Fic: Pilgrim's progress. (Twin Peaks, Dale Cooper, PG)
Pilgrim's progress. Twin Peaks, Dale Cooper, Caroline Earle, Audrey Horne, PG.
He lies awake in an empty bed and recites the facts. They're not comforting. He was slow when he ought to have been quick. He was quick when he ought to have been slow. True knowledge consists in knowing, he thinks. That I know nothing.
I.
Dale was a latchkey child. Home sharp at three-thirty, with time for a two-minute stop in the corner market. Chocolate milk in the carton, chalky and sweet, cold and sweaty in his hands. Staring up at the clouds and blue on his way home, counting transformers and pigeons on the wires. Sky so bright it stings his eyes. He assumes all birds have names he doesn't know. Home was on the second story. Crackers from the pantry and ham from the fridge and homework on the kitchen table. Done with algebra by four-fifteen, history and literature by five-thirty. At six she comes home and opens cans and asks him how his education is developing. "Tell me something you learned today, Dale," she says, "that was worth knowing."
"When Marie Antoinette was executed," he recites, "she stepped on her executioner's foot. And apologized." They're doing Revolutions, chapter five, this week. He could have gone with Robespierre for today. Or crossed the ocean and picked Washington, Jefferson, Benedict Arnold. All solid answers. He likes the story about the cherry tree. It means something. But he imagines Marie the way she looks in old movies, black and white, with ribbons in her hair. Norma Shearer, but thinner and sadder. Shorter. A beauty mark by her eye. Excuse me, she says. I did not mean to do it.
"And what does that tell us?"
He has no idea.
"The importance of good manners?" He sits up straighter and tries to remember if the fork and knife go on the left or right of the plate. It's strange that there are fork territories, home base for utensils. Do they get lonely on the other side of the plate? Do they feel lost? His mother stares at him and Dale shifts in his seat. "That we should always watch where we're stepping?"
She laughs.
"I guess," she says. "Grace under pressure."
It's meatloaf for dinner. His favorite.
II.
The first time Dale falls in love, he is twenty-seven years old. A late bloomer, perhaps. Or just waiting. There was Alice in high school, and Mary Ellen in the second year of college, and a couple of girls since then. He liked them all and wanted to be liked. He's never broken anyone's heart and so far, they've returned the favor. So far, he thinks, love has played it reasonably fair. In the first moment that it doesn't, he is sitting in Windom Earle's suburban backyard, at a picnic table behind a split-level ranch in one of the nondescript neighborhoods around Fairfax. He has been partnered with Windom for six months now, learning more in the passenger seat of Windom's boxy sedan than he learned in the last three years. He could shoot a gun and trace a license plate and run background checks and chase a suspect on foot before they met; he could conduct a decent interview and work a halfway decent surveillance operation. But now he is being taught to think. They play chess, sometimes, on a little magnetic board that Windom keeps in the car for down-time. Dale used to think that chess was a slow game, methodical and precise and based entirely on rules, on proven strategy. But Windom keeps winning, and he wins fast.
"It's because I can read your mind," he says. Dale believes him.
They are all there; Windom and Caroline and a handful of other folks, mostly people Caroline seems to know. It is Memorial Day, and it's already humid and hot under the sun. Dale hasn't unbuttoned his collar. There's a bead of sweat trickling between his shoulder blades, a slow itch crawling on his spine. He shuts his eyes and tries to think of it as a river coasting down a mountain slope, a cold stream pulsing from snow-cap to valley. In Tibet there are many mountain lakes. They say the very first frost melted to form rivers, and then pools, and much later, waves.
"Potato salad?" Caroline asks.
He opens his eyes to look at her. He has looked at her before. Probably many times. He is suddenly, painfully conscious of how often, and how long, and how intently. She is smiling down at him with a bowl in her hand; condensation drips from the point where her warm palm touches the cold rim. There is a pause before the droplet hits the table. He can almost count a full second. Maybe two. In the yard, Windom tells a joke, and there is a brief silence as everyone listens for the punchline. In that quiet, Dale stares up at Caroline, and she stares back. He has always believed that when it happened- if it ever happened for him- it would be in mind instead of flesh, one shared consciousness that touched at every point. Fingertips against a mirror, contact in a circle of light. But it doesn't seem to be a perfect science. He doesn't know if she can hear his thoughts, or feel his racing pulse from the other side of the table. If she senses anything at all. Behind them, the other guests roar with laughter. Caroline's hand is trembling.
"No, thank you," Dale says.
She walks away.
In the moment of her death, Caroline pulls him forward by the neck, leaving a bloody smear on his collar and under his ear. He will wipe it off later in the motel bathroom with the tail of his shirt. He won't cry for the first few days. After that, he will barely stop.
"I felt it," she says, against his cheek.
It is a piece of information he cannot process. He absorbs it and he dwells in it- that sentence, that thought- for the better part of a year. The case photos cannot explain it, and his report sounds false and dry. He lies awake in an empty bed and recites the facts. They're not comforting. He was wrong at every turn, every juncture when he should have been right. He was slow when he ought to have been quick. He was quick when he ought to have been slow. True knowledge consists in knowing, he thinks. That I know nothing.
III.
Dale becomes used to the presence of Audrey at breakfast, and when she does not appear he is at first puzzled, and then concerned. As an exercise he flips through the internal file labeled Audrey, looking for esoterica and red flags, and then reminds himself that he is a grown man who does not need to concern himself with wayward teenage girls' breakfasts. The grapefruits be damned. He should really be monitoring these internal analogies more closely. They're borderline. He's borderline. Time to reel it in. He will go out to the car and proceed with his investigation and perhaps tonight he will inquire as to her whereabouts.
"Have you seen her?" he asks his waitress, approximately eight seconds later. Meditation only does so much for a man. Nobody at the Great Northern has seen her lately. Despite this Ben Horne is too busy to speak with him when they pass in the hall. He waves away Dale's concerns and polite inquiries and Dale is left standing in the hallway with his hands clenching reflexively into, and out of, fists. Unhealthy, surprisingly agitated behavior stemming from an unresolved personal issue. Very probably. Dale knows he has certain expectations- however unreasonable, however rooted in fantasy and sentiment and Norman Rockwell- of paternal figures. Dale never knew his father. He knew the handwriting on the back of a handful of photographs. He knew the faraway look in his mother's eyes when records turned and seasons changed and leaves fell from the trees. It was the first mystery, of many.
Somebody knows where Audrey is.
He is thinking about this as he puts his tuxedo on, avoiding his own eyes in the mirror as he fastens his cuffs and tie. Later the thought disappears; sinks into the soft ground at the back of his mind. It rides along with him at the casino as he tries not to count cards. He focuses on smiling. On not sitting too stiffly in his chair. Boy scout, Windom used to call him. Not made for sting operations. Teeth too shiny and eyes a little too interested. Dale knows he has limitations. He is an excellent investigator with a proven record. But he does not wear rumpled jeans and windbreakers and faked backstory especially well. He remembers to ask about the poker chip. He is still considering that poker chip much later- considering a lot of things, actually- when he takes three shots to the torso and pancakes out on the floor. He feels the warm wet mass of himself seeping into the pine boards and the rug. He thinks about that bite Laura took. A hard bite. If you want to live, you keep chewing. He has never been shot before. Hit, cut, kicked. Never shot. He wonders if she wanted to keep going, then, as much as he does right now. He wonders if anyone's coming.
He really doesn't know.
IV.
"Audrey," he whispers. "Were you afraid?" Dale can feel Audrey's palm against his, pressed so tight her nails are making half-moons against the back of his hand.
"No," she says, half gone.
"What?" he asks. "Why?"
"You were coming," she tells him. She smiles with her eyes closed. "You were close." This is the poker chip, the potato salad. He pets Audrey's hair absently while she sleeps, hazed and druggy. The world trades in secret communication. Signals. Pulses. Radios are not only playing songs: they are playing the last baseball game of a losing season, memories of long drives and hopes of future pennants. This is a piece of information Windom doesn't have. Couldn't understand. There are no books, no matter how arcane, that teach you how to love.
"Thank you," he says.
He's a quick learner.
.
He lies awake in an empty bed and recites the facts. They're not comforting. He was slow when he ought to have been quick. He was quick when he ought to have been slow. True knowledge consists in knowing, he thinks. That I know nothing.
I.
Dale was a latchkey child. Home sharp at three-thirty, with time for a two-minute stop in the corner market. Chocolate milk in the carton, chalky and sweet, cold and sweaty in his hands. Staring up at the clouds and blue on his way home, counting transformers and pigeons on the wires. Sky so bright it stings his eyes. He assumes all birds have names he doesn't know. Home was on the second story. Crackers from the pantry and ham from the fridge and homework on the kitchen table. Done with algebra by four-fifteen, history and literature by five-thirty. At six she comes home and opens cans and asks him how his education is developing. "Tell me something you learned today, Dale," she says, "that was worth knowing."
"When Marie Antoinette was executed," he recites, "she stepped on her executioner's foot. And apologized." They're doing Revolutions, chapter five, this week. He could have gone with Robespierre for today. Or crossed the ocean and picked Washington, Jefferson, Benedict Arnold. All solid answers. He likes the story about the cherry tree. It means something. But he imagines Marie the way she looks in old movies, black and white, with ribbons in her hair. Norma Shearer, but thinner and sadder. Shorter. A beauty mark by her eye. Excuse me, she says. I did not mean to do it.
"And what does that tell us?"
He has no idea.
"The importance of good manners?" He sits up straighter and tries to remember if the fork and knife go on the left or right of the plate. It's strange that there are fork territories, home base for utensils. Do they get lonely on the other side of the plate? Do they feel lost? His mother stares at him and Dale shifts in his seat. "That we should always watch where we're stepping?"
She laughs.
"I guess," she says. "Grace under pressure."
It's meatloaf for dinner. His favorite.
II.
The first time Dale falls in love, he is twenty-seven years old. A late bloomer, perhaps. Or just waiting. There was Alice in high school, and Mary Ellen in the second year of college, and a couple of girls since then. He liked them all and wanted to be liked. He's never broken anyone's heart and so far, they've returned the favor. So far, he thinks, love has played it reasonably fair. In the first moment that it doesn't, he is sitting in Windom Earle's suburban backyard, at a picnic table behind a split-level ranch in one of the nondescript neighborhoods around Fairfax. He has been partnered with Windom for six months now, learning more in the passenger seat of Windom's boxy sedan than he learned in the last three years. He could shoot a gun and trace a license plate and run background checks and chase a suspect on foot before they met; he could conduct a decent interview and work a halfway decent surveillance operation. But now he is being taught to think. They play chess, sometimes, on a little magnetic board that Windom keeps in the car for down-time. Dale used to think that chess was a slow game, methodical and precise and based entirely on rules, on proven strategy. But Windom keeps winning, and he wins fast.
"It's because I can read your mind," he says. Dale believes him.
They are all there; Windom and Caroline and a handful of other folks, mostly people Caroline seems to know. It is Memorial Day, and it's already humid and hot under the sun. Dale hasn't unbuttoned his collar. There's a bead of sweat trickling between his shoulder blades, a slow itch crawling on his spine. He shuts his eyes and tries to think of it as a river coasting down a mountain slope, a cold stream pulsing from snow-cap to valley. In Tibet there are many mountain lakes. They say the very first frost melted to form rivers, and then pools, and much later, waves.
"Potato salad?" Caroline asks.
He opens his eyes to look at her. He has looked at her before. Probably many times. He is suddenly, painfully conscious of how often, and how long, and how intently. She is smiling down at him with a bowl in her hand; condensation drips from the point where her warm palm touches the cold rim. There is a pause before the droplet hits the table. He can almost count a full second. Maybe two. In the yard, Windom tells a joke, and there is a brief silence as everyone listens for the punchline. In that quiet, Dale stares up at Caroline, and she stares back. He has always believed that when it happened- if it ever happened for him- it would be in mind instead of flesh, one shared consciousness that touched at every point. Fingertips against a mirror, contact in a circle of light. But it doesn't seem to be a perfect science. He doesn't know if she can hear his thoughts, or feel his racing pulse from the other side of the table. If she senses anything at all. Behind them, the other guests roar with laughter. Caroline's hand is trembling.
"No, thank you," Dale says.
She walks away.
In the moment of her death, Caroline pulls him forward by the neck, leaving a bloody smear on his collar and under his ear. He will wipe it off later in the motel bathroom with the tail of his shirt. He won't cry for the first few days. After that, he will barely stop.
"I felt it," she says, against his cheek.
It is a piece of information he cannot process. He absorbs it and he dwells in it- that sentence, that thought- for the better part of a year. The case photos cannot explain it, and his report sounds false and dry. He lies awake in an empty bed and recites the facts. They're not comforting. He was wrong at every turn, every juncture when he should have been right. He was slow when he ought to have been quick. He was quick when he ought to have been slow. True knowledge consists in knowing, he thinks. That I know nothing.
III.
Dale becomes used to the presence of Audrey at breakfast, and when she does not appear he is at first puzzled, and then concerned. As an exercise he flips through the internal file labeled Audrey, looking for esoterica and red flags, and then reminds himself that he is a grown man who does not need to concern himself with wayward teenage girls' breakfasts. The grapefruits be damned. He should really be monitoring these internal analogies more closely. They're borderline. He's borderline. Time to reel it in. He will go out to the car and proceed with his investigation and perhaps tonight he will inquire as to her whereabouts.
"Have you seen her?" he asks his waitress, approximately eight seconds later. Meditation only does so much for a man. Nobody at the Great Northern has seen her lately. Despite this Ben Horne is too busy to speak with him when they pass in the hall. He waves away Dale's concerns and polite inquiries and Dale is left standing in the hallway with his hands clenching reflexively into, and out of, fists. Unhealthy, surprisingly agitated behavior stemming from an unresolved personal issue. Very probably. Dale knows he has certain expectations- however unreasonable, however rooted in fantasy and sentiment and Norman Rockwell- of paternal figures. Dale never knew his father. He knew the handwriting on the back of a handful of photographs. He knew the faraway look in his mother's eyes when records turned and seasons changed and leaves fell from the trees. It was the first mystery, of many.
Somebody knows where Audrey is.
He is thinking about this as he puts his tuxedo on, avoiding his own eyes in the mirror as he fastens his cuffs and tie. Later the thought disappears; sinks into the soft ground at the back of his mind. It rides along with him at the casino as he tries not to count cards. He focuses on smiling. On not sitting too stiffly in his chair. Boy scout, Windom used to call him. Not made for sting operations. Teeth too shiny and eyes a little too interested. Dale knows he has limitations. He is an excellent investigator with a proven record. But he does not wear rumpled jeans and windbreakers and faked backstory especially well. He remembers to ask about the poker chip. He is still considering that poker chip much later- considering a lot of things, actually- when he takes three shots to the torso and pancakes out on the floor. He feels the warm wet mass of himself seeping into the pine boards and the rug. He thinks about that bite Laura took. A hard bite. If you want to live, you keep chewing. He has never been shot before. Hit, cut, kicked. Never shot. He wonders if she wanted to keep going, then, as much as he does right now. He wonders if anyone's coming.
He really doesn't know.
IV.
"Audrey," he whispers. "Were you afraid?" Dale can feel Audrey's palm against his, pressed so tight her nails are making half-moons against the back of his hand.
"No," she says, half gone.
"What?" he asks. "Why?"
"You were coming," she tells him. She smiles with her eyes closed. "You were close." This is the poker chip, the potato salad. He pets Audrey's hair absently while she sleeps, hazed and druggy. The world trades in secret communication. Signals. Pulses. Radios are not only playing songs: they are playing the last baseball game of a losing season, memories of long drives and hopes of future pennants. This is a piece of information Windom doesn't have. Couldn't understand. There are no books, no matter how arcane, that teach you how to love.
"Thank you," he says.
He's a quick learner.
.