Racking up
Anastasia's viewpoint
After our discussion at the range, we had sat and chatted for a while, nothing serious, before finishing up our allocated range time and heading back home. We sat around for a bit while Jane flicked through the sports channels but there wasn't a decent game to be found.
I made some sandwiches and coffee for lunch, expecting a call from the girls sooner or later. We'd already discussed it on the way back and neither of us were prepared to bet against them being late, probably too caught up in a shopping frenzy to consider calling it quits.
Sure enough Nat rang early afternoon to let us know they were having lots of fun and we should amuse ourselves. I tossed the phone to Jane so Nat could pass on a message from Maura, before the call ended, leaving us sitting there.
"Well, so much for that" Jane nodded in agreement.
"Now what?" I thought for a moment.
"How about we head down to the local bar and grill, they've probably got cable sports and we can get a beer" Two minutes later we were piling into Nat's red MGB for the short drive down to the local. Jane had admired it as I backed it out of the garage.
"Nice old car" I nodded.
"1974 MGB, Nat's father restored it as a thirtieth birthday present, she loves it"
"That's a pretty nice present, are her parents ok to you?" I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye.
"Yeah, they kinda adopted me after my Dad died. They flew out to attend his funeral, even though they'd only ever spoken on the phone. Since then they've been good to me"
She nodded, as I remembered her comment this morning that Maura's parents didn't approve of her or them together.
"Sooner or later parents pass on, meaning you'll have to lean on each other. Maura's parents may not be that receptive to you, but Maura will be there when they're gone, and she'll need you. That's the only important thing, not their approval" Jane said nothing, just stared out the window for the next few minutes for the trip to the bar.
Kelly's Bar and Grill was a typical pseudo suburban bar, pre-aged tables and chairs, rustic charm straight from a factory in Mexico or China some other even more low cost third world hellhole. For all that, it had beer, a widescreen TV at one end of the bar and some quiet tables where you could hang out without issues.
We grabbed a beer and sat down, unfortunately, the sport was college basketball between two teams neither of us had much interest in. We ended playing darts for a while; just trash talking shit, before I spotted the pool table was free, giving me the opportunity to drag her away from darts, where Jane was kicking my ass, to a more level playing field.
Racking up the balls, we tossed to break, with Jane winning. Off the break a stripe dropped, so she kept going. As she lined up for her shot she glanced up from the table and spoke.
"So, given we have another two hours or more to kill, you want to answer a few questions?" I shrugged.
"It might as well go both ways, I will if you will" Potting another stripe she walked around the table, eyeing off the angles.
"What's off limits?" I thought about it as she shot and the ball just missed the pocket.
"Inside the bedroom's off limits" She stood back and watched me for a moment, before nodding.
"Deal" She held up her palms and tapped her chest. "These too" I dropped the first solid and started lining up a second.
"I can agree to that" The second ball dropped, leaving me looking for a third. "Anything else we can agree to on the spot" The third dropped but there was no way I was going to get a fourth, so I settled for making it hard for Jane, trying to hide the cue ball behind several solids. Jane watched me, scowling as it came to a stop.
"Bitch!" I smiled as I stepped away, heading for my beer. "OK, why are you rotting away in a liaison job here when you're better than that? With your record and skillset, you should be in Washington running investigations, not being a glorified go-fer for the LAPD" I paused , looking over at her. Jane smiled smugly. "Hey, you're not the only one with connections, I had someone look over your file"
I watched as she tried to work a way out from behind the solids, giving me time to think.
"I pissed off someone very senior in the Bureau, so I'm stuck in roles far away from Washington, jobs where I don't get the opportunity to shine and maybe get more challenging assignments" Jane eyed me over the balls, before caroming the cue ball off two cushions and trickling up to kiss a stripe, leaving me with a difficult recovery. I nodded at her skill.
"Good one" As I walked around the table, sizing up the shot, Jane stepped back and sipped her beer.
"What'd you do to get on a shit list?" I glanced over at her, before settling down for the shot.
"Sent his son-in-law to prison for eight years" The cue barely dodged two of hers, just skimming past them to tap a solid and push it nearer the pocket.
"That'd do it" I walked over to my beer and took another sip, remembering a different place, a different country and a court full of uniforms, as sentence was pronounced, the complete lack of remorse on his face. Eight years wasn't enough, but it was what he got. Jane's voice brought me back to where I was, as she potted a ball.
"Any chance of getting off it anytime soon?" I shook my head.
"Not until he retires, which is probably a decade away, so I get to stay out here on the far side of the country from Washington" She nodded slowly, lining up a second ball and placing it in the top pocket.
"That sucks" I smiled.
"Not totally, the weather's nicer here, sometimes it's good to be under the radar, if I was in Washington the petty harassment would probably be a lot more intense. I keep my head down, do my job the best I can and try and focus on the good, not the bad" She nodded, lining up a shot, which I was pretty sure wasn't going to come off, the angle was probably too sharp. It duly bounced off the edge of the pocket and rolled away.
"I'm here playing pool and drinking beer on a Saturday afternoon with you, beats a Washington winter any day" Lining up the shot, I let the cue kiss the ball, letting it trickle up and nudge my target gently into the pocket. Walking round for the next shot, I looked up at her, where she was frowning at the table.
"Why'd you come out here Jane? You're a Sox fan through and through, LA's a long way from Fenway Park" I lined up and shot, watching the cue roll up to the target, which duly rolled into the pocket, only to hit the mouth of the pocket and deflect out. "Crap!" Jane smiled at my predicament.
"When Maura had the chance to be the M.E. here for six months I wasn't going to not come with her" Jane lined up her shot and dropped it cleanly, 5-4. The next shot was too difficult, so she settled for placing it closer to a pocket for her next shot.
"Yeah, I understand that, but what were you getting away from?" She shot me a look as I lined up the shot and potted it, bringing it back to 5-5.
"We wanted to give what we had a chance to develop here, away from everyone who knew us. Lots of people knew us as individuals, but we wanted to be a couple" I nodded, lining up and dropping another ball, 6-5.
"Did you cop much grief from the people you worked with?" I wasn't going to get the next one, so I let the cue ball tap the solid ball on the way to the far end of the table from Jane's balls.
"Some, the people I worked closest with, they were cool, others thought we'd been together for a while and just not told anyone. Some others were pretty judgemental and one or two were complete pricks about it" She took her time lining up, before gently tapping the cue, which slowly rolled the length of the table, bouncing off the cushion and coming to rest up against a stripe, leaving me with no clear line to any of my balls. I sighed.
"Speaking of pricks…" She laughed and sipped her beer as I prowled around the table, the easiest shot would still require bouncing off two cushions and into a cluster of balls but I really had no choice. Taking the shot, I watched as it rolled up and split the cluster, hopefully making it easier to sink them on my next go.
Unfortunately, it gave a clear shot to one of hers, which she sank easily, walking around to the far side of the table to line up her last.
"So, where do you go from here" She grinned at me.
"That ball in that pocket, then the 8 Ball" I rolled my eyes.
"Funny. So what happens after the six months?" She paused from where she was lining up her shot.
"I dunno. I really hadn't thought about it. I suppose it's been like a holiday here, away from everything, just Maura and I. I hadn't wanted to think about afterwards" She lined her shot up and sank it, leaving just the 8-Ball, which was hiding behind my last ball. She shot and sent it ricocheting around the table, hopefully with an easier shot next time.
"Do you want to go back to Boston" I wandered around the table to take the shot.
"I'd go wherever Maura went" Looking over the table at her, I smiled.
"And she'd go wherever you went, so you'd better work out where you're going together" I lined up my last ball, leaving us both chasing the 8-Ball. Unfortunately there was no way I was going to be able to sink it from here. Jane just pursed her lips and watched as I tried and failed, before sinking the 8-Ball; Rizzoli 1, Romanov 0.
As we racked up for another game, Jane continued.
"I don't know. We both like it here, the weather's nice, the works full on but it's interesting too. It's kinda nice to be part of a squad where it's not all hanging off you" She frowned. "Back in Boston I was usually lead detective on cases, so it usually all came down to me. It's nice to know that you can actually trust the people around you as well, you can wrap up and go home knowing that there are other people there doing the job well"
"Says the woman I had to chase out of the office at almost eight at night"
"Well, yeah, it happens" I broke and the game started.
"At least here my mom isn't hassling me every night about marriage and grand-kids. She's a lot more manageable on the phone let me tell you Within two days of finding out about us she was already talking about a huge Italian wedding and lots of little Rizzoli's" I had to laugh at that.
"How'd that go down?" She smirked.
"To shut her up I told her that we were going to elope and if we did have kids we'd have a couple of little Isles"
"Did it work?"
"No, she didn't care as long as she got grandkids" I shook my head as I watched Jane clear the table.
"You want them? Kids I mean?" She paused for a moment, before wandering over to sip her beer, clearly buying time to answer.
"Yeah, not just yet, but I do, I could definitely see that" She wandered back to the table to finish her shot. "What about you?"
"Yeah, I want that, Natalie too. I could see a couple of little blonde haired blue eyed kids; as long as they look like her I'd be happy. We just haven't got to that point yet"
"I could handle a couple of mini Maura's around the house. I thought Ma would have kittens at giving up the Rizzoli name, but she was happy to sell out generations of Italian genes for grandkids with blonde hair and hazel eyes" I had to laugh at the image.
"Well if my kids look like Nat and yours look like Maura, we could marry them off to each other and breed a master race of stunning, super intelligent, super-sexy people" She laughed as I finally got a shot at the table.
"Sounds good, but I don't think I could handle you as an in-law. Natalie on the other hand…" I grinned as I moved around the table, potting balls. I was five behind with a lot of work to do.
"Yeah, yeah, put it back in your pants Rizzoli, she's taken" I dropped four in short succession as Jane watched.
"That's not what I saw, that was me she was cuddling into at dinner that night. I'm sure I could find room for one more" I missed the fifth and stepped back, shooting her a mock scowl.
"Yeah right, like you could hold out against both of them. They'd have you in dresses and heels and makeup before you knew it, no way could you say no to both of them" She laughed as she sank her sixth.
"It'd be fun trying. You're obviously no good at saying no to Natalie anyway" I frowned, watching her sink her last.
"What do you mean?" The last ball dropped and she lined up on the 8-Ball. Damn, too easy. Rizzoli 2, Romanov 0.
"I see you wandering around the building in those pants suits and heels, head office puke" She grinned, partly at the win and partly to take the sting out of her words. I sighed.
"That's Nat's influence. She started getting my suits tailored to better fit me and got me the heels. The suits are because she likes seeing me well dressed, the shoes, well that's her subconsciously trying to protect me" Jane stood back and looked at me, lifting an eyebrow.
"Look, after I got stabbed, I was on desk duty for a while, which Nat saw as an opportunity to get me better dressed. The shoes were part of that and I appreciate it, but it was also her trying to keep me safe. She must have thought that if I couldn't run in heels I couldn't get myself into the same mess I had before"
As we racked up another game Jane looked up at me.
"What'd you think about that?" I shrugged.
"I knew that she did it to protect me. It was understandable, I'd just put her through the worst two weeks of her life, she didn't want that to happen again. It was something I could appreciate so I didn't make an issue about it" She grinned.
"See, I was right, high-heeled head office puke" I laughed at her tone.
"Don't be too sure about that, I can still run in them if I have to" She looked at me with derision all over her face.
"Really?"
"Hey, after running in army issue boots, with weapon and backpack and 40 kilos of gear, in soft sand, heels are a snap"
"The only thing snapping will be your ankles, hey you want another beer?"
"Yes please, another Heineken"
We played another game, which I won before an older man and his middle aged son came up and asked to play, so we settled back at a table and worked on our beers and some peanuts.
"Seriously, do you want to stay here in LA?" She nodded slowly.
"Yeah, I could handle that. It's been good so far"
"What do you like about it?"
"The weather's better, it's much bigger, you're living in a holiday destination, we're a continent away from my family, what's not to like. Besides the likelihood that we'll get the big quake and California drops off the map and into the ocean" I grinned.
"There are times I think California is its own separate country already. Nat and I like it here as well despite the weirdness; it's a positive move for both of us" Jane nodded, looking off into the distance.
"You know what I like best about being in LA, you can be anonymous here. Back in Boston, between Maura's family name, society shit and her charity work on one hand and the whole 'hero cop' bullshit the press hung on me on the other, we couldn't be ourselves. Everyone was watching us"
"I knew about that, it'd make it hard" She came back to focus on me.
"Huh, how?"
"Natalie is a very good investigative reporter. Sit her in front of a computer with a Google and LexisNexis connection and she can dig out a frightening amount of stuff, even without tapping into the journalist's networks. You know the Chief's entitled to wear three ribbons from her time at the CIA on her dress uniform, but doesn't?"
"You're kidding me right?"
"Nope, Nat investigates anyone interesting she meets, all part of her wanting to know things. It's all part of her personality; she wants to know how things and people work. In another life she could have been a good detective. The Chief got hers for her work in the CIA interrogating Soviet spies, plus a mission in the Middle East just before the first Gulf War"
"Wow. I had no idea"
"Natalie does it almost like breathing. Give her something interesting and she digs. After that trivia night she was banging away on Google, chasing up some of the stuff we didn't know, like international politics" Jane nodded, before focussing back on me.
"So what did she find out about Maura and me?"
"Well skipping the obvious…" My eyes dropped to her hands for a moment before flicking back up and getting a slight nod in return. "…Maura's family is wealthy old money, pillars of Boston high society, her mother's an artist and her father is an anthropologist, they're both away a lot. Maura went to a girl's boarding school in France before coming back to the US to get her degrees at BCU and Harvard. She worked at a number of places, including Johns Hopkins before taking the Boston M.E. job. Her biological father is a mob boss who's now in prison, thanks to you" She looked at me and nodded.
"Not bad. What about me"
"You were a little harder, she almost asked me to dig, which she doesn't like to; she thinks it's cheating" I shrugged and took a sip of beer to wet my lips.
"You were top of your class at the academy, moved from beat cop to Vice very quickly, made detective younger than anyone before or since, first woman in Homicide, youngest Homicide detective, solved a lot of high profile cases…" My eyes flicked down to her hands for a second. "…getting a lot of public attention for some of those cases, including one where you were in a siege at Boston PD headquarters. You've had a string of use of force investigations, higher than almost anyone in the force, but have been cleared of every one of them, including the six fatal shootings in the past three years" Jane's eyes dropped to the table at that; clearly she still felt the weight of those shootings.
"As for the rest, you have two brothers; one of whom is a beat cop while the other did time, your parents are separated, you've worked with Maura for three years, been close for almost the same time, and together for almost a year" I shrugged again.
"The first reports that you two might be a couple started about two and a half years ago, when you were her escort to a charity function that was reported in the papers. They stopped beating around the bush about it when you turned up as her escort to a ball in Boston wearing a tuxedo and Maura had to get territorial to get some admirers to back off. Since then they've been calling you Boston's glamour lesbian power couple"
Jane, who had been watching me closely, leaned back and laughed at that.
"That night was so weird. I had to go but didn't want to wear a dress, the invite said Black Tie or Evening Gown so Maura suggested I go in a tux. One of the social reporters took a real shine to me and was a little too blatant about her offer so Maura stepped in and made it official. She got very possessive because Alicia, the reporter, wouldn't back off" She nodded at me.
That's pretty good, actually that's more than I would have expected" I nodded.
"It's what she does, she's good at it"
Jane was silent for a good two minutes, just looking out the window, seeing something that wasn't there, so I left her to think.
I noticed a guy, mid thirties, walking our way and shook my head. When he looked uncertain I used my hand to push the jacket I was wearing back from the pistol on my belt. Seeing it he decided to go elsewhere.
I turned back to see laughing dark eyes watching me.
"Smooth Romanov, smooth" I raised an eyebrow.
"Normally I'd just flash the ring, but then he'd settle for seconds and try hitting on you" I shrugged playfully. "No need to thank me, it's the least I could do" She hit the melodrama button.
"Seconds? That is so rude. Typical FBI agent" I laughed.
"Suck it up Jane, sometimes the truth hurts" She laughed.
"You wanna watch yourself Ana; sometimes a smack in the mouth offends"
We smiled at each other for a moment, before her tone changed, growing softer.
"There is one other thing that's pretty good about being here in LA" I tilted my head as I watched her, seeing Jane minus the sass and swagger, it was nice.
"Natalie and you, friends, it's nice. We like you too" I smiled, but before I could say anything she jumped back in, back to her more usual tone.
"Actually, to be honest it's mostly Natalie. You, not so much"
I was about to respond when I noticed the older guy who'd taken over on the pool table wander over. He had to be in his late sixties, African American, silver hair but still lean.
"Excuse me ladies" We both looked at him.
"I'm sorry if I'm disturbing you, My son and I, we feel kind of bad taking the table away from you, you looked like you were having fun. So we were wondering if you'd like to play a game against us" I looked over at Jane, who looked back at me and gave a small nod, then we both looked up at the older guy.
"Sure, why not" Standing Jane fished a coin out of her pocket.
"I'm Jane, this is my friend Ana"
"Hi, Thomas Cutler, that's my son George"
"Well Mr Cutler…"
"Please call me Tom"
"Well Tom…" She flipped the coin in the air and caught it, slapping it onto the back of her other hand. "…call to see who breaks"
Tom called and lost as I looked over at the younger Cutler.
"You guys want a beer?"
"Yeah, that'd be nice thanks, whatever you're having"
"Kick it off Jane, be back in a moment" She looked at me and turned that blinding Rizzoli grin on me.
"Don't be too long, I don't want to have to do all the work, again" I laughed at her teasing tone.
"Get stuffed Jane"