Note: Parts of the dialogue in the preface and postscript to this story are drawn from the season two episode, Zero Day. Two of Reese's previous visits to Apthorps' Club for Gentlemen are recorded in earlier stories, Target Panic and Youngblood. The Club's historyis also described in the fictional tour book, A POI Guide to New York: Dining Out and Living In. You don't need to read those stories to understand this one, but I think it enhances the experience.
Target Panic 2012/08/14/
Youngblood 2012/10/02/
A POI Guide to New York: Dining Out and Living In 2012/10/08/
Preface: Then
Walking to the dark intersection felt like a trudge through a wet bog – slippery, cold, tedious.
Reese shivered as the alley's dank chill finally penetrated his overcoat; the warmth from Carter's gloved hand dissipating as he moved farther away from her.
Wind whipped up little dervishes of dust and trash at his feet. He counted the cracks in the midnight sidewalk until he made it to the end of the block.
As he rounded the corner, he sensed Carter's eyes on his back. He imagined she was waiting until he was safely out of view before rejoining the other cops swarming over the murder scene.
Three new homicides this week. Five last week. All of them premeditated, she had said. All of them preventable, he had heard.
"The type of situation you guys usually warn us about." She spat out those words, bitter accusations in his ear.
He felt ineffectual as he struggled to give her an answer. "There's a situation. We're working on it."
The explanation sounded like thin nonsense to him even as he offered it. Weakly echoing her word didn't calm her concern, he knew. And reaching out to touch her hand made him seem like simply a desperate boyfriend rather than a partner she could count on.
But still he did it because he wanted the contact, needed the reassurance that she would be beside him even as he faltered.
She squeezed his fingers then and the warmth pulsed through her gloves, taking the sting out of her next words. "Well, hurry."
This was a test and he knew he was failing.
He felt his heart contract as tears welled up in her eyes. He wanted to reach out to stroke her cheek then, prevent the drops from falling. He wanted to confide his own growing fears. He wanted to brush away her disappointment.
But instead he shifted his gaze to a spot over her head, letting the miasma of frustration and doubt envelop them both until she finally turned and slipped back down the alley away from him.
Distracted, he walked right past the car he had stolen earlier in the evening, its sleek anonymity working against him for a change. To avoid drawing attention by doubling back abruptly, he crossed the street and took an extra five minutes hunched in another alleyway before he regained the street.
Inside the car at last, Reese fumbled with the ignition. The engine hesitated, then coughed to feeblelife as he cursed it. If he hadn't already spent too long on this block, surrounded by cops and neighbors peering through soiled curtains, he would have looked for another car to lift. The garish red of the leather interior grated on his nerves.
Finch spoke softly in his ear then, as if resuming a conversation interrupted.
"Mr. Reese, we are doing what we can, as rapidly as possible. But the situation is unprecedented and our resources and ingenuity are being taxed as never before."
Reese felt impatience rising like poisonous fumes around his shoulders.
"Yeah, but that explanation doesn't fly anymore. Not with her, Finch, and not with me."
"John, your answer to Detective Carter was the correct one. You have to know that."
"It may have been correct, but it was wrong. I need her to trust me. And that's slipping away now.
Reese paused to try to staunch the flow of words but they kept coming.
"Every day I can't help her, every day I can't explain why, another little bit of trust crumbles."
His friend sighed and Reese could hear the scrape of the chair wheels on the library's wood floor. Finch's next words were cool, but Reese could sense the urgency underneath.
"This is like a medical calamity, John; we are doctors, but our insights and capabilities are limited. Our source needs time to rid itself of the sickness, to heal itself."
Reese grunted but couldn't protest any longer. He felt winded and drained, as if he had run a marathon alone. So Finch spoke into the silence.
"That's all I can say, John. Give it – give us – time to get well."
Now
Carter was surprised that Reese was waiting for her at the designated address.
She couldn't recall a time when he had not managed to sneak up on her, startling her out of a coffee-fueled reverie, or tweaking her professional pride by lurking unobserved while she scanned the crowd for him.
But this time John was the one on high alert.
As she crossed the intersection, she saw him bunch his fists in his dark suit jacket, then pull them out, then thrust them in again. Shifting from one foot to the other, he stood on the top step of an anonymous stone townhouse watching her move toward him.
She could feel his anxiety wafting down to the curb.
A film of perspiration highlighted his forehead and made the moonlight glow on his cheekbones. His blinking eyelids flashed white in the shadows cast by the stone doorway. His jawline sparkled with the reflected glint from stubble there and she recognized the narrowness of his mouth as tension.
She felt embarrassed to be startled, overcome really, by his beauty all over again. Would that ever stop happening to her?
This wasn't a date exactly, not at this particular juncture in their stutter-step relationship.
Tonight was just an appointment, she told herself, a meeting between friends and partners, a resting place where they could pause for reassessment. Nothing more.
She saw the red eye of a surveillance camera staring from a dim corner above the door.
"Am I late?" she asked, a forced lilt in her voice. "I forget if you gave me an exact time or not."
"You're right on time." His whispery assurance barely reached down the three steps that divided them.
As he pushed the black lacquered door and stood aside to let her enter first, she thought he drew back slightly so that his chest didn't touch her shoulder as she passed.
Inside, the brightness and glamour of the square vestibule dazzled her into silence.
Black and white tiles announced the Regency sensibility of the space; dusky red Oriental rugs, dimmed by age and their weighty provenance, littered the floor. Soaring ceilings beckoned visitors up a grand staircase to a lobby where she could just make out a high mahogany desk that marked the formal entrance to the establishment.
Oil portraits of important looking men in smoky business suits or somber frock coats marched up the walls on either side of the steps, their brows gathered in judgmental scowls which contradicted the slight upturn of their thin red lips.
She felt as though she had fallen through the Looking Glass and was just a step behind Alice in the exploration of a dazzling new world.
"What is this place, John? How did you find it?"
The wonder in her voice provoked a twitch at his mouth.
"This is Apthorps' Club for Gentlemen." He said it in a sweeping news anchor voice, like he was comfortable here, like he fit in.
"A men's club? You belong to a fancy club like this?"
"Actually Finch is the member, but he lets me use it when I want."
He was smiling in full now, as though relieved to be done with the waiting and on with the game.
She felt a shiver of skepticism shoot through her.
"But will they let me in here? Seems like I'm the wrong color and the wrong sex for this joint."
"Harold made arrangements for tonight. We have the place all to ourselves for the whole evening." He took her hand and led her up the marble flight of stairs.
Crumpled upon a high stool behind the dark counter, an ancient man stirred to life at their approach.
"Oh, Mr. Rooney, how delightful to see you again! It has been far too long an absence, I'm sure!"
Joss imagined she could detect the creaking of mummified bones as the concierge slowly shifted his body in her direction. She caught a flash of shocking red silk from the interior of his musty coat.
"And you must be Miss Jocelyn. Welcome to Apthorps' Club for Gentlemen." She was sure he placed a faint emphasis on the final word.
"I am Hadley. At your service." He bent towards her from the waist, but made no attempt to leave his seat and kept the protective mahogany barrier between them.
"Mr. Hawk told me you would be Mr. Rooney's guest this evening. No one else is in our little establishment right now, but I must insist that you wear the identification badge anyway. Just one of our little rules, you understand."
Hadley handed the embossed name tag to Reese who pinned it on her jacket lapel with solemn ceremony marred only by the furtive wink he gave her.
She turned to face the counter so that Hadley could see that she was properly labeled.
Hadley's sunken eyes and loosely moored teeth glittered in an approximation of a smile at last. His voice rattled past his lips like that of an oracle in a cave.
"It was a pleasure to meet your son, Mr. Taylor, when he visited us several months ago. Such a polite and well-spoken young man. I hope you enjoy yourself at Apthorps as much as he did."
Joss turned on Reese in undisguised astonishment.
Neither he nor Taylor had mentioned their field trip to Apthorps. John merely raised his eyebrows, letting her surprise tingle in the air between them.
Then he pressed a firm hand against her waist to guide her towards the interior of the club.
For thirty minutes they walked through the winding hallways and bright rooms of the gracious old place.
The remodeling of this Eighteen Century block of row houses into a modern white palace of retreat and recreation was spectacular. Gutted of its fusty interiors, the club was now a shrine to blonde wood, clean lines, subdued chrome elegance, and exclusivity.
Joss admired the firing range with its immense row of Plexiglas booths. John positioned her in a tight cage towards the middle of the line and asked if she wanted to shoot; he kept a set of revolvers and a rifle in his locker and could retrieve one for her if she wished.
She looked out at the pristine, sexless black silhouettes arrayed like enemy soldiers across the field in front of her. For a brief moment she did want to shoot them all down, to test the weight of that gun in her hand, to see her marks penetrate the targets.
But somehow that particular sport, so loud and blunt, seemed unsuited to the gathering mood of the night, so she said no and they moved on.
They walked past bars where fat leather chairs huddled in silent conference, past lounges with billiards tables shrouded in green felt that recalled a boarding school's naughty rec room. The immaculate tiles in the beige and dove-gray washrooms made her want to rush home to tackle the dingy grout in her own bath.
Passing down a corridor next to the stately main dining hall, Joss looked up at the ceiling. Plain moldings in cool flesh tones underlined the modernity of the entire décor.
"There aren't any cameras here, are there? I haven't seen a one since we entered the building."
"No, no surveillance here. The members trust each other, I guess." John shrugged, but paused for her to get out the rest of her questions.
"Then how did Harold manage to get in? I mean, being dead and all?"
"His father willed him the membership when he died. At least that's what he told me."
They passed silently into the airy dining hall which shimmered in its own mysterious source of natural light even after dark.
Joss hesitated outside the locker room.
Even though she knew they were alone, it just didn't seem right to let a girl into the boys' locker room, no matter how fancy it was. But John laughed and pushed her through the paneled doors and led her through a maze of tall wooden cabinets to his own locker.
"Now we change into something we can move around in."
He was like a tour guide, proud of his own corner of the city, eager for her to see more.
Once they were dressed in identical white t-shirts from a stack in the locker, he gave her red satin shorts which hung below her knees like prim culottes; he tugged hard on the drawstring to make them fit her waist. His midnight blue shorts had a matching white stripe around the hem, but fit him perfectly.
She noted the familiar netting of silver scars across both knees, the long muscles tapering toward delicate ankles. These were hers, as much as his hands or his voice or his sex, these too belonged to her.
After placing his cell phone and ear piece on a shelf above the hooks which held their street clothes, John sat on the bench to put on white socks and a battered pair of running shoes.
"So, am I just supposed to go around bare foot?" Joss couldn't help the whine that crept into her voice at the predicament.
Silently, John reached up to the shelf at the top of the locker, and pulled down a cardboard box. She opened it; inside were white socks draped over immaculate black running shoes, unscuffed, already laced up, and her size, of course. A red elastic for her hair was curled up in the right shoe.
"Let me guess: Harold?"
"Yes, Harold."
They trotted for several minutes down a long passageway until they burst through a set of swinging doors into the glorious open space of an indoor track. Joss could see the starry sky through the row of narrow windows that bordered the ceiling of the vast room. She thought she could smell the fresh night air as it tickled her face and neck.
Without a word, John took off toward the first curve, not holding back, not waiting for her to catch up.
But she was fast and managed to gain on him until by the second lap she was maintaining a steady position just behind his right shoulder.
She knew she was taking two steps to every one of his strides; but she could do it, she could keep up the pace as long as he could. She would show him what she was made of.
On and on they ran, until their breathing filled the hallway, echoing around the space. She couldn't hear the pounding of their feet any more, nor the pounding of her heart. Just their tandem breathing, steady and determined, the sound expanding until it reached every corner, slammed into every window, until it became a living, demanding entity driving them on and on.
Then as abruptly as he had started, John pulled up into a slow trot. She stepped forward until her shoulder paralleled his and they took a final lap, winded and complete.
His face was red and his damp t-shirt clung to his rib cage when he finally stopped. He bent over from the waist to blow through the exertion; she crouched balancing on the balls of her feet, her knees bent double, her ass a few inches above the wooden planks.
"No sitting, let's go." The drill sergeant had replaced the amiable tour guide.
John brought her next to the glass-walled racquetball courts. As they entered one of the jewel box enclosures, he spread his arms wide.
"Taylor took me on here. Beat me pretty good too. I didn't let him do it; he just thrashed me fair and square."
John didn't seem at all put out by the admission, almost proud actually.
"Let's see if Team Carter can make it two out of two. Stay here, I'll be back in a minute with the equipment."
Joss wondered if he dawdled to give her time to catch her breath from the run, or if he needed the break himself. Whatever the reason, it took John almost ten minutes to return with the balls, rackets and towels.
If John had pushed her during their run, he gave no quarter in this match.
She won the first game; maybe he was tired or just assessing her skills. But he captured the next three rounds handily. Superior wingspan and height made the difference now. Her agility couldn't overcome the explosive power of his shoulders and arms, the torque slamming the ball around the court with frightening force.
By the time they called it quits, her side ached, her legs burned from shin splints and her hands felt like wooden mallets. They sat limply on the golden pine floor, propping their backs against the wall, shoulder to shoulder, heads lolling.
John didn't dole out empty compliments about her racket skills or her stamina. He knew how strong she was and so did she.
Lifting his head from the wall to catch her eye, he offered a simple "Thank you."
When the pain subsided, she puffed out a question.
"You and Taylor, what did you talk about?"
He looked off into the far corner of the court.
"Growing up stuff. Man stuff. How I made it. How he would too."
Now it was her turn.
"Thank you."