11th/12 October
Room 210, The Traveller's Rest
Lewis turned up the volume on the TV. The commentary was never that critical during a Monster Truck Destruction Derby, but a little more masked the sounds from next door and made him feel less of a pervert. They really should make hotel walls thicker or people show a little consideration for their neighbours.
He could understand Bob and Caro wanting to give each other "something to remember" for the next couple of weeks when the road trip would, or should, be over. Just wished they were being quicker and quieter about it.
It wasn't the sex as much as the other sounds, which were so distracting. The laughing and giggling, as much from Bob as her, which were so hard for Lewis to work out. He began to wonder if they had Chris Rock hidden in the closet. To leap out and tell them a few jokes between laps of the bed?
Though it could work to his advantage in the morning. With his buddy sleep deprived and mellow, Lewis might get away with turning right and west out of the parking lot. Have Bob in Vegas before he knew it. Forget Winslow and Petrified Forests and everything to the east and south Goren reckoned they "must see".
In North Carolina, there was one truck left "standing" at the end, while in Room 209 they were going into overtime. Or maybe overdrive?
"Chequered flag!" muttered Lewis. "At last!"
Eames' Apartment, Brooklyn
It came as no surprise to her when she finally got through the main door of her building to find a set of keys in the lobby mailbox. Eames had tried to contact Dave Seaborn for the best part of Sunday and when she called his work partner just in case there was some problem, he had been off hand with her and vague about where Dave might be. She dumped her bags and the kit CSU gave her, in the hall.
Right away she could see a clear space on the bathroom shelf he had used and there was a box with things of hers from his place in Queens on the kitchen table. Eames had already noticed that her set of keys for Dave's apartment she left on the hooks by the door was gone.
She pulled some water from the icebox and took several large swallows between reading the note he left behind. More hurt than angry. Not about the fact he'd been trying to call her most of Saturday evening through to Sunday morning. While she was dancing with, flirting with and making out with another man. The note said he was giving her "the benefit of the doubt" what she was doing out until at least 4 am Arizona time. It was the fact she never called him before that. To tell him what happened at The Desert Inn Motel and that they were being moved.
He had "the pleasure" of discovering that from some cop who answered that number and told him they had all been relocated four hours earlier after a man got shot. And that, to Dave, told him all he really needed to know about where he stood in her life. If he was wrong he was very sorry, but he wished her well.
Eames was dumped. She expected it. She deserved it. It saved her finding reason to end it with Dave. Without telling him the real reason why. As she made her way to her bedroom with the water bottle she stopped by the bookcase just inside the living room door. Took one from it and continued on her way. Like she would really need something dull to send her to sleep as exhausted and drained as she was by then?
Room 209, The Traveller's Rest
"Nhng"
"Uh?"
Caro shifted against him and they both woke up or woke each other up, trying to unconsciously move from an uncomfortable position. One their bodies had either got into or never got out of once they were done with each other. Because the bed was still something of a wreck around them.
There was a certain amount of sleepy but automatic pilot sorting out and getting comfortable. Goren switched out the lights and snuggled up.
"I had an idea earlier" he yawned warming his front on her back and tucking the covers round his own.
"I noticed" she said as she cuddled the arm he had round her. "Very good one too. And in the execution"
"Not that Caro. About when Lewis and I are done in LA"
"Mexico?"
"No. Least not with him. He really does have to get back to New York" he wriggled a little more until everything felt perfect. "I was thinking about your birthday end of the month"
"Yeah and I was kind of hoping you'd be there Rob"
He smiled. Caro rarely put expectations on him and there were times he almost wished she did it more. As much as he'd wished previous women in his life had done it less. Any contradiction or "fault" in that probably did rest with him, as much as any of them.
"Me too. I just wondered. You never got much vacation time this year. Could you take some then?"
"To help you sell that camper or stand in lines at Disneyland? Thanks but no thanks"
"It does sort of involve the VW" he felt her body tense and then relax against his as he went on.
"I was thinking about us making a little trip in it. From LA to San Francisco? Coastal Highway is supposed to be beautiful. The Getty Villa? Hearst Castle? Stop at Monterey? Read our Steinbeck in Cannery Row? Get locked up in Alcatraz together?"
"Finishing off no doubt with either The 49ers or The Raiders?" she asked sceptically.
"Could be" Goren admitted with a little smile she couldn't see.
"Hmm"
That was not necessarily a bad sign. She liked football. A lot of sports in fact. And not just the indoor kind for two people.
"For your birthday?" Goren went on nuzzling her shoulder. "I wondered about us cutting over to Yosemite? See if it's as beautiful as the Ansell Adams pictures we both like? Would be if you are there with me baby"
"Careful Rob. Corn is heavy in cans and I can hear rattling"
He could hear the smile in her voice as she said it.
"You are not planning on us climbing El Capitan are you?"
"You have to be joking Caro" he snorted. "Last vertical thing I climbed was the ladder to a top bunk I lost the toss for"
"Where was that?"
"A wagon lit from Berlin through to Paris. Luckily no one was murdered on the train that night"
"They wouldn't be. The Orient Express never went to Berlin. Okay. So you got me a little interested" she yawned.
"Good" he smiled closing his eyes.
Thinking of the fall meadows in Yosemite, of waterfalls and how the pull out bed in the camper would be really "cosy" with Caro in a way it never was with Lewis.
Eames' Apartment, Brooklyn
As she slept, discarded beside Eames on the bed was a book called "The Psychology Of Crime and Criminals". It was one of Goren's favourite texts and one he got her quite soon after they were first partnered with each other. For her birthday.
At the time she had still to be totally convinced it was going to work. This Robert Goren was quite unlike any cop she ever worked with. You heard things from the bizarre and slightly worrying about him, to the sort left you open mouthed with admiration. And Eames would not deny words like "crazy" and "genius" could still go through her mind in the space of the same ten seconds.
When she unwrapped the rather unexpected birthday present Eames found on her desk that morning, she had tried to show suitable pleasure and gratitude. Between wondering what kind of idiot or social misfit would think that a suitable gift at all. Her own fault for expressing polite interest in his interests she supposed.
It was only later Eames realised it was as much as joke on her. When Bobby was treating her to a great lunch uptown and with the menu, the waiter bought a beautiful bouquet of flowers and a gift-wrapped bottle of her favourite perfume. She never did find out how Goren found out what she liked to wear for special occasions and it was the first time she saw that side to him.
Underneath the smarts and inside that large frame, was a very sweet and thoughtful guy and, she was realising, a rather vulnerable one in some ways. It was over that lunch she had that "five second" thought she admitted to that creep Belray. To wonder, as Bobby explained some esoteric fact about Chinese food, what he would be like as a lover. Before dismissing it for all sorts of reasons.
On top of Goren's folder, the book was open at the chapter about the nature and behaviour of a narcissist.
To be continued…