1980s: Romance is in the air
While his parents are moving north, Carl is starting to find his footing in live. Career-wise life is good, and with Ken's articles he's gained some fame. He likes the sport, the activity, and while he doesn't really care for the fame, he cannot deny it's a bit fun when fans ask for his autograph.
He's also gained a girlfriend, Sidney, and he's slowly learning how to open up about his feelings again. He still doesn't talk about Vietnam, especially with her, but he is making progress in other ways.
His apartment has also gotten an update. Admittedly not one he's done, but one arranged for him by the teams PR-team for a photoshoot. To be honest, Carl doesn't care all that much, but Sidney likes it and the sofa is comfy. That's really all he needs. He does miss the punching bag, but then that just means he's spending more time at the gym.
A lot of the time Carl isn't even at home. Either he is at the gym or he and Sidney are out somewhere, usually at Orchid night club. It's not the fanciest or hottest place in town, but then neither Sidney nor Carl are high rollers enough to get into those places - yet. It's a good place to bee seen, however, or so Sidney says. Carl usually just tags along.
Tonight is different, however. Tonight, Carl has a plan. As he turns 30 this year, he's had enough of being single, and having a girlfriend is not enough. He, like his brother, wants a family. He's always been more conservative than the rest of his family and a family, and children, has always been part of the plan. Now he just need the right moment.
For his own sake, he'd happily do this in private. But he knows Sidney needs the attention for her career as an actress, and this will be good publicity, so when the time feels right, he falls to his knees, right there on the dancefloor, and asks her to be his wife.
Sidney is more than happy to say yes, and for her it's definitely a bonus to hear the camera of the paparazzi in the background as she does.
While Carl's love life is thriving, Cathy's is crawling backwards. As a romance consultant she makes a living on making other people's relationship work, but for herself it seems an impossibility. More and more she's starting to realise that Brandon just isn't what she wants in a man. He seems to have no ambition to move up on the career ladder, his style is horribly 70s, he has admitted that though he knows how to dance quite well he really doesn't enjoy it, but she could live with both if he could just stop flirting with others. But he doesn't seem able to keep himself from it.
For Beth, the constant fighting means she spends a lot of her time outside playing basket ball with whomever comes by. That way she doesn't need to listen to the fights in the apartment.
But as things get worse, even Cathy starts coming to the realisation that this isn't going to work itself out. As arguments turn to insults and passive aggressive comments and Beth more and more starts retreating to avoid them, Cathy comes to the realisation that romance consultant or not, single is better than this.
To her big surprise Brandon isn't as relieved as her when she breaks up with him. Instead he truly seems upset.
"But surely you can see that this is for the best?" Cathy says, bewildered rather than anything else as they sit in the spare bedroom Brandon slept in last night after the last fight they had. "We can't keep hurting each other like this. It's not healthy."
Even as Brandon is busy moving out, Cathy is planning on how to move on. She really had thought she'd be more upset, but now that it's over it's so clear that she was holding on for all the wrong reasons. Next time, she tells herself, she's going to take a more scientific approach, and use all the skills she has learnt at work, as well as a few of the resources.
So come next day she's leafing through the contact ads they have in their archive to find someone suitable, not for a client, but for herself. She finds two potential candidates.
Said and done, the next day Cathy arranges a date with potential candidate number one, Stephen. The meeting is arranged at the newly opened and highly luxurious Skybar Lounge downtown. Cathy has wanted to go here forever but Brandon hasn't wanted to. Now she has the perfect opportunity to.
Stephen has been here before.
"I live in the fashion district," he says. "So it's not far."
"The fashion district? I love that part of town!" Cathy says.
It turns out they have a lot in common. They both enjoy swimming, dancing and shopping, both enjoy a well made cocktail and watching the sky while sitting close to someone.
As the date goes on, neither one of them wants to go home.
But eventually all good things must come to an end, and Cathy is determined not to jump into something without proper comparison this time. Stephen too seems like a perfect gentleman, and while they both seem to want more, they conclude the date with a simple hug.
The moment she returns home, Cathy wakes up her sister to tell her all about her date.
As much as Cathy has her head in the clouds, however, she is still determined to do this scientifically, and so the next day she gets on the subway to get to Myshuno Meadows where she has agreed to meet Ted.
She's almost happy when she finds him ridiculously handsome, probably even more so than Stephen. They start the date by going roller skating, which is a lot more difficult than it looks.
Then they sit down to chat, but the conversation doesn't really flow like it did yesterday, and some of the things Ted says...
Like when he suddenly and without warning asks if she wants to take him home.
"We just met! What are you expecting?"
"Well, I just... you're hot!"
Cathy has had enough. She interrupts the date then and there. Ted might be incredibly handsome, but this is so far from her idea of a good date as she can come.
Ready to go home, she almost walks straight into someone on the way out of the park, only to realise it's Stephen from yesterday. Her hearts flutters dangerously.
She isn't sure how a conversation struck up on a pathway in a park leads to them sitting on a bench and talking for hours, or at a café in the park for hours more, with Stephen asking her repeatedly if she really doesn't want some food.
"You have to be hungry."
"Not really, no," Cathy lies. "But go ahead."
It's dark by the time he offers to walk her to the subway, and kisses her on the way there.
It's so much faster than what Cathy had planned, and yet so utterly perfect. He never pushes too far, he doesn't demand more than what she is willing to give, and by the time she returns home she has given her heart without him even asking.
And now that she's on a roll, she's insisting on doing onto others what she did onto herself. Her first victim is her sister, who only gets angry as the guy she set him up with was already engaged to be married. "Well how would I know?" she defends herself. "I can't make them tell the truth."
Undeterred, she targets Susan, who has been so busy working on improving the neighborhood (and healing) that dating has not been on the radar at all. "Come on! You need to get out there and try. Just send me your photo and I'll set up a profile in our system. It will be fantastic, I promise!"
And seeing how she has no time for romance herself, Susan relents, sending in her photo and information:
Once finished, she has better things to do, like fixing the new garden around their building, which is thriving under her and her fellow resident's hands. Or visiting her greatest creation to date - a natural pool at the old quarry.
Once a quarry it closed when water started seeping up from underneath. The natural pools were filled in, a factory was built, that then closed only to be replaced by a nightclub. Ken still miss the nightclub, but Susan loves the return of nature. Now you can see no trace of the old factory, the ground has been cleaned from chemicals, and the natural pools open up again. There are places to relax in the sun, to practise diving, a water slide and jumping platform. Everything you need in order to make maximal use of the waters.
Families flock for a day out in the hot summer weather, and Susan finds the time to catch up with her cousin and brother.
When she returns home there is mail waiting for her. Available bachelors in the area. Susan looks at the mix with growing trepidation.
"These were the best ones you could find?" She asks Cathy in a phone call later that night.
"I'm sorry, there were a lot of weirdos in your area."
"I can see that, you sent me several. Not exactly what I had hoped for, and their traits! Did you even look at them?"
"But Kash looks good, doesn't he?"
"He looks stuck up, but I guess not as bad as the others."
"So you'll go on a date with him?"
"Fine, but don't expect anything to come out of it."
"Other than you finding your one true love? Nothing at all. No pressure."
The date is set for the pool, as Susan then at least know there are activities for them to do and plenty of chances to get away. The date starts a bit hesitantly as Kash tells her that he really likes buying new things, but he also assures her that the environment is really important. It might not be the best start, but she promised Cathy she'd give him a chance. They take a seat at one of the tables and start to get to know each other.
And Susan has to admit that he seems rather nice. He likes cats, just like she does, and he is pleasant enough. A bit hard to get to know, perhaps, but after Tony someone who is a bit reserved and not so pushy might be a good thing. He doesn't seem keen on swimming, and keeps pointing out that it's cloudy, but Susan still wants to try the waters and so Kash agrees. They swim and talk for a while, before getting back up.
"A cup of coffee, perhaps?" Kash suggests. "Indoors?"
Susan agrees, and the two goes change into their clothes and meet back in the café part of the building. Kash seems a bit more relaxed in here. Perhaps he's just not an outdoorsy kind of guy?
Suddenly, they are interrupted by a woman in hysterics. She's screaming something about her child being missing.
Susan jumps from her seat immediately, but Kash remains. "Do you know her?" he asks as she runs screaming to the next table. "No, but her child is missing."
"It's not your child."
Susan shakes her head, then runs out to help the woman look.
She finds the child in the pool, happily swimming about, not the least aware that his mother is terrified and probably picture him having fallen off some rock somewhere. She calls him over, checking that it's the right child, and tells him his mother is worried.
She then returns inside, calms the mother down, telling her where her son is. Then looks up to find that Kash is gone.
"As in he just left?" Cathy asks on the phone when they speak later. "Seriously?"
"Seriously." Susan confirms. "Not a trace. I even looked. But he was just gone."
"So strange."
"It gets weirder. When I came home, there were flowers waiting for me, with an thank you card."
"Flowers are nice."
"So are good byes. I'm sorry Cathy, but this whole dating thing... I think I prefer the old fashioned way."
He's also gained a girlfriend, Sidney, and he's slowly learning how to open up about his feelings again. He still doesn't talk about Vietnam, especially with her, but he is making progress in other ways.
His apartment has also gotten an update. Admittedly not one he's done, but one arranged for him by the teams PR-team for a photoshoot. To be honest, Carl doesn't care all that much, but Sidney likes it and the sofa is comfy. That's really all he needs. He does miss the punching bag, but then that just means he's spending more time at the gym.
A lot of the time Carl isn't even at home. Either he is at the gym or he and Sidney are out somewhere, usually at Orchid night club. It's not the fanciest or hottest place in town, but then neither Sidney nor Carl are high rollers enough to get into those places - yet. It's a good place to bee seen, however, or so Sidney says. Carl usually just tags along.
Tonight is different, however. Tonight, Carl has a plan. As he turns 30 this year, he's had enough of being single, and having a girlfriend is not enough. He, like his brother, wants a family. He's always been more conservative than the rest of his family and a family, and children, has always been part of the plan. Now he just need the right moment.
For his own sake, he'd happily do this in private. But he knows Sidney needs the attention for her career as an actress, and this will be good publicity, so when the time feels right, he falls to his knees, right there on the dancefloor, and asks her to be his wife.
Sidney is more than happy to say yes, and for her it's definitely a bonus to hear the camera of the paparazzi in the background as she does.
While Carl's love life is thriving, Cathy's is crawling backwards. As a romance consultant she makes a living on making other people's relationship work, but for herself it seems an impossibility. More and more she's starting to realise that Brandon just isn't what she wants in a man. He seems to have no ambition to move up on the career ladder, his style is horribly 70s, he has admitted that though he knows how to dance quite well he really doesn't enjoy it, but she could live with both if he could just stop flirting with others. But he doesn't seem able to keep himself from it.
For Beth, the constant fighting means she spends a lot of her time outside playing basket ball with whomever comes by. That way she doesn't need to listen to the fights in the apartment.
But as things get worse, even Cathy starts coming to the realisation that this isn't going to work itself out. As arguments turn to insults and passive aggressive comments and Beth more and more starts retreating to avoid them, Cathy comes to the realisation that romance consultant or not, single is better than this.
To her big surprise Brandon isn't as relieved as her when she breaks up with him. Instead he truly seems upset.
"But surely you can see that this is for the best?" Cathy says, bewildered rather than anything else as they sit in the spare bedroom Brandon slept in last night after the last fight they had. "We can't keep hurting each other like this. It's not healthy."
Even as Brandon is busy moving out, Cathy is planning on how to move on. She really had thought she'd be more upset, but now that it's over it's so clear that she was holding on for all the wrong reasons. Next time, she tells herself, she's going to take a more scientific approach, and use all the skills she has learnt at work, as well as a few of the resources.
So come next day she's leafing through the contact ads they have in their archive to find someone suitable, not for a client, but for herself. She finds two potential candidates.
Said and done, the next day Cathy arranges a date with potential candidate number one, Stephen. The meeting is arranged at the newly opened and highly luxurious Skybar Lounge downtown. Cathy has wanted to go here forever but Brandon hasn't wanted to. Now she has the perfect opportunity to.
Stephen has been here before.
"I live in the fashion district," he says. "So it's not far."
"The fashion district? I love that part of town!" Cathy says.
It turns out they have a lot in common. They both enjoy swimming, dancing and shopping, both enjoy a well made cocktail and watching the sky while sitting close to someone.
As the date goes on, neither one of them wants to go home.
But eventually all good things must come to an end, and Cathy is determined not to jump into something without proper comparison this time. Stephen too seems like a perfect gentleman, and while they both seem to want more, they conclude the date with a simple hug.
The moment she returns home, Cathy wakes up her sister to tell her all about her date.
As much as Cathy has her head in the clouds, however, she is still determined to do this scientifically, and so the next day she gets on the subway to get to Myshuno Meadows where she has agreed to meet Ted.
She's almost happy when she finds him ridiculously handsome, probably even more so than Stephen. They start the date by going roller skating, which is a lot more difficult than it looks.
Then they sit down to chat, but the conversation doesn't really flow like it did yesterday, and some of the things Ted says...
Like when he suddenly and without warning asks if she wants to take him home.
"We just met! What are you expecting?"
"Well, I just... you're hot!"
Cathy has had enough. She interrupts the date then and there. Ted might be incredibly handsome, but this is so far from her idea of a good date as she can come.
Ready to go home, she almost walks straight into someone on the way out of the park, only to realise it's Stephen from yesterday. Her hearts flutters dangerously.
She isn't sure how a conversation struck up on a pathway in a park leads to them sitting on a bench and talking for hours, or at a café in the park for hours more, with Stephen asking her repeatedly if she really doesn't want some food.
"You have to be hungry."
"Not really, no," Cathy lies. "But go ahead."
It's dark by the time he offers to walk her to the subway, and kisses her on the way there.
It's so much faster than what Cathy had planned, and yet so utterly perfect. He never pushes too far, he doesn't demand more than what she is willing to give, and by the time she returns home she has given her heart without him even asking.
And now that she's on a roll, she's insisting on doing onto others what she did onto herself. Her first victim is her sister, who only gets angry as the guy she set him up with was already engaged to be married. "Well how would I know?" she defends herself. "I can't make them tell the truth."
Undeterred, she targets Susan, who has been so busy working on improving the neighborhood (and healing) that dating has not been on the radar at all. "Come on! You need to get out there and try. Just send me your photo and I'll set up a profile in our system. It will be fantastic, I promise!"
And seeing how she has no time for romance herself, Susan relents, sending in her photo and information:
Once finished, she has better things to do, like fixing the new garden around their building, which is thriving under her and her fellow resident's hands. Or visiting her greatest creation to date - a natural pool at the old quarry.
Once a quarry it closed when water started seeping up from underneath. The natural pools were filled in, a factory was built, that then closed only to be replaced by a nightclub. Ken still miss the nightclub, but Susan loves the return of nature. Now you can see no trace of the old factory, the ground has been cleaned from chemicals, and the natural pools open up again. There are places to relax in the sun, to practise diving, a water slide and jumping platform. Everything you need in order to make maximal use of the waters.
Families flock for a day out in the hot summer weather, and Susan finds the time to catch up with her cousin and brother.
When she returns home there is mail waiting for her. Available bachelors in the area. Susan looks at the mix with growing trepidation.
"These were the best ones you could find?" She asks Cathy in a phone call later that night.
"I'm sorry, there were a lot of weirdos in your area."
"I can see that, you sent me several. Not exactly what I had hoped for, and their traits! Did you even look at them?"
"But Kash looks good, doesn't he?"
"He looks stuck up, but I guess not as bad as the others."
"So you'll go on a date with him?"
"Fine, but don't expect anything to come out of it."
"Other than you finding your one true love? Nothing at all. No pressure."
The date is set for the pool, as Susan then at least know there are activities for them to do and plenty of chances to get away. The date starts a bit hesitantly as Kash tells her that he really likes buying new things, but he also assures her that the environment is really important. It might not be the best start, but she promised Cathy she'd give him a chance. They take a seat at one of the tables and start to get to know each other.
And Susan has to admit that he seems rather nice. He likes cats, just like she does, and he is pleasant enough. A bit hard to get to know, perhaps, but after Tony someone who is a bit reserved and not so pushy might be a good thing. He doesn't seem keen on swimming, and keeps pointing out that it's cloudy, but Susan still wants to try the waters and so Kash agrees. They swim and talk for a while, before getting back up.
"A cup of coffee, perhaps?" Kash suggests. "Indoors?"
Susan agrees, and the two goes change into their clothes and meet back in the café part of the building. Kash seems a bit more relaxed in here. Perhaps he's just not an outdoorsy kind of guy?
Suddenly, they are interrupted by a woman in hysterics. She's screaming something about her child being missing.
Susan jumps from her seat immediately, but Kash remains. "Do you know her?" he asks as she runs screaming to the next table. "No, but her child is missing."
"It's not your child."
Susan shakes her head, then runs out to help the woman look.
She finds the child in the pool, happily swimming about, not the least aware that his mother is terrified and probably picture him having fallen off some rock somewhere. She calls him over, checking that it's the right child, and tells him his mother is worried.
She then returns inside, calms the mother down, telling her where her son is. Then looks up to find that Kash is gone.
"As in he just left?" Cathy asks on the phone when they speak later. "Seriously?"
"Seriously." Susan confirms. "Not a trace. I even looked. But he was just gone."
"So strange."
"It gets weirder. When I came home, there were flowers waiting for me, with an thank you card."
"Flowers are nice."
"So are good byes. I'm sorry Cathy, but this whole dating thing... I think I prefer the old fashioned way."
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