Work Text:
"Hello-o-o?"
"Mrs. Morgendorffer?" The boy on the phone is certainly polite. "This is Tom, Daria's friend."
"Daria's—friend?"
"Jane and I promised to drive her to the bookstore today. I was calling to check if she's ready."
"Oh, well, I was hoping that today... yes, I think she's up and about."
"And just between you and me, Jane wants to treat her to lunch at the mall food court to make up for being really busy lately."
"That's awfully sweet of her. Hold on, I'll get her. Daria! Telephone! Jane and Tom are ready to take you to the bookstore!"
"Oh. Yes. Gee, it's Saturday already? I had almost forgotten."
* * *
Daria seriously questions the plan when she discovers that it involves riding in Tom's car.
"Come on, live a little," he cajoles.
"I'm afraid that a little is exactly how much we are all going to live." But her mother is watching through the front window, so in she climbs. Jane is in the front passenger seat. She smiles and looks exhausted. "Hey, Jane. On the subject of wrecks, are you OK?"
"Up late," Jane says through a yawn. "Been chasing the dragon."
Daria asks, "Uh, Jane, isn't that heroin?"
"The inspiration dragon," Jane clarifies. "Big art project. Big, big art project." She smiles again, wanly, and tries to curl up in her seat.
"I think she's plum tuckered out," Daria monotones.
Tom starts the car, successfully. "Hey, do you mind if we drop by Sunspot Video while we're at the mall? I was hoping to see if they have the box set of The Prisoner."
Daria watches Jane drift off. "I didn't know they made TV shows about high school."
"Ha. It's pretty surreal. You might like it."
"You neglect the fact," Daria tells him, "that my father gets revenge on his father by watching all the weird TV that he wouldn't allow in the house. We caught it on late-night PBS about a year ago. I think it was captivating in how it stuck to its bizarreness without compromise, but I found it pretty misogynistic. 'Never trust a woman, even the four-legged variety'? I think that's the creator's voice, not the character's."
Tom says, "I keep forgetting that both you and Jane are from a cooler world."
Jane's head wobbles up. "Damn skippy," she mumbles, and falls back asleep.
On the rest of the way to the mall, their conversation takes a random walk. From surreal cult TV they wander to experimental film, and Tom mentions that he has a VHS of Dziga Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera, he has a whole shelf of tapes actually that he'd bought used from a college that had employed them for a film-studies course. And they meander from there to discussing the bookstore just off the Lawndale State campus, where Daria had once bought an old paperback of Murder on the Orient Express, and Tom had visited maybe a dozen times... Daria finds herself vaguely uncomfortable with how easily he mentions buying stuff. From that first night in the Zon, she could tell his family was better off than Jane's, but it took a while for the fact to come into focus that the Sloanes were, well, the Sloanes.
Still, he actually wanted to watch Man With a Movie Camera and Chimes at Midnight and Koyaanisqatsi. He actually had opinions on Orient Express versus Death on the Nile. He was able to pile up books of his own while Daria mostly relied on the library and judicious purchases of her absolute favorites. But did he have anyone to talk about them with?
"My aunt," Daria offers, "the one aunt that I get along with, sent me a first edition of Cat's Cradle last Christmas."
"Cool," Tom says, and means it.
"And we talk movies sometimes when she calls. Like, last month we got into it about 8 1/2..."
And so Tom and Daria are arguing Fellini when he parks the car, unwrecked and non-exploded, at the shopping mall.
* * *
Jane rubs her eyes. Daria and Tom are doing a surprisingly small amount of going for each other's throats. In fact, she is making him chuckle occasionally, and now and then, he is prompting the start of a smile. (She knows that Daria's smiles begin at her eyes, behind her glasses.) "Hey, Daria? Want to hit Cluster Burger or that Samurai Hibachi place? I owe you lunch. To make up for being so gone lately," she adds.
"Uh? Sure."
"I'll just get a pretzel dog," Tom says, "and give you two room to catch up while I hit the video store."
"Thanks," says Daria.
Jane watches him go, ratty sweater and good shoes and all.
Over piles of teriyaki chicken, she falls into the old groove and bends Daria's ear about her latest art project. It will be a sculpture in broken glass. She is finding the story of it as it takes shape under her hands.
"Cool," Daria says, and means it.
Jane gives Tom a quick side-hug when he returns. Sunspot Video didn't have The Prisoner, but he did get a DVD of A Hard Day's Night.
Daria asks, "Interested in the Nouvelle Vague being imported to England, or just in John Lennon being off the chain?"
Before they can get into it again, Jane links arms with Tom. "We promised the bookstore, right? Can't let your mom see you return without books."
Jane thinks back to planning this escapade. She knows she had been right to give Daria a break from her family, that it was good to spend time alone or alone-in-a-crowd with Daria. Tom and Daria getting along without pistols at dawn was, well, it was nice, wasn't it? Tom could use a booksmart friend. Who better than Daria? (Really, who ever better than Daria?) What was there to worry about, Tom suddenly wanting to date Daria, or Daria suddenly wanting to date Tom? Who could imagine Daria doing a thing like that? (Daria certainly didn't see herself that way.) That just wasn't her speed. (But she really sold herself short in the appeal department.) It was good to hatch plans with Tom to involve Daria and get her out into the world. (Jane does a lot of thinking about Daria when she is with her boyfriend. She does not dwell on this.)