Disclaimers: I have nothing to do with the creation of White Collar
El stood at the stove, barefoot, but otherwise still in her work clothes, gamely assembling a chicken and rice casserole. Peter, knowing he was more obstacle than help to her, still couldn't bear to leave the kitchen. After a week of recriminations at work, he needed to be around El, who shared his grief at Neal's loss. Although they'd both gone through the motions of their normal lives, mentally they clung to each other.
El measured rice into a Pampered Chef measuring cup and poured it carefully into the pot of boiling water. "Oh," she said, pausing, the look on her face telling Peter she was caught up in a memory of Neal.
"What is it?" He touched her shoulder.
"I was just remembering—" she gave him a quick smile and turned her concentration to emptying the measuring cup. She looked into the pot, now swirling with rice. "The day Neal helped me with the St. Patrick's Day thing when my caterer flaked out on me, remember?" She put a lid on the pot and faced him.
Peter nodded.
"We were in Enrique's industrial kitchen and I needed a whole vat of green Jello, so I asked Neal to make it in one of those huge tubs. When I went to check on him he was hovering over a tub of boiling water, pouring the gallon of Jello powder, making swirling motions. He saw me and called me over. 'Look at the pictures,' he said. I looked in the vat and the boiling water was shaping the powder into changing shapes like clouds do. He said, 'Look, it's Dali's melting clocks. And there's a rabbit.'" Elizabeth was smiling, but her eyes were wet. "He wanted to know if there were other colors of Jello. I think he would have been in seventh heaven, but I had to tell him to stick with green." She brushed the back of her hand across the corner of an eye.
"I know," Peter said, then had to clear his throat. "He makes anything he can into a game or into – something beautiful. Did I tell you about the time he wrapped the office Christmas presents?"
Elizabeth shook her head.
"Our caseload was down and I had paperwork to get done – Neal's no good with paperwork – so I sent him to help the probies wrap the presents Hughes gives us. They're all the same, all in square boxes wrapped with the same cheap paper. Well, when I went to get Neal, I find my probies goofing off on a computer and the gifts under that crappy fake tree – El, I should have taken a picture. They were different sizes and shapes and wrapped in beautiful paper with different arrangements and I swear, he was placing them in careful position so as to look artistic. He never left the building; I have no idea how he got all that paper."
El put her arms around his waist and rested her head against his chest. "I guess he's good at some kinds of paperwork."
Peter rumbled a chuckle, resting his chin on her head, glad to have her close. After a moment he heaved a sigh. "What can I do for dinner?"
El pulled away and pointed. "You can get the chicken breasts out of the fridge."
Peter opened the refrigerator door and was hit with another blow. The shelves were blocked by pink boxes, at least one of which, he was pretty sure, was one of Neal's cakes. He pulled out that box and set in on the counter behind him. He opened it to see the cat hanging from a branch with "Hang in there" written on the cake's top. He stared at it. He had little hope that he and El would ever see Neal again. They would have to hang in there a long time before the sadness would lessen.
"El," he asked, and his tone caused her to turn to him, "you kept the cakes?"
She put a hand to her mouth. "I was going to throw them out," she said. "Sometime. Later."
Then they were holding each other again. "I know, I know," Peter murmured, "but can I do it now?"
"Please do." El pulled out a large garbage bag and held it while Peter dumped two lovely and no doubt tasty cakes into the bag.
One cake celebrates my fate; the other seals it.
"I guess we should have gotten the Bon Voyage cake after all."
"But Neal still wouldn't be here to eat it with us."
"No." Peter took the garbage bag out to the can on the back stoop. "It's for the best," he said when he came back in. "Phil's idea of poaching Neal would have Neal serving a life sentence in D.C."
"I know, honey." El rubbed his arm in sympathy. "You did the only thing you could." She tipped her head against him. "I just wish we could know he's all right."
Peter agreed. He kept thinking of things to tell Neal; kept looking around for him; reaching for a laptop to check his tracking data. Neal's was the largest presence they'd ever had in their lives and his absence without any closure felt like a wound. Peter ached to talk to the man. But that was out of the question.
"I'm sure he's all right," Peter forced himself to say, though he'd lost count of the number of times they'd reassured each other of that in the last week. "It's what he's good at."
"That sounds so cynical, though. He's good at a lot of things. I'm still amazed he can sew."
"You mean because he fixed the vest you ripped that night at June's."
"He didn't just fix it, honey, he updated it. Let me show you." Just like that, she was dashing upstairs, heedless of the unfinished supper she was supposedly preparing. Peter looked fondly after her and returned to the now cake-box-free refrigerator to finish his mission of retrieving the chicken breasts. On the bottom shelf, above the meat drawer, he saw a third pink box, the adhesive seals intact, although the box was labeled "open immediately". He brought the box out. Perhaps El had bought the Bon Voyage cake after all.
El returned to the kitchen holding a black cotton vest. Peter met her by the dining table. "Do you remember what this used to look like?" she asked.
"Uh …" Peter was lucky to have remembered the vest was black. At work he was as observant as the next trained agent, but he'd never been good at keeping up with El's wardrobe. Fortunately, she didn't mind.
"I'll show you." She slipped the vest on over her blouse. "When Neal insisted he could fix this for me, I mentioned that I was fond of it but I was sad because it was so outdated. He just smiled and said he'd return it the next day. Look at this." She smoothed her hands down her sides where they slid off the vest at her waist. "It used to be long, but vests aren't long anymore. It used to be double breasted, but that's so last season. He made lapels! How did he make lapels from something that didn't have them? I think he used the cloth he took off at the waist. See the stitching here? It blends with the pattern at the shoulder so you'd never notice. The thing is, double-breasted you have to wear closed, and it barely fit me anymore. This vest looks good open, so it will always fit. He didn't just fix it; he made it so much better."
"It looks great," said Peter, because it did, and because he couldn't think of what else to say.
"I know. Where did he learn to sew like that? He could be a tailor, or a designer."
"He probably has been," said Peter ruefully. "I know he has strong opinions about Project Runway." A heaviness fell on him, and Peter sat in a dining chair, hands before him. "Maybe he'll use those skills to make some disguises."
El sat beside him. "I thought you said Neal doesn't bother with disguises."
"Workmen's uniforms, the right clothes to blend in; he'll use those. I meant he doesn't change his face. So of course the Marshals have every transportation hub in the country programming their facial recognition software for him."
El looked serious. "But he knows that, right? Maybe he has hidden talents at makeup, too. He knows you know his patterns."
"I don't think I should talk about this here, hon," said Peter. "I'm sure they've authorized wiretaps on all my phones, and for all I know they may have bugged our house again." He winced inwardly, realizing how it must sound to her to suggest unknown people had invaded her house again. He hadn't meant to tell her his suspicions. To his surprise, she grinned. "We're not bugged. I swept the house."
"What? You what?"
El shrugged, pleased. "Mozzie taught me how. He left me some equipment." At his expression she added, "Oh not because of this. From before."
Peter shook his head. "Mozzie taught you how to sweep for bugs." He thought he should be exasperated, but instead he felt a sharp nostalgia. He missed the little guy, too.
"Mozzie's with him, isn't he."
"Probably. Those two are tight. At least, I hope Mozzie's with him."
El nodded. "I want to think he hasn't lost everything."
This, Peter didn't want to discuss. He had too clear a vision of everything Neal had lost. Fortunately, El continued to talk about Mozzie.
"I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't treat someone like Mozzie well, but Neal's always protective of him."
Peter agreed, but was curious about why El thought so. "What makes you say that?"
"Oh, like that night with my parents. Neal was so adept at changing the subject whenever Moz started sounding -you know."
"He didn't save Moz from your father diagnosing him."
El wrinkled her nose. "I know. But sometimes when people really get going it can be worse to cut them off. Neal knew when it would be more embarrassing to Moz to stop him than to let him go. I saw that."
Peter slumped in his chair. "I miss him, El," he said like it was a confession.
El slid her hand over his. "I know," she said. "I think everyone does. I bet even Kramer does, in a way."
"Oh, sure." Peter's tone turned bitter. "He misses the 97% closure rate he thought he could get. Hughes and I tightened up procedures in the New York office after what Rice pulled, but I should have known everyone, everywhere would be jealous of 97%. Phil had an in with me and he used it. I should have seen it coming."
El patted his hand, frowning. "I wish you wouldn't blame yourself; you're the one who –" she straightened, alarm on her face. "Rice!" She scrambled out of her chair and over to the stove, where the now boiling rice water bubbled out from under the lid. Brought back to awareness, Peter looked around to see he still hadn't taken the chicken breasts out. It had been like this all week for both of them. And they'd been so determined to have a real dinner tonight.
He sighed. "Shall I still get the chicken?"
"Yes," said El, turning the burner down to simmer and reaching for a dishcloth. "We're doing this."
Peter headed once again for the refrigerator, but paused by the confection shipping box on the counter. "Is this another cake?"
El glanced over, then turned the oven on. "No, that came yesterday from my supplier. It should be a floral centerpiece."
"It says 'open immedately'."
El bustled by him with a pat on the shoulder. "That's what they say when it's perishable. That's why I cooled it." She produced a kitchen knife. "I'll take care of it. We're ready for it at the conference center tomorrow."
Peter remembered to remove the chicken breasts this time, and opened the package with an eye on the greased casserole dish El had set out by the stove. "Do you want me to—"
But El was staring at the open shipping box like she'd found a golden egg. Peter was at her side in under a second, images of a dozen items of Nazi loot small enough for that box flashing through his mind. He looked down and blinked. Nestled on the usual shredded shipping paper lay a single red rose and a black cell phone.
His pulse pounded in his ears. He reached carefully for the phone. "It—It's Neal," he breathed. "But how?"
El lifted out the red rose. She turned wide hopeful eyes on him. Peter studied the phone in his hands and flipped the lid open. Nothing. He rooted through the box and inspected the outside. Nothing. "What do we dial?" He clamped down on his anxiety. He had to figure this out. There should be a note, a code …
"It will be on speed-dial one," El said, her face glowing behind the rose she held to her nose.
"Speed-dial one?"
"Oh, Peter, I've had this box since yesterday." El's face was suffused with both regret and delight. She nodded at the phone encouragingly. "Speed-dial one."
"How do you know?"
"Because I remember," she said. "I remember the last time he said good-bye."
Peter pulled her close and pressed the button.