Reunion (The Monkees Family Vol. 3)

Chapter 30

They tracked down Robert and Lynda and rode in a cab back to the hotel. No one spoke of the evening's final events. They only spoke of the play and the following day's plans. It was to be their last full day in town, though whether Gabby would be leaving as planned was now in question, depending on whether there would be further business pending with the police.

Just as Lynda was telling Robert in their room he had to be insane if he thought she was still in the mood to make love after everything that had happened tonight, Micky and Gabby were in their room, trying to figure out what to do with themselves. Gabby removed her shredded dress and dropped it in the trashcan in the bathroom, clearly intending for the housekeeping staff to remove it from her sight as soon as they came in to clean the next day. Then she looked at it and plucked it out again, hugged it and kissed it, then replaced it in the trashcan.

Micky gave her a mystified look so she explained "I did so love that dress because you bought it for me and it was such a beauty, but to be honest, it's given me nothing but trouble. Between what happened in it tonight, and the last time I wore it, when Davy hit on me in the shack the first time I wore it, it's got bad juju. So I thanked it for its loveliness but told it it's got to leave my life because it has bad vibes."

Micky nodded as if this was a perfectly reasonable explanation. He was used to Gabby's philosophy that not only did people and animals have emotions, but plants and even inanimate objects did as well. Emotions, vibes and spirits. They were either positive or negative, forces for good or evil, and they could all be read and understood if you were paying attention. Gabby ascribed her ability to read those signals to what she called her empathic skills. Even though Micky completely trusted the veracity of this theory, he lamented that it didn't protect Gabby from coming to harm. It only made her more conscious of the harm as it occurred.

Next, she removed her sliced up bra and dropped it in the bin with her dress. It was of an ivory color, neither pink nor blue like Micky often chose for her. He often gave her lingerie with gender-cued colors when they had spent a year trying to produce a child. When he had presented her with this bra, she had quizzed him about his atypical color choice and he explained "this is just so you know I don't care if it's a boy or a girl or an 'I-don't-know-what-I-am' kind of person."

She loved him dearly for having that open, freewheeling, accepting nature about people, and certainly Micky did have some very out there, eccentric, gender-bending friends. One of his best friends, Alice Cooper, wore heavy eye makeup and had extremely long hair for his stage persona, yet he was the personification of male sexuality. As she let go of the bra and tossed it in the can, she mourned "That was my very favorite of the bras you gave me. It was the personification of how open you are to all sorts of people and how important individuality is to you."

Micky smiled and offered "I'll buy you another one. And this one won't have any failed baby making vibes. That will make it even better, right?"

"Yeah, I suppose so. I don't really feel like that part of our life was a failure, just a learning experience. And it did bring us close together."

"Even though it set me up for a terrible, selfish mindset and compromised your beliefs?"

Gabby paused to consider. "Well, I guess there's no growth without pain. But you can't deny the fringe benefits were pretty great." She winked at him saucily.

"You're the most, Gabby. How you can have a sense of humor on a night like this, I don't know. So now what do you want to do? Bed, shower, bath? Want me to call room service for you? What can I do for you, if anything?"

Gabby contemplated. "These days, I think the thing I want to do and the thing I should do are two different things, and I'm going to choose the thing I should do. So let's have our bath even though I don't want to because it's going to make me feel vulnerable and we're both going to have to face up to what Sharon did to my body. I'd rather avoid it and put it off, which means I shouldn't. Okay?"