Missing Person!

Where the hell is DL?

PP’s been hanging out in the Berktopia Sauna chatting with Sandy about what else? All My Children. Who will discover that Erica Kane is in fact a crazed fan gone plastic surgery hog wild? Will it be her fiancé, Jackson? Or her lesbian daughter, Bianca? Or her archrival, Greenlee?

Everyone acknowledges that Erica hasn’t been herself since the kidnapping, but.....
Will anyone ever figure it out?

Yet, as PP and Sandy speculate about the possibilities of discovery, PP has this nagging worry as their talk continues.

DL was supposed to meet her in the sauna at 9:30 and it must be 9:45 by now.

Where the hell is she?

She’s never late—unusual for an Italian-- but there you have it.

Something’s very wrong.

Of course, PP jumps to the worst possible scenarios:

She’s fallen off the treadmill and been carted off to the emergency room.

She’s had a psychic breakdown from the unfamiliarity of Berktopia being thrust upon her, so now, she’s out on the streets of Berkeley, wandering aimlessly up and down Addison, strange weirdos accosting her in the darkness.

She’s passed out behind the counter of the Y, hidden away in a room with concerned YMCA clerks waving smelling salts under her nose.

Okay, she’s not in a Victorian Novel, but you all get PP’s anxiety.

Where oh where is she?

It had been a strange night to begin with. The Oakland Y was closed due to ‘paint fumes’ from an outside source—mysterious and stupid, but they’d been forced to venture into Berktopia spontaneously. Spontaneity with PP and DL is sometimes ok and sometimes not. DL had seemed unnerved this eve by being at Berktopia, so now that she’s gone ‘missing’ PP unlike the citizens of Pine Valley, knows that something is WRONG!!!!!


PP interrupts Sandy’s monologue about Greenlee being the most likely to succeed, “Have you seen DL tonight?”
”Nope.”
“That’s so weird. She was supposed to meet me at 9:30 here. What time is it now?”
Sandy leans out and over to glance at the clock, “It’s about 9: 43.” (PP always thinks it’s funny that she says ‘about’) but tonight, it doesn’t strike her as funny.






Only as Anguish! 9:43! DL is 13 minutes late! What can it mean?

“I better go look for her,” PP rises, pulling her damp suit back on and weaving through the crowd of Japanese beauties to exit the sauna.
“You could have her paged,” Sandy suggests.
PP nods, relieved to have a plan of action. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Good luck.”

PP wanders out, wrapping her towel round her waist wondering if she should go to the bathroom before venturing on her mission.
Decides against it. Time is of the essence. The Y is gonna close soon and she must find DL before it’s too late.
Not to be melodramatic or anything.
But it felt this way.

PP hurries up the stairs. Decides to take a quick look around all the exercise rooms before going to the extreme of having DL paged. Maybe she just got caught up in Ameircan Idol and lost track of time?




The floor cold on her bare feet, PP thinks for a minute how she shoulda put some shoes on, but then she was in her swimsuit and so....

It didn’t matter.

Hurrying though the weight room and then the treadmill room PP glances around. No DL in the weight room. She’s not on the treadmills though it was hard to tell where the room ended what with all the goddamn mirrors. PP’s anxiety exacerbates the mirror distortion.

Damn.
Where the hell is she?

PP rushes back down the stairs to ask for the Paging Element.

A Big Pasty Clerk is chatting amiably with a Big Pasty Berkeleyite.
“I told myself I wasn’t gonna make it tonight. And then here I am.”
”That’s the important thing, Doreen,” PBC guffaws.
“And then my car was towed and I had to call my ex husband to help....”

PP sighs loudly, glaring at them. Don’t they know that she’s in the middle of a crisis? That there’s a missing person at the Y and she needs answers pronto!?

“Excuse, me,” PP finally butts in, “but can you page someone for me?”
They both look at her likes she’s crackers.
“We don’t have a paging system,” BPC shakes his head.
“You don’t?” PP is staggered by this information. How could that be? What do they do when the need to announce closing time? To call a staff member to the Welcome Center
To find a MISSING PERSON????

PP is beside herself.

What the hell was she gonna do?

~to be continued~