Eames: Where the hell has she been?
Goren: She left some sort of lame excuse in her last story about being sucked into classic Doctor Who.
Eames: Classic? Like, the stuff from the seventies? With the monsters made of bubblewrap, and the crazy guy in the scarf, and endless, endless bondage subtext?
Goren: …yup, I think that about sums up its appeal for her.
She didn't tell him everything, of course.
She wasn't born yesterday.
Information was power and she didn't intend to ever give anyone any power over her again. No matter how likeable or decent they seemed. She'd made that mistake with Kevin, and look where that got her.
So she gave Bobby the Cliff's Notes: "My dad…he was double-dipping. Working for the city while drawing a pension. He had to pay it back. There wasn't any more money."
She remembered wondering once if she'd ever be able to say those words without that bitter tang on her tongue, without her throat going tight.
"And then Joe asked me to marry him, and the money I was saving up…our families wanted a big wedding. Catholics. What're you gonna do?"
A snort, half amusement, half commiseration.
"So I started saving up again, but there was rent, and bills…and my mom had a stroke, and her insurance didn't cover nearly enough. After awhile, the things I wanted—they didn't matter. They were selfish. I let them go."
Maybe she did tell him a little more than she intended. But it was easy in the dark, lying on top of the sheets and hearing him breathe below the mattress. He was there but not there, and the more she talked the more she felt as though she was floating on a cloud, on a different plane and just barely connected. There but not there.
His bed was soft, and warm, and clean. The sheets smelled like cheap lilac detergent, two for six dollars at Walgreens.
Bobby was quiet for so long she thought that maybe he had fallen asleep, and she was almost insulted, until he said, "What did you…what were you studying to be?"
"You'll laugh."
"I won't. Promise."
"Vet tech. You know, assisting the veterinarian with procedures and operating a lot of the equipment." She rolled onto her side, facing away from the wall. The lamplights outside cast a baleful yellow glow through his window. "I really liked animals."
"Why would I—"
"Because it was stupid," she cut him off. "Even when my dad was helping, I still had to work two jobs, and for what? Falling asleep in class, barely hanging onto my grades. Always arguing with my family or with Joe because I couldn't spend time with them." She could feel it all coming back, the anger and hurt, broken crockery and barbed words cutting above the tinny warble of the ten inch black and white television in her family's kitchen. Bile in her throat. Her hands clenched in the blankets. "It wasn't worth it."
"You…you can't believe that…"
"Don't tell me what I can't believe," she snapped. The floating here-not-here feeling was entirely gone now. She pulled the blankets tighter around her. She wished she had just changed the subject when he'd pushed for her to talk to him. "You don't know, okay? Any of this, you—you don't know."
Silence, then:
"I think you would've made a great vet tech."
She wanted to tell him to shut up, but her throat and chest had gone all tight again.
xxxxx
Things were tense the rest of the week, Bobby tiptoeing around her and her not terribly inclined to talk to him at all, let alone broker any kind of peace. If be here with me translated to relive all the bad decisions in your life for my listening pleasure, then fine. She'd deal. But no one said she had to be happy about it, or make him feel better about prying into her past for some voyeuristic kick.
On Saturday she woke to the smell of really good coffee. Her suspicions that this was some sort of belated peacemaking gesture on his part were confirmed when she entered the kitchen and saw the platter of raspberry and cheese Danishes on the table.
There was also a large cardboard box, right in front of her normal seat.
"What's this?"
Bobby glanced up from the newspaper before looking back down, studiedly casual. But the fingers of his right hand were twisting at the tablecloth. "Tit for tat."
"I see." Eames poured herself a cup of coffee, and took a cheese Danish. She ate them at the counter.
Behind her, she could hear his foot start to drum, faster and faster.
A spirit of perversity made her linger over the pastry, though her habit was usually to eat as quickly as she could. When she was finished, she made her way over to the box and opened it.
Eames wasn't sure what she had been expecting, but it definitely hadn't been…what was all this? She sifted through the stiff and yellowed papers, intrigued despite herself. Eviction notices, hospitalization records, foster home paperwork…
She noticed the names. William. Frances. Frank.
Robert.
"You didn't have to do this," she said quietly. She shut the box, but didn't look up from it just yet. Her vision was slightly blurry; she blinked, hard, and it cleared.
"I…I didn't want you to think this was a one-way street."
"How about…" She took a breath, and looked up. "How about I just ask questions, when I want to know. And you have to answer me, like I do with you."
He met her eyes. "Okay."
xxxxx
So they fell into another rhythm together, with questions in the night. Tit for tat, her above and him below. Breathing, and asking, and answering, and it was like walking on a tightrope with all the things you might accidentally reveal, but somehow it was safe enough to still drift off to sleep.
That night:
"How did you meet Joe?"
"He was cousins with the prom king. Crashed the after party, brought booze, made me laugh, held my hair while I was puking up the cheap booze he brought. What every girl dreams of."
And not ten minutes later, startling even herself (she had told herself she wouldn't ask):
"How long were you in the foster system?"
"Not long. My dad could…he could charm anyone."
Another night:
"Do you…still see your family? Ever?"
"My father's dead." The years had made this impossible fact real to her, but the words would always sound strange on her tongue. Hard, blocky. Inert. "My mother isn't going to wake up, no matter how much money they throw at her—and they haven't got a lot to throw. The rest—I won't add to their problems."
And another night:
"How did you get the scar on your neck?"
"My dad came home. He saw…I was supposed to be watching my mother. I wasn't supposed to be reading."
She almost always ended up telling him more than he told her, and sometimes in the cold light of morning she was terrified at her idiocy, at the things she had let slip from her sleep-addled mouth. But then she'd catch him darting a quick little did-I-really-tell-her-that look at her too, and somehow that settled her nerves into a manageable hum.
He never asked her the question she was sure he wanted to most of all.
Five a.m., a June night so warm the window was open:
"Eames?"
"Yeah?"
"Are you alright with—I mean, are you…are we okay?"
"As okay as we'll ever be."
And on and on and on, above and below, questions and answers in the night.
xxxxx
"Why is there a cake in the freezer?"
Eames smirked into her coffee. "It's for you. Congratulations."
"What—"
"You didn't think I wouldn't find out about this, did you?" She flicked the leaflet out from where she'd been keeping it under the newspaper. "Securing funding for a Roald Dahl room in the Children's Section—well done. I think my favorite part is your quote about 'the battle to retain whimsy in an uncaring world.'"
Bobby blushed like a tomato. "They, they smoothed out a lot of the things from the interview, made me sound—how did you get that?"
Eames' smirk grew. "Out of all the bullshit community newsletters, out of all the pretentious coffee shops Gavin could have taken me to, in all of New York City, I just happened to pick up this one."
It was a game that one of them—she couldn't remember which through the haze of sleepy memories—had started one night, trying to fit as many references to a movie into a conversation as possible. Bobby's lips twitched as he considered his response, settling himself in his chair. He tapped the leaflet. "You know this doesn't amount to…a hill of beans."
"Play it again, Sam."
"That line's, uh, not actually in the movie."
"Woody Allen lied to me? Damn." She set the flyer back down and went back to reading the paper. "Well, anyway, good for you."
"Thanks, for, for going to the trouble. I appreciate it. I…really do."
Eames rolled her eyes. "It's not like I baked it; there was a promotion going on at Dairy Queen."
"Still…thank you."
She made the mistake of looking up at him and into his eyes, which were wide and brown and sincere in a way that made you want to put them beside 'earnest' in the dictionary. She looked back down at the newspaper quickly, quashing the lump in her throat. "Yeah, well, it was cake or a blowjob, and I hate to bring work home."
He almost fell off his chair. "Please don't say things like that."
"Relax, Marian, I'm not going to sully your virtue."
"No, that wasn't—I mean…" He righted himself in the chair, leaned forward a little. "You don't have to…deflect like that. With compliments, I mean—you deserve it. You're a good person."
"Is this the part where we sing a Disney song about friendship?" It came out of her mouth before she could stop it, and Bobby's face fell. She reached out and covered his hand with hers, gave it a quick squeeze. "I'm—it's a work in progress, okay?"
"Okay."
xxxxx
A week later. She'd just started out of the gas station, newly changed into her night-shift clothes, the attendant slumped against the defective hand-dryer in post-coital bliss. She was thinking about her lunch break, when Bobby had dropped by unannounced and tried to buy her a churro ("Miguel is one of our library paiges, really, uh, entrepreneurial, just got this pushcart…" "I know it brightens your day when you can soothe my poverty-wracked life, but I think I can buy my own damn churro"). The ensuing monologue about the varied history and preparation of Latin American pastries was made entirely worth it when Bobby's jaw dropped as she carried on a conversation with Miguel in grammatically perfect, if heavily accented, Spanish. ("Where did you—" "Hooking can be a very cosmopolitan job, you know.")
Her cellphone rang. Speak of the devil. "Hey, Bobby."
"Ea—uh, I need a favor."
"What is it?" He had called before sometimes in the early morning to see if she was alright, but never just when she was just heading out. A thought occurred to her. "If you're planning on having company tonight, there are places I can stay."
"What? No, uh…I need you to go see a friend."
(Sitting in the chair across from the mahogany desk, her blouse unbuttoned. He's not even looking at her as he zips up his pants. "I have some friends I think you should meet…")
"Are you still there? Hello?"
Dutton took a deep breath. "I know you can't mean what it sounded like you mean," she said carefully. Her grip was too tight on the phone and she couldn't seem to relax it. "Because if you did, then you're coming home to an empty apartment."
"What? She's a lawyer, my friend, but she's not answering her cell, and, uh, the thing is…" His breathing had sped up, and Dutton could practically see the way he was jittering, bouncing a little on his heels or in his chair. "I'm down at the station. I got arrested."