Adam trudged down the hall to his apartment thinking the day hadn't sucked quite as badly as he'd expected but it had come close a couple of times. He was glad that people weren't asking him about Michelle and the baby – he mentally winced and then realized it wasn't tearing a hole in his soul anymore just to think about them – but he wished some of them weren't trying quite so hard not to ask him about them. That was nearly as bad as if they'd asked for a full synopsis.
He thought about knocking on Emi's door but he'd been taking advantage of her a lot the last couple of days and knew he needed to stand on his own two feet. He hadn't slept in his place until last night and the only reason he did last night was because she was working on a project and the smell was getting to him. He was a CSI for cripes sake. He'd worked on evidence that would have gagged a maggot but something about Emi's project just got to him. She was a girl … ok, she was a woman … but still. The sight of her petite figure carrying around a clear plastic bag that had a human head in it had weirded him out after having watched a marathon of Friday the 13th movies with her all day long. He'd been in the mood for a gorefest and that sort of thing didn't phase Emi. Nothing phased Emi as far as he'd found … scratch that, nothing gross phased Emi; other stuff could drive her into the stratosphere. He briefly wondered what she would have made of today's crime scene. But that head in the Ziploc bag … man oh man. Actually it had only been part of a head; she was reconstructing the parts that weren't there but was complaining that the archaeology department that had sent it to her had failed to warn her that they were sending it "as is"; in other words it hadn't been de-fleshed yet. She'd been rummaging around in her "tool box" looking for what she needed to take care of that before she could actually get down to the work she'd been hired to do.
He knew that there were computer programs that could do some of what she did faster – they had them in the lab – but Emi had skill. She brought her reconstructions to life like a computer program never could. She could also do something special. She could reverse age a face … or erase the marks that life left behind … or put them there if need be. And she didn't need computer generation to do it. She saw it all in her head and would sketch it out. You could make a flip book from her sketches and it was almost like animation. Emi looked at the whole picture … bone, genetic data and approximate age if available, remaining tissue if any, marks left by changes in nutrition and habits, era they lived in, just all of it. She built a picture … not just a visual picture but a mental one … of who she was supposed to reconstruct. More often than not at the end of a project she came so close to the real thing that people were often shocked … or spellbound. It is why most of her work came from museums.
She could also do what she called a "reverse construct." When he first met her she'd been creating models from statues located in an art museum. One of them was so detailed and realistic she'd become irritated that the director complained it was pornographic.
He hated doing laundry. You'd figure he would be good at it with a degree in chemistry but he wasn't. He was constantly spilling stuff on his clothes and then having to figure out how to get the stains out without destroying what was stained. He had less trouble piecing together degraded DNA off of a piece of fabric in the lab than he did getting pasta sauce off his own shirt. Then there was the drying and folding and God help him, the ironing. He hated irons because of the memories he associated with them … but also because he'd fried more than a few shirts and had to toss them, and his hands and fingers a few times as well. He'd been known to resort the fabric steamer at work when he couldn't hide wrinkles under a lab coat. But geez, ties were the worst. He had a few he occasionally wore but he didn't know what was a bigger problem … cleaning them or tying them.
The day he'd met Emi for the first time he'd been doing the clothes he'd played hockey in the weekend before; he knew from bitter experience that putting it off was a disaster waiting to happen because it didn't take long for the stink of the sportswear to permeate his whole apartment though he'd made the same mistake that time too. It was wicked after a long day in the lab to have to come home and be forced to open a window or put vapor rub on his 'stache to deal with the smell. Burying them down in the bottom of the hamper only worked for the first couple of days.
He walked in and she'd been doing laundry as well, sitting on the washing machine actually – the one that tended to bang around when you washed jeans in it – and making a face at the phone she was talking into. "Look, you asked me to construct a life-sized model of the man that the statute had been modeled on. It isn't my fault that it was a male nude. And trust me on this, the last thing I found the least bit titillating was reading about the private life of that particular sculptor and his nasty personal habits just to get a feel for the subject I was constructing. It also isn't my fault that the genitals on the statute do not mesh up with the genitals on the male model I built. You wanted realistic. The ones on the statute were hidden under leaves after all and men do not really run around with leaves growing on their privates … grape leaves, fig leaves, whatever … it just isn't lifelike in the least. It's not like I made him built like that Holmes dude that rocked the porn world. I just built him normal-ish." There had been someone on the other end of the phone that sounded slightly hysterical. "I know the exhibition opens tomorrow. I don't know … slide a pair of fruit of the looms on him. Call it a modern interpretation or something. At least he'll fill out the front better than the Ken doll you want me to turn him into. I've got standards you know." Some more squawking but it sounded much less hysterical than before. "Sure. I get it. I'm not insulted so don't freak. It's just you guys gave me very specific instructions and I gave you exactly what your instructions created."
When she got off the phone she'd looked straight at him and said, "Honestly. For some swanky, artsy fartsy museum with every kind of nude you could imagine shoved in every corner of that place, they sure are a bunch of prudes. What the heck? They asked for an anatomically correct reconstruction and that's what I gave them."
All Adam could remember doing is standing there pouring in detergent into the washer … scoop after scoop after scoop … listening to her talk crazy in the sanest way he had ever heard. That's when Gary walked in carrying Reni. It had been one of his good days when he had more of them than the bad ones. Gary took one look at his face and what he was doing and started cracking up. Adam had felt like his face was going to melt off in embarrassment but Gary made it easy by saying, "Don't worry Man … Emi has that effect on almost everyone."
It was Gary that had made introductions. He'd been surprised to find out they were married and that Reni was their kid but after getting to know them and their story it was all just so natural and worked really well. At least it had then. Or what he had been allowed to see had appeared that way. The last three months before Reni died Gary's occasional issues became regular issues and then turned into daily issues. By that time the only reason Adam continued to hang out is because he worried about Emi. Gary had emotional problems but they would have been manageable if he had just … Nope, Adam decided to let that guilt all be Gary's responsibility and remain in the past; he had enough going on with his own emotional problems to take on anyone else's … especially a dead guy's … even if the dead guy had been a friend at one time.
Adam finally shut the door behind him and looked around his apartment and wondered what he was supposed to do. Eat? Watch tv? Play some video games? Was there something constructive he was supposed to do or was he supposed to veg out? He definitely didn't need to clean house. The place was spotless … again that was Emi. Michelle had stormed out of his life leaving great big holes both figuratively and literally. God the apartment had looked like a war zone. Something his mother used to say drifted through his head … in like a lion, out like a lamb, in like a lamb, out like a lion. That's how it had been with Michelle. They'd meshed their lives and belongings so quickly, he'd been worried at first he was dreaming and then she'd just turned out to be great for him. He'd felt close to being whole for the first time in his life. She even made dealing with his father's illness easier … not easy, but definitely easier.
Then the incident where he'd been out in the field and someone had taken a shot at him for no other reason than they thought he was a cop. Sure he carried a badge and a gun but that was beside the point … he wasn't a cop and never even pretended to be one. He just investigated stuff and left the cop stuff to the cops. But now he was wondering that if it hadn't been almost getting shot, that maybe eventually something else would have come up to make her "feel conflicted." What a load of crap.
Adam rubbed the back of his neck and looked around. His place looked Spartan, nearly bare, compared to what it had looked like just a week ago. Every molecule of Michelle and the baby had been scrubbed away. He wasn't sure if he appreciated it or not though he knew in the long run it was what had needed to happen. He would have just liked to have hung onto the past-that-could-have-been for a little while longer. It wouldn't have made the letting go any easier but at least he wouldn't have felt so damn guilty about moving on so fast.
Not that he was moving on. As a matter of fact he was still standing in the exact same place he'd been standing in for the last several moments trying to figure out what to do next. This sucked. Being alone. Again. Even though it sucked he wasn't too sure he wanted to try to not be alone. Again. He knew he'd been here before but not exactly like this. Sure, the girl had left him … that wasn't different. The girl had broken his heart … that wasn't different either. He'd even had a couple of live in girlfriends that had trashed his place when they left. But this time a baby was involved … only it wasn't his baby. Damn that hurt.
Adam stopped and shook his head hard enough to make his hair look worse than normal. It looked worse because he'd tried to order his hair the way he'd intended to order his life from here on out and he'd gone a little insane with the gel to get the curls to stay put. Kinda looked like he had helmet head but he hadn't cared. He was trying to be all about the order and control. He needed boundaries. Boundaries kept the bad things out. Or in … inside where no one could see them. After all he was getting too old to cry … hell he'd been too old for a long time. His old man had been at him for as long as he could remember – well at least until had gotten sick and even then it still crept into the conversation even though he didn't know it was Adam he was talking to. He'd heard an untold number of times to knock it off and stop being such a sissy. Looks like maybe his old man had at least one thing right. Crap happens in life. You just had to take it. Let your heart get involved and it just made life crappier.
With almost snake like speed Adam suddenly reached out and picked up a wine bottle and was about to throw it against the wall when there was a loud knock on the door. Adam stopped. He looked at the bottle in his hand like he didn't know how it had gotten there. He started to shake before slowly and carefully setting the bottle back on the kitchen counter and backing away like it was a live round of ammunition.
There was another knock and then someone called softly, "Adam? If it's a bad time I'll come back later but … I have cookies. And … anyway … cookies. It probably is a bad time … you might even be in the shower and I'm talking to no one which ranks right up there in the stupid department. I'll set them down by your door but don't leave them here too long … I mean assuming you can hear me. The landlord's mother finally got a new dog to replace the one that died. A dachshund … one of those ridiculous looking wiener dogs … and this one is more ridiculous than most because she's painted the thing's toenails florescent orange and I think glued some kind of fake Mohawk on its head and it just … anyway … like I said … cookies … so I'll be going now."