Ms. Mix-a-lot

[cherry]

This was my humble contribution for this year's Remix Redux challenge. The original, by pearl_o, may be found here. Copious amounts of thanks are due to brooklinegirl for last-minute beta.


Days like these are few and far between.

*

Shells (Nothing But Blue Skies Remix)

*



Mid October, bright and clear. The sky is vivid overhead and the sun is peeking between the sprawl of buildings.

There aren't that many days like this in Chicago. (If you're going to be honest with yourself, as you should, there aren't many days like this anywhere, even when you're dreaming -- when you close your eyes there's the crunch of snow and you can see the horizon.) The constant, heavy smell of city, of gas and smoke and street-side hot dog vendors, is lost in the crispness of turning leaves. There's a man on the corner picking out chords, guitar case open at his feet, and the Canadian flag is snapping in the breeze.

The consulate is cool at your back, and there are forms to fill, phones to answer, and various menial tasks to perform; but it's easy to stand here for just a moment more, watching the world go by.

There's a girl on the sidewalk with a yellow sweater, staring up and watching the maple leaf dance on its pole. She looks like you used to feel (like you still feel sometimes, lost and almost overwhelmed, when you clenched your jaw so tightly and hoped that no one would notice). "May I help you?" you ask, because she's staring at the flag as though it might disappear.

She looks startled, and young. No more than seventeen, you think, but there's something about her mouth that makes you wonder.

"I'm Constable Benton Fraser," you say, because she's just blinking. "Is there any way in which I may be of assistance?"

Dief pads over and licks her hand, and then she's crying.

*

Tea. You've got her perched at the consulate's kitchen table and you're moving around, pulling this and that from the cupboards. She's not crying any more, just uneven little breaths that rip holes in the fabric of the room.

Tea, you're thinking, because when you were little and you father had left (again), your grandmother would put on a tea to boil, whistle of the kettle filling the space he'd left.

"I'm sorry," she says eventually. Her backpack is listing against one of the table legs.

"Pleased to meet you," you say. "I'm Constable Be--"

"I'm not --"

"--nton Fraser of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police."

"Lindy," she says, hands between her knees. "Lindy James. Of Indiana."

Kettle's boiling and there are bags in the teapot. "What brings you to Chicago, Lindy?"

Silence, as you add Constable Turnbull's ridiculous cow tea cozy. "What brings you to America?"

"I first came to Chicago on the trail of my killers, and for reasons that need not be explored at this juncture, decided to stay." She's staring at the tiles beneath her sneakers. You're standing by the tea pot and staring past the reflection in the window.

"Oh," she says. You've made any number of pots of tea, and the secret is this: you just have to let it brew.

She's not looking at you, is looking instead at the floor and at the ceiling with eyes that are glassy and much too red. She's twisting the cuffs of her sweater, plucking at the fabric with unsteady fingers. "You ever get left?" she asks, finally, looking up as you put the honey on the table. "You ever get left and think that that's the worst, but it's not, it's just not?"

You're thinking about sipping tea in a log cabin, watching out the window as tracks filled with snow. You're thinking about being six years old and standing alone beside the preacher. You're thinking that sometimes the scar tissue on your back still pulls.

"Upon occasion," you tell her. "Upon occasion."

*

Ray lets you borrow his car. (Of course he lets you borrow his car, just digs his keys out of the pocket of the coat draped across one arm of a chair and tosses them over-- you should feel guilty but all you can feel is grateful that he doesn't ask any questions.)

Saturday dawns dawnless, all lit with streetlights and condensation on the windows. There's a chill in the air, damp, that worms its way under your clothes and into your bones. You feel stiff with it.

"Autumn's not too long for this world, I think," your father says from the back seat.

There aren't too many days like these, and winter is coming on strong.

*

You drive her home, after. She's dazed and moving like she's waking up from a bad dream. She's sitting on the step, just outside the clinic; with her head on her knees and her beaten-up backpack resting against her shins. You wish Ray was here, but you're doing the best you can.

"Where do you live?" you ask her.

"Indiana," she says. "Hillen."

"I'll drive you."

You can see her fingering the bus ticket in her pocket, see her thinking of the old women who smell like cabbage and the old men who smell like tobacco, the middle-aged men who haven't washed in days and the young women with crying babies.

"Okay," she says.

Your father is sitting in the back seat, not saying anything. You've always wished there was a way to make him be quiet, and it turns out that all it took was this. He reaches out to touch the back of her head but stops with his fingers half an inch away, as if reminded of all the things he can no longer touch. Lindy flips through Ray's presets on the radio, settling on one playing ‘Yellow Submarine.'

You don't say anything. Lindy stares out the window with a self-conscious hand splayed across her stomach, and you watch the lines on the road. The sky stretches bright blue and incongruous all around; horizon getting nearer and nearer as the city falls behind, like the ocean reaching for the beach.

Just around the Illinois state line the radio station starts to flicker in and out. Ten minutes into Indiana it's gone completely, and Lindy sets it to a country station. It's playing Johnny Cash and she starts to cry, little sobs with her forehead pressed to the window. You reach out one hand for hers and she holds it tight.

By the time you hit Gary, she's got herself pulled back together, but she spends the rest of the ride holding on to your hand so tight her knuckles are white.

On your way back, you stop at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. You end up sitting on the front of the car and watching the sun set. Orange and red and purple, and you can't quite figure out why your hands are shaking.

*

Ray's waiting when you get home, sprawled across the couch with the light from the television flickering across his face. "Hey," he says, and "Where've you been all day?"

Your hands are better now, you notice as you unlace your boots. "I'm afraid I can't say, Ray," you tell him. Coat on the rack and boots by the door.

"You can't say? What, like you don't know?"

You've been missing Ray all day, but sometimes Ray reminds you of nothing less than a single, continuous, blur of motion -- "I can't say, as it's not information I feel I have the right to share." -- and there are times you just don't have the energy.

So you're out of the room and standing in the bathroom, staring at the mirror and wondering if you really do look as tired as you feel, or if it's all a trick of the light, or some cruel joke time is playing on you. The television cuts out and Ray's footsteps are loud in the hall.

"So you were out doing something for someone else, then?" he asks.

He's still talking, words falling from his lips as you wash your face. "Lindsay," you catch. "Lindy," you correct him, turning off the taps.

His hands are drumming on his thighs, pitter-patter as he talks. "-- and that's why I'm the bad cop. Kids, they hate me. They think I'm an asshole," he says.

You're thinking about the Kitchener case, and how he was the one who was able to coax the boy out from the basement, held the girl while she cried. You're thinking about how Stella was the one who didn't want kids. You're thinking about children having children and how all day, you wished he was there.

You're thinking -- "Ray, I'd really rather not talk about this."

"And, seriously, Fraser, it's a good thing I know you so good, because on any other guy it wouldn't look right. Guys our age? Can't get away with hanging around teenage girls too much. It's creepy. If it wasn't you, people'd probably think you were just trying to --"

You're hanging onto the edge of the sink, and your knuckles are white like Lindy's were around yours in the waiting room, in the car. "Ray, stop."

"I was just --"

Any other day, Ray. Any other day, with any other teenaged girl, and I would agree with you.

"I was just joking."

"I know. I didn't find it amusing."

There's silence then, and you're looking in the mirror and wondering when you got so old. Footsteps again, then there's hand on your back, and you let out a breath you didn't realize you were holding.

"Fraser," Ray says. "You gonna tell me what's up, or am I going to have to rip it out of you?"

Your gaze shifts in the mirror, catches his. "Ray--"

"I could do it, you know," he says.

There's nothing to be said to that, because you both know it's true. He *could* rip it out of you, question is whether or not he *would;* because it's sore and aching and he has to know the size of the wound it would leave if he did. He's rubbing circles on your back, and you just --

"Lindy lives in Indiana with her parents," you say. "They thought she was in Chicago with friends."

Guys our age hanging out with teenaged girls, Ray said.

You need to start cleaning the bathroom more frequently. There are smudges on the mirror.

"Lindy's boyfriend, a thirty-year-old man known as ‘David,' disappeared several weeks ago, a few days before Lindy discovered she was pregnant."

"No boyfriend, and she couldn't tell her folks," Ray said, and his eyes are miles away. You wonder what it is he's thinking, and you wonder if you really want to know.

"Indiana has laws," you tell him, and he's nodding, nodding, like he doesn't already know. "Indiana has laws requiring parental consent to provide abortion services to minors."

"Illinois doesn't," Ray says.

"She was alone, Ray," you tell him. The porcelain beneath your fingers is no longer cold. "She was all alone." You want so badly for a cup of tea, for the whistle of the kettle. "Alone, and young, and scared. She needed--" she needed someone to care, needed someone to notice, needed someone to trust. "She needed someone to help her, to accompany her to the clinic and help her get back home safely."

Silence, then, while you stare at your hands, sure that if you unclench them you'll start shaking again. Ray squeezes your neck.

"Okay, then," Ray says. "I'm gonna go back and finish watching the game with Dief."

"All right, Ray," you tell him, and he squeezes your neck again.

The television clicks back on and you hear the whoop of the crowds and the announcer's excited proclamations. Eventually, you get your hands back under control.

When you head back into the living room, the TV's on but Dief's the only one on the couch.

"Ray?" you ask, turning, and he's standing by the stove, pouring a cup of tea.

"Yeah?" he asks. Slides the cup onto the table. "What?"

"Nothing," you say, throat tight. Bump your forehead against his and kiss him once. "Thank you."

"Yeah, whatever," Ray says. Grabs the honey and tosses it on the table. "I love you, too. Drink your damn tea."