A Thousand Times Goodnight
"It should've been us," the first time Stella says it out loud, it's the bottom of the night, when the traffic outside of her apartment is as quiet as it will ever be.
She drums her fingernails – freshly manicured – on the glass table in the apartment. The gentle percussion, combined with the guilty beating of her tell-tale heart and the static coming from the radio lull the air around her into a half-awake state. She feels like she's on the edge of a cliff, or (for the sake of convenience) at the top of the Empire State building, trapped between Hell and Mac Taylor.
She looks down at her periwinkle chiffon gown and almost wretches at the very sight of it. She'd have to change before jumping... or at least she would, if she'd had any real plans to jump off the Empire State building. Going out in style, at least, this kind of style, was far too dramatic. Too divine. Too romantic, even, and therefore, that kind of death is beneath her.
In fact, she finds some sort of sick sense of pride in the fact that she here she is, the morning after her best friend's wedding, with no desire to ever wed herself. Their floral bouquets and champagne fountains and undying, unconditional love do nothing for Stella Bonasera. She's above that. She's something else, something brighter.
The grapes are sour, Mac Taylor would say, though never in reference to the current situation, because that would be too mean, too unfeeling.
And Stella isn't in the mood for tough love, though it's the only thing that has ever worked for her in the past. As the song that pours from the impact of her fingernails on the table fills the room, Stella finds herself back in this familiar state of sorrow and grieving for a man who isn't dead, but has left her all the same. Except that it's different this time. There's still the feelings of regret, and there's still the vague idea of self-harm floating around somewhere, but the scars she's been trying to heal have been ripped away once again and she's bleeding one-sided feelings into the song.
It's different because he's married now. He's bound to this beautiful, blushing bride, whom even Stella has come to adore and cherish as a friend, and there's something so horrifically official about it that makes her want to scream.
Fuck, the tears start, but there's no sound from her mouth, just her fingers, I love him.
There's nothing new about that. But she's sure she has this heartbreak thing down perfectly. She's got this gut-wrenching dirge that she knows by heart, which is exactly the problem. More than that, she has her act together, even now, in her dining room, still in her bridesmaid's dress, listening to the same old song. She'll be flawless at the interview tomorrow, even if he's in the room. Everything will be the same tomorrow, she's go back to her black business pumps, and a polished smile that shines brighter than the ring on his finger.
It's a sense of righteousness that pulses through her veins that tells her, Girl, you did the right thing, the way a mother might say. She doesn't know where she's picked it up, but somewhere along the way, while she was falling in love with her best friend, she came to an understand that some things just weren't meant to be, and that any sort of relationship beyond friendship with Mac Taylor, was one of those impossible things.
Improbable, he would correct, ever the scientist.
But he was the most impossible person she'd ever known, aside from herself. She was impossible in every way shape and form, and that could be good and bad, depending on the time, the place, and the man.
In this case, the man was two things. One: He was Mac Taylor, two: at one o' clock on August 11th, he married a woman who was not Stella Bonasera.
As such, she decides that things will never be the same.
Actually, it has been decided for her, she remembers. The day he came to her, to her, Stella, on a rainy summer afternoon. It was the last time he had ever come.
--
"I'm going to ask her to marry me, Stella," he said, with a boyish grin on his face.
He looked younger now than he had when she'd first met him six years earlier. A puzzled look came over her features at his words. She directed her questioning gaze at the sky and asked silently why it was so dark today.
"Then maybe this is inappropriate," she said finally, and his face was grew momentarily bright at her response, but then he realized just what kind of response it was.
"Stella?"
She turned to look at him, her old, yellow robe swishing around her bare thighs, sending a chilly shock throughout her entire being. He felt it too, his eyes dropped to the fraying cloth belt around her waist, and suddenly, it was he who felt naked and ashamed.
"I should go," he turned to leave suddenly, but she stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
And suddenly, it occurred to him that this was incredibly inappropriate. He was in love with Claire, and tomorrow night, they would most likely be engaged. What did that mean? It meant a lot of things. His palms began to sweat. Was she wearing anything under that robe? He couldn't be sure. He'd just barged in, without even thinking, jammed his spare key into her lock like it was his own apartment, like he had some kind of right to be there.
Like it was right to be there at all.
"Congratulations, Mac," she held the door open and gave him a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.
But he was too busy staring at the floor in front of him to read her heart the way he'd always done.
--
It's too bright outside for six a.m., and for the first time since college, Stella cringes at the feel of the sunlight on her face, raking at her face, at her soul. Yesterday's tears have left a burning sensation in her eyes. But she makes sure she's immaculate when she walks into the lab for the very first time, even takes the time to wash the inked address that Mac had given her off the edge of her palm.
The hallway isn't crowded, but it's filled with life. There's people walking past her, bright, intelligent people, and she's glad that none of them are Mac Taylor. She hopes he took the week off for a honeymoon at least, but stops herself from thinking about it once she realizes the repercussions, and the probability of the subject.
He isn't one for vacations.
There's intent footsteps behind her, "Detective Bonasera?"
She turns to examine the owner of the voice. It's a young man who she's certain she hasn't met before, and yet, there's something oddly familiar about his eager smile and friendly blue eyes. There's something about him that isn't impossible at all.
"Call me Stella," she says.
"Danny Messer," he shakes her hand promptly.
She searches her brain for that name, but comes up with no hits.
"Mac's office is on the next floor," he notices her questioning stare, "He uh... told me about you. I mean, just that we'd be getting another First Grade, a Detective Bonasera."
"And, I just look like a Detective Bonasera to you?"
"There's a picture on his desk."
Stella wants to hit him for divulging such information. She's never been good at distracting the merciless curiosity that hung within her constantly. She'd tried last night, at the wedding. Tried to ignore the fact that everything had been small, and well-planned and beautiful. Twenty-six guests, some of which she'd recognized as Mac's brothers from Beirut, others whom she had no names for, but recognized all the same. She'd studied the guests then, analyzed them by order of importance so that she could be no longer unaware of her own presence at the wedding, as one of three bridesmaids, clad in periwinkle and a 100-watt smile.
Then the reception, a small gathering of friends and family and... her, Stella, who seemed to stick out the most, even as she wore the same dress as two other people. She couldn't ignore him, in his black tuxedo, the first time she'd ever seen him wear one, whisper to his bride. She tried to tear her eyes away at a quarter to eleven, when they'd taken their early leave.
--
"It should've been us," she told the wall.
--
"You okay?" asks the boy, Danny Messer.
"I'm fine," she's irritated though, at his attempt to be her friend when they've only just met, "I thought there'd be an interview?"
"As far as I know, you already have the job," he grins and looks over his shoulder one last time to say, "I'll see you in the lab."
She smirks and tries desperately to put her finger on that nagging trait that makes Danny Messer a recognizable stranger. Before she has time to think about it, she feels eyes burning through her being.
There's Mac, the same way he's always been. Sitting in his office and pretending not to look at her through the glass walls. Jeez, glass? she thinks and shakes her head. He could have been made entirely of glass, his insides could have been put on display for the world to see, and no one would ever be able to unravel the enigma that was Mac Taylor.
She's tried. It's too painful.
"Come in," he says when she opens the door just a crack.
He says things to her, useless, redundant things that she already knows, and doesn't care to hear again. Once she knows something, she can't un-know it, it's stuck in her mind, so why is he still speaking?
Her eyes drift from his face, to the skyline; the backdrop of the city is nothing compared to him. All the while, her mind remains transfixed on the small black picture frame on his desk. There's only a few, but she recognizes the black one to be the frame that surrounds their picture. He'd chosen the frame himself, hence it's obvious displacement among the beautiful wooden frames that he'd received as gifts.
"Of course," she answers a question that she's heard, but hasn't considered.
She doesn't care. She can't care. There's a picture on his desk, boxed in an onyx frame, surrounded by some cosmic void. And the picture is of them, five years and eight months ago, at her academy graduation.
It bothers her because there's a solid frame around her mind too, around her being, and it keeps her in the palm of his hand – no, she has to fight for that too. She has to beg whatever nostalgia he has left within him to keep her around. She has to take this job, in this city that she isn't sure is for her yet, to be near him, because it's been years since she's been without him. It's been years since she's been alone.
This professional work relationship she's about to sign her life away to, is better than nothing, she thinks.
She's beaten that stage, she's closed the door on loneliness and regret. Besides, it's not like she hasn't spent so much time around him with her feelings in exile somewhere where the sun never shines. It's not like it's the first time he hasn't been able to take his eyes off another woman.
And if there's a first time for everything.
Well...
--
The first modern millennium passes by, and Stella passes out, on some beat-up leather couch on the balcony of a Jersey apartment building. It's as far away as she can get from him on first holiday off since she joined the team. She goes out, then goes up, then gives up whatever strength of character she has left, shoves her soul down a bottle, and then the bottle down her throat, for two hours before she can no longer stand.
She's about to play her funeral dirge for the regrettably living woman, when a piercing poly tone rakes across her eardrums with alarming ease. She's on the floor (and laughs at that) when she presses the ear to her phone and answers the first phone call of the year.
"Good morning Stella," says a cautious, but lighthearted, Mac Taylor
She's shocked by his voice, and doesn't trust her own enough to answer.
"I guess you were asleep, sorry I-"
Then Claire, so very alive, on the other end, running entirely on adrenaline and probably the electricity from a kiss just moments before, "Stella! Happy New Years!"
"Very happy indeed," Stella smirks, and realizes, "Now bring us some figgy pudding..."
"Oh Stella, you're so funny," Claire sounds genuine and warm and loving and very much like the kind of woman that Mac Taylor married, "I have to go now though, Mac's getting fidgety."
Stella says nothing, clutches the empty bottle in her hand. She's frustrated that it's empty, not a drop of bourbon left, but she cheers up a little when she realizes that it could still be used as a club to say, hit herself in the head repeatedly with (for being such a jerk, on New Years, to her best friends).
"Bye. Happy Easter... I mean, New Years," Stella clears her throat, "Happy New Years, Claire."
"She's gone," Mac says suddenly with a smile in his voice, "Out like a light."
"You went to Times Square."
"Not this year."
"Oh. Well, Happy New Years Mac," her head pounds, his voice resonating.
"Happy New Years, Stella," his voice lingers a moment, but there's not another word before the click on the other end.
"Yes," she tells herself, "Happy New Years, Stella.
--
She wakes the same morning, a cold light coming in from the east, flowing in through the window behind her, illuminating a room that does not belong to her.
She sits up, and it really feels as though two-thousand years have passed, and she should by no means, scientifically or otherwise, still be alive to see the sunrise. So she turns her back on the horizon and heads into the apartment, having woken up several millennia older.
--
The summer leaves Stella hot, and sticky with feelings she can't peel away until September sets in. Before that, she sees more of Mac Taylor than she could have ever hoped for. He's with her in the lab, he's with her on the streets at lunch, in the afternoon for coffee, and sometimes he calls her first thing in the morning to see if she wants to run.
She always wants to run and hence, she is always running.
Then, suddenly one day, Mac is beside her.
"I miss Claire," he says.
"You're married to her."
"I know but... she isn't there. She's never there."
She wants to laugh because this is what they've come to. He's spent nearly an entire summer moping around her, speaking of trivial things, and turning stormy and cold when she finally has to tell him she's leaving. Then the one time she said "Go, home, see your wife," he nearly takes her head off with his glare. It's the last time she ever mentions Claire.
"If I am not mistaken," Stella reaches down to tie her shoelace, "It's five-thirty a.m., Claire is in bed because she doesn't have to go to work until ten, and you are the one who isn't there. With her."
"I don't know how to be there."
"I'm sure you could figure it out if you tried."
"Stella," he's exasperated, and doesn't realize that so is she.
"What? What do you want from me?"
"Stella."
"Fine. Then I'll just tell you what to do. Go home. Wet your hair, change into something else, go to bed, hold her and for Christ's sake, don't let go," she says as though she's some kind of expert, "This will fix everything."
"Stella Bonasera's Six-step guide to a happy married life?" he jokes so that she knows that he's feeling better.
"Seven if you change your socks."
He leaves with a smile on his face.
He never smiles again after that.
--
He's looking for himself among the dust and rubble, come September of 2001. There's a faint echo in his heart of the man he used to be, and it's coming from Ground Zero.
Meanwhile, Stella is a few feet away, angrily yelling into her cell phone before snapping it shut. She wants to scream at the sun on it's high horse of condensation and blue, and beg for it to explode and save them from their fates. She begs the sun to show some pity, some shame. For the fate of the city, which is going to all go to hell if Mac Taylor doesn't come into work tomorrow.
He isn't one for vacations.
Vacations mean happy family time.
Mac Taylor isn't one for happiness. He doesn't have a family anymore.
And he's running desperately (almost gratefully, she muses) out of time.
--
All in all, Stella cries more than Mac does the morning of the funeral. But she's strong when she sees him, because it isn't fair for her to falter in his time of need. It's time he doesn't have, after all. He's a pallbearer of course, even though there's no body in the casket. Stella knows that he's angry about that, she remembers how he fumed at the hospital, spitting fire at Claire's parents because that woman was his wife, and how could they ask for a funeral when he couldn't be sure if she was really dead.
He wasn't completely certain, anyhow. He had his ways of knowing, had his ways of looking at the world and stumbling beneath its weight as another brick is placed on his shoulders with the passing of a beloved soul. He can feel Claire's energy disperse, washing over him in a flurry of pain and loss.
He has his ways of knowing. He has his ways of mourning too.
For a brief moment in a world that cannot exist, this method involves Stella.
--
"It should've been us, Claire," he went limp, gratefully into Stella's arms.
She swallowed the painful lump in her throat, and agreed with him.
--
He moves on, but is never the same.
She changes drastically as well.
He doesn't ever cry again, and she doesn't ever wallow the to a gentle string of would've-should've-could've. Instead, they walk bravely together into the city, surrounding by things that she can't possibly understand, but doesn't mind facing with him at her side.
She no longer thinks of herself as confined with a small glass plateau, with a sharp rectangular binding around her. Instead, she is free to follow him, and follow him, she does. Today, and every other day. He still shivers when he crosses Ground Zero, and in the winter she grasps his arm to share whatever warmth she can offer. Eventually, she's brave enough to do so in the summer as well, and then finally, years have passed and in September, they are inseparable.
It's beautiful. It's different and it's him and it's her, and she feels closest to the us that may have always been there.
fin.
September 2008.