Sorry that I didn't update yesterday but I figured that I updated two long chapters the day before so I don't feel as guilty as I would otherwise.
McGee seemed lighter during the dinner, Abby thought as she stared up the ceiling of her hotel room. He lost his grumpy persona and opened up. It was as if a weight had been lifted from him. Abby squinted, mentally comparing the younger, thinner, jollier McGee with the older, plumper, sober McGee. She came to the conclusion that, although she much preferred the McGee she had been so close to so many years ago, she was glad that they had gone out to dinner and reconnected.
They hadn't really spoken much about what had happened in the twenty-five years that they had not spoken. There was still a chasm between them which had not been closed. Abby did not know where McGee lived, where he worked or who he was friends with now. The conversation had remained staid in general, airy topics such as music and films.
Abby wished that she could open up to McGee but she didn't want to push him away before she had even managed to pull him close. There was a taboo hanging over her which McGee may not be able to get past. And, anyway, Abby wasn't available.
The trill of her phone in her bag dredged the gloom and forced her to resurface. She grimaced when she saw the number. Her face became duller and more jaded as the man on the other end talked monotonously. It was as if her face was being painted over with a vat of industrial grey paint, her chalk white features smeared with thick gloop.
The man stopped talking at last and paused, expecting Abby to pitch in. 'I know that I am not allowed out of the state for anything less than an emergency,' she said quietly. 'And I will return within the week.' She sighed. 'Thank the Judge for me. I owe him.'
The phone dropped heavily to the carpeted floor from her limp hand. Any spark which had been ignited when with McGee had been instantly extinguished. She sat up and rubbed her forehead. She needed alcohol.
She walked out of the hotel door, pulling the flaps of her coat together to shield her from the vicious wind. Glancing both ways down the street, she spotted a dimly lit bar across the road. She trotted towards it, her eyelids heavy, and paused outside to take stock of the building she was about to enter.
Bland walls, punctuated with peeling posters advertising long gone circuses and movies which had come out on DVD months ago. A single grimy window, curtained with bottle-green polyester, allowed her to peer inside. It was fairly full, though there were bare patches dotted about the cramped room. Most of the punters were balding or life-weary, their faces lined with sorrows. She was about to move away and push open the door but a solitary figure, hunched over the bar as if he would be better suited to Notre Dame, caught her eye. He had familiar caramel-brown hair.
She set her mouth in a straight line, reserving judgement on Tony nursing a beer before it was even seven o'clock in the evening since she was about to do the same thing, and walked in to join him on the empty stool beside her old friend.
Tony glanced up as she heaved herself up next to him. 'Abby,' he greeted drily, downing the remainder of his glass. 'What do you want?' he asked grimly.
Abby considered the choice of poisons. 'Bourbon,' she requested.
Tony raised one eyebrow but nodded at the bartender and repeated her order, adding another beer for himself.
They drank in silence, finishing their respective drinks before Tony ordered another two of the same.
'I thought that I'd see Ziva in here before you turned up,' Tony remarked flatly.
Abby frowned. 'Why? What's wrong with Ziva?'
Tony blinked slowly. 'You seemed the cheeriest down in the basement,' he said, not replying to Abby's question since he didn't know the answer himself.
Abby sighed and shrugged. She couldn't work out whether Tony actually gave a shit or whether he was just blowing air through his mouth. In any case, she didn't want to answer.
Tony reached the bottom of his third glass since Abby entered. 'Another,' he called, his words slurring slightly.
'How many have you had?'
Tony turned to Abby and shrugged, his shoulders out of time with each other.
Abby rolled her eyes. 'Maybe you should stop,' she suggested helpfully.
Tony shook his head and stood up, swigging down half of his new glass. He had moved onto whisky by that point. Rocking the boat a little bit. He tapped his pocket and pulled out his black cigarette lighter, moving towards the front door.
Through the grimy window, Abby could see him light up his cigarette and stand, lone on the pavement grey, puffing away his life. His lungs were already fucked up from the plague, she noted despondently. Smoking could only serve to increase the fucked-upness of them.
He dropped his cigarette on the ground and returned to his drink.
Abby watched him plough his way through a succession of drinks. 'How often do you do this?'
Tony did not reply at once but finished his hi-ball of bourbon. 'What do you mean?'
'How often do you go to a bar and just drink and drink until you pass out?'
Tony shrugged. It wasn't as if he set out each night intent on waking up the next morning on his living room floor, still dressed in the same crumpled clothes that he had set out for work in the morning before, and with his stomach churning and lurching. He did not have a penchant for starting each day with the base of the toilet bowl spinning beneath him. It just happened like that.
More to come on Abby next chapter... This one was shorter than the others but I think that they are going to stop being so long because I don't have another exam for ten days which means that I can start having a life again. I will try and update every day though with the chapters at least 1000 words long. I will just try not to go too far over that. I do have two stories on the go, remember.