Episode 22, originally published 12-Feb-97

All Dressed Up With No Place To Go

The doorbell rings at the Newman ranch and Nikki yells, "I'll get it, Miguel!" She bounds to the door and opens it to find Paul. "I appreciate your coming over so promptly," she says. "Well, you sounded like it was something important," Paul explains. "It is," she says shyly. "I want you to help solve a mystery for me." Paul, who's missed doing mysteries for many months, looks suddenly excited. "A mystery?" he inquires eagerly. She nods. "To me, at least. I live on this huge estate on these huge grounds, and yet I spend all my time in this one room. I've explored the upstairs enough to know there's a bedroom waiting for me there, but I feel as if I'm missing out on something. Wouldn't an expensive estate like this have more rooms than this? I was wondering if you could do your super-sleuth thing and find out where the other rooms have gone..." Paul thinks for a moment. "Well, I've never done anything like that before, but-- there's a first time for everything, right? Sure. Why not?" Once again the doorbell rings, and once again the near-Pavlovian response, "I'll get it, Miguel!" Nikki yells. Then she says to Paul: "Well, I'll leave you to it--that's probably my hair stylist."

Dru is in the ballet studio working up a sweat. The musical piece she is dancing to comes to an end and Madame Chauvin claps briefly. "Drucilla, you are doing wonderfully. I am so glad you have taken these afternoons between your shoots to return to ballet. You have such undeniable talent that even your irresponsible lapses in practice have failed to kill it." "Thank you, Madame. I'm really excited. And thank you for not telling Neil about it because his Birthday is tomorrow and I'm looking forward to surprising him."

Outside the Newman estate, Paul is measuring the length of the house. "Wow," he says to himself, "this place really is enormous from the outside. There MUST be more rooms inside somewhere." He whips out his magnifying glass and holds it up at waist level, following along the side of the house, skipping over bushes that get in his way. Finally, through the magnifying glass, he sees a huge keyhole. "Somebody pretty big must live here," he mutters. Then suddenly he whips away the magnifying glass and says, "Oh, I see. Now it's small again. Phew." He presses on the doorbell and moments later a child of perhaps 6 years answers the door. "Is your mommy or daddy home?" Paul asks. A blank stare. "Su mama' o papa'? uh, en casa?" Paul says in his best, halting Spanish. "Papa'!" the kid yells as he runs off. Miguel answers. "Sr. Williams," he says, somewhat embarrassed. "I had not expected anyone to come to this door. Won't you come in?"

It's the next day. Neil has a blindfold wrapped around his eyes and is being led into the dance studio by Dru. She wears a short dress with ballet tights beneath. A small table has been arranged to one side, with a red and white checkered tablecloth. Olivia, Malcolm, and Madame Chauvin are seated at the table. Gina and a waiter from her restaurant stand to one side, like the parsley on their food, just to complete the look of the event. "Can I take off the blindfold yet?" Neil asks. "OK, go ahead." Dru says. He does, and all shout "Happy Birthday!" Neil looks around but there are no presents. "I told them their presense would be presents enough," Dru explains. "Ain't that cute? And my presents -- well, I've got a surprise for you. But first, let's eat."

The Rodriguez household. In the background, Sra. Rodriguez is serving a meal to several children of varying ages. In the foreground, apparently just finishing a walk through the spacious accomodations, Miguel sits with Paul in the living room. "Quite the place you have here, Miguel!" "Thank you, Señor," Miguel says proudly. "Now that you've had the tour around, what brings you by?" Paul is unsure how to begin. "Well, to tell the truth, Nikki was wondering if maybe there wasn't some other part of the Newman Estate that was going unused--you know how she's always holed up in the living room." "I knew this day might come," Miguel says with an air of resignation. "For years, I was asked to maintain this mansion and yet no one ever used many of the rooms. Finally, one weekend while they were out of town, I decided to just wall off the part that was never used and enlarge my own quarters." "And the family?" Paul asks. "Well, they never really ask about my private life, but surely you didn't think that I have none. I would have died of boredom years ago--it used to be I got to answer the door once in a while, but now no sooner does it ring and it's ``I'll get it, Miguel.'' So I don't really even have that to cling to any more. About the only thing that they need me for is to prepare large quantities of food on short notice, and then to dispose of that food when they decide not to eat it... And having a large family helps with both of those!"

It's late afternoon as Paul pushes the front door open and finds Nikki in the living room. Her hair has changed and she's wearing a fresh bouquet of daisies in her hair. "Did you find anything?" she says. Paul shakes his head. "Old, unused rooms? I'm afraid not. I did a thorough search and nothing like that. Just the servants' quarters--I assume you don't want to hang out there." "Oh, good gracious no, that's definitely below me. Well, thanks for checking, Paul. Your check will be in the mail." "Oh, no trouble," Paul says. The doorbell rings. Nikki turns to Paul, "Oh, I can't believe how time flies. Be a dear will you and get that--it's probably my hairdresser for my evening appointment, and I'm not even in evening attire. Could you get that on your way out?" As she races up the stairs to change she calls out "Paul's getting it, Miguel."

"You're not eating," Neil says to Drucilla. "No, that's one of the surprises. I'm going to dance for you and I didn't want to do it on a full stomach." She gets up and the music begins. She throws her dress to one side and dances away beautifully for them. Neil is entranced and nods his approbation to others at the table. When she finishes, she returns to where they're sitting. Neil doesn't waste a beat. "You see, Drucilla. If you weren't always traveling, you could be keeping up on your dancing. And you're so beautiful when you dance." Drucilla gets a big smile on her face. "That's the other surprise, Neil. I have been keeping up on my dancing, even with all the traveling. And now I've signed on for a big tour! Even Sid, you know--my high powered agent--he thinks it's a good thing. He says if he can just borrow me for a few hours here and there at some of the stops we'll already be making on the dance tour, he won't have to send me anywhere. So you see? It's going to work out, Neil. I'll be doing my ballet, just like you wanted, and there'll be no more trips just for modeling. Finally I can have it all!"

Miguel's living room. The doorbell rings and he goes to the door. It's Nicholas with Sharon. "Hey, Miguel. Que pasa?" Nick says in his best attempt to sound cool. "Hello, Sr. Newman. What a lot of company I have had today. Can I perhaps fix you a sandwich before you set out on your quest to escape your father?" "Actually, we were hoping we could ask a slightly bigger favor than that. Do you think we could hide out here for a while until things cool down with Dad?" "But I thought you had such big plans for getting away from him." "Well, I do. But then I bumped into Paul and asked him for ideas about where to hide out, and he told me about how well you'd done for yourself right here and no one ever knew." Miguel shifts uneasily in the door, trying to block Nick's view of accomodations so spacious they could only be the work of the same mind that allocated office space for young executives at Jabot. "Well, you see, Nicholas," Miguel lies, "I'm afraid we barely have enough room for ourselves here..."

"But I'll tell you what we could do," Miguel volunteers suddenly. "Why don't we modify your house to have a regular part (with just a Living Room) and a secret part (with everything else) like I've done with your mother's house?" Sharon gets suddenly excited, "Oh, could we? And could the nursery I had built be part of the secret area?" Miguel ponders for a moment and then says, "Well... since it's only accessible from the Living Room, it will make the geometry a bit complex. But who would have guessed there'd be enough room to build an add-on room in the center of an already-existing house anyway? Perhaps there is a local distortion of physical space somewhere in the house that we can use to our advantage. I have some friends in the construction industry--I'm sure they can help you." "Great!" says Nick, happy to have offloaded his problems on someone else. "Now about that lunch..." Miguel continues to block Nick's view into the door. "I'll have it brought down to you at your secret hideout, Nicholas." Nick and Sharon nod their thanks and start walking back to the house. "This is going to be great, Sharon. We can run away from home and we don't even have to leave the ranch to do it! I used to do this when I was a kid. Only then it was just me being silly; of course, this is nothing like that. Oh, I told you I'd work things out, Sharon!"

That's all for this episode. Hope you learned something. Don't miss Episode 23!
If you missed any older episodes, see the index.

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