Chapter 29
The next day, Andy and Ash met up with Eric and Lily for lunch in a restaurant, something they still weren't accustomed to, even though they'd done it a couple of times since moving into New Eden. They'd been in quarantine so long that the basic things like eating out felt alien. They'd found a nice little BBQ joint that someone had opened within the walls of New Eden, and Andy was ecstatic.
Andy's hope was that they were going to keep getting more varieties of food in their new home town. The little 1950s dinner was nice, but the village needed things like a Mexican joint, a Chinese restaurant, a ramen house, a place where he could get a banh mi... Andy realized he really just needed the place to be less exclusively
white
.
The guy who owned and ran the BBQ was a big black guy named Bryant Walters who'd apparently played football for the 49ers a couple of decades ago. He'd settled in the Bay after his football career ended, and he had brought his love of southern BBQ to opening his own restaurant, called "Smoke On The Water." He had a dozen of his own BBQ sauces, brisket that he smoked for at least twelve hours and some of the best damn ribs Andy had ever tasted. It didn't hurt that Bryant was also massively friendly, making sure to come out and talk to patrons of the place. The wait staff was comprised of his partners, five women in all, at least one a former 49ers cheerleader.
Over lunch, Andy made sure to tell Bryant that he should have delivery service for the community, and the big burly man told him that was an excellent idea, and that he'd start working on a website for online orders.
The meal was the first chance that Andy and Eric had really been able to sit down and catch up one on one since they'd gotten to New Eden. Sure, they'd seen each other at parties and big gatherings, but with just Ash and Lily there, it felt like a throwback to the first days of the whole adventure when they'd been a pair of new couples sharing a tiny little condo.
"So yeah, what with all the casualties on my team, I've been promoted up the food chain to be director of the division," Eric said, poking at his brisket with his fork. "I like the responsibility and the increase in pay, but it's also incredibly depressing to think about all the former coworkers that died, none of whose funerals I can attend, because nobody's allowing funerals."
"Yeah," Andy sighed, "Phil told me they're moving to mass cremations now, since so many people died. They'll probably build some sort of memorial after we're through all of this, like the Vietnam Wall or Ground Zero for 9/11."
"It's so strange, seeing all the names on Slack that aren't lighting up any more," Eric sighed. "At some point, the death toll crossed from a number I can understand to a number I can't."
"Kill one person and it's murder; kill a hundred thousand and it's a statistic. Good ol' Stalin," Lily joked, squeezing his hand reassuringly. "Don't try and think about it, dear. You're only going to get angry or depressed again, and we're having a nice lunch here, with everyone getting a chance to see one another. I mean, I love Niko to death, but if Andy shows up with his entire tribe, it takes over the whole room. How many are there now, fifty?"
Ash giggled, rolling her eyes. "It really isn't tha' bad, Lily. How many're over there?"
"Seven, including Lily," Eric said.
"I refuse to let them send any more," Lily growled. "Each of the girls gets one day a week to spend with him, and he gets Sundays off."
"Then when do ya get time with him?"
"Any time I fucking want to," Lily laughed, waggling her beer in Eric's direction. "We're trying to have a kid now, and I'm refusing to let any of those other bitches get a go at getting knocked up until I'm well and truly swollen. Once I'm half way through my second trimester, then I'll let'em get off their birth control, and not a minute fucking sooner."
"Still got Eric under your thumb, huh, Lil?" Andy teased.
"Thumb, palm, elbow and heel," she said, grinning at him. "Not that he complains."
"Not that you'll let me," Eric grumbled, although he did have a smile on his face.
"Oh, you know that you love it."
"I mean, you actually seem really happy, Eric," Andy said. "I know the whole polygamy thing wasn't what you had planned, but you seem to be managing it pretty well."
"It's a new world, Eric," Aisling said to him. "Ya just need to roll with the punches and go with the flow. Craic on, and you'll do alright. Andy had some challenges when our pod jumped in scale, but he learned how t' manage."
"Well, the girls seemed to divide themselves into cliques pretty well on their own, and that helped."
"It didn't hurt that two of them are drop dead gorgeous world famous actresses either," Lily said. "Not that I blame you one bit. If Sarah Washington came at me with those big jiggly tits of hers, I don't think I could've said no."
"They are
great
tits," Ash giggled. "I've gotten lost in them more than a couple of times. I spent an hour reading last week with me head nestled between'em like pillows." Andy reached over and swatted Ash on the wrist, and she couldn't help but giggle a little bit more. "Oh like ya haven't as well."
"Didn't say I hadn't," he said with a smirk.
"So are you ready for your interview tomorrow?" Eric asked, changing the subject. "Don't forget to plug your books or Nicole'll have your head."
Andy nodded. His publicist, Nicole, had made it abundantly clear to him what she'd do to him if he didn't mention the books at least a little bit when he had screen time, but Andy had also stressed to her that he didn't have control of what they did and didn't air, something Nicole had, reluctantly, agreed with. "I mean, it's weird, knowing we're going to be getting interviewed for 60 Minutes, and that we're going to end up setting the standard for the new post-pandemic family unit. Who the hell saw that one coming, right?"
"Have you been doing any prep work in advance for it?" Eric had always been the more practical of the two men. "I know you don't think it's an adversarial interview, but it never hurts to be prepared, just in case it turns that way."
"I've done interviews before, Eric," Andy sighed. "You know that. Shit, you probably remember the phone interview I did with the Guardian in the UK a few years back."
"That was such a strange article they wrote. I swear, they were way more interested in getting you to talk about the rights being licensed out than they were the books themselves. It was funny, because I could've told them you barely knew anything about what the movie studio was doing, but they didn't seem to want to believe you."
"Yeah, I felt like they wanted to create a 'gotcha' moment they just weren't going to get from me. After a while, they just got frustrated and gave up."
"Dermot read that article," Ash said to him. "He said ya came off looking way smarter than the reporter did."
"Well, there's one vote of confidence in me," Andy joked. "Niko's at the base today, doing the tour along with Phil and Charlotte. Phil's running the show, but the good doctor's walking the reporter through the process itself, and Niko's giving them a sort of ground eye view of how the whole thing works, from arrival to departure. The President apparently thinks, and I happen to agree with her, that transparency is the best approach to all of this."
"Is everyone going to take part?" Lily asked them.
"Well, the plan is that everyone's going to be around for the day, but nobody has to talk to the reporter if the don't want to. The only people who've said in advance they don't want to be interviewed are Lauren and Sheridan," Ash said.
"They just don't wanna?"
"Well," Andy said, "Lauren's worried about how it'll reflect on the 49ers, so rather than ask the team's owners about it, she's just not going to take part."
"Same for Sheridan and the owners of Cirque," Ash said. "Everybody else seems okay with talking to the reporter, if they want ta, and Andy thinks it's best if we appear like we've nothin' to hide."
"We
don't
have anything to hide, Ash."
Ash giggled. "Taylor will, of course, be wearing clothes for the whole day."
"Okay, we don't have anything
