Title: stopped at the lights
Author: august
Email: appelsini@hotmail.com
Codes: CJ, shades of CJ/T
Archive: with thanks
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Everything up to, and in particular, the end of Season Two.
I did a short little toby piece, and then my little CJ voice got jealous.
total indulgence.
*
The bumper stick on the car in front of her reads 'I Fish and I Vote'. At
the cemetery, Toby had hooked her with fingers above her elbow and muttered,
"you shouldn't have driven." She looked him up, then down, and thought that
once, just once, she would like to be in love with a man who was taller than
her.
She didn't offer him a lift home.
As she brakes for the orange, she finds herself singing, "stop me if you've
heard this one", although she has no idea where the line comes from. It is
raining, drizzling, she's stopped at the lights and they had just buried Mrs
Landingham.
'I Fish and I Vote' the bumper stick on the car in front of her reads. "Stop
me if you've heard this one", she sings to herself as the light when green.
Her pager vibrates against her hip; she had turned the volume off for the
service. As she steps out of the car, she tosses the pager onto the
passenger seat. She stands, watching it until it vibrates across the fake
leather seats.
For the first time since she started work in Washington, and probably before
that, she pulls out her phone lines and walks past the flashing answering
machine. For the first time since she started work in Washington, and most
definitely before that, she stares at the sharp angles of the boxes of
frozen food in her freezer like they're tea leaves and like she's the kind
of person who believes those things.
Babish had asked her if she knew the difference between 'need to' and
'should' and it angered her, more than anything else. She felt like
explaining to him the graphs in her mind, how words become time when she's
standing up behind that podium, how everything divides into beats and
looking for the right person to ask the question she wants.
How three years with Toby had taught her everything about the precise
difference between 'need to' and 'should'.
"It's not the fall that'll kill you," she told Josh, who should have known
better because he survived his.
And, alone in her apartment, she sings, "Stop me if you've heard this one."
She watches television, a little, and tries not to think that soon they're
going to be all over every station. She turns it off when she sees vision of
herself walking into the Cathedral. Stop me if you've heard this one, she
thinks, as she opens her bedroom window, just a little, and climbs into bed.