, but because she could feel herself, if only for a moment, getting wholeheartedly behind the plan. After all, this was Aaron Echolls, the man who killed Lilly, the man who systematically abused Logan, who almost killed her father and tried to torch her alive. The man who thought he got away with it all, and who gloated. How satisfying-however fleetingly - how poetic it would be to watch his ashes swirl down the drain. . . She stopped that train of thought. She was the reasonable one, after all.
“Logan, I get the impulse, I really do, but you need to think this through. Are you even allowed to do this? I mean, legally? If the instructions are clear. . . “
“Oh, they are very clear: he wants to spend the eternity with mom. Who is in the Pacific. But the bastard doesn’t specify which bridge/cliff/beach stretch I am to dump him from. And I know all sewers eventually lead into the ocean, so, I don’t see where the problem lies.”
Trina rubbed her forehead:
“Of course you see it, or you wouldn’t get so gleeful about the prospect of it. It’s toilet, Logan, it’s demeaning! It’s disrespectful. . . “
“He expected respect from me? From me? Even before the whole Lilly mess came to light, he still couldn’t have been delusional enough to think I’ll be even remotely compelled to respect his wishes! Why did he put my name on this? Why not have you do it? Like the dutiful daughter you are?!” “Because he knew that would be the only way to ensure you come to his funeral, Logan.” And once again, Trina’s voice wasn’t contentious, just sad.
“Oh, I would have come to the funeral, all right. I would not have missed it for the world! I would not have wanted to give up the opportunity to dance on his freshly-made grave! But the bastard cheated me out of that, too.”
“Logan,” Veronica took a deep breath, and slowed her speech down, as if afraid he won’t comprehend otherwise. “As beautifully symbolic as it would be to drown your father in the crapper, it’s not going to fix anything, it’s not going to give you any lasting satisfaction and it’s not going to make you feel any better about anything. Trust me, I’m all about hollow revenge and empty symbolism. I can teach a class.”
He smiled tightly, his eyes tired and unconvinced. She ran a hand through his tousled hair, smoothing it out, fingers lingering at his temple. She could feel him physically relax, giving up a little of that tightly-coiled tension he carried around.
“I don’t know, Veronica. Hollow revenge and empty symbolism sound good right about now. What else do I have? It’s not as if I could right a wrong here, or erase what he did, or even forget for a while. When symbolism’s all you’ve got, you tend to want to make it count.” “It counts, Logan. You want to give this some significance, but the thing is, that’s what he wanted. That’s what the ritual is supposed to mean, and the real win in this situation would be to strip it of meaning. Because what is this, anyway? It’s just a glorified jar with some dust in it. So you pick a random spot, somewhere you would never normally go, dump the ashes, leave. You’ll be there, Trina will be there, and I can go with you if you want me. You don’t have to say anything unless you whish to, and if you do, you can say exactly what you think and feel. The luxury of ‘disposing of remains,’ as opposed to actually burying a body, is that it doesn’t have to feel precious. If you think about it, this already has ‘garbage dump’ written all over it. You are emptying an urn. Into a body of water that’ll wash it all away. That’s enough symbolism. Flushing a toilet would seem like overkill.”
Logan didn’t look entirely convinced, but Veronica could see she has won. There’s no fight in his stance anymore, only resignation. Trina could see it, too, and she tentatively put the urn back on the coffee table.
“Well, I think this calls for a drink,” she announced, grabbing her bag and taking out a bottle.
“Champagne, Trina?” Logan raised one quirky eyebrow. “Isn’t it a little inappropriate for a wake? It’s generally considered a celebratory beverage.”
“We are celebrating, little brother. Love him or hate him, he’s gone, and we are going to celebrate the end of an era.”
“How suitably dramatic of you,” Logan grumbled, but the snark wasn’t heartfelt.
He took out three glasses while Trina opened the bottle and poured.
“I think I would like to make a toast,” Logan tipped his glass slightly, “to outstanding parental units of Neptune!”
“Really? Parental units?” Veronica tilted her head, waiting for him to elaborate.
“To Aaron Echols, Father of the Year, megastar, fluke Oscar winner, who couldn’t act his way out of a paperback, but could, ironically, act his way out of a life sentence! A Renaissance man, who could cook, blow glass, blow smoke up a jury’s asses! A family man who loved his wife and the wives of all his friends, who loved his son to destruction, who loved his son’s girlfriend to death-literally. A great humanitarian who always donated his money generously in the name of publicity, who donated his time freely to the cause of his career, and who donated his sperm in service of needy bimbos everywhere!”
Logan downed his drink and poured another. He shook his head at Veronica’s concerned glance and continued:
“To Lynn Echolls, who liked her Scotch, her house, and her life neat; her senses and her conscience dulled; and her lips and exits larger than life and overly dramatic! . . . To Jake Kane, software visionary, who had envisioned and engineered precise behaviors and futures for his kids, and too bad they refused to fit into the molds! To Celeste Kane, who couldn’t envision anything, not her daughter’s viability nor her son’s free will. . . To Richard H. Casablancas, a straight shooter and all-around swell guy. Who prided himself on his ability to compartmentalize. Who bragged that when he was working, his family did not exist. They reappeared once the working stopped, but, sadly, he still didn’t recall that he had two sons, not one. And to Mrs. Casablancas the First, who simply couldn’t be bothered.” Logan took another gulp and sat down, suddenly drained. He still held the bottle in his hand, and Veronica grabbed it from him with a determined gesture. He made a half-hearted attempt at protest, but she shook her head and raised her own glass.
“I would like to add to the toast. To Lianne Mars, whose bitter disappointment in how her life has turned out just couldn’t be quenched. Who gave a whole new meaning to the phrase “liquid assets” when she drank away her daughter’s college education.” She took a sip and answered Logan’s questioning look with a reassuring smile, “To Chuck Rooks, who loved his little girl, and, also, other little girls. An inspirational teacher and a true man of taste, he’d treat you to the silk black sheets, ‘Tatoo You’ mood music, and a handy check to ‘take care of it,’ should the need arise. . . . To the Mannings, who elevated emotional abuse into an art form, and whose motto seemed to be: ‘God loves you, so your parents don’t have to.’ . . . To Mr. and Mrs. Gant, who loved their boy to the tune of 80 million dollars. To Mrs. Houser, who is working hard to ensure her kid will need therapy until he’s 50. To Mr. Fuller, who can hire you to baby-sit his kid and proposition you in the same breath. And to Mrs. Fuller, whose spectacular uptightness and lack of warmth is matched only by her complete and utter blindness. To Bone Hamilton, who thought neglect and humiliation were acceptable parenting techniques. To Nathan Woods, a cop, who couldn’t manage to track his son down for 17 years, but tried to make up for it in one blitzkrieg appearance in the kid’s life, and never mind the havoc it wreaked! He isn’t strictly Neptune, but he made waves here, and, I think, he deserves his rightful place in this not-so-exclusive and creepy club. And, let’s not forget the club’s president! To Woody Goodman, a man who really, really wanted to give Aaron Echolls a run for his money in that Father of the Year contest. To Woody, who had so much fatherly love, for so many, he simply couldn’t keep it in his pants!”
Veronica didn’t realize she was shaking a little until Logan’s arms came up around her. He pulled her gently onto the couch and she settled there, propping herself against him. She didn’t know how she got this agitated. All she wanted to do was comfort Logan, but, as was often the case, he ended up comforting her.
“I think I want to add something, too.” Trina flipped her vibrant red hair defiantly, reminding the other two that she was still in the room. “To former principal Moorehead, who was a father figure to me throughout my high school years. Just how much of a father his figure turned out to be was a bit of a shock, but hey, at least I didn’t really need that bone marrow! And it could have been worse: he could have dumped me in the urinal at some gas station. Neptune High bathrooms are really clean by comparison. And to the lunch lady Doris, excuse me, Mary Mooney, who, in contrast, was very forthcoming with the bone marrow, just not with any kind of information during the previous 25 years!” Veronica and Logan both raised their almost empty glasses, neither bothering to refill them.
“Hear, hear,” Logan waved his glass a little and it made dancing sunlight patterns on the table top, “to all of them, may they rot in hell, sooner or later. . . . Well, what do you know, Trin, this was fun?!” He sounded a little surprised. “I don’t feel any better, but I no longer have the need to go symbolic on his ass. He can soak in the Pacific and poison the fish. I have more constructive things to do, like write my memoirs entitled ‘Life with Father: Aaron Echolls-the Man, the Legacy, and All Things Penal.’”
*****
When she stepped out of the Neptune Grand, the sun was setting, the flowers at the front entrance took on a pink glow, and the air smelled like the sea. Veronica didn’t like words like “cathartic,” and, after certain events in her life, she mistrusted sudden epiphanies. But she felt lighter, a little more settled, and she knew it was because of the strange impromptu wake/celebration they just held in the penthouse. Or maybe it was the Champaign talking. She turned towards the garage when a hand on her shoulder arrested her movement. Logan.
“Hey, you are not driving,” his voice was matter of fact and Veronica knew that even if she wanted to raise an argument, she has lost it already.
“Why not? I didn’t have that much to drink!”
“You had enough.”
“Less than you did,” she pointed out reasonably.
“Yeah, but I can hold my alcohol. I had a lot of practice. Plus, I’m like twice your size, so stop arguing and let the gentleman drive you home!”
“OK,” Veronica smiled her defeat. A deceptive smile: “One question, though: where are we going to find a gentleman on such short notice?”
“You. Are. Hysterical.” Logan punctuated every word with a butterfly kiss to the crown of her blond head, slowly spinning her toward his Big Bird of a car.
“Don’t you have a father to ‘sprinkle’?”
“He can wait un-sprinkled another day. Trina’s not done hugging the urn, and I thought I’d best leave them alone. I’m spending the night at your place.”
“Are you, now?”
“I am. I know your dad and his big gun are out of town, and Backup misses me. I hear he’s got a new bitch, so we have a lot of man-to-man talking to catch up on.”
Veronica laughed and climbed into the passenger seat.
“Well, then, in that case, Luigi’s on you. I’m providing the bed.”
Author: Hiddeneloise
Rating: R
Word Count: 3,441
Summary: When symbolism is all you’ve got, you tend to want to make it count.
Characters: Logan, Veronica, Trina. L/V implied.
Spoilers: Seasons 1 and 2.
Warnings: Eh, some bad language.
A/N: thank you to the fabulous lady_eonen, who, though she doesn’t watch VM, still beta-ed for me and even laughed at the jokes!
Disclaimer: Would I treat them this way if I owned them?
The Neptune Grand. For a swanky hotel, Veronica thought, it was incredibly clinical. It had a feel of an upscale retirement home crossed with a cocktail lounge, which meant it was supremely uncomfortable, utterly impersonal, and cost an arm and a leg. Once again, she was reminded of how provincial this little town of theirs really was. Everything was “grand,” or too large for the small space it occupied, or simply tried too hard. It would be almost endearing if the place didn’t give her the creeps, stained with a thousand bad memories and populated by numerous ghosts.
Veronica was’t afraid of ghosts. She knew only too well that the living were the real threat. For weeks after that faithful night on the rooftop, she had to stop herself from staring at the people she knew. From thinking “are you damaged and psychotic under your normal exterior?”
Logan said everyone’s damaged. Logan should know. It was comforting in a way, except it shouldn’t be, because what it really implied was that nowhere’s safe.
She remembered how it caught her by surprise that he didn’t move out of this hotel after everything went down. Somehow she expected Logan to walk away and never approach the place again. “Where would I go?” he asked her, mildly perplexed. Probably dozens of places, but she didn’t press the issue. This was Logan: utterly unsentimental to the point of oblivion where his surroundings were concerned. She remembered his bedroom at the now-extinct Echolls mansion. It was the only space in the entire house not decorated to death. Compared to the rest of it, the room felt sparse and refreshingly unpretentious: a few posters on the walls (architectural in nature), an obligatory PlayStation, a bed in neutral tones. It was usually in different stages of disarray with Logan’s clothes strewn about and whatever comic books/novels/videogames he was obsessed with at any given time.
His bedroom at the Grand was like that, too: all hotel-minimalism, but messy in a comfortable way. Unlike Duncan’s room that had been personalized by Celeste with extra pillows, throw blankets, various bric-a-brac, and further by Duncan himself with numerous photos (mostly of him and Veronica), Logan’s held no mementos. Because few photos survived the fire, and also because Logan preferred it that way. Veronica suspected this lack of interest in photo memorabilia was, at least in some measure, the result of Aaron’s narcissistic love for his own image displayed all over the former Echolls house. It had been a veritable shrine to the big, important movie star, his retouched face staring from the photographs, posters, oil paintings and framed magazine covers everywhere you looked.
Veronica wondered last summer, too. She wondered why Logan, once alone in that mansion, did not destroy every single image of the father he hated with a brightly burning passion. She was looking for some meaningful psychological reason behind it, but the answer was probably simple: Logan didn’t notice anymore. Aaron’s looming face was ingrained into his psyche from such an early age he has grown immune to its manifestations.
In the end, it was no harder for Veronica to come to this hotel every day now than it was to come to Aaron’s house last summer. They were just places: not good or evil of themselves. Not haunted by their dead. Not marred by the horrible events that transpired. The markings were inside the eyelids on sleepless nights, in sudden flashes of memory, accompanied by sounds that filtered through the white noise. They went with you no matter where you moved.
Vernoica sighed and pushed the door to his suite.
*****
The look on Logan’s face was troubling. The last time she saw it was on the witness stand at Aaron’s trial. The look of hatred so deep it didn’t need loud fireworks to express itself. It was contained, implosive, chilling, and fed on its own energy. Then the look was directed at Aaron, and Veronica saw the man’s shoulders slump a little for the first time during the trial.
Today, the look was directed at a sizable ceramic urn resting precariously on the edge of the coffee table.
If the urn had any feelings, it would have trembled and fallen off the surface.
As if fearing this exact fate, a young redhead in designer clothes and jewelry reached out and picked up the urn. Just in case.
Trina Echolls. It’s been a while and Veronica studied her discreetly. Trina was still vocal. That hasn’t changed. A little sharper around the edges, a little slower in her delivery, but basically still the same “look at me” girl Veronica remembered. Her clothes, her voice, her gestures were loud. God, that over-the-top Echolls body language! Veronica always thought Logan inherited it through genetics, but now she could see it was probably learned, as Trina clutched the urn with the flourish right out of community theater.
“Logan, you can’t do this! Veronica, please, talk some sense into him! I seem to have no luck!” She turned to Veronica, underscoring the plea with a dramatic wave of a free hand.
“I’m doing it. And you can’t stop me.” Logan interceded before Veronica could put a word in.
“Look,” Trina’s voice got that wheedling note that was neither subtle nor particularly effective, “I know you hated his guts, and I don’t really blame you, not anymore. But this is serious. This is his dying wish! You can’t just make a mockery of it. And think: it’ll get out, the tabloids will have a field day, and you’ll be hounded for a very long time!”
Logan’s smile was wide and utterly lacking in warmth:
“How would it get out? There are three people in this room! I don’t plan on telling anyone, and I really don’t see Veronica running to the tabs. Are you contemplating something you are not telling me, Trin?”
Trina sighed in exasperation and was about to parry with a cutting remark of her own, when Veronica finally decided she’s had enough of the cryptic:
“What’s going on?”
Logan run his hand through his hair in that stock gesture of his she knew so well. With his other arm he pointed to the urn.
“This, right there, is Aaron. Or, rather, what’s left of him after the Sheriff’s office released the body. Cremated, per Aaron’s own instructions. Apparently, after mom . . . died,” Logan’s voice hitched slightly on the word, “he made new arrangements for his post-mortem disposal. So very thorough. So very Aaron. So very show business. You want to know how he wanted to be ‘disposed’ of? I’m to ‘sprinkle the remains’ into the Pacific, where he can be with mom for all eternity! . . . I am to do it. Me. Personally. It says so right there in his ‘power of attorney’ thingy, made out to, amusingly enough, his attorney. It’s all there, after the ‘please, resuscitate!’ plea. Sealed with Aaron’s own giant, autograph-perfected, slightly gay signature! Me! He wanted me to do this. His pride and joy. His son and heir. The one and only fruit of his loins. That we know of. And for an encore, I think I’ll do a little musical number. . . .”
“We get it, Logan,” Trina’s voice was surprisingly devoid of annoyance and the look she gave him was pitying. Which, of course, enraged Logan even more, and the way he was eyeing the urn made Trina clutch it tighter to her body.
Veronica sighed and slid down on the floor by the couch to sit next to Logan.
“You don’t want to do it.” It wasn’t not a question, just a statement of fact, which is why she was surprised when he answered:
“Oh, but I do. I do. I want to give him the best ‘burial at sea’ ever!”
“He wants to flush dad down the toiler,” Trina supplied the explanation, and there was a “help me stop him from this insanity” in her voice.
Veronica was rendered speechless. Not because it’s so very unexpected an idea, not because she could still be surprised by the intensity of Logan’s hatred, but because she could feel herself, if only for a moment, getting wholeheartedly behind the plan. After all, this was Aaron Echolls, the man who killed Lilly, the man who systematically abused Logan, who almost killed her father and tried to torch her alive. The man who thought he got away with it all, and who gloated. How satisfying-however fleetingly - how poetic it would be to watch his ashes swirl down the drain. . . She stopped that train of thought. She was the reasonable one, after all.
“Logan, I get the impulse, I really do, but you need to think this through. Are you even allowed to do this? I mean, legally? If the instructions are clear. . . “
“Oh, they are very clear: he wants to spend the eternity with mom. Who is in the Pacific. But the bastard doesn’t specify which bridge/cliff/beach stretch I am to dump him from. And I know all sewers eventually lead into the ocean, so, I don’t see where the problem lies.”
Trina rubbed her forehead:
“Of course you see it, or you wouldn’t get so gleeful about the prospect of it. It’s toilet, Logan, it’s demeaning! It’s disrespectful. . . “
“He expected respect from me? From me? Even before the whole Lilly mess came to light, he still couldn’t have been delusional enough to think I’ll be even remotely compelled to respect his wishes! Why did he put my name on this? Why not have you do it? Like the dutiful daughter you are?!” “Because he knew that would be the only way to ensure you come to his funeral, Logan.” And once again, Trina’s voice wasn’t contentious, just sad.
“Oh, I would have come to the funeral, all right. I would not have missed it for the world! I would not have wanted to give up the opportunity to dance on his freshly-made grave! But the bastard cheated me out of that, too.”
“Logan,” Veronica took a deep breath, and slowed her speech down, as if afraid he won’t comprehend otherwise. “As beautifully symbolic as it would be to drown your father in the crapper, it’s not going to fix anything, it’s not going to give you any lasting satisfaction and it’s not going to make you feel any better about anything. Trust me, I’m all about hollow revenge and empty symbolism. I can teach a class.”
He smiled tightly, his eyes tired and unconvinced. She ran a hand through his tousled hair, smoothing it out, fingers lingering at his temple. She could feel him physically relax, giving up a little of that tightly-coiled tension he carried around.
“I don’t know, Veronica. Hollow revenge and empty symbolism sound good right about now. What else do I have? It’s not as if I could right a wrong here, or erase what he did, or even forget for a while. When symbolism’s all you’ve got, you tend to want to make it count.” “It counts, Logan. You want to give this some significance, but the thing is, that’s what he wanted. That’s what the ritual is supposed to mean, and the real win in this situation would be to strip it of meaning. Because what is this, anyway? It’s just a glorified jar with some dust in it. So you pick a random spot, somewhere you would never normally go, dump the ashes, leave. You’ll be there, Trina will be there, and I can go with you if you want me. You don’t have to say anything unless you whish to, and if you do, you can say exactly what you think and feel. The luxury of ‘disposing of remains,’ as opposed to actually burying a body, is that it doesn’t have to feel precious. If you think about it, this already has ‘garbage dump’ written all over it. You are emptying an urn. Into a body of water that’ll wash it all away. That’s enough symbolism. Flushing a toilet would seem like overkill.”
Logan didn’t look entirely convinced, but Veronica could see she has won. There’s no fight in his stance anymore, only resignation. Trina could see it, too, and she tentatively put the urn back on the coffee table.
“Well, I think this calls for a drink,” she announced, grabbing her bag and taking out a bottle.
“Champagne, Trina?” Logan raised one quirky eyebrow. “Isn’t it a little inappropriate for a wake? It’s generally considered a celebratory beverage.”
“We are celebrating, little brother. Love him or hate him, he’s gone, and we are going to celebrate the end of an era.”
“How suitably dramatic of you,” Logan grumbled, but the snark wasn’t heartfelt.
He took out three glasses while Trina opened the bottle and poured.
“I think I would like to make a toast,” Logan tipped his glass slightly, “to outstanding parental units of Neptune!”
“Really? Parental units?” Veronica tilted her head, waiting for him to elaborate.
“To Aaron Echols, Father of the Year, megastar, fluke Oscar winner, who couldn’t act his way out of a paperback, but could, ironically, act his way out of a life sentence! A Renaissance man, who could cook, blow glass, blow smoke up a jury’s asses! A family man who loved his wife and the wives of all his friends, who loved his son to destruction, who loved his son’s girlfriend to death-literally. A great humanitarian who always donated his money generously in the name of publicity, who donated his time freely to the cause of his career, and who donated his sperm in service of needy bimbos everywhere!”
Logan downed his drink and poured another. He shook his head at Veronica’s concerned glance and continued:
“To Lynn Echolls, who liked her Scotch, her house, and her life neat; her senses and her conscience dulled; and her lips and exits larger than life and overly dramatic! . . . To Jake Kane, software visionary, who had envisioned and engineered precise behaviors and futures for his kids, and too bad they refused to fit into the molds! To Celeste Kane, who couldn’t envision anything, not her daughter’s viability nor her son’s free will. . . To Richard H. Casablancas, a straight shooter and all-around swell guy. Who prided himself on his ability to compartmentalize. Who bragged that when he was working, his family did not exist. They reappeared once the working stopped, but, sadly, he still didn’t recall that he had two sons, not one. And to Mrs. Casablancas the First, who simply couldn’t be bothered.” Logan took another gulp and sat down, suddenly drained. He still held the bottle in his hand, and Veronica grabbed it from him with a determined gesture. He made a half-hearted attempt at protest, but she shook her head and raised her own glass.
“I would like to add to the toast. To Lianne Mars, whose bitter disappointment in how her life has turned out just couldn’t be quenched. Who gave a whole new meaning to the phrase “liquid assets” when she drank away her daughter’s college education.” She took a sip and answered Logan’s questioning look with a reassuring smile, “To Chuck Rooks, who loved his little girl, and, also, other little girls. An inspirational teacher and a true man of taste, he’d treat you to the silk black sheets, ‘Tatoo You’ mood music, and a handy check to ‘take care of it,’ should the need arise. . . . To the Mannings, who elevated emotional abuse into an art form, and whose motto seemed to be: ‘God loves you, so your parents don’t have to.’ . . . To Mr. and Mrs. Gant, who loved their boy to the tune of 80 million dollars. To Mrs. Houser, who is working hard to ensure her kid will need therapy until he’s 50. To Mr. Fuller, who can hire you to baby-sit his kid and proposition you in the same breath. And to Mrs. Fuller, whose spectacular uptightness and lack of warmth is matched only by her complete and utter blindness. To Bone Hamilton, who thought neglect and humiliation were acceptable parenting techniques. To Nathan Woods, a cop, who couldn’t manage to track his son down for 17 years, but tried to make up for it in one blitzkrieg appearance in the kid’s life, and never mind the havoc it wreaked! He isn’t strictly Neptune, but he made waves here, and, I think, he deserves his rightful place in this not-so-exclusive and creepy club. And, let’s not forget the club’s president! To Woody Goodman, a man who really, really wanted to give Aaron Echolls a run for his money in that Father of the Year contest. To Woody, who had so much fatherly love, for so many, he simply couldn’t keep it in his pants!”
Veronica didn’t realize she was shaking a little until Logan’s arms came up around her. He pulled her gently onto the couch and she settled there, propping herself against him. She didn’t know how she got this agitated. All she wanted to do was comfort Logan, but, as was often the case, he ended up comforting her.
“I think I want to add something, too.” Trina flipped her vibrant red hair defiantly, reminding the other two that she was still in the room. “To former principal Moorehead, who was a father figure to me throughout my high school years. Just how much of a father his figure turned out to be was a bit of a shock, but hey, at least I didn’t really need that bone marrow! And it could have been worse: he could have dumped me in the urinal at some gas station. Neptune High bathrooms are really clean by comparison. And to the lunch lady Doris, excuse me, Mary Mooney, who, in contrast, was very forthcoming with the bone marrow, just not with any kind of information during the previous 25 years!” Veronica and Logan both raised their almost empty glasses, neither bothering to refill them.
“Hear, hear,” Logan waved his glass a little and it made dancing sunlight patterns on the table top, “to all of them, may they rot in hell, sooner or later. . . . Well, what do you know, Trin, this was fun?!” He sounded a little surprised. “I don’t feel any better, but I no longer have the need to go symbolic on his ass. He can soak in the Pacific and poison the fish. I have more constructive things to do, like write my memoirs entitled ‘Life with Father: Aaron Echolls-the Man, the Legacy, and All Things Penal.’”
*****
When she stepped out of the Neptune Grand, the sun was setting, the flowers at the front entrance took on a pink glow, and the air smelled like the sea. Veronica didn’t like words like “cathartic,” and, after certain events in her life, she mistrusted sudden epiphanies. But she felt lighter, a little more settled, and she knew it was because of the strange impromptu wake/celebration they just held in the penthouse. Or maybe it was the Champaign talking. She turned towards the garage when a hand on her shoulder arrested her movement. Logan.
“Hey, you are not driving,” his voice was matter of fact and Veronica knew that even if she wanted to raise an argument, she has lost it already.
“Why not? I didn’t have that much to drink!”
“You had enough.”
“Less than you did,” she pointed out reasonably.
“Yeah, but I can hold my alcohol. I had a lot of practice. Plus, I’m like twice your size, so stop arguing and let the gentleman drive you home!”
“OK,” Veronica smiled her defeat. A deceptive smile: “One question, though: where are we going to find a gentleman on such short notice?”
“You. Are. Hysterical.” Logan punctuated every word with a butterfly kiss to the crown of her blond head, slowly spinning her toward his Big Bird of a car.
“Don’t you have a father to ‘sprinkle’?”
“He can wait un-sprinkled another day. Trina’s not done hugging the urn, and I thought I’d best leave them alone. I’m spending the night at your place.”
“Are you, now?”
“I am. I know your dad and his big gun are out of town, and Backup misses me. I hear he’s got a new bitch, so we have a lot of man-to-man talking to catch up on.”
Veronica laughed and climbed into the passenger seat.
“Well, then, in that case, Luigi’s on you. I’m providing the bed.”