Lennie came in, and said good morning to Anita, and fixed himself a cup of coffee. She made small talk with him so she could remain in range to see his reaction. She was sure he'd be outraged and splutter something about the morons at One Police Plaza. She almost gave herself away by laughing in anticipation. She saw Lennie pick the memo up and read it and she was waiting for his reaction, but it didn't come. At least not the way she thought it would. He just sat there for a moment or two and she thought he looked as though he was hurt enough to cry if he wasn't such a tough guy. Suddenly he stood up and crumbled the memo in his right hand, and then tossed it in the wastepaper basket.
"Lieu, I'm not feeling so hot, I think I'll take a PDO. Would you tell Ed when he gets in?" he asked her.
"Whoa, wait Lennie," Anita almost pleaded with him. "Please come into my office for a second, OK?"
Lennie blew out a breath, and said "OK".
He followed her into her office at a slow amble, seemingly having no energy, and then leaned against the wall next to her office door after he shut it.
"Lennie, if your suddenly not feeling well has something to do with that memo," Anita started to confess, but Lennie interrupted her.
"Yeah, it does. I guess I've always been waiting for something like it to happen," he said in a small, quiet voice that wasn't like him.
"Lennie, the memo's a fake," Lennie's head jerked up and he looked into her eyes to judge her veracity.
"I made it up as an April Fool's joke, apparently a very bad one," Anita said apologetically.
She came over to where he was leaning and put her hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry Lennie, I wouldn't hurt you for the world," she said earnestly.
"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked.
Lennie looked into Anita's eyes. His emotions were in a complete tangle. He did want to talk to someone about it but he wasn't sure she was the correct person, but she was here and she was offering, and it would probably make her feel better. He didn't trust his voice, so he simply nodded.
"Let's go get a coffee at that little diner around the corner, and sit and talk about it, OK?" she suggested.
He nodded and opened her office door for her. They walked out of the precinct house and towards the nearby diner. Lennie opened the diner's door for her and Anita smiled to herself at his courtly manners, which she'd noticed had begun to rub off on his partner.
Lennie seemed reluctant to open up, content just to sit with his boss and sip coffee.
"Well you gonna tell me why my silly attempt at a joke backfired so badly or are we just gonna sit here sipping coffee all day?" she finally asked in a light teasing voice.
Lennie heaved his second big sigh of the day, and then started in. "I graduated from high school at 16 and half. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, except that I didn't want to work in the meat packing district like my Dad did, which considering what happened in that industry was probably a good thing. My teachers encouraged me to go to college but to a kid from a working class family that was a pipe dream, tuition was low at the city colleges but what would I do to pay for books? And if I continued to live with my folks I'd need money for transportation plus just feeling like I'd need to help my family out financially. Plus I didn't really know what I wanted to major in yet. So when I was old enough I signed up for a two-year hitch in the army, figured I'd use the GI bill to get my education when I got out," Lennie began his explanation.
Anita studied Lennie's face as he told the story of his youth. She remembered how hard it was to get the money together to get her education and she was a good bit younger than Lennie. There were federal grant and student loan programs in place when she was graduating from high school that were so new when Lennie was that age that it was no wonder he figured the GI bill was his only chance.
"By the time I got out of the army I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a cop. But I was still a little too young. They wouldn't take me at the academy for the fall term because I wouldn't turn 20 before the start date so I was going to have to wait until at least the spring term, but then I'd graduate and still not be old enough to start on the force. So I decided I'd do a year in college then go to the academy," Lennie paused and drank some more of his coffee.
"When I started on the force I continued to take classes whenever I could fit them in, until Cathy was born. With a fulltime job, a wife and a baby I just couldn't handle going to school part-time. I was three classes short of my Associates in Criminal Justice. I didn't think too much about it for quite a while until one day my captain suggested I sit for the sergeant's exam. That's when I was told I had to have 60 credit hours, if I had had those three classes; I'd have had it. I was disappointed; sergeant's pay sure would have helped out our family budget." Anita nodded remember that the pay bump had been a welcome thing in her family too.
"I went back to college and started trying to figure out a way to fit the classes into my schedule. Part way through the second of those three required classes I find out that since I'd been out of school for quite a while I'd have to meet the new catalog requirements, and that meant a different set of required courses, and then both the college and the NYPD said some of my older classes which would have met the requirements weren't going to be counted, something about not accepting courses taken over 7 years prior to recommencing my degree. I went from being like 6 credits short of the AS to 18 credits short. It took me a while but I finally got them together and got my AS, then you know what happens, the NYPD changed the requirements. Now I needed 64 credit hours to sit for the sergeant's exam. I gave up, life was knocking me a round a lot then and I felt like they just kept moving the finish line on me," Lennie finished up morosely.
"Oh, Lennie, I'm so sorry. I never knew why you hadn't taken the sergeant's exam. Actually knowing you, I figured it was some personal quirk, maybe a desire to avoid the extra responsibility or just a personal statement. You know, that you were a detective and that's all you wanted to be," Anita hypothesized.
"Mind if I use that as an excuse next time the topic comes up?" Lennie said with a smile. It wasn't one of his light up the room smiles but it was a start.
"Not at all. Now do you still want that personal day off?" Anita asked.
"Nah, lets get back to work and catch some bad guys," Lennie said as he stood up, grabbed the bill and headed to the cash register.
She smiled at him, and this time when he smiled back it was a bona fide Lennie Briscoe light up the room smile.
"Oh and Lieu"-
"Yes Lennie?"
"Next year, try something more traditional, you know a whoopie cushion, dribble glass,or a pop up snake in a can, OK?"