Chapter 36 - "Hi, I'm A Cop and No, I Don't Care To Hear About What Happened To You At The '68 Chicago Convention"

After tonights show was finished, Lisa and Murphy walked back into Murphy's Townhouse and dropped themselves onto Murphy's orange couch. They both let out a huge sigh and just looked at each other.

"What are you going to do tonight?" Murphy asked Lisa.

"Me? I'm going to bed in the next five minutes." Lisa answered, while taking her iPhone out of her purse and plugging it into the shared charger behind Murphy's couch. She heard it ding, assuring a full charge was on the way.

"Oh," Murphy said with eyes that watched her do all of this.

"You sound disappointed. Did you want to do something tonight?" Lisa asked, not really wanting to hear the answer.

"Disappointed? Why would I be disappointed? You need your rest." Murphy said, possibly giving some explanation to her under excited answer. "I'm always kind of jazzed after a show. Aren't you?"

"It's been a long week. Plus, Avery and I will be Skyping tonight."

"Oh, that's nice." Murphy retorted, her mouth now cocked to the side.

Lisa's left eyebrow went skyward as her eyes cornered Murphy's way. "Do you want to talk to your son?" Lisa asked, now fishing for Murphy's true purpose.

"Maybe I'll catch a movie or something." Murphy answered, not really worried about Avery right now.

"By yourself?" Lisa asked.

"Yes. Got a problem with that?" Murphy snapped.

"No…"

Murphy interrupted. "…Just in case you haven't noticed, I'm not one of those people who are scared to do things alone. I'm an only child. I enjoy being by myself."

"As am I, Murphy!" Lisa answered, almost at an unnecessary tone.

"Oh yeah, I forgot." Murphy answered, in an almost apologetic tone. Almost.

"I'm going to make some hot chocolate. Want some?" Lisa said, dragging herself off the couch and onto her feet.

"Do you use milk or that powder stuff?"

"Come on. Who are you talking to? I use D milk and chocolate and real marshmallows, if available. Plus, I add a secret ingredient. Yea or nay?"

"Sure, what the hell. I guess I've got to taste it to find out the secret ingredient, right?"

"If that phone buzzes you yell for me. Okay?" Lisa said before taking off to the kitchen.

"Okay." Murphy said, as her head fell backward and she looked up to her ceiling. Then she remembered this mornings paper was still on the table behind her. She reached above her head and grabbed it, whipping it around, she spread out the Local in front of her face and skimmed the movie times. And other than that new Tom Hanks thing that she could certainly wait to see on DVD, there was nothing at all that sounded appealing. So, a movie was officially out of the question.

Murphy stood and took off her overcoat. She draped it over one of the black chairs in her living room. Then she walked over to the fireplace and pressed the button to turn it on. She palmed her hands, then rubbed them together and finally warmed them above the flames. Well, that killed about two and a half minutes.

Then she heard a ding and walked over to Lisa's phone. She looked on the screen and saw a text message that said, "Hey beautiful. Want to meet up 2 nite?"

"Hey, Lisa. Your phone just dinged." Murphy yelled, without checking the name of the sender.

"Dinged or buzzed?" Lisa yelled back.

"Ding, yes a definite ding." Murphy answered.

"Do you see your son on the screen?" Lisa yelled back again.

"I'm not looking at your screen, Lisa." Murphy retorted, then sighed.

"Here you go." Lisa said as she walked back into the living room with two steaming FYI mugs of hot chocolate, giving one to Murphy and keeping the other for herself.

"That fire feels very nice." Lisa said, making her way over to her phone. She read her text, which was not from Avery, but from Matthew, that she hoped Murphy did not see. Not that she was sleeping with this man, but he just wouldn't take no for an answer and didn't care that she was married.

"Want to play pool? There's a bar with a great pool tables just down the street." Murphy asked.

"I'm finishing this and then I'm going to bed to wait for Avery to call." Lisa said, referring to her hot chocolate.

"Damn it, Lisa!" Murphy exclaimed.

"What?" Lisa answered, now scared of what Murphy would say next.

"Why does everything you make taste so good?"

"You like?" Lisa asked with a broad smile on her face.

"This is so good. If my son wasn't already married to you, I'd marry you, Lisa. I kid you not."

"I'm sure that's how I got your son to marry me, actually. You know, it's true what they say, that a way to a man's heart is through his stomach."

"And now you know the reason why my marriage only lasted five days." Murphy added.

Lisa chuckled. "Tell me about Jake." Lisa took a sip of her steamy chocolate and moved to the floor, where she placed her hands under her chin and her attention squarely on Murphy.

"There's nothing to tell, really. We were married after the Democratic convention in '68. We demonstrated together and we got arrested together. We got married in jail. We were young, impetuous, and just plain stupid." Murphy said while sipping on her treat. "And I learned then and there that you should live with someone before you get married. Back then it was called living in sin; which we should have done because that man, he wanted everything his way. I couldn't hang up my pants because his precious bell bottoms needed space to breathe. At first, I thought it was cute. Boy was I wrong. It was just annoying."

"Five days, huh?" Lisa asked.

"We were the first ones to do that, you know. Don't let anyone kid you, I did it way before Britney Spears and Kim Kardashian. I invented that."

"You actually sound proud?" Lisa asked.

"One five day marriage was all I needed to teach me that I didn't need to be married to anyone at all. And you know Lisa, I still believe that to this day."

"There's never been anyone else for you?" Lisa inquired, half ready to get her head chopped off.

"I didn't say that. There have been a couple, maybe even a few. But the only other man I almost married was Peter Hunt."

"The reporter?" Lisa asked, to clarify.

"The same." Murphy answered now really listening to her taste buds, trying to decipher the secret ingredient. "We were engaged when Avery was very young. Peter was very exciting. Very. And a lot younger, which was also exciting."

Lisa couldn't help to think that she had made some kind of truth serum. She made a mental note to try to remember its exact ingredients. "Why don't I remember any of this?"

"For one, if Avery was young, so were you and we also kept it under wraps. I swore I wouldn't mess that one up and that's just what I did. And Dan Quayle thought he had me all figured out, which proves that he just needs to stop thinking…kind of like when he was Vice President." Murphy chuckled to herself. "I can't help myself."

"I've got it!" Lisa piped up.

"You've got what?" Murphy answered.

"What we can do until Avery calls. I know what that thing is." Lisa got up and went for Murphy's bookshelf where she retrieved the Redskins baseball cap from Murphy's self made book stopper head. She flipped it upside down, dropped it to the floor and then went behind the couch and retrieved two pens and two pads of paper. "We can play, Getting To Know You."

"What the hell is that?"

"It's kind of like Truth Or Dare, minus the dare." Lisa explained. "We fill up this hat with topics like, first crush and favorite song, and then each of us pick a topic from the hat and then we both answer it." Lisa explained.

"Well, as long as I don't have to spend seven minutes in a closet with some pre-pubescent boy getting our braces permanently attached, I'll do it."

"Speaking from experience?" Lisa asked, smiling on the inside.

"Almost. His braces got caught on my favorite Angora Sweater. It was fun. Like having a conjoined twin is fun."

"Five minutes. Starting now. Write topics. Go." And one by one, they wrote out their topics, tore off little strips of white paper, folded them and placed them inside the cap. After the time ran out, Lisa and Murphy stopped. "Okay, you go first."

Murphy put her hand at the bottom of the cap and twisted the little pieces of paper around until just one was left. She grabbed it and unfolded it, reading it aloud. "First crush. Really Lisa?"

"Yes, and since it was mine, I get to go first." Lisa thought for a moment. "Leonardo DiCaprio, of course." Lisa answered, after going back what seemed to be a long time in her mind.

"I should have guessed that. Mine was Fabian. I loved that man before I even knew what love was."

"Isn't he some old singer?" Lisa asked, not really sure who he was.

"Don't you mean, total dreamboat? Because that's what I'm pretending I heard you say." Murphy asked, to clarify.

Lisa stuck her hand in the hat now, as it was her turn. She came out with a sheet of paper and unfolded it, immediately turning the sheet of paper Murphy's way. "Decipher this chicken scratch, will you?"

Murphy chuckled. "Place where you lost your virginity."

"Um, no, Murphy. No way." Lisa answered.

"College dorm room at Penn. Your turn." Murphy said with a smile planted on her face.

"You know, played with the right crowd, this game is perfectly clean." Lisa answered, face skewed. "Why you have to louse it up, I will never understand."

"What can I say? It gives me a little joy in my elderly years." Murphy's face still held a smile. "I don't remember you placing any rules on this game, Lisa. That's not my fault."

Lisa wiped her hand over her face and took another sip of her now cooled sugar chocolate. "Are you sure you want to hear this? Be very sure, Murphy. Because once it leaves my lips there's no unhearing this."

Murphy shook her head in the affirmative.

Lisa closed her eyes tightly and just blurted it out. "Your den."

Murphy's face went to disgust.

"Turn around is fair play, Murphy. Should have kept it clean."

Murphy started to dig in the hat and began taking out sheets of paper.

"Put them back!" Lisa demanded with a swift shift of her finger. And Murphy knew this was her penitence, her three Hail Mary's and an Our Father. "Now pick!"

Murphy put her hand in the bottom and felt for the slimmest strips because that's how Lisa made her strips of paper. She grabbed one and read it. "Personal Hero or Heroine."

"That's mine." Lisa answered. "I have five: One, Mary Richards. Two, Rhoda Morgenstern. Three, Sally Rogers. Four, Murphy Brown. Five, Mary Beth Lacey."

"Wasn't Mary Beth Lacey caught up in that prostitution ring in New York?" Murphy asked. "I think they made a TV movie about her."

"You're thinking of Sidney Biddle Barrows. Mary Beth Lacey was Tyne Daly's character on Cagney and Lacey. She was the one who was pregnant forever, had brown hair, a husband and kids."

Murphy shook her head indicating that she remembered.

"Avery is my Harvey. I found the DVDs in some bargain bin at a bodega in New York. I used to watch that show all the time. I even started smoking while watching the first season because Mary Beth was a chain smoker during that season. Little known fact, I wanted to be a detective years before I ever wanted to be a journalist."

"That's interesting." Murphy said in an uninterested way. "I was always a Chris Cagney type of gal myself."

"You must be kidding. Then again, Christine's also pushy, opinionated, intimidating and blonde. No similarities there." Lisa smiled. "A piece of TV trivia for you; there were actually three Christine Cagney's: Loretta Swit, Meg Foster and Sharon Gless. But everyone only remembers Sharon Gless."

"You certainly know a lot about that show." Murphy said still sipping on her treat.

"It kind of saved my life in a way. I found friends in Mary Beth and Christine. No matter how terrible my day had been I knew I could come home and there they would be. There just aren't any good roll models for women on TV anymore. And yes, Hot Lips was the original Christine Cagney. I'll bet you didn't know that."

"You're right, I didn't. Well it's official, I now know everything." Murphy smiled at Lisa. "For some reason I thought there would be bells. Aren't you glad you were here to witness?"

Just then Lisa's phone buzzed and Lisa got up and retrieved it from the charger. It was Avery. She swiped her finger across the screen, put in her code and answered the Skype call. She held the phone away from her face and said, "Hey babe. How are you?"

"Good, sweetie." Avery's voice came through the phone. Murphy smiled as she watched Lisa.

"Say hi to your mother, Avery." Lisa flipped the phone around so she could see him and he could see her.

"Hi Mom!"

"Avery, we miss you."

"Lisa, you aren't letting her teach you how to play poker, are you? Just know Mom stacks the deck and has marked the cards. She calls it a Brown family secret."

"For your information, Avery, we were just talking, getting to know one another." Murphy answered. "I was going to teach her the Brown family secret at a later date."

"Well, I'm going to take this upstairs, if you don't mind, Murphy. Good night."

"Good night, son."

"It's daytime here, mom."

"Well then, I love you." And with that, Lisa turned the phone back to face her and proceeded to walk upstairs and talk to Avery at the same time. The last statement she heard was Avery's asking, "How's the little one?"

Murphy felt a little twinge of sadness as she watched Lisa walk away from her. She didn't want to admit that she was actually enjoying getting to know Lisa.