7/5/06 - Bahir, Sabitha
A small black composition sits on the old desk, its outside cover marked with a childish scrawl: Christopher Rossi, Age 5. A neater hand has crossed out the age and the date. Inside, the older hand has skipped over the beginning pages, filled with a poorly spelled, scrawled saga about a protagonist named Superdog (whose striking resemblance to a pot-bellied potato has been meticulously illustrated in purple and blue crayons) and his battle with his great enemy, Mr. Brom, a green and orange cross between some sort of dinosaur and a kitchen sink.
The adult's writing begins two pages after Mr. Brom's gory end, joyously drawn in graphic and colorful detail. Crocodiles were involved. There was a great deal of blood. Superdog marked the occasion by donning a striking and debonair purple cape.
So the parental units took me to see more doctors today. There were tests and there was a lot of blood samples. Doctors always want blood samples. Then there were scans and pictures of my brain. I was in one of those hospital gowns that sort of cover up the front but don't really do much for you in the back. My butt will never be warm again. Mom said her usual about clean underwear, which I guess was sort of her moment of triumph. The doctors at the hospital say there's nothing really wrong with me physically, except they were doing a lot of muttering to themselves, I don't know about what. They sent me to see a shrink. His name was Dr. Freedman. I guess I saw him before, during the years I can't remember. Great. The older me isn't just a cop, he's a basket case as well.
Dr. Freedman wanted me to write down my thoughts every day so I would remember things. He says it might help with the healing process. He says sometimes when things get too traumatic for a person to handle, they can sometimes wipe it all out and forget things. He says it happens to child abuse victims all the time. That was fun. Dad started shouting at him and Mom started crying, which was a little freaky. Mom never cries. I chickened out and snuck out while they were fighting, and hid in the cafeteria until Julia came down and found me.
About the only good thing is that Dr. Freedman wants the family to stop pestering me with stuff I should remember. They've stopped for a little while. If it lasts, I'll be surprised. Anyway, writing. Mikey's calling it my homework, and Julia's locked me into my bedroom and says I can't come out until I write stuff. So.
Except I guess I don't really have that many thoughts to write down.
I should be a priest. I don't know why I'm not. I must have told somebody, but Julia just laughs and says I make a better cop anyway, and Mikey just looks at me like I'm growing another nose. There's no way I would've told Paul or Gabe. I don't want to ask Mom. She hasn't stopped cooking since we got home. I must have been kicked out for doing something, but I don't know what it is, and all the things I can think of, I can't imagine myself doing. I might have told Father Andrew, but he was reassigned to a different parish a few years ago, Dad says. How can I not be a priest? That's all I've ever wanted to be, a man of God.
I don't understand being a cop. I've never wanted to be a cop. I've never wanted anything to do with it. Not with the violence, or the uniforms, or the guns. I hate guns. How can I be a cop if I hate guns? Gabe and Paul have been telling me stories about all the messes I've been over the last thirteen years. I would think they were making things up, except that I have the scars to prove it. I saw my X-rays. I have pins in my legs, and in my arm. It hurts to move sometimes, like I'm held together with staples. I can't imagine living this life. I can't imagine living the kind of life that would get me to this point.
Dr. Freedman said he wasn't surprised that I ended up forgetting a lot of stuff. I guess there's a lot that needed to get forgotten. Paul and Gabe wouldn't know that stuff. Julia and Mikey would, but Julia is Julia, and Mikey, I don't know. He says starting fresh isn't such a bad thing. Except it's not really fresh, is it? I went to the post office with Julia to mail some stuff for Mom, and I ran into Angela, Vic's sister. She looked a lot older, but I recognized her, so I stopped to say hi. She slapped me and called me names. Julia says I had a thing with her for a couple of months, until I slept with some other girl. Angela's practically like a cousin. Why would I do sleep with her? That's sick. Even if I did, why would I cheat on her?
I feel old. I mean, I am old, but I feel old. I feel like I've had my life stolen by someone I don't even know, and it's me. The older me. The more I hear, the more he sounds like a useless jerk and a complete failure. If the scars are any indication, he's a pretty bad cop, too. I hate him already. I don't see how I could possibly have ended up as this person.
The old me must know half of New York. I ran into a couple of his people at Mike's old place. Some guy named Allergy(?) and a woman named Sabitha. She was nice. She was hot. I liked her a lot, but apparently we're just friends. She bought me dinner and we talked for a while. I can see myself being friends with her. She didn't keep pushing with the remember this and remember that and why can't you stuff that I keep getting at home. If my memory doesn't come back in the next couple of days, I might call her again and see if she can come over for dinner or something. Mom always wanted me to bring home a girl, and Sabitha says we're just friends, so maybe I can ask her to pretend to be my girlfriend for a night, or something. It would cheer Mom up.
I don't know what else to write. I guess I'll stop.
---
The sounds of traffic -- the heat and the stink and the roar of it -- are an aquarium glass away in Sweet Dreams Bookstore. There is pedestrian traffic to watch through the book-framed windows, for a body tucked in the padded alcove. Chris Rossi does not attend. In a loose white T-shirt and jeans, one knee pressed to his chest, one arm draped long and trailing across its pedestal, he bows his black and bonny head over a dusty book and bakes in filtered sunlight.
The shop bell rings, heralding the sound of entering custom. Bahir sidesteps into air conditioning and lets the door fall closed behind. His eyes wander the shop, lingering here or there, favorite sections marked, as he tries to pick where to start. Kid in a candy store, academic in a book store: the principle is the same. He starts to step off in one direction but is arrested by a familiar dark head. He sort of side-skitters closer, hesitant, and lingers a moment in Rossi's peripheral vision.
It is automatic, that idle glance up. Motion draws the sloping leg in, courtesy pulling it out of the aisle's traffic. Chris marks the newcomer's face without recognition -- newly unlearned in flatscan discipline, the young mind ambles drowsily through Antigone's lament -- and offers a brief, meaningless smile before returning to his book. Lazy fingers turn the page.
Bahir stands there stupidly a moment, startled by the lack of reaction. He says, "Uhm."
The pale gaze skips up again, dragged reluctantly from ancient poetry. "Oh," Chris says, baritone lighter than its habit. "Sorry. Am I in your way? I can--" A hand gestures while he shifts, adjusting his weight. Books behind him; books to the side of him.
Scratching the back of his neck, hand slipping beneath the fall of darkly waving hair, Bahir studies Chris' features as if to reassure himself. "Rossi, right?"
The swift passage of a grin, already dawning, falters and dies at the other man's recognition. "Yeah," Chris says. Greek tragedy skids away, snatched out of reach by the reminder of stress; anxiety twangs bitter and loud across the mind and betraying face. "Chris Rossi. I'm sorry. Do I-- Do we know each other?"
"Not well," Bahir reassures, his eyes skipping over shifting features. He nods to himself, identification fixed, although he frowns at the leak of emotion. "I haven't seen you in few months," he says, words slow and faintly puzzled. "Al-Razi? Bahir?" Who could forget him!
"Hi," the other man greets with an outstretched hand, the Brooklyn accent flattened, squashed by the tightening throat. "I'm sorry. I'm not good with faces. Or names. Or--" Chris smiles, lips twisted awry into something pained and private. "--much of anything, right now. How do we know each other?"
Bahir takes the offered hand with visible reluctance, reinforcing the mind's shield against inadvertent leaks from Rossi's quarter. "It's okay. We didn't know each other well, it's just--" He drops his hand, scuffing it against his back pocket. He grimaces, trying to phrase their meeting. "I was kind of a jerk, then I apologized. You know someone I do." He spreads his fingers, the loose web of connection lying invisible between dark digits.
Rossi's gaze follows that hand and its progress: through reluctance and cleaning to opened splay. His own dark face shadows unhappily. "Oh," he says, with a younger man's uncertainty. "Okay. I guess that's alright, then. We're not friends or anything." Though the deep voice trails up at the end, it is not a question. Chris hunches his shoulders; his own hands, lost without activity, twitch before one finds distraction in picking at his jeans' hem.
"--no," Bahir says after drawing breath for a longer answer. "Excuse me," he adds, although he does not move. Telepathy skims over Rossi's mind, not invasive, but certainly curious.
The protections that once retaliated so memorably are gone; the familiarity that recognized intrusion, likewise. Chris stirs, misery rumpled and disordered in a sheet across experiences: rough and ready ones of untried youth rather than cynical maturity. Fear threads its metallic ribbon through a personality dislodged from time; it clings with stubborn worry to what it /knows/ over what it has been told. Family. Faith. All else is simply noise.
Confusion in the backward slant of his eyes, Bahir moves now. He steps past the other man. On the way, he murmurs an apology: "Sorry." The telepathic touch withdraws, but empathy leaves a gift in the gentle ease of tension. He parks in front of math texts, and gives Chris the courtesy of space.
The tightness under eyes and across shoulders eases, subdued by that small kindness. Troubled murmurs subside in the mind, soothed into tranquility. Chris trails one last glance after the other man -- << Bahir, >> he records firmly in his tenuous memories. << Bahir al-Razi. >> -- before returning to his book. Ah, brother, thou didst find thy marriage fraught with ill, and in thy death hast smitten down my life.
[Log ends]
Chris runs into Bahir at a bookstore. Or rather, Bahir runs into Chris. Bahir who?
---
Afternoon has come and claimed its long, languid stretch of hours. For the working masses, tedium. For Chris Rossi -- still ensconced in the bookstore's window alcove, still wrapped around in recovered peace -- relief. The long, lean body is stretched out now, legs crossed at ankles along the low seat; the back slouches against the nook's wall. He reads by sunlight, Shakespeare propped on the blue-jeaned lap. Sir Toby Belch trundles through Sir Andrew's capers. There's a sixpence for Feste: let's have a song.
Sabitha finds neither relief nor tedium in the aisles of the bookstore. She seeks the former in escape of the latter and finds something like an even middle, mindless browsing as she steps down an aisle with a history book in hand. Impatient fingers flip through its pages and then close it, leaving it discarded on a shelf, and she turns her attention elsewhere. There. Forward, to the alcove, Sabby's gaze is arrested. She freezes in the line of Chris's sight, motionless while she watches him, and wills herself to turn away. Will does little good; she remains, staring.
Even through the haze of imagination, the sense of being watched pokes at his attention. His body measures it first, weight shifting in the padded seat. A finger turns a page. The nagging persists. Eyes dreamy, unfocused on the distance, the young-old man lifts his gaze to discover Sabitha, staring. Dark brows wrinkle; the woman is hot. From the innocence of 1993, Chris Rossi offers her an uncertain smile.
Sabitha's smile is equally uncertain, matching in tone if not emotion. She steps forward with hands clasped nervously behind her back and ventures, "Hey, Chris."
The smile falters. Doubt flashes visibly across the open face. "Hi," Chris says, baritone light. "I'm sorry. I...." The book closes over a placemarked finger. "How're you?"
Sabitha misreads doubt, lingers on that faltering smile, and she takes a single step back. "Sorry," she apologizes hastily. "You don't want to talk to me. It's ok, I can just go. I just thought, you know-- you're sitting there reading. I'd say hi." Nervousness flutters her hands forward in wild gestures as she forces a smile across her face. "See how you're doing."
"No. I mean--" Hastily, belatedly polite, Chris drops his feet to stand, an arm groping for the side of the alcove and its steadying support. Another person's injury, weighing on his own, unaccountably aged body. "I'm sorry. It's just that I don't ... I don't remember," he finishes in sudden, sharp misery. "I don't remember you. Do I know you through college? Or -- I guess I'm a cop. Do I know you through work?"
Sabitha steps back again, and this time there's confusion (horror) on her face before she reclaims those two retreating steps and moves toward him. Her voice is hushed, restrained, as she asks, "You don't remember?"
His smile is crooked and unhappy, as easily readable in the younger man as the older self never is. "I have amnesia," Chris says, the book a heavy and awkward weight against his thigh. "It's stupid, I know. I swear I'm not making it up. Don't slap me," he thinks to add, his other hand raking through silver-touched hair. "I /swear/ I'm not making it up. I mean, if I promised to call you or something--"
"You have amnesia." Sabitha is ace at parroting today. She closes the gap between them with a flurry of fast, worried steps. One hand lifts toward him, and then falls back to her side. "What happened, Chris?" Her question is quietly urgent.
"I don't know." The confession is as ill-tuned to anxiety as the stress that aches across Chris's face and frame. "One minute I was picking up books for seminary, the next minute I'm /old/. And I'm a cop. And I've got scars all over me and--" He breaks off, shoulders hitching up around his ears. He regards Sabitha with bright-eyed discomfort. "Are we friends? It sounds like we're friends."
Sabitha's expression softens for a moment, and she dips her head in a small nod as she answers quietly, "Yeah. We were friends." She clears her throat and finds her voice, louder this time. "Was there an accident?"
Those rising shoulders rise further in a shrug, and Chris sinks down to the bench again, an errant flinch crossing the shadowed face as he settles. "I guess not. Maybe. The doctors say it might just be in my head. Because of things." The book settles on his lap; his elbows pin it into place, forearms branched beyond its ends so hands can tangle in a Gordian knot. "I guess I've had a bad year, or something."
"Yeah," Sabby confirms again. "You really have." Her gaze on him is hesitant and then decisive, head cocked slightly to one side. "You want to go get some dinner or something? My treat."
Embarrassment creeps across Chris's face; it twinges pink at the curve of ears. "The thing is," he begins apologetically. "I'm headed for seminary, so--" Except. Realization is a dull, ugly little flicker in his expression; his back bows into it, hands closing around the book's edge. "Never mind. I didn't end up a priest, that's right. It's just weird. Sure. Dinner sounds good."
Sabitha's smile flickers into place, featherlight and butterfly-fast. "We never dated, Chris," she assures him. "Or slept together. It's ok. We're just friends. And dinner is just to talk."
"Oh," says Chris, and if the relief in his voice could be interpreted as unflattering, it is unconsciously done. "Okay. There was a woman in the post office who slapped me. I guess I sleep around a lot." The subdued baritone bears a hint of disapproval and perplexity. He drops the book back into the alcove's window and drags himself up to stand.
"Have done," Sabby confirms, and she steps in next to Rossi with obvious familiarity, taking liberties rather than allowing him space. She twines an arm through his. "But not with me. Did the doctor say if they thought it'd come back?"
Even in his amnesiac state, Chris relaxes to the comfort of physical contact. He finds a grin to tip down at the slighter woman's head, his free hand shoving into the front pocket of his jeans. "They don't know yet," he says, conscientious with third-person interpretation. "Since they don't know the cause for sure. I wish I know how to find Erik. Maybe he knows."
Sabitha practically melts with relief at Chris's relaxation, and she only just stifles a sigh to that effect. Her grip on his arm tightens as they move through bookshelves toward the door. Her question, as they go, is asked idly, with only half-attention for the answer. "Erik?"
"There was an old guy there when I woke up," Chris supplies, obligingly following the course set by the older woman. "His name was Erik. He kept talking to me in German, but I don't understand German, so-- anyway. I went out to get a newspaper to see if maybe the world had exploded, and when I came back, he was gone."
"An old guy where?" Sabby pushes.
"In the -- my," Chris corrects, "apartment. He looked pretty bad." Anxiety trips across the distracted face again: for the other man now, comrade in misfortune. His steps flag a little, the arm under Sabitha's stiffening; his expression clouds with abrupt and wretched worry. "If we're friends -- I mean, since we're friends -- you don't happen to know ... I mean, when you said I sleep around, I sleep around with, um, /women/, right?"
Sabitha breaks into laughter, and for a moment it's light and amused with no other emotions to clod the sound. "Yeah, Chris," she assures him. "Just women. Mostly hot ones, too. Just don't tell Vincent, he'll be awfully disappointed."
Relief is acute, and visibly so. Chris's arm relaxes. "Thank God." It is a heartfelt expression. "I was wondering. I mean, I couldn't figure out why I wouldn't have ended up a priest, unless they kicked me out, and when I woke up I was sort of--" Naked. He blushes, finishing lamely, "--not myself."
"Not yourself, and with an older German man named Erik?" Sabitha seeks to clarify. She blinks up at him, head tipping to the familiar height with ease, and directs them down the street.
The taller man laughs in the aftermath of verified heterosexuality, keeping easy pace with Sabitha. "Something like that," he admits. "I was pretty much naked, except for a pair of boxers. I suppose they were mine. I just didn't recognize them. It sort of made me wonder, is all."
"Was he naked, too?" Sabitha asks practically.
"He was dressed," Chris says, thrusting out his head like a sheepish heron to rub at the back of his neck. "I just ... you know, /naked/. It was weird. And that on top of the priest thing--"
"You're not gay, Chris," Sabby assures him firmly, fingers pressing against his wrist. "I promise. Never so much as a flickering sign that I've seen, and I've known you for a year. Ok?"
"Good." Chris beams triumphantly from the battlements of his blue collar, Catholic upbringing. "I mean, not that gay is /bad/. It's a sin and all, but it's not /bad/. If it's women," he amends with a measure of adolescent enthusiasm. "And they're hot."
"Mostly hot," Sabitha agrees cheerfully. She tips her head to indicate a restaurant across the street, silent inquiry, and draws in a slow breath. "Do you-- is there anything else I can answer?"
The restaurant is acceptable! Chris promptly turns his steps thither. "I don't suppose you know why I decided to become a cop instead of a priest?" he wonders, the smile fading into a warped little stepson of its former self. "I've never wanted to be a cop. I mean, never. Not even when I was a kid. I don't like guns, I don't like violence, and-- did I tell you?"
"You told me once," Sabby answers, with a small smile, "That you liked women too much. I think you were joking, though." Her smile turns sad, quiet, as they wait at a crosswalk. "I don't know, Chris. I always-- you were always kind of a quintessential cop to me. It was who you were. Are. You were good at it." She pauses for an attempt at a better smile to add, "Except when you shot yourself with your own gun."
Green eyes startle wide before Chris recalls, "Paul told me about that. In the chest, or something." Unconscious, idling, broad fingers trace the crinkle of scar tissue under the T-shirt. Red means stop. Green means go. Solicitous as a boy scout, he guides his armful of woman across the street. "I just don't get it," he repeats wistfully. "I can't have been /that/ bad in seminary."
Sabitha accepts his gentlemanly guidance with a nearly inaudible sigh. Her fingers stroke at his wrist, absent-minded, as they go, and she shakes her head. "I don't know. I always thought it was a choice. Your choice. But I don't really know why." There's a brief pause before she adds, deeply serious and soft, "I'm sorry."
"It can't be helped," Chris says with philosophical resignation, unconvincing in the extreme. His gait, hiccuped across the last traces of a limp, elongates and loosens as the reach the other side of the crosswalk: the vent of physical activity, now, as before, serves as temporary panacea to troubles of the mind. "So how do /we/ know each other?"
Sabitha's smile is forced until she shakes it loose, settling her expression into something more genuine. "Well," she begins. "You want the short or the long version?"
The grin that tilts down to her is familiar, if less cynical, a flash of bright green and white and black that has a boyish cast in the man's face. "Whichever." Chris is agreeable. The restaurant door jingles as he pulls it open for her. "Is it a good story?"
The sight of that grin triggers a matching one from Sabby, bright and lighthearted as she releases his arm and steps through the door. "I dunno. An embarrassing one, on my part. I guess maybe that's good for you?"
"Funny?" Chris asks with hopeful follow-through. The door bangs shut behind them, sealing both patrons in with air-conditioned chill. "I could use a laugh."
"Funny--" Sabby allows reluctantly. "But I'm only letting you laugh at me because you've had a rough time lately. Got that, Chris Rossi?" She pauses long enough to request a table for two, to follow the waitress to a booth, to settle herself in.
He waits until she is seated -- how proud Mrs. Rossi would be in her beamish boy -- to seat himself, folding his larger frame into the other side of the booth with a curious eye for the gleam of menus. "I'll be subtle," he promises. "I won't take inappropriate advantage of the situation."
"Damn right," Sabby approves, and then immediately looks concerned over the flip of her menu. "Do you not curse now? Should I not?"
"Curse?" Chris is startled. "You mean swear? I try not to -- I mean, I tried not to. My frat brothers swear all the time, though. I don't mind."
Sabitha regards Chris over the line of her menu with a moment's pondering bafflement before she nods. "Ok. Well. Ah - do you remember Leah Canto?"
There is blankness in the face opposite hers. "The name is familiar," Chris allows, uncertainly. /Uncomfortably/. "I think Gabe was telling me about her yesterday. She was his girlfriend and I guess she cheated on him with me."
Sabitha straightens in sudden indignity as her menu flies back to the table. "She did /not/!"
"I cheated on him with her?" Chris baffles.
"They broke up! She had been--" Sabby draws in a deep breath and shakes her head. "They weren't together when I met her, and that's been well over a year. She didn't sleep with /you/ until-- well. Until the story I'm going to tell you, and from what I've heard, I think that Gabe's kinda an ass. To tell you lies about /Leah/--"
The man sinks down on his side of the table, slipping down to sit on vertebrae and the impermanent good-will of gravity. "Gabe's--" Chris trails off, blinking unhappily at Sabby. "So I didn't cheat on him? I mean, her? I mean, she didn't ... with me?"
Sabitha mutters again, echoing her own words under her breath ("About /Leah/!") before she shakes her head and pauses in a moment's silence to stare at the menu.
The tousled black head takes shelter behind the menu. Sabitha is frightening. The menu is incomprehensible. After a few distracted moments, a shiny green eye slowly creeps up over its plastic-bround ridge to peer solemnly at the woman.
Sabitha has regained control of herself (mostly) by the time she meets Chris's gaze again. She smiles apologetically. "Leah Canto," she explains by way of beginning, "Was your brother's ex. You lived in the same apartment. I met her, and we were--" There's a brief moment of hesitation before she finishes, "Friends. She had my boyfriend at the time -- Travis -- and I over for dinner. The four of us, a proper dinner party. She made the best pasta."
"Oh," Chris says, encouraging. Wise, even. "Okay. Pasta. I know pasta."
Sabitha continues without hesitation, eyes lighting as she shares. "Now see, I was really horrible at the time. I'd been dating Travis for awhile, and he was-- y'know, not paying me the attention I wanted. So a friend of mine, she suggested that I do a little flirting, y'know? Make him a little jealous. So we have this dinner, and it's nice, Leah's done a great job, and I spend the whole damn thing throwing myself at you." She pauses to close her menu, apparently having chosen a meal. "You were very gentlemanly about the whole thing."
The man is puzzled, and shows it. "I was? Really?" Fingers slide along the menu's ribs, calluses scraping against plastic. "Is that a ... a /good/ thing?"
"Thought," Sabby continues without answering, gifting him with a bright grin. "That I was a complete nutcase. Which I was. Didn't work, of course. Broke up with Travis a few days later, I came by your place with-- fuck, I think I brought you food. I can't remember what. Apologized. And that's that."
"Oh," Chris says again. Eyes flicker in quick blinks; he drops the forward guard of his menu to plant his elbows on the table, hands knitting around his chin. "And we ended up friends?"
"Pretty much," Sabby answers, watching his eyes flutter and his hands knit. "You-- ah. You know. The cop thing. You were kinda helpful once with a thing I had. I mean, you had some helpful things to say. Mostly you can count on me to bring you food whenever you get yourself injured again."
Rossi smiles swiftly, a rueful flash of warmth that erases the lingering shadow of doubt. "I guess that happens a lot," he says, wry. "You /sure/ I'm a good cop? It looks like I spend most of my time in the hospital. --So what happened with me and Leah? ...Never mind. I should just ask her. I'm supposed to start calling numbers in my address book and get reacquainted with familiar people. It'll give us something to talk about."
Sadness, pain, flashes visible in Sabitha's face as she leans back. It's quickly covered by the tip of her face up to the approaching waitress, and she hastily orders a pasta dish before she assures him, "You are a great cop. That's why you spend so much time in the hospital."
"Stupid cop," Chris corrects with a resigned rub of his neck. He makes his own order -- likewise pasta, if of a different flavor and form -- before unfolding a napkin across his lap. "I guess I never learned how to duck."
"It's a dangerous world," Sabby murmurs, leaning forward to take up the glass of icewater the waitress left. "You put yourself out there, into it."
"It's not supposed to be /that/ dangerous," the son and grandson and nephew of cops objects, leaning into his elbows. "Not unless you're in-- I mean, your normal uniform sometimes goes his entire career without ever drawing his gun. And I /shot/ myself."
"You shot your gun," Sabby corrects. "It ricocheted. Times are tense, right now. It's not--" She pauses and squints for a moment before she finishes, "It's probably not what you remember."
Rossi is unconvinced. "Ricochet," he murmurs. "I'm not sure that that's any better."
"Saved Vincent's life," Sabby points out.
"I don't know who Vincent /is/. Are /we/ friends?"
"He's a cop," Sabby supplies patiently. "I don't know about friends. Kinda, maybe. You've done a lot of work together. He moved up from Houston, last summer, to work MA."
"MA." Chris baffles again, wavering along the unfamiliar terminology. There are more important things afoot. "I know a Texan?"
Sabitha grins into a laugh and nods, silent.
Hands brace the bottom half of Chris's face, cloaking the expression of mouth. "Weird," he decides. "I don't think I've ever known a Texan. I mean, even in college. I guess I'll call him, too. --So what do you do? I mean, what should I know about you? And us, I mean?"
Hesitation is clear on Sabby's face, quickly covered by a sip of water. When she lowers her glass again, a decision has been made. "I worked as an aide for Senator Williams, until recently. I don't have a job right now. Us? We're friends. You bought me a tiara once. I bring you a lot of lasagna to freeze when you can't cook."
It is the second time Chris has laughed during the conversation, the rare sound in maturity proving free and easy in youth. "A /good/ friend," he concludes, the remnants of that sound layering rich in the deep voice. "I guess you're a keeper, then. Wish I knew you when I was in college."
Laughter sparks something like sadness in Sabitha's eyes before she banishes it with a broad smile. "What, would've taken me home an introduced me to mom? Or just mooched all my cooking?"
"Well. Mom always sort of hoped I'd change my mind about the priesthood," Chris admits, his hand combing through his hair, only to pause on a sorrowful pang of his own. "I don't bring home girls because it used to raise her hopes, you know? /This/ one might make me change my mind. That sort of thing."
"Wants grandkids," Sabby supposes, tilting her head before she leans forward to prop her elbows on the table and cup her chin in her hands. "I've never met your family. You asked me home for Thanksgiving and Christmas - I don't really have family of my own. But I never did come."
Eyes widen, startled. "I did?" More importantly, "You don't? Did I invite you over for the fourth? I should've, if I didn't. It's a big bash over at the Rossis. Most of the neighborhood shows up for the party, and half the guests are cops, so we practically blow up most of Brooklyn with our fireworks."
"Yeah? Ever lit anything on fire?"
Christopher looks guilty. "Rosa was using way too much hairspray anyway. Vanity's not good for the soul."
Sabitha's grin broadens in time to the appearance of the waitress. "What happened?" She leans back, elbows slipping down, as steaming pasta is slid atop the table.
Rossi sinks back in the seat while his own plate is settled in front of him. A smile up thanks the waitress before being turned in more rueful counterpart to Sabitha. "I'm not supposed to talk about it," Chris admits. "It's one of those 'deep dark secret' things. It would've been a lot worse if Julia hadn't been in the upstairs bathroom with a bucket, though."
Sabitha's smile remains as she begins to eat. "Yeah, and Julia knows what to do with fire, right? I met her a few times. Like her." The conversation falls somewhere between friendship and smalltalk as they eat, Sabby prodding into family stories and supplying details of Chris's present where asked.
The meal is leisurely, food given enough time to chill under the exchange of information and jokes, old ones made new (to one mind at least) and refreshed in the repetition. The plates are long gone by the time Chris remembers to look at his watch, and is reminded of anxious family waiting at home. His face clouds with it, strain leaping quickly to its cue. "Oh," he says, quashing amusement. "Dang. I should call my folks. They're probably worried about me."
Sabitha's eyes follow Chris's to his watch. The 'dang' earns a smile, small and amused, and she bobs her head as she gathers her things and slides from her seat. "I should be getting home myself, I think. I have a friend I need to see tonight."
"I have a cell phone," Chris shares, bemusement joining his pull out of the booth. "I guess they're common now. I used to see them in TV and stuff, but I never figured I'd actually /have/ one. I always thought they'd be super expensive. --Thanks." A tip of the hand bids the waitress farewell on the way towards the door; once more the long arm pushes the exit open, courteously making the way for the lady to follow.
"It's New York," Sabby answers, turning to face him as they step out onto the sidewalk. "Everyone's got a cell phone." She pauses for a moment, head tipped back to look up at him, and her fingers twist around a small piece of paper in her hand. She breathes in, deep. "Hey, Chris?"
The door chimes gently shut. Chris pauses in the act of scrounging in his pocket, smile tipped towards Sabby. "Hm? --It's around here somewh-- oh. Back pocket."
Sabitha lifts her hand to extend to him the bit of paper (crinkled). "Two things, before you go." Another deep breath proceeds her words. "If you don't hear from me in the next couple of days, and if-- if you go awhile, and the memory doesn't come back. Call this place. Ask for Charles Xavier. They might be able to help."
A puzzled blink accepts the paper, spread out across the broad, scar-striped palm. "More doctors?" Chris asks, rueful. "I guess I have medical insurance through the -- the whole NYPD thing, but I don't know if it'll cover special things."
Sabitha shakes her head stiffly. "You know-- you know at least some of them. I'm not sure who. Just, if it doesn't come back, call them. Don't worry about your insurance, ok?"
"Oh." It is Chris's favorite response for the night. The old uncertainty creeps back, shaping remembered unhappiness across his face. "Okay. I'll do that." Obedient, he tucks the paper into his front pocket and regards Sabitha with hopeful distress.
Sabitha's expression matches Chris, and she's silent for a moment in the face of agreement. She blinks up at him with over-bright eyes and smiles, wavering. Her words, when they come, start slow and quickly gain momentum, leaving little room for interruption or response. "And the other. I just want to say. Um. If it comes back, I don't know if you'll remember this or not, and you don't really know what I'm talking about right now and I'm not going to explain it. But I just want to say anyway. You are one of the best people I've ever known. I'm really sorry for-- a lot of things. If I could fix the past year, if I could fix any of it, I would in an instant. I just want you to know that-- um. That you've been really important to me, and I'm really glad to have known you. You deserve a lot more than you get. And I love you a lot, Chris Rossi. Thank you." On the heels of the last words, rushed and tumbling together, she steps forward to brace a hand against his shoulder. It's leverage up, to press a soft, chaste kiss against his lips, and then it's leverage to turn and walk away with long, hungry strides that eat the span of the sidewalk rapidly.
Left behind, baffled, troubled, Chris Rossi touches a curious finger to the memory of her lips on his -- that soft and subtle warmth, there and gone -- and watches her go. Women are mysterious. How miraculous are the creations of the Lord. Forehead creased, he turns away to head slowly for home.
[Log ends]
Sabby runs into Rossi. She is prettier than Bahir. Chris has no objections to finding out that they're -- oh. Friends? Oh well.
The adult's writing begins two pages after Mr. Brom's gory end, joyously drawn in graphic and colorful detail. Crocodiles were involved. There was a great deal of blood. Superdog marked the occasion by donning a striking and debonair purple cape.
So the parental units took me to see more doctors today. There were tests and there was a lot of blood samples. Doctors always want blood samples. Then there were scans and pictures of my brain. I was in one of those hospital gowns that sort of cover up the front but don't really do much for you in the back. My butt will never be warm again. Mom said her usual about clean underwear, which I guess was sort of her moment of triumph. The doctors at the hospital say there's nothing really wrong with me physically, except they were doing a lot of muttering to themselves, I don't know about what. They sent me to see a shrink. His name was Dr. Freedman. I guess I saw him before, during the years I can't remember. Great. The older me isn't just a cop, he's a basket case as well.
Dr. Freedman wanted me to write down my thoughts every day so I would remember things. He says it might help with the healing process. He says sometimes when things get too traumatic for a person to handle, they can sometimes wipe it all out and forget things. He says it happens to child abuse victims all the time. That was fun. Dad started shouting at him and Mom started crying, which was a little freaky. Mom never cries. I chickened out and snuck out while they were fighting, and hid in the cafeteria until Julia came down and found me.
About the only good thing is that Dr. Freedman wants the family to stop pestering me with stuff I should remember. They've stopped for a little while. If it lasts, I'll be surprised. Anyway, writing. Mikey's calling it my homework, and Julia's locked me into my bedroom and says I can't come out until I write stuff. So.
Except I guess I don't really have that many thoughts to write down.
I should be a priest. I don't know why I'm not. I must have told somebody, but Julia just laughs and says I make a better cop anyway, and Mikey just looks at me like I'm growing another nose. There's no way I would've told Paul or Gabe. I don't want to ask Mom. She hasn't stopped cooking since we got home. I must have been kicked out for doing something, but I don't know what it is, and all the things I can think of, I can't imagine myself doing. I might have told Father Andrew, but he was reassigned to a different parish a few years ago, Dad says. How can I not be a priest? That's all I've ever wanted to be, a man of God.
I don't understand being a cop. I've never wanted to be a cop. I've never wanted anything to do with it. Not with the violence, or the uniforms, or the guns. I hate guns. How can I be a cop if I hate guns? Gabe and Paul have been telling me stories about all the messes I've been over the last thirteen years. I would think they were making things up, except that I have the scars to prove it. I saw my X-rays. I have pins in my legs, and in my arm. It hurts to move sometimes, like I'm held together with staples. I can't imagine living this life. I can't imagine living the kind of life that would get me to this point.
Dr. Freedman said he wasn't surprised that I ended up forgetting a lot of stuff. I guess there's a lot that needed to get forgotten. Paul and Gabe wouldn't know that stuff. Julia and Mikey would, but Julia is Julia, and Mikey, I don't know. He says starting fresh isn't such a bad thing. Except it's not really fresh, is it? I went to the post office with Julia to mail some stuff for Mom, and I ran into Angela, Vic's sister. She looked a lot older, but I recognized her, so I stopped to say hi. She slapped me and called me names. Julia says I had a thing with her for a couple of months, until I slept with some other girl. Angela's practically like a cousin. Why would I do sleep with her? That's sick. Even if I did, why would I cheat on her?
I feel old. I mean, I am old, but I feel old. I feel like I've had my life stolen by someone I don't even know, and it's me. The older me. The more I hear, the more he sounds like a useless jerk and a complete failure. If the scars are any indication, he's a pretty bad cop, too. I hate him already. I don't see how I could possibly have ended up as this person.
The old me must know half of New York. I ran into a couple of his people at Mike's old place. Some guy named Allergy(?) and a woman named Sabitha. She was nice. She was hot. I liked her a lot, but apparently we're just friends. She bought me dinner and we talked for a while. I can see myself being friends with her. She didn't keep pushing with the remember this and remember that and why can't you stuff that I keep getting at home. If my memory doesn't come back in the next couple of days, I might call her again and see if she can come over for dinner or something. Mom always wanted me to bring home a girl, and Sabitha says we're just friends, so maybe I can ask her to pretend to be my girlfriend for a night, or something. It would cheer Mom up.
I don't know what else to write. I guess I'll stop.
---
The sounds of traffic -- the heat and the stink and the roar of it -- are an aquarium glass away in Sweet Dreams Bookstore. There is pedestrian traffic to watch through the book-framed windows, for a body tucked in the padded alcove. Chris Rossi does not attend. In a loose white T-shirt and jeans, one knee pressed to his chest, one arm draped long and trailing across its pedestal, he bows his black and bonny head over a dusty book and bakes in filtered sunlight.
The shop bell rings, heralding the sound of entering custom. Bahir sidesteps into air conditioning and lets the door fall closed behind. His eyes wander the shop, lingering here or there, favorite sections marked, as he tries to pick where to start. Kid in a candy store, academic in a book store: the principle is the same. He starts to step off in one direction but is arrested by a familiar dark head. He sort of side-skitters closer, hesitant, and lingers a moment in Rossi's peripheral vision.
It is automatic, that idle glance up. Motion draws the sloping leg in, courtesy pulling it out of the aisle's traffic. Chris marks the newcomer's face without recognition -- newly unlearned in flatscan discipline, the young mind ambles drowsily through Antigone's lament -- and offers a brief, meaningless smile before returning to his book. Lazy fingers turn the page.
Bahir stands there stupidly a moment, startled by the lack of reaction. He says, "Uhm."
The pale gaze skips up again, dragged reluctantly from ancient poetry. "Oh," Chris says, baritone lighter than its habit. "Sorry. Am I in your way? I can--" A hand gestures while he shifts, adjusting his weight. Books behind him; books to the side of him.
Scratching the back of his neck, hand slipping beneath the fall of darkly waving hair, Bahir studies Chris' features as if to reassure himself. "Rossi, right?"
The swift passage of a grin, already dawning, falters and dies at the other man's recognition. "Yeah," Chris says. Greek tragedy skids away, snatched out of reach by the reminder of stress; anxiety twangs bitter and loud across the mind and betraying face. "Chris Rossi. I'm sorry. Do I-- Do we know each other?"
"Not well," Bahir reassures, his eyes skipping over shifting features. He nods to himself, identification fixed, although he frowns at the leak of emotion. "I haven't seen you in few months," he says, words slow and faintly puzzled. "Al-Razi? Bahir?" Who could forget him!
"Hi," the other man greets with an outstretched hand, the Brooklyn accent flattened, squashed by the tightening throat. "I'm sorry. I'm not good with faces. Or names. Or--" Chris smiles, lips twisted awry into something pained and private. "--much of anything, right now. How do we know each other?"
Bahir takes the offered hand with visible reluctance, reinforcing the mind's shield against inadvertent leaks from Rossi's quarter. "It's okay. We didn't know each other well, it's just--" He drops his hand, scuffing it against his back pocket. He grimaces, trying to phrase their meeting. "I was kind of a jerk, then I apologized. You know someone I do." He spreads his fingers, the loose web of connection lying invisible between dark digits.
Rossi's gaze follows that hand and its progress: through reluctance and cleaning to opened splay. His own dark face shadows unhappily. "Oh," he says, with a younger man's uncertainty. "Okay. I guess that's alright, then. We're not friends or anything." Though the deep voice trails up at the end, it is not a question. Chris hunches his shoulders; his own hands, lost without activity, twitch before one finds distraction in picking at his jeans' hem.
"--no," Bahir says after drawing breath for a longer answer. "Excuse me," he adds, although he does not move. Telepathy skims over Rossi's mind, not invasive, but certainly curious.
The protections that once retaliated so memorably are gone; the familiarity that recognized intrusion, likewise. Chris stirs, misery rumpled and disordered in a sheet across experiences: rough and ready ones of untried youth rather than cynical maturity. Fear threads its metallic ribbon through a personality dislodged from time; it clings with stubborn worry to what it /knows/ over what it has been told. Family. Faith. All else is simply noise.
Confusion in the backward slant of his eyes, Bahir moves now. He steps past the other man. On the way, he murmurs an apology: "Sorry." The telepathic touch withdraws, but empathy leaves a gift in the gentle ease of tension. He parks in front of math texts, and gives Chris the courtesy of space.
The tightness under eyes and across shoulders eases, subdued by that small kindness. Troubled murmurs subside in the mind, soothed into tranquility. Chris trails one last glance after the other man -- << Bahir, >> he records firmly in his tenuous memories. << Bahir al-Razi. >> -- before returning to his book. Ah, brother, thou didst find thy marriage fraught with ill, and in thy death hast smitten down my life.
[Log ends]
Chris runs into Bahir at a bookstore. Or rather, Bahir runs into Chris. Bahir who?
---
Afternoon has come and claimed its long, languid stretch of hours. For the working masses, tedium. For Chris Rossi -- still ensconced in the bookstore's window alcove, still wrapped around in recovered peace -- relief. The long, lean body is stretched out now, legs crossed at ankles along the low seat; the back slouches against the nook's wall. He reads by sunlight, Shakespeare propped on the blue-jeaned lap. Sir Toby Belch trundles through Sir Andrew's capers. There's a sixpence for Feste: let's have a song.
Sabitha finds neither relief nor tedium in the aisles of the bookstore. She seeks the former in escape of the latter and finds something like an even middle, mindless browsing as she steps down an aisle with a history book in hand. Impatient fingers flip through its pages and then close it, leaving it discarded on a shelf, and she turns her attention elsewhere. There. Forward, to the alcove, Sabby's gaze is arrested. She freezes in the line of Chris's sight, motionless while she watches him, and wills herself to turn away. Will does little good; she remains, staring.
Even through the haze of imagination, the sense of being watched pokes at his attention. His body measures it first, weight shifting in the padded seat. A finger turns a page. The nagging persists. Eyes dreamy, unfocused on the distance, the young-old man lifts his gaze to discover Sabitha, staring. Dark brows wrinkle; the woman is hot. From the innocence of 1993, Chris Rossi offers her an uncertain smile.
Sabitha's smile is equally uncertain, matching in tone if not emotion. She steps forward with hands clasped nervously behind her back and ventures, "Hey, Chris."
The smile falters. Doubt flashes visibly across the open face. "Hi," Chris says, baritone light. "I'm sorry. I...." The book closes over a placemarked finger. "How're you?"
Sabitha misreads doubt, lingers on that faltering smile, and she takes a single step back. "Sorry," she apologizes hastily. "You don't want to talk to me. It's ok, I can just go. I just thought, you know-- you're sitting there reading. I'd say hi." Nervousness flutters her hands forward in wild gestures as she forces a smile across her face. "See how you're doing."
"No. I mean--" Hastily, belatedly polite, Chris drops his feet to stand, an arm groping for the side of the alcove and its steadying support. Another person's injury, weighing on his own, unaccountably aged body. "I'm sorry. It's just that I don't ... I don't remember," he finishes in sudden, sharp misery. "I don't remember you. Do I know you through college? Or -- I guess I'm a cop. Do I know you through work?"
Sabitha steps back again, and this time there's confusion (horror) on her face before she reclaims those two retreating steps and moves toward him. Her voice is hushed, restrained, as she asks, "You don't remember?"
His smile is crooked and unhappy, as easily readable in the younger man as the older self never is. "I have amnesia," Chris says, the book a heavy and awkward weight against his thigh. "It's stupid, I know. I swear I'm not making it up. Don't slap me," he thinks to add, his other hand raking through silver-touched hair. "I /swear/ I'm not making it up. I mean, if I promised to call you or something--"
"You have amnesia." Sabitha is ace at parroting today. She closes the gap between them with a flurry of fast, worried steps. One hand lifts toward him, and then falls back to her side. "What happened, Chris?" Her question is quietly urgent.
"I don't know." The confession is as ill-tuned to anxiety as the stress that aches across Chris's face and frame. "One minute I was picking up books for seminary, the next minute I'm /old/. And I'm a cop. And I've got scars all over me and--" He breaks off, shoulders hitching up around his ears. He regards Sabitha with bright-eyed discomfort. "Are we friends? It sounds like we're friends."
Sabitha's expression softens for a moment, and she dips her head in a small nod as she answers quietly, "Yeah. We were friends." She clears her throat and finds her voice, louder this time. "Was there an accident?"
Those rising shoulders rise further in a shrug, and Chris sinks down to the bench again, an errant flinch crossing the shadowed face as he settles. "I guess not. Maybe. The doctors say it might just be in my head. Because of things." The book settles on his lap; his elbows pin it into place, forearms branched beyond its ends so hands can tangle in a Gordian knot. "I guess I've had a bad year, or something."
"Yeah," Sabby confirms again. "You really have." Her gaze on him is hesitant and then decisive, head cocked slightly to one side. "You want to go get some dinner or something? My treat."
Embarrassment creeps across Chris's face; it twinges pink at the curve of ears. "The thing is," he begins apologetically. "I'm headed for seminary, so--" Except. Realization is a dull, ugly little flicker in his expression; his back bows into it, hands closing around the book's edge. "Never mind. I didn't end up a priest, that's right. It's just weird. Sure. Dinner sounds good."
Sabitha's smile flickers into place, featherlight and butterfly-fast. "We never dated, Chris," she assures him. "Or slept together. It's ok. We're just friends. And dinner is just to talk."
"Oh," says Chris, and if the relief in his voice could be interpreted as unflattering, it is unconsciously done. "Okay. There was a woman in the post office who slapped me. I guess I sleep around a lot." The subdued baritone bears a hint of disapproval and perplexity. He drops the book back into the alcove's window and drags himself up to stand.
"Have done," Sabby confirms, and she steps in next to Rossi with obvious familiarity, taking liberties rather than allowing him space. She twines an arm through his. "But not with me. Did the doctor say if they thought it'd come back?"
Even in his amnesiac state, Chris relaxes to the comfort of physical contact. He finds a grin to tip down at the slighter woman's head, his free hand shoving into the front pocket of his jeans. "They don't know yet," he says, conscientious with third-person interpretation. "Since they don't know the cause for sure. I wish I know how to find Erik. Maybe he knows."
Sabitha practically melts with relief at Chris's relaxation, and she only just stifles a sigh to that effect. Her grip on his arm tightens as they move through bookshelves toward the door. Her question, as they go, is asked idly, with only half-attention for the answer. "Erik?"
"There was an old guy there when I woke up," Chris supplies, obligingly following the course set by the older woman. "His name was Erik. He kept talking to me in German, but I don't understand German, so-- anyway. I went out to get a newspaper to see if maybe the world had exploded, and when I came back, he was gone."
"An old guy where?" Sabby pushes.
"In the -- my," Chris corrects, "apartment. He looked pretty bad." Anxiety trips across the distracted face again: for the other man now, comrade in misfortune. His steps flag a little, the arm under Sabitha's stiffening; his expression clouds with abrupt and wretched worry. "If we're friends -- I mean, since we're friends -- you don't happen to know ... I mean, when you said I sleep around, I sleep around with, um, /women/, right?"
Sabitha breaks into laughter, and for a moment it's light and amused with no other emotions to clod the sound. "Yeah, Chris," she assures him. "Just women. Mostly hot ones, too. Just don't tell Vincent, he'll be awfully disappointed."
Relief is acute, and visibly so. Chris's arm relaxes. "Thank God." It is a heartfelt expression. "I was wondering. I mean, I couldn't figure out why I wouldn't have ended up a priest, unless they kicked me out, and when I woke up I was sort of--" Naked. He blushes, finishing lamely, "--not myself."
"Not yourself, and with an older German man named Erik?" Sabitha seeks to clarify. She blinks up at him, head tipping to the familiar height with ease, and directs them down the street.
The taller man laughs in the aftermath of verified heterosexuality, keeping easy pace with Sabitha. "Something like that," he admits. "I was pretty much naked, except for a pair of boxers. I suppose they were mine. I just didn't recognize them. It sort of made me wonder, is all."
"Was he naked, too?" Sabitha asks practically.
"He was dressed," Chris says, thrusting out his head like a sheepish heron to rub at the back of his neck. "I just ... you know, /naked/. It was weird. And that on top of the priest thing--"
"You're not gay, Chris," Sabby assures him firmly, fingers pressing against his wrist. "I promise. Never so much as a flickering sign that I've seen, and I've known you for a year. Ok?"
"Good." Chris beams triumphantly from the battlements of his blue collar, Catholic upbringing. "I mean, not that gay is /bad/. It's a sin and all, but it's not /bad/. If it's women," he amends with a measure of adolescent enthusiasm. "And they're hot."
"Mostly hot," Sabitha agrees cheerfully. She tips her head to indicate a restaurant across the street, silent inquiry, and draws in a slow breath. "Do you-- is there anything else I can answer?"
The restaurant is acceptable! Chris promptly turns his steps thither. "I don't suppose you know why I decided to become a cop instead of a priest?" he wonders, the smile fading into a warped little stepson of its former self. "I've never wanted to be a cop. I mean, never. Not even when I was a kid. I don't like guns, I don't like violence, and-- did I tell you?"
"You told me once," Sabby answers, with a small smile, "That you liked women too much. I think you were joking, though." Her smile turns sad, quiet, as they wait at a crosswalk. "I don't know, Chris. I always-- you were always kind of a quintessential cop to me. It was who you were. Are. You were good at it." She pauses for an attempt at a better smile to add, "Except when you shot yourself with your own gun."
Green eyes startle wide before Chris recalls, "Paul told me about that. In the chest, or something." Unconscious, idling, broad fingers trace the crinkle of scar tissue under the T-shirt. Red means stop. Green means go. Solicitous as a boy scout, he guides his armful of woman across the street. "I just don't get it," he repeats wistfully. "I can't have been /that/ bad in seminary."
Sabitha accepts his gentlemanly guidance with a nearly inaudible sigh. Her fingers stroke at his wrist, absent-minded, as they go, and she shakes her head. "I don't know. I always thought it was a choice. Your choice. But I don't really know why." There's a brief pause before she adds, deeply serious and soft, "I'm sorry."
"It can't be helped," Chris says with philosophical resignation, unconvincing in the extreme. His gait, hiccuped across the last traces of a limp, elongates and loosens as the reach the other side of the crosswalk: the vent of physical activity, now, as before, serves as temporary panacea to troubles of the mind. "So how do /we/ know each other?"
Sabitha's smile is forced until she shakes it loose, settling her expression into something more genuine. "Well," she begins. "You want the short or the long version?"
The grin that tilts down to her is familiar, if less cynical, a flash of bright green and white and black that has a boyish cast in the man's face. "Whichever." Chris is agreeable. The restaurant door jingles as he pulls it open for her. "Is it a good story?"
The sight of that grin triggers a matching one from Sabby, bright and lighthearted as she releases his arm and steps through the door. "I dunno. An embarrassing one, on my part. I guess maybe that's good for you?"
"Funny?" Chris asks with hopeful follow-through. The door bangs shut behind them, sealing both patrons in with air-conditioned chill. "I could use a laugh."
"Funny--" Sabby allows reluctantly. "But I'm only letting you laugh at me because you've had a rough time lately. Got that, Chris Rossi?" She pauses long enough to request a table for two, to follow the waitress to a booth, to settle herself in.
He waits until she is seated -- how proud Mrs. Rossi would be in her beamish boy -- to seat himself, folding his larger frame into the other side of the booth with a curious eye for the gleam of menus. "I'll be subtle," he promises. "I won't take inappropriate advantage of the situation."
"Damn right," Sabby approves, and then immediately looks concerned over the flip of her menu. "Do you not curse now? Should I not?"
"Curse?" Chris is startled. "You mean swear? I try not to -- I mean, I tried not to. My frat brothers swear all the time, though. I don't mind."
Sabitha regards Chris over the line of her menu with a moment's pondering bafflement before she nods. "Ok. Well. Ah - do you remember Leah Canto?"
There is blankness in the face opposite hers. "The name is familiar," Chris allows, uncertainly. /Uncomfortably/. "I think Gabe was telling me about her yesterday. She was his girlfriend and I guess she cheated on him with me."
Sabitha straightens in sudden indignity as her menu flies back to the table. "She did /not/!"
"I cheated on him with her?" Chris baffles.
"They broke up! She had been--" Sabby draws in a deep breath and shakes her head. "They weren't together when I met her, and that's been well over a year. She didn't sleep with /you/ until-- well. Until the story I'm going to tell you, and from what I've heard, I think that Gabe's kinda an ass. To tell you lies about /Leah/--"
The man sinks down on his side of the table, slipping down to sit on vertebrae and the impermanent good-will of gravity. "Gabe's--" Chris trails off, blinking unhappily at Sabby. "So I didn't cheat on him? I mean, her? I mean, she didn't ... with me?"
Sabitha mutters again, echoing her own words under her breath ("About /Leah/!") before she shakes her head and pauses in a moment's silence to stare at the menu.
The tousled black head takes shelter behind the menu. Sabitha is frightening. The menu is incomprehensible. After a few distracted moments, a shiny green eye slowly creeps up over its plastic-bround ridge to peer solemnly at the woman.
Sabitha has regained control of herself (mostly) by the time she meets Chris's gaze again. She smiles apologetically. "Leah Canto," she explains by way of beginning, "Was your brother's ex. You lived in the same apartment. I met her, and we were--" There's a brief moment of hesitation before she finishes, "Friends. She had my boyfriend at the time -- Travis -- and I over for dinner. The four of us, a proper dinner party. She made the best pasta."
"Oh," Chris says, encouraging. Wise, even. "Okay. Pasta. I know pasta."
Sabitha continues without hesitation, eyes lighting as she shares. "Now see, I was really horrible at the time. I'd been dating Travis for awhile, and he was-- y'know, not paying me the attention I wanted. So a friend of mine, she suggested that I do a little flirting, y'know? Make him a little jealous. So we have this dinner, and it's nice, Leah's done a great job, and I spend the whole damn thing throwing myself at you." She pauses to close her menu, apparently having chosen a meal. "You were very gentlemanly about the whole thing."
The man is puzzled, and shows it. "I was? Really?" Fingers slide along the menu's ribs, calluses scraping against plastic. "Is that a ... a /good/ thing?"
"Thought," Sabby continues without answering, gifting him with a bright grin. "That I was a complete nutcase. Which I was. Didn't work, of course. Broke up with Travis a few days later, I came by your place with-- fuck, I think I brought you food. I can't remember what. Apologized. And that's that."
"Oh," Chris says again. Eyes flicker in quick blinks; he drops the forward guard of his menu to plant his elbows on the table, hands knitting around his chin. "And we ended up friends?"
"Pretty much," Sabby answers, watching his eyes flutter and his hands knit. "You-- ah. You know. The cop thing. You were kinda helpful once with a thing I had. I mean, you had some helpful things to say. Mostly you can count on me to bring you food whenever you get yourself injured again."
Rossi smiles swiftly, a rueful flash of warmth that erases the lingering shadow of doubt. "I guess that happens a lot," he says, wry. "You /sure/ I'm a good cop? It looks like I spend most of my time in the hospital. --So what happened with me and Leah? ...Never mind. I should just ask her. I'm supposed to start calling numbers in my address book and get reacquainted with familiar people. It'll give us something to talk about."
Sadness, pain, flashes visible in Sabitha's face as she leans back. It's quickly covered by the tip of her face up to the approaching waitress, and she hastily orders a pasta dish before she assures him, "You are a great cop. That's why you spend so much time in the hospital."
"Stupid cop," Chris corrects with a resigned rub of his neck. He makes his own order -- likewise pasta, if of a different flavor and form -- before unfolding a napkin across his lap. "I guess I never learned how to duck."
"It's a dangerous world," Sabby murmurs, leaning forward to take up the glass of icewater the waitress left. "You put yourself out there, into it."
"It's not supposed to be /that/ dangerous," the son and grandson and nephew of cops objects, leaning into his elbows. "Not unless you're in-- I mean, your normal uniform sometimes goes his entire career without ever drawing his gun. And I /shot/ myself."
"You shot your gun," Sabby corrects. "It ricocheted. Times are tense, right now. It's not--" She pauses and squints for a moment before she finishes, "It's probably not what you remember."
Rossi is unconvinced. "Ricochet," he murmurs. "I'm not sure that that's any better."
"Saved Vincent's life," Sabby points out.
"I don't know who Vincent /is/. Are /we/ friends?"
"He's a cop," Sabby supplies patiently. "I don't know about friends. Kinda, maybe. You've done a lot of work together. He moved up from Houston, last summer, to work MA."
"MA." Chris baffles again, wavering along the unfamiliar terminology. There are more important things afoot. "I know a Texan?"
Sabitha grins into a laugh and nods, silent.
Hands brace the bottom half of Chris's face, cloaking the expression of mouth. "Weird," he decides. "I don't think I've ever known a Texan. I mean, even in college. I guess I'll call him, too. --So what do you do? I mean, what should I know about you? And us, I mean?"
Hesitation is clear on Sabby's face, quickly covered by a sip of water. When she lowers her glass again, a decision has been made. "I worked as an aide for Senator Williams, until recently. I don't have a job right now. Us? We're friends. You bought me a tiara once. I bring you a lot of lasagna to freeze when you can't cook."
It is the second time Chris has laughed during the conversation, the rare sound in maturity proving free and easy in youth. "A /good/ friend," he concludes, the remnants of that sound layering rich in the deep voice. "I guess you're a keeper, then. Wish I knew you when I was in college."
Laughter sparks something like sadness in Sabitha's eyes before she banishes it with a broad smile. "What, would've taken me home an introduced me to mom? Or just mooched all my cooking?"
"Well. Mom always sort of hoped I'd change my mind about the priesthood," Chris admits, his hand combing through his hair, only to pause on a sorrowful pang of his own. "I don't bring home girls because it used to raise her hopes, you know? /This/ one might make me change my mind. That sort of thing."
"Wants grandkids," Sabby supposes, tilting her head before she leans forward to prop her elbows on the table and cup her chin in her hands. "I've never met your family. You asked me home for Thanksgiving and Christmas - I don't really have family of my own. But I never did come."
Eyes widen, startled. "I did?" More importantly, "You don't? Did I invite you over for the fourth? I should've, if I didn't. It's a big bash over at the Rossis. Most of the neighborhood shows up for the party, and half the guests are cops, so we practically blow up most of Brooklyn with our fireworks."
"Yeah? Ever lit anything on fire?"
Christopher looks guilty. "Rosa was using way too much hairspray anyway. Vanity's not good for the soul."
Sabitha's grin broadens in time to the appearance of the waitress. "What happened?" She leans back, elbows slipping down, as steaming pasta is slid atop the table.
Rossi sinks back in the seat while his own plate is settled in front of him. A smile up thanks the waitress before being turned in more rueful counterpart to Sabitha. "I'm not supposed to talk about it," Chris admits. "It's one of those 'deep dark secret' things. It would've been a lot worse if Julia hadn't been in the upstairs bathroom with a bucket, though."
Sabitha's smile remains as she begins to eat. "Yeah, and Julia knows what to do with fire, right? I met her a few times. Like her." The conversation falls somewhere between friendship and smalltalk as they eat, Sabby prodding into family stories and supplying details of Chris's present where asked.
The meal is leisurely, food given enough time to chill under the exchange of information and jokes, old ones made new (to one mind at least) and refreshed in the repetition. The plates are long gone by the time Chris remembers to look at his watch, and is reminded of anxious family waiting at home. His face clouds with it, strain leaping quickly to its cue. "Oh," he says, quashing amusement. "Dang. I should call my folks. They're probably worried about me."
Sabitha's eyes follow Chris's to his watch. The 'dang' earns a smile, small and amused, and she bobs her head as she gathers her things and slides from her seat. "I should be getting home myself, I think. I have a friend I need to see tonight."
"I have a cell phone," Chris shares, bemusement joining his pull out of the booth. "I guess they're common now. I used to see them in TV and stuff, but I never figured I'd actually /have/ one. I always thought they'd be super expensive. --Thanks." A tip of the hand bids the waitress farewell on the way towards the door; once more the long arm pushes the exit open, courteously making the way for the lady to follow.
"It's New York," Sabby answers, turning to face him as they step out onto the sidewalk. "Everyone's got a cell phone." She pauses for a moment, head tipped back to look up at him, and her fingers twist around a small piece of paper in her hand. She breathes in, deep. "Hey, Chris?"
The door chimes gently shut. Chris pauses in the act of scrounging in his pocket, smile tipped towards Sabby. "Hm? --It's around here somewh-- oh. Back pocket."
Sabitha lifts her hand to extend to him the bit of paper (crinkled). "Two things, before you go." Another deep breath proceeds her words. "If you don't hear from me in the next couple of days, and if-- if you go awhile, and the memory doesn't come back. Call this place. Ask for Charles Xavier. They might be able to help."
A puzzled blink accepts the paper, spread out across the broad, scar-striped palm. "More doctors?" Chris asks, rueful. "I guess I have medical insurance through the -- the whole NYPD thing, but I don't know if it'll cover special things."
Sabitha shakes her head stiffly. "You know-- you know at least some of them. I'm not sure who. Just, if it doesn't come back, call them. Don't worry about your insurance, ok?"
"Oh." It is Chris's favorite response for the night. The old uncertainty creeps back, shaping remembered unhappiness across his face. "Okay. I'll do that." Obedient, he tucks the paper into his front pocket and regards Sabitha with hopeful distress.
Sabitha's expression matches Chris, and she's silent for a moment in the face of agreement. She blinks up at him with over-bright eyes and smiles, wavering. Her words, when they come, start slow and quickly gain momentum, leaving little room for interruption or response. "And the other. I just want to say. Um. If it comes back, I don't know if you'll remember this or not, and you don't really know what I'm talking about right now and I'm not going to explain it. But I just want to say anyway. You are one of the best people I've ever known. I'm really sorry for-- a lot of things. If I could fix the past year, if I could fix any of it, I would in an instant. I just want you to know that-- um. That you've been really important to me, and I'm really glad to have known you. You deserve a lot more than you get. And I love you a lot, Chris Rossi. Thank you." On the heels of the last words, rushed and tumbling together, she steps forward to brace a hand against his shoulder. It's leverage up, to press a soft, chaste kiss against his lips, and then it's leverage to turn and walk away with long, hungry strides that eat the span of the sidewalk rapidly.
Left behind, baffled, troubled, Chris Rossi touches a curious finger to the memory of her lips on his -- that soft and subtle warmth, there and gone -- and watches her go. Women are mysterious. How miraculous are the creations of the Lord. Forehead creased, he turns away to head slowly for home.
[Log ends]
Sabby runs into Rossi. She is prettier than Bahir. Chris has no objections to finding out that they're -- oh. Friends? Oh well.