Intersecting Lines Book 2
02 Lunch
Maura's viewpoint
Since taking up our secondment, now our permanent relocation, to Los Angeles my daily routine has changed quite significantly.
Once, as the Chief Medical Examiner for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I was head of a small team and handling most of the work myself, a professionally and personally satisfying situation. Now, given Los Angeles County has more people than all of Massachusetts, the vastly larger volume of work generated means that I spend at least as much time on administration, personnel issues and mentoring my much larger staff as I do on actually conducting autopsies.
For a while I had found myself unconsciously delegating the most difficult and interesting cases to myself, until I realised that I was depriving my team of valuable experience. From that time on I had started passing difficult cases across to my assistant Medical Examiners, once I assessed they were ready to deal with the work and that I was confident in their level of detail and competency. I made sure that I assisted them with their first few, before stepping back and observing the next few difficult cases, discussing their findings afterwards and suggesting areas for improvement they should be conscious of.
I did not completely enjoy stepping back like that, but it was part of my role to be a mentor and encourage their professional and personal growth so I did it nonetheless. The exceptions were cases for Major Crimes and Force Investigation. Both dealt with high profile issues and deserved the best that my office could provide; the fact that I had a personal stake in both divisions was unspoken but appreciated by my team, for which I was grateful.
Another and far more welcome change to my daily routine is my schedule of lunches and other activities. Back in Boston I would either have lunch with Jane or if she was not available I would sit and eat in my office, usually while catching up on my professional reading or perhaps shopping online.
Now however my lunches were usually spent with Jane, sometimes alone and sometimes with our friends. Most often it would be my friend Natalie, the LAPD media manager, at other times her partner Anastasia, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's liaison officer to the LAPD would join us, Thursday's were a standing lunch date with the Head of Major Crimes, Brenda Leigh Johnson, while her partner Sharon Raydor of Force Investigation Division and I had an agreement to go running early Wednesday morning's before work, our schedule's permitting.
Natalie and I will often go shopping or take in a movie on the weekends if we are not otherwise catching up, though given Brenda and Sharon and Natalie and Anastasia seem to be entertaining us as often as we do them, our weekends are often busy socialising.
Every second Saturday Brenda and I get together for a few hours of tennis, an activity that Jane also sometimes partakes in, though under protest, she prefers time in the gym and martial arts sparring, understandable given the nature of her job. As Jane once stated she wanted to spend her exercise time doing things that helped her deal with criminals and as she had not yet found a need to serve and volley a criminal into submission, sparring it was.
Usually Anastasia would join her for which I was grateful. Jane often went toe to toe with her male colleagues; what she surrendered in height, reach, strength and body mass she made up for in skill and sheer aggression.
Natalie and I had surreptitiously made our way down to the LAPD gym one afternoon to watch them spar, curious to see them in training. Quite frankly the sight had terrified me, they fought with the same dedication they brought to everything else, brutally vicious in its intensity. I was just thankful that both Natalie and I had insisted early on in their training regimen on full contact safety equipment as any error could have seen them badly injured, especially when they started training with knives and other hand-to-hand weapons.
Several other officers there watching them had quietly explained to us that very few people were prepared to spar with them more than once, newcomers would come in, see them looking hot and sweaty and to be honest, quite frankly stunning and challenge them, thinking it was a way to get close to two beautiful women, only to find themselves on the wrong end of a embarrassing thrashing.
That night, I told Jane that I had witnessed her sparring session and asked her what was driving her and Anastasia to such extremes; she'd looked at me for a moment before replying that it was their job and they needed to stay sharp, same as I did, I had my journals, they had their sparring. I knew it wasn't the whole reason but chose not to pry.
Natalie told me several days later that she had also asked Anastasia, who had attempted to deflect her questioning, but had eventually admitted that following an incident where Natalie had been endangered by several gang members and Anastasia and Jane had been forced to fight to protect her, they had decided that if the same situation ever arose again, the need to protect Natalie or I, the situation would be over much more quickly.
Remembering back to that incident, not long after we had first moved to LA, I recalled that Jane and Anastasia had dealt with it quickly and efficiently, obviously they did not agree and the sessions such as we had witnessed were the result. While I sincerely hoped such an occasion would never arise, I almost felt sorry for anyone foolish enough to rouse their protective wrath.
Fortunately that requirement had not come up again, Natalie and I had avoided such situations and simply appreciated the ever more impressively fit and toned physiques of our lovers. Jane's dedication in the gym had paid obvious results; her body was an ever more impressive work of art that I had come to enjoy immensely.
In fact I drifted back to last night, where I had spent an inordinate amount of time paying attention to Jane's impressive muscular development, including her abdominal musculature. I'd always appreciated her body but now it was even more spectacular…
"Earth to Maura, hello, are you receiving our transmissions?" Startled, I looked up and focused on the smirking face of my friend Natalie across the lunch table. I must have 'zoned out' on her as Jane would put it.
"Oh, I am sorry Natalie, please excuse me, I let myself get distracted" If anything the smirk got wider.
"From the look on your face the distraction had something to do with Jane didn't it" I felt my cheeks heat slightly, certain I was blushing.
"Well…" From the look on her face I knew Natalie was seeing right through me. "Yes, it did"
"Thought so, don't worry, I'm appreciating Ana just as much as you are Jane; she's even more delicious than I was used to before she started working out. Jane's told her she wants to be in top condition for when you walk down the aisle, whenever that is"
I smiled at the thought, Jane had always been stunning, now she was even more so. I glanced down at the ring adorning my finger, my engagement ring. Jane had placed that ring on my finger a month ago, as midnight struck on New Year's Eve. The ring, a Georg Jenson creation, mixed red gold and yellow gold outer rings with a diamond-encrusted centre ring, locked together so that the three rings formed an unbreakable whole.
Jane had explained later that night that it symbolised two very different people, from different worlds, coming together and becoming one, bound by love and marriage; Jane Rizzoli, a closet romantic. She goes far out of her way to hide it but Jane has a strong sense of romance hidden deep within her, though she would probably suggest it's her Italian heritage, before turning it to a joke.
"Have you come to a decision? You weren't sure if you wanted quiet and intimate, or a full family wedding" She grinned at me. "Personally if I was you I'd probably just elope, disappear for a couple of weeks somewhere no one can find you and spend the whole time naked, just you and her" I smiled, the thought was very tempting.
"Why would you suggest we elope?"
"Well a small wedding works, your friends here, your friends from back in Boston, Alex and Liv from New York, its not going to be a production. That is unless you start inviting the extended Rizzoli family clan, according to Jane there's hundreds of them all up and down the east coast". She shuddered theatrically. "That would be a production. Better to skip that and just disappear" I looked across at her.
"What about Anastasia and you, what do you want for your wedding" She pursed her lips for a moment in thought.
"Small, Ana has no living relatives she's close to, some cousins but she hasn't seen them in years. It'd be just friends. You and Jane, Alex and Liv, Sharon and Brenda, some of the people we work with, my parents, they're kinda Ana's parents now, have been since her dad died. That'd pretty much be it. Oh yeah, my sister Lauren, she'd kill me if she wasn't there" I smiled.
"I would like to meet your sister and your parents one day, they seem lovely from what you and Ana have told us"
"We're hardly unbiased observers, but I think they'd love you too. They did mention last Christmas that they were kinda looking forward to seeing us married and having some grandkids they could spoil"
"Do you want to get married?"
"Hell yeah, it's just been inertia, we've been together for four years now, it feels like we already are, it's just a ceremony to make official how we already feel" She chuckled. "Ana's pretty pissed at Jane over her whole proposal thing though, reckons she's a hard act to follow" I smiled.
"Alex told me much the same a few days later; apparently Olivia was out of sorts for several days afterwards. When Alex finally confronted her about it, Olivia admitted that she was at a loss as to how to top Jane's proposal" I chuckled. "Alex told her that it did not matter when or where, as she put it, 'if you like it you should put a ring on it', or something to that effect" Natalie chuckled softly.
"Sounds like Alex. So you were going to talk to Jane about how long an engagement you were going to have. What's the verdict?" I smiled at the memory of that discussion.
"Jane, as you would expect, is happy with anything that makes me happy" Natalie rolled her eyes, making me smile even wider. "But she did agree with my suggestion that our engagement should last at least one year. Neither of us wants a winter wedding so it will probably be in either late spring or early summer next year"
"Nice, keep it small and intimate, then a long honeymoon somewhere far, far from work"
"I would prefer it to be small, just the people we care about" Natalie smiled, which led me into my next question. I really was being rather silly; I knew the answer before I asked but still... "Natalie, it is traditional to have bridesmaids, to stand with the bride. I was wondering if..."
"Yes" I looked up at her interruption.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Yes, Alex and I will be your bridesmaids, we'd love to" I blinked and then smiled.
"If you are willing to I would love to have you there with me"
"You don't really have a choice" I frowned; I wasn't following her and told her as much.
"Maura, Alex and I, we'd kill anyone who got between you and us on the day, so really there's no one else available, especially if we let it be known that anyone looking for the job is courting death. You're stuck with us both" I smiled as I felt something well up inside me.
"Oh Natalie, there is no one I would rather have than you and Alex..." I frowned at her. "You have already discussed it, Alex and you, you have!"
"We may have discussed it, the night Jane proposed and a few times since" She shrugged nonchalantly. "It's traditional to have your closest friends, so that's us" I nodded, trying to not show how much her words had affected me. Alex and Natalie were the closest thing to sisters I'd ever had, they were there for me, just as I was there for them. That truth humbled me a little.
"Traditionally, the bridesmaids were part of a group of up to ten people, in Roman times it was considered important to have that many to outsmart evil spirits bent on harm to the newlyweds, everyone would dress similarly to confuse the spirits and prevent them learning who was getting married" I shrugged a little sheepishly. "It is an old tradition, descended from superstition, but I would feel lost without you both there" Natalie grinned.
"We'll be there; as for any evil spirits, with that many cops there, well an arrest for public nuisance ought to take care of them" We shared a smile. "Now on to more important things; Alex and I will organise the bridal shower and bachelorette party, plus we're going to help you look for a wedding dress. Unless you're going to get one designed for you that is?" I shook my head.
"I really do not know; I rather like the idea of having something unique for our wedding" Natalie nodded.
"What about Jane, wedding dress or a suit?" I laughed at the image of Jane in a wedding dress, as Natalie's rueful chuckle joined me.
"Natalie, can you honestly see Jane in a traditional wedding dress?" She shook her head.
"Not a chance, though she'd look amazing. So that's settled, a suit; well that's the first thing taken care of"
"One down, innumerable more to go I suspect"
"You're only going to do this once Maura, so we've got to do it right"