A/N This is my second work of fan fiction. I have decided to make it a follow on from my first one "The Twelfth Year." This is a different kind of story because I wanted to flesh out the world I had created the first time around. I also wanted to write about family life and that can be a little less linear and a little more indulgent (in a good way I hope). There are elements of romance, drama and crime in this story. Again this is an M fiction but not at first, so give it a chance.
In a busy city, on a busy street, there sat an historical brownstone, a beautiful renaissance revival rowhouse built circa 1891. On the third floor, the top floor, through the window set farthest to the left, Alexandra Goren née Eames sat on an office chair (lime green, the swiveling kind with an ergonomic design). She looked past neighbouring rooflines to the world beyond and tucked one lean bare leg beneath her. An arched elegant foot touched down to pivot on that stem, working the seat slowly from side to side, side to side. She felt itchy, twitchy, bothered but she didn't rise or wriggle. Alex had mastered her frenetic energies long ago. After all this time, after years of behaviour modification she was good, very good, but not perfect. A heavy loaded breath tumbled past her lips.
"Just 16.5 more minutes." he rumbled catching the sound and raising his eyes. She smiled because he knew her so well and because 16.5 was perfectly strange, just the way she liked him.
"Why not .8?" she shot out teasingly.
"Now you're just being silly." he said scribbling something fiercely on his notepad.
"Okay fine, we leave this room together in 16.5 minutes."
"15.8 now."
"Agh…" she groan-laughed-groaned. She was married to a comedian.
Robert Goren, formerly Detective Robert Goren of the New York Police Department - Major Case Squad, sat across from her. He was a tornado of mental energy yet from the outside looking in he was remarkably like her in disposition. This mirroring (was that the psychological term?) was undeniably a holdover from another life, a life when cracking the case had meant being completely in sync. And reading her in an instant - his partner come wife - that was a holdover too. He had a scale for weight of her breath, a protractor for the tilt of her head, an equation for size of her eyes. It wasn't a parlour trick (though he was very good at those) for them it was visceral.
"Well, pass me that pen." she gestured fluttering a hand in his direction.
"What's wrong with yours?"
She scribbled colourless angry spirals. And held up the sheet "That's why."
He reluctantly placed his silver Pelikan fountain pen (and a warning) in her palm. "Don't lose it."
"Trusts me with his life, his child, a mortgage, but not a pen." she mumbled snatching it from him.
And this intimate vignette was in the city. Yes, this was New York, but not quite the cloying, crowded life in the valley of skyscrapers that they had lived and breathed for years. This was Brooklyn, Park Slope, 17 minutes west, and a few stop signs south of her brother, and a glorious 25 second walk to Prospect Park. They could almost touch the towering old oaks from their front step.
Bobby and Alex had searched high and low for months for a gem on the island of Manhattan. That was where they'd thought they wanted to be, in a fixer or half of a duplex or something that could trim a handful of minutes off their respective commutes, but alas, they were priced out. And the places they could have gotten into bidding wars over were no places to raise a child. All they could afford were the up and comers, the barely gentrified factories and reclaimed public housing, places with very little green space and a whole lot of dodgy.
And there'd been another issue back then on their search for a place to call home. A very unique issue to this tall strapping man and his diminutive pregnant wife. Because of this issue they had run through 4 real estate agents before finding someone that could tolerate their 'quirks'. The issue was that every single neighbourhood they'd visited recalled their bloody past.
The city was a crime scene.
It was always the same, they would get a call about some glorious condo that had always 'just gone on the market.' Optimistically they would rush over, because the good ones never lasted more then 72 hours. They'd round some corner, onto some anonymous concrete avenue and then Alex would freeze and her hand would fall to her tummy and she'd say something like:
"Oh God Bobby not here remember the Pearson case?" or "Forget it, bad mojo. All I see is Candon lying there on the sidewalk blown away."
Alexandra Goren was not particularly squeamish. Normally her gore threshold was very high but these were not normal times. Eventually Bobby sat her down and in his most tender tone told her that she was in the throes of some nesting hysteria. And that her obsession with the safety and wellbeing of their child was going leave them homeless. And because truths (especially those told to heavily pregnant women) had consequences, he'd slept on the couch that night.
But the next day had dawned with new clarity. And they'd sat down and decided firmly on Park Slope. Remembering with that kind of smooth, affectionate nostalgia (because time had planed away all the bumps and edges) all the Thanksgivings and Christmases they'd spent at Will's house and how impressed they'd been by his little slice of nature butted up against the city. They remembered stately houses and tree lined streets. They remembered children happily screaming as they ran scantily clad and breathless through sprinklers or kicked at crispy piles of fallen leaves. And they knew from research that some of the best public schools in New York lived there. And really, they reasoned, it couldn't hurt to have family nearby (in a pinch). Best of all, by their recollection the only case they'd ever had near Park Slope had been about 10 blocks north in Prospect Heights, the Iberra case, and that psycho was in prison, 25 to life. Perfect.
With the neighbourhood set in stone, there had been nothing but to wait. And wait they had, for forty three days. Marking that tense time by counting new worry lines and the added inches around Alex's abdomen. Worry because they had sold their (her) home and closing loomed. But they weren't the sorts to compromise, not just any place would do, they had a list. Their detailed housing criteria was as follows: renovated, character, condo not cooperative, two bedrooms, over 1000 square feet, on, or in proximity to green space. And the kicker they had to have a room (or a nook or an alcove) to call office, that much was non-negotiable. Their agent Susan had tangled her fingers in her red pixie hairdo and pulled hard when they'd said that. Non-negotiable. An agent's greatest foe.
"You two could push the bounds of anyone's good nature." she grumbled mildly.
They both bit their tongues and resisted the urge to say: We have.
Instead they'd looked at her with genuine relief because they had already profiled her ginger bluster and they knew she was going to stick it out, not cut and run. "Thank you Susan." They said in unison.
Eventually (on an early summers day) Susan had found their apartment, the perfect apartment, and they'd gotten it for a song. But a song in New York was a very different kind of melody. In New York you didn't get a house and a big backyard and more square footage then you could handle. In New York, like Bobby and Alex, you got a renovated 1087 square foot flat, with 2 bedrooms and 2 baths and private rooftop access (called a terrace in real estate vernacular). It was quite a perk for 3rd floor residents like them. A perk designed, no doubt, to offset the reality of all those stairs. Because even dreams come true had stone cold truths. It was a walk-up, their perfect place. Every arrival and departure a vertical battle and these days it was always with a baby or a stroller or groceries or just weary uncooperative legs (with each lift Bobby chanted in his head: This is making you healthy). And a song in New York meant your agent worked the seller down to just a whisper under the 1 million dollar mark.
A million dollars.
1 million dollars!
Alex could hardly believe this was their life.
But it was.
They were really here, doing this, together.
They had crunched the numbers. And run the software (the sophisticated calculators that happily told you what you were worth on planet earth) using piles of bills and bank statements, factoring every credit and debit and as it turned out just under 1 million dollars was doable for her and Bobby. Their combined annual income - salaries, his pension, her spousal death benefits - was over third that. And they were sitting on a nice little pot from the advantageous sale of her condo.
With Alex at the helm of the chequebook (Bobby'd surrendered that task without a fight) they'd even managed to squirrel away a small financial cushion for the worst case scenario. But there wasn't going to be a worst case, because they were thriving. They were both on fire, as they'd always been together. There was passion. They were both flexing new muscles. They were both garnering new respect. And they were both alive with the mental stimuli of new challenges at work.
No they weren't detectives anymore.
But this was so much better.