Flashback
Things just didn't look right as she walked to her office from the elevator. Gone were the familiar cubicles lining the hallway. In their place were plain desks with typewriters. The overhead lights looked like gigantic bulbs hung upside down instead of the rows and rows of fluorescent tubes usually there. She got to her office door, and caught a glimpse of herself in the reflection of the window. She gasped. Her hair was done back in a snood and she had on bright red lipstick. I never wear red. It doesn't work with pale skin. She looked down at the fitted suit she was wearing. She thought it flattered her well, making her look like Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not. Her shoes were 40's style heels, and she wondered how women wore these all the time back then, because they hurt. She entered her office, and to her relief, it still had her name on her desk. Her CD player stereo on her bookcase had been replaced by a small Philco radio, and it was playing Sam Spade. How appropriate. Now she needed to get to Jack's office, to see if she was still an ADA or reduced to a mere secretary. She knocked, and he greeted her with a cheery "Good morning, Miss Robbins!" He never called her by her last name; this didn't bode well. She was relieved to hear him say, "I need you to question Mr. Huntington about his role in our case. Can you get to that today?"
"Sure!" she answered. Whoa, Jack looks awesome in that pale tan tweed suit with the padded shoulders. Cary Grant would be jealous, she thought. A pure white Bermuda hat hung from the rack where the ancient green coat usually was. Wow, Jack's got the whole thing here. Anita popped in to drop off an evidence folder for Jack. As always, not a hair out of place, and the seams on her hose were perfectly straight. Every inch the lady, and every inch the lieutenant in her cocoa brown suit with the deep collar notches. Arthur entered, in a three-piece suit with a pocket watch fob dangling from the vest pocket. He looked just like a politician in a book she had on New York history. The 40's weren't such a bad time, especially for clothes. But what am I doing here? she pondered.
"Good morning, Miss Robbins, nice to see you today," Arthur drawled. Geez, his Tennessee accent is thicker today than usual. "You look a little out of sorts, everything alright?"
"Yes, sir, just having a weird morning is all." She figured she'd better get to her interview before anything else odd happened.
She met up with Lennie and Ed outside the station house. Her little hat with the pearl trim was bugging her, so she took it off. Huge cars passed by on the street; cars from the era when American cars ruled – big steel and chrome beauties. The post-war era was certainly a time of spending money again. Ed looked very dapper in his zoot suit and wide-brimmed hat with the ribbon trim. Spats on his shoes finished his look. Quite polished, she reflected. Doesn't look like a detective; too nicely outfitted. Lennie was in the old-style suspenders and one of his usual ratty button-down shirts. Jeez, even in a dream sequence he looks like a dork. A tall balding man passed by them on the sidewalk, and Lennie acknowledged him with a, "Good morning, counselor." Kathy vaguely recognized him, but he carried off his attire with more aplomb than Lennie, which made it harder to remember the man from the photos she had seen of Jack's predecessor in his suspenders and crooked glasses. Ben Stone looked rather handsome in this part of her dream, but she wondered what on Earth he was doing there? Eye candy. Gotta be. He looks just like that guy from Glass Menagerie, the Gentleman Caller. Rather handsome, in a quiet way. He could sweep me off my feet, and that'd be ok. Tall, too. Not bad.... She snapped out of it when Lennie said, "Hey, counselor, we need to head out to do the interrogation." Is this Lennie? He's so well spoken and polite... this is the 40's though..."Ok. Let's roll." Lennie and Ed exchanged glances. Who was this alien girl speaking so strangely? Ed opened the door for her to get in – how polite! She didn't mind this royal treatment one bit. Lennie got in to drive them to the Huntington residence. Her mind drifted away before they got there. It was a dream, after all, no sense mucking it up with thoughts of work.
Jack crouched down beside her and gently shook her shoulder. She blinked a few times as his face came into focus. He smiled as he asked her, "Late night, Kathy?" She was still disoriented as she realized she had slept on his leather couch in his office. As she tried to sit up, she pushed a law book off of her hip, where it seemingly had spent the night. The case on the page was the 1948 case Winters v. New York. This was starting to make sense – the case made its way into her head as a flashback dream. She smiled a coy smile at Jack as she closed the book and stood up to head back to her office to freshen up. "It wasn't too late. I seem to have gotten plenty of rest. Just unintentionally." She passed the cubicles on the way to the elevator, thinking them strangely comforting, and pushed the down button at the doors. Nice flat shoes that don't hurt. Wow, these feel good. She fluffed her hair slightly to get rid of the pillow head she had on her left side. Once back on her floor, she entered her office, and put her book on her desk. She switched on her CD player to play the mixed 80's music CD she had in it. Then she saw a small hat with pearls on the ends of the short veil on her bookcase. She picked it up. Just my imagination, huh? She flitted her eyes around her office to see if anything else was out of sorts before putting the hat back on the shelf and shrugging her shoulders.