Black
'Blue eyes say, Love me or I die; black eyes say, Love me or I kill thee.'
- Spanish Proverb
Las Vegas - 2005
She clenched her teeth fervidly; she was ignoring it.
Determined to ignore it.
Trying instead to go back to sleep, sleep she so desperately could use.
It was like everything else in her life; out of balance, humming along without efficiently fulfilling its purpose, yet still very much humming. If there was an alternate definition of fulfillment and existence anywhere it needed to come find her.
Soon.
The curtains were dark and still and actually somewhat useful, fairly resolute in gracefully dismissing the sunlight -- and life.
It was unfair of her, she knew, to unreasonably compare apples to oranges and throw a pity-party for herself.
'Sara, why do you keep the sun out; what are you afraid of?'
But it felt only natural to do so.
It was only too easy to forget that night was day and day was night when normal life would fit nowhere therein.
Maybe fulfillment could be defined as sunrays licking one's skin leaving a tinge of life behind?
If so, by definition, her normal routine of existence in the dark and sleeping through the sun was a dead end.
A lonely end.
Lifeless.
Everywhere, yet invisible, like a meandering creek throughout the black carpet that lay stretched out across her bedroom.
The water was everywhere and she didn't care, just could not bring herself to care.
She even stepped right into the cold wetness as if to say by way of the sole of her foot 'up yours and good riddance'.
Out of sheer fear of electrocution she did turn on the overhead light and in one simple tug quickly unplugged the broken, but still incessantly humming, humidifier. All that devastation and the inert plastic entity were still humming, humming with an offbeat rhythm that had been driving her absolutely insane.
So she had killed it.
Or so she thought; kicked it to pieces in a momentary lapse of sanity.
Yet all she had done was drain it.
She noticed now, under the scrutiny of the rapidly heat-emanating luminescent bulb above, that where in truth her carpet was actually brown the water had made it look black in places, playing a trick on her sensory interpretation. And the curtains that to her had looked dark were indeed black, but warmed along their backs by the sun to yield a brownish hue.
It really was not a monochrome environment, rather an earthy and safe refuge.
'Home' just was not a word she associated with safety and comfort, so it rarely made it across her lips when simultaneously referencing the first person. Of course, the composition of her immediate surroundings was not news to her; she knew her safe haven by heart.
However, knowledge of what, or whom, may in part make up that refuge is not necessarily a bulletproof guarantee of safety or comfort.
Living in blackness cannot always allow one to see what the living heart already sees fit to allow…
"Okay, everything alright? Can I get you anything, food?"
"No"
"Sara…"
"I'm fine."
"But…"
"Really, I'm fine."
"Then why…"
"Please, just…I'm o... fine, okay?"
"…okay."
And that was the end of it, it always were.
The phone went silent.
She would assure, he would relent.
They sidestepped each other with mastery, performing to perfection in a game where there could be no winners, only what-ifs.
What if she just simply could not face him right now?
That was a change though, really, well no not really.
Her actions were what had changed. She never called in sick, for any reason, and now she had.
She had relented.
He had spilled, opened his heart to her, in the brightness of her apartment after she had yelled and bickered.
He had assured.
He had deserved the truth from her, but had she deserved the truth from him?
She didn't know what to do, only that she couldn't face him with a mask of indifference and anger, and guilt?
She didn't feel she could face him at all, not anymore.
She didn't use to be like that.
She felt drained.
Just drained.
San Francisco some eight years prior…
The knock on the door had been like thunder from a blue sky, yet barely registering on the minds of two people just struck by lightening from cloud nine.
"Uh, I …I better go check on that" Sara said, somewhat uncertainly.
She made her way between her new fish tank and him, not a whole lot of room it seemed.
His knees folded over to the left to let her slide by easier just as her knee guided her right leg in a perfectly executed bypass maneuver, as if it were a most casual encounter.
Blocking the faint light illuminating his face for a brief second, the sensual silhouette of Sara's hips emerged out of the dimness like landscape upon sunrise.
Her rumpled cotton tee made it almost all the way down to the rise of her jeans and -- oh, a long sleeved tee, sleeves pushed halfway up her arms revealing peach skin around long slender forearms; on anyone else it would have been a fitted shirt -- and he could guess that the slight dip he saw there on the horizon was her bellybutton. But he could only guess because as soon as the thought entered his heart the vision flew by his eyes leaving him with a; what now seemed harsh and intrusive, illumination against his flushed face. And then she was gone.
"Sara, glad you're home."
"Oh, yeah. Hi."
Surprised was just the beginning; he had never been to her apartment so far.
This was going to be awkward, very much so actually.
"So…" she motioned for him to enter, she kind of had to.
"I…I didn't think I'd see you here," she said in an attempt at busying the silence.
"I was in the area and, well, really I was hoping you would be available to come downtown with me for a little while, I need you."
"I didn't hear the phone, but then again I've had a lot of trouble with the line lately. I swear I've had it with those guys and…"
"I didn't call Sara."
"Oh"
Now, this was getting a little weird and the butterflies that had been freed in her stomach not too long ago suddenly retreated, as if preparing for a dark and unpredictable storm.
Gil was listening intently.
Normally he would not be eavesdropping, but then normally he would not be in the bedroom of a beautiful woman; on the bed nonetheless, while said woman is in the next room with another male.
He really did not want to make himself known, but the voices on the other side of the wall carried emotions that could not be mistaken, nor taken light heartedly.
He knew the feeling; he had been there many a time.
It was the voice of a person trying to tell someone the truth in disguise, because baring it in its entirety is simply too difficult.
He also knew the voice.
"You should go ahead Sara, I'll find my way out, it's okay." Gil smiled at her encouragingly as he emerged from her bedroom.
She looked to both men, now standing equally distanced from her -- one between her and her way out and the other between her and her way in, so to speak.
The other man's face contorted with astonishment.
"Gil?"
Uttered more like a statement of surprise than a question.
"Moby," he countered, matter of fact, determined not to make Sara feel any more exposed than she clearly already did.
"Sounds serious. I'm still here until tomorrow at least, so if you need my help in any way you know my number."
"Yes, thanks Gil. We'll see how this one plays out. Rape. Actually we suspect a string of violent rapes, escalating in brutality, but same M.O."
"We've been chasing this guy for months now," Sara added.
"The guy seems to have an insatiable hatred of women, always going after women in their middle years, which is somewhat unusual. We have even started to look for his M.O. and a signature when processing murder scenes these days, we're sensing that he is escalating past his usual abuse only pattern."
Her emphasis on the word 'only' had been noticeable.
"I guess this time he did do something different, if you have him in custody, something caused him to slip up."
Grissom was turning back into his work mode.
He actually found that it had been turned off for a change.
He prepared to offer to drive Sara on down to the station, but Moby beat him to it.
"I'll brief you on our way in, Sara."
The tone of her supervisor sounded regretful.
Grissom knew Moby well enough to know that something beyond rape and his commitment to a safer society had him worried, but he also knew him well enough not to ask.
"Hey, lighten up, looks like we finally may have the guy, right?"
Sara had not known Moby's glass to be half empty very often.
Was he that troubled from finding Grissom in her company?
That didn't really make a whole lot of sense, and he hadn't called.
Bob was never hesitant to call her?
His manners seemed off to her and it made her uneasy. Not to mention that during the 20-minute drive into town Bob was sure to touch on the fact that Grissom had been at her place, and at that had casually wandered out of her bedroom without so much as a wavering look.
Anno 2005
That uneasy feeling was back, the one squeezing your chest without any physical force involved.
She was trying so hard to clear her head, to find some way to make sense of everything; of Grissom, of herself, and of their life – not lives. There was no way of defining one without the other.
Not anymore. Not a simple either or -- he had changed that.
Sleep had departed for now, she knew, and there was no sense in chasing after it to the point of utter exhaustion. That would be awkwardly counter-productive and more than just a little illogical.
She pulled out her desk chair, shuddering from the slight screeching noise that sounded as the slender wooden legs objected the changes by clawing the floor. Those felt protectors that stick on and come sixteen to the pack were what it needed. She made a mental note to go get some, but knew that she never would. Sara Sidle was locked in a world of semi-angst and uncertainty, and in that world they just would not fit.
Too muffled, too soft, too purposeful, too logical.
Slight static. Nothing much going on during the day, nothing in her world anyway. Break-ins and accidents, not murder and mayhem. Lighter crimes as opposed to darker ones. She turned her scanner back off and just sat there for a while; glancing over to her left at the photo she had allowed to see the light of day. The little person leaning on adult knees for support, seemingly without a worry in the world.
What had happened? Where had the support gone?
She no longer asked herself the former, only why.
The dark blue CD cover was empty, so she got up and reached across to the coffee table and swooped the remote on her way to the sink, landing her thumb on the soft rubber play button before filling a plastic cup half way. Jamming the cup between her thumb and index finger she still managed to clutch the remote while grabbing a bottle of water out of the fridge. She got back to her desk and positioned herself on the chair before setting down the cup and closing her hibernating laptop, moving it over.
The chair didn't make a sound this time, it knew better.
All the colors she had used so far could be seen to some extent, although mostly they had run together, becoming new and different to the eye. Muddled and unclear. The blue and the yellow had mostly turned green, and the fire red had bled like red often does and stolen life from the green to become a dull brown. All in all the canvas that started out so pure had turned so dark, black almost.
She got out the brush, dipped it in the clear water and without discarding a single drop, lowered the hairs into the black well and swirled them round and round and round until bubbles appeared in their wake. She touched the rich black to any surface of the canvas that had felt the touch of the bristles in the past, leaving an area of sharp contrast as black met white head on. For the most part black won, outsurfacing the white.
If colors were to paint a picture of who she is, then black could not belong for black is not a color.
Yet if black is not a color, then how come blackness can arise from colors?
"You
see the world in black and white
Not painted right
You see no
meaning to your life
You should try
You should try"
-- Coldplay, 'Low'
Some eight years prior…
As the county car rolled closer and closer toward the heart of San Francisco, Sara's heart drifted farther and farther away from it all.
Bob had not even mentioned it, it had not been important; he had known it would not be what she would be worrying about.
Bob had said something that he had considered to be more important.
Bob had said something that had been far more important.
Bob had said something that was life altering.
Bob
had found her brother.
July – "The toad beneath the harrow knows
Exactly where each tooth-point goes;
The butterfly upon the road
Preaches contentment to that toad.""
-Rudyard Kipling
