Richard Edgar Castle, 2003 (part one of two)

"In the bigger scheme of things the universe is not asking us to do something, the universe is asking us to be something."

-Lucille Clifton

Derrick Storm had nothing on a nine year old with a ballet program to attend.

When Richard Castle had thrown up his hands in defeat, Alexis, the nine year old in question, had thrown herself into problem-solving. She'd called everyone they knew, starting first with the dance moms who often picked her up from or dropped her off for ballet, and then moving on to the other responsible adults in her life.

Which, Rick was beginning to see, were few and far between.

He was grateful Meredith wasn't in town yet and was thus off the list, because she wasn't, and would never be, responsible.

(His shame was growing in leaps in bounds, not just because he'd knelt down to Alexis's level and proceeded to disappoint her, but also because she'd not taken no for answer—showing more adult tenacity and responsibility than him. Which he was also beginning to see was a pattern.)

There was one other red-headed woman in their lives who couldn't be called responsible on her best day, and it was she to whom he was now forced to hand over his precocious and precious nine year-old daughter.

And apparently, to Mother's newest beau.

"Mother," he sighed. She had met them at the Broome Street Soho Dance where they had to part ways—Castle towards the independent bookstore in Harlem, and his daughter to the temporary stage in Central Park where seven of the Manhattan dance studios were performing The Nutcracker.

"Darling boy, don't sigh so, you'll create wrinkles."

He did not point out that was not how wrinkles were made; she was how wrinkles were made. And grey hairs. He didn't have any of those yet, but he could feel them coming on.

Mother bent down to cup Alexis's face and kissed the girl's cheeks. "You've grown into quite the ballerina. Show me first position."

Alexis showed off her ballet moves, her chin going up, her shoulders back, as deeply desperate for a mother's love as any young girl had ever been. And at least his mother took that role seriously, applauding softly and calling brava for a simple first position.

Castle was flustered when the boyfriend grabbed Castle's free hand and began to pump it up and down in both of his. "It's so good to finally meet you, Ricky—"

"Richard," he clipped, scowling.

"Richard, yes, yes, sometimes she calls you—"

"It's Richard Castle, this is my daughter Alexis. And you are?" He was straining politeness but the last beau had sent her to her bed for a month, lamenting the vanishing days of her youth. He'd run over to her place four times with tonic water and a hangover cure-all, and he'd been stuck there playing the piano to her mournful show tunes. Only his need to pick up his daughter from school had saved him.

"It's Beau, Beaumont Travis the Third. She hasn't said anything about me?" The faint look of hurt coloring the fiftyish something cheeks nearly undid him, but Castle simply grimaced.

"She has, she has, I just hadn't realized Beau was your name, not a designation."

The faint hurt cleared from the man's face with a startled laugh. "Yes! Precisely."

Castle extricated his hand from the two-hand pump and turned to Alexis, gripping her by the shoulders. "You're to stay with the dance team at all times, do you hear me?"

"Dad," she complained, the bun of her hair immaculate. "I'm far more responsible than you are. I got this."

Technically, she needed an adult only for the sake of transit from the practice session in the studio on Broome to the actual performance on stage in Central Park, and they both knew that. But she needed an adult because she needed her person, the one who would be looking out for her, attuned to her needs, the one who would clap no matter what the other girls said. That role she couldn't do without.

He wasn't sure she knew that. "Mother," he warned, turning fiercely on his mother. "No stops along the way. No diversions. No quick trips."

"Darling, what do make me for?" She edged him out and addressed her granddaughter directly. "I'm a professional actor of theatre and stage, film and television. I know how to arrive on time."

"Not fashionably late, Grams."

While his mother huffed and tried to lay that aside, Richard bent to one knee and wrapped his arms around Alexis. "One last book signing, pumpkin. And then it's Christmas holidays, you and me."

"You're going to make it tonight, right?" she whispered back. She looked at him like she didn't want to have to need him so much.

Killed him. "Nothing could stop me."

Last Christmas, his gift to himself was a new publisher. When he'd signed the two-book deal with Black Pawn in early January as a fulfillment of that wish—everything must change, his mother had said—he'd felt quite savvy for arranging the last ten stops on his book tour to occur in New York City. What he hadn't counted on was the number of commitments and responsibilities he faced when he was home but 'working.'

Or that those last ten stops would be clustered near and around the hottest retail season of all, the Thanksgiving to Christmas corridor.

He hated himself for not having read the fine print.

Which was how he'd gotten stuck doing not only a book-signing but also a reading at Dream of Foxes Books in Harlem. He hadn't even known he had a readership in Harlem; demographically, Derrick Storm didn't read as a multicultural ladies man.

That should change, shouldn't it? He was a writer living in one of the most culturally diverse cities in America. Why were all of his heroes white?

A reflection of himself, obviously. Which said too much about his own issues.

Richard winced and rapped on the employee entrance at the back, where he'd been directed to show his face an hour before the event. He would have that time to sign as many copies of his books as the store had on hand (how many could that possibly be?) and then a quick break before he read a chapter to the crowd, signed a few, and then got out of there.

The back door opened with a bang—Richard had to jump back—and a woman with such open and welcoming features he took an involuntary step forward held out both hands to him. Clasped his. "You're Richard Castle."

"I am, yes ma'am." He was drawn into the back of the Foxes store, immediately surrounded by the scent of used paperbacks and cinnamon sugar cookies, a particularly restful combination that set him at ease. "Good to meet you."

"I'm Lucille," she said, waving him inside. She was wearing an oversized knit sweater in jade green, and her hair was cropped short and left natural in a poof of grey on her head. She was wearing a necklace that was also oversized, chunky, and she spun one of the red plastic knots on it as she led him through the maze.

He was comforted by the shelves of worn books, even in the employees' area. "Did my publisher send you the packet?"

"Oh, yeah." She sounded disappointed.

"Is there some kind of problem with the schedule?" Please no. He had to be at his daughter's ballet performance. She was a dancing toy at the very beginning, and she only came on again for the finale.

"Too stuffy. You don't plan on being so…" She looked him up and down and sighed, waved it off as if it was better off left unsaid. "Come on. I got coffee and a place to sit, and that black marker you need."

Had she been about to say so white? Or formal. Yes, he really did think she'd been thinking he was too white, just as he himself was. And maybe he should reconsider his approach here. Was there a scene in the latest Derrick Storm that could be more… appealing to the Dream of Foxes crowd?

When he was confronted with a wide oak table groaning with books, piles and piles of his books, he dropped to the overstuffed chair in abject horror. Forget taking a little time to find a more appropriate reading, there were easily a hundred books here. "This is… a lot of stock to have on hand."

Lucille winked at him, as if he'd said something cute. "How do you take your coffee, honey?"

Richard stared at her, then the pile of books he had to sign, then gave up. Go with the flow of the universe, as his therapist had said. "Right. Yes. Two creams, a packet of sugar, if you have it."

"I have something better," Lucille said.

"Of course you do," he sighed. And started with the first stack.

There were many things about his last book signing of the year that Richard Castle would never forget, though later he would not believe the one he had forgotten, an incident that was nothing at all to him and everything to someone else.

He was quite self-absorbed for a man raising a nine year old.

First, the coffee was phenomenal. Lucille had returned with a mug sporting a red vixen of a fox in one hand, and a book of poetry in the other, from which she read out loud to him while he signed his name in each of her store copies. The coffee was divine, and he considered her a messenger of the gods for it, and as such, the poetry tended to stick to him in odd and peculiar ways. In one book he wrote, safe through the generous fields and then signed his name, and he could not fathom why, but the line had clung. In another, sipping slowly from a coffee that she had refilled for him, he wrote, keep the door unlocked until something human comes.

He wasn't sure if it was the coffee or the woman or the poetry, but the hour before his reading seemed to him to pass in a hypnotic state, his hand giving each signature a flourish he hadn't felt before, and his spine straightening with each stack he cleared.

In the past, these book signings had left him crippled in hand and hunched in body, so bent that he often had to lie down on the wood floor of his loft and stare through the skylights to not only unknot himself, but to remind him of why he did it in the first place. Or rather, continued to do it.

Not that day.

When he went out onto the sales floor to do the reading, two things struck him: one, the audience held not one white face, and two, there was a stage which he was expected to perform on.

To say his readings changed from that moment forward would be akin to saying that the spirit of Christmas entered his body and transformed his very being. Melodramatic, yes, but not wrong. It was a made-for-tv difference. Just the presentation of his work, his creation, upon a stage put his role here into perspective. It literally changed his perspective.

This was not a required checkmark in the boxes of his contract, this was a chance to transform the world.

He read an action scene, as he always did, because Derrick Storm was all action, very little reflection, but on that stage, with that coffee lighting him up (Lucille had said, with a knowing twinkle in her eye, vanilla syrup), Richard Castle embodied the creation.

He performed.

He didn't pretend to be driving a car as it was flipped by his pursuers; he didn't make the nosies of the clip emptying into metal. No. He used his voice and his body to take on the life of the scene and transmit it to the people in the audience.

(His mother would have taken all the credit, if she had seen.)

They applauded. They stood and applauded, Lucille included, and when he lifted his sweat-damp face from the page, most of which was actually memorized by now, he saw they'd drawn more than the advertised crowd: people had come in from other parts of the store to watch and listen, and he had folks in aisles and clumped behind chairs and looking down from the second floor, all rapt and appreciative.

Something universal happened in that bookstore, and he was stupid enough to believe it was him. For a long time, Richard Castle thought it was his words, and not the story itself, (straining to be heard in poetry, in coffee, in an old woman's acceptance, in Christmas) which had resonated with those faces.

He had taken on the role of the messenger and forgotten it was, in fact, the message that had and would always push people to their feet.

He would learn.

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