Oh crap. 

I peel one eye open and stare groggily at my watch which tells me it’s 0715.   And someone’s pounding on the door of the penthouse.  

Shit.  Cops serve their warrants at such ungodly hours.   

I grasp the whys of it: sleepy perps equal stupid, confused perps who forget to ask for their lawyers and will basically nod and sign anything if it means they can get some coffee or a cold can of Coke or a place to lay back down or the cop to just shut up.  You’d think they’d have cut me some slack since I know the routine.   

Then again, that makes me even less deserving of consideration. 

“Yeah!” I yell at the door as I clumsily hitch myself up to my knees and then to my feet, “I’m coming!”  

 I toe the big spot of drool on Sylvie’s rug.  Yeech.  When I’d finally crashed, I’d crashed hard.   

I peek through the eye-hole but can’t see anyone.  Jesus Christ, are they all poised off to the side, weapons drawn or what?  Don’t tell me they’re going to storm in and do some kind of NYPD Blue take down.  I mean, I know I technically assaulted someone but surely I’m not going to get thrown down and taken in.   This isn’t television. 

But, I’m a Texas cop in San Francisco and I broke the wrist of a psychiatrist practically on the SFPD payroll in her own home.   

I’m fucked.   

“Just a minute!” I yell at the door on the other side of which I can hear what sounds like a couple of kicks and vigorous fist thumps.  They’re getting antsy.  I wish I was on that side of the door this particular morning. 

I run my hands over my face and down my body in a swift take-stock frisk.  My Glock is in its shoulder holster, resting on my jacket in plain sight and nowhere near the door or my person.  Good.  Ear-rings; and they’re hoops.  Not good.  In fact, the worst.  I unhook them and toss them on the floor near my jacket.  Okay.  What else?  Watch.  It’s cheap and it’s leather; I don’t think they can hurt me even if they twist my arm enough to break— 

I stop.  Shit.  I’m giving myself all the consideration I didn’t bother to offer up to a civilian.  I’ve turned into the worst kind of cop.  I’ve become one of those I loathe.   

I punch the code in and throw the locks then leap back to avoid the door as they burst in.   

I try to make myself relax because there’s less chance of hurting anything seriously when they put me down on the hardwood floor that way.  Arms up, fingers spread, loose, elbows out; look Ma, not armed.     

And there’s only one person on the other side of the door.  One very small person.  A female.   

Staring at me.   

Okay, so much for my Delusions of Bad Assedness.   

“You Sgt. Finn?” she asks.   

“Yeah.”   

Glossy, caramel colored, shoulder length curls bob as she thrusts an envelope towards me.    

My instincts tell me she’s definitely a cop; every line of her stance relays it and if there were any doubts she’s got that skeptical tilt to the head, that pre-eye rolling expression of disbelief and disgust at the world at large.  There’s a gold badge hooked over a chain round her neck which she flashes at me with a practiced twist of her hand and then lets  drop back against a powder blue, rather tight pullover.   

I don’t get it.  I know I’m not really awake yet and they do things differently out here but I’ve never heard of simply handing over the arrest warrant straight to the suspect.    

When I just stand there staring at her extended hand and the paper in it, she slaps it mid-air so it bends in the center and pops back into place, seething impatience.  

“Take it,” she snaps and shakes the envelope again, one brown pointed toe bootie tapping an edgy beat on Sylvie’s hardwood entrance floor.   

Mutely I reach to do so and just as my fingers brush it she jerks it back level with her shoulder and throws her head back, curls bouncing.  She glares at me with thick lashed dark eyes and holds it just long enough for me to start feeling pissed off in a sleepy confused way before she grunts and tosses the envelope at me, spinning away on her heels as I clumsily flash a hand out to catch it.  

I’m staring at my name on the otherwise blank white front of it when it’s suddenly snatched back out of my grip.  There’s the briefest cool strike of nails across the back of my hand and I blink down at this tiny, furious dynamo poised in the doorway as if about to attack.   

“I don’t know exactly what you did to Kim Legaspi and I don’t care,“ she spits out and then waits for my eyes to jerk up from my name in black ink on the envelope to her face.   

“But,” she says, dark brows lifting along with one emphatic slender finger, “If you harm one hair on Jinny Exstead’s head I will hunt you down and I will hurt you.” 

She keeps the finger poised there, aiming at my nose until I nod and then it falls to her side as she gives me a little nod in response.   

She’s spinning around to leave when I finally manage to find my voice.  

“You’re the partner.  Jinny’s.”   

She stops and turns and stares at me from a distance of about ten feet.   

“Yeah,” she spits at me.  “And you’re the asshole that’s out here doing exactly what Jinny does not need.  If Massey had printed out a fucking handbook for you, you couldn’t have done it any better. “ 

 She shakes her head at me as if amazed at my sheer ability to have complicated and screwed things up and there’s no point in arguing is there?  I am notoriously adept at both.   

“What were you thinking?” she demands, putting both hands on her hips and glaring at me.  Behind her the elevator door swooshes open and then shut as she makes no move to go inside.   

I sigh and really, really wish I was slightly more awake for this.  I start to shrug and she lifts a hand and cuts the gesture off. 

“No.  I don’t want any ‘I don’t know’ bullshit.  You’re a peace officer.  You were here to investigate another department.  So far you’ve done what?” She spreads her fingers and begins ticking my stupidity off on them.  

 “Let’s see.  You’ve over dosed and put Jin in the position of having to defend the infantile, idiotic behavior of the very person who she should be keeping her distance from, not to mention forced her into coming back to this place that she should never have had to step foot in again.”   

“Then you decide it might be fun to switch hit for the other team and who do you pick to fuck around with?  A virtual buffet of lesbians to choose from and who do you go for, who?”  She pauses ferociously as if I am actually going to attempt an answer here, glaring at me, and waiting before ripping back into me.   

“Jinny.  Who, believe me, doesn’t need your help to feel stupid and worthless.  And do you stop there?  Oh no!  For your next triumphant fuck-up you decide to use physical violence against a civilian and break her arm.  Now, I’ve wanted to whack Kim Legaspi many times myself but there’s the difference between us, Finn.  I take the vows I took seriously.  My job and my son are my life and I would rather die than jeopardize either.” 

She seems to be waiting for some sort of response from me so I nod and when she rolls her eyes and grunts before turning towards the elevator and slapping at the button with an open hand I decide to risk it.  She can’t possibly despise me any more than she does.   

“Is Jinny okay?”  

The look she turns on me is furious.  She shakes her head in disbelief and hisses at the ceiling in Spanish; I catch “pendajo” and “cencesos” which loosely translates into “brainless asshole” before she cocks one hand on a hip bone and glowers at me.   

“If you call being two days after a potentially lethal overdose of Jack Daniels and Oxycontin ‘okay’ then I guess she’s fine.  And yeah, by your definition of ‘meaningful existence’ I guess she’s just swell. “ 

Oh fuck.  I sag back against the doorway.  For one nauseating moment I feel certain I’m going to either faint or vomit as the blood leaves my head way too fast.  She didn’t just take a minor little drop off the wagon.  No wonder Legaspi was so furious, so protective!  No wonder she wouldn’t let me near her. 

 And no wonder this woman wants to bounce my head off the wall a few times.  She’s staring at me with disgust tempered with sickened fascination. 

 She can’t have meant to kill herself, I think frantically, she miscalculated.  She just miscalculated.  Her tolerance is low because she hadn’t drank in almost a year~~simple mistake, that’s all. It’s like me and the Vicodin.  She fucked up.  Not the other.  No way.  I cannot have done anything so awful to her in this short period of time to make her want to be dead.  I can’t have.   

“Yeah, well, you keep telling yourself that, Sgt. Finn,” she says and I realize I’ve said it aloud.  Oh well, might as well let her celebrate my misery with me.            

She slaps furiously at the elevator button with one hand without dropping the stare and when the door slides open she steps in without turning away.   

“And you know what else?  She actually had me hand deliver this so I could go back and tell her you were okay. She’s worried about you. “ 

Ever think someone can’t possibly come up with anything to hurt you any more?  And then they do?   

I earned this though.  And whatever else she can dish out so I just stand there and blink through it.   She is Jinny’s partner.  In some ways it is more important, more intimate than a lover.  I’d have gone ballistic on anyone who had driven Jase even close to such despair. But then that’s me: stupid and violent.  What had Sarge yelled at me after one disastrously physical bust where I’d come close to facing charges?  “What was your thinking here, Cooper?  Send everybody to the hospital and then arrest them if they live? Try to remember you’re one of the good guys.”   

I’m pulled back to the here and now by the cop.  She makes some kind of a noise, a snort or a huff as if she thinks I’ve managed to tune her out, as if none of this really matters enough to me to hold my attention.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a scathing look of sheer repugnance and aversion.   

Oh wait.  Yeah, I have.  At the bottom of a stair case.   

“What about the assault? Are you not going to arrest me?” I ask wearily as the elevator door begins to slide shut. 

 She sticks a foot out and prevents it from closing all the way and tosses her hair back, planting both feet shoulder width apart as she frowns at me with her head tilted defiantly. 

 “Is your nose in the carpet and my boot up your ass?”

 A bell dings and the door glides shut on the angry stare so I assume it was a rhetorical question.

  I stare down at the envelope in my hand and slide down the outside wall because my knees are refusing to cooperate and keep me standing.  It feels like I’m going to throw up; if there was anything in me besides Mountain Dew I’m sure I would. 

  I don’t want to open it.  It’s going to be bad.  And however bad it is, it’s justified.   

You fucking pussy, I think viciously and rip it open and unfold it and try to keep it from jittering around too much for me to read.   

Cooper,

Don't pay too much attention to Magda.  She's pissed off at both of us. 

If I don't just write this now I'll never be able to, so here it is however awkward and messy it comes out.  

You're going to be blaming yourself.  Know how I know that?  Because I would be.  

What I did is not your fault.  Have you ever just been so tired you really just didn't give a shit? 

what you're supposed to do?  I've been doing that for months.  And with this terror every morning, 

looking in the mirror, asking myself, "Is this the day?" Wondering when I went in and the Captain 

looked at me, "Does she know? Did she get the pictures?  Did Sylvie mail them?"  Wondering every 

time I'm called in to her office, every time I walk past the squad room and the guys stop talking, every 

envelope on my desk I'm not expecting to see there, every email flagged urgent… Is this it?  Today?  

Right now? For months.  And sober through all of it which you have to admit is the height of irony.  

(And lunacy.)

I don't know…  I kept holding this hope out that something would change, that she would give up 

or go away and then this bullshit with Massey started when I refused to play her game and I just thought,

 fuck it… Let it happen.  I can't keep living like this and I thought I didn't care anymore even.  Then you

 show up and something did change and for the first time there at the park the other day, I thought, 

Maybe there's a way out.  Maybe she can help me.  McCafferty told me I could trust you.  She said if 

anyone could see their way around Massey's bullshit you could but then she doesn't know about Sylvie…

She doesn't know what's really going on here.  

I didn't expect that with us.  I shouldn't have let it happen.  I was selfish.  I wanted you and I wanted 

you to want me and when you did…and I saw it… I was weak.  I couldn't stop thinking about you and your 

eyes; that look in them when you told me why you kept running from me, why you were afraid.  And then when 

I saw you there at the club, knew you had followed me there…it undid me. I didn't want to stop and think, 

didn't want to be sensible.  I wanted to take you and make you come. I wanted to know how you sound and I 

wanted to see your face when you lost control, I wanted to hold you up through it.  God, I'm making 

myself crazy thinking about it~~

 I don't want to make it be more than it was but I also refuse to pretend that it was less.  And then 

when you seemed so afraid and disappointed the next morning, I lost it.  I couldn't handle it 

because, I think, it felt too much like Sylvie, the rejection and I just couldn't take it coming from you. 

 So I ran.  And I rode around for hours thinking how shitty it is to be sober just in time for all this crap 

in my life and not even trusting myself enough to stop somewhere to eat that served beer and until 

you've tried to find a place other than Burger King or McDonald's that doesn't serve alcohol you don't 

realize how limited your dining experience suddenly becomes.  That's an attempt at humor.  It's okay 

to laugh now.

So guess who shows up at my door that night?  Yeah.  And she showed up with JD and a toaster 

for me to celebrate your deflowering and it just went downhill from there.  And she told me the photos

had been mailed out to McCafferty but wasn't I lucky?  She's gone on holiday with her

daughter and it's bought me some time.

And somewhere in there she poured me a drink and I took it.  And she didn't have to pour me 

another because I did it myself.  Another failure, see?  Jinx fucks up again.  Now I'm not even a 

recovering alcoholic, I'm a relapsed drunk.  And she left the Oxycontin.  Said she knew I knew what 

to do with it, I knew what would be best for everyone -especially Magda and Captain McCafferty who 

have backed me 100% this whole time~~  But they don't know about Sylvie, or McCafferty doesn't because 

Magda does know now.  And it just suddenly made sense to me.  Me alive and a fuck up means they have to 

stick by me, root for me, support me because it's what friends do.  Me dead and a fuck up and everyone 

can just sigh and shake their heads, "That stupid Jinny!" and go on with their lives.  

So I took nineteen at the end of the second bottle.  And guess what?  I fucked up as usual because 

I had lost track of time and forgotten I was to meet Magda to set up the stake out again.  She came 

to get me and saved my life with a bottle of Ipecac she had in her car.  She called Kerry and Kim 

and they made my puke and cleaned me up and listened to me bawl my stupid sorry eyes out…  

And now here we are.  I gather you showed up for your appointment and had some type of altercation 

with Kim -who has a minor stress fracture, and Kerry -who can't seem to decide if you are Evil Incarnate

 or merely her long lost baby sister gone bad.  And if you're reading this it's

hopeful Magda resisted the urge to drag you in for Kim's assault and you're still walking around on 

your own recognizance and must be wondering what the fuck you did to get sent out to sort through 

such an ungodly, heinous mess as the ones I manage to create without even 

really trying.  

I'm not running or fighting any more.  I'm going to McCafferty and just let it happen.  

I'm so sorry you got sucked into this.  Go home.  Know that I am responsible for every decision 

I've made, good or bad, just like everyone else and you are to stop blaming yourself no matter what

Magda says or does.  

Be well and stay safe.  

J 

 END OF TWENTY ONE