Like Grissom, I too, enjoy Shakespeare. I want to share this special quote
with you.
"To review or not review. That is the question."
Disclaimer: I don't own Sara and the rest but I do own the two stacks of cards she plays with.
*****
Being alone in my apartment only made things worst. There weren't a lot of distractions and since furniture hadn't yet developed the ability to talk, I had no one to talk to. I was about to explode so I started pacing back and forth from my bedroom to my kitchen like a caged tiger or something. A word of advice: if you pace long enough you get queasy and disoriented. I heard a growl. My stomach was informing me that I was hungry so I went to check out the contents of my fridge.
'If you take those pictures to the supervisor I swear I'll tell him about your last screw up with the evidence'. I closed the fridge's door, there wasn't anything edible.
Oh, god, this memory thing sucked. My feelings during that conversation came back like a giant emotional tsunami and I had to sit down on the cold floor. Desperation, fear, anger, guilt and uncertainty took over my body. Had I done the right thing that day?.
What's done is done and I can't undo it. I have a theory that if I say that phrase often enough I'm going to end up feeling better. This might be just wishful thinking.
As much as I liked my apartment's floors I wasn't going to spend the rest of the day sitting on it. So I went to my living room which was, at the moment, in its worst shape. I sighed and began to collect jackets, shirts and pajamas off the floor, couch and chairs. Judging by the state of my apartment a stranger would think I was always in a hurry and that I fed off of air and ice cubes.
I tossed the bundle of soon-to-be-cleaned clothes on my bathroom floor, thus leaving my living room in a pristine condition and my bathroom a mess.
I collapsed on my couch and without thinking started to pick up the cards I had strewn all over my table. I didn't remember the last time I'd used them but I didn't have much else to do so what the heck. I realized there were two separate decks, one with the back of the card blue and one in red. When I'm tired and edgy I do mindless things like separating two decks of cards.
"Blue, red, red, red, blue…", I said out loud as I flipped the cards and stacked them up in two piles, "Blue, red, blue, blue."
I stopped, in my left hand I still had a handful of mixed cards and in my right I had a blue card. I had chosen a very ironic task. I bet Freud was smiling down at me from heaven or smiling up at me from hell. Depending on your opinion about his work on human behavior.
Two stacks of cards from two different decks. It was easy to separate them, blue goes on the blue pile, red goes on the red pile. Good, bad, good, bad. The problem was that I had a violet card in my past. I'd done something and I was still trying to figure out if it had been good or bad.
I resumed my activity, I couldn't handle the violet card right now. I'll stick to the easy task "Blue, red, blue, red, red, blue…"
"...you know that's blackmail, Dylan. If the supervisor finds out you're out of here"
"Blue, blue, blue…" Bad, bad, bad.
"… if you like your job Sara, you better keep your mouth shut."
My hands began to shake, and my pulse skyrocketed. I thought I was too young to have a heart attack but you never know.
"...I have the pictures Sidle. I'll tell you what we're going to do: I'll do whatever I please and you don't say a word. Is that clear?"
What could I say? I'd only made one mistake, one mistake. One mistake to help someone. I was ten times better at my job than he was. Was I supposed to quit and let him mess up crimes scenes? Or was I supposed to play the scared animal that found herself between a wall and a hunter's rifle? That wouldn't have represented a performing challenge because I indeed had felt like a trapped animal.
"Yes, it's clear. But this is not over". I'd had to rescue some of my pride. And it wasn't over, he discovered that three months later.
The two decks were finally separated, laying motionless on my table. I leaned forward, resting my elbows on me knees and my hands under my chin. I didn't move for awhile, my eyes went from one deck to the other, trying to decide where would I place my imaginary violet card. It isn't blue, so it's not bad but it isn't red either, so it's not entirely good. I was beginning to think that as green was the color of envy, violet had to be the color of ambiguity.
My heart skipped two beats when my TV turned on by itself. I figured that I'd been playing with the timer again. "Saturday Night Live" was on. A little humor wouldn't hurt me.
***
I was taking some 'fresh air', ironically I was standing pretty close to where Warrick and I'd torched that poor pig. I was early again, I hadn't learnt my lesson. It was freezing but I didn't mind, the sky was clear and the night was beautiful. I dug my hands deeper into my jacket's pockets and sighed. A cloud of vapor came out.
"Do you want to turn into a Popsicle?", Grissom asked. I looked at him and I came this close to spilling everything out to him. I played the hypothetical scenario in my head and it didn't go very well. I ended up fired.
"I was taking some air." He took a step closer to me until our arms were touching, it was really cold.
"You had your 'pondering face' on." My what?? "What were you thinking about?"
I didn't like the direction this conversation was taking, so I tried to make a U-turn "My 'pondering face'? I didn't know I had one." He smiles and I didn't feel cold anymore.
"You know-when you narrow your eyes ", he imitated the gesture "that makes you look pensive." I wonder if he has a dirty secret buried somewhere inside his complex brain.
"Very observant", I joked.
"It's my job", he said, tilting his head towards me as he said so. He might be older than me but the guy was one of those types that makes you want to know what was going on inside that head. In any way possible. Bed, for example, wouldn't be a bad place to start. With that thought I hit a mental road block, that romantic path was closed, plenty of curves and dangerous cliffs ahead.
He asked again "So what were you thinking about?".
I took a deep breath that almost froze my lungs and then exhaled slowly. "The past."
He smiled and looked skywards "Interesting subject." He kept his eyes on the stars, "You can't change it." That's what people usually said about it.
"You sure can't."
"I take it it wasn't a happy moment.", he asked.
"No, it wasn't", I replied gazing up at the stars.
"San Francisco?", he queried. I frowned at looked at him, I was surprised.
"How---?"
"I'm observant, remember? You've been distracted since that dayshift CSI form San Francisco came here", again he smiled and I smiled back. We both went back to our star gazing.
This was turning into a dangerous conversation "Yes, it has to do with San Francisco."
"..and with Mr. Harris?" I fidgeted, he was getting too close. Now I knew how a suspect felt when someone like Grissom interrogated them. He always knew more than you expected.
I didn't know how to respond, so I didn't say anything.
He noticed my reluctance to answer his question and quickly apologized "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to---"
"That's OK", I interrupted him, "You were just asking." If we talked for two more minutes I was going to break into tears and tell him everything.
That was a chancy thing to do. I knew Grissom but from time to time a part of him that I didn't know would crawl into the open only to leave me confused. Catherine *knew* him, Grissom's outbursts never seemed to faze her.
"You know what I hate about the past?", he asked. There you go, that simple act of sharing something was a surprise to me.
"What?"
He pursed his lips, he was looking for the right words "The fact that it affects the present. For example, if you did something wrong, you can't change it so you regret it. If you can't get over it, there's this awful feeling called guilt that follows you around like a rain cloud."
"Nice analogy. You made me wanna buy an umbrella", I said "What if you don't regret what you did but you regret the consequences it brought to you?" I had to ask.
He looked down at his shoes and then back up at me "That's where responsibility comes in. You have to accept the consequences, deal with them." According to what he just said I was supposed to 'deal' with a blackmailer bastard that took pictures of me 'rearranging' evidence to free a guilty suspect. Like many things it sounded sensible in theory but it didn't apply to reality.
"Oh". That was the only thing I managed to utter. He didn't know that I had indeed tried to deal with the situation myself. I too had managed to snap some interesting pictures of him. Unfortunately that hadn't made the situation any easier to deal with.
So this was the situation in San Francisco: we both had (and still have) enough film in our hands to end our careers and we both hated each others guts.
I remembered Nick's comment about 'our old sparkle'. There was your sparkle Nicky.
TBC…
"To review or not review. That is the question."
Disclaimer: I don't own Sara and the rest but I do own the two stacks of cards she plays with.
*****
Being alone in my apartment only made things worst. There weren't a lot of distractions and since furniture hadn't yet developed the ability to talk, I had no one to talk to. I was about to explode so I started pacing back and forth from my bedroom to my kitchen like a caged tiger or something. A word of advice: if you pace long enough you get queasy and disoriented. I heard a growl. My stomach was informing me that I was hungry so I went to check out the contents of my fridge.
'If you take those pictures to the supervisor I swear I'll tell him about your last screw up with the evidence'. I closed the fridge's door, there wasn't anything edible.
Oh, god, this memory thing sucked. My feelings during that conversation came back like a giant emotional tsunami and I had to sit down on the cold floor. Desperation, fear, anger, guilt and uncertainty took over my body. Had I done the right thing that day?.
What's done is done and I can't undo it. I have a theory that if I say that phrase often enough I'm going to end up feeling better. This might be just wishful thinking.
As much as I liked my apartment's floors I wasn't going to spend the rest of the day sitting on it. So I went to my living room which was, at the moment, in its worst shape. I sighed and began to collect jackets, shirts and pajamas off the floor, couch and chairs. Judging by the state of my apartment a stranger would think I was always in a hurry and that I fed off of air and ice cubes.
I tossed the bundle of soon-to-be-cleaned clothes on my bathroom floor, thus leaving my living room in a pristine condition and my bathroom a mess.
I collapsed on my couch and without thinking started to pick up the cards I had strewn all over my table. I didn't remember the last time I'd used them but I didn't have much else to do so what the heck. I realized there were two separate decks, one with the back of the card blue and one in red. When I'm tired and edgy I do mindless things like separating two decks of cards.
"Blue, red, red, red, blue…", I said out loud as I flipped the cards and stacked them up in two piles, "Blue, red, blue, blue."
I stopped, in my left hand I still had a handful of mixed cards and in my right I had a blue card. I had chosen a very ironic task. I bet Freud was smiling down at me from heaven or smiling up at me from hell. Depending on your opinion about his work on human behavior.
Two stacks of cards from two different decks. It was easy to separate them, blue goes on the blue pile, red goes on the red pile. Good, bad, good, bad. The problem was that I had a violet card in my past. I'd done something and I was still trying to figure out if it had been good or bad.
I resumed my activity, I couldn't handle the violet card right now. I'll stick to the easy task "Blue, red, blue, red, red, blue…"
"...you know that's blackmail, Dylan. If the supervisor finds out you're out of here"
"Blue, blue, blue…" Bad, bad, bad.
"… if you like your job Sara, you better keep your mouth shut."
My hands began to shake, and my pulse skyrocketed. I thought I was too young to have a heart attack but you never know.
"...I have the pictures Sidle. I'll tell you what we're going to do: I'll do whatever I please and you don't say a word. Is that clear?"
What could I say? I'd only made one mistake, one mistake. One mistake to help someone. I was ten times better at my job than he was. Was I supposed to quit and let him mess up crimes scenes? Or was I supposed to play the scared animal that found herself between a wall and a hunter's rifle? That wouldn't have represented a performing challenge because I indeed had felt like a trapped animal.
"Yes, it's clear. But this is not over". I'd had to rescue some of my pride. And it wasn't over, he discovered that three months later.
The two decks were finally separated, laying motionless on my table. I leaned forward, resting my elbows on me knees and my hands under my chin. I didn't move for awhile, my eyes went from one deck to the other, trying to decide where would I place my imaginary violet card. It isn't blue, so it's not bad but it isn't red either, so it's not entirely good. I was beginning to think that as green was the color of envy, violet had to be the color of ambiguity.
My heart skipped two beats when my TV turned on by itself. I figured that I'd been playing with the timer again. "Saturday Night Live" was on. A little humor wouldn't hurt me.
***
I was taking some 'fresh air', ironically I was standing pretty close to where Warrick and I'd torched that poor pig. I was early again, I hadn't learnt my lesson. It was freezing but I didn't mind, the sky was clear and the night was beautiful. I dug my hands deeper into my jacket's pockets and sighed. A cloud of vapor came out.
"Do you want to turn into a Popsicle?", Grissom asked. I looked at him and I came this close to spilling everything out to him. I played the hypothetical scenario in my head and it didn't go very well. I ended up fired.
"I was taking some air." He took a step closer to me until our arms were touching, it was really cold.
"You had your 'pondering face' on." My what?? "What were you thinking about?"
I didn't like the direction this conversation was taking, so I tried to make a U-turn "My 'pondering face'? I didn't know I had one." He smiles and I didn't feel cold anymore.
"You know-when you narrow your eyes ", he imitated the gesture "that makes you look pensive." I wonder if he has a dirty secret buried somewhere inside his complex brain.
"Very observant", I joked.
"It's my job", he said, tilting his head towards me as he said so. He might be older than me but the guy was one of those types that makes you want to know what was going on inside that head. In any way possible. Bed, for example, wouldn't be a bad place to start. With that thought I hit a mental road block, that romantic path was closed, plenty of curves and dangerous cliffs ahead.
He asked again "So what were you thinking about?".
I took a deep breath that almost froze my lungs and then exhaled slowly. "The past."
He smiled and looked skywards "Interesting subject." He kept his eyes on the stars, "You can't change it." That's what people usually said about it.
"You sure can't."
"I take it it wasn't a happy moment.", he asked.
"No, it wasn't", I replied gazing up at the stars.
"San Francisco?", he queried. I frowned at looked at him, I was surprised.
"How---?"
"I'm observant, remember? You've been distracted since that dayshift CSI form San Francisco came here", again he smiled and I smiled back. We both went back to our star gazing.
This was turning into a dangerous conversation "Yes, it has to do with San Francisco."
"..and with Mr. Harris?" I fidgeted, he was getting too close. Now I knew how a suspect felt when someone like Grissom interrogated them. He always knew more than you expected.
I didn't know how to respond, so I didn't say anything.
He noticed my reluctance to answer his question and quickly apologized "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to---"
"That's OK", I interrupted him, "You were just asking." If we talked for two more minutes I was going to break into tears and tell him everything.
That was a chancy thing to do. I knew Grissom but from time to time a part of him that I didn't know would crawl into the open only to leave me confused. Catherine *knew* him, Grissom's outbursts never seemed to faze her.
"You know what I hate about the past?", he asked. There you go, that simple act of sharing something was a surprise to me.
"What?"
He pursed his lips, he was looking for the right words "The fact that it affects the present. For example, if you did something wrong, you can't change it so you regret it. If you can't get over it, there's this awful feeling called guilt that follows you around like a rain cloud."
"Nice analogy. You made me wanna buy an umbrella", I said "What if you don't regret what you did but you regret the consequences it brought to you?" I had to ask.
He looked down at his shoes and then back up at me "That's where responsibility comes in. You have to accept the consequences, deal with them." According to what he just said I was supposed to 'deal' with a blackmailer bastard that took pictures of me 'rearranging' evidence to free a guilty suspect. Like many things it sounded sensible in theory but it didn't apply to reality.
"Oh". That was the only thing I managed to utter. He didn't know that I had indeed tried to deal with the situation myself. I too had managed to snap some interesting pictures of him. Unfortunately that hadn't made the situation any easier to deal with.
So this was the situation in San Francisco: we both had (and still have) enough film in our hands to end our careers and we both hated each others guts.
I remembered Nick's comment about 'our old sparkle'. There was your sparkle Nicky.
TBC…