A/N: Later, when they start singing, I put it in point form, it's easier to read. Thanks ) And I suggest EVERYONE go and see RENT because its really really good!
"That was a wicked movie, Sar!" Katherine said happily, as she bounced down the street, her white strap top contrasting beautifully with her black skin. " We have got to rent it and see it again somtime next week!"
Sara nodded, agreeing with Katherine, while still lost in thought. She had taken two weeks off work, and gone to New York City, with her new-best-friend Katherine. It was her third day here, and they had already gone to more restaurants, movies and tourist attractions than Sara would ever have gone to in say -- three months. Maybe five.
Sara had met Katherine while working at the theatre. She had taken up singing/acting, after Grissom telling her that she should find a distraction. And find it she did. After being told more than a few times that she was more than good, after singing at some bars and clubs, she tried out for the musical RENT, and had gotten accepted for the role of Mimi.
Katherine, who she had not known at the time, had gotten the role for Joanne. They started to hang out after practice. Partly because they just seemed to get along, partly because they were both a bit loners, needing time alone, or just to sit with a friend and not talk. Sara, because of her past and present, and Katherine because although she was one of those really pretty people that everyone wanted to talk to, she hated that because they all wanted her to be something she wasn't. So they started going to restaurants, and later, once Sara knew her better, she let Kath drag her off to a movie, Annapolis, which turned out to be really good.
A few months later, after everyone on the team had been complaining that she was being to secretive and not telling them where she was going, they accidentally found out that she had been acting.
Tina, Warrick's wife, had somehow gotten tickets to the show, and they had all been sitting in the third row back, when she came on as Mimi. Just before intermission, when she had sung Take Me Out Tonight, she finally realized they were there. She still blushed, remembering the moves she had done for the song.
MIMI:
Whats the time?
Well it's gotta be close to midnight
My body's talking to me
It say,'Time for danger'
It says 'I wanna commit a crime
Wanna be the cause of a fight
Wanna put on a tight skirt and flirt
With a stranger'
I've had a knack from way back
At breaking the rules once I learn the
Games
Get-up life's too quick
I know someplace sick
Where this chick'll dance it the flames
We don't need any money
I always get in for free
You can get in too
If you get in with me
Let's go out tonight
I have to go out tonight
You wanna play?
Let's run away
We wont be back
Before it's Christmas Day
Take me out tonight (meow)
When I get a wink from the doorman
Do you know how lucky you'll be?
That your on line with the feline of
Avenue B
Let's go out tonight
I have to go out tonight
You wanna prowl
Be my night owl?
Well take my hand we're gonna howl
Out tonight
In the evening I must roam
Can't sleep in the city of neon and chrome
Feels to damn much like like home
When the spanish babies cry
So let's find a bar
So dark we forget who we are
And all the scares from the
Nevers and maybes die
Let's go out tonight
Have to go out tonight
You're sweetWanna hit the street?
Wanna wail at the moon like a cat in
Heat?
Just take me out tonight
Please take me out tonight
Don't forsake me - out tonight
I'll let you make me - out tonight
Tonight - tonight - tonight
As the curtains closed, she took a bow.
"Yeah, go Sara!" she heard someone yell. Someone that sounded suspiciously like Nick.
Slowly, she raised her eyes, and got one her first glance of the audience. Everyone from the night shift was there, cheering their hearts out for her, for the girl who used to be the ugly duckling, but was now transformed into a beautiful women.
No one knew really anything about her, or her past, but loved her for her wit, sarcasm, humor, and smiles. They loved her because she was the one who was very strong, somehow not letting anything like petty fights end up breaking them all apart. She got a good look of her friends before the curtains closed.
Yes, she had gone back out later, and finished the rest of the show, but only because Katherine told her that if she didn't, Katherine promised she would be out there, and telling one Gil Grissom that Sara was madly in love with him, if she didn't finish the show.
"Look, you play a big part in this movie, and we all need you out there. Besides, if you don't get back out there, one GIl Grissom will be told, by a character named Joanne, that Sara Sidle is madly in love with him. But, If you go out there, he will not actually ever hear the truth."
Sara, after cursing Kath to hell and back, agreed. She had told too much to Katherine, and now she was getting what she gave. She remembered a quote her friend Josh had once told her.
You'll always be my friend, you know too much.
Well, if that didn't apply here, she'd eat her skimpy little black costume, that showed more than it didn't, the one she had, well, performed in, when she was singing.
She had gone back out, and once she was out there, singing and acting out scenes that she had loved ever since she heard about them...well, it didn't matter quite so much.
That didn't stop her from sending a letter, of all things, to one Gil Grissom, telling him that she was taking two weeks off, for a vacation. It was only convience that she didn't actually see, face to face, him or any of her colleges after the show.
And that brought her here. With Katherine, they were both taking a break from acting, although their producer gave them a parting compliment, and for someone who usually never actually said anything nice about his actors, that was pretty emotional.
He had hugged them, when they broke the news that they were not going to be acting in his next show, a wonderful rendition of The Lion King, and told them this. "Ok, girls, but if you ever think of professional acting, you two could do it, and make it big." They gave the rest of the cast, their friends since the beginning, hugs and left the auditorium, promising to come back sometime, if only for one more stage story.
She thought about Katherine, and how she had made such an impact on her life.
Katherine was one of those people who everyone wanted to talk to, to be with, or just to look at as she walked down the street. That would have been ok with Sara, except for the fact that Katherine was determined to pull Sara out of any place she would try to hide in. So Sara had laughingly let herself be dragged everywhere, from movies to tourist attractions.
Today they had watched the movie RENT, and Sara had to agree that it was one of the best she had ever seen in a very long time.
Sara and Kath walked around a corner, and Sara bumped into a middle-aged lady, who dropped her two shopping bags.
"Oh, I'm so sorry, here let me help." she said, bending down to pick up the bags. However, the female got there first, grabbed them, and glared at Sara before walking away, nose in the air.
Sara felt a flash of emotion, and felt like saying "You, off my planet!", but held her tongue.
"New York City," Katherine said, laughing.
Sara looked at her. "Uh-huh," she said, with the air of someone that had been there, and done that. Sometimes, when they liked the movie a lot, Katherine and Sara would act out pieces of the movie. And Kath had just sung a piece of the movie in question.
"Sing it, girl," someone sang out in a beautiful bronze voice.
Sara and Katherine jumped, then laughed as Jeremiah, Katherine's long-term boyfriend, and colleague actor who played Collins in the musical with them, linked arms with them and their voices all sang out into the station, as they entered into the subway car.
--
Katherine:
Times are gritty, but I'm pretty sure they can't get worse
Sara:
I hear you
Katherine:
It's a comfort to know
When you're singing the hit the road blues
That anywhere else you could possibly go
After New York would be
A pleasure cruise
Jeremiah:
Now you're talking!
Well I'm thwarted by a metaphysic puzzle
And I'm sick of grading papers, that I know
And I'm shouting in my sleep, I need a muzzle
All this misery pays no salary, so
Let's open up a restaurant in Santa Fe
Oh, sunny Santa Fe would be nice
Let's open up a restaurant in Santa Fe
And leave this to the roaches and mice
OH-OH
Everyone:
OH--
Katherine:
You teach?
Jeremiah:
I teach- computer age philosophy
But my students would rather watch TV
Katherine:
America
Everyone:
America!
Jeremiah:
You're a sensitive aesthete
Brush the sauce onto the meat
You could make the menu sparkle with rhyme
You could drum a gentle drum
I could seat guests as they come
Chatting not about heidegger, but wine
Let's open up a restaurant in Santa Fe
Our labors would reap financial gains
Everyone:
Gains, gains, gains
Jeremiah:
We'll open up a restaurant in Santa Fe
And save from devastation our brains
Everyone else:
Save our brains
Everyone:
We'll pack up all our junk and fly so far away
Devote ourselves to projects that sell
We'll open up a restaurant in Santa Fe
Forget this cold Bohemian hell
OH- OH-
Jeremiah:
Do you know the way to Santa Fe?
You know, tumbleweeds... prairie dogs...
Katherine, Jeremiah, and Sara:
Yeah...
--
"Wicked, Jere, you have got to tell me how you knew where we were," Katherine asked her boyfriend excitedly, and they all traded high-fives, and she gave him a hug.
They all sat down, and as Katherine began talking to Jeremiah, trying to figure out where he had been. Sara knew that he was going to propose to her, tonight at a resturant, but Katherine didn't know that – yet. Sara's mind floated back to her past, back to a time when she too, was as happily laughing and talking to her friend.