Part 2. Things get darker.

---

The 9th of August, 4:01 AM.

Grissom wakes you by pressing a cool jar full of spiders against your naked back. "Let's step on them," he says. "Maybe it will rain." You're messy haired and shaky (fighting off The Skeleton Effect) but Grissom just rolls the cool glass jar between your shoulder blades, eyes placid.

"Gil, you haven't killed a spider in your life."

"Not on purpose." But he's already searching through the slippery sheets to gather you up and carry you towards the balcony…

Five minutes later you're both kneeling, staring at what remains of four small grey spiders- 32 legs in total. "You're a perpetrator now."

Grissom just peers up at the sky and shrugs. "The Greeks called it sacrifice."

The Greeks were afraid of their gods. You'd like to ask him what he's afraid of.

---

The 10th of August, 4:22 AM.

Bathwater crashes against porcelain. You put a towel under the door to silence the sound. You leave your clothes on and hold your breath. When you slip silently back into the bedroom the carpet behind you is damp and Grissom is awake. Without a word you cross the room and lie down on top of him- heavy as wet sand. Beads of water gather and slide in droplets down your hair. In the morning you will both be dry and the bed will be damp. You close your eyelashes against his jaw.

"I love you."

Like an exhalation of breath on glass. You can feel the tendons straining under his skin. You're scared.

---

The 11th of August.

"-but these ligature marks disprove that theory. Darren Hayworth's arms weren't tied in front of him; they were tied behind his back, which means he could not possibly have shot himself at that angle. It had to have been someone who was at least 6 foot 2 in order for the bullet hole to align with the-"

This is where it starts. Eighty-hour weeks back to back to back until all that makes up a life is death. He tries to quote Shakespeare while removing your 4-inch heels but he ends up with Elliot. "I had not thought death had undone so many."

You wake after 90 minutes sleep to the racing tumble of his words and it's all gibberish for the first ten seconds. Consonants and syllables and the soft glow of the bedside lamp. He's talking about his case- abrasions and gun shot residue and references to chemical compounds you've never even heard of.

You breathe face down into your pillow while he talks himself through a criminal psyche…

In the morning he pretends you weren't the one lying awake with him for hours. He never says that he shouldn't be talking about an open case and you never ask. It happens again and then a third time before you pull yourself sitting and take a page of his chaotic notes in your hands.

"I bet Niki Rodriguez could give you an ID on your second Vic."

"Who?"

"The designer whose coat your mystery woman is wearing in the lobby footage."

It's a peculiar addiction, this new kind of puzzle with invisible pieces. Five hours pass leaving nothing but the technical names for skull bones and the memory of sleep. The first time you break a case it's at 6 in the morning and it isn't until he reaches across you on the bed to gather his notes that you realize you can't remember the last time anything has been such an aphrodisiac.

Both of you are always exhausted now, but smiling lightly behind your coffee cups. You call him from your car on the way to work to tell him that the clouds remind you of bruises on a cadaver. Eight hours later he meets you at your front door and grabs your hand. He licks his tongue along the rough edge of your thumbnail before whispering, "be careful Catherine."

"I'm not Icarus," you say in return but he doesn't look convinced.

Either way, your nights still end with crime scene photographs spread over the room and your legs locked around his torso. "I'll show you ligature marks…" You kiss the science out of his mouth but it's always back again before the coffee's made.

Sometimes he talks about butterflies and exotic snakes while you straddle him and sometimes you're sure you come harder and longer when he tells you about the 5000 miles the Monarchs fly every spring.

His fingers are magnifying glasses- his saliva is print powder. "You used to wear a ring on your left index finger- I can still feel the indent." Grissom- the perpetual eleven-year-old boy…

You kissed him first in March and it was against your front door and it was when he said he was leaving and it was your hot mouth and his rigid hands and your leg on his thigh. When you finally pulled away to gage his reaction he was already hard and you were undoing your belt with one hand while the other was reaching down his pants. His voice still shook when he asked you, "Would it be alright if I stayed?"

Grissom kisses you as though your mouth is a glass.

Once in April you both lay awake listening to the rain pound on pavement outside you apartment. "Water is the most valuable substance on earth," he said. It was just one sentence spoken into the dark bedroom. You felt loved.

---

August 25th.

One year before Eddie and six years before Lindsey. Grissom drives you both out into the desert with a blanket and a basket full of plums. It's 3:36 AM.

Dust rises off the ground behind the car and leaves chalky tracks to settle. "How many cases have you solved using vehicle tracks?" the look he gives you in the rear view mirror is the only answer you need. Too many.

"We're here," he says instead.

From the trunk he takes out a jar full of fireflies and sets it on the hood. The night smells like hot earth and you can see glistening fruit juice on his lips, nearly invisible in the dark. You've already begun to loosen the lid on the glowing canning jar when he stops you urgently. "Eat these first." HHHhe pushes two small round plums into your palms- like black stones in the darkness- a comforting weight.

The sticky plum nectar drips down your hands toward your elbows in the dark. "Now let them go," he instructs once the ripe fruit has been devoured. When you unscrew the lid you hold your breath. There is, you think, a sadness about this. There is meanness in a world where every beautiful thing is fiercely independent. You had a mother who told you, "Cash up front," and had sex with Sam Braun while the bedroom door was half open. You believe things leave because it makes them better than the things that stay. Then you hold up the jar and try to memorize the glow of Grissom's face in the yellow light- something sacred because it is forever. The lid unscrews and the light dissipates.

Five insects like a single silent firework abandoning each other in the night sky.

When the first small winged light bulb returns to hover around your hands you declare it confused. "Drunk bug. Lay off the nectarine's buddy." When the second one comes back you realize they can smell the fruit juice on your skin. When all but one of them comes, you look through the faint light at Grissom and he says, "I knew it would work," and then you cry. He knew you would. He watches you from the shadows with bewitching eyes.

December 8th, 2:58 AM.

Grissom finds you in the women's washroom at Marlena's Nightclub. There's soggy toilet paper on the counter and a puddle of something liquid soaking into your skirt. He must be ashamed to come in here but he never talks about it afterwards. You're slumped under the counter, having crawled as far from the door as you can get and you're holding the U-bend in the drainpipe like an anchor. There's blood on your forehead and on the edge of the counter- doesn't take an investigator to know who hit what.

"Jim! I've found her. Bring your car around; we're going to the hospital."

He holds your eyes open like a doctor and bends your head awkwardly up to face the ceiling light. "Catherine, come on Cath. Talk to me. Catherine! Tell me about that whale you danced for- remember what day it was?"

"My birthday… he gave me a thousand… he… a big… tip." You feel like a cadaver, drunk on embalming fluid.

Grissom picks you up in his arms and- for just a moment- he stands stark still looking in the mirror. There is quiet then- more in the way he holds you than in any measurable decibels. Only quiet and the smell of his breath in your hair: after all of this, he's still the sober one: club soda and ice water. "I'm not Icarus," you gasp, "I'm not Icarus," but in the cracked bathroom mirror his reflection is almost disgusted.

Years later you will consider this the moment he left you. In the women's bathroom with dull pounding bass behind the wall and your blood on his shirt. The next day you stay in bed until 4 in the afternoon and make your way to the living room where you lean against the doorway, shaking.

"I think The Skeleton Effect is going to take a while to wear off this time."

"I'm taking the week off work," he says before turning back to the manila folder in his lap. "There's apple juice in the fridge. It's an antioxidant. You should drink at least five glasses a day."

"Grissom-" your voice catches, as painful as a fishhook in your throat.

"I know Catherine. I know." And for once when you fall asleep he doesn't wake you.

---

January, February, March.

Three months of negative statements ranging from, "He won't leave me," to; "I won't fuck this up," to, "I don't wish I was doing rails right now." It occurs to you later that most negative statements are just mirror reflections of the positive reality. It also occurs to you that Grissom had already begun calling you 'Cath'. You assume it's an endearment but Grissom's endearments are always in the actuality of a thing. The precision is the compliment. 'Catherine' was his endearment.

The first week withdraws entirely into the shadows of your apartment. He tacks the satin sheets from your bed up over the windows and remakes the bed with plain comfortable cotton. Meanwhile you make promises of getting clean as though they were mantras. You promise him and you promise you- ten times, then fifteen.

"Life is too fucking short, I mean really. It's just so stupid I can't even-"

"Catherine?"

"What?"

"The lady doth protest too much me thinks."

A moment's silence before: "Damn it Grissom." To his credit, you're clean for three months before he leaves.

---

March 18th.

The smog outside licks the windowpanes with oil stains- murky and slightly iridescent. Grissom comes over early, before dawn on a Sunday morning. When you hear his key in the door you're watching reruns of 'The Price Is Right' and there is never any doubt that what you still have is over. He hasn't spent the night since Friday.

There is movement in the hall as he leans down to remove his shoes and then you hear him moving into the kitchen. The fridge door opens and faintly, under the sound of forced audience applause from the TV, you can hear him heating something. A spoon is stirring circles in a metal pot. It is five minutes before he comes into the living room with a mug of boiled orange juice in his hands. You can already smell it- violently warming the air. "Heated by stove top, not microwave," he says. When you don't take it from him he sets it down in front of you and you have to bite your lip to keep from whimpering.

It's your favorite drink and he knows it and he's saying goodbye.

He watches you watch the screen instead of him. "Goodbye Catherine," he says. You watch the screen instead of him.

You won't cry again. You did not cry when you were seven and you broke you're arm. You did not cry when you were 21 and your car broke down on the way home after your first day at The Palace. You do not cry when things brake.

On TV someone almost wins a Volvo. They're twenty dollars off the retail price. This 'almost win' feels somehow metaphoric.

He leaves the key you gave him on the counter. It makes a quiet click. You will always consider this the sound of him leaving.

You and Grissom used to feel like the reverse of some children's coloring book. Your chaos- like Crayola scribbles lying down askew across the bed and he, the outline of black ink. He would trace himself along your edges. He would lick your shoulder blades, as thought it was an art in it's self. "I must apply even pressure from bottom to top." He hasn't spent the night since Friday.

You can't hear his feet in the hallway, walking away from you the way he could always hear yours. You strain through the grey apartment light but hear nothing.

He leaves you with only the smell of his soap and the bitter taste of citrus. You want to yell after him- to wave from the window. You want to apologize for falling asleep once while he was talking about a murder at the Tangiers. You don't. You're the best goddamn stripper The Palace has ever had and even when you're wearing five-inch heels, you still know how to walk away from a man.

You finish watching the price is right and drink the orange juice he made for you. You pick a hole in the couch cushions while you phone The Palace. "Marlene," you say, "I'm coming back to work."