Tom did a great job of carrying the conversation onward and encouraging people to share. As was the norm for this sort of thing, Tom did this once Off-Screen with an NPC, and then when they went On-Screen, he did it again with another NPC, greeting them, being polite, and encouraging them to speak.
Bobby held his breath, wating for his turn.
"Riley," Tom said, "you've been coming to group for some time now, but I don't remember if you've ever shared. I'd like to give you the opportunity today, but just know there is no pressure. As I understand it, you're here because of your parents' death."
Riley's eyes got wide, and Bobby thought he looked offended, like his plans had been ruined, as if he had cooked up some other backstory as a substitute for his own and now wouldn't be able to use it.
Riley cleared his throat. "Yes," he said. "When I was a kid... I actually prefer just to listen, if that's okay.”
Bobby wasn't surprised.
"Of course," Tom said. "Just know that when you're ready to talk, we're here for you."
"Man, you are nearly forty years old, and you're still upset about the death of your parents?" one of the NPCs said, taking Bobby by surprise.
Bobby found it funny that Riley and Kimberly had been aged up. Bobby was now the youngest of the group.
The man who had spoken wore one of those suits with a shiny finish on it, was it silk or nylon? Bobby didn't know. The man's shirt was unbuttoned almost halfway, exposing his chest hair. He was probably a handsome guy if it wasn't for the smirk and cruel eyes.
"Your parents died when you were a kid," the man continued. "At some point in time, you just have to man up. What's the point of getting over your trauma at this point? You've lived most of your life. If you can't talk about it now, there's no point in trying."
The man looked around the room for support. Bobby thought some of the NPCs agreed with him, but maybe they were just humoring him.
"Patrick, that is out of line. It is never too late to seek help," Tom said.
"You're wrong about that," Patrick said. "His parents died when he was a kid. His whole life, he's lived with this grief that he can't even talk about. What's the point of getting over it? It's not like he can go back to normal, he probably doesn't even remember normal. At this point in time, you just gotta let it go."
"Patrick, we've talked about this," Tom said.
"Alright, alright," Patrick said. "I hear you."
Tom stared him down, clearly not believing him.
"Despite himself," Tom said, "Patrick almost made a good point. Not the nonsense about being too old to grieve, but the part about being afraid to find a new status quo. Once you find even an unhealthy coping mechanism, like bottling your emotions, it's easy to fear that finding another coping mechanism may destroy the relative peace you've found. Better the devil you know than the one you don't, as they say. That's why I'm glad that we have these group meetings, so that we can all learn about each other's coping mechanisms, and maybe we can find one better than our own."
He looked Riley in the eye and nodded.
Then he briefly looked at Patrick and said, "But that doesn't work if your coping mechanism is to hastily judge others in order to avoid really evaluating your own problems."
Bobby smiled. Tom had been just subtle enough that Patrick hadn't realized that comment was directed at him.
Bobby looked back at Riley. Kimberly was comforting him. Those two were often paired together in casting. Bobby didn't have anyone like that, not until Jules came along. But Jules did not appear to be as closely tied to him as normal. He had not used the recast trope he often brought into storylines, Last Minute Casting, which would cast him as a random NPC with an involvement in the plot. Maybe that was why Jules hadn't been with him like normal.
As he thought about this, Bobby heard someone saying his name.
It was Tom.
"I'm sorry, what?" Bobby asked.
"I was saying that you haven't shared in a few weeks. Maybe you might want to get something off your chest," Tom said.
Bobby took a deep breath. He had to pull the thread that brought him closer to Janet.
"I pushed the wrong button on my answering machine this morning," he said. "It played an old message, one that Janet, my wife, had left for me. It was about groceries, how she was going to go across town to the store, so she might be a while. She said 'I love you' and everything, and for this brief moment I thought that it was a new message."
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Bobby started to cry. He really had heard Janet's voice on the answering machine that morning. The tears were real. He didn’t care what the others thought.
"I know that's ridiculous. It's been almost nine months now," he said, basing it on a calendar he had found in his home. "And now it feels like even the cops have given up. It's a cold case. The thing is, at this point, I don't know what to do. It's so hard not knowing what happened. Every time I feel like I'm about to grieve losing her, I feel awful because just allowing myself to grieve is also allowing myself to give up on her. I mean, I don't know where she is, she might be out there and I need to look for her, but I don't know where else to look. And I'm afraid to give up. I feel like I'm caught in limbo, and I don't know which way is which anymore… Have I given you guys missing posters yet? It has her picture on it."
Once he started talking, he couldn’t stop.
"I think there's one on the message board," Tom said softly.
"Oh, right," Bobby said. "You know, the cop who was investigating her disappearance just retired a couple of weeks ago. They passed the case on to somebody else. I don't know what that means. Is there any chance that this next person is going to look for her nearly as hard as the other guy did, when it wasn't even his case originally? I just don’t know what to do."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Tom said, “Truly.”
A few more NPCs chimed in, some giving condolences, others messages of hope.
Kimberly suggested that Riley might be able to run a missing person’s profile for Janet; he had a lot of pull with the Carousel News Network.
Bobby thanked her.
And then Patrick started to speak. "Yeah, I was a mess when my ex left me," he said.
It seemed so simple, but Bobby felt like he was being made fun of.
"She didn't leave me," Bobby said angrily. "She disappeared. She's missing. I don't know what happened to her; she could be dead. How can you say something like that?"
Patrick barely even hid his smirk.
For a moment, Bobby considered jumping across the circle and punching Patrick, but he knew that might harm his character arc. He didn't know yet whether violence was the solution, but he sure hoped it would be.
The meeting went on for a little while longer, but just to gather footage, Bobby assumed.
As he was leaving, headed toward the parking lot, where he didn't actually have a car, but everyone else was going in that direction, he went On-Screen.
"Hey, Bobby, wait up," Tom called from behind him.
Bobby turned and did as asked.
"Hey, buddy, I was meaning to talk to you," Tom said.
Bobby didn't answer, but he looked expectantly at Tom.
"Look, I know that this group is great for some people who are just looking for closure or someone to listen to them, but I think I know of another group that might be more fitting for your particular situation," Tom said once all of the other group members had walked past.
"Like a group for people with missing loved ones?" Bobby asked.
"It's a specialized group," Tom said. "I can't really talk about it here, but I'd really like to invite you to try it out. Everything we do, we do for a better world. I know it sounds hokey, but if you're interested, here."
He held out a card. Bobby grabbed it.
"Twenty percent off frozen shrimp at Eternal Savers Club," Bobby read from the card.
"No, it's, well, it's on the back," Tom said with a laugh. "But we do meet at Eternal Savers Club, strangely enough. In the basement, not the frozen food section, I assure you. I wrote down my phone number."
Bobby regarded the card with suspicion, but he wasn't going to turn it down.
"I'll think about it," he said. "Do I have to be a member of the club?"
Tom laughed.
"No, we can take care of that, just don't tell my boss," he joked.
Bobby stared down at the card and nodded to Tom as he walked away.
"Don't worry," Riley said. "We still have an hour before I go On-Screen, and since you're here with me, that means it's at least an hour for you too."
"I'm not worried," Bobby said.
They were at the diner. Kimberly and Riley had a party to go to, but Bobby would just go home to his dogs. That sounded about right to him.
Antoine was there. He leaned into the center of the table and said, "Have you guys noticed the vibe here is just weird?"
They all agreed.
"People are so mean," Kimberly said. She went on to tell stories about things that she had seen so far in the storyline. Riley talked about the mean jokes Antoine had read off on his show.
"Well, it's the nineties," Bobby said. "That's just how things were then. Fat jokes were super common and nobody said a thing."
"It wasn't just fat jokes," Riley said. "It was the way they laughed."
Bobby shrugged his shoulders.
"And then there was that guy tonight, Patrick. Obviously, he was supposed to be a jerk, and Tom was supposed to look like a good guy by slapping him down. But the rest of the NPCs didn't look that offended," Riley said.
"Yeah," was all Bobby could muster. They didn't need his opinion; they hardly ever asked for it. They had their Film Buff.
They did, however, need him to read the script to the failed storyline, because he was the only one who could see it on the red wallpaper.
"I'm telling you, I read through it," Bobby said. "Not much has happened. It's not a good script, it's not a complete story. We know that the employees at Eternal Savers Club are supernatural bad guys of some kind, probably a cult. As we know, the script only goes as far as the players made it."
"And how far is that?" Riley asked.
"Thirty pages," Bobby said.
"You're kidding," Kimberly said.
"So when Sal said they only had thirty usable minutes, he meant thirty screenplay pages," Riley said.
"The rule of thumb with screenplays is that they'll end up being a minute per page in the final movie, so yeah," Bobby said. "I can still take you through it, but the players had learned next to nothing. What I will say is that there is something under Eternal Savers Club."
"Didn't you say that Tom invited you to the basement?" Kimberly asked.
"Sounds like somebody's the main character," Antoine added.
Bobby nodded. "We'll see how I do."
He had been the main character before, technically, but the movie was Itch, and while they had completed it, it wasn't exactly character-driven.
"I'm sorry that Carousel is bringing up your wife," Kimberly said.
Bobby shrugged.
"Carousel will do anything for production value," Riley added.
Bobby didn't respond. He didn't want them to know how desperate he was for Carousel to even acknowledge Janet. He knew that he couldn't talk about it, because Riley would start freaking out. Whatever force had taken his wife had also scared Riley right through the fourth wall.
It was torture for Bobby that the answers to his wife's disappearance were sitting across from him, and he couldn't even ask about it. What a stupid rule.