Disclaimer:All of the characters are the property of Dick Wolf. I thank him, the writers, the directors and all the great actors who brought them "to life" for our benefit. Any "liberties" I have taken with them stems from my fond admiration (and a few personal quirks I will seek "help" for).
AN: This story is not set within the accepted "canon" for the characters as it is only officially portrayed by the TV series. So I get to "fool around" with them in ways in which they've never been seen, stretching those limits and suspending the "reality" that is "fiction" to start with…now there's a contradiction in terms!!!
(And yeah Goren I know the proper word for that is oxymoron…now quit interrupting I'm busy…and possibly…maybe…later…if you behave)
I thought it was time something worked out right for Bobby given the trials I sometimes put the poor guy through…and some of this stems from incidents really happened to me…and if y'all gonna "write yourself" into a story, why not be bold about it?
THE TOURIST TRAP
As they entered the Fifth Avenue entrance lobby of The Empire State Building, Alex Eames turned to her partner Bobby Goren whose attention seemed to be more on the art deco features than this frustrating case they were working on.
"Shall we take the elevator or the stairs?" she asked.
"It's a hundred and two floors to the observatory and gift shop Eames" he replied. "And one thousand eight hundred and sixty steps. I think you chose a bad day to wear heels if you fancied a work out"
"I sometimes think humour is wasted on you Bobby" she muttered seriously thinking to bring one of those heels down sharply on his size thirteen's. Making it seem it was an accident. As she had on previous occasions he "made her" do it.
He said nothing as they turned the corner to the elevators where a line of tourists snaked three times round the hall and which Eames used her badge to by-pass. What some took at first to be ill-mannered behaviour and resulted in muttering and mumbling in perhaps ten languages, before people realised they were cops.
Nor did they discuss the strategy to interview a witness worked in the shop over thousand feet above their heads as they squeezed into the car with a tour group of Australians. Because Bobby spent the whole ride revealing more of the cornucopia of facts he seemed to know about the building. The over ten million bricks in the façade of the building, the fact it had 6500 windows, as well as the colours and dates for the special floodlighting events of the top thirty floors. The group from Perth very grateful, since the saving of time at the in-house exhibit would allow them more to "down a few tinnys" at lunchtime.
Eames knew it was a mistake to ask what that meant, as Bobby spent the time it took to transfer elevators for the next stage of the trip explaining it referred to beer. Specifically cans of beer or if you were Australian "tinnys". On account the English of the Antipodes was based more on British linguistic usage. Which usually, but not always, meant what an American called a "can", their shared, former colonial masters called a "tin". The term deriving from the fact that was the metal from which the earliest types were made. Or more accurately the plating as tin was rust resistant to hold liquids.
Bobby could become very pedantic at times and Eames was grateful for the crush of numbers in the next elevator car because she would still stay upright if she fell asleep. Whilst he expounded on other examples of "what George Bernard Shaw once said". Like "sidewalk" was "pavement", a "hallway" a "corridor" to a Brit (except in domestic premises) and what they were in a "lift". Though the Australians seemed to enjoy it especially as Bobby also seemed to know an awful lot about the differences each side of the Atlantic about sexual slang.
How in Great Britain "fanny" was anatomically speaking the opposite side of the body to the USA (though only in women) and considered by some there almost as vulgar to say as…a word a slight screeching from the elevator (or was it lift?) brakes thankfully drowned out. Leaving Eames to conclude Bobby's claim to have spent time in Oxford chasing "co-eds" (a term apparently almost extinct over there) was probably true. And that he had succeeded in catching a proportion of them.
Her irritation with him that morning only grew greater when they got to their destination as Bobby wandered off around the shop, leaving her to question the witness alone. It wasn't like this was the crime scene or the home or office of a suspect, where objects he saw often offered him those strange insights led ultimately to the solution of a crime.
Bobby was content to duck behind a wall of t-shirts sufficient in number, style, design and size range to outfit the entire population of a Mid Western state. Assuming they all wanted to boast "The Empire State Building Rocks", and he couldn't but think that at a hundred and two floors up, it was a very poor choice of slogan. But Eames' irritation with him he knew exactly how to induce (in more ways than deliberately not laughing at her jokes) and her pre-occupation with the witness, gave him the chance to do what he wanted.
To search amongst the variety of souvenir pens and pencils. For indelible purple marker pens to add to his growing collection. Bobby never set out to acquire such a large number, but tracking down an exact match for shade and thickness of the felt tip was proving frustrating. A match for the one used to write those poems about him on the female rest room walls at 1PP, which the contract cleaning crew alerted him to so often. Poems whose bad spelling, weak stylistic form and poor rhyming technique he was used to. Though the content about him was luridly imaginative, always wrong and often anatomically impossible. Or if not impossible, very uncomfortable and not things he found especially pleasurable. They might be some female's "dream come true" but those poems were at the root of his worst nightmares.
Bobby had lost count of the purple marker pens he'd purchased all over New York in recent months and was just glad he had size thirteen feet. Not only did they come in useful to intimidate male suspects with one of those anatomical legends, but he now needed three of his shoeboxes to store the pens. Shoved under his bed, but labelled and sorted for the closeness of match to that used by an author, or authors, whose creativity would be better expressed at Bellevue in some sort of therapy session. They might do well to take spelling and grammar lessons at the same time.
He'd just snuck to the counter to pay cash so as to not leave a credit card trail he might live to regret, when he realised the woman ahead in the line was in difficulty. Not the brunette browsing through postcards but the older one, no question her mother. You could see the resemblance between them and Bobby could tell from the accent the more mature lady was British. He knew none of them ever spoke like Dick Van Dyke had in "Mary Poppins" and had once witnessed a whole room full of Brits, rolling on the floor weak with laughter whenever he appeared on screen during a showing of the movie. An accent, one of them had assured Bobby, got Dick more laughs than he ever had in any other of his appearances on British TV networks, when he was trying to be funny.
Bobby listened to the exchange as the older woman said to the assistant behind the counter. "Do you have any souvenir pencils without rubbers on the end?"
Which made the young man's eyebrows rise almost as high as the building they were in (opened in 1931) and then respond with a stiff "Excuse me?"
The unfortunate woman looked behind her for a moment to see whose path she was blocking. But then Bobby knew in the UK if you wished someone to repeat something they said "Pardon?" or more colloquially, "Say again?" or "Sorry?" and if you met an ignorant Brit, "Eh? You what?"
"The pencils over there?" she indicated. "They all have rubbers on the end. Do you have any without them please?"
The assistant behind the counter sniggered and waved over his friend. "This lady says our pencils all have rubbers on the end. Now that's a first"
Bobby knew the Brits might have a reputation for being cool and polite but he could see the senior getting annoyed by the seeming stupidity of the staff serving. And heard the way with cut glass clarity of accent, emphasis on each syllable and at a speed a trainee stenographer could manage, she said once again. "Rubbers on the pencils. Do you have any without them?"
Sensing muttering behind him in the line and seeking to help, Bobby stepped forward. At the same time as the daughter realised her parent was having some sort of problem and turned from the postcards. It meant she ended up stepping on his size thirteen's, but luckily for him she wasn't wearing the four-inch heeled, black patent leather that for some reason Eames had on today. He sometimes wondered if she still did some part-time undercover work with the Vice Squad when he saw some of her clothes.
"Oh hell Mum" said the brunette in a mid Atlantic tone just as Bobby said "I think I can help you ma'am"
For a moment they looked at each other. Her upwards and him in a downwards direction, which given his height was usually the case with women. And then with that fractional eye lingering look in certain areas of the anatomy. The sort the human genetic code pre-programmed into both sexes to ensure the continuation of the species. Though as her gaze met his feet and one of hers brows twitched, Bobby suspected she knew that "urban legend" too. And that he would give her a chance to find out how true that might be.
"Sorry about your foot. Another of those George Bernard Shaw moments" she said. "Two countries separated…"
"…by a common language" Bobby finished knowing it was probably bad manners to interrupt, but seeing that slight smile again suspected he might be forgiven.
"And Oscar Wilde?" there was a mild challenge in the tone. "The Americans are identical to the British…"
"…in all respects except, of course, in language" he finished the quote wondering if there was such a thing as love at first sight.
"Pardon me for interrupting this literary exchange" said the brunette's Mom (or rather Mum as the Brits say) "But I still didn't get this sorted out"
"Better if you tell her I think" said Bobby slightly awkwardly then stood back. But he did hear what the brunette hissed in her mother's ear.
"Over here a rubber is a slang term for a condom"
"Oh" said the Mom/Mum with a slight flush of pink before turning to the assistant. "Do you have any souvenir pencils without the little…um…erasers on the end?"
"No ma'am" said the young assistant, who had maybe learned a useful lesson for the future.
Bobby saw her slightly grit her teeth as she said, "I suppose those will have to do then"
She went by him muttering to her daughter "Wait until your father hears about this one"
"I take it this happened before?" he said to the woman knew Shaw and Wilde and not wanting her to move away too quickly
"Kind of" she replied using the American term not the Brit he knew was more commonly "sort of".
"Worst was when I lived in California. Waitress at some place said she assumed we were Germans. On account we spoke English so well"
Bobby smothered a laugh as he took the change for his latest purple marker pen and they moved away from the counter "What did you say?"
"I think Dad said he'd spent six years of his life making sure the whole of Europe didn't grow up speaking German. Whilst you Yanks sat on your asses for two of them, taking bets on the outcome" she grinned. "Or rather he said arses. Because where I grew up an ass is only ever a donkey. And if you don't wish to be that rude you say bum, which is never an itinerant"
"What was it they said in the UK when US troops began arriving?" he frowned. "The word play on the Cohan song 'Over There' ?"
"Over due, over paid, over sexed and over here" she replied. "I'm sort of mounting a one woman counter occupation. Though the job isn't over paid and anything else is my business"
"You live and work here now?" he asked. "The accent I mean?"
"Yeah terrible isn't it?"
"I don't think so" he'd moved with her to the door of the observation platform.
"It helps now though" she muttered. "Over on the west coast when I first moved out I got asked three times if I was from Sydney or if I'd ever met Kylie Minogue"
Bobby frowned and said incredulously, "They thought you were Australian?"
"Uhuh. And trust me, for a Brit that's a far bigger insult than ever being thought to be German. Anyway I must go round up my folks before they get themselves into more bother with the locals. Thanks for offering your help Detective Who-ever-you-are"
"You noticed the badge?"
"Eventually"
"It's Goren" he said with a smile. "Robert Goren"
Ten minutes later....
"Where have you been?" muttered Alex as he rejoined her like he was a kid wandered off in the mall.
"Helping some overseas visitors Eames. Protect and serve and all that"
"Only serving I saw going on was you at the counter"
Then she added suspiciously "What were you buying Bobby?"
"Rubbers…I mean erasers" he said, quickly shutting his folder as she peered at it.
So Alex didn't see the purple marker pen or the only note he'd made since they arrived. A name and number he intended to call when he got home.
AN 1 : The incident with the pencils and my Mom/Mum really did happen and got far more confusing before it got resolved (though not at the Empire State and regrettably not with Bobby anywhere nearby by to offer to help me out). So did the two examples of mistaken nationality…so much so in one case I almost considered taking up Australian citizenship. My Dad did NOT however make the remark attributed to him in this story…sorry Popsy.
AN2 : I am not employed at 1PP nor do I own an indelible purple marker pen.