Disclaimer: Most characters in this short story are from the X-Files and the property of Chris Carter, TenThirteen Productions and FOX networks. Rolling Rock is a registered trademark of Latrobe Brewing Company.
Dedication & Notes: To StarbuckJayne, for introducing me to Ephemeral. The bartender, Garcia, Agents Michael and Tawnya, are creative property of the author.
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I sat there at the bar, getting close to closing time. I knew that I didn't want to go back to my office late at night and at this point in my life, I thought that alcohol was the best comfort. I sat there for hours, looking down at the countertop, at my almost empty draft, and three overturned shot glasses. As the night went by, I chose not to make eye contact with the rest of the patrons. I am an agent with the FBI. Already in my young career, I had seen things, the dark side to humanity, and none of it was inthe recruitment brochure.
Since it was closing time, all of the tables had been wiped off and the chairs placed upside down on top of them. Garcia, the owner of the bar, allowed Agents from the Bureau to stay after hours and a lot of us who worked nearby in the J. Edgar Hoover Building made it a place to stop in after long nights of work.
Another agent trotted in, at first glance, he looked as if he too had a long day at the office. He took a seat at the bar on the opposite side, practically sitting in front of me. I chose not to make eye contact with the man. I just kept my head down, keeping with my routine of crying in my beer. Something inside made me want to look up, maybe he could be someone who I could talk to, a colleague that would be able listen and understand what I was going through. I knew he was an FBI agent from the moment he walked in. He had his ID badge hanging from his breast pocket.
Okay, I thought, I'll make eye contact. At least that he'll know that I was friendly and not snobbishly ignoring his presence. I took one good swig of my Captain and coke and carelessly put it down on the bar before lifting my eyes once again.
I looked at the FBI man sitting in the counter and instinctively he looked back at me. Our eyes met and said nothing to each other. I chose to give him a nod and a half-hearted smile. He removed his leather bomber jacketand placed it on the stool to the left of him. Then, he removed the tie from around his neck and rolled it into a ball and placed it on the counter in front of him. The tie was just as bland as boring as mine was. It was red and blue striped diagonally to my blue and white one. Maybe my colleague was on to something. It was getting a little stuffy in here tonight.
I looked at my watch and saw 1:47 AM. There was nobody in the bar, just me and the other Agent sitting at least 6 feet away from me. Garcia had been in the back doing his usual nightly chore of finishing the dishes and placing the mugs and shot glasses back to where they belong. Garcia is a trusting guy and a good guy at that. He would only pop back in behind the bar every now and then to either check on us or serve a new patron a drink. I looked back through the kitchen window behind me and waved Garcia back to the bar to ask the new agent if he wanted anything to drink.
I made eye contact with the other Agent across from me and tried to deduce what might he be drinking tonight. And at that moment, I recognized the Agent in front of me. "Shit," I thought to myself. "You're looking at Mulder. Fox 'Spooky' Mulder." It finally dawned at me that the dark black haired, tired looking, FBI agent was none other than the legendary Fox Mulder. When I first entered the Academy and went through training, I had heard stories about him. They called him 'spooky' because the theories he threw around in his case files were so outlandish that everybody thought he was some sort of crackpot with his theories of alien abductions and unexplained phenomena. I studied a few of his case files in the Academy. I thought he must be one of the greatest geniuses ever to walk the face of the earth just for his talent for criminal profiling. I wanted to meet him someday. I guess tonight I felt I was blessed to have the chance to meet the man.
When Garcia approached me, I told him to give Agent Mulder a draft of beer on me. I decided to send him a beer brewed near my hometown called Rolling Rock. It's good stuff. At least I thought so, but I already had a personal hometown bias. Garcia kindly grabbed another glass, put it under the Rolling Rock tap, and brought it to Agent Mulder. I watched as Garcia pointed back to me, explaining that the beer was from me. I said a prayer that Mulder somehow understood my good intentions and didn't think I was trying to pick him up or anything.
Agent Mulder again made eye contact with me, picked up the draft, and gave a toast as a thank you in my direction. He then gave a small friendly smile and sipped the beer. Garcia wiped down a spot on the bar that he apparently thought he had missed and walked back into the kitchen to resume his dishwashing duties.
"Just what should I say to him," I asked myself. "I'll probably be so star struck I'll sound like a idiot and he won't want to talk to me. I was glad that he accepted my offer to buy him a drink though."
Just about the time where I gathered enough courage to go up and talk with one of my heroes, another Agent walked in the door to join us at the bar. I didn't recognize the man; only by his FBI badge did I know he was another Agent. He was a chiseled man with a dirty blond crew cut. His jaw line was raw and angry looking which seemed to match the forehead that looked very wrinkled. He came in wearing a navy sport coat and flung it on the coat hanger never taking his eyes off Agent Mulder. I was facinated with his steely blue eyes!
Rolling up his sleeves, he walked directly at Mulder and choosing the empty seat to his right. At first the new agent had said nothing as he rested his elbows on the bar counter and cupped his hands in front of his mouth and nose. Neither agent said anything to each other. They both just stared straight ahead.
"Don't look now, but I think that Agent over there tried to pick me up," said Mulder.
I felt like I needed somewhere to hide after I overheard Mulder's comments to the other Agent about my misinterpreted gesture. I chose to look oblivious to them as I just stared at the beer in front of me.
"You've been gone for a while now, Agent Mulder," said the other Agent when a few more awkward moments of silence went by. "For a while, the FBI had almost given up hope of finding you alive."
"That's interesting," said Mulder taking a swig of his beer. "Considering the fact that my whole career the FBI tried to get me to leave."
"There you go again," Mulder's friend said with a disapproving sigh.
I continued to sip away at my draft of Rolling Rock beer, not making eye contact with either of the two colleagues. I began to wonder if they knew that I could hear every word that they were saying.
I learned that the other Agent's name was Doggett. He then briefed Mulder and spoke about what had occurred while Doggett had filled in for Mulder's absence. I tried to hold my liquor while Doggett went into detail about a cult surrounding this parasitic slug, a bat-creature, a man turning into metal, and this handy-capped Hindu mystic crawling up people's asses. The one thing that connected it all was the way that Doggett described his working relationship with Mulder's partner,the enigmatic Agent Dana Scully.
"I made a promise to myself that I would protect her, Mulder," said Doggett. "She's a fascinating woman, that partner of ours. I did my best to keep her in one piece for when you came back."
"That's very noble of you, John Doggett," countered Mulder.
"However, when I found out that you've been assigned to the X-Files, I really wasn't sure it was possible to trust someone else on this. You read my files. You invaded my life's work."
"What was I supposed to do? Kirsch assigned me to finding your ass and I used everything at my disposal," Doggett asked raising his voice.
At this point, I picked up my head as I could sense that the conversation was getting a little tense. Mulder got off his stool and reached down for a wad of cash in his pocket.
I suppose the guy was good enough to leave a tip, even on a drink that was purchased for him. Or maybe, he just wanted to get away from the confrontation.
"I expect it's back to violent crimes for you. No more chasing the boogeyman. Take my advice, John, get out while you still can."
"That's just it, Agent Mulder, I don't think I'll be going anywhere soon. We've got a meeting in Director Kirsch's office tomorrow morning."
At this point, Garcia entered and offered his services to Agent Doggett. "Tequila shot." ordered Agent Doggett. Just as fast as Garcia could fill up the shot glass, Doggett threw it down like a pro, then gestured for one more. Garcia filled the glass and went back to the kitchen to finish mopping up for the night.
"When I first started on the X-Files, I was just doing my job by playing by the book," read Doggett. He held thesecond shot as if he was waiting for the right moment to say cheers. "I kept digging deeper and deeper, wondering just what exactly made Fox Mulder tick. What made him continue on?"
Mulder inched his way over to the coat rack by the door, listening inventively. He wondered if Doggett had been trying to set himself up to say something important. He would later give credit to Doggett for not beating around the bush for too long.
"Then one day, I figured it out! It's your partner, isn't it?" asked Agent Doggett.
Mulder had no response to this but a stone faced stare. He simply waited for Doggett to get up off of his on bar stool and approach the exit. What happened next shocked the hell out of me.
With a right cross that even a prize fighter would have been proud of, Mulder hit Doggett across that same square jaw and stared angrily at him. Agent Doggett shook himself alert from the punch and felt for his sidearm. Doggett cursed to himself realizing that he had his Federal Issue hidden in the breast pocket of the sport coat that he came in with. "What in the hell did you do that for? Agent Mulder you're outa line!"
Mulder appeared not to want to back down. He again thrust his fists into his replacement's ribs. I sat right where I was the whole time, wide-eyed and stunned at my hero's actions.
"I've seen guys like you come and go, Agent Doggett. The FBI has tried to discredit me for a long time and now you're just a tool to breakdown the investigations."
Agent John Doggett got back a few shots of his own, landing a fist on Mulder's shoulder blade and an uppercut to Mulder's jaw. This sent Mulder reeling back and landing on a nearby circular table in the bar. This only angered Mulder more and he tackled his opponent to the floor. Both participants rolled back and forth, getting in a few punches, but never really taking control of the fight.
Suddenly, Mulder leapt to his feet, grabbed a bar stool, and waved it around clipping Doggett in the hip with the stool seat.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Mulder, your partner Scully, she learned to trust me. You trust her judgment, don't you?" yelled Doggett.
In a moment where Mulder appeared to try to think rationally, he took a few deep breaths and wondered just what made up the character of Agent John Doggett. Mulder had been through just about everything, it was a wonder just how he was able to stay sane this long. He was still very shaken from the recent attempt to cheat death and alleged abduction by aliens. Perhaps, a new face moving in on Mulder's territory, once hired to bring him back was enough to send Mulder over the edge.
"She's pregnant!" Agent Doggett blurted out.
Mulder's instant reaction was to drop the bar stool from his hands, the shocking news was the key to a sobering reality for Mulder.
Garcia finally re-entered the bar and ran in between the sparring Federal Agents. Garcia let out a rambling of Spanish commands that I couldn't quite decipher followed by a few more words that I did know. Parada meant 'stop'!'' Doggett was already explaining to Mulder that Scully was four months pregnant while I came from out behind the bar where I had been observing the melee.
The two rival bickering Agents called a temporary truce and decided to leave before they caused any more damage to the bar. "What are we going to do about the meeting with Kirsch in his office tomorrow?" asked Agent Doggett.
"We'll act like it never happened," was Mulder's solution.
Garcia looked at the mess the two Agents made and I had a moment of pity for him. I began to pick up some of the chairs that had crashed to the floor, only then finding a broom to pick up the broken pieces of glass ashtrays. Agent Doggett put on his navy blazer and exited the bar. He said that he was parked not too far away.
Agent Mulder called a cab, but before he could walk out the door himself, I had to talk to him. I felt that this might be the one and only chance to talk to one of my heroes in the Academy.
"Agent Mulder," I called. "The beer. The beer was for, ummm."Stammering through and awkward moment, I realized that whatever pedestal I put this man on, it caused me to be star struck, making it unable for me to put the right words together to tell him how much I appreciated his work.
"Make it quick, son, the meter is running and I got to go." Mulder said to me.
"Um, well, that beer was from me. I read some of your profiles in the Academy. I think you're a brilliant profiler."
"Ah, thanks, but for future reference, I'm more of a shot glass man," said Mulder as he escaped out the front door only turning back with that reply. I got the impression that he wasn't about to stick around and that was his way of brushing me off.
"Oh, great," I thought to myself. "Way to make yourself sound like a dork. He probably thinks I'm one of those sycophants or something."
I called my own partner, Agent Tawnya to come swing by the bar, as she has already had to do for me three times this week. I never forget how lucky I am to have just a dedicated partner I could trust in her. 10 minutes later from my call, I got in my partners car and sighed at all I had just witnessed tonight. I wondered if I should report the scuffle to my superiors.
Behavior like that could get a Federal Agent discharged. I decided not to on the basis that it would probably get covered up and buried on some bureaucrat's desk. That's the nature of the beast these days. I've seen a lot of things fall by the way side. It wouldn't do me any good to report the incident. Back to work again in the morning.
The End