December 8 - Simple Thing
Is this the place that I've been dreaming of?
Oh simple thing where have you gone?
I'm getting old and I need something to rely on
-Somewhere Only We Know, Lily Allen
"How's your throat?" Her voice is husky and warm over the phone, a little distracted.
His throat? Castle pauses halfway through the living room, holding his phone to his ear. But she's at the 12th, at her desk, not in front of him to study her face. "It's fine...?"
"You said last night you felt bad?"
"I did?"
"Hmm, you did."
"How was the book?" He's already picked it up and flipped through it; the first few pages weren't boring exactly, just not gripping.
"Surprisingly good. Castle, you'd like it. It's a ghost story, a horror story."
"What?" He turns around, tempted to go back to the bedroom and pick it up again. "No way. I read the first-"
"Don't let that fool you. It stars off in this Gothic romance setting, I know, but the narrator has this really irreverent and pathetic tone - give it a chance. By the end - wow."
"Really." He's intrigued. He forgets she reads. Good stocking stuffer; he'll have to find out if the author has others. "Have you read any Chuck Palahniuk?"
"Other than Fight Club?"
"Right," he says, heading for the kitchen again. "Other than the famous one that everybody read to look cool. Which you know I hate. Read for the fun of it, read because it takes you places or answers your heart's deepest questions, don't read because you want to look-"
"Is this going to be an extended diatribe, Castle, because I am at work you know."
"Diatribe. That's hot," he hums. "You left early. Was there a body?"
"Last night. Boys caught it. So I'm running two."
"No diatribe then. Back to Palahniuk. What else of his?"
"Something about a guy flying a plane, trying to kill himself."
"Ah, yes, Survivor. Good one. My favorite after Fight Club. But I'm asking because I have this other one by him, Diary, and it's good. It reminds me of this Egan book you're going on about it."
"You didn't read the Egan book."
"No, but I read a few pages. Enough to know-"
"That's impossible-"
"Hear me out," he says, staring into the fridge, searching for something.
"I'm hearing you. Even if you read the whole first chapter, you have no concept for what this author does by the end when-"
"Spoilers!" he shouts.
"Rick."
"I'll read it this afternoon."
"You have that New Year's press interview thing. You can't read."
"I'll be fast."
"Diary?"
"Right. Main character is a woman, an artist who held promise at one point and now she's married and a mother and it just - has fallen apart on her. But the psychological terror in that book-"
"Okay, that sounds interesting."
"See? Told you. I'm good at this."
There's a noise over the line and Castle uses the momentary pause to put his concentration back on what he's doing. Breakfast. He has the New Year's interviews to slug through today; he's got to be extra charming. All of the magazines still want to know what happened to him this summer and it takes effort to divert them.
He wants bacon. He's really craving bacon.
"Rick?"
"That's me."
"I've got to go, but keep thinking books."
"Oh?"
"Mm, I like it when you talk literary to me."
He laughs, pulls out the roll of sausage from the fridge. No bacon. It will have to do. Eggs and sausage. "Love you, Kate."
"Love you, babe. See you at fourish?"
"Maybe six. Not sure about the last session."
"Got it."
She hangs up and he ends the call, absently putting the phone on the counter.
If she likes Diary, he'll give her Nick Hornby. Different flavor, but some strangely interesting correlations. After that, well, depends on how this branches out. He could go to David Maine or go back and pick up more classics-
Castle blinks, a roll of plastic-cased sausage in his hands, coming back to the here and now. Breakfast seems so uninteresting when Kate's out there somewhere willing to talk about books.
Books.
No one else talks about books with him.
When he finally gets back to the loft, Kate's right there to meet him.
"My throat's killing me," he croaks, feeling pitiful.
She strokes her fingers over his neck, along his windpipe. "Sorry."
"Bad day for interviews."
"You feel a little hot," she says, up on her toes to kiss under his jaw. She's been home longer than he has, already out of her work clothes, in jeans now and a loose sweatshirt, some kind of strangely sparkly top underneath.
"I'm always hot."
She rolls her eyes, but her hand comes down to catch his fingers. "Let's go out to eat?"
"Remy's?" he says hopefully.
"Cheeseburger," she answers with a little smile.
"And a milkshake." Mm, he wants a milkshake for his throat.
"Yeah," she murmurs, tugging on his jacket lapels. "You want to change or go sexy?"
He laughs, startled, glances down - gray slacks, the dress shirt, tie stuffed into his coat pocket and the top two buttons undone. It was choking him. "Like this, I suppose."
"Mm, sexy it is." She winks at him. "Let me get my coat."
Cheeseburger is heaven. Goes down warm and good, flavor-filled, rich. The milkshake adds the sharp, cold kick that soothes the frog in his throat.
Kate sucks salt from her fingers, picks up another french fry, breaks it in half to dip one in the honey mustard smeared at her plate, the other in the ketchup. She puts both in her mouth at the same time.
She fascinates him. Who does that? - Kate does that.
"Nabokov," she answers finally.
"Really? Why?"
"Lolita," she nods. "That book was achingly beautiful."
Castle narrows his eyes at her. "It's about a sexual predator."
She bites her bottom lip. "Exactly."
"Okay, you're gonna have to explain because Humbert is a pathetic excuse for a-"
"Sympathetic," she argues. "He's a pedophile, I know. I know. Who doesn't know what that book is about? But Nabokov does it anyway. How does he do that - make Humbert into a person? Make me - feel sorry for him. Root for him."
"Honestly, Kate, I don't know. If I did, maybe I'd be writing serious literature instead of a cop with a stripper name."
"Don't do that," she says quietly.
He glances up. She's watching him. "Do what."
"Don't talk about your books like they don't change people's lives."
He doesn't know what to say to that. Change people's lives? That seems so incongruous with the best-sellers he churns out. But Kate. For Kate, his books changed her life, didn't they? If that's all he ever does in his writing life, then it's the Nobel Prize. "Okay."
She nods, goes back to the fries. "You didn't like Lolita?"
"I have a daughter."
"Does that make it different?"
"Most definitely."
She rolls the french fry in ketchup. "Okay. Well, what did it for you? Made you hate yourself for loving it."
"Wasn't a book actually. A movie."
"A movie?"
"Yeah." He squints and she smiles in response; the night is golden inside Remy's, untouchable. "It was 'Gladiator'."
"Russell Crowe?"
"Not him specifically, but yes, that movie."
She blinks, evidently not what she was expecting from him. "I... am at a loss."
"It's one of the final scenes, inside the arena, Crowe's character-"
"Maximus."
He lifts an eyebrow. "Why is it hot that you know that?"
"Because you think everything I do is hot."
"Fair point," he concedes, reaching over and stealing her ketchup-soaked fry from her fingers. She flicks at him, nails scratching his knuckles, but he's already got it. "Maximus is inside the arena, in the middle of one of the gladiator contests, and it's been intense and his personal integrity is at stake, plus his life, and as a movie-goer you're just - on the edge of your seat, impressive storytelling, cinematography is gorgeous if stolen straight from the graphic novel-"
"Skip the commentary. And?"
"And you're urging him on, you're in that arena, you're there, and suddenly the camera pans the crowd. The cheering spectators. A dizzying circle, 360 around the arena, and back to Maximus, blood-soaked, near-death, and so betrayed by everything he's held sacred."
"Oh. Wow. I see."
Castle nods. "He put me there. He made me one of them. Ridley Scott, the director, has just turned me into a bloodthirsty Roman citizen, cheering for the death match."
"Ouch."
"Yes." He chews her fries with relish. "And that is why I hate that I love that movie. I won't rewatch it. I'm ashamed."
She laughs a little, but he's actually pretty serious about that. And why is this ground they've never covered before? She suggested 'Gladiator' once on movie night and he just said no and they moved on to '300' instead. Why did he never explain?
Why did she never ask? This is first date stuff. But they never really got a first date, did they?
After his disappearance this summer, maybe a few first dates are what they need.
"That's what Lolita does," she says then. She settles her chin in her hand, idly picks up another french fry. She finished her turkey burger long before him, inhaling it. Probably her lunch was half a sandwich from the expensive deli just outside the 12th. Or a salad. Nothing filling.
"Makes you a pedophile?"
"Makes you cheer for him. Side with him. There's a scene I remember really clearly, he's taken his step-daughter on a cross-country tour and it's really gorgeous. Nabokov loved the States, you can really tell it, and so I think that helps you forget too. You get lost in the Grand Canyon and all these great picturesque scenes - it becomes a travelogue. A love letter to the country."
"I don't exactly remember that part, but okay."
"Yeah, well, like you said, you have a daughter. I was a daughter, reading it, only 17 and I guess I dissociated or - the lure of the forbidden. Anyway, this scene. She's been a real nasty brat to Humbert, Lo has, and just so hateful, and he's taken her on this really great trip and tried to keep her mind off her mother's death-"
Kate grinds to a total halt. Castle studies her, waiting for it, and her lips twist, just one corner before it's gone again.
"Kate."
"How did that never hit me before?"
"You said you were seventeen. Hadn't happened to you yet."
She ducks her head, scrapes her hand back through her hair, tugs at her pony tail. She looks young and vulnerable and entirely nymphette, and he really hates that he's used Humbert's word for Lolita now to describe Kate.
Gross.
But that's exactly what Kate is talking about. How it leads you down the primrose path before you even know how deep you are in the thorns.
"She's been a brat," Kate murmurs. "But her mother has died. Of course she's been a brat."
"You weren't then what you are now," he says. "You didn't have that compassion. Or a daughter."
Her eyes flick up and away, gone in the space of a heartbeat. "What was my point? Oh, that scene. No, I had no sympathy for Lo. Humbert was the one wronged. Treated poorly. Miserable over it too, because he felt things deeply, was so sensitive. This is all unconsciously going through my head, and I'm thinking she's an ungrateful little brat, and then Nabokov, this subtle line, and everything is made so horrifyingly clear."
"Do you remember the line?" he husks. He feels like he's walked in on it too, this line, this subtle and horrifyingly clear thing.
"I remember some of it. The way of it." She closes her eyes and paraphrases. "Our long journey was no more than a collection of - places, things, he gives a list of items here, like maybe maps and old books - and so he says their journey was a collection maps, and old books, and her sobs in the night - every night - the moment he feigned sleep."
He sucks in a breath, stunned even by her awkward remembrance.
She swallows. "That's when I remembered what Humbert is doing. Raping her. He's a pedophile and all the beautiful scenery is just camouflage designed to trick you into forgetting that she's sobbing herself to sleep every night after."
"Foreground details," he murmurs. "That's what it's called when he - does that. Slips in this damning information in the background of the other stuff going on. He's an unreliable narrator."
"I have goose bumps," she whispers.
"I really hate that novel."
"I really hate how much I love it."
They fall silent. She's got her chin on the heel of her hand, young and make-up-free but her eyes are tired. She stayed up late last night reading her book. He went to bed early, but he woke a few times with the light in his eyes; she left early to get started on a case they caught over the weekend.
"I wonder how much of my life I've done that," she says then. Her head turns on the pivot of her hand. "Seen but not seen."
"It's a matter of perspective," he shrugs. "The older we get, the more we experience, the more we have to draw on."
"I was seventeen, my mother was alive; I had no idea. Now I do. I think reading Lolita now would break my heart."
"I think so too," he admits. "But maybe it's good you read it before your mom was gone. Fresh eyes. You never had to experience it as an orphan."
"I try to approach a crime scene in the exact opposite way," she murmurs. "I go into it thinking like the daughter of a murdered woman. Is that terrible? Sometimes it feels terrible to call her memory up like that."
"It's terrible," he nods, voice rough. "But only because I love you."
Her eyes jerk to his, like a rock skipping across a lake, jerky and surprisingly graceful. "Why?"
"Why do I love you? Let me count the ways-"
"Shut up," she murmurs, lips curling at the edges. "It's not a bad feeling. I mean, yes, it is. But I think it gives me an edge in this line of work. It means the cases never get stale like that. I don't burn out."
"It fuels you?"
"Yes, exactly."
"I meant it as a question," he says, clearing his throat. "Does it still drive you? Now that Bracken..."
She doesn't move for a moment. This hasn't been a thing they've talked about. It was over, done, she had her victory, even had her moment, and he was there, got to be there for the end. But it's the end. He knows how he feels when he writes the last chapter, how he felt when Storm was gone, and that was just a character in a book.
"I don't know anymore," she croaks, burying her face in her hands.
"Whoa, Kate. Um. Not what I meant to do." He rises out of the booth, slides in beside her, arm around her shoulders and she comes that fast, crashing into his chest. "Don't cry."
"Not," she says roughly.
Barely. He hugs her harder but she's struggling away and he lets her go, doesn't watch as she gets herself back together.
"I'm okay."
"You're always okay."
"Yes. I think you just touched a nerve. I'm still - going through this kind of deconstruction. Dismantling the framework that has been my life for a decade. And now..."
"I know. It's why I asked if it still fuels you," he says weakly, wishing he hadn't. He tries for a laugh. "You know me - I'm all about motive. I dig in where I shouldn't."
She nods, fingers coming to his knee to grip tightly. "Finish your burger. I'm really fine."
He covers her hand with his briefly, stands up and goes back to his side. She has a look on her face Castle chooses to believe is peaceful.
It is, at least, for this moment.
"I don't know what it is, Castle. But it's there, whatever it is, that drive." She reaches across the table, takes his hand. "I'd like to think it's more than my mother's murder - can I not let go and let her rest? I don't know. But maybe it's just you."
"Me?" That doesn't sound like a good idea. He can't be the reason she wakes up in the morning; he's going to fail her. He's himself. That's not enough.
"You. I'm your muse, right?" She shrugs. "Maybe you're mine."
Oh. Wow.
He kind of just fell in love with her all over again.
