Had a request last time Jorge popped up for a reminder on the pronunciation of his name. He is 'Hor/hay,' and his friend is 'Bay/to'. And I have to confess to the fact that the more Beto called Harry 'donkey' as I wrote this, the more I could hear the donkey jibes in a Shrek accent despite Beto speaking Spanish most of the time. But you kind of have to go for exasperated affection and you'll be close or just bizarrely imagine Shrek as I do…. "Donkey!"


Chapter Twelve

Wednesday 22nd May

'You still can find some room, For broken hearted lovers, To crowd their little room.'

"If you're just going to mope about the place you can go home now!" Jorge demanded.

"Well, you're not helping it with the mournful lift music," Harry retorted.

"And how do you know? You've been taking the stairs!" Harry raised an eyebrow and Jorge gestured to his legs. "I can tell by your beautifully toned calf muscles!"

Harry looked down at his trouser covered legs.

"Mrs Finkelstein told me!" Jorge admitted. "I thought I might try some of the gospel numbers next."

"Anything but Heartbreak Hotel, please!"

"Alright then, so why are you moping?"

"I'm not moping, I'm worried." Harry explained.

"Which of your loves is it?"

"Pardon?" Harry asked.

"Alright. Which of your women is it?"

"What do you mean which of them, how many do you think I have?"

"You've got a least three…"

"Three?"

"Of course three, you love your mother, you're in love with Nikki and you love to hate your boss."

Harry opened his mouth, ready to challenge Jorge's theories, but he had no words with which to challenge Jorge's truths.

"Which one is it then? That boss of yours, yanking your chain again? I can't believe you let her. She's not that good looking."

"What are all these?" Harry asked gesturing to a pile of envelopes stacked neatly on a set of drawers and studiously ignoring Jorge's questions.

"Oh, it's Beto's mail." Jorge said dismissively. "Beer?"

"Thanks! This one's from Sullivan and Cromwell, aren't they a law firm? Beto's not in trouble is he?"

"Beto? No."

"Then what are they?"

Harry shuffled through the pile, he didn't recognise the names of all of them, but they all sounded like law firms.

"They're job offers," Jorge said nonchalantly, he gets one every week. They all say the same thing, big money, nice office, he's never interested."

"Job offers?" Harry asked incredulously.

"He's a lawyer; didn't you know?"

"No," Harry replied, shocked that he'd known the man for so long, and obviously in all that time the fact he was a lawyer had never even come up.

"What did you think he was? A personal trainer?"

Harry thought, actually a personal trainer was exactly what Beto looked like. "I just never knew." Harry admitted. "Why does he have so many job offers?"

"Because he's good!" Jorge laughed. "But he won't go and work for them, he works for a little independent firm in mid-town and does pro-bono work for immigration cases and miscarriages of justice that kind of thing."

Harry's brain churned, all this time he had known a lawyer, he'd known an immigration lawyer and he hadn't even realised. "So he could be earning mega-bucks and he's out championing the cause of the poor and the weak?"

"You could put it like that." Jorge said and flicked on the TV.

"But why?"

"What you think being rich is everything there is in life? Beto doesn't need the money, his family has plenty. His mother sent him to America to stay with an aunt of hers years ago. He was only a teenager but his mother was determined to keep him out of the family business after his father was killed. He worked hard and got to law school and now he uses his talents to help others, it was one way he could show he was different from the others."

"Hunh?" Harry asked.

"The others, Beto's family are from Colombia too," Jorge spoke very slowly enunciating the English clearly. "They had a family business, they are very rich." He paused; he could see the confusion on Harry's face. "There are not many ways to get rich in Colombia." Harry stared at Jorge over the top of his beer and raised an eyebrow.

Jorge nodded, his friend had finally understood.

"The only time he did make any money, the IRS investigated him in case he was money laundering for the operation back home but as far as I'm aware, they changed business. He never even opens most of those envelopes. I'm not sure why I'm even keeping them."

"When's he coming back?"

"I don't know, his mother had some complications in hospital, picked up an infection, she's still very weak. He wants to be there."

Harry looked at the stack of envelopes on the side and wondered if Nikki had a similar stack but all addressed to him. She'd be gone in a couple of days.

"What's with long face?" Jorge said, aware of the change in Harry.

"It's Nikki," Harry admitted.

"Did you ever decide what you were going to do?"

"I did."

"And…"

"She's going out to Afghanistan to do a job."

"She's going where?" Jorge asked, suddenly interested in the conversation. "Our Nikki? Is going to Afghanistan!"

Harry nodded.

"What on earth for?"

"Her boss, my old boss, is doing someone a favour; she's going out to help him."

"That's some favour."

"Tell me about it."

"So you're worried she won't come back."

"Of course I'm worried she won't come back, she's got a knack for finding trouble in her own backyard and she's going to Afghanistan, she'll be lucky to avoid it. I did decide what I was going to do and now I've finally made the decision she goes flying off on some hair brained mission that she may never come back from!"

"You'll just have to trust her." Jorge said and then added "Spanish with English subtitles or English with Spanish subtitles?"

"What is it?" Harry asked. He'd really got out of the habit of watching TV.

"X files box set, I started when Beto left, it's about the only show we don't agree on. I'm over half way through series 7."

"Which way do you usually play them?" Harry said glad in an odd way to hear that his best friends still had their own disagreements within what seemed to be the most happy and functional relationship Harry had ever witnessed.

"English with Spanish subtitles. Mulder doesn't sound so hot in Spanish."

"That I find hard to believe," Harry said and smiled for the first time since he'd spoken to Leo. "Nikki used to like that show."

"She has impeccable taste," Jorge stated. "Now, drink your beer, watch TV. Have a normal life. She's going to be fine." He said as he passed Harry a second beer and pressed play.

A woman was speaking, Harry assumed it was Scully:

"Time passes in moments... moments which, rushing past, define the path of a life, just as surely as they lead towards its end. How rarely do we stop to examine that path, to see the reasons why all things happen, to consider whether the path we take in life is our own making, or simply one into which we drift with eyes closed. But what if we could stop, pause to take stock of each precious moment before it passes? Might we then see the endless forks in the road that have shaped a life? And, seeing those choices, choose another path?"

Another path thought Harry.

The beer probably helped but he didn't hate the show, he quite enjoyed it actually all until the last moment when his thoughts were caught back to his own life and not the preposterous fake TV life he had just been immersed in.

"What if there was only one choice and all the other ones were wrong? And there were signs along the way to pay attention to," Scully had asked.
"Mmm. And all the... choices would then lead to this very moment. One wrong turn, and... we wouldn't be sitting here together." Mulder replied.

Harry looked across at the sofa where his friend was avidly drinking up every last second of the episode, every move as Mulder carefully pulled a blanket over his sleeping friend and stroked her cheek.

One wrong turn? One!

'Please God, keep her safe,' he prayed.

"You up for another?" Jorge asked. "The next one is all about the evil of big corporations."

"I think I'll pass." Harry said. "Thanks for putting up with me tonight."

"Always a pleasure," Jorge said. "Any time my English friend."

"Thanks."


All Things Series 7 Ep17 X files; 20 century Fox

Gotta love some Mulder and Scully and as I recall this ep was written by Gillian Anderson.

Heartbreak Hotel: Axton (Elvis)