Canto
I shouldn't have slept with her. Dammit. Should've pushed her off, should've made her talk to me. Thinking back, can't tell. City's full of women I could snap like a twig in interrogation, and I decide to start sleeping with the one I can't read. Something's off. This Grossman thing, on top of her job situation; getting pretty unstable in Cantoville.
Shouldn't have slept with her. Maybe. Shit. I'm the last person in New York qualified to argue against using sex to stop thinking. Grossman. Who would've figured she'd fall for him, and that fast? Think I'll head over to MA in the morning, figure out who's handling the case, see what's up.
10/3/2005
Logfile from Leah.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Old Brownstone Apartments #300 - Leah
Plentiful light and air combine to make this tall and narrow apartment seem larger than its floor plan suggests. Directly opposite the entry's little foyer, a trio of high, leaded-glass windows dominates the main area: the central living room, the kitchen next to the entry, and the eating nook in the corner between kitchen and window. On the other side of the apartment lies private space: a tiny office next to the entry, the bedroom on the other side of a short hallway, and the bathroom between.
The decor is simple but pleasant with many touches of nature, from the polished woods of floor and furniture to the scattered arrangements of seashells, dried flowers, and framed landscapes that complete the essence of a peaceful haven.
--
Darkness outside. Darkness inside. And a light, blazing its way up the stairs on long legs, bearing amusement on its crown. Chris Rossi lopes easily down the hallway, barefoot in jeans and a T-shirt, photographs trapped in a hand's hook. His other hand's fist serves as notice of his arrival at Leah's door. "Canto! Open up. You're not going to believe this. /Canto/. You there?"
The door stands in silence almost frowning in intensity -- but not impervious: it shudders open a few inches under the knock's impetus, breaking the plane and the quiet both. Showering sounds lie on the other side, inside, and through the faint, close breath of steam is the musty musk of an apartment kept shuttered closed for too long. Lights are off. Discarded clothing, worn but clean, lines a ragged path from the door into the dark.
Distracted by photographs (Mikey, stolid and uncomplaining under familial onslaught) it takes Rossi a moment to mark the treacherous door. Another knock breaks the entry's gap even further, inviting Chris's cautious step in. "/Canto/!" The green gaze skims, marks mess, and darkens with exasperated amusement: the woman is a slob. He kicks the door shut and ambles, tracing the path from door to shower. "Leah. You're lucky I'm a decent guy, or I'd be stealing all your shit right about now. Canto?"
The bathroom door, unlike its outer brother, is quite firmly closed, leaving steam to purl out underneath it in sufficient quantities to suggest an appalling long shower in progress, a magnificently effective water heater, or both. Dim sounds of movement through the steady, rattling hiss of water mark presence, at least ... but presence does not mark back. There's a shoe, right there at the door, lying right there, a shoe: a low-heeled pump, its color dimly red in the floor-level crack of light.
The man pauses, nudging the shoe out of the slim band of light with a toe's tip. Shoulders and spine settle against the wall by the door, arms folding in a pretense of patience. We will wait, then, says the slouch of body (while the foot tap-tap-taps to call it a lie.) A hand surrenders, rapping its knuckles into the door. "/Canto/. You'll shrivel up like a prune."
A cry coughs low, just over the water noise, and the movements stop. "Who--?"
"--It's the fucking bogeyman," informs baritone, amused. "You left the door open, Canto. You nuts? Any freak could've walked in."
"I guess one did?" A skittering laugh. "Give--give me a sec. Almost done. Sorry, Rossi. Chris."
The detective chuckles quietly, prodding the shoe into a cringing corner, and disengages from the wall to trace his steps back. Her garments collect themselves across his elbow, piece by piece, and are tossed into a chair's basket; he is for the kitchen, and the discovery of long-eroded plates. "/Christ/, Leah--"
--Who emerges after another few minutes, wrapped in a fluffy big terrycloth robe and wide, blinking amazement. Her eyes jump around the hallway -- shy away from the shoe -- and then lead her to stand in its mouth, gaping as it does at the living area and at their guest. "I was busy," she offers weakly, hand out in supportive starfished splay on the wall. "I was going to clean up in a bit...."
Water runs in the kitchen. Chris rinses dishes. "It's a mess," he scolds with fraternal disapproval, dark head stooping to peer across the counter's gap. "What, it'd kill you to do some housekeeping from time to time? --How's it going, Canto?" White dashes across the green-skewed gaze, warming in a sudden, febrile heat. "I ever tell you you look hot when you're wet?"
Leah steps back, quick, into corridor shadow. "No. You--" She jitters another laugh. "That what bring you up here? Clean my place, get laid?"
"Julia took some pictures," Rossi informs, denying neither the cleaning (nor the sex) though water spray flies at a dismissive gesture. "They're on the table. Mikey made detective -- I tell you that? -- started day before yesterday. Sex Crimes, over at the two-seven." Glass squeaks under the vigorous sponge.
"Oh. That's nice for him." Leah stays in abeyance. Then ... nudges out, absently scrubbing at throat and cheeks with curled hand, and makes a slow and mincing away towards the photos. Each step rolls careful, wary, but her shoulders have a negligent sway to them. She picks at the topmost picture with the same laxity. "He looks nice. You all look nice."
The faucet turns off to the abrupt fall of silence, and baritone mocks, "/Nice/. Mikey looks like he swallowed a brick, and Julia looks like she's going to rip his head off. Figured you'd think it was funny," Rossi informs, dishragging his hands and tossing it aside for his stalk out and in. Hands thrust into pockets, shoulders sloped to the easy, loose-limbed stride; he pauses at the end of the coffee table, tipping a boy's grin at Leah. "For a writer, you got a crappy vocabulary, Canto."
Leah flinches. "Sorry."
Rossi's grin fades. "Christ, Canto. I'm kidding."
Leah blinks at him, owl-round. (Fluffs.) "Oh. Sorry. Yeah. Long day, huh?"
"For you? How's it going?" Rossi asks again, rocking back on his bare heels, gaze alert on her face. "Job front picking up for you?"
Leah edges back again. There, the couch. Her calves bang into it, and then the rest of her does as she falls into cushions. Leaf-pale, red-rimmed eyes never leave his face, but they saccade, jumping infinitesimally back and forth in automatic scan. "Maybe?" she tries and hugs her gut. "Maybe. Maybe picking up. I'm okay. Are you okay?"
The man pauses. Runs a puzzled hand through his hair to set it tumbling against his brow. "Yeah," he says, curiosity tugging at his baritone. "I'm okay. Running some old cases -- Captain's pissed off at me because I opened my big mouth. The LT caught some friendly fire between Tucci and Yamaguchi, swallowed some laxative...." Rossi's voice trails off, tangling with bemused awkwardness. "Huh."
"I'm glad you're okay," Leah tells him earnestly. "I'm really glad. With your job and all."
Chris regards Leah with blank, open eyes. "What the fuck?"
Leah bursts into tears.
"/Fuck/," says Rossi, harassed, and then it's over the coffee table and into the tumble of the couch. A crash, if soft into the cushions; Chris sprawls wide, claiming the seat's entirety (and Leah too, annexing) before folding around her in baffled comfort. "What's going on, Canto? You're not okay. Why are you crying? Christ. Don't /cry/."
Leah clings. And cries. And clings some more, shaking and shaking to get it all out. "--sorry, sorry, I'm sorry," she gasps through the paroxysms. "Sorry, I'll stop, I'll stop, don't hit me, don't hurt me, I'm sorry, I'm sorry--"
Chris's arms stiffen, offended. "I'm not going to /hit/ you. When have I ever--" There's time for that later. He breaks off, smothers Leah's head in his shoulder, and endures, a broad hand cradling the fragile curve of skull. Father Rossi. More gently, "What happened?"
Leah stops. Just -- stops. "Nothing." She starts unclinging. Wresting away with small, tight, vicious expenditures of energy.
"Like hell, /nothing/," retorts Rossi, and sets his teeth. Holds, bloody-minded fool, to the embrace she dove into. "What's going on?"
"It doesn't matter," Leah says on a swing back into despair. The fighting stops, but she doesn't lean back into him, either. She's stiff and taut and unhappy and staring (saccading) at his shoulder. "Just stuff. In my life. Whatever. I'm okay. Didn't I say I'm okay? And you're okay, so whatever, Rossi. What...ever."
A muscle leaps in the hard line of jaw, hiccuping under the skin. "You're just fine," agrees Rossi, heavy with sarcasm. "You're just dandy. I could write an entire fucking novel about how /fine/ you are. Tell me." Insistant man. And then, kinder, more coaxing, "C'mon, Canto. What's up?"
Leah stares at him. At his shoulder. It's right there in front of her, after all. She says, "Aaron's in the hospital. A mutant put him there. Attacked him. He's in a coma."
The shoulder stiffens, with surprise, with shock. "Grossman? In the hospital?" Rossi rears back, hands on Leah's upper arms to push her back: rounded green eyes to brown. "You're shitting me. When did this -- wait. This that mugging thing?"
Leah, trembling, nods as solemn as a schoolgirl at lessons. She got it right. Does she get a gold star?
Rossi eases, his hands loosening around Leah's arms. "Shit," he says, still riding the low descent from shock. Sympathy next. "Damn. I'm sorry, Canto. Is he -- how is he? What do the doctors say?"
"They don't /know,/" Leah cries softly, shuddering from some deep core, outward in concentric circles of tangible misery ... and her gaze pins desperately away from his. The neck now, that slope of sinew from jaw to shoulder. "It's medicine -- what the fuck do they ever know? Maybe he'll wake up. Probably. I don't know. Changes from day to day, and his whole damn family camped out in shifts at his bedside... /Just/ like my family. Just like ours. Same thing over and over again, and the mutants, the mutants--" Sobbing again.
"Hey." An inhaled breath, over the hand's broad caress across the soft hair; Rossi settles back, peering down into Leah's face. "It's okay. It'll be okay. Grossman's a tough guy -- he's a /garbageman/. Christ. They've got thicker skulls than longshoremen."
Leah's fist clenches in his shirt, pounds once. "I know. I know. I don't know -- coma. God, God..." Shuddering, she leans her head forward, resting the bronze-bright crown against his chest. Quietly, very quietly, and precisely: "I want to kill the bitch who did it to him."
Warmth buoys Leah, strong and encompassing, a mountain's solidity for Mohammed's loneliness (peace be on him!) The heartbeat keeps time in the chest's chamber, a mortal clock. "You really fell for him, didn't you?" There's wonder in Rossi's baritone, made bass between them. "I didn't know."
"He's a nice guy," comes forlorn answer after a long, warm, rocked and clocked moment.
"How's he feel about you?" asks the quieted voice, pitched low and curious.
Leah shrugs.
"You two--?"
"No."
"Man." Fingers thread through hair, splicing skin with bronze. "I'm sorry, Canto."
Leah shrugs again and looks up. "Happens," she says bleakly through a death's-head grin. "Life sucks, then you die. Right?"
Chris settles, couching his shoulder and spine's twist into the couch's back. Cynicism meets cynicism, and finds its reflection disturbing. "It's not /that/ bad," he demurs, a foot hitching up onto the cushions with them. "You don't know. He might wake up tomorrow."
"It is indeed that bad, and none of us are gonna wake up in the end," Leah informs him with sad finality. Then she kisses him, hard.
Startled protest parts Rossi's lips, thinning them around a muffled, "Canto." Hands tighten and press. Away. Green eyes tighten. "What about--"
Leah pushes him into the cushions with an arm's peremptory rod, and she stares at him as she slides around onto his lap, terrycloth flaring and settling around shower-damp, shower-warm, shower-scoured flesh like poor vestments. "What about what?" she demands and grabs another kiss from him. It gnaws; it covets. "--What? This isn't what you want?"
Heat leaps to answer demand, fanning passion's flame. Chris rocks back, pressed into the couch: but soft, soft--! Caution stiffens arms, pinning Leah's arms back; the troubled gaze searches, wary. "Fuck that. What do /you/ want?"
Leah's jaw grinds. "Just to forget about all this shit for a while. Is that so wrong? Is that a fucking sin -- literally -- Father Christopher?"
"What about--" begins Chris, clinging (God help him!) to hard sanity, to the woman's better part: only to snap his mouth shut again. "Screw it." An arm loops up and drags her down, pulling her into a hard, savage kiss.
Nothing, nothing, no answer, nothing, only down and down and into the softness and into the heat, with him, on him, around him, tongue and teeth, growl and grab; and down and down, and Leah drowns, oh, she drowns. And down.
[Log ends.]
Rossi visits Leah, who has been newly turned and released by the Friends of Humanity.
Shouldn't have slept with her. Maybe. Shit. I'm the last person in New York qualified to argue against using sex to stop thinking. Grossman. Who would've figured she'd fall for him, and that fast? Think I'll head over to MA in the morning, figure out who's handling the case, see what's up.
10/3/2005
Logfile from Leah.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Old Brownstone Apartments #300 - Leah
Plentiful light and air combine to make this tall and narrow apartment seem larger than its floor plan suggests. Directly opposite the entry's little foyer, a trio of high, leaded-glass windows dominates the main area: the central living room, the kitchen next to the entry, and the eating nook in the corner between kitchen and window. On the other side of the apartment lies private space: a tiny office next to the entry, the bedroom on the other side of a short hallway, and the bathroom between.
The decor is simple but pleasant with many touches of nature, from the polished woods of floor and furniture to the scattered arrangements of seashells, dried flowers, and framed landscapes that complete the essence of a peaceful haven.
--
Darkness outside. Darkness inside. And a light, blazing its way up the stairs on long legs, bearing amusement on its crown. Chris Rossi lopes easily down the hallway, barefoot in jeans and a T-shirt, photographs trapped in a hand's hook. His other hand's fist serves as notice of his arrival at Leah's door. "Canto! Open up. You're not going to believe this. /Canto/. You there?"
The door stands in silence almost frowning in intensity -- but not impervious: it shudders open a few inches under the knock's impetus, breaking the plane and the quiet both. Showering sounds lie on the other side, inside, and through the faint, close breath of steam is the musty musk of an apartment kept shuttered closed for too long. Lights are off. Discarded clothing, worn but clean, lines a ragged path from the door into the dark.
Distracted by photographs (Mikey, stolid and uncomplaining under familial onslaught) it takes Rossi a moment to mark the treacherous door. Another knock breaks the entry's gap even further, inviting Chris's cautious step in. "/Canto/!" The green gaze skims, marks mess, and darkens with exasperated amusement: the woman is a slob. He kicks the door shut and ambles, tracing the path from door to shower. "Leah. You're lucky I'm a decent guy, or I'd be stealing all your shit right about now. Canto?"
The bathroom door, unlike its outer brother, is quite firmly closed, leaving steam to purl out underneath it in sufficient quantities to suggest an appalling long shower in progress, a magnificently effective water heater, or both. Dim sounds of movement through the steady, rattling hiss of water mark presence, at least ... but presence does not mark back. There's a shoe, right there at the door, lying right there, a shoe: a low-heeled pump, its color dimly red in the floor-level crack of light.
The man pauses, nudging the shoe out of the slim band of light with a toe's tip. Shoulders and spine settle against the wall by the door, arms folding in a pretense of patience. We will wait, then, says the slouch of body (while the foot tap-tap-taps to call it a lie.) A hand surrenders, rapping its knuckles into the door. "/Canto/. You'll shrivel up like a prune."
A cry coughs low, just over the water noise, and the movements stop. "Who--?"
"--It's the fucking bogeyman," informs baritone, amused. "You left the door open, Canto. You nuts? Any freak could've walked in."
"I guess one did?" A skittering laugh. "Give--give me a sec. Almost done. Sorry, Rossi. Chris."
The detective chuckles quietly, prodding the shoe into a cringing corner, and disengages from the wall to trace his steps back. Her garments collect themselves across his elbow, piece by piece, and are tossed into a chair's basket; he is for the kitchen, and the discovery of long-eroded plates. "/Christ/, Leah--"
--Who emerges after another few minutes, wrapped in a fluffy big terrycloth robe and wide, blinking amazement. Her eyes jump around the hallway -- shy away from the shoe -- and then lead her to stand in its mouth, gaping as it does at the living area and at their guest. "I was busy," she offers weakly, hand out in supportive starfished splay on the wall. "I was going to clean up in a bit...."
Water runs in the kitchen. Chris rinses dishes. "It's a mess," he scolds with fraternal disapproval, dark head stooping to peer across the counter's gap. "What, it'd kill you to do some housekeeping from time to time? --How's it going, Canto?" White dashes across the green-skewed gaze, warming in a sudden, febrile heat. "I ever tell you you look hot when you're wet?"
Leah steps back, quick, into corridor shadow. "No. You--" She jitters another laugh. "That what bring you up here? Clean my place, get laid?"
"Julia took some pictures," Rossi informs, denying neither the cleaning (nor the sex) though water spray flies at a dismissive gesture. "They're on the table. Mikey made detective -- I tell you that? -- started day before yesterday. Sex Crimes, over at the two-seven." Glass squeaks under the vigorous sponge.
"Oh. That's nice for him." Leah stays in abeyance. Then ... nudges out, absently scrubbing at throat and cheeks with curled hand, and makes a slow and mincing away towards the photos. Each step rolls careful, wary, but her shoulders have a negligent sway to them. She picks at the topmost picture with the same laxity. "He looks nice. You all look nice."
The faucet turns off to the abrupt fall of silence, and baritone mocks, "/Nice/. Mikey looks like he swallowed a brick, and Julia looks like she's going to rip his head off. Figured you'd think it was funny," Rossi informs, dishragging his hands and tossing it aside for his stalk out and in. Hands thrust into pockets, shoulders sloped to the easy, loose-limbed stride; he pauses at the end of the coffee table, tipping a boy's grin at Leah. "For a writer, you got a crappy vocabulary, Canto."
Leah flinches. "Sorry."
Rossi's grin fades. "Christ, Canto. I'm kidding."
Leah blinks at him, owl-round. (Fluffs.) "Oh. Sorry. Yeah. Long day, huh?"
"For you? How's it going?" Rossi asks again, rocking back on his bare heels, gaze alert on her face. "Job front picking up for you?"
Leah edges back again. There, the couch. Her calves bang into it, and then the rest of her does as she falls into cushions. Leaf-pale, red-rimmed eyes never leave his face, but they saccade, jumping infinitesimally back and forth in automatic scan. "Maybe?" she tries and hugs her gut. "Maybe. Maybe picking up. I'm okay. Are you okay?"
The man pauses. Runs a puzzled hand through his hair to set it tumbling against his brow. "Yeah," he says, curiosity tugging at his baritone. "I'm okay. Running some old cases -- Captain's pissed off at me because I opened my big mouth. The LT caught some friendly fire between Tucci and Yamaguchi, swallowed some laxative...." Rossi's voice trails off, tangling with bemused awkwardness. "Huh."
"I'm glad you're okay," Leah tells him earnestly. "I'm really glad. With your job and all."
Chris regards Leah with blank, open eyes. "What the fuck?"
Leah bursts into tears.
"/Fuck/," says Rossi, harassed, and then it's over the coffee table and into the tumble of the couch. A crash, if soft into the cushions; Chris sprawls wide, claiming the seat's entirety (and Leah too, annexing) before folding around her in baffled comfort. "What's going on, Canto? You're not okay. Why are you crying? Christ. Don't /cry/."
Leah clings. And cries. And clings some more, shaking and shaking to get it all out. "--sorry, sorry, I'm sorry," she gasps through the paroxysms. "Sorry, I'll stop, I'll stop, don't hit me, don't hurt me, I'm sorry, I'm sorry--"
Chris's arms stiffen, offended. "I'm not going to /hit/ you. When have I ever--" There's time for that later. He breaks off, smothers Leah's head in his shoulder, and endures, a broad hand cradling the fragile curve of skull. Father Rossi. More gently, "What happened?"
Leah stops. Just -- stops. "Nothing." She starts unclinging. Wresting away with small, tight, vicious expenditures of energy.
"Like hell, /nothing/," retorts Rossi, and sets his teeth. Holds, bloody-minded fool, to the embrace she dove into. "What's going on?"
"It doesn't matter," Leah says on a swing back into despair. The fighting stops, but she doesn't lean back into him, either. She's stiff and taut and unhappy and staring (saccading) at his shoulder. "Just stuff. In my life. Whatever. I'm okay. Didn't I say I'm okay? And you're okay, so whatever, Rossi. What...ever."
A muscle leaps in the hard line of jaw, hiccuping under the skin. "You're just fine," agrees Rossi, heavy with sarcasm. "You're just dandy. I could write an entire fucking novel about how /fine/ you are. Tell me." Insistant man. And then, kinder, more coaxing, "C'mon, Canto. What's up?"
Leah stares at him. At his shoulder. It's right there in front of her, after all. She says, "Aaron's in the hospital. A mutant put him there. Attacked him. He's in a coma."
The shoulder stiffens, with surprise, with shock. "Grossman? In the hospital?" Rossi rears back, hands on Leah's upper arms to push her back: rounded green eyes to brown. "You're shitting me. When did this -- wait. This that mugging thing?"
Leah, trembling, nods as solemn as a schoolgirl at lessons. She got it right. Does she get a gold star?
Rossi eases, his hands loosening around Leah's arms. "Shit," he says, still riding the low descent from shock. Sympathy next. "Damn. I'm sorry, Canto. Is he -- how is he? What do the doctors say?"
"They don't /know,/" Leah cries softly, shuddering from some deep core, outward in concentric circles of tangible misery ... and her gaze pins desperately away from his. The neck now, that slope of sinew from jaw to shoulder. "It's medicine -- what the fuck do they ever know? Maybe he'll wake up. Probably. I don't know. Changes from day to day, and his whole damn family camped out in shifts at his bedside... /Just/ like my family. Just like ours. Same thing over and over again, and the mutants, the mutants--" Sobbing again.
"Hey." An inhaled breath, over the hand's broad caress across the soft hair; Rossi settles back, peering down into Leah's face. "It's okay. It'll be okay. Grossman's a tough guy -- he's a /garbageman/. Christ. They've got thicker skulls than longshoremen."
Leah's fist clenches in his shirt, pounds once. "I know. I know. I don't know -- coma. God, God..." Shuddering, she leans her head forward, resting the bronze-bright crown against his chest. Quietly, very quietly, and precisely: "I want to kill the bitch who did it to him."
Warmth buoys Leah, strong and encompassing, a mountain's solidity for Mohammed's loneliness (peace be on him!) The heartbeat keeps time in the chest's chamber, a mortal clock. "You really fell for him, didn't you?" There's wonder in Rossi's baritone, made bass between them. "I didn't know."
"He's a nice guy," comes forlorn answer after a long, warm, rocked and clocked moment.
"How's he feel about you?" asks the quieted voice, pitched low and curious.
Leah shrugs.
"You two--?"
"No."
"Man." Fingers thread through hair, splicing skin with bronze. "I'm sorry, Canto."
Leah shrugs again and looks up. "Happens," she says bleakly through a death's-head grin. "Life sucks, then you die. Right?"
Chris settles, couching his shoulder and spine's twist into the couch's back. Cynicism meets cynicism, and finds its reflection disturbing. "It's not /that/ bad," he demurs, a foot hitching up onto the cushions with them. "You don't know. He might wake up tomorrow."
"It is indeed that bad, and none of us are gonna wake up in the end," Leah informs him with sad finality. Then she kisses him, hard.
Startled protest parts Rossi's lips, thinning them around a muffled, "Canto." Hands tighten and press. Away. Green eyes tighten. "What about--"
Leah pushes him into the cushions with an arm's peremptory rod, and she stares at him as she slides around onto his lap, terrycloth flaring and settling around shower-damp, shower-warm, shower-scoured flesh like poor vestments. "What about what?" she demands and grabs another kiss from him. It gnaws; it covets. "--What? This isn't what you want?"
Heat leaps to answer demand, fanning passion's flame. Chris rocks back, pressed into the couch: but soft, soft--! Caution stiffens arms, pinning Leah's arms back; the troubled gaze searches, wary. "Fuck that. What do /you/ want?"
Leah's jaw grinds. "Just to forget about all this shit for a while. Is that so wrong? Is that a fucking sin -- literally -- Father Christopher?"
"What about--" begins Chris, clinging (God help him!) to hard sanity, to the woman's better part: only to snap his mouth shut again. "Screw it." An arm loops up and drags her down, pulling her into a hard, savage kiss.
Nothing, nothing, no answer, nothing, only down and down and into the softness and into the heat, with him, on him, around him, tongue and teeth, growl and grab; and down and down, and Leah drowns, oh, she drowns. And down.
[Log ends.]
Rossi visits Leah, who has been newly turned and released by the Friends of Humanity.