No Chance, Ch 11
No Chance Chapter 11 copyright 2011 comidacomida
"I don't get it." Rex noted, head cocked to the side, both floppy ears raised ever-so-slightly, "A door can't be a jar, because then it wouldn't be a door."
Courtney laughed all the louder, actually having to stop mid-way through putting mayonnaise on a slice of bread, "That's why it's a joke, Rex... it's a play on words that sound the same."
"Door and Jar?" the dog cocked his head the other way. She had him confused enough that his eyes were actually focused on her for once and not the food.
"No, Rex... no..." she said, setting the knife down on the counter to turn toward him, "The joke goes, 'When is a door not a door?', which, like you said, a door is a door no matter what."
"And that's funny?" he asked, ears raising further.
"The answer is supposed to be the funny part. The question is called the 'set up', and it's supposed to make someone think about an answer." Courtney smiled. Almost everyone she knew hated having to explain jokes. Being honest with herself, Courtney had to admit that she did too, but there was something about Rex's wide-eyed approach to all things human that made the exercise extremely fun.
"So... it's like a riddle?" Rex questioned, "Abe taught me about riddles."
"Like riddles, yea." Courtney nodded, and went back to piecing together a set of sandwiches, "Jokes that make a play on words are a lot like riddles."
"Oh..." Rex nodded his head vigorously, his lipa-flapping with the motion faintly audible, "So... when a door turns into a jar, it isn't a door anymore..." he made a show of smiling, his tail wagging vigorously for a few seconds. The tail stopped and the smile disappeared, "I still don't get it."
Courtney chewed on her lower lip; while she had to admit a certain amount of ignorance was cute, silly, and even endearing, she realized that Rex really was looking to her for education. That detracted a small amount of the joy from the humor, but it brought about another thought in her mind; she had a chance to make a difference. "Alright... so put aside the door turning into a jar thing for a minute... and tell me what comes to mind when I say the word 'watch'."
Rex blinked, "Humans and televisions."
The woman smiled at that, "Okay... if I said 'watch' to you... what would you do?"
"I'd watch." Rex answered, tail wagging, "I like these questions a lot more. Are these jokes too?"
Courtney had to keep herself from laughing,"No, Rex... we'll get back to the jokes." she undid the strap on her watch with her clean hand and set it on the counter next to herself, "Do you know what this is, Rex?"
"It's a watch." he responded.
"So... when you're looking at me you 'watch' me... and a clock people wear on their wrist is a 'watch', right?" she asked. Rex nodded, so Courtney continued, "It's the same word."
"Oh!" the dog nodded vigorously, tail wagging, "It is the same word, but it means different things!"
"Right!" Courtney confirmed, "And you can make a joke by using those similarities between words because you can end up with a sentence that doesn't make any sense if you think about it the wrong way."
"Like... having your watch watch tv?" Rex asked, wagging.
Courtney smirked at that, "It's good for a first try, Rex."
"If I may?" David spoke up from the entryway to the office's kitchen. Courtney and Rex both turned to regard him, "Why did I throw my Rolex," the ferret pointed at the watch on his wrist, "at the television?"
Rex paused, squinted, licked his muzzle, cocked his head to the side, and noted with complete conviction, "I don't know."
"Because I wanted to 'watch' my tv." David explained.
Rex was quiet for several seconds. He licked his muzzle, cocked his head the other way, and scratched one of his ears with his fingers... then his tail suddenly started beating out a rapid tempo, "Oh! It's like you want to see what show is on, but you ended up... oh! I see!" the Dog let out a little snorty-growly-barky giggle, "I'm supposed to laugh now, right?" Both David and Courtney responded to the sound and comment with laughs of their own.
"So... what started this, exactly?" David asked once the laughing subsided.
"Oh..." Courtney shrugged, pulling out another two slices of bread, "I asked Rex when a door wasn't a door." she held the slices up facing David, "Sandwich?"
"If it isn't any trouble, yes, please." the ferret bobbed his head lightly, then tapped the end of his muzzle, "I've heard that one... A Door is not a door when it is ajar."
"Exactly." Courtney confirmed, and added mayo to the new set of bread.
"So... you CAN turn a door into a jar?" Rex asked.
"When something is open just a little way..." David said to the dog, pulling open one of the cabinet doors an inch, "it is considered ajar, meaning it is neither all the way open, nor all the way shut."
"Oh..." Rex wagged, "So... right now, the cabinet is ajar!" his wagging picked up speed, "So the cabinet is not a cabinet!"
"He's like a kindergartner." Courtney laughed.
"Almost second-grade, actually." David responded, "A fine lady I used to date ages ago was a childhood development specialist."
Courtney paused and glanced to David, unsure which of two questions she'd ask first. In the end, she joined them both, "So... he IS practically a child... and did you just actually give out personal information, David?" she chose her first question to go first since the second was more a friendly jab than a serious inquiry.
"No on both counts." the ferret smiled good-naturedly, "I'm joking, of course." he reached out to pat Rex on the head, eliciting even more tail wagging from the dog, "First, Rex has spent most of his life as a dog, not a human-like dog, so many of the intricacies of speech and advanced logic are still new to him. There's a learning curve, and he's a very smart individual, so he's picking it up quickly, and--"
"I'm a good boy?" Rex inquired.
"Yes, Rex... you are." David noted, resulting in the commencing of the dog's happy panting.
"So... you're saying that he's playing catch-up on the whole 'higher-thought' thing?"
"Put very succinctly, yes, Ms Porter." David confirmed.
A faint chill went up Courtney's spine at David's response, but she couldn't place it. Perhaps it was something about the formal way he addressed her during such a casual conversation, or maybe just the fact that his mustelid-gaze hiding behind his modified wire rim glasses was unsettling. She shrugged it off as she placed meat on each sandwich, "So you never dated some woman who studied childhood development?"
"That's a fairly personal question, don't you think?" David grinned.
"Now I can see why Daryl thinks you can be an asshole sometimes." Courtney responded.
"Oh?" the ferret's ears went up, "He told you that, did he?"
The woman smirked slyly as she shrugged, "I'm not sure what Daryl and I talk about is any of your business, Mr Graham... that's a fairly personal question, don't you think?"
"Touche." the ferret chuckled with a wink, and headed to the small refrigerator, "A drink to go with dinner?" he offered.
"Cola!" Rex barked excitedly.
"Rex... we've talked about this..." David noted in a firm tone, "you can only get cola before six." he pulled out a small plastic bottle, "You can have some iced tea instead."
"With lemon, David?" the dog wagged.
The ferret looked at the label, "With lemon." he confirmed, and passed it to Rex.
"I bet you have kids." Courtney noted, cutting each of the sandwiches crosswise.
"You do not give up easily on the personal questions, do you?" the ferret inquired; though David's voice was fairly close to monotone, Courtney thought she heard a faint bemused quality to it.
"I'm just saying, you do very well with Rex, and he reminds me a bit of a child." she shrugged innocently.
"To be honest... children scare me." the ferret answered, again in his monotone voice. "The whole idea of procreation is eerie... a house filled of imperfect clones... 50% your DNA, and 50% the DNA of your fellow gene-donor..." Courtney hard a much harder time telling if he was joking.
"Gene-donor..." she contemplated the phrase, confirming her first thought that David was just being funny again, "you make marriage sound so romantic."
"Marriage is a wonderful thing... but in the real world procreation has nothing to do with marriage." the ferret pointed out.
Courtney paused, brain suddenly hijacked and taken another direction, "Is talking with you always like this?" she questioned. The woman set down a plate in front of Rex and in front of David and took one for herself.
"How do you mean?" the ferret inquired, casually taking a bite of the offered sandwich.
"We went from teaching Rex about jokes to a philosophical question of sex in and out of wedlock." Courtney pointed out.
"Technically, we discussed procreation... sexual intercourse is just the most common way to accomplish that." the ferret clarified. Courtney could have sworn she caught the hint of a smile on his muzzle. Did he really enjoy such chaotic discussions and random side-notes in casual conversation? "And on that note," David added, "I believe I am going to take my leave. You and Daryl both have the same exact expression when you're about to reach your emotional limit of thought-provoking discussion, so, thank you again for the sandwich, Courtney, but I believe this dinner will be to-go." he offered a faint bow of his muzzle and disappeared down the hall.
"I like David." Rex noted, tail wagging.
"I think you like just about everyone, Rex." she said with a laugh. Despite her ferret-generated headache, Courtney couldn't help but smile; if nothing else, Rex certainly had a positive effect on her mood, "You're a good boy." she added, and the dog's tail picked up speed. Dinner was full of sandwiches, tail wagging, and more attempts at word-play. Despite the fact that the humor still didn't quite take, Courtney still enjoyed herself.
She stayed in the kitchen with Rex until almost nine, at which point the dog said his farewells and explained he was going to go spend some time with Abe. A number of thoughts came to Courtney's mind about the two, but she quickly dismissed them; what they did down in the lab was their business and none of hers. As she began considering where in the base to go at that point, however, she realized she was at a little bit of a loss; going back to her quarters was probably the best option, but she didn't like the idea of returning to the small, almost cell-like room. It wasn't comfortable, it wasn't welcoming, and it wasn't even technically a bedroom. Courtney made up her mind, and headed straight for Daryl's office.
The trip through the base took her down one floor and several hallways over. She passed near Fred's work area, and heard the tell-tale sounds of the bear's rumbling growls commingled with the banging of metal on metal. In the time since their 'talk', the bear had gone from welding to what Courtney thought might have been hammering, to using some kind of electric saw (the logistics of a bear using a any kind of power tool was beyond the scope of her imagination). From the sound of it, Courtney was convinced that Fred was frustrated and probably just throwing scrap metal around. She put any worry about Fred out of her mind and continued down the hall, stopping outside the door to office Daryl had taken as his room. She knocked quietly.
After waiting for a reasonable length of time, Courtney knocked again. After another wait she slowly tried the doorknob: unlocked. Peeking her head in, the woman spoke up, "Daryl?" she called... no answer. She slid the rest of the way into the office, and that's when she saw light peeking out from beneath the bathroom door; the sound of the shower going signaled the end of her investigation. She went over to the bathroom door and knocked, "Daryl?" she raised her voice.
"Huh? What? Just a minute!!" he called, and Courtney giggled to herself when she heard the sound of what was probably soap hit the bottom of the tub, followed by Daryl's obviously frantic scampering around the bathroom. Though she could have imagined it, Courtney could have sworn she heard the sound of his claws click and scrape across the linoleum; the smile slowly disappeared from her face; her fiance was half-panther, and she apparently still wasn't quite ready to find the humor in that. As she pushed the developing melancholy aside the door opened a little and Daryl's panther-like face appeared in the available space, "Yea?" he asked.
Courtney took a moment to examine the face gazing at her. The first time she'd spent the night at Daryl's he had taken a shower... when she knocked, he had done the exact same thing. She saw that same look of trepidation on his face and, though the face had changed, the look hadn't. Daryl's black fur was soaked, dripping down onto the floor as his water-logged ears still somehow managed to stay up, focused on her, except for the occasional swivel backward, a sign that somehow made sense to her as a show of embarrassment.
The thought of that almost made her laugh. He didn't have anything to be embarrassed about... they were almost married... she had seen him naked a lot of times. It was then that his modesty hit home; she had seen him naked before his change... considering the circumstances it was no wonder that he was so uptight and conservative; she felt immediately bad about knocking, "I..." she paused, turning her back to the door to grant him a little more privacy, "I just wanted to say 'hi'.... I didn't see you much today and..." she wouldn't do any favors by denying it, "and I missed you."
"Hi." Daryl responded, his voice hinting at a purr, "I missed you too."
She remained with her back turned, leaning against the wall beside the door, "Everything go okay?"
"Yea." she heard Daryl respond, followed by the sound of his claws clicking their way back across the bathroom linoleum. The water stopped.
"I can talk later if you want... you can finish your shower." she offered.
"Nah... I'm clean enough." he stated, and she heard the sound of a towel being used vigorously. A strange thought suddenly came to the forefront of the woman's mind.
"Can.... can I ask you something, Daryl?" Courtney inquired, hoping he wouldn't take it the wrong way.
"Sure... What's up?" he inquired from the other room.
Unable to hold back the inane question any longer, Courtney let it fly, "How much longer does it take for you to towel off with that much fur?" For several seconds there was no reply but, after the long, disquieting pause, Daryl broke into laughter. A moment later Courtney joined in. It felt good, she realized, to be sharing a laugh with him again without the humor feeling forced... it had been so long since she realized she could.