A/N: The local colour in this chapter is all my beta's, the amazing Brighid45. Thank you for all the amazing reviews and the story alerts. Perhaps I write for my own pleasure, but I certainly post in order to get my ego stroked, and you, my dear readers, are doing an excellent job. I'm purring like a cat!
This chapter, as the title indicates, is a bit of a bridge, so don't be surprised if it leaves a lot of questions open. Many will be answered in the next chapter.
Part II: Philadelphia
Chapter 5: Over Hill and Under Hill
He still doesn't have enough money for a longer trip, but he's getting antsy, so he decides to take a short break and head south. He doesn't have any illusions as to why he's starting with New Orleans instead of the North: he's always wanted to go there (okay, 'always' for the past three years) because of the music. But if he's interested now, chances are that he was interested already at the age of twenty-two, and somehow he can see himself choosing a medical school based not on its merits, but on its surroundings. He has a really good time, but finds no evidence at Tulane that he ever attended the university there. He also can't find his way around the campus or around New Orleans, but that doesn't mean anything, he supposes. He ends up staying longer than planned, and hanging around jazz bars cuts deeper into his budget than he'd anticipated, so after a week he heads straight back to Philly instead of dropping in at Johns Hopkins in Maryland, as he'd originally intended.
His former employer is happy to have him back, because he's cheap, fast, and good, so he works long shifts to get together more money as quickly as possible. In between, he tries different strategies to find out more about himself. He drives out to Acme, takes a liberal dose of anti-anxiety meds that he tops off with two cans of beer, waits until he feels nicely spaced out, and then he does a round of 'shopping': he walks around the store not really looking at the individual items, just tossing stuff into his cart. At the end he examines the contents. At first glance there's nothing surprising there: a packet of ground meat, chilli beans, a few apples, bananas, frosted flakes, Aunt Jemima maple syrup, eggs, flour, bacon, rice, toast, butter, Suave shampoo, toilet paper, a tube of Colgate. Orange juice, two six-packs of Yuengling and a bottle of Maker's Mark. Cheez Doodles, microwave popcorn and cookie dough flavoured ice cream; all of them items he wouldn't hesitate buying today. But there's also an all-bran cereal in there, a loaf of wholegrain bread and low-fat plain yogurt. All three are definitely foods he'd eschew unless there was nothing else on offer. Orange juice isn't his drink of choice either, nor would he normally buy quite as many apples as are in his cart unless he was intending to bake apple pies. And how often does he crave popcorn?
Who the hell was he living with?
As the days pass, he gets edgy. Wilson must have spent the last weekend at Lisa's place, unless he was impressed by his, Pete's, threats, which he doubts. The next weekend finds him restless. He works for twelve hours each day under conditions that make him long wistfully for the Brunel, and when he's off the clock, he keeps himself busy, but it's all he can do not to take the car and park himself within sight of Lisa's house. But that would be pathetic and stupid, and doubtless she's right and nothing will happen. If it does, it'll be months or years from now, and he can't possibly keep an eye on her for that long. He's certainly not going to make a fool of himself hanging around outside her place and being apprehended by the police for potentially criminal activities in an upper class neighbourhood.
By Monday his method of keeping himself distracted makes a visit to some sort of medical centre advisable. He knows a walk-in clinic close to City Center, having passed it several times. The clinic happens to be part of the department of 'Family and Community Medicine' of Lisa's hospital, and she just happens to be in the clinic every Monday and Thursday, as a few phone calls during the last week informed him, but that's hardly a reason not to go there, so he gets out his sunglasses and a baseball cap and limps in through the glass sliding doors.
Inside, there's a large waiting area with orange plastic seats, a few low tables sporting magazines, and two water dispensers. Examination rooms branch off to the right and the left; a reception desk is situated straight ahead with three receptionists sitting behind it, separated from their clientele by a large glass pane. To the left of the reception desk lies a glass-fronted office, and there he spots Lisa. She's standing in front of her desk, bending over a file that a nurse is showing her. He can't see all of her face, but what he can see doesn't look battered or bruised. Her whole stance, while attentive, seems relaxed.
He goes over to reception and states his case. It's a free clinic that guarantees anonymity, but the receptionist still wants to know a lot more about him than he's willing to impart, so matters get a little tense for a while. It takes all his persuasive powers, which the receptionist brands as 'appalling rudeness and insulting behaviour, culminating in verbal assault', to get onto the waiting list. After a twenty-minute wait on the orange plastic seats next to a boy who is scratching his armpits and an old man whose lungs make interesting whooshing sounds he is left to kick his heels in an examination room, where he whiles away the time with a game of darts using disposable syringes as darts - the things they leave lying around in these examination rooms! - and inflated surgical gloves as targets.
The physician comes just in time to curtail his next activity: making aeroplane models with tongue depressors and tape. An older guy with a harassed look and greying hair, he takes a look at his sore stump, another at the prosthetic, and proceeds to fill out a prescription.
"What, no questions on how this came about?" Pete asks.
"Mr Reagan, you say you're a cowboy and that this happened while riding, so you came all the way from, umm, Texas to our clinic to get it treated. I'll just believe you, shall I?" the man says, not looking up.
"Patients always lie."
At that moment the door is flung open and Lisa walks in.
"Ah," Pete says. Caught in the act.
The physician looks up in surprise. At Lisa's questioning look he gestures at Pete's exposed stump and says, "Amputation. Abrasions, soreness, and swelling, probably due to over-exertion. The prosthetic doesn't fit very well, but if he keeps off his legs for a few days ..."
"I've got this," Lisa says to him.
The physician looks at her as she leans against the wall, her arms crossed, at Pete, who does his Mask of Innocence expression, and at the file in his hands. "Okay," he says. "Sure you don't want me to stay? He seems a challenging character."
Lisa shakes her head and waits until he's out the door. Pete takes off his sunglasses and the baseball cap resignedly.
"How'd you find out I'm here?" he asks.
"If you want to stay anonymous, don't start arguments with my receptionists."
"Oh, come on, you must be getting this sort of thing twenty times a day."
"I told them to inform me when a white male, mid-fifties, with a limp comes here. I narrowed it down to asshat white male after one day. Let me see!"
She looks at the stump, gently prods the swelling and examines the abrasions. Then she examines the prosthetic. "What the hell have you been doing?"
"What makes a guy's stump sore?" he asks suggestively.
"You don't do enough of that to ... " Her voice peters out as a thought strikes her. She narrows her eyes at him. "You've been running, you moron!" she says. "How far did you run?"
"I'm doing something for my health. Lots of people run - you run." He'd seen her running shoes in the hallway when he was at her place.
"Not with one of these." She waves the prosthetic.
"Ever heard of the Paralympics?"
"Please, please tell me that you didn't run twenty miles with this prosthetic!"
He musters his remaining foot in its trainer. "No, just three," he mutters. Even that was difficult; he'd done a lot of brisk walking, but running - getting both legs off the ground when only one is a real one - is quite a challenge. It had been more of a skip than a run, but that's beside the point, he guesses.
"Great! You're fifty-five years old ..."
"Fifty-three," he corrects. That's what his passport says.
She pauses. "Fine, fifty-three. You haven't done any sort of physical activity in years, you have a mediocre prosthetic, and one fine Sunday you get up and say, let's go for a run."
"Saturday," he corrects again. "And Sunday." He'd been determined to get the technique right, so he'd had to try again, hadn't he?
"You ran three miles on Saturday, and then, because the pain wasn't enough, you ran three more on Sunday," she summarises. "Did you ever run before that with your prosthetic?" He's silent. "Okay." She walks over to the phone on the wall and dials a number. "Walter? Dr Cuddy speaking. I'm sending you a patient who needs a new AK. An Ossur flex-blade and a decent knee joint for running. ... Yes, I know what that costs. ... Yes, I'll take care of it ... Bump him up on the list, he needs it fast. Oh, and if you could replace the socket on his present one? ... Okay, he'll be with you in about half an hour."
She puts down the phone, takes out a pad and a pen and writes something down. "Here, go there and tell them I sent you. They'll fix this prosthesis for you and get you another one for running. Have you got pain killers?" When he nods, she jots down a few lines in his patient file and snaps it shut. "The next time you want to find out whether I'm okay, don't go crippling yourself as an excuse for turning up. Just drop in, okay?"
"I ... won't be dropping in anymore," he says slowly. "I'm leaving Philly as soon as ..." He gestures at the prosthetic.
"Oh." Her face drops; she studies the cover of his file with sudden interest.
"Have you thought about what I said regarding James?" he asks, hoping against hope, although she's not the type to back down.
She takes a step forward and looks him straight in the eye. "I'm not dropping him to satisfy your paranoia."
He gives a short nod. "Then I guess ... this is farewell."
"Don't ...," she says before breaking off. She bites her lip, but then she mirrors his nod. Stepping up to him she places a hand on his cheek. "Goodbye, Pete," she says softly. Then she drops her hand and turns towards the door. In the doorway she turns around again. "Look, I know this is presumptuous, but will you stay in touch? Just as a friend," she says hurriedly when his eyebrows quirk.
"We've never been friends," he states bluntly.
Her eyebrows rise. "We did pretty good in Bristol," she points out.
"Even then, I didn't see you as a 'friend'." It doesn't come out quite as suggestively as he would like, because truth be told, he's sorer about ending this than he'd anticipated.
"How many people do you see as friends?" she asks knowingly.
He considers this. Baz and Ellie, maybe? He hasn't bothered to let them know how he's doing since he got to Philadelphia. In fact, unless Ellie has told the others, they don't even know where he is. And if they had suddenly disappeared from his life, the way he has from theirs, he wouldn't feel any compulsion to figure out where they had gone.
Lisa's voice cuts into his ruminations. "Right. So, since friendship is a comparatively unknown concept to you, why don't we give it a try? Learning by doing. You let me know every now and then whether you're okay. That's all."
"You sure you aren't confusing midlife maternal surges with this friendship thingy?"
"Call it what you like, but call me!"
"Geez, mom! Oh, okay," he concedes, secretly pleased that she should be bothered about his well-being. Nodding, she turns briskly on her heels again and is out of the room before he can say any more. He suspects that her sudden speed is motivated by a desire to avoid any further confrontation that can lead to his retracting his offer.
He fixes up his prosthetic again, pulls his jeans on and ties up his trainers. When he comes back into the waiting area, the scratching boy is wheezing and looking anxious. He walks over to the reception desk. "You've got a problem over there," he says.
The receptionist doesn't look up. "We've got fifty problems," she says dismissively.
He musters her for a moment, and then he walks over to the glass front of Lisa's office and knocks on it.
"Hey, don't do that!" the receptionist yells even as Lisa looks up. He points to the boy, Her gaze shifts to where he is pointing and she comes striding to her office door.
"You might want to get someone to look at him," he says.
She looks from him to the boy, and then she runs over to the boy, putting a finger to his neck to feel his pulse. After a moment she looks back at him questioningly.
"Anaphylactic shock," he says, slinging his backpack over his shoulder. He shouts over to one of the nurses, "Need 0.1 cc epinephrine here!"
Lisa is making the boy lie down and elevating his feet. He guesses he's done his job here, so he heads for the door.
"Thank you," Lisa calls after him. And then, "Call me next week."
He's still in Philadelphia the next weekend, and around three o'clock on Sunday afternoon he loses his cool and phones her.
"Just wanted to say thanks for the prosthetic," he says awkwardly.
"Have you got it already?"
"No. I'm getting it fitted next week."
She's silent.
Finally he says, "And I thought I'd tell you that I'm leaving after that."
"Crap. You're calling to check on me because you know Wilson is here." He can hear a man's voice in the background. Then Lisa holds the receiver away from her mouth and says into the room, "It's ... Pete. He's going to leave Philly and travel around." Her hesitation is interesting. He could swear that she was going to say some other name first; in short, that she was about to lie to James about who is on the phone.
James says something. Then, suddenly, it's James's voice on the phone. "Pete. Cuddy is fine and I'm not going for her throat today - it isn't full moon."
He grins at the Harry Potter allusion. "That kid is rotting your brain," he says.
"The alcohol took care of that," James says without much regret. "But feel free to check on her regularly. It would ease my mind."
That doesn't make sense - the last time they talked he'd threatened this guy with serious psychological warfare. Or maybe it does. "So basically you want me to play guard dog for you – to make sure, by keeping an eye on Lisa, that you don't step out of line. Do I get paid for this?"
James sighs audibly. "No. Cuddy ... Lisa worries enough as it is, mostly about me. It'll make it easier for her if she doesn't worry about you, too. And that in turn makes it easier for me." Then, conversationally, he says, "You're getting a new prosthetic?"
"Yeah, a flex blade."
"Great. And - where are you headed?"
Small talk has never been his strength, and having a casual conversation with his ex's volatile ex definitely fits the category 'weird AU experiences'. "The north first, New York and Boston, then to the south. From there I'll head west."
"Sounds good. ... Looking for anything special?"
"No, not really. Just sightseeing - the usual."
"Oh, haven't you ever been here before? Your accent had me fooled." There's a hint of ... disbelief in James's voice that he can't quite place. The man doesn't trust him, and he's getting an odd vibe there. He's being touched for information.
"I used to live here when I was a kid, but I don't remember much, so I thought I'd go and look at it all again." That's the story he's cooked up to explain his accent, which decided to turn unmistakeably and irrevocably American within days of his arrival.
"Okay ... well." James, at the other end, seems uncertain how to end this conversation. "Just phone Cuddy every now and then, will you?"
"Right," he says, and puts down the phone. James Wilson is an odd fellow, not least because he calls his former girlfriend by her last name. One would think that a ladies' man like that - three divorces to his name - would have switched to 'Lisa' once their working relationship turned into something more intimate.
...
Next Sunday he phones her again.
"Hey."
"Pete! Do you know what time it is?"
"It's nine p.m. in California."
"Are you in California?"
"No - but I could be."
"Where are you?"
"New York."
"Everything okay?"
"Peachy."
"You got enough money?"
"Are you my mom?"
"Okay. Goodnight, Pete."
"G'night."
...
The next week he promptly forgets. He's busy trying out the new prosthetic and enjoying the heightened comfort that a snugly fitting socket on his old one gives him, so it's Tuesday evening before he phones, and then only after she texted him a few times with increasing desperation.
"Are you stalking me?" he begins without a preamble.
Silence. Then, "I was worried, okay?"
"That someone will run me down with his car? I was hoping that you were keeping an eye on Jimmy."
"You're an ass, you know."
"I was busy," he whines. "I still am - got two hot bods in my bed right now. Girls, say hello to Lisa." In a high falsetto voice he says, "Hello, Lisa, I'm Shanice." He switches the phone to the other side and says in an even higher tone, "Hi, Lisa, I'm Janice. Pete is such a stud!"
Lisa chuckles. "Seriously, what are you up to?"
"Sightseeing. New York's a big place." It certainly is, and it has a lot of teaching hospitals that need to be checked out.
"Okay." She sounds as though she doesn't quite believe him. "Try not to forget to call next week."
"No, mom. ... If you're that worried, why don't you call me?"
"Huh, that would be stalking, wouldn't it, if the ex whom you dumped kept phoning you?"
"But it's okay for me to phone you," he ruminates.
"We-ell, you broke up with me, so that wouldn't be stalking, not unless I was dating again. It would be 'raising false hopes' at the worst, but I asked for you to phone me, so I think it's okay."
"I must have skipped the class in high school where they taught the Fifty Rules of Dating."
"It isn't dating that you have no clue of, it's the concept of breaking up that seems to elude you."
"I have problems with these so-called social interactions, so my shrink told me to imitate what I see other people doing. Like, when you told me in Bristol that you didn't want a relationship with me, but kept turning up in my life." He pauses to let that sink in. If someone's breathing can sound dangerous, then it's Lisa's. He decides to give her a break. "Let's simplify this: you call me when you want to; I call you when I want to."
"Fine!" she snaps. "Goodnight, Pete."
"G'night, Lisa."
...
They talk irregularly from then on. Mostly Lisa phones; the calls are short. There is, after all, not that much to say. But it's reassuring to know that someone will miss him and go looking for him if he ends up as road kill on one of his runs. And it's a nice way to end the day: to exchange a few uncomplicated words, trade a few insults, banter a bit.
The difficulty lies in not letting slip what he's up to. He's sure she could be helpful in his search in more ways than one: she works in a teaching hospital, used to be dean of another teaching hospital, and probably has contacts all over the country. He'd like to bounce a few ideas off her, because his search is proving exceedingly difficult. For one thing he has no idea when he was born, which means that he has to go back any number of years in his search of the archives. And since he has nothing to go on except his present appearance, finding himself in old photos will probably be a matter of chance. Another obstacle that is proving hard to surmount is the bureaucratic red tape involved in getting into the archives. Normally this wouldn't bother him; he'd just slip under any metaphorical road block placed in his way and bluff his way through, but he's keenly aware of the inadvisability of getting caught in a situation that might end with his fingerprints being taken and compared to police records.
Parallel to his searches in university archives he's been browsing through standard medical fare in bookshops and faculty libraries in the hope of pinning down his speciality and then rooting around in conference proceedings and medical publications to see if his picture turns up anywhere, but that has proved to be even more of a dead end. There are few areas that he doesn't seem to have at his command, no field in which he can't answer standard questions; he could be a specialist in at least five areas: neurology, nephrology, oncology, infectious disease and paediatrics. Apparently he's also pretty much an expert on rare genetic conditions.
The more he thinks about it, the more convinced he grows that Lisa (and James) would probably be able to help him clarify his identity within a month, but he is reluctant to confide in them. Depressingly boring and unimpressive as his present persona as a crippled cook may be, the aura that surrounds 'genius doc' loses a lot of its shine when one adds to it a criminal past and an opiate addiction. James would have an absolute field day with that: what's a bit of house demolition under the influence of alcohol when compared to a career with a drug syndicate that probably culminated in some sort of capital crime? And Lisa has got a kid; she won't want a former mobster near her.
No, he's better off posing as a cook. From what Lisa lets slip one day, she's got a low taste in men anyway: when he phones her at 5 a.m. in the morning (he can't sleep and is bored), she informs him sleepily that he reminds her of an ex who was a PI and who used to come home in the early hours after stake-outs expecting to have sex.
"Did you oblige?"
"God, yes! I was convinced that he was all that stood between me and a lonely old age, so I put up with a lot of bullshit from him. Never again!"
"So you got yourself a kid instead. Congratulations!"
"That was after I got Rachel."
"So was that telephone sex you were offering just now?"
"What would that get me?"
"The satisfaction of knowing that I'm getting some satisfaction?"
"I'm fine knowing that your balls are turning blue."
"Why did your PI get real sex in the wee hours while I don't even get a few kind words?"
"Because you aren't my boyfriend."
"Ever heard of post-break-up sex?"
She sighs and asks, apparently randomly, "Are you coming back here some time?"
"Are you going to stop seeing Wilson?" he counters.
"I'm not seeing Wilson that way," she says obscurely.
He's not going to discuss the different ways of not dating a guy. "You're seeing him as in, 'strengthening his obsession with you and granting him opportunities to harm you'."
There is a very long silence at the other end. Then, "Why don't you talk to Wilson about this and see what he has to say? You'll like him."
"My liking him won't solve the basic problem."
"Which is that you're jealous!"
"I'm not dating you; I have no reason to be jealous."
"According to that logic, Wilson is no danger to me, since he isn't dating me either."
He has to concede the point.
After a few moments she says, "If this isn't about jealousy, but about my safety, then feel free to hang around when he's here. But I don't want you hovering over him and threatening him."
"Are you giving in on this?" he asks unbelievingly.
"It's called a compromise," she snaps.
"Okay, define 'hovering' and 'threatening'," he demands.
"Just behave the way you would if he wasn't around."
"You don't want that," he says suggestively.
"Oh, for heaven's sake!"
He can hear that she's on the verge of ending the call. He's going to have to take a little step in her direction. "Are PDAs in his presence allowed? Or must I refrain for fear of setting him off?"
"I've told you that if I thought there was anything that would set him off, I wouldn't be seeing him," she says with waning patience.
"So they're allowed."
"Depends."
"On what?"
"On whether we're, you know, together again?"
"If I say we are, do I get telephone sex?"
"Then you can have the real stuff at the weekend."
She comes up to Boston for the weekend as promised. He's relieved on some level, though he still isn't quite sure what he's getting into here. Just to be on the safe side, he opts to meet her on neutral ground first, because if he brings her straight to his motel he knows how this will go: they'll end up in bed without having discussed how things will continue regarding James Wilson, and then over breakfast there'll be a nasty little scene because she'll believe that getting his rocks off after a period of dearth will mellow him enough that he won't pursue the matter, while he'll just insist on his standpoint, eight a.m. not really being his time of day for diplomacy. So, after picking her up from the airport he takes her to a bar, finds a quiet spot in a corner and gets them two beers. If this ends with her walking out on him, he'd rather not be sitting somewhere where every customer has a front row seat to their performance.
But to his surprise she pre-empts him. "I don't think this Wilson thing is going to be a problem," she says. "He's due to be released in ten days, and he's been offered a job in research in New York."
"Why New York?"
"He wants to leave Princeton, and his brother - is in New York."
This is almost too good to be true; 'almost', because New York is still too close for comfort. "You won't see him anymore?"
"I'll be visiting him every now and then, but I'm sure we can work it so that someone always accompanies me."
He leans back nursing his lager, trying to sort her compromising behaviour into a category that fits her. He can't find one, so he picks on the weak link in her chain of thought. "Someone?" he queries.
"Wilson has friends in Princeton who will want to see him too, and New York is just a step away from there."
"Why not me?"
"Well, if you're around ...," she says slowly.
He homes in on this at once. "Why are you bothering to kit a relationship with a man you hardly know and who you believe won't be around anyway?"
She draws patterns in the beads of condensed water on her glass. "Maybe because I hope that if we can settle this," she waves a hand between them, "then you will be around?"
His stomach gives an odd satisfied lurch at that. Nevertheless, he can't let it rest there. If she still believes that he came to the USA solely to see her, then he has to disillusion her, fast. "I didn't cross the Atlantic to be with you," he says brutally. "You were just ..."
"... a convenient starting point," she concludes his sentence. "I know. You had maps and city guides scattered all over your hotel room right from the start, and you were more interested in earning money for your trip than in seeing me." She looks away. "I never thought you'd stay."
"So what exactly do you want?"
"I don't know!" she says exasperatedly, "but anything has to be better than the past weeks, when it was anyone's guess where you were and what you were up to."
He constructs an edifice with beer coasters, using two coasters leaning against each other as supports and balancing more on top. "There've been other women," he says as he carefully balances a second level on top of the first one.
"You ... want an open arrangement," she says dubiously.
He makes the mistake of looking up - one side of the structure promptly collapses. Lisa, who is chewing her lower lip, grabs her purse.
"I can't," she states, pushing her chair back and rising, bumping against the table in the process. The collision brings down the rest of his edifice.
"No, wait! That's not ... I meant during the past weeks when we weren't - whatever we are now."
"You mean, you had other women after you dumped me?" For some reason being dumped by him seems to give her a macabre sense of satisfaction. He nods. "But you'd stay faithful if we got things sorted."
"Yes, you idiot!" he almost yells, his relief at her having understood him tinged with annoyance at her harping on the fact that he'd walked out on her. He hadn't wanted to dump her. Yes, he'd thought about it before that afternoon with James Wilson, but when he'd suddenly been faced with the necessity of doing so to protect himself, he had realised how little he wanted to do it. Clearly, he isn't cut out to be a dumpster.
"Oh. Well, spare me the tales of your floozies and hookers."
Her summary of his sexual activities is eerily apt; he has discovered the hard way that getting chatted up in bars by strange women is not a Good Reason to have sex. The last encounter left him standing in a Boston suburb in the middle of the night with slit tires courtesy of the boyfriend whom his chance acquaintance had been trying to make jealous by picking up strangers in bars. After doing the math on that - three drinks (not counting his own) and one set of new tires, for one night of uninspiring sex - he'd come to the conclusion that a hooker offered better value for his money.
He's had no opportunity to put his new insight into practice because the sight of the slit tires put him in mind of another victim of senseless violence, upon which he phoned Lisa at five in the morning just to make sure she was okay, resulting in her turning up this weekend. That's just fine with him, because now he doesn't need to ponder the economics of hookers versus middle-aged frustrated suburban wives. No, he doesn't need an open arrangement; he's sure he can manage with porn and an old sock if there's a chance of a little something whenever he's in the vicinity of Philadelphia. But he can't let his sense of relief take over yet; there's still one small matter to be clarified. She has left a loophole, and if she thinks he hasn't noticed it, she's sadly mistaken.
"What about the coming weekend?"
"What about it?" she asks back, avoiding his eyes.
"Isn't James due to have another stress test, now that he's so close to his release?"
"Yes, but there's a function at his old hospital in Princeton that he wants to attend, so he'll be staying with friends there." She pauses, and then she looks at him challengingly. "I'll be attending, too, but we'll both be surrounded by roughly five hundred other people, so I think I should be fine."
"Five hundred people - what function is that?" he wonders, intrigued by the ambivalence she's showing. It sounds harmless - ideal, really, as far as her safety with regard to James is concerned -, but she's showing an unwarranted reluctance to talk about the do. There must be a hitch somewhere.
"PPTH is celebrating its 125th anniversary," she says, brushing it aside.
"So what's the problem?" he asks directly.
"There is no problem," she insists. When he raises his eyebrows, she rolls her eyes and says, "Okay, there is a problem. They more or less fired me four years ago when I took a longer leave of absence because of Rachel ... and my PTSD. I pre-empted them by resigning of my own accord, and I haven't been back since then."
"Then why are you going, if you're still bitter about it?"
"I'm not. It was business pure and simple, a poker game, and I lost that one. But returning there for a big event that will be attended by all the people who effectively went behind my back to get rid of me is going to be awkward. I don't think Wilson should go either, but since he's going, I want to be there to support him. It's complicated, that's all, okay?"
He lets it rest, because she doesn't seem to be hiding anything regarding James, but he can't rid himself of the feeling that she isn't being completely open about this.
"I need to talk about this to Wilson, though. He has a right to know why I'm behaving so ridiculously. I'll drive him down to Princeton next Saturday and tell him on the way."
"Alone?"
"I'm not taking Rachel along," she answers, deliberately misunderstanding him.
He gets up, showing his opinion of this unmistakeably.
"Sit down, Pete!" she orders. He doesn't sit down, but he doesn't move away either. She rises and walks over to him, moving into his personal space to glower up at him. "I am agreeing to your demands, which are unnecessary and an insult to Wilson." She pokes him in his chest at each item to underline the message. "In return, you will grant me the opportunity to explain this to Wilson in a fashion that is not demeaning to either of us. That's called a 'compromise'."
"Compromises stink. There are logical arguments, and there are crappy arguments. Mine are either one or the other. Why are you agreeing to my 'demands' if you consider them so ridiculous? Why are you discussing this with me when a few weeks ago it was 'do or die'?" he asks, leaning over her in turn.
She exhales, long and slow. They are now receiving exactly the attention that he was trying to avoid by choosing a nook table, but at the moment he couldn't care less. At this point in their confrontation his awareness of his surroundings is focused solely on sounding how they can be used to his advantage. He has discovered that most people don't like public scenes, and he has used this knowledge a number of times to win confrontations; if your behaviour is outrageous enough, your adversary will back down in order to curtail the scene. It doesn't work with Lisa - she seems as immune to the stares and whispers as he is.
"My therapist ...," she says carefully. He gives a short laugh of derision at that, upon which she gives him a warning glare. "My therapist," she repeats, "advised me to objectify our relationship."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Can we sit?" she asks, gesturing at the table. So she is aware of the attention they are receiving. She's simply ignoring it manfully so as not to give in to him. Kudos to her. He sits down, but with one arm draped openly over the back of his chair in an 'I'm ready to jump up and leave' sort of pose.
"It means that I shouldn't regard the relationship as an integral part of myself, with its success or failure reflecting on me as a person," Lisa continues, with the slightest hint of quoting someone.
"Oh, I see," he says sarcastically. "More like an item of clothing - underwear, that you throw away when you're done with it."
"Bad simile," she says smugly. "My underwear gets washed, folded and put away neatly, and I know exactly what I have. No." She fiddles with her necklace, a blue chalcedony pendant. "I'm supposed to regard it like a patient that needs to be diagnosed, and chances are that your diagnosis is as accurate as mine is."
"More accurate," he can't help amending.
"It's not a real patient," she says repressively, "so I estimate that my diagnosis is as accurate as yours. But I owe it to you as fellow physician of this patient to take your opinion seriously and to implement any course of treatment that you suggest as long as it doesn't endanger the patient's life."
It's a lot of bullshit, of course - how the hell is a relationship supposed to survive if either side has to put up with dumbfuckery just to keep the other side happy? But it's so glaringly difficult for Lisa to make this concession that it's a pleasure to listen to her stumble her way through a bunch of hollow platitudes, a joy that he wouldn't want to miss. In her list of Top Ten Humiliating Experiences this one probably ranks among the top three, and he has bagged a front row seat. If this is how 'compromise' will work for them - total humiliation of one party to the boundless amusement of the other party - hey, then he's all for it. Even if it means that she'll drive Wilson to Princeton.
But of course he can't let it rest at that, not when the red rag 'therapist' has been waved in front of his nose. "Let me see if I got this: I'm blatantly right. You choose not to listen to me, leaving me with no choice but to break up. You run to your therapist, who repeats what I said, but instead of listening to me in the first place you listen to your therapist instead, and only then come running back to me. Right? Can't we shorten this process," he rolls a hand illustratively, "and have you listening to me right from the start?"
She sits there, her lips moving - he's prepared to bet that she's counting to ten or possibly even to twenty before retorting-, any number of murderous emotions chasing across her face. After a long pause (it may even have been fifty), she says with forced calm, "Believe me, this - me listening to my therapist, to anyone at all - is already a huge step forward. Don't push it!"
He observes the shine in her eyes, the slight tremble of her lips, and impulsively leans forward to give her a quick peck across the table. A group of older ladies at the next table - Girls' Night Out - breaks into applause.
"Let's get outta here," he says, and takes her hand.
Eight hours later he lies in bed with Lisa curled up loosely against him, watching the sunlight peek through the threadbare curtains and meditating on Good Reasons for having sex. Being on the same page as one's partner could be one. He'd anticipated a lot of ripping off of clothes, wild fumbling and hasty release of pent-up sexual drive once they reached his motel, but instead it had been a slow, conscious affair, a thorough re-discovery of each other's bodies, a leisurely apology for whatever wrongs they had done each other. He knows he pushed her too hard over James, but that isn't something he'll ever be able to verbalise, so he's only too glad to be able to express this in other ways. And a few hours later, when he'd woken up to find her spooned up against him, her shapely ass pressed into his groin, it had done funny things to him that he wouldn't have thought possible, not at his age and so briefly after his previous exertions. So they had done it again, with even less pomp and circumstances. It's all very uncomplicated and familiar, and a lot different from the fast, dirty sex he's used to from his one-night stands. That's rather like picking someone's pocket. You get their wallet with some cash, a few credit cards (useless without PIN numbers), and possibly an ID with a crappy photo of its owner. This thing with Lisa is more like breaking into someone's house: it's a lot more of an effort and very dangerous, but once inside, you can get hold of their technical gadgets, their jewellery, and their other valuables. You can root among their clothes, leaf through their albums, raid their refrigerators. You're in their life, with insight into their personality.
Sex with strangers, he decides, is overrated. He knows all the behavioural theories that state that he's basically hardwired to scatter his DNA as widely as possible, so this may just be his personal view based on the complications that ensue when one has a major disability, but he can't for the life of him see what advantages a romp in the sheets with someone who knows neither his preferences nor his limitations is supposed to offer him. After all, it isn't as though the sex in a relationship can actually get worse over the course of time; more predictable - yes; boring - possibly, if one can't be bothered to invest time and energy into enlivening the experience. But even the momentary thrill of a new conquest can't make up for all that ungainly fumbling while one gets one's bearings, the fear of arousing disgust or failing to make the mark, the awkwardness of the morning after (if one stays that long) or the loneliness afterwards.
And that, he thinks, trailing one hand along her back leisurely, doesn't even take into account that a chance bar acquaintance is unlikely to go down on him.
Lisa groans, half-awake. "I can hear you thinking. What's up?"
"Just thinking about getting some head," he answers truthfully.
Lisa can convey 'rolling her eyes in exasperation' even when her eyes are clamped shut. "Oh, God! Not now. ... Go, do something. Keep busy, play the piano or something, but let me sleep." She must have got up in the middle of the night yesterday to get all her work done before leaving for Boston in the middle of the day.
He disentangles himself from her and gets up, strapping on his prosthetic and slipping into boxer shorts and a T-shirt. 'Not now' means, 'later, possibly' - if he doesn't piss her off, so it's advisable to do her bidding. He doesn't have a piano - where does she think he's staying, the Ritz? - but he bought a guitar in a pawn shop. He gets it out and sits down on the only chair, a hardback, resting his legs on the bed and strumming a few experimental chords. Then he starts singing quietly.
Feelin' good, feelin' good,
All the money in the world spent on feelin' good.
Lisa groans and buries her head in the pillow. After a while she gives up, re-surfaces and starts listening.
The problem with this 'being on the same page' thing with Lisa is that maybe they're reading the same sentences at the moment, when it's all about smut, but they seem to be reading different books. Her book is a typical chick holiday read, where a woman, frustrated by life and screwed over by worthless assholes and losers, meets the one true love of her life, the man the stars destined for her and of whom she has to prove herself worthy by overcoming all the ridiculous obstacles that fate chooses to plant in her way. His, in contrast, is a sort of James Bond/Jason Bourne remix, in which the hero, a noble broody screw-up who has been hoodwinked by the people who are supposed to support him seeks his identity, aided by sexy chicks whom he recompenses for their assistance by fulfilling their sexual fantasies. Since by some odd quirk of metafictional irony their two books share the smutty pages, will the two stories drift apart again or will the plots end up hopelessly intertwined, with his knightly quest ending in a morass of domestic woes while her dreams of a perfect union are tarnished by the realities of life with a moody, potentially criminal jackass?
Lisa stretches and gets up. He relishes the sight of her naked body bending over as she retrieves some items of clothing from her overnight bag, and he can't help tipping his head in appreciation when she stands before him in a bright pink top and the skimpiest of black shorts with a pair of trainers in her hands. He slips into Slow Down.
Slow down, slow down,
Let me step on board,
I just wanna ride your Train,
One time before you're gone.
"I'm not going anywhere before tomorrow," she notes, "and if you come for a run with me, you can have your blow-job afterwards under the shower."
Definitely on the same page there. He puts down the guitar, untangles his legs and moves over to where his flex blade leans against the wall. He picks it up and rotates it with one hand, saying, "You know that with this, I'll streak past you leaving you choking in a cloud of dust."
She smiles confidently. "You know that the best view you'll get of my ass is from behind."
End of Part II
J.B. Lenoir, Feelin' Good
J.B. Lenoir, Slow Down