"You Ok, Lennie?" he asked.
Guess I'm doin' fine, at least a lot better than Rausch, or Munch," Lennie mused.
"Yeah, as blue as you seem, Munch does seem bluer. What's with you two?" Rey asked.
"Munch is one truly screwed up guy, and me, I'm just regretting missed opportunities," Lennie answered wistfully.
"The Waterfront Bar waitress?" Rey asked judgmentally.
"What's wrong with her?" Lennie asked.
"A meaningless one night stand?" Rey challenged.
"Unlike you, I haven't had anything meaningful waiting for me at home in years," Lennie's response left Rey mute.
Like a wealthy man who had just belittled a pauper's meager possessions, Rey felt something akin to shame burn his cheeks, and found he couldn't respond.
"Don't worry about it, Rey. She probably wasn't worth the trouble of turning this day trip into a layover," Lennie said. Then he laughed.
"Of course I did want to see if I could turn it into a laid over," Lennie said with a smirk.
Rey smiled back at him.
"I heard a rumor she came on to you pretty hot and heavy," Rey said fishing for details.
"You could say that," Lennie said his face bordering on a blush.
"Come on give," Rey said, encouraging his partner, hoping to get him into a better mood.
'Well, when we walked into the bar she announces to everyone that Munch is a cop, and that he's heavily armed, so everyone better behave, and then she walks up and tells me I'm better looking than Munch's last date. Munch introduces me and says I'm a cop too, so then she asks me if I'm heavily armed too," Lennie put an appropriately sexy emphasis on the last phrase.
"So what'd you tell her," Rey asked.
"I was so taken a back, I didn't know what to say, I just sort of stood there, taking her in," Lennie answered.
"Then Munch and I get to talking and I realize I use to date his first ex-wife, only Munch sort of thinks it was a whole lot more than that," Lennie said.
"Well, was it?" Rey asked.
"Well, yeah for a little while but…" Lennie hesitated.
"But what?" Rey asked.
"I don't know. He was so freaked out about it. I mean he's still so hung up on her and Munch made it sound like Gwen was this frigid little bitch that no man could satisfy. Somehow I was a freaking genius because I figured her out. Granted, I could please her, but it wasn't like she was "wired" differently than any other woman I'd ever been with, I mean she was just a woman like any other woman," Lennie said.
Rey looked at his partner more intently than he had before and listened to him as he described how he made love to Gwen Munch. He discovered something about Lennie Briscoe. Rey had heard a few rumors about his partner from some of the women around the station house and the labs, but he didn't know whether to believe them or not. As he listened to Lennie explain his "technique", Rey began to believe the rumors were true.
"I just listened to her, she told me what she liked and didn't like. Not always in words, but it doesn't take a genius to learn to interpret a woman's sighs and moans," Lennie was saying.
"So you're saying your secret is that you listen to a woman and you give her what she wants?" Rey asked.
"Well, I give her what she wants in bed. I'm generally not too good at giving a woman what she wants otherwise, that's why most of my relationships don't last that long. At some point most women will say the sex is great, but … and then there will be something that I do that she just can't put up with, in the old days it was my drinking," Lennie admitted.
"And nowadays?" Rey asked.
"Once an addict, always an addict, I just have more benign addictions these days," Lennie confessed.
"Such as?" Rey asked.
"Well, the last couple of women I've been involved with would probably say work, AA, pool, or betting on sports," Lennie said.
"Sounds like a lot of addictions," Rey commented.
"I rotate them," Lennie joked.
"Actually when I think about it, most of the women I was ever involved with were jealous that I wasn't addicted to them," he added.
"Yeah, well from what I've heard about you that's probably right," Rey replied.
They rode in companionable silence for a while.
"You know, if you're really looking for some female companionship I bet Deborah could,"-
"Oh no you don't. Don't you dare tell Deborah to start setting me up. She'll have me dating every widow in your parish," Lennie said with a laugh.
"And every divorcée in her tribe," Rey added with a laugh of his own. He sighed, glad that Lennie was back in a better mood. Despite Lennie's protests he would talk to Deborah and figure something out, maybe they'd even be able to find him a cop.
Rey got up and went to the back of the train to find the restroom, when he returned he saw Lennie entertaining several nearby passengers, they all had huge grins on their faces and were leaning forward to hear Lennie tell one of his infamous jokes. Rey wasn't sure he understood it, but they were all in stitches as Lennie said, "So I said to the naked lady with the salami in her hand, 'That's a duck, not a chicken. '"