Wow ... I really thought this would be a two chapter story, but I just can't finish it.
I had written a lot more for this chapter, however it was going on too long, with no sight of a convenient break and much more to say before I launch into a short homecoming /epilogue chapter.
I have struggled to keep this piece interesting... it's so hard to write a conversation between two men, set in one location. Especially when, by necessity the talk is very one sided.
I apologise that this took so long to update, and for it's shortness ... but in the end I decided to cut the thing in half just to get something out.
Hope it's not too disappointing.
Woody turned on his heel, picked up the lamp and strode purposefully to the metal barrier that separated the narrow strip of sandy land beside the highway from a rougher area of scrub, rocky outcrops and scattered trees. About thirty metres beyond this, the land dropped sharply away in the darkness to the precipitous edge of a small ravine. He stepped over into the scrub and turned, beckoning Jane to follow, then started to pick his way cautiously toward a group of several largish jagged rocks that loomed shadowy in the moonlight, surrounded by smaller, smoother boulders.
As he drew close to the rocks, he turned again to see Jane; sitting, facing him and barely visible, but obviously deep in thought, on the roadside barrier.
"You gonna join me?" he yelled above the sudden rumble of a truck that growled past at speed, illuminating Jane's solitary figure in the glare of its headlamps and lighting up his tousled blond mop like a beacon.
Woody smiled. "I was having you on about those coyotes," he yelled again. "They don't bite."
He waited and two minutes later a slight figure scrambled through the gloom and, without a word, prepared to sit on a boulder next to him, peering suspiciously at the rocky surface and wiping bits of debris and dirt off with his hand before he lowered himself.
"Have you ever seen one?" Jane finally asked.
"Not yet."
"Then how do you know they don't bite?"
"Haven't been bitten yet."
"Fair enough,"
Jane rubbed his hands together, ostensibly to clean off the grime from the already dewy rock, but mostly out of nervousness. Then he crossed his legs, folded his arms loosely in his lap and waited for Woody to resume his gentle probing.
"What were you thinking about back there?" Woody asked finally. "Thought for a minute you were going to back out on our deal. You said you'd talk."
Jane turned with a look of resignation, "Yeah ... you weren't about to give up," he asserted. "I was preparing."
Woody examined his features carefully in the dim light before beginning.
"The bad timing … it wasn't bad in itself was it? He paused. "Something good happened."
"Yeah. About as good as it could get," Jane smiled.
It was one of those watery,wistful smiles, and his voice was low and overcome with nostalgia for a precious moment remembered.
"One of Teresa's brothers got into a poker game that turned into a murder. We traveled up to Chicago, where they grew up, to get him out of trouble. It was a bit of a revelation for me; seeing the old family home, her childhood, her old haunts, meeting her folks. Not her parents," he added hastily, as an afterthought. "They both died when she was in her teens."
Jane paused and swallowed and his expression turned sombre for a moment as he remembered.
"That week turned out to be a watershed in our relationship; she mended some fences with her brothers, I got a reminder of what family can be … even when it's broken … well particularly when it's been broken. A conventional family like that was something I never had as a child and I was still learning to build one as an adult … if … I mean … before …"
He broke off abruptly and Woody, noticing the telltale hesitation, interrupted immediately to steer the conversation back to the happy memory.
"There was something else, something else good that made the timing bad."
Jane lifted his head and turned his attention to the moon, so Woody couldn't see his face. He blinked hard.
"That weekend was the first time she told me she loved me … loves me," he explained hoarsely. "All those weeks, after I'd declared myself, I knew she did, love me that is, but she could never bring herself to say the words. Scared of the commitment I guess. But there, at that family christening the following Sunday, with all the people who love her, all the children … and all of them accepting me. Well, ... I think she saw us in a different light."
He swung around to meet Woody's expectant gaze with unashamedly tearful eyes.
"God, I was so happy … and surprised."
"Why surprised?"
"I suppose it made it real. Concrete."
"And that's where the bad timing fits in," Woody confirmed.
Jane's loud, protracted sigh was a cloud of misty melancholy as it floated between them in the cooling night air.
"Yeah … I didn't realise it at the time," he said slowly, exploring his feelings as he went. "I guess, up until then, I'd never felt like she was mine to lose. Not really mine … I don't mean in the ownership sense .. in the sense of commitment … because, of course I was committed to her, I'd … I'll always come back to her…" he rambled on quietly, looking down at his hands, fidgetting and blinking occasionally, as his thoughts coalesced into a stream of verbal diarrhoea. " … I know she doesn't think that though, or didn't … probably doesn't think I'm coming back this time …can't blame her really … don't have a good track record …" he shuddered to a halt, took a big breath and expelled it slowly, allowing his body to slump like a burst balloon.
"Still, at least I know she's sure she loves me," he decided at last looking up at Woody with a dismal little smile.
"And are you going back?" Woody asked tentatively.
Jane's face transformed at once to an expression of shock that verged on indignation.
He sat up straight.
"Of course I am," he confirmed vehemently. "I love her."
Woody didn't react, other than to give him a professionally bland look and sit back with his hands clasped, fingers intertwined. He then proceeded to sum up, in a way that made Jane think he should be talking into a dictaphone, or taking notes and he himself should be reclining on a shiny black faux leather couch.
"So," Woody said. "You love Teresa and you are now sure she loves you. But because of that you're unable to live with the fear of losing her and worried about the friction it's causing between you."
Jane nodded.
"Yeah. That's a fair summation."
"And all this came to a head with that big case you pulled her out of?"
Jane hung his head dejectedly, studying his hands yet again.
No," he admitted. "I could have handled that … with some work. I was trying. Not necessarily succeeding, but prepared to start trying. I was honest with her about it though. Told her I wasn't sure I wouldn't do it again."
His expression became grim. "But the fates conspired. Although ironically what happened next brought the whole thing to a head, which is good ... I suppose."
"The final nail in the coffin?" Woody asked innocently.
He watched as Jane's face gradually blanched, making it appear tinged with blue in the cool light of the moon.
The mentalist sat, suddenly rigid, fragile like an eggshell under a hammer and edgy, like a sprinter awaiting the sound of the starting pistol.
He sat, for a good minute and a half, before the spell broke and he glanced icily in Woody's direction, deliberately avoiding eye contact.
"It's cold out here, and my backside's numb," he announced with an exaggerated shiver.
Then he pushed himself up from his rocky seat and started walking silently toward the parked vans.
Woody was momentarily stunned; he'd thought they were making slow but steady progress, working methodically through to an understanding which would help the poor man find a way home to his love. He'd already, instinctively come to the conclusion that it was where he was meant to be, but now it seemed he had managed to snag another open wound.
By the time he caught up with Jane, who was standing, hands in pockets, waiting at the door of the VW, Woody had figured out the terrible mistake he had made.
"I'm sorry man," he said, unlocking the door and standing aside politely. "Someone died, didn't they?"
"Yeah," Jane mumbled as he passed him and climbed inside without another word. He picked up the keys to his Airstream from where they lay on the bench seat, stared first at Woody, then at the open door, before unexpectedly he heaved a heavy sigh, shoved the keys in his pants pocket, turned around and slumped down at the table, head in his hands.
Woody breathed a sigh of relief. He had fully expected that his clumsy and, as it turned out, highly inappropriate attempt at levity, would see the troubled man fleeing to the security and privacy of his own vehicle.
As he stepped back outside into the dark to both collect his thoughts and to give Jane some much needed space, Woody considered his own behaviour.
A brief period of soul searching, in fact, just a minute or two, confirmed to him that too much time on his own was dulling his social skills and that, perhaps, his concept of professional ethics needed an overhaul. A few hours in the company of an interesting companion, had him interfering in the man's complicated life, opening up old wounds and blundering callously around in a world of pain that he could only imagine.
He wondered if he had been so crass in his past incarnation, as a so called 'professional'. If he had, it seemed that getting away from the difficult business of pontificating on other people's problems, to see the country, nurture their spirits and commune with nature, as Elizabeth had insisted when they were young, had been a very good thing. Certainly, if his skills and empathy had been poor then, he felt tonight had proved they obviously hadn't improved with time.
He and his gal had had a fine time on the road, and she'd seemed happy, so it seemed to him a fine irony that she had been the one to persuade him that they should return to the constraints of the nine to five and city life when Millie had reached school age. Although he couldn't deny his daughter's right to the benefits or otherwise of a conventional education. Anyway, he'd stuck it out til she graduated high school, when his feet got itchy and things got scratchy with Elizabeth. It turned out that she was the one who'd become a pillar of society and a mover and shaker on the local school board. They still loved each other, but couldn't live the same life.
When Woody poked his grizzled head inside again Jane was sitting calmly, in the half light, playing with the worn ring on those magician's fingers that he had been so captivated by earlier. The sadness pervading the atmosphere in the van was almost palpable in its intensity. He didn't say anything or move until Woody sat down opposite, so they were face to face.
What Woody saw was raw, naked and hopeless.
"I'm sorry. I should never have interfered," he apologised. "It's none of my business. I guess being on the road makes you nosy, given a bit of company."
Jane stopped spinning his ring, gave it a fond lingering look, stretched his back out and ran both hands deliberately through his scruffy golden curls.
"You know," he said, with what Woody read as relief. "It's okay. It's probably a good thing. I haven't been good at talking, so it's time I did." He shrugged diffidently. "Anyway, it's not as if we'll ever meet again, don't suppose."
"Still, I shouldn't have pushed," Woody declared, desperately stalling while he tried to figure out his next move.
Jane pre-empted him by getting up quickly and moving to the door.
"I think I have a couple of beers," he said casually. "We may as well finish what we started, don't you think?"
He flashed Woody a half enquiring, half assumptive glance. "You don't have anything more pressing on your agenda, do you?"
In an instant he had disappeared into the now inky night, for the moon was sulking in sympathy behind a mass of cloud, leaving Woody wondering whether this was the man's artful get out plan; leaving him with no chance to protest and nothing to do but listen to the opening and closing of the Silver Bucket's door. Nevertheless, the shrewd hippie's best bet was that, true to his word, his new friend Patrick would be back.
The Airstream felt somehow alien. Once a cosy haven, a reminder that tethered him to who he was, or had been, in those long hot summer days of his early childhood, days filled with noise, laughter and the smell of his mother's cooking, was now chilly, dark and foreboding. Even the subtle glow cast by the light Jane flicked on as he entered gave no warmth and failed to penetrate the far reaches of the van; the end to which he was inexorably drawn.
As he searched his little larder for something to eat, he tried but failed to ignore the bed, half hidden in the gloom. He tried not to look at the body shaped indentation, half disguised by a crumpled blanket, where he had done his best to catch some sleep during his night on the road.
He'd only made the effort because he'd scared himself half to death by almost driving into a ditch in his exhaustion. Ironic, really, considering how often in his life he hadn't given a damn whether he lived or died.
The indentation looked hollow and cold.
About as hollow as his heart felt right now.
The pillow on his side of the bed was awkwardly folded in half, where he'd pummeled it into submission in a vain attempt to find comfort. Beside it lay the crisp, uncrumpled pillow where Lisbon's beautiful head should have rested.
If any scene could paint a picture of his loneliness, this was it, he thought.
It hurt. So he tried not to think.
Having found what he was looking for he shoved a few bits and pieces in his pockets and opened the fridge to search out some drinks. As he turned, his eye was caught by the moonlight reflecting off the shiny screen of his cell phone, sitting on the passenger seat where he'd left it. The urge to pick it up was compelling, yet he couldn't bring himself to do it.
He knew there would be missed calls and he knew who they would be from; he'd missed one already, that he knew of. He was ashamed that he'd been both guilty but also undeniably relieved when his phone had started to squirm in his pocket, and he'd been unable to answer it as he'd been busy taking a leak in the grubby diner where he'd stopped for that cardboard breakfast. His subconscious had contrived to make his normally nimble fingers fumble horribly with his pant zipper until the squirming stopped and he hadn't been able to pluck up the courage to even look to see who called.
It wasn't the he didn't want to talk to her.
Honestly it wasn't.
In fact it was breaking his heart not to be able to hear her voice. Wouldn't have mattered if she'd been whispering sweet nothings, or screaming blue murder at him.
He just really wanted to hear her.
The trouble was he had no idea what he was going to say, except that he was sure, as sure as the day is long, that whatever he said to her would be the wrong thing.
And not knowing what to say was not something he was very accustomed to, until he came back from the island and he became unsure of where he stood with her.
Still he'd felt it was better to say nothing, than to say something that he hadn't thought through.
So now the damn cell sat there taunting him for being a coward and he was behaving like it was his worst enemy on the other end, not the love of his life. The probability was that if it had been his worst enemy, he would have picked up; just for the challenge.
He studiously ignored it anyway, shook himself down, gathered up his beers, tried to muster up some optimism and left the thing to sit there on it's own. Shining in the dark of the Airstream.
So there you have it ... not much progress, but Jane's story is a long one I guess, and his problems many. I think it would have been better as one long chapter ... but that was never gonna happen.
I'll try to update more quickly next time, but bear with me please ...
I usually don't ask for reviews, but some feedback would be very much appreciated.