Rusted Hearts

Chapter 11

...Friday, First week February 1982...

It was late on a Friday afternoon when I got the call. I'd packed away my files and checked my schedule for the Monday, already mentally leaving the station and gearing up for the days off ahead. It had been weeks since Starsky and I had both had a free weekend that actually coincided. If it wasn't work shifts or actual casework for either of us, it was endless paperwork and policy briefings for me and research papers for Starsky.

We'd put the weekend aside for us. Just us. No socializing, no outings, no work calls (unless urgent) – just home, reading, meals, conversation – and of course – some long-awaited skin on skin time. I can recall the buzz I had in me, actually smiling at my own little inner glow of anticipation as I snapped closed my briefcase. I was pulling my jacket from the back of the chair, when my desk phone rang..

"Damn!" Why did front desk always have a knack of putting through a call when I was about to walk out of my office bay? It was nearly five o'clock. I'd planned to be on the road by now. Any delay was going to put me right in the middle of rush hour.

I walked four or five paces away, determined to ignore it, before cursing and dropping my briefcase. "Hutchinson!" I wanted to bite the head off the caller as I swung back to the desk and snatched up the phone. The way the person on the other end of the phone responded, I had succeeded.

"Ah – excuse me. Is this Lieutenant Hutchinson? Kenneth Hutchinson?" a strange man's voice was tentative, almost apologetic.

"Yes, it is," I smoothed out the barbs in my voice with effort but couldn't hide the impatience.

"I was wondering if I might have a few moments of your time, Lieutenant. My name is Robert Morgan."

The name meant nothing to me.

"I'm just leaving the office, perhaps the matter can -" I looked ruefully at the door.

"Really this won't take very long," he said.

I sighed at the inevitability of things, especially phone calls that always came at the exact wrong moment, and levered my hip back onto the desk.

"How can I help you?" I tried not to sigh.

"I apologize for calling you at your work, but I had no other way of contacting you privately," the man said. "I know your home address, but I did not want to risk intruding on your life in case…."

My home? If this was a damn cold caller salesman …

"Privately?" I repeated. "So this is not a work matter? And how do you know where I live?" My tone was growing fresh barbs again.

"Please – let me explain. If possible I'd like the opportunity to meet with you – even briefly. I'm free this evening and I could meet you wherever it best suited you –"

"Look, Mr. – err – Morgan. I'm a Lieutenant. If this is a police matter than you need to go through the proper channels and not ring me directly –"

"This is not a police matter," Now he sounded frustrated. "As I mentioned it concerns you personally."

"I don't believe I know you," I told him.

"No you wouldn't but we have a mutual – ah – friend."

The conversation was starting to piss me off.

"Listen, Morgan, cut to the chase. What is it you want? Tell me now and quickly, because I have no intention of meeting with you tonight," I said brusquely.

"Alright. But at least hear me out. I'm a friend of Alice Peters and -"

"Alice Peters? You mean –" I was taken off guard by hearing the Christian name combined with a surname I don't believe I ever even knew – or at least recollected. I should have known her full name shouldn't I have? Damn – that was bad that I hadn't.

"Yes, Alice. Your friend who you helped place in the Half -Way house."

"I know Alice, of course," I know I sounded terse but I had to cover my embarrassment at not knowing Alice's full name.

"We've struck up a friendship, she and I. I've been helping her re-establish some life goals, get her into a small job – prepare for some future study –"

"I know who you are," I interjected abruptly. At least I thought that I did. This must be the man Huggy made mention of and the same one Starsky saw Alice getting into the car with a couple of months ago. "So what do want from me?" I suppose I sounded rude, but something about this call was unnerving me rapidly.

"I don't want anything from you, Lieutenant Hutchinson," Morgan replied coolly, and it was then that I caught the inflection of his voice, slightly pompous, elite – educated? Isn't that what Huggy had told me? An academic junkie? No, ex-junkie, I corrected myself. Did all his knowledge; all his years of intellectual pursuit take their toll on him, wearing him down so that eventually he turned to the needle, to cocaine or whatever was his preferred vice?

"I'm merely calling you on behalf of Alice," he said.

"Why? Why isn't Alice calling me?" I demanded, a little more harshly than I had intended.

"She didn't want to come to your home although I offered to go with her – she said that you wouldn't appreciate an unexpected visit –"

"She's right. My home is private. I wouldn't appreciate it if you had come there with her," I gave him another cool slight. "What does Alice want that she couldn't call me about herself? I don't follow this. What's with this third person stand in? I don't even know you, so why call me?"

"Alice didn't think you would be receptive to the call. I know that you haven't seen her since you organized her place in the community house."

Did I detect criticism there? Like I detected criticism from Huggy for the same thing?

So was that what this was about? Was Alice wanting me to come back into her life and enlisting her friends to guilt me into it?

"Our –" what word should I give our relationship, Alice's and mine? "Our friendship –is a complex one. I thought she understood that I couldn't continue to see her – at least for the time being." But I knew I had never told her that, not in so many words. I'd only told her that I couldn't continue to have an intimate relationship with her.

"She would really benefit from a chance to see you again. She only wants some time with you to talk. That's all. Nothing else. Just talk. Please, surely you could do that much for her," Morgan said bluntly. "I think you owe her that much, don't you?" he added, an obvious undercurrent of disapproval in his words.

Since when did this stranger know or understand what I might owe Alice or what was between us? What business was it of his anyway, my relationship with Alice?

"What? What did you say?" I demanded, total disbelief at such a judgmental statement. "Jesus, who do you think you are to call me up like this and lay this guilt crap on me?"

"Look, I'm sorry," Morgan replied quickly. "Really – I take that back. It's just that I care about Alice and I think, the way she talks about you, that you once cared about her too –"

"Did?" I said, still affronted. "I still do. Alice is my friend and I've known her a lot longer and a lot more deeply than you might think you know her. We don't need you to push your face into our personal lives, so back down will you?" I meant every word of it and I think it came across in the low threat of my voice.

"I didn't mean to offend you. I'm sorry okay?" he sounded less confronting.

"Anyway, do you really think Alice would like you going behind her back like this?" I challenged him.

"I'm sure, more than anything Lieutenant – that she would be grateful for the chance to see you and talk. She's strived hard in the last months. Coming off the drugs, applying herself to her job – planning for bigger goals. She should be proud; she's got a right to be. Maybe she'd like to tell you all about it. I'm sure you believes that you were instrumental in getting her to this positive point."

"I…." I what? Was I going to refuse to see her? Was I going to tell this man to go away, get out of my life and stop dragging Alice and all the inherent problems connected to her to my doorstep? Hardly. Whether I or not I liked to admit that this guy was right, I owed Alice this small favor.

"Alright. I'll meet with her. I'd appreciate if I could do this in private. Are you – you two -?"

"No. We're not involved, not like that anyway if that's what you mean. Alice still lives where she did. I helped her move back in, and to back pay the rent," he said. "When? When do you think you'll come? I'd do my best to make sure she'd be there if I knew – and she has her job."

I rubbed at my neck, flipping open my desktop calendar, trying to think. "Not on the weekend. I have a full schedule." With my partner.

"Monday evening. I have an early afternoon," I told him, slamming my appointment book closed. "I could aim to be there by five, but of course I can't promise it. Things can crop up in this business," I added, just a touch sarcastically.

"She'll be home, I'll see to it," Morgan sounded so sure that he could make it happen that I wondered at the significance of the role he played in Alice's life. "Thank you Lieutenant –"

"Ken – call me Ken," I blew out a breath, capitulating enough to physically feel him relax on the other end of the phone.

"Thanks Ken, I know she'll really appreciate it," Morgan said, and he sounded genuinely grateful. Truly buoyed up.

God, did I ever feel like a hard ass. I was being thanked profusely by a stranger to pay an old friend one small social visit.

As long as it was just that, I thought as I headed toward the elevator's doors. Just one small social visit and nothing more as Morgan had promised. I pushed the nagging worry out of my head. It was the weekend and between now and Monday, any emotional headspace would be devoted solely to Starsky. Time enough to sweat it later.

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...Monday Evening, Second Week February 1982...

The door to Alice's had been painted a striking white. It was the first thing I noticed when I walked down the narrow hall toward her apartment. I did a quick double take at the glossy veneer and had to check the new shiny brass number plate to be sure. A quick scan along the hall showed that no other doors had been restored, still just as scuffed, chipped and painted some indeterminate color, their worn facades reflected the years of wear and the era of the building. So the new look door was not part of general building maintenance – but of Alice's doing.

Fresh and new. A new front door for a new beginning? The symbolism wasn't lost on me and although I was uneasy about the meeting I felt a small smile on my lips at this small but powerful statement. It was a typical "Alice sort of thing" to do.

As though she was expecting my knock the door opened almost immediately and then she was there, her expression part joy, part …what…fear? How much she had changed – even since July. Her heart-shaped face was now acutely angular; her eyes too big in her head, and her body thin beyond belief. I had to hold my reaction in check. Starsky had not been wrong in his depiction of her. However, despite her emaciation, there was a strong vibrancy about her, incongruent to her fragility.

Dressed in a tailored pantsuit, she looked like a completely different Alice to the one who had inhabited the night hours for her livelihood. Her seemingly huge eyes were sparkling; her hair was smooth and billowing around her face and her make-up was subtle and fresh. There was no sign of the tortured, drug frenzied woman who had railed against the world that night last year.

"Hello Alice," I said softly, stepping inside the door. She smiled and stepped back to accommodate my presence, but as I leaned in for a light welcoming kiss, she stepped back further and averted her face, completely avoiding my lips. Pulling back, I tried to read her expression. Was she resentful that I had taken so long to show back up in her life? Or was she setting the boundaries for my sake straight up? Before I could think on it further she tucked her light hair behind her ear and brushed my arm with her hand.

"Hello Hutch, I've missed you so," she brushed at a tear already springing to her eye and I thought I must have been mistaken about why she had jerked away from me. There was nothing but warmth in her words "It's been such a long time since I've seen your handsome face and heard that honey soft voice of yours."

I sighed inwardly. Why did I have to hurt her straight up by setting her straight about why I was at her doorstep again? Still, she deserved the truth.

"I might as well tell you now Alice, that I didn't come here tonight spontaneously," I admitted. "Your friend phoned me. He told me you were back home and asked if I'd pay you a visit."

"Robert," she said simply. I had no way of telling what she thought of it.

There was a brief awkward silence and I had to step across it.

"I'm sorry Alice." For so many things. For making you go. For leaving you alone.. For not being there as a friend…

"Don't be sorry Hutch, you've got nothing to be sorry about."

"No – I know I should have come to see you sooner but –"

"But you're here now and that's enough," she said, indicating the sofa. "Now - a drink?"

About to refuse I realized how offensive that would seem, as though I was looking to keep the visit to its absolute minimum.

"Sure. Thanks – a beer?"

"Of course." As she walked into the kitchen to get the beer I settled on the sofa and took stock of the small apartment. It, like the front door and Alice herself, seemed brighter than I remembered. Newer, though there was nothing new about it, cleaner. Like Alice. Clean Alice, purged of all the dirty drugs flowing in her veins – with only needle track scars to hint at her grim habit. Would she stay that way? Clean and bright – or would she succumb again as so many did?

She came back, handed me a beer and holding her own mixed drink, took a seat opposite me. I tried not to look away as she took inventory of me just as I had done of her and her apartment. She held my gaze as she let her eyes travel over me from head to foot and back again in almost clinical appraisal. When she'd taken her full, she picked up her drink and took a sip. With her eyes no longer measuring me up, I sat back a little and relaxed marginally.

"Did you mind that your friend, ah Robert, phoned me? That he asked me if I would come to see you?" I wanted to know.

She didn't hesitate.

"No – in fact, I asked him to do it. I told him where to call you."

That took me my surprise. "What? But he said he was doing it for you because you wouldn't…"

"Not entirely a lie. I just didn't think you'd come if it was me on the phone asking you to."

"That makes me feel like a bastard," I said a little too defensively. "Of course, I would have come if you'd called me." I'd said that with an absolute certainty that I didn't really have.

Obviously Alice didn't have the certainty either. "Would you? " she asked.

"You're thinking that because I never visited you in the community house that –"

"I'm not thinking that," she interrupted me. " I know that when we parted ways last year, I'd given you my word to not ask you for anything else, and you had made it clear that you couldn't offer me any more either," she said. "I didn't have any expectations that things would be any different than they've turned out to be."

Damn, it, she made me feel even worse by letting me off the hook. "It had to be like that, Alice."

"You don't need to defend yourself in any way Hutch. Please."

I drank some beer, tried to move the conversation forward. "Robert and Huggy have told me that you have a job and plan to study."

"Huggy?" she smiled fondly. "Then if you heard it from Huggy it must be true," she gave a tinkling laugh. "Yes – Robert helped me get a job in a bookstore and I love it."

"All those crisp, new books," I joked, knowing how much she loved to lose herself in the pages of a novel. "You must be in heaven."

"I am! Most of the time it doesn't feel like work at all. It's only part time because I had planned to study soon. I'd wanted to learn more about my favorite subject…"

"English Literature," I smiled. "I know."

"So Starsky told you? I saw him one night back near Christmas," she said, "My God Hutch, he looks wonderful. So – so strong and well, and so incredibly happy."

I couldn't help beam at her compliments, as proud of them as though they were directed personally at me. "He does – and I hope he is," I hesitated a beat. "We both are – very happy."

"I'm so pleased for you Hutch. You've both waited too many years to find happiness together."

"Well I suppose we were always happy being partners and friends – this – what we have now, is just the whole package," I said. "It's not easy of course – even today, we have to make sure we keep our relationship hidden from mostly everyone we know. But one day –"

"Things will change Hutch." Alice said. "Of course they will. The world just has to catch up about all the many different ways people choose to find their personal happiness."

I liked her attitude; Alice was always so good at getting to the heart of matters. "And – talking of happiness," I went on, "Starsky said you looked the happiest he had ever seen you too. He said that you looked like you'd found what you'd wanted."

I was startled at how quickly her expression changed. Her face now showed anything but happiness. What had I said?

"Are you?" I asked, looking at her more closely. "Are you happy Alice?"

She twisted her glass, put it down, before shutting her eyes for such a long moment that I feared that she was either going to cry or had gone into some sort of trance.

"Alice – are you okay?" I put my drink to the side and leaned forward to touch her lightly on the knee.

Her eyes opened again and she looked at me with such an intense gaze I felt like she was pulling me inside of her head. "Happiness," she considered the word. "It's such a strange box of tricks? All those parts of us that go to make up the whole of feeling happy; many connections that have to be put together to feel that experience," she looked like she was grappling with the concept as she tried to express herself to me. "What if some of the bits are missing, or broken, or don't fit with the other pieces?"

I thought about what she was trying to convey. "Not every part of you has to be happy though Alice," I said, "just the general sense deep in your soul."

"Hmm, " she said, running her fingers over the fabric of the sofa edge as she did. "Then yes. Yes, I'm happy. This moment, right now, sitting with you, I'm happy. All day today at work at the bookshop, that was happiness, last night when I went to my first tutorial on Keats and planned how to write my first paper for submission – yes – all of that was happiness."

"Then you see?" I said, pleased that she had been able to get in touch with her feelings. "You're getting there, putting the pieces together like you said. You're finding what makes you happy and grabbing on to it with both hands," I said.

"Yes but," her eyes came back to mine again, "you know Hutch, if there was a stash of heroin hidden in this apartment right now, I would only be waiting for you to leave so I could shoot the whole lot into my veins. That's a type of happiness too. Sick isn't it? And so, none of it fits together correctly. None of the pieces makes a proper whole."

Was she trying to shock me? Maybe I should have told her that it's hard to shock someone who knows exactly what it's like to still crave the rushing high of a fresh warm fix.

"You'll work through the wanting of another hit Alice, believe me…"

"It's so unbelievably hard Hutch." And I could see just how hard it was - in her thin body, in her gaunt face, in her shaking double-handed grip that wrapped around her glass as though it might drop away and shatter if she took her mind off the tenacious hold..

"You're doing so well Alice. With your job and your study. " I recalled what Robert Morgan had said about being proud of her. "You've achieved so much, moving out of the Half-Way house, carving out a new life for yourself just like you've always planned on doing –"

"You sound like Robert," she said with a knowing smile and I felt myself blush at being caught out for all but re-delivering his line.

"Well then, we're both right." I leaned over and patted her knee again, this time more forcefully. "You're strong Alice. Strong and determined."

"Maybe I am, but strong and determined just won't cut it this time 'round, I'm afraid." Her strange little laugh was almost too loud in the quiet room.

"Determination always cuts it," I argued, not liking the change in her mood, "especially when it's combined with support. And you've got both going for you Alice. You've got people who care about you and you've got inner strength."

"Even if I did, it won't help me," she said flatly.

"Oh come on," I urged, "you don't usually give up like this. You're too much of a survivor."

Seeming suddenly restless, she stood and walked over to the window, before turning around again and pacing back to me. I waited for her to answer me.

"I'm glad you think I'm a strong person. Thank you for believing in me Hutch – you've always believed in me, even last year when I came to you in such a mess…"

"And look. You've proved me right. You're on track Alice. Be proud of what you've done for yourself."

"I am – or at least I was starting to feel proud. But what's the point? It's all too late." There was more than self-pity and dejection behind what she had said. Something nearing on being inexorable. The brightness that had been around her when I'd entered was receding and flickering like a dying power source the longer I spent with her. It was like she only had so much bright energy stored up to put on show for me and now it was all but spent.

"Is this why your friend wanted me to come and see you, Alice? Because he's worried about this – this depression?" I asked carefully, really looking at her, into her eyes where the small residual brightness was turning into overwhelming sadness.

"No – though he is worried about me of course. But Robert called you because he knows how essential it is that I talk to you about something."

Her body was beginning to shake. It had started in her fingers, had spread up her arms, to her shoulders and now her chest and her back.

I could feel that she was descending emotionally. I went to her and put my hand on her shoulder, feeling the tremors rolling through her body. "Wait here."

I went to the kitchen bench and poured her a fresh drink. Returning quickly to her side I helped wrap her hands about the glass, my big hands over her small ones. She felt cold. I snagged a light blanket from the end of the sofa and threw it over her thin shuddering shoulders, tucking it carefully about her form as I settled beside her, meaning only to offer her some of my own body heat. She seemed to recoil. For the second time since I'd been there my physical proximity seemed to cause an almost knee-jerk reaction in her to avoid me. She shifted quickly along the sofa, putting distance between us.

"Please Hutch, don't – don't touch me now. Let me get this out. I can't do it why you're …while you're close to me like that," she sounded distraught and I realized that my touch really was distressing to her.

"Okay. It's alright," I soothed, more than confused as to why she seemed so uncomfortable with me near her. "I'll go back over to my seat, but tell me what's going on. What's got you so upset?"

She took a swallow of the spirit and then lifted the heel of her hand to press it hard, almost too hard, into her eye. "All those years – all those times I dreamed of having a chance with you. Me, the cheap hooker and you the brave, handsome cop. Stupid, stupid dreams. I only ever wanted to have you love me and want me – even for just a little while, even for just a little bit."

"I know. I know that Alice," I said gently. I'd always known it.

"And then – when you came to me that night, when Starsky had sent you away because of his own suffering, I was selfishly pleased. Do you know that?" her voice rose, almost challenging me. "I was secretly pleased that I might finally get the chance for something, anything – with you, even if it was because Starsky was mixed up and hurting so badly that he hurt you just as much."

I'd known that too. I nodded quietly.

"But what did I do with that chance? What did I fucking do with it?" she let out a low wail. " All I did was bring you misery and pain. I'm so sorry for that Hutch. More than you'll ever know."

"You brought me a lot more – you gave me a lot more than that Alice. You were there for me. Don't underestimate how much I needed what you gave me."

"Oh God, what I gave you…." She echoed my words. She moaned and rocked a little, her arms over her concave belly as though I'd said something to make her want to vomit.

"Alice?"

"I'm sick Hutch. Really sick. The sort of sick that only has one end to it." She said it as though she was trying on the expression for the first time. Trying it on for fit, hearing the truth herself as she said it out loud.

I didn't react too much at what she'd said. Not at first anyway. I told myself that I wasn't shocked, wasn't even surprised. I mean – one look at her could have told anyone that she was sick, and had been for some time, even before the heroin abuse. I'd seen the sickness, the deep malaise, long before the heroin hadn't I? I'd seen it in her eyes, in her face, in the way she had begun not to care for herself? Back when we were spending lost nights together and she feared that I was pulling away from her. I'd recognized the melancholy, the depression – the deep sadness in her then.

Maybe her descent into drug abuse was her way of beating the encroaching illness off with a stick.

The heroin had been more like an incendiary device. Combusting her internal pain into flames so that the illness tore like a raging fire through her whole body. Then after the heroin, she was worn down, hollowed out, her whole system ravaged.

"Alice, it'll take time, a long while, to get your strength and health back. Maybe now is the time for you to find out why you turned to the drugs in the first place. You can get some professional treatment, some therapy. These days the medications for depression are –" but she was already shaking her head before I got half way through.

"No, Hutch. Not that sort of sick. I've gotten over the drug abuse as best as I can and yes – you're right. I've already been seeing a Psychiatrist. If I'd done that fifteen years ago maybe… " She sighed wistfully. "But none of that is what I'm talking about. I'm sick from something else and now you have to say nothing and let me tell you what, because it's so very hard for me to say it." She drew a shaky breath. "When I have, you're going to be angry and hurt and – I think also, very frightened."

And then she told me.

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TBC