Chapter 22

“Mooooo-gie,” Bena sang sweetly in her silliest voice. “Mooooo-gie,” she repeated, wrapping her arms around Leeta’s waist and leaning her head against her beautiful Bajoran mother’s midriff.

Leeta grinned at her daughter. “What is it, Beeeeeeee-na?” she replied.

Bena giggled. “I was just thinking that there’s nothing to do right now, soooo—maybe we can go see that recreation park? You said that it has a playground. Please, Moogie?”

“I have to help your grandmoogie clear this tongo table. But then—” Leeta paused, just long enough to nudge up her daughter’s excitement. “Then I think it sounds like a great idea! In fact, we can all go. We certainly deserve a little recreation, right?”

“Right!” shouted Bena, her eyes sparkling.

“Well, don’t count me in for recreation,” Quark huffed as he picked up several trays and headed for the kitchen. “Odo’s right. There’s no sense losing any more business right now. I’m going to reopen the bar—and the embassy.”

“Don’t count me in either,” Rom said softly. Then he looked at Leeta. “I’m so nervous. I think I’m going to stay until we hear back from Odo. I wouldn’t be good company at the park.” Turning to Bena, he asked, “Will you mind if I stay here?”

“Of course not, Daddy,” Bena said, and she smiled while her mother kissed him on the top of his head, in the little indentation where the front quarter spheres of his brain met.

“Come on, Zekkie,” Ishka said to the ex-Nagus. “We’re going on an outing to the recreation park. We can sit on the grass and watch Bena play.”

As they walked out the exit, Rom heard the former Nagus saying, “I hope the grass isn’t scratchy. I don’t like scratchy.” Then the current Nagus trudged over to the bar, where Quark was setting up glasses. He reached for a bar rag, intending to help polish the glassware, but he bumped one and it dropped to the floor with a crash.

“Oh, great,” his brother commented grumpily. “Now you can make me nervous.”

With the force field down and the lights turned up, the bar began to feel normal for the first time in days. Quark’s regular customers wandered in, relieved to discover that most of the visiting Ferengi were gone. Quark quickly fell into work mode, mixing beverages as fast as people could order them. There was just one problem.

“Where are all my waiters? Where’s my dabo attendant?” he yelled at Frool. “You’re the only one who’s shown up to work.”

Placing several drink orders on a tray, Frool rattled off an inventory of the missing personnel: “M’Pella went to Bajor to help out Treir—there’s some sorta sports event, so they’re busy; Broik overindulged in the slug liver canapés last night—he’s in the hospital with some kinda ‘digestive’ thing; Issa quit after the replicator threw up on him; you fired Shmenge—”

“Where’s Hetik?” Quark interrupted. “I need someone on that dabo table—it doesn’t play itself, you know!”

“Oh—uh, well, Hetik didn’t know how long you’d be closed down, so he went to see if he could get a part-time job at the spa.”

“Is he up there now?”

Frool nodded nervously.

“Well, go tell him that if he doesn’t get in here right away, he’s going to need one of those special spa skin creams to get my bootprint off his behind!” Quark shouted.

“But—”

“NOW!”

Rom quickly stepped forward and took the tray that Frool was holding. The waiter tossed him a grateful look and raced out the door. “And when you get back,” Quark shouted after him, “remind me to charge Broik for eating appetizers that were meant for the customers.”

Then, turning to Rom, he said, “You can put that down. I’ll get to them myself in a minute.”

“I’ll do it, Brother,” Rom said, sounding rather doleful. “I still remember how.”

Quark looked at him. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Rom,” he said sincerely. “It wouldn’t look right for the Grand Nagus to be slinging drinks.”

“I don’t care,” Rom asserted. “Besides, I’m not sure that I’ll still be the Nagus when this whole mess is over.”

Rom delivered the drinks on the tray and approached new customers as they seated themselves. “What’ll you have?” he asked, and they ordered just as if the guy with the tray wasn’t the highest-placed Ferengi in the galaxy.

“Black hole, iced millipede juice with an Acamarian brandy chaser, a synthale, and a Til’amin Froth,” he reported to Quark, then hustled away to take more orders.

“Bolian tonic water, Maraltian seev-ale, and a shot of tranya, straight up,” he recited as he picked up the previous order.

“One raktajino, a Finagle’s Folly, and a Warp Core Breach.”

And on and on, into the afternoon. As quickly as Quark could mix drinks, Rom delivered them. In no time at all, they fell into their old rhythm of working together, just as they’d done for years. As if they’d been doing it every day, without a hiatus.

As he stepped down from retrieving a bottle of kanar on the top shelf, Quark turned and found himself face-to-face with Rom, who’d jumped behind the bar to grab a bottle of Trixian bubble juice from the cooler. “Excuse me,” the two Ferengi said in perfect unison before each stepped back and moved off to serve his respective beverage.

Then both stopped, again in unison, and turned to glance at each other.

From opposite ends of the bar, they shared a warm, brotherly smile.