"Love and Monsters Redux" - Part Four

Part Four

            Mireya switched her outfit back to the alluring, green silk dress and black corset she commonly wore in this regeneration. She stepped out of Kara’s TARDIS and Elisa’s apartment altogether, heading over to Giles’, where she found Kara observing one of his paintings. “Whatcha lookin’ at?” she asked her.

            “The so-called ‘American Dream’,” Kara said in disdain, getting an eyeful of the happy family in the painting. “I never could understand the obsession of a White America in this period.”

            “Neither could I,” Mireya wretchedly concurred.

            Somewhat changing the subject, Kara mentioned, “Would you believe some guy in the theater downstairs mistook me for Dorothy Provine? Why would she of all people be in a low-rent movie theater wearing a hoodie and jeans?!”

            “Well, ya do kinda look like her,” Mireya said. “Both her and Doris Day.”

            “Oh, now Doris I can work with.” Kara mockingly galloped over to Giles’ refrigerator, reaching inside to retrieve one of many different-colored, different-flavored pies that he had stocked in there. Taking one end of her hoodie, she pretended as if it was a dress skirt, while holding up the pie in the other hand. In her best Doris Day impersonation, she said, “Darling, you’ve worked so hard today, so I baked you a lil’ something to take the edge off.” She then followed by spouting other cliches: “A woman’s place is in the kitchen, especially on Thanksgiving and when the boss visits…You are the breadwinner, my darling husband…Let me get those shoes off and rub those tootsies.”

            Mireya exploded with laughter at her imitation.

            However, the laughter dwindled, just as they noticed Giles entering the room.

            Figuring that he heard everything, Kara felt embarrassed and humbled enough to tell him, “I am so sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to…”

            “Oh, don’t apologize,” Giles casually dismissed with a wave. “All you did was help me to see the frugality of this piece.” He gestured to his painting. “The whole assignment is ridiculous. I…I never understood why they are so happy anyway. So happy about a slab of animal.”

            “You a vegetarian, Mr. Giles?” Kara asked.

            “No but working on this painting definitely makes me want to be one,” Giles jested to the giggles of Kara and Mireya. “Believe me, if that agency wasn’t so pressed about a white family in their ads, I’d change the script and paint a negro family. Alas, it’s just how it is.”

            Mireya shrugged. “So…just quit.”

            “Pop,” Kara ridiculed her suggestion.

            “No, she’s right,” Giles acknowledged. “It’s not like they’re going to give me the time of day anytime soon.”

            “Well, we don’t wanna put you out of food and home,” Kara said while taking a fork out of the nearest drawer to eat the green pie that she pulled out of Giles’s fridge. “Not out of food, at least, with all the pies you got stocked.” Taking a bite, her face was suddenly flooded with disgust, nearly turning as green as the pie. “Oh…Oh, my! This tastes rank!” Unable to swallow the bite, she spat it out in the sink.

            “It’s probably been in there for too long,” Giles excused, although he didn’t sound absolutely convinced. “How about I take you ladies to the place where I got all those pies and have some fresh ones? Let’s call it a ‘Thank You’ treat for liberating me from a supremacist conglomerate.”

            Mireya smiled big. “I like the sound of that!”

            Giles put on his toupee and led the two ladies out of his apartment. They were on their way downstairs, until Craig and Bryson popped out of Elisa’s apartment, with the latter griping, “Hey! We’re gettin’ a lil’ bored up in here! And I didn’t think that was possible inside of an alien spaceship!”

            “Where are you guys going anyway?” Craig inquired.

            “Just out for a lil’ while,” Mireya said. “We’ll be right back.”

            “If you boys are bored, you’re welcome to watch some television at my place,” Giles offered.

            The Williams cousins wasted no time on his offer, dashing into his apartment.

            “Wait…what are we gonna watch?” Bryson asked. “I don’t think they had Cartoon Network in this time.”

            Craig saw his point. “We’ll just channel surf ‘til we get to the old timey cartoons.”

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            Something about this “Krasko” character rubbed Strickland the wrong way, so he arranged for Fleming to do some investigating on their new “boss.” He came back with no results. Krasko was a walking ghost – no birth certificate, no dental records, and not even a social security number. This, of course, only made Strickland more highly suspicious of him; but he kept those suspicions to himself.

            He found him in the lab that once held the Amphibian Man, sitting at a small table across from the empty swimming pool and eating a full course meal, much to Strickland’s sickening displeasure. “Makin’ yourself at home, boss?” he hissed. Approaching him, he noticed that his meal was battered fish and French fries. “Fish and chips? Thought you were the all-American type.”

            Swallowing the bit of fish he had in his mouth, Krasko grinned and said, “Spent a little time over in London on assignment – grew something of a palate for the stuff. Besides, all this talk about your ‘fish man’ got me hungry.”

            “Uh-huh,” Strickland scoffed. “Well, while you were fillin’ your belly full of that stuff, did you come up with any leads?”

            “No leads,” Krasko said, finishing up the last bit of fish on his plate and wiping his mouth with a clear white napkin. “Just a theory.”

            “A theory?!” Strickland snapped. “A theory is gonna save our butts from Hoyt?”

            “Save your butt from Hoyt.”

            Strickland gritted his teeth. “Well, would ya care to share this ‘theory’ you have, Agent Krasko?”

            Krasko got up from the table. He took his suit jacket off from the chair where he hung it and slipped it back on, buttoning the front. “There was a woman I encountered not too long ago – a blonde, just like one of the two you had here in the base. She went under the alias of ‘The Doctor’. Whether or not she actually was one, I can’t really say. But she was in the possession of a police box.”

            “Police box?” Strickland parroted derisively. “That’s your theory?”

            “No, Colonel…you see, her police box wasn’t any ordinary police box…it was an alien spaceship, capable of traveling between space and time.”

            Strickland burst with laughter. “Jeez, Krasko! You had me goin’ there for a sec!”

            “I am dead serious, Colonel.”

            Strickland saw the stoicism in the young agent’s face, which was a new development in the short time that he had met him. “You are, aren’t ya? Doesn’t change the fact that what you’re saying sounds insane.”

            “Oh, c’mon, Strickland! You people had a fish man holed up here for weeks, but you can’t stretch your imagination far enough to believe in the existence of aliens?”

            “I can buy something like that bein’ from outer space, but you’re saying those two women who took the creature are aliens themselves?”

            Krasko snickered. “Just give me a few hours, Colonel, and I’ll prove it to ya.”

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            Dixie Doug Pies had a unique theme that Kara and Mireya admired. The pies were assorted with different colors, corresponding with different flavors – green for key lime, blue for blueberry, red for cherry, orange for mandarin, yellow for lemon, and brown for chocolate. It was like ice cream in the form of a pie.

            Unfortunately, the taste didn’t follow with the ingenuity of the theme.

            “This taste more like poop than chocolate,” Mireya gagged, having tried a piece of the brown pie.

            “Yeah, and this is more like pee than lemon,” Kara tried the yellow.

            “Would you girls keep the criticism down to a whisper?” Giles shushed them in the busy establishment. He then confessed, “Alright, so the pies aren’t exactly A-grade…but they’re not the reason why I come here.”

            “Then what is?” Kara asked.

            “I think I know,” Mireya gushed. “Our dear Mr. Giles has been staring at that cute guy at the register, ever since we walked in.” She gestured to a manly, masculine construction worker-type individual behind the counter. He was dressed in white – t-shirt, pants, and apron – and blond-haired, blue-eyed.

            “Ahh, I see now,” Kara smirked.

            Giles blushed. “Guilty as charged.”

            “What’s his name?” Kara asked.

            “I’ve yet to find out, actually,” Giles said. “I only know him as the ‘Pie Guy,’ despite their mascot being the ‘Pie Boy’.” He gestured to the napkin dispenser, which had a three-dimensional porcelain model of a little winking man in chef’s attire. “I brought Elisa here last week. I think even she figured out the real reason I come.”

            “So…” Mireya lingered.

            Giles shrugged and frowned quizzically. “So what?”

            Giving him a gentle kick in the shin, Mireya urged, “Go tell him how you feel.”

            “Oh…no,” Giles refused. “I…I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

            “C’mon, Mr. Giles,” Kara supported Mireya’s advice. “What’s the harm.”

            Reluctant at first, Giles’s optimism began to swell under the goading of these two beautiful women. He removed himself from their booth, straightening his suit and toupee. He then casually strode over to the counter and engaged with the Pie Guy, with Kara and Mireya happily observing from afar.

            “This is so sweet,” Mireya beamed, her chin resting on her palms.

            “I gotta say that I’m surprised,” Kara said.

            “By Giles’ taste in men?”

            Kara chuckled. “No. I mean that he found a guy who’s as open as he is. This is 1962 after all – not a lot of gay men publicized their sexual preference in this era.”

            “Wait,” Mireya realized. “Did he say that the Pie Guy was gay?”

            “What’re you doing, old man?!”

            The outburst redirected Kara and Mireya’s attention back towards the counter where Giles and the Pie Guy were – the latter recoiling from an affectionate gesture the former made, which was merely touching hands. Giles was flabbergasted, stammering for an explanation. He was robbed of his chance just as an African-American couple entered with their kid and approached the counter, to which the Pie Guy immediately turned and scolded, “Hey, no! Not the counter! Just take out! You can’t sit there! You want something, you order and you take it out!”

            “But it’s empty,” the mother indicated. “The counter is…”

            “All reserved! All day!” the Pie Guy bellowed. “You don’t sit down!”

            Neither Kara nor Mireya appreciated the way in which the Pie Guy spoke to the African-American family. “I retract what I said earlier,” Mireya uttered, her tongue pressing the inside of her cheek in anger and disgust. “He’s not so cute.”

            Kara’s hearts sank for the family, watching them leave. “Like I said…this is 1962 after all.” She noticed a few words exchanged between Giles and the Pie Guy, ultimately ending with Giles dejectedly dismissing himself from the counter and leaving the restaurant.

            Kara and Mireya quickly left their booth to catch up with him.

            “Hey, you two!” They stopped as they heard the Pie Guy call to them. Mireya didn’t even want to look him in the eye, knowing what she’d do if she did. Kara, on the other hand, fired him the coldest of all stares and heard him out as he left the counter and marched up to them. “Did you two come in here with that old queer?”

            “As a matter of fact, we did,” Kara proudly verified. “He’s our friend.”

            “Might wanna find better friends,” the Pie Guy suggested. “A pair of nice gals like yourselves don’t need to be ‘round fairies like that.”

            His use of the derogative was the final straw with Kara.

            She went to the illuminated glass column on the counter that displayed the pies in rotation, removing one of the key limes from it. Returning to the Pie Guy, she looked him dead-straight in the eye and coolly said, “Lemme show you what kind of a ‘nice gal’ I am.” She then, to the surprise of everyone in the diner, stuffed the key lime pie down the Pie Guy’s pants.

            “You witch!” He gasped.

            “She’s not the witch, buddy – I am!” Mireya declared, stepping into the altercation and adding injury to insult by kneeing the Pie Guy right in his groin. The hot pie stuffed in his pants mashed along with his manhood. He dropped to the floor, whimpering, as a young waitress rushed to his aid.

            “Somebody call the police!” she cried while Kara and Mireya walked out the door, exchanging a high-five over their deed.