This Tony & Michelle story picks up where "Love at First Date" leaves off. Enjoy, and please review! I love hearing from you! xxxooo
LAFD EPILOGUE
Chapter 1: His Dilemma
The unit was in chaos. Glancing down at the bullpen, once again desks were vacated and, again, conversation could be heard emanating from the ladies room. How many times could the same women fawn over one ring? What was it with women and engagements and weddings, anyhow? Men weren't like that. The guys in the office weren't crowded into his office, asking which brand of champagne or type of hors d'oeuvres he was considering, or recommending places to hold a rehearsal dinner. One guy had said something to him. Just one: Jack.
"You getting married?"
"Yeah."
That was it. No discussion about traditional tuxes versus tails. No stressing over cummerbunds as opposed to vests. Who cared?
Thank God the nation wasn't under attack. Thank God it had been a wholly uneventful week of straight grunt work with CTU officially offline, its mandates temporarily divided among the various defense and law enforcement agencies and its main priority to replace the systems, staff and intel that the unit had lost in the bombing. But who knew when Chappelle might unexpectedly saunter through the door to assess the state of progress; or Hammond — and with God knew how many Homeland inspectors or Pentagon envoys at his side, there to tour the facility's innovative new technological advancements, like investors in some kind of new feature attraction at Disney World? With bodies constantly absent from their stations, it gave the appearance that he was either way behind in staffing up or had irresponsibly granted vacation to half the newly relocated Division, Homeland and Defense personnel down there.
"Chloe," he barked into the phone on his desk.
"Yes, Mr. Almeida?" she snapped back.
"Go get the women out of the bathroom," he ordered.
"Again?" she whined, with that whine. Though on the job for only five days, he was already prepared to fire her, based on her personality alone. He wasn't sure if federal employees could be terminated on the grounds of a personality disorder, but he was willing to set precedent. The woman possessed all the social skills of an eggplant. If she hadn't been carrying the workload for the women in the bathroom all week long, he'd have sent her packing by now.
"And don't question my orders again," he loudly reminded her for the umpteenth time.
"Relocating personnel is not part of my employment specificati—"
"Just do it," he yelled into the phone. "And tell that kid Adam to quit staring at Michelle."
Maybe Michelle had been right, after all, about having a game plan in place for the office. He hadn't anticipated all hell breaking loose when the two of them had taken a deep breath and walked through the door together on Monday morning, Michelle conspicuously sporting a diamond. The first hour had been fine, with women clustered all around her, admiring it and sharing their astonishment at not even knowing they'd even been dating. It was a nice ring, granted, and he had expected that kind of thing to go on in the first hour. It could even be viewed as contributing to boosting morale, he felt, which was sorely needed at a time when the painful loss of so many colleagues sat heavy on the minds of the old crew and newbies alike. Working shoulder-to-shoulder in a pressurized environment, constantly under elevated alert levels, created extraordinary conditions that tended to encourage and forge closer bonds than in civilian workplaces, he knew, courtesy of human nature alone. Bonding and building familiarity and trust was important in this line of business. But it was Friday, now, for crying out loud. Enough was enough. He had only just recently received his directorship, and it was his lone responsibility to get the unit up, running, fully operational, and ready for inspection and clearance as soon as possible.
He counted heads as he watched the line of women shuffle back into the bullpen and fan out in the directions of their respective stations, each taking a moment to flash a look up toward his window, like he was some kind of party pooper instead of the Director of the Counterintelligence Unit of the United States government; not to mention their boss.
He was tempted to roar over the speaker system for his Chief of Staff — who was supposed to be coordinating interdepartmental document exchanges — to get herself up to his office, but thought twice upon recalling the first time he had used the speaker system that morning, mindlessly attaching "sweetheart" to the end of a request, which had prompted a chorus of snickers from the crew of brash young hotshots in the corner, on temporary loan from Homeland's elite cybersecurity division.
He glanced at his watch. The night shift would soon be transitioning in and he and Michelle would finally be out of there, thank God, and on the road to the airport to meet his Dad's plane. Tonight was the night his Mom would be told the news that she had waited for all these years to hear, God help them both. His Dad already knew that he had popped the question to Michelle. His Dad, in fact, had offered to take his corporate jet to Maine today and pick Michelle's aunts up for a two-week visit, suggesting it would kill two birds with one stone to just get the announcement over with in one evening, with both families doing a meet-and-greet on the same coast. Just let everyone get acquainted at the same time so that maybe by next week, he and Michelle could start resuming reasonably normal lives; or as normal as life could be once his Mom had been invited to organize the wedding — and pronto, too. He didn't want this planning business dragging on for the usual eternity that wedding arrangements took. He wanted to get married and on with his life. He was giving his Mom two weeks: way far more time than an expert like Amanda Almeida would need to pull off a perfect event. He had first been inclined to make it one week, but since a wedding dress was involved, he decided to be generous about it, entirely for Michelle and her aunts' sake, who would probably want to fuss over which of his Mom's couture designers should be entrusted with the project.
His Dad had come up with the whole scheme. His Dad was always thinking. And it had all just made so much sense, too. Michelle had been fretting about how and when to tell her aunts. And since they were going to have to be transported to attend the wedding anyway, she had taken Jim Almeida's sage advice and simply informed them, over the phone, that she had fallen in love and wanted them to come spend some quality time getting to know her new beau and his family. "Meeting the family" would send an unmistakable signal, in itself, that Michelle considered the relationship serious, therein elevating the importance in making the trip. And as if meeting a serious beau weren't enough impetus for her aunts to agree to an out-of-the-blue excursion, Michelle also knew that there was nothing they enjoyed more than traveling. They were the only two people in America who actually got a thrill out of spending time at an airport. It had always made them feel like part of the jet-set.
So the task of getting the aunts into town would be accomplished easily enough, and without spoiling the surprise announcement, either. It would also spare Tony, himself, from having to make an independent pilgrimage to the other side of the country at a time when he could least afford a day away from CTU, to introduce himself and ask for their niece's hand in marriage. It was a burden that would only be temporarily lifted from his shoulders, however, as a ritual like that was going to have to be performed, regardless, once Jim Almeida had gotten the aunts into town. His Dad would never let him fail to fulfill such a sacred, time-honored tradition, he knew. Almeida men did things "the right way," as his Dad's eyebrow had sternly reminded him at so many key junctures throughout his life.
The operation had pulled off perfectly, thus far, with his Mom thoroughly absorbed with her new grandtwins and none the wiser. If she had even so much of an inkling of the upcoming announcement that was being hatched right under her nose, she would have been over at CTU, like a bat out of hell, with her event planner, François, and his mobile design studio in tow. But not even dinner tonight had aroused suspicion in his Mom, since she had been standing right there when Jim Almeida had given Michelle a direct order to be seated at the dinner table sometime this week. Nor would his Dad's last-minute cell phone request for extra place settings likely tip her off, as Amanda was perfectly accustomed to having his business associates arrive at her table with next-to-no notice. Her household staff had been on red-alert dinner status for decades.
Three-thousand miles east, a black limousine pulled up in front of a quaint, white picket-fenced cottage, with a black SUV security car directly behind it. Jim Almeida wished he could have arrived with a little less fanfare, but traveling with a detail had graduated from a precautionary measure in pre-Terrorism War days to a necessary fact of life for leading corporate titans; particularly contractors who provided services to the military installation. They had always been ripe targets when traveling overseas, but the Pentagon had steadily upgraded the threat level for homeland travel over the years, owed to increased sleeper cell discoveries throughout the country, which posed a real and growing risk for high-value citizens.
Flanked on either side by his black-suited, sunglassed men and armed with a thick bouquet of flowers, Jim Almeida approached the quaint New England-style house where his future daughter-in-law had spent her formative years. His drive through the town had felt like a cruise through an oil painting of a bygone era when society had enjoyed a kinder and gentler existence. Somehow, this Shenandoah, this Shangri-la, this uniquely serene hamlet had managed to isolate itself from the rest of the fractious world. Fragrant blooms and leafy vines climbed trellises that framed the front doors of immaculately kept, modest cottage-sized houses. Children rode bicycles. People walked dogs. He half-expected a horse-drawn dairy cart to pull up from out of nowhere, with bottles of milk clanking against blocks of ice. He made a mental note to purchase one of these enchanted seaside nests as a romantic getaway for his wife and himself to make an occasional escape to, far from the maddening Bel-Air crowd.
Jim Almeida checked his tie in the reflection of his lead man's sunglasses before leaning in to press the doorbell. Though he had never lost his elite Special Forces Psych-Op training from his service days in the Mekong, where the necessity to instantly size up the villagers was an imperative component to remaining alive, he wouldn't be needing to draw upon his skills to evaluate the sisters. Aunt Gert had immediately revealed herself as the clear leader, decision-maker and protectorate of the two, he instantly recognized, upon her having politely, though firmly, requested from the other side of the door that he slide two forms of I.D. through the mail slot. With a nod of his chin to the security guard on his right, the man produced his boss's passport and drivers license and, leaning down, inserted it through the flip-up brass receptacle. A few quiet minutes had ensued while Jim and his men stood solidly in place, listening to whispery chatter through the heavy oak door, followed by the sounds of a beeping security panel disengaging and various bolts unlatching from their cylinders.
In the open door stood another vision of bygone times, though more like the Loretta Young days of the 1950's, when women wore crisp cotton dresses, heirloom pearls and broaches, and invisible silk hairnets to keep their manicured coiffures in perfect order. The sisters — considerably older than Jim had expected and whom he had found himself towering over by at least a foot — were immaculately groomed and transmitting a drugstore-purchased Coty fragrance that he hadn't smelled since his days as a boy in Brooklyn.
"Aren't these lovely," Aunt Gert, the younger of the two by at least ten years, croaked in a tiny voice as she exchanged Jim Almeida's credentials for the flowers he stooped in and placed in her arms.
After formally introducing himself and lightly kissing each lady's dainty, withered hand, he nodded for his men to take their positions outside the door while he joined the women inside for the tea they had prepared. At that point, Tony had received a call at his desk from his Dad's front man, informing him that "the client has made contact." Now, nearly seven hours later, he was sending his own chin signals down to Michelle in the bullpen, trying to hurry her along with the process of settling the night crew in and briefing them on their assignments so that he could finally, and officially, end this annoying week, all together, and get them on the road to the airport. After his Dad had gone to the trouble of making a coast-to-coast pickup on their behalf, it would be beyond unacceptable not to be standing on the tarmac when his plane taxied in.
"You and I are gonna have a talk about that ladies room," he warned her in a firm voice as he shuffled her into the passenger's seat and clapped the door behind her.
Michelle wasn't the least bit concerned; she knew that his nerves were on edge in anticipation of not only meeting his future aunts-in-law for the first time but of the wedding madness that was predestined to bust loose the second his mother had been gifted with the responsibility of weaving her magic over the course of the next mere two weeks. She quickly double-checked her purse for the guest list that they had crafted at the kitchen table the other night, when her future father-in-law had stopped by with the ten names that his secretary had spit out of the printer. With the threesome's modest guest list already hammered out and printed up, all Amanda would have to do, to instantly get the painfully short-notice invitations into her engraver's hands, is add her own list of guests. The invitation scheduling itself was ridiculous, as normal timing was concerned, but Michelle intuitively knew that Tony would never acquiesce to the traditional six-week advance notice that guests were generally treated to. She was certain, in fact, that somewhere in the recesses of his mind, he was counting on the short timing to ultimately cut the number of attendees from his mother's column down to a reasonable size.
"Did you call that woman of yours?" was the first thing he asked as he fired up the engine of the car, thinking of the furry state his apartment was in after having had her fat cat as a houseguest for the entire week.
"She came by the office this morning, honey. I gave her a key," Michelle said, soothingly, as he eased them out of the parking space and headed toward the open lot's exit. "She's been cleaning all day."
"There'd better not be anything missing," he warned her.
He had agreed to it only for Mrs. Sanchez's sake. He had called his housekeeper last night and surprised her with a bonus day off, thinking it wise to spare her the sight of the apartment that she'd dedicated so many years of her life keeping in ship-shape order. No reason she should have to be subjected to suddenly dealing with the fat one's fur, which had built up over the week to the point of seemingly blanketing the apartment from one end to the other. Mrs. Sanchez hadn't signed on for a mission like that. And no amount of the vacuuming that he had made Olivia's boyfriend, Gerald, do had seemed to make even a dent in the insufferable shedding situation. There was something inherently wrong with having to bring Michelle's housekeeper in to clean before his own housekeeper arrived, he had first noted to himself and then loudly to Michelle, but it was the only course of action he could think to take.
"She's not a thief, dear. She's a housekeeper," Michelle tsk-ed. "The only thing that will be missing is the fur she's vacuuming up…"
And polishing off, and dusting away, and otherwise magically obliterating, as only a professional of Mrs. Goebel's caliber and skill level could masterfully pull off. Michelle had lost so many housekeepers due to Fluff-Fluff's excessive shedding. Mrs. Goebels's arrival had been nothing short of a godsend to her. She shuddered at the thought that, although Tony had yet to realize, there was no way they were going to be able to make do without her housekeeper; not if he wished to live in a fur-free home. She wasn't quite sure how she was going to eventually break it to him, but if it had to come down to deciding between housekeepers, Mrs. Goebels had the job-security edge over Mrs. Sanchez, hands down.
He drove in unusual silence. She laid her hand on his thigh and gently swirled small circles with her nails against the fabric pulled tightly across his skin. Something else was bothering him, she knew; something beyond the chaos at the office or the existence of Mrs. Goebels at his apartment.
"You promised you were always going to tell me everything, remember?" she softly reminded him, leaning in to switch off the low-level chatter of the radio's news anchors.
He didn't speak for a moment.
"I don't like the way you're handling the staff, Michelle," he grumbled.
"I know you're annoyed, but that's not it," she responded, detecting a little too much of a brood in his voice to account for an office-related issue.
He remained silent for another moment, eyes glued to the road.
"I don't like this living arrangement," he gruffly confessed in a low, controlled tone, but with a deep frown etched into his brow.
"I know it's difficult, honey," she gently replied. "And I know it's hard to be looking after Fluff-Fluff, with the two of you barely even acquainted yet. But with real estate agents coming and going all day while I'm at work—"
"I know, I know," he grumpily cut in, not seeking to assign any blame to her. It had been his own big idea to get Michelle's place listed and off their hands as soon as possible. And he even understood that the cat couldn't very well be roaming and shedding all over the premises while realtors showed the place to interested parties — and especially not with the furball's penchant for making a break for it whenever a door swung open. But he hadn't anticipated that it would also result in Michelle spending her nights at her place instead of his. He didn't know about all this newfangled "staging" stuff, to make places look more spacious and inviting in down markets; he didn't know that it would involve her having to pack certain things up at night, and have a company haul big space-eating furniture items off to a storage facility, or that she would also have to be on hand first thing in the morning to turn keys over to whichever realtors wished to show the place to prospective buyers during the day.
"I tried to warn you about looking to get so many tasks accomplished in only two—"
"It was something that was gonna have to get done anyway, Michelle," he defended himself, with a distinct ring of grouchiness now present in his tone. It wouldn't have made any financial sense, they had both agreed, to continue carrying her empty place once the three of them — that critter of hers included — were all living at his place after they returned from the honeymoon. It was best that they get rid of the condo now so that, once they got back, finding a house would be the only thing they would need to contend with. "It's just…"
Silence followed. She gave him a few moments to stew. She knew what he was about to say: he didn't like the idea of her side of his bed being vacant for two long more weeks. Although they had only spent a weekend together, it had felt more like a year. Waking up beside each other had come to feel so natural and right. Neither had expected that their first night apart would feel so desperately lonely, or that the emptiness would increase as the week dragged on. They had taken to calling each other and falling asleep together with their phones on.
"I think the situation is what it is for now, honey," she gently broke the news to him. "With my aunts at my place for the next two weeks, I can't very well be staying at yours."
Every which way Tony had examined the situation, there was no scenario that worked out in his favor: He had instantly eliminated the idea of the furball being kept at a kennel, knowing that Michelle would never even entertain the thought. He knew that being strapped with her cat was a given, as was Michelle's hosting her aunts. No scenario he could think of would deliver Michelle into his bed.
"It's just that I think your cat misses you," he informed her, taking a stab at stirring some concern in her for the emotional state of her pumpkin chop, though aware that she would only see right through his transparent ploy. "I think—y'know, I think that maybe we should re-access the situation. Maybe… I dunno, one of those Bel-Air Hotel cottages. It's a luxury resort, Michelle. Movie stars are always crawling all over that place. Old ladies get a big kick out of that kinda thing."
But as he heard the suggestion departing his lips, he knew that he wasn't even kidding himself, much less Michelle. The fact was that no rational reason or excuse existed for the aunts to stay anywhere other than right where they had always stayed through all the years they had been making their annual trek to her side of the country: in the familiar guest room, with the twin beds, at their beloved niece's abode.
"We'll find some time to be together, dear," she gently assured him, though knowing the chances were next to nil that between accelerated wedding arrangements and other unforeseen festivities that her future mother-in-law would undoubtedly plan, the only "alone time" they were likely to share were stolen moments in a CTU supply closet, if they could even still find one that hadn't yet been equipped with security sensors. Anywhere else on the premises wasn't even an option anymore, what with that new recruit, Chloe, noticing every last little unusual glitch in the entire system, as though she were physically wired into the grid, herself. The last time they had ventured to shut down the cameras in a halfway-renovated interrogation room, the woman had taken it upon herself to initiate a lockdown of the entire facility and transmit a Level-1 Breach of Security notice to Division.
"I just — I don't like you being away like this," he capped it off, deciding to leave it at, for now. Now didn't seem like the right time to broach a discussion about the disturbing dream he'd had about Nina, which had been bothering him all day long. He would wait for a proper DIB opportunity to give Michelle the background, first, regarding all the hell he had been through after Nina's arrest: the humiliation upon realizing he had been sleeping with the enemy, literally, and how it had felt to have every federal colleague come to learn about it; the torment of knowing that she had played him for such a fool and that he — a trained agent — had never even had a clue; the way the whole sordid story had gone on to become folklore throughout the international intelligence community. It had affected his life on so many different levels back then, but he had worked his way past it and hadn't planned to revisit any of the details, ever again. That morbid, ugly part of his life was over and not coming back, he had sternly told himself so many times until he finally believed it. But last night's bizarre dream had disturbed and haunted and followed him around throughout the day, and he wanted Michelle's take on what it meant. She was good at figuring out that kind of thing.
He steered over to the airport's security gatehouse and went through the usual clearance motions, running his CTU I.D. through the slot, pressing his hand against the scanner, and signing into the private hangers' log.
"How ya been, Mike?" he asked, handing the paperwork back to the security officer.
"Good, Tony. They're putting your dad in another circle."
"How long ya figure?"
"He's got four birds ahead of him, so… ten, fifteen minutes, maybe?"
The words felt like music to his ears.
"Are his guys in their office or already on the tarmac?"
"Tarmac," Mike said, only barely getting the reply out of his mouth before the car's wheels were screeching off in the direction of the empty hangar.