aFireFist
Cameos in The Big Bang Theory
Chapter 10 - Part 1
The whiteboard in 4A still had the joint presentation outline on it from the week before. Two columns. Balanced arrows. Nobody had erased it. Leonard had started treating that as a good sign.
Thursday night pizza had bled into Friday lab hours and then into the kind of weekend that looked almost normal if you didn't look too hard. Sheldon had gone back to correcting people about parking regulations and comic book timelines. Leonard had gone back to carrying more of the social load than he should have. Penny had gone back to short shifts and late nights and the low-level chaos of living across the hall from two physicists who treated a living room like a lab.
By Monday the apartment smelled like coffee and leftover Thai. Howard was in the armchair complaining about his mother. Raj was on the floor with a laptop open to a paper nobody else wanted explained. Sheldon sat in his spot with a mug aligned to the table edge. Leonard stood near the door with his keys, waiting for Sheldon so they could pick up dinner.
"If we leave now we can beat the line at Siam Palace," Leonard said.
"The line at Siam Palace is a function of poor staffing, not our departure time," Sheldon said. "Leaving now merely relocates us into the same inefficient system at an earlier timestamp."
Howard pointed a chopstick he had stolen from an old takeout bag. "That's his way of saying he's coming. Give him thirty seconds to insult the restaurant and then we go."
They went.
The stairwell on the way back was the problem.
They were halfway up with the bags when the singing started. It came from above them, off-key and loud, stretching a note that should have been short and punching a note that should have stayed in the middle of the range. Leonard stopped first. Sheldon stopped one step later, head tilting as if the sound itself had violated a rule.
"That cannot be a radio," Sheldon said.
"It's not a radio," Leonard said.
The voice got closer. Penny came down the stairs in a tank top that clung to the full shape of her tits and cutoff shorts that sat low on her hips. Her blonde hair was pulled up in a messy knot. She had a script rolled in one hand and she was still singing, committed to it in the way people got committed when they thought they were alone.
She saw them and cut off mid-line.
"Hey. You heard that."
Leonard shifted the takeout bag to his other hand. "A little."
"Good. I wanted you to hear it. I got Mimi." She grinned, flushed from the stairs and the song. "Community workshop production of Rent. One night. I'm actually in it. Not chorus. Mimi."
Sheldon's face did the small tight thing it did when reality failed to match an expected model. "You are performing a sung role."
"That's the idea, yeah." Penny leaned on the railing. The tank pulled across her chest when she shifted her weight. "Saturday night. You guys should come. It's a workshop so it's not fancy, but there'll be a stage and lights and I'll be up there in the little outfit, so you might as well get a free show."
Leonard's mouth opened and then closed. He looked at her face, then at the script, then at Sheldon, who was already calculating an exit.
"We would love to," Leonard said.
Sheldon looked at him.
Penny's smile widened. "Yeah?"
"Yes," Leonard said, too fast. "I mean—Saturday. We'll check. There's a chance we have something, but if we don't, we'll be there."
"There's a symposium," Sheldon said.
Leonard shot him a look. "There might be a symposium."
Penny shrugged, still smiling. "If you can make it, make it. If you can't, I'll survive. I just wanted you to know I got the part. I've been practicing in the shower and in the hall and pretty much anywhere with tile because the echo helps."
"That explains the acoustics," Sheldon said.
Penny laughed. "You're a terrible audience. Come anyway." She squeezed past them on the stairs. Her shoulder brushed Leonard's. The smell of her shampoo cut through the takeout garlic. Then she was gone down the next flight, already humming again.
They stood there with the bags.
Leonard started walking. Sheldon followed.
Inside 4A, Leonard set the food on the table harder than he meant to. "You couldn't just say we'd think about it."
"I provided a plausible alternative commitment," Sheldon said. "You were constructing a social obligation with no off-ramp."
"I wanted to go."
Sheldon unpacked the containers with precise movements. "You wanted to sit in a dark room and watch Penny sing material she is not equipped to sing, then spend the rest of the evening pretending the experience was pleasant so that your romantic prospects remain theoretically intact."
Leonard stared at him. "That's a lot of words for 'you don't want to go.'"
"I do not want to go. I also do not want to lie. Those are separate preferences that have now been forced into the same evening."
Howard and Raj arrived twenty minutes later. The food was already open. Leonard explained the invitation. Howard made a face like he'd bitten something sour.
"I heard her through the wall last night," Howard said. "I thought somebody was dying in a key that doesn't exist."
Raj winced. "She's enthusiastic."
"She's off-key," Sheldon said. "Enthusiasm does not correct pitch."
Leonard dropped onto the couch. "I'm not telling her that."
"Then you have two options," Sheldon said. "Attend and manufacture praise, or decline with a reason that does not require you to evaluate her vocal performance."
Leonard rubbed his face. "There's a symposium next week. Not Saturday. Saturday is clear."
"Then Saturday is no longer clear," Sheldon said. "We are attending a symposium on molecular positronium."
Leonard looked at him. "That's not a real Saturday event."
"It is now."
Howard pointed at Leonard with a spring roll. "He's going to make this worse. You know that, right?"
"I know," Leonard said.
He told Penny that night.
She was in her doorway in the same tank and shorts, script tucked under one arm, one bare foot hooked behind the other ankle. Leonard stood in the hall with his hands in his pockets and tried to sound like a person with a real schedule.
"We can't make Saturday," he said. "There's a symposium. Molecular positronium. Sheldon's been talking about it for weeks. If we miss it, he'll treat it like a personal insult to physics."
Penny's face fell for half a second, then reset. "Okay. That sucks. I wanted you there."
"I wanted to be there."
"I know." She leaned her shoulder into the frame. The tank shifted. The full line of her tits pressed against the cotton. "Is it actually important or is it a Sheldon thing?"
Leonard hated how easy the next sentence came. "Both."
"Alright. I'll record it or something. Or you can hear me practice through the wall whether you want to or not." She smiled again, smaller. "Tell Sheldon I said his symposium can kiss my ass."
"I'll translate that into something he'll accept."
"Don't. I want him to hear it the regular way."
She closed the door. Leonard stood in the hall for a second longer than he needed to, then went back to 4A and sat on the couch without turning on the TV.
Sheldon was at the whiteboard, writing nothing of value.
"She believed you," Sheldon said.
"That's not a compliment."
"It is an observation. Belief is the intended product of a successful false statement."
Leonard didn't answer.
Penny practiced after midnight. The wall between the apartments did not help. Her voice came through in pieces—Out Tonight stretched thin, a high note that missed, a laugh at herself that was almost worse because it was honest. Leonard lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. Across the room, Sheldon's breathing stayed even until it didn't.
The knock came at two.
Three knocks. "Leonard." Three knocks. "Leonard." Three knocks. "Leonard."
Leonard sat up. "If this is about the thermostat I'm going to lose my mind."
Sheldon stood in the doorway in his pajamas, glasses on, expression tight. "Your lie is inadequate."
"Go to bed."
"I will not. If Penny checks the departmental calendar—and she is capable of using a search engine—she will discover there is no molecular positronium symposium on Saturday. The falsehood will collapse. She will then ask why you lied. You will be forced to choose between a second lie and an evaluation of her singing. Both outcomes are worse than the current state."
Leonard put his face in his hands. "It is two in the morning."
"Which is why I am addressing this now, before the error propagates." Sheldon stepped in. "I have constructed a replacement narrative. It is more robust. It cannot be disproven by a public schedule."
"I don't want a replacement narrative."
"You already have one. I am upgrading it." Sheldon's voice stayed level. "You did not lie because of a symposium. You lied to protect me. I have a cousin. His name is Eustace Loobenfeld. He has been in and out of treatment for years. Saturday night the family is holding an intervention in Long Beach. I cannot drive. You are taking me. The condition is uncommon. I have named it Loobenfeld Decay for internal consistency. It is a progressive neurological deterioration with a substance-use overlay. That is sufficient detail to discourage follow-up questions without inviting medical scrutiny."
Leonard stared at him. "You invented a disease."
"I invented a label. The symptoms are assembled from existing literature. If she asks for more, we can supply it. If she does not, we stop."
"That is insane."
"It is structured. Your symposium was not."
Leonard laughed once, short and tired. "I'm not telling her you have a cousin with a made-up disease."
"You already told her a lie she can Google. This one she cannot." Sheldon adjusted his glasses. "Also, I have already told her."
The room went quiet.
"You what."
"This morning. After you left for the lab. She was in the hallway. I informed her that the symposium story was a cover, that you were protecting my privacy, and that the actual commitment is an intervention for Eustace. She was sympathetic. She agreed not to mention the symposium in front of me. She also said, and I quote, 'Tell Leonard he's a good friend and also kind of an idiot.'"
Leonard stood up. "You went across the hall and expanded the lie without asking me."
"I closed the hole you left open."
"You made it bigger."
Sheldon considered that. "Bigger, but sealed."
Leonard sat back down on the edge of the bed. The apartment felt too small. From across the hall, faint and muffled, Penny hit another note and missed it again.
"She's going to ask about him," Leonard said.
"Yes."
"She's going to care."
"That is the intended emotional effect. Concern redirects attention away from the performance."
Leonard looked at him for a long time. "You don't get that this is worse. You get that the calendar problem is solved. You don't get that she thinks someone in your family is falling apart."
"Eustace is not real. No one is falling apart."
"She doesn't know that."
Sheldon's mouth tightened. "Then the narrative is functioning."
Leonard didn't sleep much after that.
In the morning Penny knocked. She had coffee in a paper cup and her hair was still damp from the shower. The T-shirt she had pulled on was old and soft and sat tight across her chest. The shorts were the same ones from the stairs. She looked at Leonard like she was checking him for damage.
"Hey. Sheldon told me. About his cousin."
Leonard stood in the doorway and tried to look like a person who had not been awake since two. "Yeah."
"You should've just said that. I wouldn't have been mad. Family stuff is family stuff." She sipped the coffee. "Is he okay? Eustace?"
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