Then it dawned on him that he had seen a bar around the corner the night he and Claire had walked the few blocks to the Italian eatery. He buttoned his coat to the top button in order to shield himself from the cold, crisp night air. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he turned, and headed for the bar.
When he walked into the bar, the thing that impressed him the most about the place was that he could very easily see Claire frequenting the place. It was smoky, as bars are, and filled with the young, hipster crowd. It was exactly the kind of place Claire should be hanging out in. He found an empty place at the bar, sat down, and ordered a vodka rocks. He downed it in one long gulp. He ordered another, and drained it just as quickly. And another, which went the way of the others.
Throwing a few dollars on the bar for tip, he got up, found a pay phone, and called himself a cab.
At home, he took a shower, and headed for bed. His bed was still unmade from when he and Claire had made love there earlier in the evening. He straightened the sheets, blankets, and comforter, and climbed in, wearing only a pair of boxer shorts. Covering himself, he willed sleep to come quickly.
He had pretty much avoided thinking about the argument, and Claire, since leaving her place, by shear force of will. But in the dark, with the scent of her hair on his pillows, it was impossible NOT to think of her. In frustration, he picked up the offensive pillows, and, one by one, threw them to the floor. Rolling to his side, he cushioned his head with his arm.
When an hour had gone by, and his sheets were a tangled mess from his adjusting and re-adjusting himself in the vain effort to get comfortable, he gave up.
"Fuck!!!" he cried into the darkness. He had thought getting rid of the pillows would help, but had soon realised that her scent was not just on the pillows. He could smell Claire all over his sheets. In any case, it wasn't the smell alone that was getting to him, but the memory of the considerable amount of time the two of them had spent in his bed in the past week.
He threw what covers he had left off of himself, got up, and headed down the hall for the guest bedroom. It was the only room in the apartment in which they had not made love.
Yanking the covers back, he climbed in, thinking, "Let's try this again."
He tried...oh, how he tried...to push her from his mind and will himself to sleep. But it was an exercise in futility. He could hear the sound of her voice ringing in his ears. And when he closed his eyes, all he could see was her face. Her beautiful, beautiful face: in anger, as it had been just before he'd stormed out of her apartment. In admiration, like when he walked back to the prosecution table after breaking a particularly difficult witness on cross. In ecstasy, as when they made love. In fear, like it had been when Gordon had attacked her. In concentration as she poured over law books in the office. In joy, when they were together, content and enjoying each other's company.
Claire. Why did she affect him so? She challenged him. She frustrated him. She excited him and could drive him to distraction. She could make him laugh and could move him to tears. She bewildered and bewitched him. She infuriated him.
He loved her.
Had he realised this 24 hours earlier, he'd have been elated. At the moment, however, the realisation just made him sad. The scene in her apartment had gotten pretty ugly. He was right about her needing to come clean to her mother, of that he was sure, just as he was certain her refusal to do so had hurt his feelings.
He had been out of line when he'd made the comments about Claire being a child. That's when the argument had really gotten out of hand. He had stung her with the very thing that worried her most about telling her mother: namely, their age difference. And two decades is a damn big difference. How could people outside their relationship be expected to accept the vast different in their ages when they seemed to be having a problem with it themselves?
The funny thing was, Jack continued to muse into the darkness of his spare bedroom, before a few hours ago the age thing had been a non-issue. It was there, of course, but it had never been acknowledged as any cause for alarm or source of future conflict.
Her reluctance to acknowledge him as her boyfriend to the members of her family had wounded him on a level he hadn't known existed inside him. As confident a man as he normally was, where Claire was concerned, he felt more than a little insecure. She was bright, young, beautiful, and caring. She could have any man she wanted. That she had chosen him, at not-quite-50, with half a century's worth of emotional scars and baggage, was astonishing, and he kept expecting her to wake up and realise that she had made a grave error in judgment in doing so.
Her behaviour had seemed to him like a confirmation of his worst fear. The sense of panic and dread that had hit him had thrown him for a loop. He hadn't known how to tell her what he was feeling, and so he had lashed out at her in a way that he knew would make her feel as bad as he did.
After the way he had stormed out of her if her apartment, he was no longer sure where he stood with the woman he had just realised he loved. He knew, though, that despite the ugly scene that had developed, and despite the fact that they were likely to quarrel in the future, he was unwilling to let the relationship end there. In the morning, he decided, when he woke up (provided he actually went to sleep), he would call her. Whatever problems they might have, he was quickly coming to realise that he would find life without her unbearable. They had to work through this problem, and they had to do it together.
Eventually the needs of Jack's body overcame his over-active mind, and sleep took hold. When at last he slept, he dreamt of Claire, and her face, smiling above him.
*****
Claire's body jerked when Jack slammed the door shut behind him. She was livid; so much so that she could hardly see straight. At first, she was angry at him, for the "grow-up, Claire" comment, for trying to force her into action she wasn't ready for, for his inability to see her point of view, and for storming out like he had. But standing there, erect, arms crossed over her chest, staring down into the fire, her anger at him abated. In that instant, she realised it was herself she was angry at, and not Jack. She knew she had behaved very poorly, and she felt like hell because of it. The fire began to blur in front of her as the tears welled in her eyes.
He was right, and she knew it. There was no reason why she couldn't tell her mother, except for the ones that existed only in her head. It was only the dread she felt in anticipation of the look of disappointment on her mother's face that was worrying her. It was the threat of that look that had kept Claire on the straight and narrow, for the most part, as a child. Claire learned at a young age that her mother was the type of person one should always endeavor to placate, because a look from her could stop you dead in your tracks. To Claire, "the look" had seemed worse than a blow.
She decided, then and there, that in the morning, when she went to visit Mac and her mother at their Manhattan brownstone (their residence during the school year, while Mac was teaching law), she would confess all, and let the chips fall where the may.
"You know he's right, Claire," she told herself. "You're a week shy of your 29th birthday. It's about damn time you grew up and stopped living your life according to what you think will please your mother the most."
She wondered why it was so easy for her to make this decision now, when Jack was gone. It would have been prudent if she had reached this conclusion before the argument had escalated to the point where Jack had been upset enough to storm out the way he had. She suspected it was because he had cornered her. She had always been the kind of person who needed to come to her own conclusions, independent of the input of others, before deciding on a course of action. It was classic passive-aggressive behaviour, she knew, but it was the mechanism she had developed her first year in college, as a fall-out from having to deal with her controlling, demanding, pushy, over-protective parents all her life. When her parents had separated after 12 years of marriage, when Claire was 9 years old, and later divorced, her mother had become worse. Until meeting and marrying Mac 3 years later, Claire had become the center of her attention, much to Claire's chagrin, and she had laid out a nearly impossible standard for Claire to live up to. Her father, before dying of an early heart-attack when Claire was 19, had been the same way, and in some instances, worse, because he had never re-married. Claire had spent all of her adolescence killing herself trying to please her parents.
Even now, all she had to do was close her eyes and she could readily hear them yammering away at her, pushing her to be the best, molding her to their idea of what it meant to be successful.
"A 'B' isn't good enough, Claire."
"Run a few more laps."
"Push yourself harder."
"That's a nice dress Claire, but it makes you look sallow. Here's the one I like."
"Why don't you hang out with Susie, anymore? She was such a sweet, nice girl. Not he bad influence your new friends are."
"Daddy's little girl is going to be a doctor, one day, isn't she?"
She shook her head, as if to shake her mind free of the echoes of the past.
In this instance, her coping mechanism had backfired, and she was now in the position of having to eat crow, which, if it meant mending the rift that had opened between herself and Jack, she would gladly do.
The first thing she had to do was call Jack. She knew he wouldn't be home yet; he had only left --at the most-- ten minutes earlier. She picked up the phone anyway, and dialed his number.
After 4 rings, the machine picked up, "You have reached 555-5225. Leave your name and number, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can."
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.
"Jack? Jack... it's me. I know you're not home yet, but I couldn't just leave things how they are and go to bed. God....Jack, I .... I feel like shit. I'm so sorry," she said haltingly, searching for the right words. "I don't know what it is about my mother, why I can't stand up for myself with her, but...well, in any case, I'm not going to do it any more, not going to let her stop me from doing what I want. I'm going to tell her tomorrow, and I don't....I don't care if she has a problem with it. It's my life and it's about time I started doing the things that will make me happy. When you get home, call me. I don't care how late it is. I won't be able to sleep until I hear form you, anyhow. I'm going to take a shower, so if you call and I don't answer that's why. Leave a message, and I'll check my machine when I'm done."
She showered, combed her out her hair, slipped into a pair of flannel pajamas, and went to check her machine.
"You have no messages," the computer-voice of her answering machine told her.
She was perplexed. It had been a good 40 minutes since he'd left. He should be home by now.
Maybe he hadn't checked his machine. She decided to call again. If he was home, wonderful, if not, she'd leave another message.
After the fourth ring, the machine kicked on again.
"Jack? Are you there? I just got out of the shower, and there weren't any messages, so I thought maybe you hadn't checked your machine yet," she paused. "You there, Jack? Okay...just call me."
When another half an hour went by, and still no word from Jack, all sorts of wild ideas began flying through Claire's mind: He's been mugged, beaten, stabbed, shot. He's lying on the side of the road somewhere bleeding to death. She considered the possibility that he had gone on a drinking binge --it wouldn't be the first time. With that thought, came another that struck Claire like a blow to the stomach. Jack was an attractive man with the ability to charm the pants off the Mother Superior of the strictest order of nuns. What if....what if he had met some woman in a bar, and because of her own stupidity, he had gone home with this other woman in order to punish her?
Would he do that?
Normally she wouldn't have thought so, but after their argument, and the way he had slammed out of her home....well, suffice it to say, the irrational part of Claire's brain now seemed to be holding the reigns, and when that happens, Claire can conceive of just about anything.
The thought that he had been hurt or killed was too much for her to deal with, and so she began to focus on the idea that he had gone home with another woman. The thought made her heart practically stop in her chest. She suddenly felt nauseous, and thought to herself, "Good God, what have I done?" She felt herself becoming extremely and uncharacteristically jealous: a state of being she had never before experienced, and was it compounded by the fact that it was her own stupidity and childishness that had pushed him to it.
The idea of him with another woman, touching another woman, making another woman feel the way he made her feel, was pure agony, and she began to wallow in it.
When she noticed her heart pounding in her chest, and that she had begun to perspire, she reigned herself in.
"Christ Almighty!" she exclaimed out loud. "Talk about jumping to conclusions! Settle down, Claire!"
She picked up the phone and once again dialed his number. When the machine clicked on after the fourth ring, she hung up.
Where the hell was he?
Then another idea came to her. Perhaps she had pissed him off enough that he no longer wanted anything to do with her. This thought was only slightly less painful then the thought that he could have been hurt or killed. It hurt more than the thought of him in bed with another woman. She imagined him coming home to her first message, hearing her voice, and just deleting it without listening to the entire thing, and then staring at his machine in anger and incredulity as she left the subsequent message. It didn't cross her mind that if he really wanted nothing to do with her, he would have turned off the ringer on the phone and muted the volume on the machine, or picked up and told her to go to hell.
And what if he really didn't want to see her again? What would she do? She sat down heavily into her over-stuffed easy chair, drew her knees up to her chest, and laid her cheek against her knees. The thought of him not wanting her anymore forced her to face her true feelings for him. She had already known that she cared more about him than any man before him, that she was more attracted to him than any other man, but the idea of continuing on without him in her personal life made her want to curl up and expire. It was becoming quite obvious to her that in the short time that they had been together (had they really only made love for the first time a week ago that morning?), she had fallen in love with him. It was for this reason that the notion that she had just blown the best thing that had ever happened to her was so utterly torturous.
How could she face him on Monday morning knowing he didn't want her anymore? She'd have to request another assignment, there was no way around that. It would be torment unbearable to be with him on a daily basis knowing their personal relationship was over.
When she had just about given up any hope of continuing their relationship, Lucy came meowing her way over to the chair, jumped up on the arm, and insinuated her way into Claire's lap, and Claire quickly lowered her feet to the floor. Lucy, sensing that Claire needed comfort, seemed to get over her crankiness at having been abandoned for a week, and nuzzled up under Claire's chin, purring contentedly. Claire buried her face in Lucy's side. She could faintly smell in Lucy's fur scents from Mrs. Harrington's place. And she could also smell something that brought tears to her eyes once more: Jack's cologne. It was very light, but it was there; must have rubbed off when he was carrying her.
Oddly, she seemed to take strength from this, both from the comfort her cat offered, and from the reminder of Jack's physical presence. She decided that no matter what, what had happened earlier was not going to kill their relationship in it's baby steps. The fighting spirit awoke in her, and she knew with a certainty she had never felt before, that she would fight with everything she had for Jack, and for this love that was so new to her.
She picked up the telephone again, and clicked the re-dial button. The answering machine picked up.
After the beep, she left the following message:
"Jack? It's me again.....Look, I know you're upset, hurt, angry...but please...if you're there, please pick up the phone. Pick up the phone so I can apologise to you and not this damn machine. Jack? Jack, you have to pick up. You have to, so I can tell you I was wrong. I was infantile. I was stupid and stubborn," her voice began to waiver with emotion, "Jack...you have to talk to me...this silence.....it's killing me. I love you, Jack. Like I've never loved anybody." With that last, she lost it completely, and with a muffled sob, hung up the phone.
On auto-pilot, she shut off all the lights in the place, and went to bed, where, after what seemed like years, she finally cried herself to sleep.
*****
Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, Claire awoke from her most disturbing Gordon-related nightmare to date. In the dream, Jack had called wanting to make up. He said he had gone into the office to do some research for a case, and that sitting at his desk, staring at her empty cubicle had made him realise what an error in judgment he had made in walking out on her the previous evening. He asked her to come meet him at the office.
Next thing she knew, she was stepping out of the elevator on her way to Jack's office. She noticed two people sitting in the office with Jack, but their backs were to her, as they were sitting on the opposite side of the desk from Jack, facing him. One was a diminutive older woman with salt and pepper hair who bore a remarkable resemblance to her mother, but she figured she was only imagining it. The other was a large man with coal black hair.
Jack, seeing her walking toward his office door, stood, walked around the desk and held the door open for her. She paused briefly before him as she walked by, and he planted a chaste-seeming kiss on her cheek.
"These people have come to see you, Claire," he informed her.
"Oh?" she muttered, more than a little perplexed. Something was very wrong without he way Jack was behaving toward her, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. The woman stood, and turned to Claire, all smiles.
"Mom? What....what are you doing here?"
"I've brought someone for you to meet," she said, gleefully, "A nice young man who'd be perfect for you."
Claire cast Jack a questioning look, but could read nothing in the look he gave her in return.
"But first," her mother continued, "Mr. McCoy says that there is something you'd like to tell me?"
"Tell her, Claire," Jack admonished, "Now is the perfect time."
"Jack....this isn't the way.... I'm going to tell her....but not like this."
"It's put up or shut up time, Claire, so make your decision now," he told her, "We're all waiting."
She turned to her mother, who was looking at her expectantly. She wanted to tell her --oh how she wanted to!-- but the words caught in her throat, and when she opened her mouth to speak, no sound issued forth.
"Fine," said her mother when Claire said nothing. "I've got a nice young man here, who thinks you sound just wonderful. Alex?"
The large dark-haired man stood up and turned around. Claire's heart nearly arrested on the spot.
It was Alex Gordon.
Claire began backing toward the door, but Jack grabbed her by the upper arm, effectively preventing her retreat.
"Isn't he as attractive as I said he was?" her mother asked, obviously very pleased with herself.
"NO.....Mom.....no..." she stammered, fearing the look of gloating satisfaction she saw in Gordon's eyes. "Mom...I can't....won't go with him. That's him, Mom. That's Gordon, the one who attacked me. Jack..." she pleaded feebly, turning to him, feeling rather like a wild animal caught in a trap. "Jack, please....please tell her."
"You've already made your decision, Claire."
"Jack...no! You know...it's you. You're the one I want to be with. Mom," she turned back to her mother, "Mom? I....I've got something to tell you. I've been seeing Jack for a while now. He's the man I want."
"What are you talking about, Claire? The man is old enough to be your father!" her mother replied, becoming annoyed with her belligerent daughter. "Here's a nice YOUNG man, who is genuinely interested in you."
Claire turned and threw her arms around Jack's neck, sending him a silent plea with her body.
"Jack...please....help me...please. You know....you know what he wants to do to me. Please....you're the one I want. The one I've always wanted, I know that now. Please....I love you."
He unhooked her arms from his neck and pushed her away; pushed her toward Gordon. "It's too late for that now, Claire. You made your choice."
Tears of frustration, fear, and hurt began to poor down her cheeks.
Through all of this, Gordon had remained silent. He was merely a menacing presence. At this point, seeing that he had, in effect, "won", he advanced on Claire. Taking her hand in his big, powerful one, he began pulling her toward the door. She attempted to resist, but he had her hand gripped so tightly in his own, and she knew that all he had to do was squeeze just a little harder and he would crush every bone in her hand.
"If you'll excuse us, Claire and I have some getting-to-know-each-other to do."
He pulled her down the hall with him, and she struggled and protested every inch of the way. She cried out for help, but her mother appeared to be too wrapped up in her own delusional vision of Claire's life to be of any assistance, and Jack had made it quite clear that he felt too betrayed.
The elevator slid open as they approached, and Gordon stepped in, yanking Claire in behind him. As the doors slowly closed, Gordon threw Claire against the back wall, which she hit with a 'thud'. So violently did she hit the wall that her vision blurred and it took her a minute to focus again. In the meantime, Gordon had moved in front of her, and was now pinning her against the wall.
"What're you going to do?" she choked out.
"I never got to teach you your lesson," he confided.
"Please," Claire whispered pleadingly, "please don't hurt me."
"The lesson is meaningless if it doesn't hurt," he told her.
Claire let out a squeal as his hands reached for the neck of her blouse, which he effortlessly tore open.
He clamped his hand over her mouth, as he had done in the parking garage. "Lesson number 1," he said, bringing his hand back and then belting her hard across the face, "Shut the fuck up!"
Claire sat bolt upright in bed, fear coursing through her veins, tears streaming down her face. She was at once both burning up and shivering. She was drenched in sweat, as were her sheets, and her breath was coming hard and fast, as though she'd just finished running some kind of marathon.
She was completely shaken, and it took her a while to realise where she was. Part of her brain still thought she was with Jack, at his place, and another part was still lost in the dream. She reached for Jack, as she had done upon waking from her nightmares every day for the past week. Panic struck for a moment when she felt no one next to her in the darkness, but then Lucy jumped upon the bed, and it was then that Claire remembered where she was, and why Jack wasn't there with her. She cursed herself for her earlier belligerence.
When she had calmed down enough that her brain once again functioned rationally, it suddenly struck her that she was not doing a very good job of coping with what had almost happened to her. She had been trying to deal with it on her own, sure that all she needed to get over it was time, but her chosen course of action was obviously not working.
She began to lecture herself in her mind, something she did from time to time. "you've got to get a grip, here, Claire. Your life is slowly falling to pieces in from of you, and the tighter you hold on, the more easily your control slips through your fingers," she told herself. "Your nightmares are getting progressively worse. You've alienated Jack. You've got to do something before you lose it completely. Put your pride aside and ask someone for help."
Her advice to herself only begged the question, "Whom do I ask for help?"
Her mother? That was the last thing she needed to do. Can't exactly assert your independence by running to your mother.
Jack? She still wasn't sure if that door remained open to her.
"Of course!" she blurted out into the dark room. Liz Olivet had offered her services, on either a professional or personal level. Claire didn't want therapy. What she needed was someone to talk to, someone who would listen, and who could understand what she was going through. Liz had been raped a few years back. She of all people would be able to comprehend the enormity of Claire's torment. That she was trained to listen and offer advice for a living was an added bonus.
She decided to try and get in touch with Liz in the morning, and see if maybe they couldn't get together some time before the weekend was through.
*****
Jack woke just before 7 am. His head hurt, and he was disoriented at first. "How the hell did I get in here?" he wondered. And then it dawned on him. He and Claire had fought. He had gone to a bar. When he got home, he had tried to sleep in his own bed, but was unable to, because of the thoughts of Claire his bed dredged up. So he had come in here, and it had been then that he had finally admitted to himself that he was in love with Claire, the thought of which, if you had suggested it to him when she had first walked into his office over 4 months ago, would have caused him to laugh in your face. He was nearing the half century mark, and he had ceased to believe that he was capable of love. He had, of course, been instantly attracted to her: she was a gorgeous woman. And her blatant refusal of the idea of a relationship developing between the two of them, had only served to intrigue him, to attract him further. Back then, it had been merely a physical attraction, coupled with the desire to possess something that he was being told he could never have. He had resolved then, if he had any say in the matter, that he would bed her.
At the time, he had been casually seeing another woman. But things with Angela had fizzled shortly after he had begun working with Claire. She had, unbeknownst to her, and much to Jack's chagrin, insinuated herself into his mind, and soon, he could think of no woman but her. Everything about her fascinated him. Her drive, her devotion to the job, her feminism and compassion, the strong line of her jaw, the way she absentmindedly changed the style of her hair several times a day (she would come in with it in a bun, and the next time he saw her, it would be down, and then when he wasn't looking, she would pull it back into a ponytail). He had tried to fight it. Each of his relationships with his assistants had ended badly, and he was reluctant to see something like that happen again. And there had been Adam to consider. After his affair with Diana Hawthorne had soured, Adam had warned him that he didn't want to lose another good ADA due to Jack's inability to keep his libido in check where his female assistant were concerned.
In the end, his resistance had been futile. Everything had come to a head the night Adam had taken her off several of his cases so that she might first chair the Gordon case. Faced with the reality that she would not be spending as much time by his side as she had been, he had lashed out at her first, and shattered both his own composure, and hers next. After their first kiss in the elevator, he knew that he was charming enough to have been able to seduce her, as he had wanted to. He hadn't considered the possibility that she would steal his heart. But she had done just that, and he had been unable to take advantage of her, which was why he had pushed her away the next day.
Jack threw the covers back and sat up, slinging his legs over the side of his bed. He shook his head in an attempt to banish the contemplative mood he was in. He got up, wandered down the hall into the kitchen, and started a pot of coffee. While the coffee brewed, he showered, and dressed in a pair of jeans, a white T-shirt, and a sweater.
Back in the kitchen, he poured himself a cup, and drank the coffee down as quickly as the heat of the beverage would allow. When he was done, he put on some shoes, grabbed his jacket, and headed out to the newsstand on the corner to purchase the Saturday morning papers.
When he returned, he entered the kitchen for another cup of coffee and some breakfast. It was then that he discovered the blinking light on his answering machine, signaling that he had messages.
He hit the playback button, and Claire's voice filled the kitchen.
"Jack? Jack...it's me. I know you're not home yet, but I couldn't just leave things as the are and go to bed...."
He listened to the messages, feeling like an idiot for storming out on her the way he had, and for not having checked his messages when he got home the night before. The first two messages were difficult enough for him to listen to, and they had obviously come in before he had gotten home from the bar. The third and final message, which, by the time his machine gave, he concluded had come in while he was showering, made him feel like utter crap.
The level of emotion in her tone really got to him. He could hear the clear panic and remorse she was feeling. He could also hear her trying desperately to keep the depth of feeling she was experiencing from her voice, but it hadn't worked. He could tell she was straining very hard to maintain some semblance of composure.
And then he heard the last part of her message:
"Jack...please....I love you. Like I've never loved anybody."
He noted her sob as she hung up the phone.
She loved him! It was all he could do to keep from shouting his elation.
In the next instant, he felt guilty: for not having checked his messages, for not calling and making her worry about him all night. Who knows what manner of thoughts were running through her mind?
He picked up the phone to call her, but quickly thought better of it. He had to go to her. What they needed to say to each other at this point was much better said in person.
He shut off the coffee pot, grabbed everything he needed, and was out the door in a flash.
He arrived at her front door a short time later. He knocked, but there was no answer. He knocked louder, and again, nothing.
When he was pounding on the door with all his might, Mrs. Harrington come out of her own apartment to see what all the hullabaloo was about.
"Oh, hello!," she remarked amiably. "She's not home."
"Do you know if she went out jogging or to the gym?" he asked.
"No, she's gone until tomorrow night," she informed him. "She brought her sweet cat back for me to look after."
"Did she happen to mention where she was going?"
Mrs. Harrington shook her head. "But you only just missed her. She left about 20 minutes ago."
"Dammit!!!!" he thought to himself. "I should have called first. Now I have now idea where she is, and no way of getting in touch with her until tomorrow night.
"Thank you," he said to Mrs. Harrington, and headed dejectedly back to the elevator.
In the elevator, he remembered she had a beeper.
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