A Caroline in the City/Northern Exposure Crossover
by Ann Fox and Sarah Stella
1998
Winner of 1998 CitC fanfic mailing list contest: "Best Crossover fanfic"
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Part Three
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Richard trudged through Caroline's door fifteen minutes later than usual. She was standing in front of her sink as he walked in, zealously attacking something on the counter. Caroline looked up as she heard him enter, waved, then quickly turned her attention back to the counter. He walked over to get himself a mug of coffee, but he soon realized there was nothing in the coffee maker.
"Mr. Coffee is looking a little empty this morning," he commented dryly.
"Richard, have you ever seen so many ants in one place before?" she asked, indicating the colony of tiny insects swarming across her counter top.
Richard leaned over her shoulder and shook his head. "Bah, this is nothing. You should have seen my old apartment. If I ever had a day when my place wasn't being taken over by one type of insect or another, then I knew something was seriously wrong."
Caroline ignored the comment and continued to squish the ants with a wad of Kleenex. "I hate to kill them all like this, but this apartment belongs to me, not them."
"Why don't you just spray some Raid on them?" asked Richard as he helped himself to a Sprite from her fridge, his comment eliciting no response from Caroline. "Don't you have any caffeinated beverages in the house?" he inquired as he read the label.
"Annie didn't make any coffee this morning," she muttered absently. "She made me 'The Cure' instead."
"Ah, too many margaritas last night?" commented Richard.
Caroline sighed. "Not exactly. For her, maybe, but...well, I'm not sure."
"Is everything okay?" asked Richard with concern as he sat down at the partners desk.
Caroline stopped squishing ants for a moment and looked up. "I think so. But I just had the weirdest dream last night and then I woke up on the floor in the bathroom."
Richard sat stock-still in his seat as his face went ghost-white. "What sort of dream?" he asked cautiously.
Caroline bit her lip as she decided the best way to describe it to him. She didn't notice the way it was already affecting Richard. "Well, I was in bed last night when I heard this rustling from the bathroom," she began.
Richard stayed perfectly silent while Caroline related her 'Tale of the Tiny Woman' as she secretly had begun to call it. If she'd been more alert, she would have noticed the conspicuous absence of any snide comment from that quarter, but truthfully she was still feeling a little muddled, even with the aid of Annie's surefire "Cure". When she had finished he sat and stared at her for a long, uncomfortable moment until realization of his strange behavior finally dawned on her.
"What?"
Richard put his head in his hands and pulled his fingers through his thick blonde hair until it stood out in tufts. He looked at Caroline with an inscrutable look. She firmly quashed the urge to smooth down his hair knowing it'd only irritate him.
"That has got to be, without a doubt, the strangest thing I've heard yet this week."
Caroline shot him a tight lipped smile, not knowing whether to feel insulted or strangely flattered. "It's only Monday, give me time." Silence fell between the pair and it was Caroline who finally broke it, broaching the subject with halting awkwardness.
"There's something else though." She squinted at him carefully. She was right.
Now, if he'd only admit it.
"There's something else," Richard repeated, his inscrutable look was back in force. "Last night, Caroline...you know Julia and I just moved into our new place. Anyhow, the view from the picture windows is just so perfect that I didn't want to waste any time, so I started painting..." At this point Caroline nodded knowingly, understanding exactly what excited fever must have gripped Richard. "It was getting very late but we actually have more than one room in this apartment so I wasn't disturbing anyone," he looked slightly guilty nonetheless, "I was working with acrylics and I went into the kitchen to wash a brush and when I came back..." Richard took a deep breath. Caroline was definitely flattered now; she knew the effort any even vaguely personal admission required of Richard. "There was this, this...man I guess, sitting on the divan staring at me."
"A man?" Caroline asked, alarmed. "How did he get in? He didn't rob you, did he?"
"Not unless he was there to rifle through Julia's pantyhose drawer," Richard replied with a wry twist of his mouth. "Caroline, he was about four feet tall and he did the damn best Peter Pan impression I've ever seen."
"He flew?" Caroline's voice was barely above a whisper.
"No he didn't fly. He was dressed completely in some sort of Robin Hood meets the Boy-who-Never-Grew-Up ensemble. Even his face was green."
"Oh," Caroline said, more softly than before, "is that all...I mean, did he say anything to you?"
"Like I said, he was staring at me and then he said, 'Richie'. His voice was kind of scratchy but I could swear he had a Brooklyn accent."
"Then what?" Caroline asked breathlessly.
Richard looked as supremely embarrassed as she'd ever seen him. "Then I woke up and it was this morning and I had a big, nasty lump on the back of my head where I'd hit it on the coffee table when I passed out."
Caroline tried vainly to suppress a smile. "You fainted."
"Looks that way," he answered glumly. "But you don't have to sound so pleased about it, if I remember correctly..."
"And you always do," Caroline cut in.
He looked sharply at her, or as sharply as he could ever look at her. "If I remember correctly," he repeated with emphasis, "you didn't do so hot yourself with the fainting bit."
"True." Caroline shrugged. "So we're both going crazy. I'm imagining six-inch high women who're liberal with the fairy dust and you're imagining sarcastic midgets from Brooklyn." She laughed with just a touch of hysterical abandon then clapped her hands together and slid into her seat. "We're a matched set, Richard. I think the best thing is just to forget about it and assume that we're both a little overworked."
"And underpaid," Richard added under his breath but he followed Caroline's example and was soon engrossed by the panels surrounding him.
And yet, in the back of both their minds they knew that they couldn't dismiss their experiences out of hand. For her own part, Caroline now understood Richard's inscrutable look perfectly. It had been one part his usual skepticism and another part hope, hope that she would be able to prove to him that he wasn't crazy.
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Alex was rudely dumped sideways into her seat by the seasick rocking of the train as it pulled into Penn Station. Craning her head back as far as it would go she was met only by the disappointing grey cement pillars that lined the arrival platform here, as in any other underground station in America...or Canada. The only interesting thing about the scenery was that it was all upside down.
Across from her, Gwen wasn't even looking out the window, she was busy trying to get her eyeliner to go on straight as the car clacked from side to side.
"You look fine," Alex assured her, swiveling her head to face her cousin followed by her body.
"I feel awful," Gwen replied, giving up on the eyeliner and opting for lip gloss instead. "We've been on this train forever and I need a real shower like nobody's business." She smacked her lips together to smooth the gloss down and offered the pot in Alex's direction. "Want some? It's honey-flavored." Alex launched herself into the air, pushing out of her seat and landing with a loud 'thump' beside Gwen. She stuck her finger into the gloss and applied some to her own lips.
"Mmmm," she said approvingly before adding innocently, "but I wouldn't think you'd mind being on the train for so many days." She elbowed Gwen teasingly in the ribs and was rewarded with a gentle shove. Ed had become their constant shadow and traveling companion as the days had passed. They formed a pretty little close-knit group.
"If I wanted to impress him with my glamour and poise I've failed miserably. Right now I'd cheerfully sell both you and Ed into white slavery for a long, slow shower and a soft bed in a quiet room. And besides," Gwen added, her face growing grave and serious, "he's too old for me, dontcha think?" She whipped out a compact and powdered her nose.
"Who's too old for whom?" asked the man in question, sliding into a seat opposite the two girls.
"Never mind," Gwen said hastily before Alex had a chance to open her mouth. Ed was too much of a gentleman to pursue the line of questioning any further than that. She snapped her compact closed and stood, trying to will away the blush that had spread across her fair complexion. Ed jumped to his feet and helped the two girls with their bags.
"It's pretty hot in here," he told them casually which made Alex and Gwen suspect that he knew more about what they'd been talking about than he let on.
The statement hung, unanswered, in the air, but the three left it (and any awkwardness that might have come with it), behind them when they made their way off the train and into the big city.
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"Richard, have you seen Annie?" Caroline asked when she returned from picking up lunch. She clutched two white paper sacks which she set down on the kitchen counter with a small flourish.
"No and I hope never to again, why?"
"No particular reason, I passed her apartment on my way here and her phone was ringing and ringing and ringing and I thought it might be an important call or something."
"Caroline, this is a city of millions and millions of telemarketers. I'm sure it wasn't important."
"You're probably right. But whoever it was sure was persistent."
"Say, what took you so long with lunch? If you hadn't come back when you did I was thinking of a spot of cannibalization." He looked meaningfully at Salty who, for her part, was completely oblivious to his designs.
Caroline frowned her practiced, I-know-you-hate-my-cat-but-I-still-secretly-love-you frown. "I wanted to try that new place, Via Cucina. Do you want root beer or iced tea?" She plucked two bottles out of one bag and two paper covered bundles out of the other and unwrapped them to reveal plump and delicious-looking sandwiches. Richard grabbed the iced tea and one of the sandwiches. "Don't tell Remo," she added guiltily.
"Your secret's safe with me," Richard assured her around bites.
In Annie's apartment, the phone was ringing again.
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"Where the hell is she?" Gwen was supremely frustrated. Around her, Penn Station coursed with a confusing kaleidoscope whirl of people, colors and smells. Seattle hadn't really prepared her for the electric pace that seemed prevalent among New Yorkers. Suddenly, Alex and Ed were at her side. Funny--she hadn't remembered calling them or catching their eyes or anything. Gwen shrugged it off and rubbed absent-mindedly at her left arm where the perfectly straight burn scars were still visible, even after ten years.
"What's wrong?" Alex asked, her brow furling in concern. She pushed a few stray hairs out of her eyes.
"I've tried calling Annie five separate times. Each time the phone just rings and rings and no one picks up. I'm running out of quarters and dimes and patience."
"I don't understand. She knew we were coming in today. I called her before I left Vancouver."
"Well," Gwen dug into her purse for a few moments before emerging with a glossy piece of paper, accordion-folded into a neat rectangle, "how well do you read a map?"
They spread the map out across several seats in one of the waiting areas, drawing sour looks from a few passengers. Under their fingers, the whole New York subway system spread out like an enormous, mutant-colored spider. Ed, Alex, and Gwen each stared at the map solemnly for a minute.
"We're here," Alex said, jabbing her finger into the belly of the spider, realizing that the other two had mirrored her words and her movement at the same instant. Three fingers poked at the map...in three separate locations.
"Here, let me," Gwen offered, trying to be as kind as possible. She gently swept Alex's and Ed's fingers from the map. "Living in Seattle should have been good for something. I can read a map like nobody's business."
Ed and Alex withdrew slightly while Gwen poured over the map as if the last prophecy of Nostradamus were printed there, right between Central Park and SoHo. It was a few tense moments before she cried, "Eureka!" took off towards the subway.
Alex grabbed Gwen's arm before she could get anywhere. "Aren't you forgetting something?"
"What?...The bags!" Gwen slapped her forehead. "I'd forget my head if it weren't screwed on so darn tight."
"Or if I didn't remind you to bring it with you," Alex added wryly.
"Too true," Gwen said, giving her cousin's shoulder a friendly squeeze. She seemed to remember something. The girls stopped and turned towards Ed who'd been dogging their footsteps all the time.
"Were you planning on coming with us?" Alex asked him.
"If you don't mind," he said, lowering his eyes and shuffling his feet nervously. "Since we're going to the same place an' all."
"We don't mind at all," Alex said brightly and Gwen nodded. "The more the merrier, after all."
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Continued in Part Four
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Please visit my Caroline in the City webpage: Sincere Amore