I think I am more surprised by my words than he is. It's
been a long time since I've been able to surprise him. Maybe that's
why I did it. Maybe not.
The last time I surprised him, really truly surprised him, was
playing pool. There's something that looks like a pool table over in the
far corner of the room, but it does not appeal to me. It lost that appeal
when I lost my idealism, when I sacrificed the uncertainty of blind hope
for complacent cynicism. I don't remember how long ago that was. I
don't even remember what I was like that long ago.
He just blinks slowly. He's probably trying to remember just
how many drinks he has had and if I have been matching him. He's a bit
slow, a little closer to completely soused than slightly tipsy. That would
make me pretty close to thoroughly, unforgivably drunk - add my body
size to the killer concoctions the barmaid has kept me supplied with
and it seems pretty clear what my state of mind really is. But I
carry it well and I can see him fumble momentarily as he wonders
whether he's dealing with a completely, sloppily, inebriated woman...
or just a lonely, melancholy Captain who has only just been forced
to give up her otherwise stoic mien to lose herself in drink. How
could I expect him to realize that I have been falling towards this
point for so long?
He surprises me though. He doesn't respond the way
drunk men usually do to the invitations of drunk women, instead
asking merely, "Why?"
I consider briefly. "Why should you? Or why did I ask?"
He rolls his drink around his tongue before shrugging.
"Either. Or both." He shrugs again. "Or neither."
His indifference irks me. I swallow my vexation along
with a burning mouthful of my own drink. "Do you have a preference?"
I cannot hide the sarcasm from my voice.
He barely looks at me. "What makes you think meeting
my preference is going to make me kiss you?"
Even the incredibly high alcohol content of my drink isn't
enough to take the edge off of that. When he finally looks at me, it is
before I can wipe the hurt from my face. I prepare something trite
to say to waylay whatever meaningless statement of pity he sends my
way... but after scrutinizing my face with a clinical eye, he merely
tosses back his drink and looks away.
It is only then, as his indifferent, cold honesty finally trickles
through the fog settling in my brain, that I think to wonder why Tom Paris
is wallowing alone with his quiet desperation in this stagnant pool. I
belong here... by the same virtue that makes the bridge my home, I
belong here. Tom does not... or at least he should not. The casual,
smooth manner in which he hails a barmaid... the patented look of
indulgent sympathy, designed to cover a more basal disgust, from the
barmaid as she dispenses another round... and the effortless, practiced
way he tosses the drink back before beckoning her for another... these
are all seeming indications of a seasoned patron. I know well enough
that Tom Paris has spent enough time in bars to perfect his alcohol palate,
his pool, and his pick-up lines... but no amount of time - no amount of
alcohol - could ever make him deliberately cruel. Not him.
"Are you okay?" It sounds lame even to my ears.
He gestures for the barmaid to get me another drink. She
complies, but I am suddenly grateful that both Tom and I had the foresight
to wear civvies instead of our easily recognizable uniforms.
"Just fine. You?"
And so the game begins. I throw my drink back in one easy
motion and gesture for another. "Never better," I tell him.
"Good." He intercepts my drink, probably curious what it is
if I can toss it back with no seeming effort at all and yet get drunk enough
to proposition him. He swishes a mouthful experimentally. If he is
surprised by the fiery texture and my ability to handle it, he does not show
it. Instead, he produces a detox hypo out of nowhere and slides it across
the table to me.
"I didn't come here and drink myself into oblivion only to detox
myself back," I say without thinking.
"You didn't come here to die of alcohol poisoning either."
"Did you?"
He looks up at that, but only for a brief moment before he
focuses again on his glass. The drink offers him more than I can. "Take
the hypo or stop drinking. I didn't come here to call for your emergency
beam-out."
This time I am better able to hide the hurt. "So then why did
you come here?"
"Same reason you did, I would imagine." He scans the room,
no doubt for my benefit, and his gaze settles at the bar on a buxom blonde
wearing a tight ensemble speckled with what appear to be galacite crystals.
I watch him watch her, noting the carefully blank expression on
his face as she giggles at whatever lecherous comment the nearest patron
offered her. "She's not at all like B'Elanna," I note.
I see the brief spark in his eyes, the momentary clenching
of his jaw, and realize that I have stumbled upon the reason he has
so far avoided giving for his presence here.
"Is that the point?" I ask him quietly.
He is still staring at the blonde, but even his faked interest
from the moment before has faded. Even his blank, clinical look
is gone. All that remains is a clouded expression that I do not - should
not, cannot - identify.
"Already married to an older man," he says, gesturing
with his drink to the blonde.
I have already pegged her as the mistress of an older,
affluent married man... one probably in the process of convincing
him to leave his wife to get her talons firmly entrenched in his assets.
I tell Tom so.
He nods, conceding the point. "So who is the most
betrayed, Captain? The wife by her philandering husband? Or
the husband by his conniving, gold-digging mistress?"
I watch the blonde settle on a rather stately older man
nursing what appears to be a particularly weak drink and I feel a
rush of sympathy for the man. I sigh. "The kids."
Tom's head shoots up at that.
"Having to witness such discord between your parents..."
I watch idly as the blonde swivels slowly in her seat to grant her
newest victim an eyeful of her galacite-encrusted cleavage.
"Would it be better not to have been born at all?"
I am struck by the desolation in his tone. "Tom-"
"Let's play a new game, Captain," he says suddenly.
He points across the room to a quiet man, his shoulders hunched
under the weight of silent misery and his hands clasped around a
drink as if it is his only lifeline. "Him. Tell me about him. We'll see
who has the best answer."
I study the quiet, isolated figure for a moment,
completely baffled. It is the bafflement itself that helps me finally
recognize the vaguely familiar set of the shoulders.
"He looks like you, Tom," I say honestly.
Tom's answer is a noncommittal grunt, even though
his fist tightens almost imperceptibly around his drink. "I see a
man who is lost... completely lost. Maybe he lost his job. Maybe
his wife left him." His expression becomes unreadable. "Or maybe
his girlfriend forgot to mention that she lost the baby he didn't
know she was carrying after taking a stupid fucking risk on her
last survey mission. Maybe he only found out about the whole
thing because of his access to the medical database."
I am shocked. "Tom-"
His laugh is bitter. "Oh, look, it's a tie. Would you care
to try another?"
I don't know what to say. I don't even know if I can trust
how I am interpreting his backwards confession. I don't even know if
I want to.
But then I remember the last scouting mission... how I had
put B'Elanna on it only because she had not been off the ship in ages...
how the shuttle had been buffeted by a comparatively mild ion storm...
how the emergency beam-out call had come as a complete surprise...
and how the Doctor had given an abnormally brief report on B'Elanna's
condition. I swallow hard.
"That one," I say softly, gesturing to a solitary woman
whose eyes, under her thick, elaborate headdress, are fixed in
concentrated indifference on an empty glass.
"Workaholic," Tom diagnoses immediately. "Works
herself to the bone for whatever reason and wonders why her life
is in ruins around her."
I gaze at the woman for a long, long time, Tom's
assessment running through my head. "Guilt," I say finally. He
glances at me and I elaborate, "That's the 'whatever reason'. Guilt."
He peruses the woman's still figure. "Misplaced guilt,"
he says. "She takes on the guilt to drive her towards her work
and away from her life. It is easier for her to work than to live.
In a life that has always demanded she do everything the hard
way, this is her only concession to ease."
"Maybe she wants to live again," I say after a moment.
"Maybe she just doesn't know how."
"Or maybe now that she has experienced ease, she
has become addicted to it, victim of its powerful allure. Maybe
she is so eager to feel life that she will proposition a friend to
feel just the ghost of it. Maybe that is easier for her than cutting
her strings to try and feel the real thing."
I drop the pretense immediately. "I have no strings,"
I snap, irrationally angry at his assertion that I do.
Tom, however, stubbornly maintains the game.
"She has a man who loves her... a comrade, perhaps, and
someone she both admires and relies on. But she hasn't told
him that she doesn't love him back. It's easier to blame it on
work rather than to tell him the truth."
"And just what would the truth accomplish for me?" I demand.
Tom ends the charade then as well. "What would a
kiss from me accomplish for you, hmm?" He sighs heavily then,
the most overtly emotional display he has shown this entire evening.
"You think I can help you live, Captain. But the truth is that I've spent
a lifetime avoiding doing so myself."
"Your life isn't over just because..." My voice trails off. I
can't seem to make myself say it.
"No, it's not. But the fact that B'Elanna never told me...
that she would never tell me... I thought I was alive with her, Captain.
I wasn't. It got me thinking that maybe I've never been."
I am suddenly repulsed by the last few remaining dregs of my
drink. I abruptly shove the discarded detox hypo onto my arm, then quickly
recalibrate it for a more appropriate dosage for a man Tom's size.
"What-?"
He tries to jerk away, but my already improved motor
skills are vastly superior to his and I administer the dosage before
he can get away.
"Let's get the hell out of here, Tom," I say. It is more
an order than a suggestion.
He looks disconsolately at his drink, his glazed eyes
already clearing. "Why?"
"I refuse to believe the life I've been missing is in the
bottom of a shot glass," I say. "Or that I've been destined to
search for one there." I look over his shoulder to the pseudo
pool table and suddenly, I realize that I want to play a game.
He seems to understand. "Rack 'em," he says.