Places People Live
by
the stylus
A not my typewriter story: I miss the innocence I've known.
Thanks to cappuccinogirl for pointing out all the places my funky grammar used to live.
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Some time off, she'd said. To straighten out a few things.
"Take a long weekend," Toby said, implying his magnanimity by his tone. So she had a Friday and two more days in which to struggle against the gravitational pull of headlines, deadlines, bylines. He had blinked up at her; his office was so much darker than the corridor that he had seen only her outline.
The noise of his pen on the paper traced fine lines of tension outward from her spine. She wondered what words were spelled out in this tightening down of her muscles.
---
Carol bothered to ask. "Where are you going?"
"To LA," she replied. And then, because they were themselves, she answered the follow-up before it followed: "Just some unfinished business."
Her suitcase fit into the overhead bin. Before she closed it, she flicked in the last Christmas card he'd sent; if she did it quickly enough there was the possibility of denying it had ever happened at all.
---
Her LA friends still kept the cult of the two-martini lunch alive. She kissed children and cheeks and breathed very deeply in the bright sunshine. The rental car smelled faintly of cinnamon and industrial cleaner. She drove with all the windows down.
The first night she unpacked into Wei-Ling's guestroom, hanging everything neatly in the cedar-lined chest. When she came to the card she propped it against the phone extension on the bedside table.
Her hostess leaned in the doorway, her infant son Jack cradled to her chest and jerked her chin toward the phone. "You should call him."
"I'm thinking about it." She sat on the edge of the bed, a pair of socks hanging limply from her left hand. "It's been a long time, though."
"He's sent you Christmas and birthday cards every year for the three years you've been gone. And I know for a fact that you haven't even called, because he occasionally does ask if you've moved or died." Jack gurgled and she shifted a little to ease him, her dark hair falling at an angle across her brow.
Wei-Ling had been twenty-nine and hell on wheels when they'd met. For two years she'd dragged CJ and Sean through every bar in LA, each seedier than the next.
"You should call him." The baby's hand curled into the front of her shirt and she ran a hand over his small head.
"I think I will."
---
The second night they had drinks with Wei-Ling and Todd before dinner. Jack was on a blanket on the floor studiously exploring the limits of his own limbs.
Brendan knew where all of the liquors were kept. "How is the new account going?" he asked Wei-Ling, and without further clarification she launched into a long discourse on the balance of television to print advertising. The jargon was vertiginous, causing CJ to finish her second drink too quickly.
It didn't matter because Brendan drove. The restaurant was dim and tables for two were set so that they were seated almost beside one another. Conversation stalled until a few bites into the salads, at which point Brendan's knee brushed hers and he carefully balanced his fork on the rim of his plate. In a completely neutral tone of voice, he said, "I was a bit surprised that you called, to be honest. Don't get me wrong—I was glad to hear from you."
CJ stared at the vibrant plate of romaine and arugula, stirring it doubtfully. "Frankly, I was a bit surprised that I called."
He didn't touch his fork. "Why now?"
She looked up at him, because she was trained to look people in the eye. She was trained to project honesty, and eye contact was essential. "I don't know."
"All right."
They finished their salads and by the time the waiter came to clear the plates anecdotes about old friends had taken over.
---
"Remember the time that Wei-Ling took all of us to that horrible club in West LA? The bouncer was that four-hundred pound guy who looked like an extra from a Wayans brother's film and the cover was about twenty-five dollars but she was wearing those white go-go boots and she just batted her eyes and convinced him that he'd never even seen us as we ducked under the rope."
---
"So Andrew—remember Andrew: tall Australian guy, balding, worked down the hall from Marge?— walks up to him and puts his hands on his hips and says, 'No, mate, but I will.' And Sean cocks his head to the side for a second, thinking, and then loops his arm through Andrew's and says, 'Well, that's an offer I can't refuse.' Poor Andrew looked like someone had just told him the world was flat. The guy on his arm just grinned."
---
CJ laughed until she had to dab at the corner of her eyes with her napkin, and once Brendan let out a particularly undignified snort which caused the couple at the cozy table beside them to turn and stare.
They split dessert and snickered together at the knowing look with which the waiter asked, "So that'll be two forks?"
In the car on the way back to her guest room she watched the streetlights wash over his profile. His hands on the wheel curled like Jack's hands in his mother's shirt. There was a moment when she might have reached out and placed her hand on his arm, but the stoplight changed. He glanced over at her and smiled when he shifted from second to third, and it was like looking at a photograph.
On the porch they stood awkwardly making whispered conversation until he leaned in and kissed her. She didn't pull away. He did, trailing one finger down her cheek and looking so hard at the path it traced that she wondered if he might burn through her. There didn't seem to be much to say that they hadn't said before, so she thought he might leave then and let her nurse the hard, empty thing curled in her chest. Instead he leaned in again; and though he kissed her on the softly cheek, she felt the touch knock out against her ribs.
"Happy early birthday, CJ," he murmured. Before she unearthed any words he had closed the Volvo's door and was looking over his shoulder to avoid flattening the border of geraniums under his back wheels.
---
Two hours on the runway, a faulty display light and a lack of pretzels later, the day couldn't get any worse. CJ blazed through the desert.
A blond woman in a leather jacket materialized in her path: "Ma'am, I'm sorry. You can't go down there."
"Like hell I can't. I'm CJ Cregg. I'm the Press Secretary to the President of the United States. I've missed two connecting flights because of a damn storm stretching from Texas to Canada and I am in desperate need of some place without seven thousand tourists so I can call the White House and have them bomb this entire state off the map."
"Okay, Ms. Cregg. I appreciate your dilemma, but you're going to have to find another place to work."
"This is my concourse. I just want to get to the executive lounge where there are seats and free peanuts." An afterthought: "Who the hell are you, anyway?"
"Catherine Willows, Las Vegas CSI. And the departure lounge is precisely where you can't go."
"Why is that?"
"Because at the moment there's a dead guy using it."
CJ took half a step back, and the scene slowly swam into focus. Cops milled around the head of the concourse, pressing back against the curious crowd. The blond woman—Catherine—smiled and ran a hand through her hair. She looked as tired as CJ felt. "Look, I'm really sorry about the inconvenience. There must be another lounge on another concourse."
And then the overhead speakers spat something other than courtesy phone pages and CJ's shoulders slumped. "Well, looks like it's a moot point. I'm not getting out of here until tomorrow at the earliest."
---
The day had gotten worse. And darker. CJ scanned for a taxi—what kind of city had an airport without taxis?
"Still here?"
CJ whipped around. The blond woman from before stood behind her, shrugging into a leather jacket. "God, you scared me."
"Sorry." Her head titled a little and CJ saw something that might have been a smirk start. Everything was rose-colored in the last of the daylight.
"Don't be."
"I thought you'd be long gone. Off into the sunset. Or headed east. Aren't you vital to the preservation of national security?" There was something at the edge of her tone that made the hair on the back of CJ's neck rise.
"Yes. And if I can't find a taxi in the next seven minutes I will self-destruct."
"Okay," she laughed. "Listen, I have a car. If you're going into the city I can give you a lift."
Her laptop case was digging into her shoulder. She was shivering lightly as dusk chilled the air. The strap of her garment bag cut into her hand. She looked down at the blonde woman. "Just like that? What if I'm a serial killer?"
"With all due respect, Ms. Cregg, I don't think I'm the one who should be worried." Her right arm tucked back the tan jacket, revealing a holstered gun.
"What did you say you do?"
"I'm a CSI—crime scene investigator. I work for the Las Vegas police department."
She shifted her suitcase to the other hand and nodded. "Lead on."
---
It was a black Tahoe, large and heavy, and Catherine drove it furiously, freely. It made CJ think of convertibles and California. It made her a little nostalgic. "Do you do this often?"
"Pick up strange women at the airport?"
CJ's eyes crinkled at the corner. "Yeah."
"Mmm." It was a noncommittal sound and Catherine pulled her eyes away from the road long enough to meet CJ's. Her right eyebrow was near the line of her bangs. "Do you often go home with strange women who carry guns?"
"More often than you'd think."
That caused a little start of surprise, though the blue eyes didn't leave the road again. Catherine passed two cars and slipped the Tahoe back into the right lane.
"Secret service," CJ offered.
"Ah." She looked as though she was going to say something more, but a sharp ring caught them both by surprise. They reached for their phones, even as CJ's brain registered that the ring wasn't hers. Catherine shifted forward to slip a phone out of her back pocket.
"Hello? Hey, baby. Yeah. I'm going to be home in about half an hour and then I'll take you to Kelly's, ok? Ok. I'll see you then. I love you, too." She flipped the phone closed against her leg. "My daughter Lindsey," she explained.
"Oh. How old is she?"
"Nine." Her face seemed to soften, just a little, before she clenched her jaw. "Where am I taking you?"
"I don't know. I wasn't planning on staying. Anywhere that isn't shaped like one of the seven wonders of the world."
"How about the Hilton? It's a big, ugly box."
"I can live with that."
The rest of the drive passed in silence. CJ watched the scenery and occasionally the woman next to her who was humming softly to the radio and calmly weaving in and out of traffic. Her slender fingers kept time on the wheel. The expanse of the desert abruptly gave way to the outskirts of Vegas, which blurred past in streaks of white and red light. Catherine pulled the Tahoe into the circular driveway of the Hilton and cut the engine.
"Well, Ms. Cregg. This would appear to be your stop."
"It would." CJ pushed the door open and stepped out, reaching awkwardly behind the seat for her bags. Catherine twisted around and lifted the laptop off the floor, passing it over. When CJ reached out for it, her hand closed briefly over the other woman's fingers. She straightened back, adjusting the strap.
Catherine leaned across the seat. "Got everything?"
"Yeah." CJ smiled. "I really appreciate the ride."
"No problem. Really."
She reached out to close the door as the car started, turned over and caught in a hail of rapid-fire drumming from the radio. CJ saw the evening before her: the industrial bisque of the corridors and the quiet hum of her laptop and CNN's anchors, the heaviness of yellow light reflecting off of strange walls. She canted her body back toward the interior of the car. "Listen, it's presumptuous of me to ask, I know. But would you let me buy you dinner or at least a cup of coffee as a thank you?"
Not a muscle moved in Catherine's face for a long moment. Then she blinked once, as if having reached a satisfactory conclusion. "Sure. Give me two hours? I need to pick up my daughter and jump in the shower."
CJ merely nodded.
"All right. I'll pick you up here in two hours. And Ms. Cregg, this is Vegas." Catherine waved a hand to encompass the length of CJ's body. "Try to wear something that doesn't scream 'uptight East Coast investment bank' so loudly."
---
The black Tahoe pulled up so close CJ thought she could feel the heat of its engine. Catherine emerged as the tinted window rolled down. "Ready?"
"You bet." She walked around and slid in.
"Much better."
"Hmm?"
"The outfit."
CJ glanced down, though she hadn't forgotten. "Thanks." It was as close as she came to finding casual clothes in her wardrobe these days, the grey flannel pants and the white oxford unbuttoned farther than she'd wear it at the office. "I didn't have a lot of choice."
"Right. So, any preferences on dinner?"
"Food. The only thing I had today besides a bagel at breakfast was a gallon of horrible coffee." It was said lightly, but CJ could feel the sentence hang between them, as if she'd revealed a bad habit or her father's illness.
"How do you feel about Thai?"
"I have strong positive feelings about Thai cuisine."
Catherine barked a short laugh and pulled out into traffic. "Okay, then."
CJ took advantage of the short drive to take in the lights of the Strip and her companion. The hair around Catherine's face was still slightly damp and when the car slowed to a stop under a streetlight, CJ could see the fine lines that belied the first impression of someone younger. She wore dark pants and a top in a bright shade of blue that dipped low enough to show off freckles across her breastbone. And a different, black leather jacket. CJ plucked at the white cuff of her shirt, feeling its stiffness.
---
After the "where are you...?" and "what do you...?" the silences became uneasy for CJ. Her whole world these last years has been composed of articulations. The other woman did not seem discomfited by the conversational lapses, or by CJ's level regard.
"It's odd," she ventured over her pad thai, "but I never thought of Vegas as a place people lived— not normal people."
Catherine murmured something and took a sip of her beer.
"What?"
Those pale blue eyes were steady. "I said, I don't know how normal you'd think I am."
It could have been something more if the tone had had anything but simple fact about it. CJ turned it over the way she would a new wine, teasing at its edges. Asking felt invasive, risky. It had been so long in the halls of power and their carefully guided transgressions. "Why not?"
She had a half-smirk that briefly reminded CJ of Toby at his moments of extreme levity. "I voted Republican once."
"Oh?" CJ leaned her elbows on the table.
"Mmhm. Also, I work with the dead."
"Well, I work with the brain-dead." Not even a tick of recognition came from across the table. "The press," she elaborated.
"Ah." A smile flitted around the mouth and then was replaced by the unsettling intensity under which CJ had squirmed all evening. It was hard to eat with the lower half of her stomach curled into an inexplicable tangle. It had been a long time since she'd met someone so unimpressed with her place of work but so intent on her words.
"You know," Catherine said, motioning as she spoke, "I'm going to have another beer. I think you should do the same. Two more," she told the petite waitress, sweeping her hand to encompass the nearly empty bottles of Singha that sat between them.
"Ordering for me now?"
"Yes. Do you have a problem with that?" There was an impish challenge in the glance that followed.
"I'll let you know when I have a problem." CJ could feel herself easing into the rhythm of the exchange, so like and so different from sparring with Josh. Or Toby. Especially Toby.
"You be sure to do that. I'd hate to disappoint." One fine-boned hand pushed the reddish blond hair back off her face.
---
The second beer did not make CJ drunk, or even tipsy. But it eased the steel band behind her eyes and she found herself, inexplicably, telling the story of her first—the administration's second—Thanksgiving in the White House. When she described the turkey deliberations, she was a little afraid that beer was going to come out through Catherine's nose. It was a near thing.
Because Catherine's face closed a little when she mentioned her work, and because talking was something she was good at, CJ talked. She stayed far away from power structures and situations and only brought up obscure agencies and numbered regulations when they applied to one of Josh's particularly harebrained schemes.
She was very good. All her words wove tightly together as she strung out the convoluted goings-on of the West Wing and the press corps into taut, funny narratives. She brought to bear the skills garnered from the podium and Capitol Beat and the sun-bleached years of doublespeak. She had forgotten what it was like to actually have a conversation with someone that wasn't overlain by righteousness and a five minute warning— or underlain by the past.
When the waitress had tried to clear the table three times, CJ invited Catherine back to her hotel for a drink. Something about the way the other woman tilted her head to listen had seemed to imply that she would accept.
---
The hotel bar was nearly empty, an austere stab at leather-covered comfort modernized by glass tables and abstract art. Catherine had a lazy, hooded look that ensured prompt service and nearly undid their waiter. CJ ordered a grasshopper, her first in nearly two years. The taste reminded her of summer and high skies, and when Catherine focused too sharply on her, she stared down at the cloudy, vibrant green surface.
"Who is this Toby?" Catherine, folded into a low chair, seemed to be mostly knees and black boots and pointed questions.
"What?" And she tried to scan back through the stories she had told, through what she had said and not said about him.
"Toby Z-something." Her hand indicated it wasn't important. "Are you in love with him?"
Her drink was the color of the sea before a storm, but Catherine's eyes were the color of the sea under a clear bright sky. And so she said "no" quite softly, believing herself.
They didn't touch or talk on the way upstairs, not even when the elevator doors closed them in together. CJ stared at the mirrored wall just beyond Catherine, seeing the way their reflections bounced back and forth into eternity.
---
Catherine's skin tasted of salt and CJ thought, while she was still thinking, that it was strange to associate the sea so strongly with the desert. There were teeth over her collarbone then, almost painful as she arched into the hands at her hips. The tongue that followed alternately soothed and teased.
They were much too far from the bed. When Catherine pulled her up for a kiss with the strong hand twined in her hair, CJ stilled and studied her face.
"CJ," the other woman murmured, dragging her back to the present—the hands and the lips and the rasp of their clothing where their bodies met.
She tried to put it all into words, tried to worry aloud, but finally found a finger lightly resting on her mouth.
"I'm a big girl, CJ. You're not going to hurt me. And I don't expect anything from you, so relax." There was a dark edge that CJ couldn't place, an insistence about this bit of openness that spoke loudly of everything it did not reveal. But Catherine's mouth replaced her finger and CJ was aware of carefully stowing all her objections and apprehensions before abstract thought became impossible.
The bed moved or they did. When it hit the back of her legs, she fell back onto it, dragging Catherine ungracefully after her. There was a moment of laughter and then the deathly serious business of buttons and belts and zippers. CJ found herself unable to move. When her hands were pinned above her head, she left them there and fought to remember how to breathe. Catherine was the bright center above her, around and inside her. When she came, her eyes closed and her head twisted to the side, she saw nothing but light.
A minute or ten later, she ran her hands down the narrow flanks of the other woman's body, her fingers still tingling at the tips. She remembered how different a woman's skin felt. She counted Catherine's ribs twice—once with her hands and then again with her mouth. She followed this pattern down and then, the body under hers still shocking, she unexpectedly found herself content to stretch out and tuck her knees into the back of Catherine's and ease herself to sleep.
---
When the front desk called at 6.30, Catherine had an arm hooked over CJ's stomach and a leg thrown across her leg. CJ showered and dressed and kept waiting for it to be awkward, but it wasn't. Catherine rose naked out of bed and kissed her and made a joke about still respecting her and then repeated it, more seriously and quietly.
"You didn't see much of Vegas."
"I saw everything I wanted to see."
At the airport CJ made her hand into a fist and brushed the back of her knuckles across Catherine's sternum. They kissed on the mouth and exchanged business cards, and CJ closed the door of the Tahoe very softly as the burning desert air raked across her face and walked inside without looking behind her.
---
She stood in his doorway, noting the line of his shoulders and the way he always worked under the overhead light, even when the day outside was sunny.
"Toby."
He ducked his head up in the way that only Toby did and smiled, just a little. "Welcome back. How was being stuck in Vegas?"
"It was good. It was... There was this thing that happened." She smoothed a hand down the crepe of her pants.
"Ok." He didn't ask, because he never did. "Is it going to be a problem?"
She stared at the window, the light ribbing through the cheap blinds. And smiled. "No. No, I don't think so."
"Well, okay. I need to—"
"Yeah." She was already turning to leave when he spoke again, very softly.
"It's good to have you back."
"Yeah," she murmured to herself, though Josh was passing and turned to look at her and then caught his breath and the tail of the numbers he'd been rattling off to Donna.
"It's good to be back," she said to no one.
---
Fin
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All characters are the property of their creators. The author makes no profit from this work.