Title: Charlotte's Web (Chapter Ten) by Lexikal
Rating: M for graphic violence and language
Fandom: The Mentalist
Summary: Patrick Jane has lived his life obsessed with the capture of Red John ever since finding his beloved wife and daughter slain by the maniac's hand. Now, 10 years to the day after that horrific night, a young woman appears in Patrick's life, someone who threatens to destroy everything his life has become in the interim... if not his sanity, itself.
Author's Note: Keep the reviews coming guys! This chapter is short (for me) but I wanted to get it out there. I am busy on paintings and sculptures right now. Sorry.
"I think paranoia can be instructive in the right doses. Paranoia is a skill." ~ John Shirley.
"There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery." ~ Joseph Conrad.
Night's black mantle covers all alike. ~ Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas.
Thursday, November 1st, 2013 10:11 P.M. P.S.T.
Charlotte was feeling restless. She'd never been able to handle being in enclosed spaces, not well, not without the almost-overwhelming urge to tear up paper or hammer on the walls or fiddle with something, anything, something trivial and distracting. And usually, most nights, the girl ran. She would wait until dusk, when the light was just beginning to fade away, the Earth turned from the sun again so that the sky was lit up in oranges and reds, celestial flames, with her shadow so incredibly long and sinewy behind her like some dark spider-thing, following, following... She had read once that at sunset and sunrise the sky appeared pink and red and orange because the white light from the sun was passing through a much longer path in a lower atmosphere (because of the relative position of the Earth to the sun) and the aerosols in the lower atmosphere scattered more "red light". What did that mean exactly? She wasn't sure. She hadn't bothered to really investigate, actually. So, in the end- even after memorizing that little tidbit of trivia- the physics behind it escaped her, though she did realize it all had to do with the position of light.
The position of light decided if there were shadows- or not- and how long they were. At dusk- every day for the last four years, in fact- she had run 8 miles at dusk, heart thudding, lungs burning, legs cramping, as near a sprint as was possible, face turning fuchsia to match the chromatic wash of early night, hands swinging back and forth, back and forth, like pendulums. She'd run as the street lamps flickered on and the sky turned mauve and then royal blue, breathing hard, panting, smelling fresh cut grass and the faint charged aroma of pastel hydrangeas and purple catmint and powder blue forget-me-nots (no, I'll never forget-), face hot and dry after the first mile, hand reaching out to gently tap the red letter drop on the corner of Howard and Knight, sneakered feet jumping over the cracked sidewalk on the end of Jamesy. Around the 4th mile- sweat stains under the arm pits, beads of sweat on her forehead- was when the light of the day was replaced with a tired, lazy glow of lavender and the first sprinklers of the evening burst to life, spraying a fine mist over the yards, adding to the soothing greensmell of the grass and this daily running had helped to calm the itchy unease in her stomach and her blood, the burning need of wrongness and disorientation that seemed to pervade every waking moment of her life and which had existed for as long as she could remember.
Running helped, and when she did not run, she felt even more on edge and keyed up, like an old tin toy (a little monkey on a bike, perhaps) that has been wound for far too long. Ready to burst or crack or "flip the fuck out".
Last night, some of that energy had been burnt away by trying to manage the terror that had accompanied turning herself into Patrick's custody. Tonight, though, the uneasy beast inside was back, a deep, screaming, thrumming tantrum of energy crackling away hot and electric like a cellular fire, and it was ever-so-hard to sit still and listen to music on the mp3 player and avoid the way Patrick's eyes flickered to look back at her every five minutes, as if he wanted to make sure she hadn't evaporated and left a black nothingness imprinted on the seats of the camry.
His eyes were crafty and aware as a fox's, dark and knowing eyes as they flickered from her to the road to his partner and back again in their eager, penetrating circuit.
Did he expect her to flash out of his existence again, like a shadow burned into the ground after a nuclear bomb's white kiss? She had seen him on the television over the years, always so confident (almost cockily so) but now he was pensive and reserved, offering up small, tender smiles like a child offering their parent macaroni art whenever he saw her looking at him. And she looked at him at those times, and nodded, and tried to smile but it felt fake and awkward. She did not smile, not really. Not to be nice. It was an odd, fake grimace. Social niceties to be "nice".
The urge to get out and run was increasing every second. Patrick, being a mentalist, had to pick up on this. He had to know. Was that why he was glancing back at her more often? Keeping track of her anxiety?
Her legs felt itchy and jumpy and full of speed, full of pent-up miles. Charlotte scrolled through her songs. Opened the little folder containing all the artists and scrolled down to The Ramones. Scrolled through the songs and selected Beat on the Brat. The music started up, fast and charged, the way every Ramones song opened itself up.
Beat on the brat, beat on the brat, beat on the brat with a baseball bat
oh yeah, oh yeah, ohh-hooooo!
Beat on the brat, beat on the brat, beat on the brat with a baseball bat
oh yeah, oh yeah, ohh-hooooo!
oh yeah, oh yeah, ohhh-hooooo!
What can you do? What can you do?
With a brat like that, no, it's not your fault, what can you lose?
What can you do? What can you do?
With a brat like that, no, it's not your fault, what can you lose? Lose?
She replayed it several times. Then Blitzkrieg Bop. Then I wanna be sedated. Patrick's eyes were flickering to look at her a little more often, flickerflickerflciker, she thought. She didn't like it. Eyes that pierced her concentration in the night, powerful eyes, piercing. Of course, she had known he would be like this. Scrutinizing people was what he did.
But it was still irksome, those eyes. Like an itch, she couldn't scratch. Scratch out the all-seeing eyes.
In her backpack, in a little battered altoids mint tin, was some bud. Northern Lights Indica, good stuff. In the front pocket of her pack was her pipe. It was made of glass, it changed colours when you smoked up. Maybe that would help, just a little nip of pot?
"Can we stop?" Charlotte asked, pulling the earbuds from her ears. Patrick's eyes swung in her direction again and she saw a subtle nod of his head.
"You okay?" He asked mildly. What a stupid question. It was obvious what was up, wasn't it?
"Have to go the bathroom," Charlotte informed him, hoping to sound somewhere between bored and pained. He didn't say anything, just nodded. The words they were speaking were not honest words, but they were a dance, a social dance. There was a beat of silence.
"Next Mobil, we'll stop. Okay?"
"Sure."
They didn't stop at the next gas station, though. Patrick found a dilapidated motel and pulled the car into the lot. Lisbon, who had been dosing, seemed to come to. Charlotte sought out Patrick's eyes again, electric green crashing into his noble, alert blue. Green eyes were really just blue eyes with an extra layer of lipids. Green eyes were "fat" blue eyes.
"We should stop for the night. I'll get us a room." Patrick said, his eyes on his daughter, then turning to his partner.
"A room?" Lisbon said, voice sleep-clogged. "Just one?"
"Two beds. I'm not sleeping."
"You have to sleep, Jane-" Lisbon said, voice still fuzzy and tumescent with sleep.
"I'll sleep tomorrow. You can drive."
Charlotte sighed, pulled the back door open and looked at the motel. The Lazy Susan, it was called. The vacancy light was flickering, attracting moths. There was apparently a heated pool on the property and color TV. Charlotte's lips curled up at the fluorescent anachronism.
"Do you want to wait here with Lisbon? I'll be fast," Patrick said, and his words were light and genial, but Charlotte knew it wasn't a request. Patrick wanted to limit how many people saw either one of them. He was no doubt paranoid that the description of the three of them had been all over the news (despite the lack of mention of anything related to them on any of the radio stations). Charlotte shrugged. She had to release the pent-up anxiety, the agitation. But waiting with Lisbon was something that she had no control over, so a shrug was it.
"I need to run. At least a mile. I'll be back in 8 minutes."
"Run?" Patrick said, like he didn't know what the word meant. Lisbon, for her part, was still in the front passenger seat, silent. She had evidently decided that whatever her partner and his long-dead daughter were discussing was none of her business.
"I need to run. I need it," Charlotte said. She couldn't explain better than that, didn't want to think about it anymore than that. She needed to run the way a crack addict needs a hit and she wasn't sure how much she wanted to tell Patrick, anyway. She didn't really know him, did she? Not really.
Memories weren't "knowing", not when the memories she based her knowledge of him on were old and faded and curling like antique photographs left in a trunk. The agitation was building and eventually it would cross over into anxiety, and if that wasn't released... then maybe full-fledged panic.
Charlotte mentally thought of the panic attacks she got in waves as the "neon screams". They felt like being dropped into Hell, pure adrenaline and terror coursing through her veins so intensely it was almost psychedelic- the need to get away from the all-encompassing *fear*, to get safe, to get away from her own body, and heart and brain and memories. That need crashed through her with each heart beat during the attacks, clanging like a war drum from some place both far away and closer-than-close. The way the screams built up silently and fell out of her mouth as moans, then gasps, then shudder-shrieks, then- only two times, but those two times were imprinted forever in her memory- howls of terror. She couldn't let Patrick see that. He could never see that. Not the howls.
She wasn't sure why it was so imperative he never see the neon screams, but it was. She knew it in her core, that it was just not something she could allow to happen.
"Charlotte?" Patrick said, and she realized she had spaced out on him.
"Huh?"
"Can we go for a run in a few hours? When it's light out?" His voice was so gentle, so concerned. He was sitting in the front driver's seat, Lisbon silent (but ever watching) beside him in the passenger seat. His voice was too nice. She hated the sound of it, the gentleness in it. It irritated her, pestered something hot and mean in her. She wanted to yell at him. No. They couldn't go for a run in a few hours, in a few hours it would be too fucking late. Then she remembered the little mint tin in her backpack, the little nest of marijuana. Marijuana was hit or miss with anxiety. Sometimes it amped everything up and made it worse, unbearable even. But usually it took the edge off, if she took it soon enough.
"A few hours?" Charlotte repeated. She was trying to think, avoid Patrick's gaze, pay attention to his words and keep the rising tide of fear out of her limbs and her voice. He was staring at her like a hawk now. sharper than sharp. She knew that look, and it made her skin crawl, the intensity of it.
Red John looked at people like that. Like a hawk. Total, 100% focus.
"Would that be okay?" He said softly. So soft. A skilled hypnotist's voice. Tissue-paper soft voice, egg-shell thin words. How could you fight eggshell thin words?
She bit the inside of her cheek. Did he see that? Did he notice? She thought he might have noticed, because his eyes seemed to narrow, just a little. She bit it until she tasted hot, salty copper and the pain licked out from the inside of her cheek like a squirt of citrus, a flash of heat. Less than a second it took.
"That will be okay," Charlotte told him after the pain screamed at her and calmed the rush of wrongness. She even tried out a smile for him, but it felt fake and wooden. He smiled back, but it never reached his eyes.
"Will you stay here with Lisbon while I go and get us a room?"
Charlotte turned her head to Lisbon. Lisbon gave her an awkward grin back, like she didn't know how to look, what to say, but wanted to still look supportive.
"Sure," Charlotte informed her father mechanically.
"And I'll go running with you in a few hours? When it's light out?"
"Sure," Charlotte repeated, this time a bit faster. Just hurry up and get the damned room already, Patrick, so I can use the fucking bathroom...
"Okay. I'll be right back. Lisbon? You okay here?" Patrick said, and now Charlotte really wanted to scream, because it seemed almost like Patrick was deliberately drawing this little talk out.
"We're okay, Jane," Lisbon said, sensing Charlotte's growing unease, darting a quick look to the teen, then another- more meaningful- look back to her colleague. "We'll be fine for five minutes."
"I'll be right back," Patrick said, and slipped out of the car. Charlotte watched him as he hurriedly made his way to the little office housing the no-doubt obese motel manager. Charlotte could imagine the motel manager, pock-marked and fat, t-shirt riding up, stuffing his face with Cheetohs and watching a soap opera on an ancient camping television, waiting for people to drift into his life like moths fluttering into a gas station bathroom.
She shut her eyes, counted to ten. Bit the inside of her cheek once more. She would not lose it. Her arms felt tingly, the hands cold, weak. Weakness in the arms could be a sign of cardiovascular disease, signs of degenerative disorders of the muscles, brain tumors, encephalitis and drug overdose, neurotic conditions and neurological SNAFUs and... She would not lose it in this fucking car with Patrick's partner in the front seat like some hostage looking uncertain and uneasy and totally out of place. No. She would not lose it. She would not...
"So... you like to run?" Lisbon said in what Charlotte was already coming to think of as the woman's "awkward voice". Charlotte slit her eyes back open like a reptile. Exhaled as quietly as possible. Nodded.
"I used to run," Lisbon continued. Charlotte swallowed. Tried her voice.
"Oh?" The car felt airless. But she knew she didn't have asthma. She'd been checked for that.
"Yeah. Track and field. Ninth grade."
"Oh," Charlotte said, and this time it was cut off by a choked sensation. She screwed her eyes shut. Not this shit. Not now.
"Are you okay?" Lisbon said and her voice sounded tinny. The teen ignored it.
"Charlotte?" Lisbon said from miles away, but the sound was muffled by the roaring of her blood, the sudden high-pitched ringing. There was the sound of the passenger door opening. Footsteps. She counted her breaths and screamed silently for this to pass. Hyperventilating right now would just fuck things up, but it got so hard to remember to breathe when you were dropping into Hell unexpectedly...
"Hey," Patrick said, and his voice was closer, somewhere between careful and cajoling. The voice of someone at a fair, trying to get you to play one of those stupid carnival games. Come on, it's only 3 bucks and everyone wins a prize! Charlotte whipped her eyes open.
"What?!"
"You're okay, just slow down your breathing-" Jane said, and the cajoling was softer. Back to hypnosis-shit, again.
Charlotte slit her eyes into lines, despite the rising surge of anxiety. Stared at him, almost-but-not-quite-a-glare.
"I need to run... or I get... like this," she said stroppily, the worlds sloppy with breath and fear, as if that explained everything.
"How long have you been having panic attacks?" Jane said conversationally but too-calmly, and she wanted to tell him to mind his own damned business. Anyways, they weren't "panic attacks". They were neon screams. Panic attacks were for regular people. People who hadn't seen Hell. Panic attacks were unwarranted, chemical aberrations. What she got, what Charlotte Ruskin-Jane experienced, were lifestyle events. Like LSD flashbacks. Different thing. She had every right in the world to experience them, she had damn-well earned them...
"I never panic," Charlotte said from the back of her throat, and clopped her mouth shut so hard her teeth rebounded. Her chin was shivering, her chest was shaking. Fuck this crap. Fucking traitorous body.
Patrick stopped trying to talk to her for a moment. He was talking softly to Lisbon, telling her what room he had gotten. There was the clinking noise of keys being passed. He wanted her out of the way, evidently.
Privacy.
"Nothing to be ashamed about," Patrick said after a handful of moments. He sounded firm and kind and unnaturally good. Lisbon had disappeared somewhere.
"N-not ashamed."
"That's good," he said, and somehow he managed to say those words without sounding too condescending.
"N-not used to being coo-cooped up in a c-car for so loong...d-damnit..."
"Adrenaline just has to run its course now."
"N-no s-shhit, Sherrrlock," Charlotte slurred and aimed a glare at him. He gave her a look that couldn't quite be called a smile, not a provoking smile. Kind. Sad.
"Do you want to sit here until you feel better? Or go to the room now?"
She shut her eyes, swam into the inky blackness. No. Not quite inky blackness. The neon lights of the motel sign were bugging her optic nerves, even through the veil of her eyelids. She wanted to be alone, that was what she wanted, but she knew that wouldn't happen. Not for a long while. Patrick was too paranoid of something happening to her.
She counted her breaths. Her lungs felt like they had been taken out and tanned. Like they were no longer working and no longer alive. She could feel them inflating, but they felt tight, like there were tensor bandages wrapped around them, constricting just how much they could move. The little clusters of cells inside, the alveoli? Had they all shriveled up and died? They didn't seem to be pulling oxygen in anymore.. What had happened to all the oxygen?
Charlotte squeezed her eyes tighter. Fucking thoughts. Traitorous body. Traitorous mind.
"When I was a kid I used to like Lipton chicken noodle soup," Patrick said then, voice rich and warm and comfortable. Like he was telling a little child a story. Which, in a way, he was.
"What!?"
"I used to like Lipton chicken noodle soup. The kind that comes in the red box? The one you add hot water to? With the neon-yellow chicken broth? The tiny, straight noodles? They'd go even more yellow then the broth, real fluorescent yellow..." His voice was so lazy, so calm.
Charlotte wheezed out a breath. "So!?"
"If I was having a bad day, I'd put on some water, wait until the water was boiling, steaming... bubbling water, and then dump that little noodle packet in. Breathe in the warm steam, stand in front of the stove and breathe in the smell of cooking soup. Watch the noodles start to soften right before my eyes. Stand there, and you could watch this dry powder change in the hot water, the smell-"
"I know what you're doing," Charlotte said then, but her lungs did feel a bit looser. Patrick was silent for a good ten seconds before answering.
"You do?"
"You're trying to distract me. And the imagery you've chosen is obviously meant to be relaxing. Warm water? Chicken noodle soup? You're hardly being subtle."
Patrick turned his electric eyes to her and grinned, a full grin. Like one of the numbers she could remember him putting on so many long years ago. The corners of his eyes crinkling, laugh lines etching ever so deeper.
"Is it working?"
"It's running its course," she allowed. "The adrenaline." Still tight, her lungs, but not quite as tight. Chest aching, wanting to spasm. But the growing terror was gone. Mostly.
"I'll go for a run with you in a few hours. When it's light. If you still want to?"
Despite herself, the teenager yawned. Suddenly felt so incredibly tired. Damn it. Chicken noodle soup...
"Want to go and rejoin Lisbon?"
Charlotte nodded. Unclicked her seat belt (it had been on the entire attack) and pushed the door open. Shuffled out onto the pavement and slammed the door. Patrick was beside her instantly, quiet and smooth as a shadow. He didn't touch her, but she could feel him next to her, like a magnet. He walked her to the motel room.
Lisbon, for her part, had changed into the pyjamas she had purchased herself at the god-awful Walmart super center and was sitting on one of the beds. There were only two beds. Charlotte looked over at her father expectantly.
"I'm not going to sleep," Patrick said.
"Jane, you have to sleep," Lisbon began in what almost sounded like a worried tone but Jane just made a tsking noise. She stopped talking.
Hadn't they just had this conversation in the car? Déjà vu hit Charlotte in the throat. Her thoughts began to whine, tinnitus.
"I'll sleep in the car tomorrow. You can drive, Lisbon. Deal?"
Lisbon stared at him for a moment. Finally nodded her head. Sighed loudly. Charlotte wasn't sure, but she thought Lisbon might have wanted to argue the sleeping arrangements and decided to let it drop. Charlotte tried to remember what her father was like back in the day- really like, and not what she imagined he had been like. Had he been stubborn? Yes. Charismatic? Yes, again. No doubt Lisbon knew better than to argue with him. Knew to pick her battles.
Charlotte glanced over the room now, taking in all the details. Old shag carpeting, peeling wall paper, prosaic little prints of clipper ships in pastel water colours. What a yawn fest. Lisbon had left her the bed closest to the washroom. Closest to the TV. The bags had been brought in from the car, everything but her backpack and some of the food. The teen went and found the bag of clothes Lisbon had told her were her's, grabbed the entire thing and marched to the washroom. Once inside, door locked, she opened the small window above the toilet. Pulled out the pot and the pipe and smoked a few quick tokes. Patrick would smell it, of course... but so what? Let him say something.
Then she was into the shower. She showered quickly, washing herself in what was almost a frenzy, the water pelting and hot and almost painful, steaming the bathroom mirror in seconds and causing the fan to cut on. She flossed in the shower, ran the toothbrush with aquafresh furiously over her teeth, spat. Spat again. Put down another line of toothpaste and began to clean her teeth again, scrubbing until the foam she spat out was pink. Then little splatters of red in the pink. Good enough.
She ran her right pointer finger over her teeth and tested them. Smiled a little when they squeaked. She was equally vicious with the shampoo, clawing the soap through her hair quickly, furiously, then repeating. Then repeating again. Five minutes after getting in the shower she was finished. 6 minutes after she'd turned on the faucet, she had dried and changed into her pyjamas. Lounge pants and a long sleeved, green t-shirt.
Charlotte walked back out, hair slightly more wavy than normal, and eased herself onto the bed Lisbon had left her. The pot was already hitting her and making the edges of her awareness a bit fuzzy. The girl got back up, grabbed the remote control off the cabinet the TV was resting on, and turned the television on. CNN was showing middle eastern bullshit. Israel and Syria and Russia, Oh my! Putin was pissed at Obama. What else was new? Putin was saying... Charlotte changed the channel. An old rerun of Saved By the Bell. The Big Bang Theory. The local news. Some melodramatic made-for-tv movie. She surfed through 10 more channels before stopping on a cartoon. Old one. She-ra. Charlotte stared at the cartoon, then grinned at it.
Then she began to giggle. This cartoon was inane. Time was really slow and bubbly now, time was warm. Could time be warm? She-rahhhh! Charlotte's eyes glazed over. On the television, a brightly coloured cartoon horse (wasn't its name Swift-wind? Something like that?) was carrying the yellow-haired She-rah back to her castle. The crystal castle. Exciting cartoon music. Charlotte giggled louder.
On her bed, Lisbon glanced over at Jane. He was sitting in the corner of the room, by the closed and locked door, on the only chair in the room and was watching his daughter with tired, patient eyes. Lisbon caught his eyes and he smiled at her, a perfunctory gesture of acknowledgment. Nodded at her, a subtle incline of the head. Charlotte giggled again at something on the television screen and chewed on her fingernails, and it was such a strange little giggle that Lisbon felt like she was in the room with a six year old, not a sixteen year old. Lisbon was also pretty sure the girl was high, but that was Jane's battle. Jane was just watching her, transfixed, the light from the television dancing over his tired features like pastel flames. As tired as he no doubt was, his eyes never lessened in intensity.
"Hey, Lisbon?" Charlotte half-hissed, half-whispered then. Lisbon glanced around.
"Yeah?"
"You ever watch this cartoon? She-raaaaah?"
Lisbon grinned at that, and nodded.
"Yes, actually- I used to watch this when I was little. I even had the lunch box-"
Charlotte had collapsed into the blanket stretched over her bed and laughed into the fabric. Lisbon threw an uneasy glance over at Jane. The smile that had been on his face had lessened a little. He looked almost sad. No, not sad. Accepting. Pensive.
When Charlotte lifted her face back up, her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes were very, very shiny. She pointed a slender finger at the screen.
"What is this thing that looks like a colourful monkey mixed with a butterfly? With the little bird beak?"
"His name is Kowl," Lisbon said slowly, testing the waters. Charlotte stared at her, mouth twitching.
"He's named Cow?"
"Kowl," Lisbon repeated. "With an "el" at the end."
"Was..." Charlotte trailed. "Was your lunch bucket made of plastic?"
Lisbon nodded again.
"Was it pink plastic?"
"Um... I don't think so. I think it was blue," Lisbon informed the girl, her own mouth jerking up at the corners.
"Was that monkey-butterfly thing on your lunch box?"
"I don't really remember," Lisbon said gently, smiling in memory. She could suddenly smell crayola crayons and the smell of elementary school lunches (usually peanut butter and jelly with a banana or an orange, sometimes bologna with mustard and mayo. Always on white wonder bread. Sometime a fruit roll up or a baggie of Oreo cookies or a chocolate pudding. In the fall, spaghetti and meatballs in the little thermos. By winter of the first grade, Teresa Lisbon's She-ra lunch box had been covered with scratch and sniff stickers, puffy stickers of Garfield.
Funny how memories were linked like that.
"Was that horse with the wings on it?" Charlotte asked, rousing Lisbon from her trip down memory lane.
"Charlotte?" Jane said then, voice a bit louder than usual. Charlotte looked over at him lazily, more like a cat than a squirrel now. Lisbon was almost expecting her to yawn at him.
"Hmmm?"
"I think Lisbon is tired," Jane told her matter-of-factly.
"I want to know about her lunch box. From... from when did this cartoon come out? 1965?"
"Mid-eighties?" Lisbon said, ignoring the comment.
"I want to know about the mid-eighties lunch box," Charlotte informed her father, and amazingly, she said this straight faced. Then, she seemed to run the comment through her short term memory and lost it laughing again.
"I... I want to know about the Pegasus name... named... swift-wind."
"Why don't you talk about it tomorrow in the car?
Charlotte mumbled something into the blankets and finally stopped laughing. She looked back at the television with glassy eyes. Lisbon lay down on her own bed. Shut her eyes. Wondered what was going through Jane's mind at this moment.
Wondered what horrors Charlotte was suppressing while giggling away at retro cartoons at 2:30 in the morning the second night after escaping from the serial killer who had raised her.
End of Chapter, please review. Reviews= love.