"What an unexpected pleasure," Alice emphasized. "Would you join me for dinner?" The last phrase was put so casually that Maura almost didn't realize that a request had been made, and one that demanded an answer.
"Alice, what are you doing here?!" Maura gasped, dumbfounded.
"Oh dear, it is so good to see you!" Alice advanced, embracing Maura and kissing her on both cheeks, allowing a hint of a sly smile. Alice's hand lingered on Maura's shoulder.
Maura felt a small sensory jolt at the embrace, whether from surprise, attraction, or what could have been a faint sense of foreboding, Maura could not tell.
"Your table is ready," the hostess interrupted, "please follow me."
Maura stood still. Her mind had helplessly locked up, unable to process the inapposite appearance of someone whom she had never expected to see again. Alice took advantage of Maura's hesitancy by pushing Maura gently in the direction the hostess had gone. Maura followed on instinct.
After they were seated Alice quickly explained, "I'm so sorry, my presence must be a shock. I got the invitation, you see, and I'm afraid I can't make it, but I still wanted to see you."
"You what?"
"Got the wedding invitation?"
"How?" was all Maura could wonder.
"Oh, it was easy, rather. I saw you listed online as the Chief Medical Examiner, congratulations by the way darling, I wouldn't have expected any less from a mind as brilliant as yours," Alice stringed her sentences together too fast for Maura to catch up. Or was it Alice's intoxicating British lilt that made it so tempting to focus on form over substance? "Any way, I happened to be in town just today and tomorrow and I didn't want to miss the chance to reconnect," Alice's hand clasped Maura's for emphasis, "before I leave so I called up your assistant Susie."
"She's not my assistant," Maura said automatically and wondered at it. Really Maura? This is what you take issue with, out of everything that has been done and said in the last ten minutes?
"Hm, well she identified herself as your assistant," Alice continued, questioning.
Maura was off-kilter. Why did Alice always have this effect on her, she thought dumbly. Maura looked down at her place setting and took in a breath to collect herself.
"I mean, she's not that sort of assistant," she said to her plate.
"Oh, well, no matter, she told me exactly where I would find you tonight. A bit of a creature of habit? I would have thought that I had disrupted your craving for routine a little more permanently" Maura identified this last comment as a subtle dig at her lifestyle choices. "But please, tell me all about Jane," Alice continued.
Except Maura's mind was still reeling. "How?" Maura repeated, her mind a blur but vaguely realizing that the key to understanding any of this lay in that one word.
"I'm sorry," Alice looked quizzically back at Maura, as if she doubted Maura's ability to understand even the most basic of facts of her circumstances. "Did you say how?"
Maura cleared her throat and tried again to intelligibly elicit an explanation for what she would have considered, only an hour ago, to be an extremely unlikely occurrence - sitting across from Alice and having being asked about her upcoming wedding to Jane. Serendipitously seeing an old acquaintance, Maura could understand. Having an old acquaintance seek out a meeting, however aggressively, she could still understand. Running into exes was also bound to happen. But if Alice was to be believed, and Maura was not quite sure that was true, given their history, something even more highly improbable had happened. "How did you get an invitation?" Maura managed, and followed it up with a quick clearing of her throat, as if to soften the implicit harshness of the question.
Alice gave her a look of (faux?) insult. "Wow, I remember you being blunt, but I don't remember you being quite this bad."
Maura felt a little shamed by being caught in this small faux pas, memories of her mother's (or more often her governess's) long instructions on proper manners causing her to blush slightly in embarrassment. "I'm sorry," she smoothed her hands on her slacks, collecting herself, "I'm just so surprised to see you."
"Oh dear! Of course, I'm sorry, you must be frazzled, what with all you've been up to! Did I already tell you how pleased I am for you?" Alice prodded on.
"Thanks, we're both…," Maura started to say but Alice cut her off.
"I mean really, not just a medical examiner but 'chief'? That must give you some great satisfaction." Alice beamed at her and once again grasped Maura's hands.
Maura had lived a life filled with awkward conversations in which she had misinterpreted signs and social cues enough to earn her various negative nicknames. But this particular conversation was one of the most bewildering she had ever endured. Just when she felt like she understood what Alice was talking about, she was thrown for another loop. And Maura couldn't help the suspicion that her confusion was Alice's goal.
Their relationship had been brief, but intense. Part of that intensity came from Alice's unpredictability. From their first chance meeting on the plane, Alice always had made Maura feel a little off-kilter, a little like she was behind the 8-ball. But there was also something so seductive about Alice that kept drawing Maura in. It wasn't just that Alice had an easy charm about her, she was also compelling - the same way a hypnotist is. And it was that sense of being compelled that made Maura feel like Alice was actively manipulating all of their interactions, then and now.
It was true that they had made a real connection, once upon a time. They were both smart, and in the same way—prioritizing rational thought over the messiness of emotions. They were both unconventional. Maura thought little of bucking social norms or conventions and didn't typically experience strong feelings of guilt. It was partly these tendencies that led her to question whether she was more like her father, the sociopathic killer, than she would have liked to believe. But that wasn't the first time she had considered whether the term "sociopath" applied to her. She had actually first explored the diagnostic criterion for "sociopath" during one of her first cases as a medical examiner. The case remained unsolved but the primary suspect - the one everyone knew was the killer but nobody could prove - had reminded her eerily of Alice. Could it be, she had wondered? And what did that suggest about Maura herself, that she and Alice shared so much in common?
Perhaps Alice noticed this sudden turn in Maura's demeanor. Or perhaps Alice was trying to push Maura further off-balance as she suddenly stood up from the table, "But here I am chatting your ear off when we both have things to get to." Their food had arrived not more than five minutes ago, but Alice started packing her things."
Dumbfounded, Maura reached for her bag to pull her wallet out.
"Oh no, I already gave the hostess my card while I was waiting for you and instructed her charge it by 8 pm. And look at the time, 8:06 and I'm sure I'll be late." Alice started threading her arms through her coat. "But I'm so sorry we didn't get a chance to speak more."
Maura shook her head in reply.
"Say," she said, with all the subtlety of a child actor, "my flight isn't until noon. Could I swing by your office and buy you a cup of coffee?"
"Coffee?" Maura stuttered, also rising to her feet.
"Great idea, I'll meet you tomorrow." Before she left, Alice looked Maura up and down like she was a delectable dish. Alice gave Maura a few seconds of too-intense eye contract before leaning over and gently kissing her cheeks again, this time with the last kiss just glancing off the edge of Maura's mouth. Alice's fingers gently caressed Maura's shoulder. Maura felt her insides squirm under the sudden wave of seductive energies emanating from Alice. Alice leaned in one more time to whisper in Maura's ear, lips grazing her sensitive lobe, "I'll see you tomorrow."
...
When the phone rang, Jane had been holed up in her hotel room reading some more of Frost's "materials," including a quote from George Bernard Shaw: "Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?"
"Hey babe!" Jane answered.
"Jane, I'm so glad you picked up," Maura said breathlessly. Maura started explaining everything that had happened that evening as best as she could, but it all came out in a jumble largely incomprehensible to Jane. The one concept that did stick out to Jane was… But how could it be?
"You what?!" Jane exclaimed.