Particles of Light, Chapter Four: Open Doors and Bare Feet
Title: Chapter Four - Open Doors and Bare Feet
Rating: PG, for language if you're sensitive
Disclaimer: Not mine. Not mine. And, of course, not mine.
CHAPTER FOUR
OPEN DOORS AND BARE FEET
The only Zen you find at the top of a mountain retreat is the Zen you bring with you.
-Zen Buddhist quote
As Reese reached her hand out to open the door, she realized the large wood door was already open. Not wide open, but slightly ajar, to use her police vernacular.
Open is open, she thought, and flinched at the zenishness of her conclusion. She wondered why for a split second, why her partner would….and, then it hit her. No locks. No bars, no gates, no fence. Right. She got it. She felt a sly smile inside her belly as she realized that as he unlocked himself so he could be part of the world outside his walls, she enclosed herself entirely within hers. She meshed herself within so many nebulous layers of dread and deceit that she was truly locked away from everything sometimes.
As her thoughts turned back to Crews and his time in jail, she felt a tightness spread across her jaw line. She thought about how hard it must be for him to adjust. Fuck. To adjust? No, to have survived. To live through hell on earth -or worse- and to come out on the other side, alive.
She looked around the entryway of the house, pondering the idea that he came out of his personal hell just a few months after she returned from hers. But, that was the last thing she wanted to think about and so she shook the thought from her mind. She took a few more steps forward, so unsure of her presence being a good idea that she realized she was trying not to make a sound.
It won’t be that bad. Maybe he’ll go off an a birthday themed spin out again, but I can just tune him out, she thought as she walked further into the cavernous house.
She saw the bright, coppery sheen of his hair first and walked towards it. In a very empty, very large living room, Charlie stood next to a card table with a paper tablecloth on it. There was a cake, with a small mylar balloon attached to the edge of the table, compliments of Ted. The balloon had a cartoon monkey holding a banana and the words, “Happy Birthday” written in childlike text. Earlier, Charlie had laughed when Ted confessed there were only two balloons left and it was either the chimp or Dora the Explorer. The chimp was holding fruit.
On the floor next to the table was a large, oval galvanized bucket filled with ice, soda and water bottles, but no beer. Reese allowed a small smile to dance across her lips, realizing at once that the omission was purposeful, and completely for her benefit. Ironically, the one thing she could probably have used at that exact moment was a beer.
Charlie was wearing jeans and a untucked dark blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up and was standing on the wood floor in bare feet. Floppy, but well pedicured blue-white feet which pointed slightly outward peeked out below his jeans. Reese looked at him for a moment and thought this was the only setting in which he didn’t appear large and slightly forceful, leaning in to the air with an odd kind of careless yet dignified presence. Here, he looked slightly smaller than normal, his physicality somewhat diminished with such open space swirling around him. He also looked slightly lost, standing by the small table, but seemed relieved to see Reese enter the room.
“Hey, Reese. You made it.” His face lit up when he said the words.
“ I made it.” Reese agreed, smiled shyly and jutted her chin forward a bit in an almost apologetic, irritated shrug.
“Well, Ted went down the hill to get some food. He forgot that when he was at the store getting the cake. Want something to drink?”
“Yeah, sure.” Reese went over and grabbed a 7UP from the bucket and snapped it open under her small fingers.
Reese looked at Charlie’s hand, which also held a 7UP. His pale hand seemed to gracefully encompass the entire can,. Reese thought it looked like he had a miniature can and she had a larger than normal one. “Ah. Same taste in….something. ” Reese said holding up her can in recognition while she conceded a small laugh.
“Very lemony taste. No other lemon soda quite gets it right. They either ruin it with not enough lemon or they add the lime. 7UP is just really…..lemony…..and, you know, I really like lemons.” He sniffed out a small laugh of agreement with himself before continuing, “Like ’em a LOT.”
Was Crews….was he nervous? Reese thought she saw something darker in his normally aquamarine eyes. It wasn’t the darkness that filtered through his eyes when he was off on one of his daydreaming trips. This was a grey of uneasiness that she’d not seen in his eyes before. Or, maybe, she thought, maybe she’d seen it that first day in the car on the way to interview Mark Rawls in prison. But, this was a more subtle version, and by the time she had convinced herself it was there at all, he was back in normal Charlie mode, talking about the origins of Mylar balloons.
They walked outside to the large pool area, which was lit just enough to allow them to walk around without falling over a strategically placed McRock.
As she wandered around, she felt as if everything at her partner’s house was at once quite beautiful and quite soul-less. She thought about how funny it seemed to her that people spent the most money on things that left her the coldest.
The air was still warm up there on the mountainside, and Reese felt herself warm up a bit for the first time that night. She was aware of her partner behind her, but he stayed some distance away, silently sipping his soda and probably doing some kind of open-eyed meditation.
She almost didn’t turn around at all, but when she did, she let out an audible sigh as she saw the view of the city at night. It was truly breathtaking. “You’ve done well for yourself,” she held up her can and smiled before silently chiding herself for being so dumb and thoughtless. She couldn’t look at him, so she looked out across the canyon for a second or two.
When she finally looked up at Crews, he was nodding silently, a small smile on his face, generously helping her through the awkwardness of her toast.
*********************************************************************************
Like many before them, they heard Ted before they saw him. Bumbling through the front door, he glanced furtively behind himself numerous times into the darkness of the night before emerging into the turreted entryway with a few Whole Foods bags. He quickly closed the door behind himself and made a nervous, cursory check of the entryway for anything that may have followed him inside. Breathing a sigh of relief, he lumbered through the living room to the kitchen before going outside into the warm night air and going through the introduction protocol with Charlie’s partner. His unexpectedly pretty partner.
Charlie talked often about Reese to Ted, but never once had he mentioned even the slightest detail about her stoic beauty. Ted tried to keep his eyes in his sockets until they adjusted to her appearance. He then excused himself and came back a few minutes later with a sandwich platter and a large bowl of fruit salad, paper plates, plastic forks and napkins in a bag under his arm. Sheepishly, he pointed over to a small table near one corner of the pool. “Please help me convince Charlie we need a dining table before it gets too cold to eat outside at night.” With this, he glanced around again, clearly uncomfortable at the thought of being outside after dark at all. Charlie thought for a moment and then turned to Reese, “We usually eat at the kitchen island, but that doesn’t seem right for…..a PARTY.” The last two words were drawn out, sarcastic and accompanied by a slight nod as he raised himself on to his tiptoes, which made Ted laugh and Reese smile. When Charlie saw Reese’s smile, he looked directly into her eyes for what seemed like a long time. She noticed that his temples relaxed, and she saw her own smile echo across his lips, albeit a sort of lopsided version.
By the time they got to the cake, they had talked for almost three hours at that table, warmed by a large restaurant heater. They talked about the Job, about hiking in the mountains and the best places to get 24 hour breakfast in LA. Ted even talked about the historical strength of the dollar in the Southeast Asian market. In spite of herself, Reese was having a good time. Sort of. It was an awkward good time. But, then, she thought, when had she NOT had a good time without it being awkward?
Reese pondered this for a while as she half-listened to Ted and Charlie discuss fruit bearing border plants. She WAS having a nice time. Kinda strange. But, nice. Relaxed. Warm. No booze or anonymous hands and lips required.
After a while, they started back into the house. Ted carried in a large basket wrapped in cellophane and a burgundy colored satin bow. Reese realized she’d left Charlie’s present in the car. “Got ya something. In the car. Isn’t a big deal.” The words came out quicker than she’d anticipated and Charlie glanced at her with a raised eyebrow and cocked head while Ted gingerly placed the fruit of the month basket down on the card table. “And, actually, its probably time for me to get going…..drive back.” Ted said his goodbye and nice to meet you and slowly backed out of the room, not wanting to turn away form the sight of his best friend and his beautiful partner, but also desperately wanting to vanish into thin air.
Reese smiled, nodded at Ted and walked towards the door with Charlie next to her. For every four or five steps Reese took, Charlie took two and she glanced down to see his still bare feet. She was wondering how on earth his feet weren’t freezing, and when she looked up at him, he shrugged and said, “I like going barefoot. Its nice to go barefoot anywhere ya want and not get staph.” She made a small noise that sounded to Charlie like the first real laugh he’d heard from her. Charlie was surprised that her laugh was so full, so throaty and he felt a slight electric jolt in his lower stomach that also surprised him. Reese stopped laughing, but still smiling said, “Yeah, I guess so….”
Charlie walked Reese to the car, where she opened the front passenger door and brought out a small, slightly crumpled, brown paper bag. She handed it to Charlie, who stared at her for a long time while slowly unfolding the top of the bag. When he finally looked into the bag, she could no longer hold back her smile. The look on his face was priceless. Reese wondered how she could know someone for such a relatively short time and know that this look was so perfectly…..him.
He reached into the bag and said, almost under his breath, “Candlenut.” He triumphantly held up a tangle of oddly shaped green fruit, complete with the same hued leaves.
“Candlenut,” Reese agreed softly, nodding her head slightly before turning away, pretending to look out at the lights over the canyon.
“I’ve never….I don’t. Where did you get these? Reese, how did you KNOW about these?”
“Indian market two blocks up from my place. I noticed them on my run tonight before I came over. The guy said they were rare. Never heard of ‘em. Figured they were just weird enough to be perfect for you.” She smiled, adding, “ I mean, I don’t think they’re organic, but…..” Stop talking, Dani, you’ve said enough.
Charlie stared at his partner for a moment with great interest, taking in her eyes, her lips and the small sections of hair falling in around her cheekbones. She NOTICED fruit on her run tonight, he thought. Now that’s interesting…
“Reese,” Charlie spoke her name as if he were saying some sort of statement or affirmation. He paused and completed his thought, “Thank you.” He had that sweet wistful sideways grin on his closed, small mouth. She looked at his eyes and suddenly felt that she was being deeply contemplated and wondered about behind his slightly squinted gaze. Something in her felt grateful for that and she felt a slight butterfly in her stomach, in spite of herself.
“Sure, no problem. I didn’t want to come empty handed. Listen, it was….nice. I had a….good time.”
Charlie silently smiled and pulled off one piece of fruit, put it back in the otherwise empty bag and handed it to Reese. “Here, you should try one, too. You might not like it. It might be too weird. But, you should try it…...”
“ I should try it,” she said intently in slightly sarcastic agreement as she nodded and wrinkles formed on her serious forehead. She took the crumpled bag, put it back in the car and went around to the driver’s side and got in. Starting the engine, she said, “See you tomorrow.” He smiled and waved with his free hand and walked back a few steps towards the house. As she turned the car around, she rolled down the window, “Crews?” Charlie turned towards her, listening hard. “Happy Birthday,” Reese smiled at Charlie’s face, and her eyes made contact with his for a few seconds, before she said, “Partner.”
When she reached the top of the driveway, she glanced in her rear view mirror and was not at all surprised to see Crews still standing there, looking out in her direction as her car was swallowed up by the darkness that increased the further away she got from the house. Or, at least she thought he was looking at her. From the chin up, there was a navy blue moonlit shadow that went across his face at a slightly diagonal angle, making it impossible for Reese to see exactly where his vision was focused. Or, indeed, if he were even still smiling.
What she wasn‘t able to see in those shadows, and how she wasn’t able to see it was the subject of her dreams that night. As she tossed and turned under the scratchy top sheet, Reese approached her partner on his front porch. In her dreams, she walked barefoot towards him, over and over again. But, she never got a clear glimpse of his eyes.
She never got a glimpse of where those eyes were focused, nor any hint of what thoughts of fruity, sunny joy or endless night might be going on behind them.
Rating: PG, for language if you're sensitive
Disclaimer: Not mine. Not mine. And, of course, not mine.
CHAPTER FOUR
OPEN DOORS AND BARE FEET
The only Zen you find at the top of a mountain retreat is the Zen you bring with you.
-Zen Buddhist quote
As Reese reached her hand out to open the door, she realized the large wood door was already open. Not wide open, but slightly ajar, to use her police vernacular.
Open is open, she thought, and flinched at the zenishness of her conclusion. She wondered why for a split second, why her partner would….and, then it hit her. No locks. No bars, no gates, no fence. Right. She got it. She felt a sly smile inside her belly as she realized that as he unlocked himself so he could be part of the world outside his walls, she enclosed herself entirely within hers. She meshed herself within so many nebulous layers of dread and deceit that she was truly locked away from everything sometimes.
As her thoughts turned back to Crews and his time in jail, she felt a tightness spread across her jaw line. She thought about how hard it must be for him to adjust. Fuck. To adjust? No, to have survived. To live through hell on earth -or worse- and to come out on the other side, alive.
She looked around the entryway of the house, pondering the idea that he came out of his personal hell just a few months after she returned from hers. But, that was the last thing she wanted to think about and so she shook the thought from her mind. She took a few more steps forward, so unsure of her presence being a good idea that she realized she was trying not to make a sound.
It won’t be that bad. Maybe he’ll go off an a birthday themed spin out again, but I can just tune him out, she thought as she walked further into the cavernous house.
She saw the bright, coppery sheen of his hair first and walked towards it. In a very empty, very large living room, Charlie stood next to a card table with a paper tablecloth on it. There was a cake, with a small mylar balloon attached to the edge of the table, compliments of Ted. The balloon had a cartoon monkey holding a banana and the words, “Happy Birthday” written in childlike text. Earlier, Charlie had laughed when Ted confessed there were only two balloons left and it was either the chimp or Dora the Explorer. The chimp was holding fruit.
On the floor next to the table was a large, oval galvanized bucket filled with ice, soda and water bottles, but no beer. Reese allowed a small smile to dance across her lips, realizing at once that the omission was purposeful, and completely for her benefit. Ironically, the one thing she could probably have used at that exact moment was a beer.
Charlie was wearing jeans and a untucked dark blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up and was standing on the wood floor in bare feet. Floppy, but well pedicured blue-white feet which pointed slightly outward peeked out below his jeans. Reese looked at him for a moment and thought this was the only setting in which he didn’t appear large and slightly forceful, leaning in to the air with an odd kind of careless yet dignified presence. Here, he looked slightly smaller than normal, his physicality somewhat diminished with such open space swirling around him. He also looked slightly lost, standing by the small table, but seemed relieved to see Reese enter the room.
“Hey, Reese. You made it.” His face lit up when he said the words.
“ I made it.” Reese agreed, smiled shyly and jutted her chin forward a bit in an almost apologetic, irritated shrug.
“Well, Ted went down the hill to get some food. He forgot that when he was at the store getting the cake. Want something to drink?”
“Yeah, sure.” Reese went over and grabbed a 7UP from the bucket and snapped it open under her small fingers.
Reese looked at Charlie’s hand, which also held a 7UP. His pale hand seemed to gracefully encompass the entire can,. Reese thought it looked like he had a miniature can and she had a larger than normal one. “Ah. Same taste in….something. ” Reese said holding up her can in recognition while she conceded a small laugh.
“Very lemony taste. No other lemon soda quite gets it right. They either ruin it with not enough lemon or they add the lime. 7UP is just really…..lemony…..and, you know, I really like lemons.” He sniffed out a small laugh of agreement with himself before continuing, “Like ’em a LOT.”
Was Crews….was he nervous? Reese thought she saw something darker in his normally aquamarine eyes. It wasn’t the darkness that filtered through his eyes when he was off on one of his daydreaming trips. This was a grey of uneasiness that she’d not seen in his eyes before. Or, maybe, she thought, maybe she’d seen it that first day in the car on the way to interview Mark Rawls in prison. But, this was a more subtle version, and by the time she had convinced herself it was there at all, he was back in normal Charlie mode, talking about the origins of Mylar balloons.
They walked outside to the large pool area, which was lit just enough to allow them to walk around without falling over a strategically placed McRock.
As she wandered around, she felt as if everything at her partner’s house was at once quite beautiful and quite soul-less. She thought about how funny it seemed to her that people spent the most money on things that left her the coldest.
The air was still warm up there on the mountainside, and Reese felt herself warm up a bit for the first time that night. She was aware of her partner behind her, but he stayed some distance away, silently sipping his soda and probably doing some kind of open-eyed meditation.
She almost didn’t turn around at all, but when she did, she let out an audible sigh as she saw the view of the city at night. It was truly breathtaking. “You’ve done well for yourself,” she held up her can and smiled before silently chiding herself for being so dumb and thoughtless. She couldn’t look at him, so she looked out across the canyon for a second or two.
When she finally looked up at Crews, he was nodding silently, a small smile on his face, generously helping her through the awkwardness of her toast.
*********************************************************************************
Like many before them, they heard Ted before they saw him. Bumbling through the front door, he glanced furtively behind himself numerous times into the darkness of the night before emerging into the turreted entryway with a few Whole Foods bags. He quickly closed the door behind himself and made a nervous, cursory check of the entryway for anything that may have followed him inside. Breathing a sigh of relief, he lumbered through the living room to the kitchen before going outside into the warm night air and going through the introduction protocol with Charlie’s partner. His unexpectedly pretty partner.
Charlie talked often about Reese to Ted, but never once had he mentioned even the slightest detail about her stoic beauty. Ted tried to keep his eyes in his sockets until they adjusted to her appearance. He then excused himself and came back a few minutes later with a sandwich platter and a large bowl of fruit salad, paper plates, plastic forks and napkins in a bag under his arm. Sheepishly, he pointed over to a small table near one corner of the pool. “Please help me convince Charlie we need a dining table before it gets too cold to eat outside at night.” With this, he glanced around again, clearly uncomfortable at the thought of being outside after dark at all. Charlie thought for a moment and then turned to Reese, “We usually eat at the kitchen island, but that doesn’t seem right for…..a PARTY.” The last two words were drawn out, sarcastic and accompanied by a slight nod as he raised himself on to his tiptoes, which made Ted laugh and Reese smile. When Charlie saw Reese’s smile, he looked directly into her eyes for what seemed like a long time. She noticed that his temples relaxed, and she saw her own smile echo across his lips, albeit a sort of lopsided version.
By the time they got to the cake, they had talked for almost three hours at that table, warmed by a large restaurant heater. They talked about the Job, about hiking in the mountains and the best places to get 24 hour breakfast in LA. Ted even talked about the historical strength of the dollar in the Southeast Asian market. In spite of herself, Reese was having a good time. Sort of. It was an awkward good time. But, then, she thought, when had she NOT had a good time without it being awkward?
Reese pondered this for a while as she half-listened to Ted and Charlie discuss fruit bearing border plants. She WAS having a nice time. Kinda strange. But, nice. Relaxed. Warm. No booze or anonymous hands and lips required.
After a while, they started back into the house. Ted carried in a large basket wrapped in cellophane and a burgundy colored satin bow. Reese realized she’d left Charlie’s present in the car. “Got ya something. In the car. Isn’t a big deal.” The words came out quicker than she’d anticipated and Charlie glanced at her with a raised eyebrow and cocked head while Ted gingerly placed the fruit of the month basket down on the card table. “And, actually, its probably time for me to get going…..drive back.” Ted said his goodbye and nice to meet you and slowly backed out of the room, not wanting to turn away form the sight of his best friend and his beautiful partner, but also desperately wanting to vanish into thin air.
Reese smiled, nodded at Ted and walked towards the door with Charlie next to her. For every four or five steps Reese took, Charlie took two and she glanced down to see his still bare feet. She was wondering how on earth his feet weren’t freezing, and when she looked up at him, he shrugged and said, “I like going barefoot. Its nice to go barefoot anywhere ya want and not get staph.” She made a small noise that sounded to Charlie like the first real laugh he’d heard from her. Charlie was surprised that her laugh was so full, so throaty and he felt a slight electric jolt in his lower stomach that also surprised him. Reese stopped laughing, but still smiling said, “Yeah, I guess so….”
Charlie walked Reese to the car, where she opened the front passenger door and brought out a small, slightly crumpled, brown paper bag. She handed it to Charlie, who stared at her for a long time while slowly unfolding the top of the bag. When he finally looked into the bag, she could no longer hold back her smile. The look on his face was priceless. Reese wondered how she could know someone for such a relatively short time and know that this look was so perfectly…..him.
He reached into the bag and said, almost under his breath, “Candlenut.” He triumphantly held up a tangle of oddly shaped green fruit, complete with the same hued leaves.
“Candlenut,” Reese agreed softly, nodding her head slightly before turning away, pretending to look out at the lights over the canyon.
“I’ve never….I don’t. Where did you get these? Reese, how did you KNOW about these?”
“Indian market two blocks up from my place. I noticed them on my run tonight before I came over. The guy said they were rare. Never heard of ‘em. Figured they were just weird enough to be perfect for you.” She smiled, adding, “ I mean, I don’t think they’re organic, but…..” Stop talking, Dani, you’ve said enough.
Charlie stared at his partner for a moment with great interest, taking in her eyes, her lips and the small sections of hair falling in around her cheekbones. She NOTICED fruit on her run tonight, he thought. Now that’s interesting…
“Reese,” Charlie spoke her name as if he were saying some sort of statement or affirmation. He paused and completed his thought, “Thank you.” He had that sweet wistful sideways grin on his closed, small mouth. She looked at his eyes and suddenly felt that she was being deeply contemplated and wondered about behind his slightly squinted gaze. Something in her felt grateful for that and she felt a slight butterfly in her stomach, in spite of herself.
“Sure, no problem. I didn’t want to come empty handed. Listen, it was….nice. I had a….good time.”
Charlie silently smiled and pulled off one piece of fruit, put it back in the otherwise empty bag and handed it to Reese. “Here, you should try one, too. You might not like it. It might be too weird. But, you should try it…...”
“ I should try it,” she said intently in slightly sarcastic agreement as she nodded and wrinkles formed on her serious forehead. She took the crumpled bag, put it back in the car and went around to the driver’s side and got in. Starting the engine, she said, “See you tomorrow.” He smiled and waved with his free hand and walked back a few steps towards the house. As she turned the car around, she rolled down the window, “Crews?” Charlie turned towards her, listening hard. “Happy Birthday,” Reese smiled at Charlie’s face, and her eyes made contact with his for a few seconds, before she said, “Partner.”
When she reached the top of the driveway, she glanced in her rear view mirror and was not at all surprised to see Crews still standing there, looking out in her direction as her car was swallowed up by the darkness that increased the further away she got from the house. Or, at least she thought he was looking at her. From the chin up, there was a navy blue moonlit shadow that went across his face at a slightly diagonal angle, making it impossible for Reese to see exactly where his vision was focused. Or, indeed, if he were even still smiling.
What she wasn‘t able to see in those shadows, and how she wasn’t able to see it was the subject of her dreams that night. As she tossed and turned under the scratchy top sheet, Reese approached her partner on his front porch. In her dreams, she walked barefoot towards him, over and over again. But, she never got a clear glimpse of his eyes.
She never got a glimpse of where those eyes were focused, nor any hint of what thoughts of fruity, sunny joy or endless night might be going on behind them.