Lunching in LA

[dead_hooker_2]

Sometimes a girl wants to see and be seen when she goes out in LA, and sometimes she really doesn't. If you're Trina Echolls, the former is usually the case and the latter is hard to pull off these days, after the thing with Nicole and Logan's . . . whatever that was on Larry King last night.

But she manages, at times like this, because Carl is the creme de la creme of maitre'ds. Which is why she's waiting for her little brother in a table tucked neatly in back of a restaurant (that can't be seen from the door or any of the windows), with iced tea, breaking a breadstick into pieces.

Comments

[dead_hooker_2]

"That I'd be something other than complete shit at the older sister thing?"

[obligatoryass]

"That you'd come back," he says. "I mean, I know it's stupid. You were only my age, and there's no way I'd do that kind of shit, if I had a younger sibling."

[dead_hooker_2]

"You'd have been in foster care so fast it would have made your head spin, assuming Dad and Lynn hadn't made alternate arragements.

"I know I'm not a good sister, Logan. You've made your point."

[obligatoryass]

Logan finally looks up from his straw. "That wasn't what I was saying," he says. "I mean, no, you weren't, but I just...fuck."

There aren't words for this, really. She was a pretty bad older sibling, yeah, but she did the best she could.

"I just was talking to this fake Charlie, and he didn't want to be us, our family, a part of that. But he didn't know about the other stuff, and so he didn't even know how much he didn't want to be a part of our family. And I told him, and he was fake, and the other Charlie, the real one...he'll never want anything to do with me. Us. Anyone named Echolls."

He's out of words, now, the rush dried up. He passes a hand across his face, resting his forefinger on the bridge of his nose.

[dead_hooker_2]

"If you'd had a choice, would you have picked us?"

[obligatoryass]

"No," Logan says, and it's achingly hard thing to say that short, hard word.

"Not the parents, especially, not Lynn and Aaron. Not the Kanes, either. About the only person who I ever envied for her parents was Veronica. How fucked up is that?"

[dead_hooker_2]

"Less fucked up than a lot of other things about you," she says. Then amends, "About us."

[obligatoryass]

Logan smiles a little, a small, knowing sort of smile that's amused but also a little rueful. "Yeah," he says. "That's a good point."

[dead_hooker_2]

"Or a bad one," she says.

"I guess, when you get right down to it, it's kind of a miracle we're here talking to each other."

[obligatoryass]

"Very true," Logan says. "This relationship should have self-destructed years ago."

There's a very long pause, and he finally says, very quietly, "I'm glad it didn't."

[dead_hooker_2]

"Yeah," she says. "You're kind of the only decent relative I have. That I've known for more than a year.

"Well, you're the only relative I have at all that I've known for more than a year. But I'm glad you're the one I have left."

[obligatoryass]

LOgan's smile is now larger, growing slowly. It's also sincere and very, very sweet.

"Thanks," he says. "Technically, we've got one other relative left out there, but I'm not sure he's going to do us much good."

[dead_hooker_2]

"Screw him," says Trina. "He'd be lucky to have us, and it's totally his loss."

This more or less flatly contradicts some other things she's said. But flat contradictions have never really bothered Trina.

[obligatoryass]

Logan just laughs. She's wrong, he's pretty sure of it. He's pretty sure that last night he made Charlie Stone's nice, ordinary life into something like a living hell, but at this time and this place, it doesn't seem to matter. "Cheers to that," he says, raising his soda.

[dead_hooker_2]

Aaron Echolls did not father (or adopt) children who get to have nice, ordinary lives. And if Charlie Stone wanted one, taking the money was stupid.

"Always," she says.