CHAPTER FIVE: A Rain Dance

January 2, 1993

Mac's hands were colder than winter's breath as he picked up the pay phone from its cradle and pushed coins into it. Huddling in closer until he couldn't feel the prick of the downsizing blizzard outside of the booth, he shut the flimsy door behind him and dialed a number from memory.

It felt like cruel eternity as he waited for someone to answer, as anxiety pricked his aorta, as the rings echoed repeatedly in his reddened left ear while his hands struggled to hold the phone in place. He closed his eyes to block out the thoughts and the nervousness itself, and just when he had finally felt calm enough to hold the phone with only one hand, someone picked up:

"Hello? Happy New Year!"

He almost dropped the receiver.

He tried to regain himself by clearing his throat. As a pregnant pause came up in the inactivity, the person's breathing on the other line quickened.

"Mac? I- is that you?"

He gritted his teeth. He thought that they were starting to chatter.

"Yes, hello Claire," he answered uncertainly, trying to gauge her tone from her previous question. He continued talking as he still tried to gauge, shaking his head at the striking difficulty this phone call was proving to be. "Happy New Year to you too. How are … how are you doing?"

"I'm okay as okay gets, Mac. I've been here in the office for almost everyday."

"Even during the holidays?"

"Yes, even during the holidays."

He was still gauging the approach that he needed to use on his wife (or on their current situation), and when that last word cruised out of the telephone, Guilt got up from his bed and started to do a rain dance. He was an ass of a husband – he should've been there for their first holidays as man and wife, he should've been there on evenings that they usually spend together in front of the fire, talking about anything that came into their minds.

But he wasn't. And that was all the difference he needed.

"Look Claire, I know that it has been sometime since we last saw each other –"

"- It has been two weeks, Mac. I've been counting."

That stung, a lot more than she probably intended it to, but it did for him. Much like most of the females he identified with, Claire was difficult; she was beyond beating around the bush.

The truth was that he counted too: he counted the seconds, the minutes, and the hours he stared listlessly at the telephone in Stella's den, trying to make up his mind on whether to call her or not. He never brought himself to do so, until today. Until today when he decided that he was not angry with Claire anymore. Disappointed, yes, somewhat disgusted, yes, but not angry. He could take that. He could be a man and take that.

For some unfathomable basis, he didn't call her on Stella's phone. He had to cash in a fifty dollar bill for coins and go to the pay phone right beside the apartment's stoop. That decision, no matter how weird it was to make, was probably paying off. Probably.

"Fine, two weeks," he parroted weakly, wanting nothing more but to get whatever he needed to say over with. "And I'm sorry for that. I really am. I hate what I did and I shouldn't have let those two weeks past without us talking … but let me tell you something you didn't give me the chance to: I don't want us to give up. I still want to make thi- this work." He took a deep breath, the air chilling the tubercles of lungs. "I still love you, Claire. Even if what you did really … hurts."

"You tell me you love me," his wife countered, her breath coming up short and ragged. "So you … you'll try and understand what I'm trying to tell you? What I want for both of us?"

"Not having kids? Is that WHAT you really want?" Mac bit his lip hard, then stopped when he tasted the faintest hint of blood. The warning beep about his last remaining seconds on the pay phone started, and he struggled to push a few more coins in it as he talked, "Isn't it we came to New York for our family? What is this, a wild goose chase? Is this a game, Claire?"

"There you go again! You're not understanding me!"

"What do you –" Mac ran out of voice, and he fluctuated. He hated himself for that - for showing her his defenselessness - and to make up for it, he hit the clear glass of the booth's wall. The sound of flesh against solidity was a painful echo in the small entrapment. "Goddamn it! We're not going through this again, Claire! Just tell me the REAL reason why you don't want my kids!"

"I told you why! It's because I'm not ready!"

"You're lying TO ME!"

"I'm not, Mac, stop pushing me-"

"I want the fucking truth!"

"Don't use that tone, you have no right to use that on me when you're just calling from a phone in your whore's house –"

When those words came out of his wife's mouth, everything stopped. His mind, her breathing on the phone, the winter chill, the pain, the echoes. Everything came to a screeching halt.

Mac's eyes widened slowly, as each letter of the lexicon sunk into his system. First, there was disbelief, then there was panic, then anger --- the anger that he had worked so hard to get rid off for the past days. It was right behind him, urging him to open his mouth and start to REALLY talk.

"What did you say?" he said, clutching the phone so tight his knuckles were turning white, and pressing it against his ear so hard that his skin started flushing. He heard something behind him rattle, but he ignored it in his anger. The last thing he wanted to do was to tear himself off of this platform.

Claire hesitated, and when she came back on the line, her voice was meek and unsure. "No, Mac, I didn't mean it that way, I really didn't …"

"What DID you say, Claire? That Stella's my whore? Is that what you are implying?"

Suddenly, the tone from the other line switched, as if a personality change had occurred inside of his wife and she snapped. Her voice was icy - the bite of her words stinging - as the next sentences poured out of her:

"FINE! So that's what I meant!" she shouted, her voice vibrating from the receiver to the body of the phone. "Is that what you want to hear, Mac Taylor? Do you want to hear the damn truth?

"I'm sick and tired of her! Of your undying devotion to her! It's like you owe her your life, as if she saved you and you have to offer her your damn life --- and dammitt, sometimes she's more important to YOU than I am!

"Yes, I AM implying that she's your whore. You expect me to believe that within the time you've spent at her apartment, wait – it's not really HER apartment because YOU pay for it -, that nothing's happened between you two? I see what goes on when you look at her and when she looks at you, Mac! The woman adores you and it makes me sick to my stomach! She looks at you as if you're, you're goddamn Zeus! And you look at her as if she's a little nymph you have to rescue EVERY TIME! And if you tell me that 'nothing's going on', I will highly doubt that statement because …"

He wasn't able to reply for a long minute, even if Claire already faltered and even if it was obviously his cue to assure her that he was taking it all in, that he was still listening to her.

Every single idea that she had given him killed him slowly. It was as if he was standing in front of a firing squad, and when she started, the guns started shooting him too. And just when he thought he was about to die – just when he was sure that he was about to feel relief from all the inflicted pain -, she suddenly stopped, the guns stopped, and all he wanted was for her to continue so that he would die. So that he would have nothing to say to her anymore. So that she would cover all bases and he would only have to accept them all.

But now, he had to say something.

Something.

Mac released a breath that he had been intentionally holding during that long minute, and when he lost that breath, he lost almost all of his bearings.

"… Because why, Claire? Why would you doubt the truth, me?"

"Because," she choked out, "I know that you love her. It goes beyond explanation and my rationale, but you do love her. I know it, Mac. You talk about her as if she's God's gift … to you and you only. You talk about her as if you own her."

He started stammering, and he didn't know if it was because what she was telling him was false or if she was getting too close to his buried truth. "N- no, Cl- Claire. Stella's just a frie- friend, she's not my- my whore, and I- I only love …"

"Don't lie to me, Mac, please. T- that's the reason why I can't have children with you. How … how can I have children with a man who's other half belongs to another? How can I expect him to be faithful to me and our family in the long run?" Claire's voice started fading into softness, fragility. "How can I be sure that I'll still have you a few years from now? How can I be sure that … she wouldn't, she wouldn't …"

"S- she wouldn't what, Claire?"

"That she- she wouldn't own you, too. All of you." Then she added in a raw whisper, as if it was the worst secret of the universe, "I know that she almost does."

Shit.

Mac had nothing to say, nothing else to do, and nothing was registering to him. He stood there for sometime, trying to start disputing what Claire just opened out to him, but he was incapable of doing so.

So he did the next best logical thing: he placed the phone down.

"Mac?"

He turned around so fast he knocked the phone down from its cradle, and he had to struggle to get it back on again. After that, he faced probably the worst thing (and the last person) he wanted to encounter for that day:

Stella Bonasera stood in front of him, between the open doors of the booth, clad in her light blue parka and thick denims, with a ratty old backpack on one shoulder and a stack of medical books hanging from her hands. The tip of her nose was red from the cool breeze, and so were the rims of her eyes, trapping her green liquid diamonds within a fiery island.

It dawned to him - like a thunder bolt from the god of gods himself- that she was crying AND that she had heard everything he said. The noise he ignored a while ago was not just nothing, it was her opening the phone booth's door.

"God, Stella, I'm sorry –" he told her at once, raising his arms to take her by the shoulders and convince her that whatever she heard was only from a rocky couple's perspective --- it was spontaneous, irrational, and stupid. She should never believe in it.

But as he drew closer, when his fingertips touched her clothed shoulders, she shook him off with a force that surprised him.

"No, Mac, I'm okay, I should be the one who's sorry because … I was going- going to call you for dinner and I got home e- early and …" A tear reappeared at the corner of her right eye, sinking like a drop of crystallized snowflake onto the corner of her mouth. She abruptly bent her head down and wiped it. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have …" Her voice grew thick, and it was the sound of rushing molasses in his ears. He started to get alarmed.

"Stella please, listen to me," he urged, moving forward to hold her in between his grasp, but she pulled back once again. In her action's wake, the heavy books that she was carrying dropped on a pile of wet snow in front of them. Neither made a move to pick them up.

He glanced at the books and saw that the pasty snow was seeping into the plastic covers and was about to ruin the pages, so he dropped down on his knees and began to gather them in his arms. While doing this, he opened his mouth to speak to her. But in his peripheral vision, Stella's legs trudged towards the opposite direction, and then she began to run.

Mac raised his head up in shock. He shouted her name, asking for her to wait, to stop, to listen --- but she didn't.

He stood up, with the damp and heavy volumes in his arms, and helplessly watched as Stella's figure disappeared beneath the shadows of the street lights.

He went straight to Central Park after placing the medical books safely inside Stella's apartment to dry. He didn't understand why, but he also didn't allow himself to second guess. He only followed his instincts to the very end and walked all the way to Central Park. He made sure that his thoughts were following his long stroll, that they were there to keep him company, and to criticize or praise him whenever he needed them to.

Reaching the west end of the park, he knew (theoretically) that if Stella ran all the way from her apartment to the park, she wouldn't stray far. She would find the nearest snow- covered benches, swat the ice off, and sit on it to think. He knew for a fact that she loved thinking – she did it quite often, actually. It always gave him the impression that she was alone, or left alone, most of her life. Maybe she didn't trust any of her friends with her thoughts. Maybe she simply just had enough time to sit down and contemplate on whatever she wanted to.

As for him, he never had the time to stop and solely think. He always had something up his sleeve. Sure, he would think when he was working, or when he was filing papers or going on a long drive from the Bronx to Queens to arrest a suspect, but never like what Stella did. He never had the chance to just be by himself and think, to stay put for thirty minutes or an hour, and to reflect on what was going on in his life. Whenever he and Claire fought, he went to Stella. Whenever he was alone or when Claire was out with her friends, he still went to her. Whenever he needed someone to talk to during his graveyard shifts, he called Stella up. And whenever he needed to think, he would rather go to her apartment and talk his thoughts out with her.

Remembering Claire's words in his heads, he scrunched his face up.

Maybe she was right: fine, so he DID adore the woman and he did love her. But not in that sense. It was in a different level. His heart belonged only to his wife, but Stella … it was as if she was meant to be there in his life. It was as if as soon as she entered his realm, she fit … and that was all he needed to know back then. He never thought that he would have to define what he had for her in the long run.

Or maybe the problem was that he never wanted to define what he had for Stella, period.

The Park was a blanket of smooth whiteness and static tranquility as he stepped into the clearing, shuffled snow from his boots, and raised his head to look out for a fluff of curly hair. As he had expected, she didn't wander far away: She was seated on the closest bench from his stand point, the hood of her parka dangling at her back from her lapels, her shoulders hunched, and her whole upper body weight supported by skinny arms that were resting on her knees. Her eyes were still teary, her mouth twisted in a dire line, and her nose and cheeks red from both the cold and her emotions.

Mac immediately felt an awful panging in his heart upon the sight of her so defeated, so alone. If it would make Stella feel better, he would certainly try and define what he had for her or what they had together. Surely it would also make him feel somewhat better.

He drew closer to her, gauging - yet again - her reaction to his presence for what seemed like the nth time for that day. She didn't seem to either mind or be frantic about it, - or maybe she was simply ignoring his presence. Nevertheless, he decided to be bold.

Brushing off snow from the space beside her, he sat down and mimicked her pose.

"When you were four," he started spontaneously, and Stella cocked her head towards him to indicate that she was listening, "you were sick and tired of staying inside the orphanage. There was this little girl who kept bullying you to give her your erasers, and you sat idly as she stole all of your erasers – every one of them, everyday. You hated the nuns because they made you brush your teeth every after the five meals you take in a day. You hated it that your friends had some stories to share about their parents and what their lives were before the orphanage, and you didn't.

"Then on a rainy evening in November, September, I don't know, the month escapes me --- you sprang out of your window and tried to run away. Thank God the gardener caught you before you had pneumonia."

Stella chuckled slightly at the memory, and he shared that little laugh with her. Afterwards, he continued.

"Before you were eighteen - a few months before you hit the mark -, your current boyfriend, your first love, broke your heart over the bullying little girl that you hated so darn bad you believed it was pre- natal. Rather than crying alone in your room, rather than allowing your friends to console you, you told the nuns that you're independent enough to find a good scholarship and go to college. They let you out of the orphanage before you were even supposed to get out. You turned your back on your former home and never revisited.

"During your first year of college, you did your boyfriend's thesis proposal and got caught by your favorite professor. You couldn't take the disappointment in your professor's eyes when he was reprimanding you, so you quit college, broke up with your then- boyfriend, and vowed never to return to that University again.

"On the day we met - two years ago - you had nothing with you because your boyfriend had everything you ever owned. You told me that he had a little arsonist streak in him, but we both know that that is not true. You just didn't want to go back to his apartment, to face him, and deal with the aftermath. You opted to accept a complete stranger's proposal of a new life than turning around and trying to amend what you already have. You'd rather lose everything you own than face what you set behind you."

"Is this going somewhere, Mac?" Stella said, blinking away incoming tears and sniffling back those that dared to appear. She shook her head and intertwined her cold fingers in front of her. "B- because if you have a point, I'm waiting for you to make it."

"Yes, I do have a point," he answered, running his hand across his chin. He gritted his teeth until he heard the sounds of sliding molars in his head, and then stopped when he couldn't take it anymore.

"Is this what you do, Stella? All your life, is this what you're good at doing?"

For the first time that day, she gazed at him. Her eyes betrayed her confusion, but he allowed her to fool him, or them, for the meantime.

"What do you mean? What do I do?" she asked, a tear emanating at the corner of her eye and taking that familiar pattern down her face.

Mac reached over and wiped the tear away with his thumb, then he took her frozen hands in his warmer ones.

"Do you always have to run away?"

In alarm, Stella tried to pull her hands back, but he held them firmly in place. She darted her eyes from his, but he redirected them back to his stare by squeezing her wrists gently.

He smiled at her, ironically. "See what I mean?"

She blinked slowly, understanding dawning in her shiny green irises, and she ultimately gave up trying to escape him.

"You know that I can't ever run away from you, Mac," she sighed, wallowing in her loss.

He waited for her to elaborate on that, but she didn't.

"C'mon," he urged, standing up and releasing her from his constraints. Mac opened his arms out to her. "Let's go back to your apartment and talk, okay? Will that make you feel better? Will that make you stay put?"

Stella licked her lips in contemplation, then immediately grinned - that marvelously conjured grin of hers. And despite the tiredness in her eyes and her lanky demeanor, she did step into his arms and allowed him to hold her --- just like the way she did for him whenever he needed someone real, whenever he needed a friend after his fights with Claire.

And just like he always felt her do during those times, he kept her in his embrace all the way home, until they were both safe from the cold outside.

END of CHAPTER FIVE