Author's Note: I'm procrastinating on my NaNo novel to post this. I got stuck and then I got ideas for how I wanted this to go, so I wrote this instead. Thanks for your patience and thanks for the comments.
Part Seven: I didn’t want to be alone today.
Here I am, back in front of the bathroom mirror. Only this time, I’m not languishing over my scars or my past. I’m trying to look toward the future. That future is now in my hands.
It’s a new bottle of pills. A crazy long name is printed on the side. I can’t pronounce it. The doctors have already explained this to me once before. The lead in my system was constant, thanks to the lodged bullet. I would never, ever be able to just flush it all out completely. All I could really do was control it. These pills are going to help me do that.
It’s been about a week since I left the hospital. I still haven’t swallowed one.
I shake the bottle absentmindedly, listening to the pills rattle inside. I see myself in the mirror again. I see my eyes, heavy with fatigue and age. It seems silly that I wasted a whole year of my life trying to hide from my mistakes, trying to cover up what happened to me 12 years ago.
I’m at that age where ‘mid-life crisis’ is a common phrase and the fear of losing one’s hair is imminent. I’m at that age where every single second of life starts to become more precious. At the age of forty-three, my fiftieth birthday still seems a long way off, but ask anyone and they’ll state the truth: time gets away from you. It won’t feel like it, but suddenly, you’re ten years older. I wasted a year moping.
Except, I wasn’t really moping as much as I was searching. Maybe my mid-life crisis has come and gone. You know, if trying to carve a bullet out of your own body amounts to a “mid-life crisis”.
I’m back home. I’m back in Vegas. I have a family here.
“Tony! You’re going to miss your cooking lesson, you stay in there any longer!”
Sofia. It’s our day off and I asked her to stop by. I didn’t want to be alone today. She’s teaching me to cook pancakes. It’s a lot harder than one would think.
I set the pills down on the sink. I’m not ready yet. Not ready to give in to the consequences of aging. I’ve been lucky enough to go through life without depending on medication. I need time to adjust to that idea.
I walk into my little kitchenette and she’s got the batter all ready. She looks at me, “So, you took them?”
“Yeah,” I lie, easily. “No sweat. Just gotta take one a day.”
She smiles, “Good. I’m glad you’re doing this, Tony. You need to be 100 out there.”
“I know. I’m doing as the doctor says,” I lie again and Sofia is none the wiser. There goes that blind loyalty of hers, that blind trust in me. I really hate myself sometimes, I really do. This will be the last time I lie to her. . .outright.
I will take the pills. Just not today.
“What?” she says. I must be staring at her like an idiot. Spacing out is something I have to work on.
“Nothing,” I say quickly. I join her at the counter and focus on the food, “So, you wrote down all the stuff that goes in this bowl of goop?”
Sofia grins, “This ‘bowl of goop’, Tony, is pancake batter. It’s ridiculously bad for you and tastes like heaven. I’ve done the hard part, now it’s your turn to do the easy part.”
She hands me a scoop, then instructs, “Dip that in there, scoop some out and pour it onto the griddle.”
I glance at her sidelong, then I do as she says. I scoop out some of the batter, than pour it onto the griddle. The batter sizzles instantly. Easy.
“Now, it’s hot, so you have to pay attention at all times,” she tells me. “Watch for the bubbles. When there are bubbles all over the top, it’s time to flip.”
So I watch and wait. It doesn’t take long for the half-cooked cake to bubble up. I get the spatula, shove it under the cake and go to flip it over. It falls apart on me.
Sofia laughs and says sweetly, “It’s your first one. The first one always falls apart.”
“You’re just saying that to be nice,” I say. Am I pouting? Tony Vartann does not pout.
“No, no, I’m being honest. Cooking is a practiced activity. You’ll get it,” Sofia urges gently, patting my arm. “Just keep repeating what I told you. Catherine will be really impressed tomorrow.”
I look at Sofia and say sternly, “This is not a . . .”
“It’s not a date. I know, I know,” Sofia rolls her eyes. She shakes her head at me, “You’re in such denial, Detective. You’ve got it bad.”
“Do not,” I retort.
“Yes, you do,” Sofia laughs.
“Do not,” I repeat, my tone so serious, even I have to laugh.
“You’re acting like a child,” Sofia points out, doing nothing to hide her amusement.
I groan aloud. She’s right. I do have it bad.
So I try to keep the focus on pancakes. I spray the griddle, pour the batter, flip the cakes and repeat. Soon enough, I’ve made my first real batch of pancakes, floppy and misshapen. Hell, it’s the first real breakfast I’ve had in years. We sit on my couch and eat.
“Not bad, Tony,” Sofia says between bites.
“Hey, you made the batter,” I point out. “They should be good.”
She hums a response because she’s eating. We lapse into silence for a moment, before she looks at me,”Hey, Tony? Can I ask you something?”
Uh oh. I hate it when people preface some serious talking with ‘can I ask you something?’ Firstly, how does one say, ‘no, you can’t ask me something’? You can’t say ‘no’, you have to say ‘yes’. God, it’s like a bad omen of things to come. I hate serious talks. I hate them.
I swallow before shrugging. “Uh, sure. What’s on your mind?”
She’s quiet again, her forehead scrunched deeply. She’s thinking hard about what she wants to say and again, I think that’s a bad sign. Something’s weighing on her mind. It’s either about me or it’s about her and she wants to share. She’s confiding in me. Or maybe, she wants me to confide in her. I wait with bated breath.
“I don’t know,” she begins doubtfully. “I guess I still don’t understand. . .why.”
“Why what?” I ask.
“Why you just didn’t take the pills in the first place,” she says, finally finding the words. She half smiles, her tone apologetic. “I know you’re a real private person, it’s just, you could’ve died. What if Catherine wasn’t there? What if you went home, fell over and no one was around?”
I frown, not because I feel her questions are too probing, but because I’ve asked myself the same things over the last few days. I let my stubbornness get so ridiculously overtaking, that I just let my health dissipate until there was nothing left of me. Little does Sofia know, I’m doing that all over again. My pills are still sitting on the sink, unopened.
I put my plate down on the coffee table, before saying, “Those are. . .good questions, Sofia.”
“And?” she pushes gently.
“And. . .I’m not sure I have the answers,” I say honestly. Before she protests, I cut her off, “Really, if I knew, then maybe I wouldn’t be having all these issues. I wouldn’t have run off a year ago, I wouldn’t have lied about cutting my shoulder open. I’ve been trying to figure these things out.”
“You went into therapy. That didn’t help?” she asks.
I chortle lightly. “No, not really. I guess I worked through some things, but how does someone ever get over being shot?”
“Or being the shooter,” Sofia adds, her voice suddenly meek. Officer Bell. It still pains her to think about it, I know.
“You didn’t kill him,” I remind her.
“But I thought I did,” Sofia says, trying to smile. “I thought I did and that was enough. . .”
“Therapy didn’t work for you either?” I ask knowingly.
Sofia shakes her head, before answering with a soft, “No. It didn’t.” Then she continues, “I didn’t have anyone to talk to either. I couldn’t. All of my friends were working the case. You were working the case.”
I
was working the case. I also started performing my disappearing acts that year as well.
“But,” she says. I hate it when people say ‘but’. “But you had someone, Tony. You had me, Brass, anyone. Why did you let it get so bad?”
Yeah. Why did I let it get so bad? Long before Officer Bell’s shooting, I was acting out. Arriving late for work, leaving late, getting rough with suspects. Sofia had noticed, but in her own quiet way tried to help me. She tried to figure out what was going on. I couldn’t say, I wouldn’t let her in.
After the Bell shooting, I distanced myself from everyone. The case was long and emotional and physically exhausting. It hit everyone in the department hard. It seems silly for me to have been so tired. All I did was my job. Sofia suffered through interrogations, accusations and guilt. I guess I never forgave myself for being such a lousy friend during that time. That whole year led up to the my untimely departure.
“I wish I could be. . .better,” I say to her. She looks at me confused. I shake my head, not sure how to word it. “I think about this bullet and. . .and leaving Vegas and I wish I had done things differently. It’s just, I don’t know any other way to be.”
Sofia gives a soft smile. “Don’t change, Tony. People handle life’s great mysteries in their own way. I don’t want you to be better or be different. I just want you to be happy again.”
“Happy. Not sure I remember what that is,” I joke lightly.
Sofia says, “I think Catherine makes you happy.”
I scoff, not sure I should admit to that. “She’s seen me at my worst. I’ve shown her how ugly I can be.”
Sofia simply tilts her head to side and suggests, “Well, if that’s the case, I guess all that’s left to show her is the best of you.”
--------------------------
“What are you thinking?”
Catherine’s voice breaks me, interrupts wherever my mind just took me and I remember where we really are. At the lab, pulling a double. The case is high profile, high risk. A young man is missing, his captor in our custody. Unfortunately our suspect is playing games and our evidence just isn’t giving us enough to say to hell with him. Our suspect knows this and he’s wasting our time and toying with our emotions.
Despite all this, my mind should be here and its not. It’s elsewhere.
Catherine repeats her question, “Tony, what are you thinking?”
“Honestly?” I ask her.
“Yeah, honestly,” she says.
I sigh and confess, “I was thinking that I’ll never be able to cook breakfast for you, not if this kind of stuff keeps popping up.”
To my surprise, she just smiles. I really like her smile.
That’s when Greg busts into her office, out of breath and possibly out of his mind. His hair is more wild than usual, not that I blame him. I don’t think any of us have gone home, not even to take a shower. He’s convulsively waving this piece of paper and he’s talking so fast, I know I’m not catching a single word. I look at Catherine and I can tell she isn’t either.
She rises from her chair and requests calmly, “Greggo, slow down. Where’s the fire?”
“Funny you should ask,” Greg says, finally his words clear and succinct. “Our guy used to be a local fireman, right? Volunteer work. Well, I did some digging. Searched for all possible firehouses that use volunteer firemen. I found one mentioned in an old newspaper article. The records for this place date back so far, they were all stored on paper and filed away. They wouldn’t have shown up in our current database.”
Catherine takes the report, studies it herself. “This firehouse has been rundown for years.”
I stand up now to get a look myself. I say, “Really? Closed down?”
“Yeah,” Catherine says, her eyes scanning the paper some more. “It was originally shut down because of asbestos. Old building, old ceiling tiles. It never opened back up.”
“Don’t you get it?” Greg grins. “We have a possible location!”
“I’ll get on it,” I say, stepping past both of them. “In the meantime. . .”
“We’ll talk to our guy again. See if mentioning his old haunting grounds spooks him into talking,” Catherine says, reading my mind. I nod then throw a cursory “good job” in Greg’s direction. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the kid smile so wide.
--------------------------
Greg Sanders closed our case. Fancy that.
It was then I said, what the hell? I invited Catherine over for breakfast once our shift was done. You know, to celebrate closing the case.
“It’s not much,” I apologize ahead of time, sticking my key in the door. I breathe in deep before I push the door open and lead Catherine inside. In the last week, I did manage to buy some things to spruce up the place. Some pillows for the couch, new pots and pans for cooking. It’s still rather plain, though. I should’ve bought a painting, just to have something on the walls. Unlike Catherine’s home, I don’t have pictures of family or friends. Not even ex-wives.
Yeah, I said it. Ex-wives. With an ‘s’. Plural.
Catherine looks around, a small grin on her lips. She glances at me over her shoulder and says simply, “It’s you.”
I look at her inquisitively. It’s me? As if she could really know me and what things constitute as “me”. I can’t help but ask, “So, what about my empty apartment screams Tony Vartann?”
At first, it looks like she doesn’t want to answer the question and I feel stupid for asking. I’ve made her uncomfortable already. Before I can take it back, however, she answers, “It’s straightforward. Nothing extravagant or flashy. You just live here and to you, that’s all the apartment needs to be: a place to live.”
“I thought you might say, ‘it’s boring like you’,” I joke, smiling like an idiot.
Catherine laughs, “You are far from boring, Tony.” She looks around then asks politely, “Bathroom?”
“Uh, just through there,” I point toward my bedroom. She disappears through my bedroom door and I sigh heavily. I almost screwed that up. Her temporary departure does give me a chance to get the kitchen set up, though. The morning is not a total loss, not yet. After finding our missing person and putting away that scumbag of a volunteer fireman away for life, the day can only get better from here on out.
So what do I need? A bowl for mixing, a mixing spoon. Uh, the griddle. What else? The food might be a good idea. Eggs, buttermilk, sugar. ..something else. God, I don’t know what I’m doing! I fish through my fridge, looking for the items I think I need. In the process, I drop a few eggs.
“Damn it,” I curse under my breath. When did I turn into such a klutz? I bend over and notice my hand shaking a bit. Nerves? Or maybe a sign that I’m going to be sick? I still haven’t taken the medication and I’m starting to feel the signs all over again. I stand up and search for a paper towel, but Catherine is right behind me and I nearly jump out of my skin. “Whoa, Catherine. You scared me. I was just. . .”
She’s not smiling. In fact, she doesn’t look happy at all. Then I see why. She’s holding my pills. The unopened bottle of pills.
“I’m going to ask you a question,” she says. “And answer honestly. I counted how many were in here.”
I look at her incredulously, my voice angry. “You
counted my medication?”
“Have you taken any?” she asks, ignoring my ire. She shakes the bottle for emphasis. “Are you doing as the doctor says and taking this daily?”
Oh, she already knows the answers to those questions, so why should I bother responding? I’m still too angry she counted my pills to actually think of something reasonable to say. So I go for the unreasonable. “Hey, Catherine, you know what? I don’t need a mother. I don’t need this.”
“So what? You need a quick lay? Maybe you thought that I would just fall over you, fawn over you because big bad Detective Vartann needed some comfort?” Catherine literally spits at me. She shoves the bottle of pills in my hands and says sharply, “You don’t need a mother? Stop acting like a child.”
“Is that what you think this is?” I say, following her into my living area. She grabs her purse, a sure sign she’s about to walk out my door. “Hey, hey, wait a minute. I invited you here to say thank you, okay? I wasn’t sure how or what I should do, but just saying ‘thanks’ wasn’t enough.”
Catherine throws me a hard glance, then scolds, “Don’t act so naive, Tony. There’s something going on here and it goes way beyond a ‘thank you.’”
Okay, she’s got me there. I have developed something more, feelings that run deeper. However, her scolding does bring me to a new conclusion about her feelings toward me.
“Okay, so it’s not just me.”
She whirls around and nearly growls, “What?”
I push on, “You said ‘there’s something going on here’. Not ‘there’s something going on with you’ or ‘there’s something going on with me’. You said ‘there’s something going on here’. You mean between us. There’s something going on here between us.”
“Hey, this is a ‘you’ problem, not an ‘us’ problem,” Catherine says sternly.
“So you do agree there is an ‘us’ somewhere in the mix?” I push. I won’t let her back down from this. I know this isn’t just a ‘me’ problem!
“I didn’t say that,” she argues.
I tell her simply, “You didn’t have to.”
She’s finally speechless, which gives me time to look away for a moment. I need to collect my thoughts. I know it’s not just me. It’s both of us. There’s this thing, I know there is!
“Tony, look, we’re tired. We just pulled a very long shift and maybe we should continue this another time,” she tells me.
No, I don’t care how long we’ve been working or what day it is or if the sky is blue. I’ve gone my whole life starting things and not finishing them.
So right now, I can only act like a desperate fool. I can only do what any man can do in a position such as this. Tell the woman she is right.
“You’re right,” I say, just as she throws open my door. My confession does stop her. I say again, “You’re right. I invited you here for more than just a ‘thank you’, but. . . you have to understand that my intentions were good. I wasn’t looking for. . .”
“Sex,” Catherine fills in for me. Her tone is still sharp, but her eyes have softened.
“Uh, right,” I say, the tips of my ears starting to burn a little in embarrassment. What? A man can’t blush when he hears the word sex? It happens and it’s especially embarrassing when the woman you’re attracted to believes that’s all you want her for.
Well, that’s not true. I don’t treat women that way and I would never just use Catherine for my own physical needs. I step forward, trying to figure out how to say all that in words she’ll understand. Words that won’t sound phony.
“Why am I here, Tony?” she says, her exhaustion evident.
I half-smile at her. “To have breakfast, Catherine. I guess I can see how this can look like something else, but I promise it was just to have breakfast. To watch me make a fool of myself while I attempt to flip some pancakes.”
“Why not just take me out?”
“Because. . .because, I don’t know! I wanted my ‘thank you’ to be more than just a $4.99 meal at the local diner. I wanted it to be. . .genuine. I was trying to be a gentleman, not a pervert.”
Her eyes squint ever so slightly as she steps back into my apartment, shutting the door behind her. She asks again, “Why?”
“Why what?” I say.
“Just why. Why now?” she tries.
“Because. . .because. . .,” I flounder, shutting my eyes in frustration. I hate CSIs. They need motives, they need reasons. Why can’t ‘because I said so’ ever be enough? I sigh before I admit, “Because you’re right about everything, about me, about this. This is more than a ‘thank you’ and don’t ask me what it is yet. All I know is that I came back to Vegas and you. . .you called me on my bullshit first.”
This makes her grin. “Yeah, you were kind of an ass.”
“Thanks,” I say sarcastically, before asking, “Am I forgiven?”
“No, don’t ask me that. Please, forgive me,” she sighs. She drops her purse back on my couch. A sure sign that she is going to stay. “I assume the worst in men, even when I know that man is a good guy. Call it a defense mechanism. I’ve been played before, one too many times. I shouldn’t have accused you of. . .”
“Using you for sex?” I say and this actually elicits a slight blush from her.
“Yeah,” she nods. She walks up to me, grabs my hand and lifts it up. It’s only now I realize the bottle of pills is still in my possession. She says quietly, “Why aren’t you taking them?”
I look at the bottle and at our joined hands, then look at her. “I don’t know.”
“You have to know,” she says.
“Well, I’m sorry. I really don’t know,” I tell her, shrugging. I place them on the counter and fold my arms.
Catherine scoffs, but she smiles. “You’re impossible.”
I shrug again. “It’s one of my more endearing qualities.”
“Endearing?” she repeats, raising an eyebrow.
“You heard me,” I grin elfishly.
I see her thinking, the wheels turning in her head. I feel like she is going to scold me again, yell at me for lying. Lying about taking the medication, lying to her and to Sofia, to everyone. Instead, she just gestures toward the kitchen, “Let’s just eat. We’ll talk about it later.”
I watch her walk toward the kitchenette, grab some towels and clean up the eggs I dropped. I continue to stand there for a moment, my arms still folded across my chest and a fleeting thought passes through my mind.
God, I think I love this woman.
The thought is fleeting, mind you. I’m still kinda pissed she counted my pills and I’m more upset that she thought of me as some perverted, lonely loser looking for sex, but it’s still there, flickering in the back of my mind.
I think I love. . .
I remind myself that love is out of the question right now. I need Catherine in other ways and she’s made it quite clear that our relationship should really just stay a friendship.
Friends.
I can do that. For now.
To be continued. . .
