On Impulse
At NCIS Gibbs glanced at the clock, yet once again. Jenny should be just collecting Tony, and he felt a little unsettled. He made his way to Autopsy and stood silently, then began to pace the perimeter of the space.
Ducky took one look and guessed the cause of concern. He spoke reassuringly "Give Jennifer a chance, Jethro. She very badly wants to show you that she is capable of tending young Anthony."
Jethro nodded, and a couple of minutes later, he returned to his desk.
Driving more carefully than usual, Jenny glanced nervously in the rear view mirror, but Tony seemed fine. Watching the cars as they passed in the left lane of the beltway, he called out the car models as they whizzed by Jenny's vehicle. "That's the Ford, there, the yellow one is the Toyota Tercel. I see the Chevy truck up ahead of us."
He changed a few minutes later to making car and truck vrooming noises, and catching Jenny's gaze in the mirror, he smiled at her. "Where are you taking me today? I have on nice clothes, not play clothes. Do you like them? Abuela and I chose them."
She responded with a quick smile of her own. "I thought we'd go to one of the malls, first. I have a few things I need to pick up, and I think there is a toy store there you would probably like."
Tony's eyes lit with anticipation and he strained against the restraining bar to lean forward to inform her, "I have been a very, very good boy, so you probably need to buy a toy for me."
She couldn't help but laugh. He might be barely past babyhood, but Tony already oozed charm.
Less than an hour later she found a parking space in the crowded parking lot of one of Baltimore's shopping malls.
She managed to extricate Tony from the restraints without too much difficulty and then began to head towards the nearest entrance. Tony jogged up to her and pulled on her skirt. "You are not supposed to not hold my hand in the parking lot."
Jenny mentally slapped herself and looked down at him. "Right you are, Tony, I guess I am just used to keeping up with myself." She plastered a serious expression on her face and questioned, "What happens to children who run around in lots where cars are going and coming?"
Tony answered, "If I ran in the road I would get a spanking because a car could hit me and run over me and kill me dead. Even Ducky couldn't fix me then and put me back together. I don't know about those other children, though."
Spying a revolving door at the entrance, Tony began jumping up and down as he quickened his pace. "I like that door! Let's make it go around and around, ok?"
He was adorable, Jenny had to admit to herself. She could see why all of NCIS loved him.
Nevertheless, she had an agenda. "Well, let's just go around twice. Otherwise, we will waste all of our time with the revolving door and will have to skip the toy store."
He pulled her into the space and giggled as they whizzed around. Once they emerged after the two revolutions, she pulled them towards a mall directory.
Spying a bank of rentable strollers, she looked appraisingly from them to him.
Tony caught her focus and bristled, puffing out his lip. "Those are for babies and wee lads, and I am not that."
She didn't fight him, and a couple of minutes later they entered the store she wanted, where she made her way to the displays of dressy business suits she wanted to check.
Tony attempted to follow her from rack to rack for several minutes, but eventually got tired. He sat down on the floor, then began crawling under the racks of clothes, pretending that he was under a caravan of tents. A couple of minutes later he realized he needed to use the restroom, so he crawled out and made his way to Jenny, who had moved into yet another section of the store. She was evaluating three silk blouses, each a slightly different shade of pink.
He pulled her skirt to get her attention. "I have to go to the bathroom."
"Go," she ordered absentmindedly.
"I don't know where it is," he responded.
"Oh-" She stopped and glanced around their area. Finally she spotted a sign, and leaned down. "Tony look, do you see the sign up there? That's the restroom. You go ahead and go, then meet me back here." With that, she went back to her analysis of the hues.
Tony made his way in the direction of the restroom with more than a little worry. Usually his daddy or his abuela took him to public restrooms. He went into the bathroom for boys with Daddy, or the bathroom with girls with Abuela. He had tried numerous times to convince both adults that he could go all by himself, but they firmly refused to allow that. This was his opportunity to show them that he was no longer a baby. Nevertheless, he glanced back carefully to make sure all looked well.
The bathroom door proved heavy, and he had to put his back against it and use his legs to provide enough traction to get it wedged open. He stumbled through, pleased that he had gotten into the room. A couple of minutes later he improvised a stepstool out of the trashcan, and balanced on the sink to wash his hands.
When he came out of the restroom no one appeared in sight. He looked to the left and to the right, trying to locate Jenny. Realizing that he didn't have any idea which direction to choose to begin a search, he used his balled up fists and began chanting, "Eeney meeney, miney, mo, catch a tiger by the toe." The last word landed on his left fist, so he set off in that direction, keeping on a straight course down the center aisle.
Discovering Jenny was nowhere to be found to the left, Tony decided to move towards the side aisles to search. He had yet to see store personnel, and a couple of minutes later, he began to worry.
Just as tears threatened, he spied an escalator, and his mood changed to elation immediately. He loved escalators! The trip down to the ground floor was made a bit longer as Tony created a game of almost reaching the bottom, then scrambling back up several steps. When he finally grew tired he stepped off and found himself in the cosmetics, perfume, and make up section. That certainly didn't look appetizing, so he made his way around some more of the store areas before it dawned on him that he was alone.
He leaned against a store mannequin of a man dressed in shorts and a polo shirt and thought up his next move. Jenny had probably returned to the car, so he needed to navigate his way to the parking lot. He scanned the ceiling's perimeter until he located the Exit sign. Mrs. Mallard had taught him to immediately find the exit sign in every building he entered, just in case there was an emergency.
