It was shortly after our third delivery run with Panda Freight, well before we purchased the Russion Unicorn. We were still flying around in the imaginatively designated CCSV PF-1138, a vessel that smelled as if it had previously been used to transport a ton of used socks, at this point.
This trip had left us back as Mars, and we had a couple of days off before we were scheduled to head out to New London. I had been saving up my credits, and wanted to take Delanna out for a nice meal.
I know now, and I guess I should have known then, that I didn't really have to do anything special to please Delanna. I was far out of her league to begin with, and if she needed that kind of impressing, we would never have gotten that far to begin with. Still, I was young, and stupid, and wanted to make the night special for her.
I got a reservation at Zeus, a restaurant built atop a thousand meter spire at the peak of Olympus
Mons. It was the highest restaurant in the whole solar system, if you didn’t count anything not built up from the ground, and very exclusive. A Lunar like me would never have been able to get a reservation there, but the Troy family name carried a lot of weight on Mars, so I made the reservation under Delanna’s name.
“What are we doing here, Zane?” Delanna asked me as her driver landed at the base of the restaurant tower. She sounded suspicious, and of course she had reason to be.
“We’re having dinner,” I explained, “It’s been six years since we first met-“
“I know when we first met.”
“-and I wanted us to commemorate it with a special dinner.”
“I know how much you make,” Delanna replied, “And I know how much eating here costs, so let’s go somewhere more reasonable.”
“Then you also know that they’re going to bill me for not showing up for our reservation, so we might as well go.”
Delanna smiled at me, “Okay, but I’m not loaning you any creds for beer later.”
We took the lift up to the restaurant dome, watching the immensely wide caldera that that restaurant was perched on the edge of drop away below us. I tried to imagine what it all must have looked like to the first colonists; what it must have looked like before a city was built up around it.
The maître d was a complete snootpot clad in a tuxedo and a pair of silver infospecs, and I might as well have been wearing a lapel pin that said “Lunar Trash” on it, because he was away from his podium and coming towards me before I even had both feet out of the lift.
“Excuse me, sir,” the attendant said, “but I believe you are in the wrong place; the Burger Bro is that way,” he pointed through the thick plastiglas that made up the walls of the restaurant to a speck in the distance.
I wanted to call him a quot, but I didn’t want anything to ruin the evening, “I have a reservation,” I said, trying to act like I had not even heard him.
“I highly doubt that.”
Delanna stepped up, her eyes narrowed at the man, “Look under Delanna Troy,” she said in tone very similar to the one he was using towards me.
The maître d looked at Delanna, he had been so fixated on getting rid of me that he had not even noticed her. His eyebrows raised above the top of his specs, “Miss Troy? I do apologize, I did not realize he,” he glanced over at me as if I had leaked out of a wastebin, “was with you.”
“I am with him.”
“Yes, of course. It is always a pleasure to have you with us.”
“If we could be shown to our table, please,” Delanna’s voice could have cut plastiglas.
“Of course, madam.”
The view was as spectacular as it appeared in the datastream; the kind of view that Lunars almost never get to see outside of trids. I would never have been able to experience something like that if I had no met Delanna, but her wealth had nothing to do with why I loved her. She could have been another rock-poor Lunar like me, and I still would have loved her with all my heart.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Delanna asked, noticing me staring down at Olympus below us through the window next to our table.
“Not half as beautiful as you,” I replied.
Delanna laughed, “That’s cheezey, Zane, even for you. Have you been watching those old Terran trids again?”
“I mean it though; you are the most perfect woman in the whole universe.”
“You just haven’t seen enough of the universe then,” she laughed, “We’ll get there though.”
“As long as you’re with me, I’m happy to go anywhere or nowhere at all.”
Delanna went easy on me when ordering. She ordered a salad and chixxen, when I know she would have ordered steak if she, or her dad had been paying. For me I had chixxen and water, but it was probably the best tank-grown chicken I’ve ever had.
The waiter, dressed almost identical to the maître d, save for the tuxedo jacket, treated me about the same. He barely acknowledged that I was there while fawning all over Delanna. She was not happy about this. She hated it when people treated us differently just because I was Lunar and she was Martian.
I think the way she was treated like royalty was part of why she liked doing cargo transport. When on a space station, she was just another spacer. People never made the connection between her name and the owner of Panda Freight, and she liked it that way.
“Would madam care for any desert tonight?” the server asked as a busser whisked away our dishes.
“I don’t think so,” Delanna said evenly, “Just the check, I think.”
“Of course, madam,” the waiter oozed, and then disappeared.
“You’re not leaving him a tip,” Delanna said once the waiter was away.
“Of course I am,”
“He has acted like you aren’t even here the whole meal. You are not tipping him.”
“Won’t that just confirm what he thinks of me then?”
“Frass what he thinks of you,” she said through gritted teeth, “All paying customers should be treated respectfully.”
I was starting to feel dejected. I almost aborted my plan, but Delanna was always able to read my emotions easily, “Zane, I really appreciate this, but I would have been just as happy if we had gone to Burger Bro.”
“I wanted tonight to be special.”
“It is special, every minute with you is special, but I would hope that you know after all this time that this,” she waved at the restaurant around us, “is not necessary to make me happy. Zeus does not make me happy. Dressing up does not make me happy. You make me happy, whether it’s in some crummy diner on a space station, or Taco Hut, or here.”
My heart was pounding in my chest. I was in fight or flight mode, and I had to make a decision. It wasn’t too late for me to pull back and do it again another time… but you only get one anniversary a year.
I went for it.
“But sometimes a setting like this is necessary,” I said, reaching into my pocket, “Some things just aren’t as meaningful if you do them in front of the a counter at Burger Bro.”
I pulled the small object from my pocket as I rose from my chair. I held it out in front of me, flipping open its lid as I dropped to one knee in front of Delanna.
“Delanna Troy, will you marry me?”
Her jaw dropped. She reached out hesitantly, and took the small box with the shiny ring inside it.
“How?” she asked, “How did you afford this?”
“I’ve been saving for a long time,” I said.
Delanna stood, and pulled me up to my feet. She threw her arms around me, and held me tight, “Oh, Zane,” she said, speechless for the first time I can think of.
“Is that a yes then?” I asked.
She released me, and stepped back. She looked at the ring, and then at me, “It’s beautiful, but no,” she shook her head.
Now it was my turn for a jaw drop, and not just my jaw either; it felt like someone had just dropped my heart off the side of the restaurant and down into the ancient caldera below. Every bit of my plan had gone sideways, and now I had to live with rejection by the love of my life.
“No?”
“No, Zane,” she shook her head. She closed the ring box, and held it out to me.
I’m not a big crier. In fact, I can only think of a few times before I lost Delanna that I cried about anything, but I felt on the urge of crying then. I took the ring back, and stared at the box stupidly. In my mind I was going through the humiliation of trying to return the ring; having to face another person who would know that she had said “no”.
Delanna placed her hands on my shoulders, “It’s not because I don’t want to marry you, honey.”
“You parents?” I asked.
“No, it’s not father either. It’s not the time.”
“Huh?”
“There is something we have to do before we can get married,” Delanna explained, “We need to be more independent.”
“How?”
“We need our own ship. Once we don’t have to move around the big black in a Panda Freight owned vessel, then you can ask me again.”
“I have to save up enough to buy a ship?” I asked.
“We have to, yes,” Delanna hugged me again, “Once we have our own ship, and can choose to work for father or not, then I will say yes.”
“So it’s not really a no?” I asked, wanting to clarify.
“No, you keep that ring, and when the time is right, ask me again.”
Nothing that night went the way I had wanted, but somehow I still felt like it was the best night of my life. There would be better to come, and of course there would much, much worse, but how many people can say that they were rejected by the love of their life, and yet still ended up with them?
If nothing else, it makes for a nice story, and when all is said and done, what do we have left for us by the stories?