CHAPTER 8

Bill had only been on Caprica for a week but he hadn't gotten even remotely used to the erratic sounds of the city – it was nothing like the steady hum of Galactica's engines. Lee had helped him find an apartment in the fashionable side of the city, not far from his apartment, and only a few blocks from the capital square. It was a prime location. But Bill wished that he'd taken something on the city outskirts instead. He couldn't even get a decent cup of coffee; ten cubits for one measly cup and it was virtually impossible to pronounce half the fancy names – and everything had to have a flavor. Whatever happened to just plain coffee? Advertisements winked at him from every corner, cinematic billboards tailored to sell you your own heart's desire – at a discount no less.

When his buzzer sounded, Bill put down the tasteless dark roast that he'd barely touched and pressed a series of buttons until the little monitoring device chimed politely three times, indicating that his visitor, whom he hadn't bothered to screen, had been buzzed in. Bill opened the door ajar and went back to his half eaten muffin.

"I would have brought you a housewarming present," said Saul Tigh as he slammed the door with a loud thud, "but I got sidetracked when I bought the beer." He carried the battered looking case of beer over to the fridge, pausing to peek at Bill's open laptop on the high top counter.

Bill shrugged. "Beer's better. Although I need a coffee pot."

Saul squared his shoulders and squinted disapprovingly at his friend. "Why are you looking up Laura frakin' Roslin?"

Shit. Bill had forgotten about his little intranet search.

"Her daughter is marrying my son," Bill said vaguely.

Saul expelled a puff of air. Looking closely at the screen, he browsed rapidly through a series of articles and photos. Most of the pictures showed Laura in perfectly tailored Tassani suits standing poised and elegant at press conferences while cameras flashed amidst a glint of microphones. Adar was in most of them. There was a fuzzy photo of a younger Laura wearing a stunning emerald-green silk dress while her fingers fluttered over a grand piano like the wings of a hummingbird.

"Great gods of Kobol but those legs," muttered Saul.

Bill grunted. "I didn't notice."

"You're a liar. Still giving you the cold shoulder, is she?"

"I'm not Madame Secretary's favorite person," declared Bill with an ironic laugh.

"So you spilled a little wine on her dress; is she that pretentious that she's still harping on a little accident?"

"I don't think it's just the wine." Bill paused and took a half-hearted sip of the now-tepid coffee. "We – don't mix," he intoned flatly.

Saul flopped down onto the sofa, making the cushions bounce. He pushed aside a designer pillow that was undoubtedly Lee's influence and looked at Bill.

"Look, Bill, I'm going to speak frankly."

Bill braced himself. "As opposed to when you don't?"

"You and Carolanne have been divorced for what? Five years now? Six? Lose the frakin wedding band already and give yourself permission to be happy. You're fifty years old. You're not dead. You've spent a hell of a long time – "

There was an impatient knock on the door followed by an irate female voice.

"Couldn't you have at least left the door open for me, Saul? I practically had to give the doorman a hand job to get up here. Hello, Bill."

Bill rose from the sofa and opened the door for Ellen Tigh who immediately enveloped him in a perfumed hug. She followed the gesture up with a loud kiss on the cheek. "Bill's a gentleman," Ellen told her husband accusingly.

Saul threw up his hands. "Well, if you didn't have to fix your damned hair and reapply your makeup, we could have walked up together. You took forever." There was the briefest of pauses and then Saul blurted out, "Bill has a thing for Laura Roslin." He rose and turned the laptop so that the screen faced Ellen.

"The politician?" Ellen leaned down and peered at the pictures. "Oh, yes. The redhead. Terrible about what happened to her family."

"What happened to her family?" asked Bill.

"Wiped out by a drunk driver. Oh – about four or five years ago. Father, siblings….mother, too, possibly. I can't remember all the details. Tragic. She frequently speaks at colleges and universities for SADD. Look." Ellen bent over the computer and hurriedly typed something. A few clicks later she brought up an article that showed a picture of Laura lecturing in front of a roomful of students in an amphitheater. Another photo showed a close up profile of her face. Her eyes, which so often lately had glared at Bill in anger, were wistful here. Ellen skimmed the article. "It was a college student driving an SUV. Her father, Edward Roslin, and her two younger sisters were killed on impact."

An ache settled in the center of Bill's chest. "Was Laura in the car?"

"I don't think so. This is what comes from not having networked computers on Galactica," Ellen admonished. "You boys don't keep up on any news unless it involves a Cylon or a missile."

"Lee should have told me," murmured Bill, eyes fixated on the photograph of Laura.

"Lee….," Ellen gasped. This is – oh my goodness – this is Kara's mother, isn't it? Lee's fiancé's mother."

"Yeah, that would be the one."

"You would've met her if you'd come to the decommissioning," said Saul.

"You know I wanted to….I missed the shuttle."

"Probably because it takes you a millennium to do your frakin hair."

"I told you, Saul, I got stuck behind the president and his entourage."

"I don't have a thing for Laura Roslin," Bill interrupted abruptly. He headed toward the refrigerator. "Who wants a beer?"

Laura found that writing her letter of resignation was much more difficult in practice than in theory. Crumpling up the fourth draft, she finally stood up from her desk in her apartment office and looked out the window, leaning lightly against the frame. Rain was coming. She could smell it in the dampening air. The sky, so blue earlier, had faded to the white puffy cover of clouds and was now darkening to a slate gray.

A couple of days after the funerals were over, Richard had whisked her away to a suite on the chic upper end of town.

The wine thrummed heavily through her system, as she reclined on the plush sofa, eyes half closed while Richard leaned over her. How many glasses had she consumed? She couldn't remember. Her body felt loose. Muscles relaxed. Her spine pressed lazily into the cushions. One shoe was off, already half hidden under the sofa. The other dangled precariously off her right toes. She felt warm, her body flushing with heat, and reached down to unbutton the first couple of buttons of her blouse. She was surprised to find them already undone, the cream silk fabric of her bra exposed. She giggled. Richard's insistent hands were on her thighs, brushing against the hem of her skirt, asking an age old question. She arched toward him and drew him closer simply because he was something steady and solid to hold onto in a room that was full of ghosts. She guided his mouth to the hollow of her throat so that he wouldn't feel the moisture on her cheeks.

And so it began. It would always be muted in her mind, that first wine-soaked time with him, after all those months of him coaxing, her uncertain. She pursued him aggressively after that, surprising them both, in those first few months after the accident, eager for a few moments of oblivion amidst the frantic schedule that she insisted on keeping.

She never pressed him for more, never begged him to spend more time with her. Their quick trysts were enough. She was a docile and aloof mistress. Seeing him smiling broadly beside his wife with his arm around her waist while the cameras flashed never bothered her, and she didn't want to stop to consider the reasoning for her lack of jealousy. She felt guilty sometimes about the cheating itself; she had never thought that she would be the kind of woman who would sleep with a married man.

He was the only one she had told about the cancer. Besides Kara, who else did she have left to tell? He had made sure that she saw the best oncologist. Later he would skip meetings and debriefings, driving Brenner absolutely insane in the way he "catered" to her – flinging aside his schedule when he could while he campaigned for the presidency. He wasn't able to get away nearly enough; he knew it and he was full of apologies and regrets, hushed late night phone calls, and daily bouquets of flowers. The scent of the flowers made her nauseous after the chemo - besides making her think of funerals. She didn't tell him when she found the first clump of hair on her pillowcase or when the tumor refused to shrink.

Her intimacies with Richard only extended so far.

In the end, after they got the cancer under control, when she went into remission, he took her to a private beach to celebrate. They reminisced about those early mayoral campaign days, stuffing envelopes and canvassing until their feet ached – those days when they were friends, long before they had become lovers. Richard was happy to see her laughing again; he didn't see the emptiness behind her smiles or understand that no matter how many times he made her climax, she never felt the release or solace that she sought.

He probably wouldn't have noticed anyway.

Laura was clenching the tattered letter draft in her hand so tightly that her knuckles were white. She tossed it toward the wastepaper basket and missed, then bent down to retrieve it and placed it in the basket. She couldn't stop thinking about the initiatives that she was working on for educational reform that someone else would pick up when she resigned. Billy had called her, so excited that morning, to tell her that an unexpected portion of their funding had been met. She wasn't a quitter. She didn't like the idea of leaving her work unfinished.

Damn Richard Adar for making her feel like a pawn.

Damn herself for allowing him to.

She wished that her mother were alive. She would tell her – everything. She'd tell her about the confusing affair that she couldn't seem to end, how Richard was like a bad habit that she just couldn't break. She'd tell her about the fact that she couldn't touch a piano anymore, once a source of so much joy, without feeling as if her insides were being crushed. She'd tell her about her mystifying interactions with Bill, maybe even laugh about it – the way they couldn't be within two feet of one another without engaging in a heated argument. Poor Bill – he'd borne the brunt of anger that she should have directed elsewhere. She considered apologizing – a quick phone call, maybe an invitation for coffee. Their children were getting married, after all. She looked over at her phone, considering – when it rang.

She reached for the small, flat device and saw the caller ID. Kara.

"Hi, honey," she said with forced cheerfulness. "No, no….you didn't interrupt anything important…."