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The Triumph Of AJ Quartermaine
Chapter Seventy Eight
Voices of Reason.
"EMILY BOWEN-QUARTERMAINE, you get your ass over here pronto! Cook calls from across the room.
"Busted." Carly and Emily wince as they say the obvious together.
"Is that Emily's mom?" Irene asks curiously.
"Worse." Emily says glumly. "That's Cook. I am soooo grounded."
"Time to face the music. Excuse us, please. " Carly rises with Emily to walk over to where Cook and Judge are sitting. Luke already suspecting the problem comes over too.
"The offer of the backroom is still open." Luke points the direction with an unlit cigar.
"You, I might have known." Cook says with disgust as she sees through Carly's disguise finally. "Don't you have the sense that god gave a gnat? Bringing a teenage girl into a BAR?"
"Um Cookie, if you don't start calming down I'm going to start telling tales." Judge inserts smoothly attempting to calm the waters. "Luke, I think that we will take you up on the back room."
There is sniff and a snort as Luke and Judge escorts Cook, Carly and Emily to the back room leaving Irene with Michael. She looks at the baby curiously. Michael looks back at her and gives a happy grin showing off baby teeth. "Looks like we're on our own, little man, Michael isn't it? Looks like your Mama has her hands full with your auntie." Looking around Irene finally offers to Michael, "You want a cheesefry?" Offering the fry to Michael with one hand she raises her other catching Claudes attention. "I need a drink."
"Happens a lot around people that hang with Ms Benson." Claude admits. "What can I get you?"
"A white wine would be great. Should I call AJ?" Irene asks rhetorically.
Claude shrugs answering the question anyway. "Seems to be a Spencer problem, draggin the Quartermaines in it will just make it that much messer."
"Spencer?"
"Yeah, Carly is Luke's niece; she may go by Benson but she's Spencer."
"Okay I'm new in town, what in the HELL does that mean?" Irene finally blurts out. Claude flags down a waitress to get the white wine and pulls up a seat. He grabs a cocktail napkin and the pen from behind his ear.
"Okay there are a few major families in this berg and eventually everyone gets hooked up with one or more of them. It would be kind of incestious but you don't have to actually marry into them just be affiliated with one or more. You're working at ELQ now that makes you affiliated with the Q's." Claude outlines the Q's. "AJ is living with Carly, that makes you affiliated with the Spencers." Claude outlines the Spencers. "Now if I got my story straight, you met AJ though Jakarta which means that you are affiliated with the Jacks since Jerry was helping in Jakarta." Claude begins to outline the Jacks but then stops. "Scratch that. Jerry has basically kissed off the Jacks and become a Spencer through Bobbie, Carly's mother. So that doesn't count. Actually scratch everything about the Q's too. Carly's pretty well dragged AJ into the Spencer clan. All you really need to know are the Spencers."
"Make that a very LARGE white wine." Irene shakes her head. " How do you know all this stuff? And explain to me again why my boss is a Spencer and not a Quartermaine. And if he is a Spencer that means that I should call him about the fight in the backroom, right?"
The Backroom
Luke starts racking the balls and offers Judge the first break while Emily and Carly try to explain to Cook exactly what they are doing there.
"...Carly had some stuff she had to do at the courthouse and then we were going to meet Irene. Luke's was the most convenient place. IF the press had figured out who we were then we would have had a safe place to meet up. Some where the press couldn't have gotten us." Emily begins to explain.
"Wigs and dressup. Ordering drinks. Don't think I didn't see you." Cook reminds.
"She had a coke." Carly inserts defensively.
"Don't think I don't know what you were doing. Contributing to the delinquency of a minor is what they call it." Cook turns on Carly. "Don't you have enough on your plate?"
Judge stands up from his shot. "Cookie, I'm calling a foul on that one. I met you in a bar and doing the math now I realize you had to be what-- sixteen?"
Both Carly and Emily get wide eyed on that one. Cook flushes furious. "That was different. It was a family bar, and I worked there."
"This is a family bar." Carly claims suddenly her mind racing.
"Oh so now you're claiming me? Sweet Caroline, I didn't know you cared." Luke quips.
"Not necessarily," Carly avows glaring at Luke. "But he claims Michael and Emily is Michael's aunt so that makes this a family bar."
Luke and Judge look at each other and shrug going back to their game. "She's got a point there. " Luke admits.
Cookie rolls her eyes. "How convoluted can you get?"
"Just as much as I need to be." Carly claims crossing her arms in front of her.
"Alan knows I'm with Carly." Emily interjects. "He okay'd it."
"Oh don't even go there, little girl. There is no way in hell that your father would approve of you hanging out in a bar."
"Okay, lets try the other one. I've been here before and Dad was here too."
"Nice try. The night that trashy Nik Cassadine was shot?" Cook rolls her eyes. "Oh like that would convince your father. Alan was higher than a kite that night. He's got his head on straight these days."
"Trashy Nik Cassadine?" Luke perks up. He wasn't used to someone agreeing with him on the spawn from hell.
"You sleep with dogs; you wake with fleas. That boy has fleas. That's all I'll say." Cook says cryptically before turning back to Emily. "And that boy is not getting near you until he gets dipped."
"I vote for clipped." Luke quips with a quirk of a brow. "Wouldn't want to pass on any of those crazy cassadine traits.
"Oh pot and kettle, Spencer. I've lived in this town long enough to know that insanity doesn't just run in the Cassadine line. You're all a bunch of idiots." Cook mutters under her breath. "Sorry Lord, I'll do better next time." Cook takes a deep breath. "Okay," Cook looks around her. "I'll give that this is a family bar.... and loosely you would be considered family." Cook glares at Carly. "But you and I BOTH know what happens to little girls that hand out in bars, now don't we? And I don't like you encouraging her."
"Yeah, But she was with me." Carly tries to mitigate.
"Today, what about tomorrow?" Cook snaps back and then continues. "I'll keep this to myself as long as you stay back here. And I get a HINT of you messing up, I'm announcing it at a family dinner. Then you can deal with that."
"I swear that I will only enter a bar with family." Emily offers raising one hand.
Cooks eyes narrow. "Nope, not good enough. You swear that family doesn't include male Spencers."
"I'd have to agree with that one." Carly admits. "It's a good deal, Em."
"Okay, Deal." Emily shakes with Cook.
"Now Missy," Cook looks at Carly in her red wig and business suit. "Where is your son?"
"Oh hell! Irene. Be right back." Carly races from the room. She is breathless when she reaches the table where Irene is on her second glass of wine and Claude is still keeping her and Michael entertained. "Sorry, sorry, sorry. It's all better now. Come on let me introduce you to some people." Carly picks up Michael and loves and kisses on him. "Don't worry baby no blood shed this time. Thanks Irene. I didn't mean to drop all this on you."
"Claude has been explaining things to me." Irene bites her lip. "It's still all rather confusing."
"There are some things that just have to be experienced. Port Charles is one of them." Carly shrugs.