CHAPTER 75: Howard's Worst Pep Talk
Howard Wolowitz arrived at the Pasadena shop on a Tuesday with a binder.
It was a proper binder — three rings, color-coded tabs, laminated cover sheet — and it said OPERATION: GET BACK PENNY in block letters that he had clearly printed at home and then reconsidered and then not reconsidered enough. Stuart saw it coming through the glass before the door was open and had approximately four seconds to decide how to handle this.
He decided: with patience.
"I'm going to need you to hear me out," Howard said, setting the binder on the counter with the energy of a man presenting closing arguments.
"Howard."
"I know what you're thinking."
"Do you?"
"You're thinking this is ridiculous. It is not ridiculous. This is accumulated wisdom. This is relationship architecture." He tapped the laminated cover. "Tab one is Grand Gestures. Tab two is Strategic Vulnerability. Tab three is what I'm calling the Bernadette Protocol, which is a method I developed in 2007 that —"
"Did it work in 2007?"
A pause. "Define work."
A customer — Dale, who came in every other Tuesday and was, in Stuart's understanding, either a retired engineer or a very committed hobbyist; the distinction had never become clear — drifted past the counter, looked at the binder, and said, "Is that a limited edition?"
Howard blinked. "It's not — no, this is a personal document."
"The Defenders run?" Dale picked it up.
"Please don't —"
"I'll give you eight dollars for it."
"It's not a comic."
Dale turned it over, read the cover. Put it back. "Seven."
Howard retrieved the binder with the dignity of a man still catching up to what had just happened. Stuart was looking at the ceiling.
"Tab one," Howard said.
"Howard, I appreciate this."
"I know you're going to say you don't need it."
"I don't need it."
"That's what I said." Howard opened to Tab One anyway. "Okay, Gesture Option A: flash mob. I know a guy who does the choreography. He owes me. Well, he owes Raj, and Raj owes me, so it's — there's a chain."
"I'm not doing a flash mob."
"Option B: billboard. I looked into pricing. It's not as expensive as you'd think and it's only expensive in the way where you'd have to sell a kidney but —"
"No billboard."
"Option C is the airport scene. Classic. There's a script." He turned to a tabbed section. "I wrote some of the dialogue myself, I want to be transparent about that."
"How much of it."
"Most. Almost all of it. The romantic beats in particular. I feel I have a gift."
The bell above the door went. Raj walked in carrying a tote bag that appeared to be full of herbs.
"I brought the things," Raj said.
Howard pointed at him. "This is Tab Four."
Stuart looked at the tote bag. "What's in it."
Raj set it on the counter like he was presenting an archaeological find. "White sage, jasmine oil, a rose quartz geode, and a very specific playlist I curated using the Pythagorean frequency principles —"
"Raj."
"It's scientifically adjacent."
"No frequency principles." Stuart looked between them. He was aware that they were doing this because they cared, which was the thing that made it impossible to be impatient with. Howard had driven here on a Tuesday with a laminated binder. Raj had sourced a rose quartz geode. These were people who, in their way, loved him, and were terrible at this.
"She's good at the thing she's doing," Stuart said.
Howard stopped. "What?"
"She's good at the thing she's doing in New York. She's really good at it, and the thing she's doing requires being in New York." He straightened a rack of issues that didn't need straightening. "No billboard is going to fix that. And I wouldn't want it to."
A silence.
Raj said, slowly, "So you're not trying to get her back."
"I'm trying to do this without leaving any damage."
Howard had one hand on the binder. He was quiet for a moment — not the kind of quiet he performed, the kind that had gone genuinely still. Stuart had seen Howard genuinely still only a few times, and it was always slightly alarming, like watching a hummingbird stop.
Howard's phone buzzed. He read it. "Bernadette says she's going to judge my life choices at dinner."
"That sounds about right," Stuart said.
"She's very literal about that. She does it with a rubric." Howard picked up the binder. He looked at it for a moment. Then he reached in — not Tab One, not Tab Two — somewhere in the middle, and tore a single page out carefully, and folded it, and put it in his jacket pocket.
Stuart didn't ask.
"For what it's worth," Howard said, "the airport scene script is not bad. Objectively. As a script. Separate from the situation."
"I'll take your word for it."
"I wrote it in one sitting. Two hours. I was in a flow state." He tucked the binder under his arm. "You want to close early, we could all get food. No frequency principles. Just food."
Stuart looked at the shop. It was a Tuesday and there was no one in it except them and occasionally Dale.
"Give me ten minutes," he said.
Raj quietly put the geode back in the tote bag. Howard didn't say anything else. He went to stand near the new releases rack and turned a spinner with one finger, and read the covers, and waited.