Maternal Instinct
The green cursor glided across the monitor's screen, pausing, darting, careening toward its destination. The blue cursor abruptly left its location and headed straight for the same goal.
No high-decibel video game could deliver the quiet pleasure Finch got from watching the movement of his blinking cursors crisscrossing the grid of the city.
He had written the program early on to permit him to follow Reese (green), Carter (blue), and Fusco (yellow) as they travelled to execute the missions he assigned them.
He wanted to know where his operatives were at all times to be able to alert them to the need for quick action, to help them skirt danger or confront a malefactor. So he always kept the minimized screen with their current locations at the lower right of his monitor as he called up other data vital to the successful prosecution of their cases.
He tried to be discreet in how much he followed his charges as they moved around the city. He wasn't nosy. But he did keep a close watch.
He knew when Carter and Fusco were at the precinct and when they went out on assignments. He knew when Fusco left early to watch his son's football practice and when Carter stayed late at her desk.
He knew which bolt hole Reese occupied each evening. And how often he roamed the streets in an insomniac relay of stalking or surveillance or aimless meandering until two in the morning.
So Finch was utterly unsurprised when the patterns altered and the green cursor and the blue cursor started blinking in cheerful chorus from the same intersection on the grid several nights a week.
He only wondered what had taken them so long.
But he knew that the complex workings of the human heart were beyond his ability to comprehend.
Further, he believed that depleting his limited energy trying to understand the desires of his friends was a futile exercise.
And one utterly irrelevant to the core mission.
The absence of Cheerios didn't surprise Reese all that much. He had emptied the box during a two a.m. raid on the kitchen in a bout of sleeplessness.
But even after several weeks of this new arrangement, he remained stunned at how little Joss kept in her refrigerator. Carrots, a half empty jug of milk, the steaks he knew she was defrosting for dinner, a quarter round of Colby cheese, and a few plastic containers of leftovers.
The Spartans would have cried "uncle" if she was their chuck wagon cook.
Mother and son had departed an hour ago. To Reese, there was nothing more satisfying in the world than the pure animal luxury of lying in bed listening to the little sounds of other people who had to get on with their day.
He liked hearing Joss struggle to wake herself with a vigorous round of tooth brushing. He liked listening to the sound of the water spraying while the sun was still faintly pink over the brownstone roofs, knowing that he could wait to shower until hours later if he wanted.
He liked imagining what combination of dark pantsuit and jewel-colored shirt Joss would select and then surreptitiously prying open his eyes to see if he had guessed right.
He liked listening as mother and son discussed their plans for the day, when they would return home, what they would eat for dinner, knowing that he didn't have a plan in the world and no reason to get up yet.
After they left, he checked his cell for messages from Finch, inspected the Mother Hubbard refrigerator, and discovered that the canister of coffee was down to a scant teaspoon of grounds.
As he drank a glass of milk leaning against the kitchen counter he thought about the most recent number.
The case had ended successfully the previous night. He knew that Finch was satisfied that the theatre stage manager had not been killed by a jealous rival and that the show had indeed gone on as promised.
The fact that Reese had suffered several severe bruises, dislocated his thumb, and acquired a new assortment of gashes in the decisive scuffle was of minor significance in the larger scheme of things.
He lived with pain at all levels on a daily basis.
Most days it was a low-grade distraction, simmering and bubbling in the background. It would flare occasionally, travelling like a river of fire from ribs to shoulder, from hip to ankle, spine to head, ever constant but always changing.
More than once he had been forced to pull off to the side of the road, trembling as a wave of pain engulfed him.
Some mornings just anticipating the day's portion of pain clenched his stomach so fiercely that he could barely manage to keep down a mouthful of coffee.
Other days he simply vomited and expelled the pain that way.
He never discussed the pain with Harold. Or Joss either. He hid it when he was at her apartment because he didn't want Taylor to worry. There was nothing any of them could do to ease the hurt so why make them feel bad.
He knew they would cluck and sympathize and offer aspirin and suggest calling in Dr. Tillman.
But none of that mothering would work, he was sure.
Above all, there was Harold's example. Watching the older man struggle each day with his own terrible burden truly humbled him. If Harold could remain stoic and purposeful in the grip of his dreadful injuries, then Reese owed it to him to not utter a word of complaint about his own lesser problems.
Harold deserved that consideration.
But this morning the pain was subdued, except for the throbbing in his damaged thumb. The number was safe. Finch had no new assignments for him.
Reese needed a cup of coffee, maybe something substantial to eat.
Shower, no shave. Jeans, t-shirt and leather jacket, no uniform. Since Finch wasn't around to inspect, there was no need to get spit polished and shiny.
Reese walked the three blocks from Joss's apartment to a steel-clad cafe garishly labeled Otto's Uptown Diner. He had grabbed coffee here many mornings and liked the buzz of the brew and of the anonymous crowd. In particular, he liked the brusque but warm welcome from Anita the waitress.
This morning however, she had a bee in her bonnet.
When Reese pushed through the diner's double glass doors she launched into her tirade.
"If you are going to be a regular around here, Hon, you need to have a name."
The freckle-faced Anita was in full throat within seconds, without a warm-up, like she had been thinking about the problem all night, just waiting for his arrival to get it off her chest.
"The strangers who stop in here, I call 'em 'Hon' or 'Sugar' or 'Sweetie' because they got no name. And to tell ya the truth, I don't care to know 'em anyway. Stuck-up no accounts, most of 'em, with their briefcases and their fancy phones and their newspapers in front of their faces and their hoity-toity attitudes."
As the agitated waitress caught her breath, Reese settled into his usual booth and slid along the bench toward the window so he could survey the street through the slanted blinds.
Without waiting for a request, Anita slammed down a mug of Otto's darkest coffee. He noticed how red and chapped her hands looked as she ran a damp cloth across the table to wipe up the drops that slopped over.
"But you come here often enough, you need to have a name, a real name. So what's it gonna be, Doll-Face? Can't keep calling you 'Hon' forever!"
She blinked her blue button eyes at him expectantly.
Reese looked out the window, put his right hand to his mouth and smothered a smile as he worked on an answer. His dislocated thumb throbbed angrily when he tried to make a fist and he put the hand down with a wince.
While he was thinking of a suitable reply, two painters in white overalls at the counter swiveled on their stools to call for Anita. The painters wanted wedges of apple pie to top off their breakfasts of eggs, sausage and pancakes, so Anita returned to her post behind the counter to attend to their request.
Reese was temporarily off the hook.
He rarely ordered anything more than coffee for breakfast at Otto's, preferring to keep his stomach empty and his head clear for action.
Anita usually tried to get him to at least look at the laminated menu.
She stood a persuasive five feet ten in her crepe-soled black shoes, not counting the inches added by her dark red pompadour. And since she certainly weighed a good ten pounds more than he did, he took her request seriously.
"Don't rile up the waitress" was a motto he had lived by for a long time.
His mother was a waitress in plenty of crummy restaurants when he was in grade school. He remembered her big scary moods, her sudden hugs and kisses, her bad temper. He couldn't get away. He could tell when a customer was really bad because she was so mad about it all during dinner that night. When she yelled like that he wanted to duck under the table and hide until it blew over. But he couldn't get away. Sometimes, she was still going on about the bad man while she washed out her stockings and apron in the bathroom sink after dinner. And when he went to the toilet in the middle of the night the stockings and the apron hanging over the tub threw big scary shadows against the ceiling over his head. He just couldn't get away.
She didn't hit him every time she got mad, but when she did, it really hurt.
Reese was jerked out of his thoughts by Anita's return.
"Whoa there, Doll! Here, let me wipe up that spill for you. You doin' all right?"
He grunted but made no other reply.
When she lingered at the booth, he asked for the menu, planning to make a thorough study of it before paying for his coffee and leaving.
Breakfast was the featured meal of the day at Otto's and the selections were numerous, so he was only through the first page of offerings when a stranger in a copper-colored leather jacket and black tights slid into his booth.
Reese's first impression was that the woman must be near seventy, but all the usual signs were telling him otherwise: Heart-shaped face without lines, flawless caramel skin, sparkling eyes, good breasts.
Joss's mother, no doubt about it.
Pretending he didn't know who she was or that she didn't know who he was would lead to certain disaster.
"Mrs. Neal, nice to meet you."
He lifted his eyebrows, relaxed his mouth a bit, and hoped he appeared more confident than he felt.
A broad smile lit up her face and set him at ease.
He leaned back against the seat and examined Inez Neal closely while she did the same to him.
He thought she looked exactly like Joss. Same face, same body.
Except all the accessories were pushed to the extreme: platinum blonde hair trimmed tight above the ears rose to silky spikes at the top of her head and trailed in soft sexy feathers over the nape; silver hoop earrings brushed the shoulders of the leather jacket; a complicated bib of twisted silver chains and black pearls filled the low neckline of her black shirt.
Below heavy silver cuffs, her nails were shaped into long ovals painted pale blue. She wore three silver rings on each hand. Her make-up was minimal and neutral except for a dramatic swoop of fan-shaped false eyelashes.
Was the faint powdery scent Irises or another spring flower? He wasn't sure.
The strong possibility of developing an instant crush loomed before him. He always fell hard and quick. This looked to be another one of those times.
"Glad to make your acquaintance at last, young man. I don't know what's wrong with Jocelyn! What's she doing thinking she can keep a secret like you from me?"
A soft low voice, full of teasing, frankness, and the promise of good times.
"Well, I don't know what to say, Mrs. Neal. I'm sorry. We've been kind of private for so long it just felt natural to keep it going like that, I guess."
"Oh, I don't blame you. I'm her mother, not yours. No apology needed."
He released a long breath and heard it turn into a chuckle.
"But do you know how embarrassing it is when the girls in the beauty parlor start asking you who your daughter's new boyfriend is and you don't have a single damn clue? I'm telling you I was some kind of shocked that day."
"Well, how did they know?"
To get off on the right foot from the start, he might as well prompt her to lay it all out in the open immediately.
He watched her mouth curl with mischief.
"The girls knew because Jocelyn started getting weekly pedicures. Now I can tell you she hasn't done that in over fifteen years. Only one reason she would ever do that: she wasn't sleeping single anymore."
He felt the tops of his ears tingle a bit and assumed the blushing had begun.
Anita's sudden return relieved him of the immediate problem of trying to suppress his autonomic reactions. The waitress swooped down on their booth, waving her order pad in the face of Inez Neal with a familiarity Reese hoped was mutual.
"Hey, Inez, how in heck did you slip in here?" Grinning, Anita looked between her two customers, sizing up the arrangement.
"Don't tell me you're making a play for Doll-Face here? What're you doin'? Tryin' to beat my time? You know I saw him first!"
Inez didn't hesitate.
"And you know I have other fish to fry, Anita!"
"You still seeing that Anthony? Nice enough looking boy, needs more meat on his bones for my taste. But what do I know?"
"Anita, get with the program. Anthony was history two months ago. I'm with Carleton now."
"Is he over twenty-five?"
"His birthday is next January. If it's any of your business. Which it isn't."
Both women laughed and Reese wanted to disappear under the table so they could continue this conversation without him.
He didn't want to know about the sex life of Joss's mother.
Actually he did. But he didn't want her to know he was curious.
Anita winked at him and continued her poking.
"Say, why don't you find a man your own age, Inez? Leave the young'uns for the rest of us."
Inez arranged her face into a mask of pious reflection and with deep solemnity raised her eyes to the ceiling.
"You know what the great philosopher Moms Mabley said about that? She said, and I quote: 'The only thing an old man can do for me is carry a message to a young man!'"
The rich laughter rang out again. Several smiling customers at the counter swiveled around to see what the fun was all about.
Reese marveled that in the span of just thirty minutes he had seen Inez Neal laugh raucously several times. In contrast, it had taken at least five months before he had elicited the same free-wheeling response from her daughter.
It was as though the mother had sucked up all the merriment in the family, leaving Joss to shoulder an abundance of rules, regulations, cares, and responsibilities.
Anita finally got down to business, taking Inez' order for the farmer's platter of two eggs easy over, hash browns, hand-thrown biscuits, and link sausages.
When she turned to Reese, he asked for a refill of coffee and an order of whole wheat toast.
"Unh, unh! No sir! I'm not going to just stuff my face while you sit there staring at me with those gorgeous eyes. Not going to happen. You have to eat something too."
He started to protest. But Inez rolled her eyes to her friend who laid down another unwritten house rule, possibly one invented on the spot.
"We don't serve toast without nothing with it. You gotta order the whole breakfast to get the toast. So, what's it gonna be, Doll-Face?"
"He'll have the farmer's platter, same as me." Inez settled that and Anita rushed off to the kitchen with the order.
While they waited for their breakfast, Reese listened as Inez chatted away like he was family.
She talked about raising her two daughters, the dazzling Inez Junior, gone now, and dutiful Jocelyn. About her late husband, a dashing figure and responsible breadwinner, also gone too soon. About her own long career as an emergency room nurse at St. Saraphia Martyr Hospital in the Village.
He wanted to know more details of how she had figured out about him and Joss.
If he was going to be involved with this family, he needed to have an accurate assessment of the skill set and knowledge base each member brought to the table.
Inez was forthcoming with the details of her sleuthing.
"After the pedicures, the first real clue was Taylor. That kidnapping really shook him. Naturally. It would any young boy. And to tell the truth, Jocelyn didn't handle it all that well. She sort of shut down, never talked with the boy, made him keep it all inside just like she did. Then she sent him off down South for the summer and the chance slipped away."
Inez sipped from the cream-laden coffee in front of her and inhaled the steam as it rose around her face.
"But before Taylor left, I tried to talk with him a few times, I was that worried for him. He wouldn't say much. Just kept on and on about this 'badass dude' who had rescued him. At first, I thought he was imagining it, like the way you would try to push a nightmare out of your mind with a happier thought.
"But after he repeated it so many times, I began to figure the 'badass dude' was real."
Inez paused and pinned Reese with a gut-stirring glance.
"I may be old but I'm not stupid. I started to put it together: maybe the 'badass dude' was Jocelyn's new man."
Anita interrupted with their breakfasts, steaming and juicy on white dishes the size of home plate. With an affectionate flourish, she slammed the platters down on the table, filled the mugs to the brim again, and left them to their conversation.
Reese attacked the flaky hash brown potatoes in order to avoid talking.
But Inez didn't seem to need much verbal prompting to resume the account of her intelligence gathering operation.
"I go over to Jocelyn's apartment once or twice a week to check up on Taylor, make sure some good cooking gets into him, put a few things in her pantry. So one time when I stopped at Mr. Oh's grocery store, you know, the one around the corner, Mr. Oh asked me if I wanted to pick up another box of Cheerios. Now, I know perfectly well that Jocelyn hates Cheerios and she taught Taylor to feel the same way. But Mr. Oh said lately she was buying at least one box each week, sometimes two. So that meant someone else was in her apartment, eating up the Cheerios."
Inez paused, triumphant, and grinned at Reese.
"You do like Cheerios, don't you?"
"Yes, I do. Always have. My mom told me Wheaties was the 'Breakfast of Champions,' but Cheerios built winners."
"And did your mother teach you to use starch on your dress shirts? Because that was my next clue. A week later when I went back to the grocery store, Mr. Oh asked if I needed more spray starch. Now, you have to understand, Jocelyn hasn't ironed a shirt since Bill Clinton moved to Harlem. So I knew she must be entertaining someone in the apartment with a taste for real sharp dressing."
She ran her impish gaze up and down his body, taking in the wrinkled black t-shirt he had thrown on for his day of leisure. Reese felt seriously underdressed. The next time he saw Inez Neal he vowed he would be wearing his best black suit and smartest white dress shirt.
To deflect, he gestured with his fork urging Inez to continue her account.
"Well, I'm not too proud of this part of the story, to be honest. I confess that I did a little snooping around in Jocelyn's bedroom, looking for clues, you know."
She lowered her eyes and then her whole head so that Reese could see the individual peaks of the bright blonde spikes that bloomed on top. When she raised her face to him again, he thought he noticed a tear in one eye.
"I found a picture in her bedside table. It was a photo of you. Of you with a white woman. You were both smiling and happy, with tall drinks on a table in front of you. I didn't know what it meant. Why would Jocelyn keep a picture of two strangers next to her bed? Unless it meant something real special to her."
Reese swallowed hard.
He knew about the picture Joss had taken from Jessica's mother. About the conversation the two women had had about Jessica and her mysterious man and their brief, lost relationship.
He had never had the chance to meet Jessica's mother, to talk with her like this, to share how much her daughter meant to him. Jessica had kept their relationship a secret from her mother, even lying about his identity when they went on their trip to Mexico. And that choice had deprived all three of them of a chance to experience the multilayered joys of a kinship built on love.
The reverberating ache he felt now confirmed that he wanted something different this time.
Inez was still talking, still apologizing for an invasion of privacy he was sure Joss would forgive, if she ever learned about it.
"…so that's how I knew who you were. When I walked in here this morning, I saw you and knew you were the man in Jocelyn's picture."
She breathed a hitching sigh and pushed an end of sausage around the plate with her fork.
His injured thumb was seriously protesting the workout with the utensils, barking in double time now. Reese had a blister-packet of two Tylenol in his jeans pocket and he excused himself in search of the bathroom so that he could take the pain medicine in private.
When he came back, Anita had cleared the table and Inez seemed to have recovered from her bout with the blues. Observing him closely as he slid across from her, she squinted a bit as if facing into the sun.
"So, what line of work you in, exactly?"
Her interrogation techniques – soften up the subject with kindness, then dive in for the kill without warning – would make her daughter proud.
"Personal security, I guess you could say." He was trying hard not to lie, at least not this early in their acquaintance.
"Kind of a body guard? That it?"
"Yes, something like that."
"So that explains the fresh bruises on your chin and the gash above your eye. What did the other fella look like?"
"A lot worse."
They both smiled and he thought the subject was dropped. But Inez was on a mission.
"And your thumb? Dislocated, looks like. Let me get a closer look."
She took his hand in both of hers, cradling it in her left, probing the colorful swelling at the base of his thumb with her right index finger. Her touch was skilled, confident. Warm fingers closed firmly around his wrist to hold the hand still as he flinched at the sharp pain from her examination.
"On a scale of ten, what's the pain level?"
"Three, maybe four."
"It's more than that. But O.K." She let his bravado ride.
"I can fix this for you. Pop it right back in place. Done it fifty times every Saturday night in the emergency room for twenty-eight years."
She looked at him steadily until he squirmed under her analytic gaze.
"Or were you planning to slink off into a cave somewhere and do it by yourself later?"
He nodded and closed his eyes.
"Do you want me to help you? Or don't you? Your choice."
He nodded again, still with his eyes closed.
"Alright then. Look at me." Orders, stern and direct.
Reese raised his eyes to meet hers. Soft, dark and large, the whites a bit yellowed with the accumulated years, but still so beautiful.
"Now look up at my hair."
"What?"
"I said, look at my hair. I need your opinion on it. Do you think I should stick with this color or go back to a shade with more gold in it? Do you think this color looks too bright on me? Does it wash out my complexion? Straight up brown is way too basic for me, so you aren't going to try to suggest any of that boring foolishness, are you?"
As she prattled on, Inez seized his thumb and gave it a quick jerk. He heard, rather than felt, the dry click as the bone dropped back into the joint socket.
White sparks flashed behind his eyelids. A sharp yelp burst from him before he could clamp his mouth shut. He felt a single hot tear run down each cheek and he squeezed his eyes tighter to prevent more from escaping.
"Shoosh, shoosh. You're O.K. now. It's over. You're alright now." Low and gentle.
Her soothing voice reached through the roar in his head. The pain began to recede. She stroked his palm, then turned his hand over and passed her fingers across the knuckles and tendons, pressing and cooing as she worked.
Panting, he croaked out an answer to her inquiry at last.
"I think your hair color looks just fine the way it is. Don't change it on my account."
"Wouldn't dream of it! But thanks anyway. Vote of confidence from a good-looking man is always much appreciated."
Though the words were flirtatious, her eyes suddenly seemed tired, her energy spent.
Anita appeared at that moment with the check, which she carefully placed on the table at the exact mid-point between her two customers.
Reese moved quickly to claim the bill and Inez nodded at his good manners but did not utter a word.
In her world, as in his, going Dutch Treat was simply not an option. A gentleman always pays.
He had never gone on a normal date with Joss. Never taken her to a real restaurant and bought her a meal. He didn't count the dinners at Pooja's because they were included in his rent.
He had never shared with her how much pain he was in from day to day. He had never let her see him shed a tear.
Now, on this remarkable morning, he had done all these things with her mother.
Inez Neal interrupted his reverie.
"Look at the time! I gotta get going now. Church committee meeting at eleven sharp and the deacon scolds like an old wife if you show up late."
She was cheery again, the way they had started off their conversation two hours ago. She leaned forward across the table and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper.
"So how we gonna handle this with Jocelyn? You gonna tell her we met? Should I? Or we just let her find out on her own? Just keep it a secret between us?"
Reese lifted his shoulders and shook his head to indicate their fate was in other hands.
"I figure she's going to want to formally introduce us sooner or later. Let it be her call."
Inez raised her eyebrows and nodded.
"Smart man. I can see why Jocelyn likes you. You got her all figured out."
She slid along the bench to the edge of the booth, pulled herself upright, and stood over Reese.
"So like Anita asked, what am I gonna call you, now that I met you in person?"
"You can call me John."
A bit of skepticism tinged her voice.
"That the name your mother gave you? Or a made up name?"
"The name my mother gave me."
"Alright then. John it is. It was a pleasure to meet you at last, John. Maybe I'll catch up with you here again sometime soon. Even before Jocelyn gets around to introducing us."
Then she was out the door, a faint hint of Irises trailing in the air behind her.
By midnight, Finch had completed scanning the Facebook and Twitter accounts of the several hundred New Yorkers he monitored each day. He considered these social networking sites the modern day equivalent of the agony columns that enlivened newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic in the nineteenth century. He liked to cite Sherlock Holmes' assessment of this seemingly frivolous reading material:
"What a chorus of groans, cries, and bleatings! What a rag-bag of singular happenings! But surely the most valuable hunting-ground that ever was given to a student of the unusual!"
But the data he gathered there, even if commonplace or inconclusive as it was today, always rattled his sensitive mind. To generate a distraction and calm himself for sleep, Finch expanded the screen with the city grid for a final examination.
He was comforted to see that all the cursors were fast in their places; their ramblings had ceased.
Familiar warmth curled through him as he watched the green cursor and the blue cursor settle into their synchronized blinking pattern at the same intersection for another night.
He powered down the computer at last and retired to bed.