Part of me knows that someday I’ll look back on the scene with the Senator outside Dr. CIA’s hospital and laugh; not because it was particularly funny but because I’m fucked in the head like that. 

Now, in the Mustang, speeding along some freeway or highway or interstate I’m mostly just relieved it’s over. 

I glance at my unlikely chauffeur who has one long, graceful, rich-mocha colored arm stretched out the gleaming door of the Mustang and slides almond shaped eyes to meet mine. 

“What’s your name?” I ask and she snorts and reaches for the dashboard controls and cranks one of the local stations up, then eases her seat back slightly to accommodate never ending legs and grins at me. 

“Girl, you don’t need to know my name.  All you need to know is good thing for you I was there.” 

I move my legs around and rub my hands down my jeans and frown; the adrenaline rush has mostly drained away now and I feel limp and doughy-soft inside, like a noodle. 

“I wouldn’t have hit him.” 

“Uh huh,” she glances at me, grin small and teeth of course brilliantly white and straight.  “Sure you wouldn’t have.”

“No, really,” I insist.  “I mean, not on TV.  Not with McCafferty right fucking there.  I have more control and self-discipline than that.” 

At least while sober which I am oh-so-fucking wallowing in. 

She grins off at nothing, focusing on the road. 

“Sure you do, Cowboy.” 

Now it’s my turn to snort. 

“Cowboy?”  I repeat, grinning in spite of my best efforts not to.   

Apparently I am hysterically funny because she almost bends double over the steering wheel laughing. 

“Cow-o-boy-wee,” she mimics, attempting my drawl which of course is hysterical done in her Northernish California mono-accent mixed with the Street Smart twang she has incorporated into her speech.  “Say that yippidy do dah thing.” 

“Yippidy~~ you mean, yippy ki yi yay?”  I lay the Texas drawl on thick when I add,” Get uh-loang liddle doe-gees?”

“Oh fuck,” she giggles helplessly. 

I love an appreciate audience. 

We laugh, hard, for at least five belly cramping minutes, both of us high on jerky amps of adrenaline before we mellow out into silence and exhaustion.   The dash’s clock reads 3:39.  I wonder how many times Jinny has phoned McCafferty and if she’s left the penthouse yet and how mad she is at me. 

“You shouldn’t think that hard, Cowboy,” she tells me after long moments of silence.  “Put’s this wrinkle right in the middle of your forehead.  And it’s obvious it ain’t something you can fix anyway or you wouldn’t have to put that much effort and thought into it.” 

I glance at her, bemused.  I’ve bailed out the female African American version of the Dalai fucking Lama who was incarcerated for shoplifting baby formula and now she’s going to straighten me out as she drives me across San Francisco after basically scooping me up and tossing me into the car and making away with me from a disastrous fiasco of a press conference.  The onset of which had been all her fault. 

“You’re right.  I’d have hit him.” 

“Oh, yeah,” she says, smiling.  “I saw it.  You’ve got one of those faces, Cowboy.  Everything shows if you know what to look for.” 

I wrinkle my nose in a grimace and stare out my side of the Mustang, watching the white stripes flick by hypnotically. 

Now that’s a terrifying thought but I know it’s true, hence my obsession for dark eyeware. 

“Why’d you steal the diapers and the baby formula?”

Deep velvety eyes flick at me and one brow lifts. 

“Because I needed them.  Why else would I steal them?”

I nod.  “You know, there’s programs~~”

She lifts a quick, long-fingered hand off the wheel to silence me.

“Don’t even.” 

I sigh and pick with my thumb nail at a groove in the leather interior of the passenger door. 

“So what are you going to do if you rack up enough of these and they take your kid and place it in foster care?” 

She turns to look at me and grins, hugely. 

“What makes you think it was for my kid?  Maybe I’m a little bit of a Cowboy too, taking on the bad guys, even~” she drops her voice and tinges it with awe, “‘The Law’.  Maybe I’m fighting for justice and righting shit and straightening it up too.  Maybe I just know somebody with a kid that’s hungry and I took the shit for them.”

I eye her in amazement and then the grin stretches wider and she winks at me. 

“Or maybe I’m just full of shit.” 

“Hoooowee!  Somebody’s living large,” she comments, whistling as the elevator doors whir open on the penthouse level.  “You got this whole big place to yourself, Cowboy?”

I glance at her and can’t decide if I’m amused or annoyed.  

She insisted on coming up with me as if I need babysitting and I can’t figure out if she is just dying to see Sylvie’s place up close or if she actually thinks I’m in danger. 

Hopefully she thinks I’m the one that’s dangerous and she’s going to have the opportunity to pull me off someone else tonight.   I hadn’t missed the gleam of excitement in her eyes when her hand had flashed out and caught my arm just above the elbow as I was tensing and probably about to spin Chandler’s head around for him. 

I sigh and lean forward to bounce my head off the solid wood of Sylvie’s door. 

I think I’ve fucked up. 

I think my temper and my insatiable desire to always be right and better and ready and win has snagged Jinny in some deep shit and me along with her.  Please, I pray silently to whatever god might be eavesdropping, please let S’Phear be ready to move on this.

“I asked if you have this whole big ritzy place to yourself, Cowboy?” she repeats and I decide to just keep ignoring that question.  I’ve already explained this is Max Chandler’s property; she can’t seem to wrap her mind around the fact that I’m staying in a penthouse owned by the man I just exchanged rather heated words with on live television.  You know, however live television is at 3:00 a.m.

I’m not real clear on that either and have decided that things are too swiftly coming to a boil, partly due to circumstance, partly due to my temper and my incurable shit magnethood and I had better be removing myself pronto.  But a few hours sleep can’t hurt, surely.  And maybe S’Phear will have good news for me today.

“Ooooh, security key pad and everything,” she observes, grinning and I glance at her and punch the numbers in swiftly. 

She’s refused to tell me her name so I’m calling her Bad Ass.  She’s refused to grasp that mine is Cooper and is calling me Cowboy. 

We’re bonding, in a truly sarcastic, irreverent smart ass kind of way. 

I hesitate as I swing the door open, listening.  There’s music playing and lights on downstairs at least so maybe Jinny hasn’t deserted me in a fit of piqué after all.  

I walk in quietly, Bad Ass practically running up my butt in some strange gait that looks as if she’d like to get in front of me and check the room out before I do.  Jesus.  Let’s hope I don’t look so pathetically weak and washed out that a skinny chick thinks I need protecting. 

“Jin?” I call quietly and am relieved when I see a dark head pop up from the sofa in the upper level. 

“Hey,” she says, scrambling up and coming down the three steps at a gallop. 

“You okay?”

She glances curiously at Bad Ass but doesn’t hesitate to put both arms around me and pull me to her tightly, rocking me back and forth. 

I sigh and relax into her and lay my head on her shoulder, nose in her neck. 

“I fucked up,” I say morosely.  “I got made out front and he came over, Jin. The Senator.” 

I decide to leave off that it was Bad Ass who outed me.

“Yeah, I know.  I saw it on TV and McCafferty’s called three times looking for you.” 
 
I feel her tense, go suddenly rigid there up against me and I lift my head and can see her jaw working as she grinds her teeth, staring at Bad Ass. 

The fingers of both hands tighten on my upper arms as she realizes, rather obviously, that she’s looking at the person she just saw blow my cover to Senator Chandler. 

“Have you lost your fucking mind?” she asks me, sounding as if she honestly thinks I have.

Which is, of course, a good question. 

“So,” Bad Ass asks cheerfully, “Are we playing on the All News Channel or just local cable access?” 

Thirty minutes later I’ve downed a Shiner Bock, called a cab for Bad Ass and watched myself on television. 

This is not my debut; were I the sort to count that kind of thing this is probably my fifth or sixth case or investigation to warrant coverage by the television media.  And I have no idea how many of those local public service commercials I did for the Department regarding seat belts and child restraints and enforced reduced speed zones in construction areas; get born blonde, halfway cute, enter a male dominated society and everyone decides to cash in.  There’d been this huge discussion before my oral board when I was up for the CLE promotion about whether I had been too exposed to ever make it undercover.  The Department had of course opted for sending me 400 miles from my last duty station before they put me under. 

You see?  Halfway cute and everyone decides to cash in. 

I can’t decide if it’s not as bad as I first thought it could be or worse than I had initially hoped for. 
 
ANC is showing it approximately every fifteen minutes, narrated by Kurt Loder.  I wonder if Sheila Preddy is watching wherever she lives, nursing a wine spritzer or some drink containing Vodka and throwing empty epithets and olives at the screen when they cut the footage off each time she appears and swing it back to Kurt to tally up. 

I wish they’d cut to someone else during my time on screen; I look wasted, the black eye showing up brutally violet.  My hair is wild as if I’d reached up and clutched it several times during the preceding hours~~  which of course I had.  I look altogether “too” everything; too tired, too wired, too wasted, too bruised, too volatile, too intense. 

God, especially that; too intense. 

The Senator of course looks magnificent; he probably has people to coach him on how to stand and how to speak and where to lean and when to look sincere or angry or indignant.  

My internal advisors apparently are only whispering to me, “Look pissed.  Look more pissed.  Okay, now look ferociously and intensely pissed.”

And the sound…I can’t handle listening to myself.  God, the fucking Texas thing is just out of control any time I am tired or angry or breathing. 

“Aaaauuugghghh, no!” I howl when Jinny turns it up with the remote. 

We’re on the sofa and Bad Ass has departed; Jinny had insisted on escorting her down minus me and I’m too leery of our new found  and fragile “us” to do much more than whisper a few words of, “She got me out; focus on that” and “See that there?  I’d have hit Chandler right there if she hadn’t grabbed my arm~~” all during which Bad Ass had calmly smiled and coolly refrained from comment. 

When she’d come back up I’d almost wanted to examine her knuckles for skinning and bruising but decided that was merely a result of exhaustion and my usual hyper focused and vigilant state of mind. 

She wouldn’t slap someone around for what had been really no more than a mistimed blunder; not like Bad Ass had deliberately hunted me down and screamed my name to pinpoint my location to Chandler.   Just bad luck and an excellent example of my shit magnetism.   

And she had apologized for blowing my cover when she had.  At least I think she’d intended her blasé observance of “Damn, that bites” to be an apology. 

Jinny’s cellular rings maybe halfway through the second showing I’ve caught and she answers it, then glances at me before murmuring a “yes, ma’am” and extending the phone to me. 

I know it’s McCafferty before she speaks; it can’t be anyone else with the face Jinny is making. 

“I’m here,” I say and pause to clear my throat because it’s ridiculous how exhausted and strained it sounds. 

On the other end of the line McCafferty exhales air slowly. 

“I’m not going to ask what strange machinations of the mind prompted you to exit the hospital with the person responsible for your latest, very public, fiasco,” she says but the mere tone of her voice tells me that, of course, she is asking. 

But where to start?  Who’d have dreamed bailing someone out of Holding would result in a 3 a.m. showdown between Senator Chandler and Captain Kaitlynn McCafferty on the steps of a hospital with me the shred of meat they’re gnawing on? 

“Before we get any further into it,” I say, closing my eyes and willing back tears and the lump in my throat, “I want to say thanks for backing me like that.  So…thanks.” 

She makes a mirthful yet exhausted noise and I can tell she’s grinning when she answers; it’s the rueful grin, one side only, dimples engaged, head canted to the side.

I know that grin so well. 

“Yeah, well, you were doing your job and that’s the bottom line here.  The arrest was handled according to procedure and you just did your job.  If that inconveniences Senator Chandler that’s not our problem.” 

She pauses for a split second and adds deadpan, “And I can always find another job.”

“Oh shit,” I breathe and lean forward slightly.  Beside me Jinny stirs and I feel her arm go around me and let her pull me closer, relaxing into her with my eyes shut tight. 

“I’m only half kidding, of course,” McCafferty says and then launches into the purpose of her phone call. 

“I requested a copy of the blood work and the admitting physical examination on Sylvie so we can prove the seizure at the division was the result of her indiscriminate drug sampling and not the police brutality Chandler is going for.” 

“Thanks,” I whisper. 

Christ.  That’s the first thing I should have asked for from Weaver.  Instead I’d gone ballistic because someone had touched me in my sleep and never got back on the job after that.  Fuck up.  I am a total fuck up as a cop. 

“And I called Karl as soon as I could get to a phone to give him a heads up in reference to this latest crapfest with Chandler.”

I wait, knowing there will be more. 

 “He wasn’t happy, as you can imagine, being under the impression you would be back in Texas by now, but he didn’t say the words ‘suspended’ or ‘fired’.    He said a lot of other words, but not those.  And we both want a memo immediately, Cooper, detailing that female claiming you bailed her out of jail this afternoon.  I want to know how you know her, why you did it, where you got the money; everything.  Chandler’s people are dancing and throwing confetti in the air right now over that.  Do you have any idea what they can spin from that sort of information?” 

Oh fuck. 

“Yes, ma’am,” I whisper.  “You want that immediately as in now or maybe after I’ve had a couple hours sleep?”

 There’s a full moment of silence on the other end and I’m wondering which of the various scenes she’s replaying back through her mind before she answers; discovering I’ve broken Legaspi’s arm, Weaver and I in her kitchen, or seeing me wake up panicked and terrified   earlier in the hospital.   

“Later will work.  I mean a short time later, not a few-days-from now later.” 

“Yes ma’am,” I say and try to stifle the yawn but don’t quite make it. 

Jinny’s hand has lifted and is poised so close I can feel the heat from it on my scalp.  I bump my head under it, like a cat and open my eyes to half mast to glance at her.

She grins at me, lazily.

As if she can see us, McCafferty hesitates and then pushes forward, “Remind Exstead she still works for SFPD and she and Magda are still technically assigned to the Dunbar case.”

“Gotcha.”  I point a finger at Jinny and wink. 

“And Cooper?   The computer stuff really needs to start moving.  We’re running out of time.” 

As if I don’t know that. 

After she’s signed off with me I flip the phone closed and hand it back. 

“You work for SFPD,” I tell her, “And your Captain says the Dunbar case is still ongoing.”

“Really,” Jinny says, smiling and puts a hand on the back of my neck to pull me closer. 

“And I have a memo to write on Bad Ass the Shoplifter.”

“Of course,” she murmurs, sliding off the couch and pulling me up by the hand. 

“And she’s worried we’re going to screw up waiting on S’Phear so I need to get in touch with him.”

I glance at my lap top as I say this and notice it’s open. 

 She shrugs.  “He was doing some kind of insistent beeping IM thing when I came in so I just told him you weren’t here.” 

 
 I nod.  If she’d told me she and S’Phear are planning a massive cyber assault on the Pentagon I doubt I could summon up the energy for real surprise or worry. 

“He said to tell you things are good to go within a day, maybe two.  And that my typing skills suck so you should forget all those ugly things he’s said about yours in the past.” 

I laugh.  And take the hand she’s holding out. 

“You need to sleep.  I need to sleep.  The expedient thing here would be for us to sleep together.” 

I let her pull me towards the spiral staircase and up it.  She pauses every third step to turn and kiss me; on the forehead, the nose, each cheek, my chin. 

“Can you sleep here?” I ask when we’ve reach the top and she considers, head to one side and then turns to gaze at me solemnly.

“I think so, yes,” she says, as if slightly surprised herself, then hesitates, turning back to me. 

“One thing, though.” 

I wait silent and she gives me a long, measuring look before she imparts another of the gentle, oh-so-tender kisses, this one to my lips, then leans into me to lay her forehead against mine.

“You have to promise you’ll look at me just like this when we wake up.  I can’t take another morning of ‘who are you, how did this happen, why did I do this?’.  Okay?” 

Her voice is low and throaty and I can see the tension in her neck and shoulders as I reach to wrap my arms around her and bury my nose beneath her ear and run my tongue along damp, salty skin. 

“No,” she says thickly, “I don’t want to hear ‘sorry’, I don’t want to hear an apology about it and I don’t want you fucking me just because we’ve got whatever this is~~”  She holds a hand up, fingers splayed and I see the trembling in it, a fine yet definite treacherous shaking.

 “That’s what being this close to you does to me,” she says, pulling back and forcing me to look her in the eyes, hands resting easily on my hips, fingers tugging as they’re looped through my belt loops.  “But that’s not enough for me, not now, not anymore, not with you.  I don’t need another fuck buddy. 

“So if you want just a friend then I can be that and I’m a good one.  And if you want more then we can go for that too because I know what I want.”  She repeats it, voice and eyes level and intense and clear.  “I know what I want. “

“So do I,” I whisper and without dropping my eyes from hers, I sink to my knees and slide my hands with languid serenity to the button of her jeans. 

 

END OF THIRTY EIGHT