Conditional Holidays are Always Less than What They Seem (Part 4/4)

Conditional Holidays are Always Less than What They Seem (1)

Conditional Holidays are Always Less than What They Seem (2)

Conditional Holidays are Always Less than What They Seem (3)

It felt like an age had passed while I was in the restroom. Yet it hadn’t been long enough. The older I get the less these conditional holidays seem like holidays at all, and more like work in disguise.

“Lalantree?”

Reluctantly, I turned towards the voice and the mountains. Either it was my imagination or the twilight on that side of the plaza was deepening; shadows darkening the flowers among the scrub, and far above them, the pines and the crags. Someone had seen fit to leave a stone table on the grass not far from me, and its weathered scrollwork, and cracked surface, managed to convey forlornness amid the rest of this zytocoke-fueled fantasy.

Mavind was sitting there, waiting for me with her cream self perched upon the faded grey, feet off the ground and legs swaying slightly. The table might as well have been placed for her. A creeper was growing up one leg.

“Lalantree, it doesn’t seem like you are enjoying my advances.”

Conditional Holidays are Always Less than What They Seem (Part 3 of 4)

Conditional Holidays are Always Less than What They Seem (1)

Conditional Holidays are Always Less than What They Seem (2)

I forged a path toward the washroom through the thinner bits of the crowd, conscious that my newfound powers in clearing away knots of people were 100% due to the Junoesque figure following me. And this, I realized, was one of the most exciting things that had happened on any of our CLPFC days; the expressions around us were awash with curiosity, shock, and delight. Everyone here would know that Ibrander’s date had jumped ship to Lalantree before lunch was served.

Trying to scan as many faces as possible without making eye contact (now this is a true art) I almost bumped into Loddi’s mum. This in spite of her neon floral mumu. “Oh, hello Lalantree. Loddi isn’t with you?”

“No…” Mavind had come up close behind me, and Loddi’s mum did a double take.

“Goodness! You’re looking very well.”

“Thanks.” She seemed genuinely sceptical of my appearance, what with her forehead noticeably Rejuv-smoothed since I last saw her; however, my secret was no more and no less than I had never tried very hard to look my best on these occasions. Always set low expectations. “Um, if you don’t mind, I should…”

Conditional Holidays are Always Less than What They Seem (Part 2 of 4)

Conditional Holidays are Always Less than What They Seem (1)

Nonchalant and all that, I waited until the last moment to look up at the welcome interlopers.

“Ibrander,” said a poised, throaty, laughing voice, “won’t you introduce me?”

They stopped in front of the bench, my third cousin Ibrander¹ (who detests Loddi, making me instantly suspicious of his coming over) and a tall, glossy person who was all rich brown hair and expressive mouth and hand gestures. One hand was on Ibrander’s arm but she still managed to be gesturing with it. Her clothes were nothing less than dashing – a wide hat and a one-piece dress suit in cream, its tailored A-line skirt skewing physics by ending in a sway. This was one case where I didn’t have to worry about the polite game that people played of trying to guess-without-guessing whether someone was visiting in-holo only. She was most definitely in person.

I mercilessly crushed the wish that I had worn something better.

Conditional Holidays are Always Less than What They Seem (Part 1 of 4)

Loddi Frisket is a black hole of neuroses. His very existence centres on an unstable singularity, which sucks in anxieties, crises, and the most outlandishly negative possibilities. From prior experience I can attest that his event horizon fluctuates around a diameter of approximately 15 metres. Sometimes the emotional debris which gathers on his accretion disk is an accurate enough warning that I can reverse course, and get away before his attention fixes on me. Sometimes it is not enough.

To give you a sense of just what I am dealing with, Loddi once asked me if I would rather lose my heart (and dignity) to a psychopathic baker, or flee the civilized world, giving up everything from clean pillow shams to NutriPills, only to waste away in boondocks replete with SABs¹ and smugglers.

In my humble opinion, the baker of Loddi’s bipolar love was not psychopathic (I still buy rolls there), but merely possessed of poor judgement, seeing as she countenanced his Gothic style of flirting in the first place. Furthermore, it is well known that the Carwallian smugglers (the only smugglers within 50 lightyears to whom Loddi could have possibly been referring) live very well in their off-planet colonies, though the latter are admittedly remote places. Politics may be laissez-faire over in the Esten Economic Zone but they still don’t want blatant crime polluting the fine views and real estate values of the elite.