Chapter 112: The Agreement
Missy had been watching Sheldon from the living room doorway for about three minutes.
He was on the couch with his notebook open, but he wasn't writing in it. He was doing the thing he did when he was genuinely worried about something rather than academically engaged with it — the specific, unfocused staring of a person whose mind was somewhere else entirely.
She had a plan.
She came in and sat on the other end of the couch.
"Sheldon," she said.
He looked at her.
"I can help you with the Cecily situation," she said.
Sheldon looked at her with the evaluating expression he gave things he was skeptical of.
"You have a plan," he said.
"I have a plan," she said.
"What is it?"
She smiled.
It was the specific smile she produced when she had leverage.
"I'll make friends with Cecily," she said. "She's six. I can do that in about twenty minutes. Once she has me as a friend, she's going to be busy with me instead of looking for you."
Sheldon considered this.
It was, he had to admit, logical. Cecily wasn't targeting him out of malice — she wanted a playmate. If a more suitable playmate became available, the strategic pressure on Sheldon would be redirected.
"And what do you want for this?" he said.
Missy had been waiting for this question.
She looked at the television.
Sheldon followed her gaze.
"No," he said immediately.
"TV control," Missy said. "Weekday afternoons. Two hours."
"Absolutely not," Sheldon said. "The educational channel programming during that window covers content directly relevant to my current—"
"Okay," Missy said. She stood up.
"Where are you going?" Sheldon said.
"You don't want the deal," Missy said. "I'll go do something else."
Sheldon looked at the window. Through it, the Patterson house was visible at the end of the street.
He looked at his notebook.
He looked at Missy.
"One hour," he said.
"An hour and a half," she said.
"An hour and fifteen minutes," he said.
Missy looked at him with the expression of someone recognizing a specific form of stubbornness.
"Done," she said. "Starting Monday."
"Monday," Sheldon confirmed.
He reached into the pocket of his cardigan and produced a folded piece of paper and a pen.
Missy stared at him.
"I'm writing the terms," Sheldon said. "So there's no dispute later."
"You're writing a contract," Missy said.
"An agreement," Sheldon said. "There's a distinction."
He wrote the terms in his precise handwriting — start date, duration, the specific programming windows affected, a clause about Sheldon retaining priority rights during science specials on the educational channel, which he inserted while Missy was looking at the ceiling.
He showed it to her.
She read it.
"What's a science special?" she said.
"The network airs periodic documentary programming that falls outside the regular schedule," Sheldon said. "I retain priority for those."
"How often does that happen?" she said.
"Infrequently," he said.
"Define infrequently," she said.
"Fewer than twice per month," he said.
Missy looked at the contract.
"Fine," she said.
They shook hands with the specific formality of two people who had found this procedure somewhere and decided it was appropriate.
Missy put the agreement in her pocket.
"I'll go now," she said.
She went.
Seventeen minutes later she came back with the specific satisfied quality of someone who had completed a task efficiently.
Sheldon looked up from his notebook.
"Done?" he said.
"Done," she said.
"What did you do?" he said.
"I knocked on the Patterson door and told Cecily I had a big pink Barbie and a lot of craft supplies," Missy said. "She's coming over tomorrow."
Sheldon looked at her.
"That's it?" he said.
"She's six," Missy said. "It didn't take much."
Sheldon processed this.
It was, he thought, remarkably efficient. The whole operation had cost him an hour and fifteen minutes of weekday television access per day, which was a real price but a manageable one.
"Good," he said.
"You're welcome," Missy said.
She sat back down on the couch with the composed satisfaction of someone who had executed a business transaction correctly and was content with the terms.
Twenty minutes later, there was a knock at the front door.
Mary called from the dining room — the dinner that George had made was getting cold and she'd been listening for the gate — "Sheldon, can you get that?"
Sheldon's troubles had been resolved, which had put him in a better mood than he'd been in all week. He went to the door with the light, purposeful step of someone who had been freed from something.
He opened it.
Cecily Patterson was standing on the porch.
She was holding a small box, and she had the friendly, direct expression she'd had every time Sheldon had encountered her, which was the expression of someone who had no particular idea that she had been the subject of extensive household discussion for two weeks.
"I'm looking for Missy," she said.
Sheldon made a sound.
He moved backward.
The sound he made was not entirely voluntary, and the backward movement took him several steps into the living room before he arrived behind the armchair and stayed there.
"Sheldon?" Mary appeared from the dining room, read the situation, and shifted her gaze to the small figure at the door.
Connie came from the kitchen direction and looked at Cecily with the warm, practical assessment of someone seeing a six-year-old at the door.
"Hi there," Connie said. "Who are you looking for?"
"Missy," Cecily said.
"That's me!" Missy had materialized from the hallway with the specific, prompt energy of someone who had been expecting this.
Cecily's face lit up.
She held out the box. "I brought crayons. We can draw."
"I have so many colors already," Missy said, with the generous authority of a person issuing an invitation, "but mine are better when there are two people. Come see my room."
Cecily came through the door.
She looked around the living room with the open, curious attention of a child in a new place.
Her gaze moved across the room.
It found Sheldon behind the armchair.
She looked at him for a moment with the same direct, uncomplicated expression she'd had at the door.
Then she looked back at Missy.
"You have a pink Barbie?" she said.
"The big one," Missy confirmed.
Cecily's interest was fully and completely redirected.
The two of them went down the hallway toward Missy's room with the immediate, focused energy of new friends who had identified shared territory.
Connie watched them go.
She looked at Mary.
"She seems fine," Connie said.
"She seems fine," Mary agreed.
They both looked at Sheldon, who had emerged from behind the armchair with the careful movements of someone confirming that a threat had departed.
He stood in the living room.
He looked at where Cecily had been standing.
He looked at the hallway she'd disappeared down.
"She didn't look at me," he said.
"She was interested in Missy," Connie said.
"She completely ignored me," Sheldon said.
"Yes," Connie said.
Sheldon considered this.
"That's ideal," he said.
"I thought so," Connie said.
He went back to his notebook.
In the backyard of the Patterson yard, the music had wound down and the beer had wound down and the evening had the specific, comfortable quality of a gathering that had reached its natural conclusion.
George and Jeff were still on the haystack when Brenda's voice came over the fence.
"Herschel, Cecily went over to the Coopers'. Go check."
Jeff looked at George.
George looked at Jeff.
"She's probably fine," Jeff said.
"She's probably fine," George agreed.
"But I should go," Jeff said.
"Probably," George said.
They stood up from the haystack with the careful movements of men who had been sitting on a haystack drinking beer for an hour and a half and were finding the standing process more deliberate than usual.
Georgie stood up too.
Jeff turned off the speaker.
They came out through the yard gate into the street, and in the thirty feet between the gate and the Cooper front walk, something happened to the two men's expressions that suggested they had both made a silent agreement — the postures straightened slightly, the relaxed quality of the last hour was organized into something more composed, the specific calibration of men who were about to walk into their respective households and needed to look like they had been conducting adult business rather than drinking beer on a haystack.
Georgie watched this happen.
He looked at his father.
He looked at Jeff.
He looked back at his father.
"Serious negotiations," George said, with the flat, unconvincing delivery of a man who knew his teenager had watched the whole transformation happen.
"Obviously," Georgie said.
They went inside.
The Cooper house had the warm, settled quality of an evening that had been more eventful than expected and had landed well anyway.
George found Mary in the dining room with the food still on the table, slightly cooler than it had been, and the specific expression of a woman who had been waiting.
"The Patterson situation," George said. "We talked. It's fine."
Mary looked at him.
"Cecily's in Missy's room right now," she said.
George blinked.
"How did that happen?" he said.
"Missy," Mary said. She said it with the mild, specific admiration of someone who had just watched their child solve a problem efficiently.
George looked toward the hallway, from which the sound of two small girls engaged in something creative was audible.
"Huh," he said.
Jeff Patterson appeared in the open front doorway, having followed George in.
"Is Cecily—" he started.
"Missy's room," Mary said.
Jeff looked at the hallway.
He looked at Mary.
"They're going to be friends," he said. It wasn't a question.
"Probably," Mary said.
"Brenda's going to think that's wonderful," Jeff said.
"It is wonderful," Mary said. And found, as she said it, that she meant it.
Jeff nodded once. He looked at George. The nod communicated several things that didn't need to be said.
George returned it.
Jeff went home to tell Brenda that everything was fine.
(End of Chapter 112)
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