Post by Dreamfire on Dec 29, 2008 21:21:17 GMT -5
Karen talks to her friend and confidante, a woman she’s known for years and who is something of a mentor, friend and counselor.
“Jim’s been quiet, subdued. I mean he’s never exactly been loquacious but, since he told the Lieutenant he wouldn’t be carrying his weapon anymore, he’s changed, and not for the better. Don’t get me wrong, he’s still a great partner and all, but,” she shook her head, her mouth dropped at the corners and her eyes took on a far away hue. “He looks…” She couldn’t find the words.
“Sad?” I suggested, feeding back to her what I observed on her own face.
“Yeah.” Karen Bettancourt looked up at me, stirred the sugar into her coffee and nodded. “Sad, lost, defeated in some way.”
“You say he gave it up pretty quickly?”
“Well, I guess, I mean he’s been in the squad about four months but the gun issue really onto came to the fore last week when it got stolen and we thought that kid had been killed with it.”
“Do you think he was ready to give it up?”
Karen shook her head, “I don’t know.”
“You know, I thought it was a good thing, that night. It would shut Marty up and it seemed that’s where most of the tension inside the squad was coming from. And Tom was right, we’d have his back.” She looked up at me.
“I’d expect Jim would be thinking more about could he still have your back, than who would be watching his.” I said quietly.
Karen met her eyes. She was right. Jim probably felt disempowered by giving up his gun. “Do you think he shouldn’t have done it?”
How would I know? “It’s not really a useful question, Karen. He did do it and now you all have to live with that. But it does sound like he wasn't quite ready.”
Karen stretched her hands in the air, yawned and leaned back. “He’s a cop Ann, how can a cop ever be ready to give up their gun?” Again she shook her head, her hair brushed the leather of her coat and she remembered that first week, when he’d told her he could hear that sound and what information it relayed to him. He’d looked quite different then, his first case since coming into the squad solved, a big high profile case they’d spent hundreds of hours on, and he seemed to relax for the first time since she’d met him. Then he’d asked her what color her eyes were and the sour note had threatened to spoil what they were building.
She looked at the woman in front of her. Who would ever have thought they’d end up having this conversation?
“Yes, I still care about him. And I’m not mad anymore.” I answered the unasked question in Karen’s eyes.
Karen laughed, “Another round?”
“Sure.” A beautiful young thing in a waiters apron gave me a thousand watt smile and started making us new drinks. I appreciate things of beauty and this one looked strong, healthy and, very importantly to day, straight.
“So, how do you propose I help him out of his sadness? Or do you think it’s a time thing?”
“How long since he gave it up?” I asked, putting on my counselor hat.
“A month”
“No, definitely not a time thing. He needs to be jolted out.” I had a wicked idea, “You two been in any good scrapes recently?”
“What do you mean good scrapes?”
“You know, a tight corner, gun held on you, a suspect turns would be perp in a flash, something where he can be a hero, hell even a bit of a chase to get his adrenaline going might do it, but better if he can be a hero.”
“You are one sick lady. We don’t go looking for danger.”
“The Jim I used to know did. Doesn’t he ever say: I’m ready for a real juicy case?”
Karen was quiet, shaking her head and sipping her drink.
“Well he used to and he and his partner always got through it fine and came out bigger and stronger after.” I must have looked sentimental because Karen gave a disgusted snort.
“Well, as I’ve said to you before, my Jim and your Jim sound like two different people.”
“You’re right Karen, forgive me. I don’t know him anymore and I really shouldn’t mouth off about what he needs.” She was right, I had to remember my JD was gone, the waiter arrived as if on cue and brushed past my shoulder with as he placed our drinks on the table. On his way up his lips brushed my ear. “I’m off in an hour?”
I couldn’t stop myself, I nodded, blushing and giving the JD in my memory the flick.
“Ann! He’s got to be ten years younger than you!”
“I like variety and since you’d have conniptions if I even thought about following up on Jimmy I have to look elsewhere for my fun.” She raised her eyebrow, challenging Karen to deny it.
“You wouldn’t have any luck anyway, from what I can see he’s devoted to Christie.”
That didn’t compute. “Then he sure has changed. Who would think a bullet could do that to a man? You sure he only got shot in the head?”
“Ann!” She glared at me for a moment and then her features softened. Perhaps she could see the very real affection I still had for Jim Dunbar. Despite the hurt he had caused me, I admired the man and was possibly still a teensy weensy bit in love with the idea of him if not the reality.
“Look, he’s really trying, I think they’re seeing a therapist and they’re even doing dance classes or something.”
The potent mixture of gin and rum, coke and lemon exploded out of my mouth, and even my hands in front of my face couldn’t prevent it spraying the table. The alcohol burned my nasal passages and tears spilled forth, blurring my vision. When I finally stopped coughing and we’d cleaned off the table and come off the list of most interesting things to watch in the bar, the tears in my eyes were joined by giggles of disbelief.
Karen frowned, “What?”
“Tell me it isn’t true. Please, if I have an image of J.D. at a dance class burned into my head I may never be able to say hi to him with a straight face. Please tell me it’s just rumor and you don’t know it for fact.”
“Well, Tom told me, so…”
“Tom, the sincere, slightly gullible, that Tom?”
“Yeah.”
Ann put her hands in her head. “Well, that proves it. My JD would rather be hog tied and whipped than go to a dance class. He’d say Dance class is for pussies. I said in my best imitation of his voice, which is pretty good despite the fact that reaching that low a register is hard for a girl. Now it was Karen’s turn to have her drink threaten her airways.
“Oh, you do that too well.”
But Karen wouldn’t make a claim like that unless it had some ground in truth. I felt sadness well in me. “If Jim is giving up his gun voluntarily, being faithful to his pretty wife and taking dance classes then the man I knew is gone.”
I couldn’t afford to think about that now and switched from this overly painful topic to our other favorite: Karen’s love life. We had an hour to fill and with chatter and getting pissed. Then the cute waiter sidled up with a free drink for each of us and another whisper in my ear.
Karen took the cue. “I gotta go, early start tomorrow, see you.” She threw a surreptitious look over her shoulder as she left. I saw it through the lights and the music as the kid led me through a complicated ritual of intertwining limbs on the dance floor to the sound of a raunchy latin number.
~
Karen thought about what Ann had said. It was true that the Jim Ann used to describe and the one she knew seemed light years apart, but, in the last few months she had seen glimpses of the old Jimmy and perhaps the real one was just hidden over by the need to concentrate on finding his feet on the job. She remembered how he had stepped up in that first week and saved her from Randy Lyman. And then pushed forward until they had his confession, the other bodies and a water tight case. He’d been completely focused on the job and despite the stumblings and bumps that she and Marty sneered at, she found he had a hard edge about him; an unwillingness to compromise, and an unflagging energy that she found hard to keep up with. He put in far more hours than she did, staying late into the night to make sure his reports were completely satisfactory, even while struggling with new software on his computer, he was almost compulsive about ensuring he had every report written by the squad scanned and available to read. Over the last months she’d come to realize why he took his laptop home most night, he went over those reports in detail and knew the strangest details of every case.
She smiled, remembering one incident a few weeks ago. Tom and Marty had been looking for a guy who was a member of the Third Street Gang. They’d had no luck and were complaining about how secretive that gang was about their membership, they’d pulled a guy in and he swore he wasn't a member. They’d left him to stew in the interview room but had no expectation that he would give up his membership. Jim remembered from a report Tom had written months before, that this particular membership all had a tattoo on their body. A tattoo with a three theme. He reminded the guys about this and they went in asking not if the guy had a tattoo but where it was. They got him. All because Jim read everything. She’d asked him about it and he said it was one way to compensate for not seeing the crimes scenes and the people himself. She’d been impressed.
As she walked the few blocks to her apartment, Karen finally figured out what was different about Jim. He seemed tired. He seemed softer around the edges and less decisive. Maybe a jolt was what he needed.
