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Kat is having three thoughts all at once, which is quite a feat of mental choreography. The first dips towards her consciousness in a fit of obviousness. It tells her through gritted teeth, There is someone riding your bumper. The second pulls aside her hair and whispers to her, So slam on the brakes and let him have it. The third claps its hand over the second's mouth and shouts, You can't! It's Patrick!The fourth thought is a logical sort. It would wear a monocle if thoughts did such things. As it is, the thought adjusts a metaphorical monocle and clears its throat.You, it says firmly, are Katarina Stratford.So she slams on the brakes. There is a screeching of metal as Patrick's little white Nissan, which seems to be held together solely with duct tape and force of will, slams neatly into the back of her car, and, thus presented with the indestructible obstacle that is Kat's rear bumper (which, by the way, had not a scratch on it after slamming Joey's car in high school), stops. She pulls over into the nearby college parking lot, jerks her keys from the ignition, and goes to greet her boyfriend of two years, who is standing beside his car and waving his arms as if he is attempting to do a little-known and complicated ritual dance used as a tribal remedy for damaged automobiles in Australia. "Patrick," Kat says, a bright smile on her face. "Gertrude!" he says, pushing his messy hair out of his eyes and rubbing his chin in the general direction of his car. She takes a step back. "You've already forgotten my name? It's only been a month."He finally makes eye contact with her and grins, slowly. "Sorry? You must be mistaken. I'm looking for my girlfriend. Kat. About your height, long blonde hair..."Kat crosses her eyes looking upward at the bangs. "You don't like it?" He opens his mouth, and she cuts him off. "Because it's not like I can just grow it back. There's a right answer here.""I love it," he says quickly. "Red's a very good color on you. With the stripes you look like a skunk, even." There is a moment wherein she contemplates the effort involved in starting her car up and running him over and compares it to the potential relief she might feel. "A very pretty skunk," he clarifies. "You are the Mona Lisa of skunks. I can't imagine a man who wouldn't stop to stare at your stripy locks of glory." Her thoughts hold a pitched battle in her skull for half a second before she laughs against her will and hugs him. Patrick smells like paint, and pot, and some sort of pie, and also just Patrick, which is the most pleasant of things that begin with P."Who's Gertrude?" she asks, her voice slightly muffled by his Nine Inch Nails T-shirt. "The car you just totaled," he says into her new hair, which she thinks looks kind of punk rock and kind of intriguing and yeah, kind of like a skunk, but only in bright lighting. She pulls back slightly. "I didn't total it. Gertrude will be fine after a visit to the car doctor." Patrick makes a moue. "Gertrude has been through too much. She can suffer another scar. Trust me, she's not particularly vain. She won't drink poison or anything." (1) He pats himself down for cigarettes, which he starts again every time she goes back to school after a visit. In the middle of feeling his back pocket he freezes and then looks sheepish in the rather shaggy way that is two parts endearing and one part infuriating. She's never met anyone else with quite so balanced a ratio. "Looking for something?" she asks. Patrick just smiles at her and then, seemingly inexplicably, kisses her. It has the effect of sending the petty thought about to force a gibe about his smoking habits from her lips fluttering to the pavement, which she realizes after a moment was his intention. She wrenches her lips from his. "Was that just to--"He kisses her again."No, really--"Patrick places a firm hand over her mouth, which she gives a sharp bite out of sheer principle, and tells her, as if to a child, "We've had this conversation, Kat. It's okay if your brain turns off during kissing. Actually, it's highly recommended."Now, let's have another, yeah?" There is another, and another, and Kat actually really wishes she had the capacity to turn her brain off, but it doesn't seem to work that way. "Why are you here?" she asks him. "You didn't, you know, schedule or anything.""Let's get married," he says, apropos of nothing. There is a small silence. "Yes, Patrick," says Patrick, in a ridiculous falsetto that she supposes is meant to mimic her voice. She does not sound like that. That sounds like Bianca. Or more appropriately, Cameron. "Certainly, Patrick. Anything you say, Patrick." He deepens his voice to an unrealistic baritone. "And then what happened?" He replies, this time in his own voice, "Then she threw her arms around my neck and kissed me, and off we went to Vegas." (2)Kat merely stares at him. She is aware her mouth is slightly open. She feels this can be forgiven under the circumstances. "You're not actually, uh, serious, are you?" she asks after a long moment, during which he shoves his hands in his pockets and smiles winningly at her. Simply because he still knows how to smile in that way doesn't mean that he hasn't cracked. "Maybe," he says, waggling his eyebrows. "Would it be so bad?""Well," says Kat, half-laughing and half-disbelieving, "well, I think I just got proposed to through the medium of a one-man puppet show sans actual puppets.""Would you like puppets?" he asks, and makes a sweeping bow. "Anything you ask for, lady, I'll gladly provide." "No, I don't want puppets," she snarls, suddenly feeling angry. "Did you or did you not just propose to me?"It occurs to her that if he was joking she is going to feel very small. It also occurs to her that if he wasn't, things could get very complicated very quickly. Patrick appears not to know either. He mulls it over. In the meantime, she rants, because she is, by now, so proficient that she does it as a place-holder while she thinks of other things. "I am in college! You work at a record store! You take night classes, for God's sake! We wouldn't be able to live anywhere! We would wind up in a trailer park in West Virginia and I would have to read The Feminine Mystique while barefoot and bouncing Baby!" Patrick scuffs his shoes on the asphalt and gives her a look that translates to "Eureka!" He says, with a grin, "I didn't mean this Sunday."Kat makes a concerted effort to close her mouth. Gingerly, she swallows, and then says quietly, "What did you mean?"Patrick wraps his arms around her. "Eventually." He looks down at her. "What d'you say?" "I don't know," she says, pulling herself out of his embrace and crossing her arms. For once, she has managed to shock him. She basks in this for a moment. "I mean," Kat continues, "I feel kind of shortchanged. Next time I want puppets." (1) See Hamlet, death of Gertrude
(2) See Taming of the Shrew, Act II, scene i. Proposal--if such it can be called--of Petruchio.