"The End"
By December21st
Fandom: Castle
Rating: G
Pairing: Castle/Beckett
Warnings: None
Summary: This is what happens after their story is over.
I don't know what to expect when the door opens, but a teenage boy isn't it. He stares at me for a moment, like he's memorizing what I look like, then yells into the house at the top of his lungs without even bothering to turn his head. "Granddad! The book person is here!"
A few minutes later, the old man shows up from within the house. He's dressed nicely – not too formal, not too casual, and walks with a cane. If he's passed 70, it's not by much. He's clean shaven and speaks with a steady voice. "What, you didn't invite her in?" he asks the boy, who just shrugs and smiles. He proffers his hand. "Richard Castle."
"I'm Nikki Taylor, from the Hartford University Virtual Book Review, Mr. Castle." I tell him, shaking his hand.
"Of course, we're expecting you. My grandson, J.R." he gestures towards the boy who answered the door. The kid makes some sort of gesture that looks like the Vulcan salute from Star Trek.
"Do you like the cane? I got it so I can shake it at these darn kids these days," he asks, demonstrating by lifting it off the ground a few inches and shaking it in the direction of the teenager. The boy seems unfazed.
"Come on through to the living room. It's got a good view," he tells us as he leads me through a short hallway. Saying it's a good view is like saying he's written a couple of books. The view is amazing.
He settles in to one of a matched pair of easy chairs, first moving stuffed elephant/bear (gray with pink polka-dots) out of the way, then gestures for me to sit at the sofa across from him. "Watch out for heffalumps and woozles. My youngest granddaughter is going through a stuffed animal phase. Apparently there are a lot more animals now than when I was younger."
There's nothing on the sofa, but a winged Chihuahua is grinning at me from the coffee table. "Mind if I set up my computer here?" He nods assent and I take the five minutes necessary to set up the computer recorder. I tell him that I like my reviews to be informal; I'll just record everything and edit it later.
I usually spend more time getting biographical info before I do an interview, but I swapped for this at the last minute, so I'm woefully unprepared. I've basically come armed with a couple paragraphs from an electronic dust jacket and little else.
"I should tell you, Mr. Castle, that I have you to thank for my name. My parents are big fans. They met at a book club and "Heat Wave" brought them together. They've been reading your books ever since.
"Well, isn't that something. I wanted to name my youngest daughter Nikki," he tells me, grinning and looking genuinely pleased.
"Why didn't you?"
"Her mother wouldn't let me. And considering that Rowan ended up becoming a cop, that probably worked out for the best."
"So your daughter works for the police department?
"She sure does. Detective in the NYPD Fraud Division. She keeps her dad updated on all the juicy cases. You never know what will inspire the next book." He's proud that his daughter is a cop. This house probably cost more than I will ever make in my entire lifetime, and he's proud of his civil servant daughter.
"Are you working on your next book now?"
"I surely am. It's a work in progress. Another Casey Strike book."
"What's this one about?"
"Murder! Baseball! Green paint, fake sand, automatic sprinkler systems, recycled water, missing diamonds, and …" he pauses for dramatic effect, "gophers! But that's all I can tell you."
"Mostly because that's because it's all that he's written," a woman's voice comes from the doorway to the kitchen.
It's an older woman, probably in her sixties, leaning against the doorjamb. She's younger than him, but not by much. She smiles at Castle. "I'm back from the store. Enough groceries to last another week if Alexis gets back from her conference today and J.R. goes home, or for two days if she has to stay there any longer."
"Ms. Taylor, I'd like you to meet my wife. Ms. Taylor is from …"
"The Harvard Book Review. It's nice to meet you." She tells me, stepping forward to shake my hand. She has an air of pleasant efficiency.
"If I could eat like that and stay as skinny as he is, I'd demand rights to half of the ice cream. Speaking of, did you …?" Castle has the optimism of a kid.
"Yes, and I need to put it away before it melts." She excuses herself and disappears into the kitchen. Castle watches her leave.
I focus back on the interview. "Mr. Castle, you killed off your first hero, Derek Storm, and in the last twenty-five years, you've written several books featuring Casey Strike and Miranda Wright as well as a number of standalone novels. But the fan favorite among your protagonists is arguably Nikki Heat. You only wrote six Nikki Heat novels, and it's been more than twenty years since the last one, "Tropical Heat." Any chance you'll ever bring Nikki Heat out of retirement for another adventure?
"No, Nikki's done with her adventures. I didn't want to put her through any more." Castle says fondly.
"So she rode off into the sunset, got married, had a couple of kids, lived happily ever after?" I'm oddly curious about my namesake's destiny. Plus, mom wanted me to ask. She was over the moon this morning when I told her about this interview; I'm under orders to get an autograph before I leave.
"Something like that," he smiles.
"I was going to offer you some lemonade, but …" Mrs. Castle says from the doorway. She's chuckling and holding a glass pitcher of lemonade. The lemonade pitcher is home to a stuffed fish with a head on both ends.
He laughs and says "We'll have to tell Martha that fish can't live in lemonade."
"I'll call Johanna and let her know that we've accounted for Graplunk, Mouse Mouse, and Seuss," she says, looking in the pitcher. "But Lowly and Tiger are still missing."
"No, I found Tiger," he tells her, waving the elephant/bear at her.
"But you didn't come here to hear about what animals escaped from my granddaughter's zoo," he turns his attention back to me. I actually like the family byplay; it gives me a better sense of who he is.
"How do you respond to criticism that your last few novels have been written for the money?" I ask gently. I want him to know that it's not my viewpoint.
"If all I wanted was money, I would have stopped writing years ago. No, my children are grown and have successful careers of their own, and all four grandchildren will go to college wherever they want. The house is paid for, and we have enough set aside for emergencies. I write because I can't not write. I write because it's who I am," he tells me passionately. "And, as cheesy as it sounds, I write for the fans."
"Especially the female fans," his wife says, coming in from the kitchen to sit with us. She's teasing him. "Admit it, Rick, those cute young things oohing and aaahing over the great Richard Castle. They make you feel young again."
"No, they make me feel old. You make me feel young again." She's blushing. I wonder how long they've been married, that he can still make her blush.
"Fame is funny," he tells me. "My daughter, Alexis, is a professor of Literature at Vassar. Her name's not Castle any longer; she kept her married name after the divorce. So her students don't know who her father is. And about once every couple years, someone writes a paper on me or my books. So, of course, I get to read them after she's done grading them. The conclusions that some of these students come to are amazing. Some have been really good, but some of them are way out there. One of them did an analysis of the victims in my books, and apparently the ratio of male victims to female murderers in my books indicates a subconscious desire to support a matriarchal society."
"And do you support a matriarchal society?"
"No more than the next man. No, I just think that women are more dangerous than men."
"Speaking of dangerous women, I understand that the character of Nikki Heat was inspired by a real-life police detective named (I checked my hastily written note on the computer) Kate Beckett. Whatever happened to Detective Beckett after you stopped writing the Nikki Heat books?"
Castle's wife answers the question for him, her eyes sparkling. "I got married, had a couple of kids, and lived happily ever after."