We walked about a block in silence before he finally spoke.
"I couldn't help but notice there's no swat team descending on us, so I guess that means you didn't call for backup. Can I ask why?"
"What would be the point? You'd just pull a Houdini again. And I would miss out on Mike's double-chocolate chip pancakes."
"Are they that good?"
I made a show of rolling my eyes upward in a blissed-out expression. "Positively orgasmic. Also? I have a pen in my pocket."
Jackson took a quick step back. His face was a perfectly-schooled blank mask, but there was a definite widening of his eyes and a vague look of panic. He shook his head. "That's just mean."
I grinned. "You wanna see?"
He gave me a look of disgust. "No!" Then, thinking better of it, "Yes."
Slowly - with no sudden movements - I pulled the thick, pink plastic pen from the back pocket of my jeans and held it straight out, arm extended, right in his face, the little white figure at the top staring him down.
"Hello Kitty? Are you eight?"
"Rrrawr!" I growled and shook the pen at him. "Be nice to Kitty," I warned.
"Are you still drunk?" he sputtered, eyeing me like you would a crazy person who's gone off their meds.
I sighed and pocketed Hello Kitty again. "Probably."
xxxxx
We'd missed the morning rush at Mike's. There was a handful of senior citizens having coffee together, but other than that it was pretty much dead. As we were entering, Jackson grabbed the door and held it open. I hesitated, expecting him to go through, but he didn't move. It was a strange and awkward moment while I stood there and he stood there, neither of us moving, both mildly confused, until finally, he placed his hand lightly on the small of my back and ushered me into the building.
I stiffened immediately – not, oddly enough, because the physical contact with him repulsed me - but because it was so foreign. It had been so long, I had forgotten what it felt like to be led into a room by a man; that chivalrous, but slightly possessive gesture that makes a woman feel… not weak, but cherished. I'm a pretty liberated girl, but having spent half my life in Texas, I'm a sucker for a guy with manners. Out of all the dates I've been on since moving out here, one guy opened the door for me. One. I just wished I was experiencing this awkwardly adorable John-Hughes-moment with someone other than Jackson Rippner.
If he noticed my reaction, Jackson made no show of it. He followed me to my favorite booth in the corner, a window seat, and slid in across from me.
He glanced around an then over at the door. "Actually, uh... Could we… Do you mind if we switch seats?"
I raised an eyebrow, but didn't object. If he was going to be all OCD about the seating arrangements, well, I'd just add that to his list of obvious neuroses; something I would do well to remember. His easy-going demeanor, the gentlemanly gesture at the door, that jolt of electricity from his hand on the small of my back – I'd met this guy before, and he wasn't real. I couldn't let myself forget that.
I scooted out of the booth and swapped seats with him. As soon as he was facing the door, he visibly relaxed. I couldn't help but think what a strange life he must lead, always being on guard, always keeping one eye on the door. I might have felt sorry for him if I didn't know it was a life he had chosen for himself.
"So," he smiled, "come here often?"
"Not as much as I'd like. I love breakfast, but I love sleep more. I usually rush off to work with coffee in hand and that's about it."
He nodded. "I'm the same way."
The conversation stalled at that point. I picked at my nails and Jackson knocked out a beat on the table. It was surreal, but on eleven. To my great relief, about a minute later, Dawn, one of the full-time waitresses came over in her squeaky Dr. Scholl's tennis shoes and set out two menus for us and two glasses of ice water.
"How ya doin', hon?" she asked in her soft, southern drawl. "You need a menu or you want the usual?"
"I am going to splurge this morning, Dawn. I want the double-chip pancakes and a coffee, please."
"You want a short stack or tall?"
"Tall," I said firmly. I was hungry and I'm not one of those women who are afraid to eat in front of men.
"And how 'bout you, hon?" she said, turning to Jackson. "You need a minute?"
He took a second to flip through the menu. "I'll have the buckwheat pancakes, tall stack, and the turkey bacon. Coffee, too, please. Thank you, Dawn," he handed the menu back to her and smiled – a smile that could have possibly melted the hearts (and underwear) of most woman and some men. It was positively angelic.
"Sure thing, hon." Dawn smiled back sweetly, gave me a little knowing look and floated off.
I rolled my eyes and wondered if Jackson had any inkling of the affect he had on women.
"What?" He must have caught the derisive look I had shot him. And now he was the picture of innocence.
"'What?'" I parroted back to him. I laughed. "You know what."
He had the nerve to look confused. "No, seriously. What?"
"Are you really going to… You know what? Never mind." I waved my hand dismissively.
He sighed. "Lisa," he said, using that condescending professional tone that I despised, "do you have something you'd like to say?"
Suddenly, I was feeling rather sober. Well, he asked for it.
"Okay," I said, mimicking his tone of voice. I folded my hands primly on the table in front of me. "There is something I've been wondering since the red eye flight… Something that I've gone over and over in my head. Something that never quite made sense."
He imitated my posture and leaned in. "I'm all a-tingle." He smiled, but I could tell there was a challenge behind it.
I took a sip of my water. "Why the whole nice-guy act?"
He blinked, cocked his head. "What do you mean?"
I pursed my lips. "I mean at the airport in Dallas… Defending me and the airline employee against that irate guy in the ugly jacket? And then that phony parlor trick of guessing my drink?" I leaned forward. "If I didn't know you were a stalker, I would have thought you were hitting on me."
His smile faltered for a moment. A hit! A palpable hit!
I continued. "But that would be unprofessional, and Jackson Rippner is nothing if not professional." There was a flush rising on his cheeks. I smiled calmly back at him.
"I don't think it's considered stalking if you're getting paid," he muttered.
I waved my hand. "Semantics. My point is, you didn't have to stick up for me when we were in line. You certainly didn't have to invite me for nachos at the bar. In fact, looking back, I think the reason I resisted so hard and for so long was, in part, because I had seen what I thought was this other side of you. I thought I could get through to you, appeal to whatever humanity was in you – or to that charming guy from the Tex-Mex.
"So again, I'm asking – why the nice-guy act? Why even bother? Was it because you get some perverse kick out of fooling people?"
Jackson frowned, eyes running over the imperfections of the table top. He smoothed the tips of his fingers over his lips in thought, then dropped his hand to his lap.
"Look," he sighed. "It's not like…" He broke off, grimacing. He was uncomfortable. I had never seen him so uncomfortable – not counting that time I rammed a Frankenstein pen into his throat.
He took a deep breath. "For my part, there was never any plan to fuck with your head. Okay? You're right, though. There was no good reason for me to talk to you in line. Everything you said about that is true." He drummed his fingertips on the table absentmindedly.
"My modus operandi for these kinds of situations was always, always blitzkrieg: Understand your mark. Anticipate their reactions. Bombard them with negative emotional , and, if necessary, physical stimuli, and they will eventually perform the task you require them to perform.
"Of course, an airplane isn't the ideal setting. I was nervous about that," he admitted. "And that guy, he was being a real - to you. That was completely uncalled for…"
I burst out laughing at that. Oh, the irony. Jackson smiled back pleasantly, completely oblivious.
"Also, by the end of my usually allotted surveillance timeframe – three to five weeks is the norm – I wasn't confident that I knew you as well as I should. So I drew it out another week. And then another, and then another, and then another…"
I looked up at him, a bit surprised at his honesty. He was examining me through slit eyes, as though I were a puzzle or a Rubik's cube that had him stumped. He shook his head.
"I was never able to put my finger on it, even after eight weeks, why you were the way you were." He lowered his voice, smiling a bit ruefully. "Beautiful women, as a rule, aren't reclusive." There was something about the tone of his voice - it was dark and warm, like melted chocolate. I could feel the heat rise in my cheeks at his comment. I kept my eyes firmly fixed on the paper placemat in front of me.
"They have boyfriends. Or they date. Or they have one night stands. Even a girl's night out with the girlfriends; something. They don't stay home every weekend and have Turner Classic Movie marathons with a plate of scrambled eggs for company. They don't go from Miss Type-A personality in high school and college to... Well, there were a few times I wondered if you were doing intensive training to enter a convent."
I huffed and rolled my eyes. "I'm not like that, now."
He grinned. "Clearly."
"I was going through a rough patch, okay? What, you've never had one?"
He held up his hands. "I'm not criticizing, Lisa. I'm just illustrating why I was so curious about you."
Dawn wandered over with our coffees and an apron full of creamers. Jackson ignored the cream and poured a couple spoonfuls of sugar into his cup. I couldn't help but blanch at how he took his coffee. I opened four little containers of creamer and stirred them in and then added another for good measure. I poured in a long stream of sugar, tasted it, then added a little more. Too much cream, too much sugar. Perfect.
We stirred our coffees, the metal clink of spoon against porcelain sounding impossibly normal, given the situation. "I see you still take coffee with your sugar and cream." He smiled, like it amused him.
"I don't know how you can drink that swill without it," I countered.
"Habit," he simply said. "We're all creatures of habit."
After a moment, he said, "You know, I never actually thought you'd take me up on the offer." I glanced up at him, confused. "For nachos," he explained. "I was sure you would make up some excuse. I was certain of it. That's why I asked. I wanted to reassure myself that I understood you, that you were predictable like everyone else. That I could handle you easily enough."
That warm, chocolate tone was gone from his voice. When he said things like that, I couldn't help but picture an icy lake. It made me shiver.
"But you surprised me when you showed up. That doesn't happen very often, people surprising me. I almost choked on my whiskey," he chuckled.
"I was torn, really. Half of me wanted to politely excuse myself and get the hell out of there, but the other half wanted to stay there and pick your brain. Figure out what makes you tick. See if I could find the missing piece in the puzzle. So, against my better judgment, I decided I wanted to know you better... Before the shit hit the fan, so to speak. Call it professional curiosity."
He leaned back abruptly as Dawn approached with our orders. It was like a sudden rush of cool air was pumped into our little bubble - the invisible layer surrounding our booth and blocking out the rest of the world.
She set the plates down in front of us, Jackson, with his health-conscious breakfast, and me, with my steaming tower of Hershey syrup-drizzled pancakes with a dollop of whipped cream on top. My stomach rumbled again as my olfactory senses caught a delicious whiff.
"Can I get ya'll anything else?" Dawn asked, pushing her black horn-rimmed glasses up a little on her nose.
"No, thanks," Jackson said.
"I'm good," I said, shooting her a quick smile. I just wanted to eat my breakfast and get out of here - away from him, studying me like I was some goddamn science experiment.
She nodded, "Well, enjoy," and bounced off in her squeaky shoes to seat a new customer.
We unwrapped our utensils from our napkins and dug in. Jackson eyed my pancakes with something that might have been envy. "That looks more like dessert than breakfast," he noted. The cheerful, light-hearted tone of voice was back. Jesus, he must have multiple personality disorder.
"Yeah, well, after the day I've had..." I muttered.
He stopped chewing and swallowed. "I'm sorry. It must be unsettling to hear this."
I shook my head. "It's fine." But I could feel his laser eyes on me, trying to peel back the layers and know what was going on in my brain.
As I was bringing another forkful to my mouth he said softly, "I wanted to know why you were so sad."
The fork hesitated about an inch from my mouth while I took that remark in. Where could he possibly be going with this? Why would he say something like that, as if he actually cared? Professional curiosity? Mean, angry, trying-to-murder-me: that was the Jackson I could handle. But nice? Caring? Concerned? I didn't know how to react to remarks like that from him. They threw me completely off-balance. Maybe that's what he was trying to accomplish. I couldn't handle that. I had to get out of there.
As I crammed the bit of pancake into my mouth and chewed double-time, he continued: "When I watched you those eight weeks, I remember thinking you had the saddest eyes. Not when you knew people were watching, of course. You hid it well. But when they looked away... When you were at home, alone... Or at the corner bar... your eyes would drift around the room, and... you'd get this look on your face... of utter loss."
I stopped eating. I stared down at my pancakes, letting my hair fall in my eyes like a curtain. I couldn't bear to look up at him. Part of me was horrified that he had seen me at my most vulnerable, that he had been privy to my private feelings, ones that I hadn't allowed anyone else to see. But another part of me was strangely... touched. Someone had noticed. Someone had taken the time to look closer, to see through the facade I wore like protective armor.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. "I don't feel like that anymore," I said softly.
"Maybe not as acutely as before, but it's still there." He reached over and with his index finger, swept my bangs out of my eyes and back behind my ear. "But there's also hope now, I think." The side of his finger brushed the shell of my ear and I shivered.
It wasn't entirely out of fear.
I settled back in the booth, poked at my pancakes with my fork. I could still feel his eyes on me. Eventually, he did the same, leaned back and took a drink of his coffee, the spell broken.
Snapping out of it, I sighed, and with that exhalation, a dull feeling of anger and annoyance flooded in. I put down my fork with an abrupt clink. I finally worked up the courage to look him in the eye. "I appreciate your candor, Jackson. I do. But tell me this: who is it that I'm talking to?"
He shook his head slightly and pursed his lips, trying to decipher my meaning. He opened his mouth and took a breath as if he meant to say something, then let out the breath he was holding and looked at me expectantly. Is it possible I had stumped him? This from a guy who had a quick and cutting answer for everything.
"What I mean is, who is it sitting across from me, now, at this moment? Is it the man from the Tex-Mex? The man from the plane? You've been so many different people with me, Jackson, you'll have to excuse me if I'm a bit confused and surprised by this turn of events."
He smiled. "I think you'd be surprised about a lot of things if you really knew me, Lisa."
"No, if I really knew you, I know exactly what I'd find: instead of a brain, a check register; and instead of a heart, a bottom line."
My mouth dropped open. Had I actually said that?
"What," he glowered. "What is it?"
"I think I just had a breakthrough," I said, amazed. "I guess I have you to thank for that. For the first time, when confronted with a horrible, insensitive person, I knew exactly what I wanted to say and I said it."
"Well, you have a gift for it. That was a perfect blend of poetry and meanness."
"Meanness! Let me tell you something about meanness..."
He held up his hand. "Don't misunderstand me, I'm just trying to pay you a compliment."
"Oh."
He seemed sincere enough and here I was, biting his head off. "Look," I said after a moment. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to say things like that. Despite everything you've done, there's no excuse for my saying that. That was horrible."
"No, no. I'm the horrible one."
"Well, that's true. But I have no excuse."
His eyebrows shot up. "Oh. I see what you're saying. Whereas I am a horrible person, therefore I have no choice but to be horrible. That's what you're saying?"
I cringed. "I'm sorry, but every time you speak..."
"…Things like that just fly out of your mouth."
"Yes!"
"You wanna claw my eyes out."
"Well... Kind of, yeah."
"Well, that's okay. You're entitled to hate me."
"I know." I took a sip of my coffee, now lukewarm. "So," I said, returning to my previous question, "which person are you today, Jackson?"
"I can't be both?"
"I don't see how that's possible," I said softly.
He mulled this over for a minute. "I guess I'll just have to prove it to you, then."
"That's not necessary. Really."
He took a another breath. The tension around his eyes dissipated. His shoulders, usually straight and square, relaxed. "Okay," he said. "Truth time. There was nothing professional about my curiosity."
I frowned. "What do you mean?"
His eyes darted around the diner, like he was about to reveal some deep, dark secret; as if he were searching out a hidden enemy who might overhear. "Sometimes I get these thoughts and I wonder..."
"What?"
"If I hadn't been hired for the Keefe job, and you hadn't been managing the Lux, and we had just met somewhere, out of the blue..."
"Oh." I wasn't sure I was comfortable with where this was going.
"Yeah... I would have asked for your number. And I wouldn't have been able to wait twenty four hours before calling you up and saying: 'Hey, how about coffee, or drinks? Or dinner, or a movie... 'til death do us part?" He laughed nervously, like he had just made a really lame joke.
Oh.
Oh.
I really hadn't expected that.
I looked at my pancakes, at the Formica table top - anywhere but at him.
"Jackson..."
He ignored me and continued, the words rushing out of his mouth in a great hurry, as if he just had to get them out into the air, into the open, or he'd explode. "And you and I would never have been at odds. None of that trying to kill each other nonsense. The only thing we'd fight about would be which DVD to rent on a Saturday night."
I smiled hesitantly. "Do people really fight about things like that?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. We wouldn't, though."
I shook my head in agreement. "We would never." I laughed, "No, chances are I would find out about this tiny little detail of what you do for a living..."
He grinned. "...And you'd run screaming into the night..."
"...And you'd chase after me with a butcher knife..."
"...Shouting, 'Wait, sugarplum! Can't we talk about this?'
"Sugarplum?" My lip curled in disgust.
"Would you prefer snicker doodle?"
"I'd prefer not to be called food."
"Ah," he nodded in understanding. After a moment, he shrugged, wistfully.
"If only."
Yeah. If only.
If only we were both someone else.
All the humor seemed to drain from the conversation. The mood had taken a distinct turn and wound up somewhere in left field. I felt it and he felt it.
"I have to go..." I said, unable to speak in anything other than a hushed tone. My throat just wouldn't allow it.
"Will you let me walk you back?" His voice was soft as well, as though he were having the same difficulties.
I nodded. "Okay."
xxxxx
The walk back to my apartment was very like the walk to the diner: quiet, but now there was a sobering air of gravitas surrounding us. I shivered, wrapped my arms around myself to fend off a sudden gust of chilling wind, and wished for a sweatshirt. Jackson's hands were stuffed into the pockets of his jeans. For the first time, I noticed he was wearing normal clothes: jeans and a long-sleeve t-shirt – startlingly different from the business casual attire he wore that night on the plane - and had always worn since in my nightmares. Now he looked like a kid. He could have passed for some UCLA student even, considering how young he looked with his freshly shaved face and his hair falling in his eyes - just a little too long to look professional.
We walked around the corner of my building to the back door. I pulled the spare key from my purse and shoved it into the lock. With my back to him, I could feel the warmth of his body – or maybe he was just blocking the cold wind. Either way, it was terribly distracting and it took a couple of jiggles to get the lock open.
I glanced back at him with what tried to pass as a smile, but was probably more like a nervous grimace.
"Well…" I began, about to offer a quick thanks so I could rush inside and get away from this uncomfortable situation - but he cut me off.
"Look, I know I blew…" He shook his head. "Let me rephrase that: nuked any chance I would ever have had, but do you think... Could you ever... consider... possibly... forgiving me?"
I studied his face for any trace of insincerity and could find none. If he was trying to pull something over on me, he deserved an Academy Award because the half-wistful, half-pleading look masked with a feigned air of nonchalance appeared all too genuine.
"I... I don't know, Jackson. I had the rug ripped out from underneath me once and just as I was starting to get my bearings, you came along and did it again. It's enough to make a person want to stay in bed. Indefinitely."
"Sure," he nodded a little too quickly.
"I just need time."
"No, I understand."
"Thank you for breakfast," I offered.
He smiled slightly. "You're welcome."
I stepped through the threshold, then turned back once more.
"Sweet dreams, Lisa."
I nodded, unable to respond, and closed the door behind me.
xxxxx
To be continued…
