It was not Charlotte this time. And he was not chasing rabbits. His dusty attic had transformed itself into what looked like one of the weirder rooms at The House On The Rock in Wisconsin. Headless cavalrymen guarded the entrance to an orchestra pit where headless mechanical musicians prepared to play New Orleans jazz. At the other end of the room, a woman put a token into the slot to start the music. The music was loud and very distracting.
"I want to kick your behind, Patrick Jane." Worse, or better than his daughter, it was Angela who put the mechanism in motion and was now addressing him. She was swaying to the music but she had a very stern expression on her face. "You are the biggest fool on this planet, taking the chance you are with that tea. No, I don't care that you think you did enough research to find a safe dosage or that you got it from a knowledgeable herbalist. You are an idiot. Charlotte told you to get a life, to move on. Why you aren't I don't know - "
"You - "
"Don't say it, Paddy. Don't give me that 'you know why' horse-pucky. You should have taken that adorable Teresa for a nice roll in the hay a long time ago."
"That's a bit surprising, coming from you."
"Is it? You think for some reason that I WANTED you to screw Red John's little errand girl? Lay off the drugs, sweetie, your brain is addled enough. If you don't want to do Lisbon, maybe I will."
"What? Wait - "
"No, I don't think I will wait. No time like the present. Teresa cares about you. That is what I want for you. Not only that, but she deserves a thorough seeing-to, and you clearly are not up for it."
"Angel, I'm not sure I can deal with double entendres from you about another woman." The lights and menagerie from the Carousel Room began filtering through the walls. "And I'm sure I can't deal with all those... things flying around your head." Faceless cherubs were circling like buzzards over roadkill. Bizarrely one of them was still, hanging on the wall, covering its face with its hands.
"Learn to deal with it. She's no Charlize Theron, but if I were going to pick my replacement, Teresa Lisbon is the one I would choose."
"No one can replace you."
"Of course not. Moving on is not about replacing me and Charlotte. It's about making a new life for yourself.
"I don't want another life. I want you and Charlotte back."
"I know, Patrick." A clean, gentle pity shone in her eyes as she spoke. "But we are off the menu. You have to choose from the options that are available. I want Teresa for you. Do you know how extraordinarily lucky you are that you have her in your life? I would tell you to give her the life she deserves, starting with a good lay, but we've already been over that."
"If you are going to do her, can I at least watch?"
"What do you think?"
"I think that as a projection of my subconscious mind, you are going to have a hard time bedding Teresa without my cooperation."
"I have my ways."
"What ways would those be?"
"Dreams, my love. As in, 'in yours'."
"Oh that's hardly fair."
"Don't complain to me about fairness. You are not being fair to Teresa or to yourself. You treat her like a foregone conclusion. Did you know during your fugue you asked her to climb into bed with you while you were in the hospital? And a half an hour before you did that, you put your hand on her ass like it belonged there - in front of the firefighters you had been drinking with AND Agent Van Pelt. Oh and yes, it is every bit as nice an ass as you expect."
That was a sobering thought. Headless characters and carousel animals began to fade. "If I get any closer, Red John will do to her what he did to you. I can't take that chance."
"So take her and run. Go to Monte Carlo, get yourself a nest egg then disappear."
"Lisbon wouldn't come with me. She wouldn't leave her job or her family for me."
"That's because she doesn't have any reason to believe you belong together. If you set your mind to it, you could convince her."
"I don't want to take her away from her life. I don't want to take anything away from her."
"As practical and sensible as she is, she has enough heart that tramping aimlessly around the Mediterranean with her husband would make her feel free, not like she has lost something. You would be able to see depths of her soul that she keeps hidden from everyone else. Devoting yourself to vengeance is not nearly as tough a penance as devoting yourself to Teresa's happiness."
"It's not that easy. You think I could do that for her when I couldn't make myself quit the psychic game when you asked and it killed you?"
"No. It won't be easy to win her, Patrick, because you won't want to tell her how much you need her. And it won't be easy to beat back your guilt. But if you do pull it off, everything else will fall into place. "
"I can't, Angela. I have to see this through. You know that."
"Idiot."
"Please don't be angry, my dear. I'm just not ready yet."
"How can you be such a stubborn -" She took a breath as though she were suppressing profanities, then continued, "Idiot! I can't believe you."
Jane blinked in the face of her hostility and an odd shift in his wife's voice. His vision cleared a bit and he saw Lisbon standing over him. Angela faded out as his attention went elsewhere.
The live woman said, "Do I need to send you to rehab, you suicidal idiot?"
"Lisbon - it's not as bad as you think."
"Really? Because what I think is, you drank some more of that damned tea so you have been hallucinating God only knows what and you did it here at CBI headquarters. It's going to take more than winning some poker games with Bertram to save your hide if you keep going on this way."
"I don't want to play poker with Bertram. He'd be tiresomely easy to catch in a bluff."
"I wasn't talking about you. I played poker with Bertram. Don't change the subject. You can't keep doing this crap, Jane - the drinking, the narcotics, the hallucinogenic tea. You can't. I can't take much more of it."
The look of worry and care mingled together on her face made his own concern for her well up through his consciousness. "Don't be angry, Lisbon. I just got an earful from my wife, and I won't be doing this again soon."
Lisbon did not respond immediately. She was flashing back to all the times her father had promised not to drink so much, not to lose his temper any more, that things would get better. If Jane were not lost among the weeping angels and the carousel chimera, he would have caught on sooner. When she spoke, she said, "Your own hallucinations are telling you not to drink hallucinogenic tea? Your wife's still here?"
"Yes." He looked around. Realizing he had not noticed when Angela had left, his face fell. Bereft, he said, "No. She was before you came in." A hint of accusation in his sadness struck a blow at Lisbon's attempt to build up resistance to the way he pulled at her heart even though it was more in her imagination than in his voice.
"I'm sorry."
"You have nothing to be sorry for, Teresa. I do. I'm sorry for scaring you and making you worry. This is milder than the stuff Betty used. I got it from an herbalist."
"Now I know I have to get you to a doctor. This is the second time in as many weeks that you have apologized to me."
He stretched an arm toward her, putting his hand around her elbow. "Please don't make me go back to the hospital. I'm already coming down. You can see it didn't affect me as much this time. I'm not trying to operate heavy machinery or drive vehicles I'm not licensed for."
"The belladonna made you go into convulsions, Jane. And I'm tired of wondering when you are going to go so far with a scheme that you can't come back." The defeat in her posture and on her face slammed through him like a vault door swinging closed.
He reached out to stroke her face with one errant hand. "Don't give up on me, Lisbon. I need you."
"You need me for a mark," she said, in a small voice. Then a little louder she said, "It doesn't matter that you got this batch from an herbalist, Jane - you cannot keep this up."
"That's what she said, my lovely Lisbon. You are not a mark for me. You keep giving me second chances, you are my second chance." He stumbled minutely on the word lovely. He caught himself being almost careless enough to call her love. If she noticed the stumble, Jane thought, she covered her reaction well enough. He was not confident it had gotten past her.
She had noticed and chalked it up to a slip of the tongue in the wake of hallucinating his wife. The churning in her heart over hearing that word from him again, she buried.
He wanted so much to tell her the rest of his conversation with his wife. But to do so would be to commit to giving up his revenge and for that he was entirely unprepared.
Giving him a searching look, she moved her elbow out of his hand and replaced it with her hand. With a slight tug, she said, "You obviously need a responsible adult to supervise you. Come sleep on the couch in my office. Come on."
~~Fin~~
Author's Note: Dear Readers, the House on the Rock is in Spring Green Wisconsin. wiki/House_on_the_Rock Neil Gaiman fans will recognize it from his book American Gods. It is an extraordinary place. Having been there, I can safely say that I think everyone should go there at least once and that I shall never voluntarily go there again. It is full of curiosities, of strange tableaux. A young genius such as Patrick Jane training himself to be as near omniscient as possible would find it an exceptionally interesting for a number of reasons, including the opportunity to examine very carefully crafted reproductions of antiques which litter the place like autumn leaves on a forest floor, interspersed as they are with genuine antiques.