*** You and me ***
Inspired by "Romeo and Juliet", written by Mark Knopfler.
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Kowalski was in the lab and it seemed that he hadn't heard Skipper's call although the door was open.
"Soldier, did you go deaf or -"
It couldn't be. Not again.
Skipper had found Kowalski sitting at his work bench, crying with Doris' photo in his flipper. It couldn't be... they had already had that talk so many times! Would he have to tell him again? He approached and cleared his throat, thinking about how to address the issue with a tact that neither did he have nor would he have in his whole life.
"Kowalski," he said, making Kowalski look at him. "There are plenty of fish in the sea."
"Although you enjoy calling Blowhole a fish to make him mad, you know perfectly that dolphins are mammals."
Even if Kowalski was at the bottom of a pit, his know-it-all side always emerged up to the surface. Skipper would need reinforcements.
"Get out of the lab, we need to talk."
Kowalski obeyed protesting under his breath, taking the photo with him. Skipper ordered him to sit on one of the concrete blocks. The four were at the table and they were going to settle that damned issue once and for all.
"That photo," Skipper said, making a gesture for Kowalski to give it to him. "This is the problem. Rico, you know what to do."
Rico swallowed the photo ignoring Kowalski's complaints. Skipper told Private something that Kowalski didn't hear, and Private nodded.
"Kowalski, we want to help you," Private started. "Three months have passed. You can't go on this way."
"At least it hasn't been like the previous time," Skipper commented with his flippers crossed. "Each time Doris gives you the brushoff, you take to do not very recommendable things. To be shut in, a poem which made us cringe, some of your inventions... should I go on?"
"You don't need to," Kowalski said, with his head leaned down. "But this time it was working, and I'm fine."
"Until it has stopped working, and you're not fine. You just act like you're fine," Skipper replied to him. "In your place I'd forget about her and I'd try it with another."
"With Eva?" Kowalski asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Why not? You stayed friends, didn't you?" Private asked. "Or with another. The problem is not you, it's how you take it."
Skipper read Kowalski's disconformity gesture. "You won't listen, will you? Go and talk with Doris, let's see what she tells you."
"That's what I'll do," Kowalski said, he stood up and went running for the car.
Skipper faceflippered. Kowalski didn't get sarcasm.
.
Kowalski had arrived at the dock some time before his teammates, who had to reluctantly accept the subway. But it hadn't been of much use, as there was no hide nor hair of Doris. Skipper breathed soothed when he saw him alone: there was still hope to take him home before he made a fool of himself for the zillionth time.
But Kowalski was faster. He remembered that the old banjo confiscated from Julien a long time ago was in the car, he took it and tuned it. And he started singing and playing.
Skipper was flabbergasted, unable to react, when he recognized the melody: a song from the musical "West Side Story", but with the lyrics changed. And sung as a duet! Kowalski couldn't sink lower. Or could he?
He could.
As if he were under a spotlight, he was the center of all the stares in the dock. Except human ones, luckily. He was standing in the middle, making a better door than a window, ignoring the laughters of the rest, mainly the dolphins, and not knowing that their teammates were witnessing everything at very few yards' distance, hearing him perfectly. Skipper gave the order to intervene only if he gave the signal.
Kowalski revised mentally all what he wanted to tell her. He would be brave enough to propose again and he had his discourse prepared. He was going to succeed. He went on singing and playing.
And then she appeared. Like the Moon, emerging from the sea. The ocean's goddess.
Kowalski smiled faintly, stupidly.
"You and me. How about it?"
To hell the discourse!
Doris got near Kowalski. He, as if bewitched, approached her purring.
"Oh, Kowalski... You can't do this! You scared me to death! You know that I have a boyfriend, and he's here."
Kowalski's smile vanished at once.
"Listen, Kowalski... we've talked about it many times. I like you, but only as a friend. We tried it... and it couldn't be. And it won't be. So take it out of your head: you cannot force something that is impossible, and you cannot come and try it once and again."
The purr had become silence. Kowalski felt that Doris had squeezed his heart as if it was made of foam. It seemed that she took pleasure in destroying his heart in the most varied ways, and he even wondered if she kept a record of the times that she had squashed it, detonated it, stabbed it...
Although Kowalski didn't want to believe it, he had bet on her knowing that everything was decided in advance. She had told him that she regretted not having seen again the penguin of action that she had seen against her brother, but he didn't want to see the truth: Doris had just taken a fancy to one facet of his, she didn't love the whole. She didn't love Kowalski the genius, or the freak, or the insecure... she only loved what she had wanted to see in him. And he could think what he wanted, but the truth was what it was. What could he do about it?
But he didn't give up as he had done the other times. She had always told him no, not knowing what she was missing. And he was going to remind her of it. He stared at her, making an effort to swallow his pride and not show his tears, and he took a step forward.
"Doris," he started, trying to sound more assertive than what he felt, "I know that we're so different. That logic says that we can't be together, that your brother's issue doesn't improve things... but we both wanted the same, we both dreamt of the same. And I made your dream true, because nobody else will ever be able to love you as much as... as I loved you and as I love you." He grimaced to hold a tear back. "If you are so important for me... how is it that you don't feel the same and you treat me as you'd treat anyone else? I'm not anyone else, I assure you." Bitterness leaned out in his voice. "I'm not a toy, I'm not a throwaway boyfriend."
Next to Doris there was another dolphin. Kowalski noticed that both were holding flippers.
"Is it him?" he asked, afraid of the answer.
"Yes, Kowalski, it's him. My boyfriend, Finn."
"At least this time it seems that you got the species right," Kowalski acknowledged with bitterness. "It seems that you wanted to try here and there before making your mind up and I wasn't going to be the gold medal at your personal olympics, and if I have to be the silver one... there's really one prize. You prefer a handsome dolphin that you surely don't know as much as you know me, but I don't forget all your promises. I see that they're not worth at all."
"Which promises?" Finn asked.
"That she would be with me forever, through thick and thin, that she would never stop loving me, that -"
"Finn, don't listen to him," Doris said, interrupting Kowalski. "I already told you... it was just an unimportant fling, I don't think about him anymore."
Kowalski was really indignant by what he had just heard, but he didn't overlook that Finn apparently didn't care. He didn't think that Doris had explained it to him because he had seemed jealous, but for simple gossip. But Finn was a dolphin... what could be expected from him? Kowalski, with his flippers crossed, focused on Doris' words and stared at her, unsuccessfully trying to hold back tears.
"Now you'll tell me that it's not true all what you used to tell me when we were alone and we had some time for privacy."
When he heard that word, Skipper covered Private's earholes. Rico had covered his a while ago, that kind of conversations really made him ill.
The same as Doris had pulled out Kowalski's heart, now he wanted to pull out her shield. He made an effort to sound suggestive, and took no notice of what Finn could think. To hell with him!
"Then you used to tell me, crying, that you had never been with anyone like me. That you would love me forever, that you loved me more than the sea and the stars in the sky. Will you tell me that you got poetic just because you were giving in to passion and because we were so bonded then?"
Finn read between the lines and frowned. Doris saw his gesture and shook her head. Kowalski didn't know if she had made her new boyfriend the same promises, if Finn was just jealous thinking that he wasn't the only who had touched Doris... what did it matter.
Kowalski continued. "I would do anything for you, always, without thinking. I may not be the best, but nobody will ever love you like I do, not even him," he pointed at Finn, who was visibly annoyed. "I'm in love with you and that's the only thing I can do, to be in love with you. Until I die. And to miss you, and to think about you. And it's not a promise, it's a fact. And you leave me like this, with no hope, wanting me to kiss you only in my imagination."
Doris was just staring at him, saying nothing, with an indecipherable demeanor. Kowalski noticed that his beak was dry after talking so much, and Doris had only been listening... that, if she had been listening. But silence is telling, and that was his last bolt.
"You say nothing because you know it: the only thing that failed was that it wasn't the moment. But now it is. Give me an opportunity. Tell me yes."
"No," Doris said. "I was wrong, period. Don't think that they were the circumstances. You and me don't work together. Don't look for excuses because you know it."
"Haven't you realized how in love I am with you?" Kowalski asked her.
"Yes, but you haven't realized that I'm not."
Doris turned around and dove in the sea again, not giving an option to reply. Finn addressed a disapproving stare to Kowalski and followed his beloved. Kowalski was left alone in the deck, defeated.
"Can't we even be friends?" he asked knowing that she wouldn't reply.
He sat down with his stare lost in the horizon and let the tears run free. His awful faux pas was something secondary, what hurt was Doris' "no" and knowing that possibly he would never see her again.
After some minutes, his teammates decided to leave their hiding place.
"Skipper... why did you let Doris slaughter him that way?" Private asked.
"You may be the expert on emotions, but unfortunately here I am the expert on looking after depressive penguins. Either we pull Doris out by the roots or this will never end."
Rico nodded admitting his leader was right.
The three went towards Kowalski, who didn't react when he saw them.
"I'm so sorry," Private said, hugging him.
Kowalski just cried like a hatchling on his friend's shoulder, with a position rather uncomfortable for such a tall penguin. He didn't notice that one of them had taken him inside the car until he heard the engine roaring.
.
They didn't talk about that issue for weeks in the HQ. The three agreed that the best option was to let Kowalski take some time and ask for help himself. It was the convenient thing. Even if Kowalski had returned to the annoying dynamic of not leaving his bunk.
One day, to everybody's surprise, Kowalski got up and went determined to the lab. He closed the door, took the cell phone from a drawer and dialed a number.
"Eva! I'm so happy to hear you. Listen... I wanted to ask you... you and me, together... what about it?"
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