wizened_cynic | if we wanted, we could fall (part 8)

It took Alex two days to reconcile the fact that Lorelai wasn't coming back.

It took her another two days to realize that she probably had been delusional all along --- she remembered from lunches with Huang that hallucinations are a common symptom of PTSD --- because cookies didn't magically spring to life and become your best friend.

She couldn't bear to throw Lorelai away though, delusion or no delusion. The closest she came was to leave Lorelai on the windowsill one morning while she took her laundry to the dry cleaner's. (She was not sure why; nothing she owned actually required dry cleaning.)

But when she stepped out of her car and into the sun, she thought, There might be ants, Lorelai is scared of ants,, and somehow she found herself behind the wheel again, driving home, to Lorelai.

The only logical thing left to do was to put Lorelai away in a Tupperware container, which Alex conceded was a very liberal interpretation of "logical," but she couldn't bear to throw Lorelai away and she couldn't stand to look at Lorelai either, not like this, cold and wrong and eyes frozen.

The Tupperware had a bright blue lid, and Alex stuffed it with tissues before placing Lorelai ever so carefully inside. It hit her then, like a fist in her gut, that Lorelai looked like she was lying in a coffin. Alex felt the burn of bile as it rose in her throat, and clamped the lid shut.

Breathe, she told herself. Breathe.

Lorelai needed to breathe too.

(Except she didn't, because she was a cookie.)

Air holes, Alex thought. She could punch air holes into lid, just in case.

She didn't have nails, though, or a hammer; she had a screwdriver somewhere but it was a souvenir from the moving guys who put her furniture together.

Alex drove to Home Depot to buy a nail.

The line was long, and when she finally got to the check-out counter, the clerk asked, Is there anything else, ma'am? She shook her head, and it was then that Alex realized Velez had won.

That he had won because she was in a Home Depot in suburban Wisconsin, buying a single nail to punch air holes in a Tupperware container for a cookie she considered her best friend, and she didn't give a shit about it at all. She didn't give a shit about anything.

She understood then, that it is never the bullet that kills you; it's knowing that there is no longer anything in the world that you care about.

The nail cost 32 cents.

*

Alex used to work late at the office, and, ironically, now she stayed late at the office.

(She also used to hate the word "ironically," the way she hated the suburbs and the Midwest and teenage soap operas, and look where she was now.)

She never really had to work. There was nothing that could not be done in the course of nine long hours, no deadlines to meet, no sudden need to knock on a judge's door for a warrant, no victims for whom to seek justice.

Instead she sat in her cubicle and played Freecell on her computer, because at least Freecell had the decency to tell you when it was over. You have no moves left. Once she had stayed until nine playing Spider Solitaire, undoing and undoing and undoing until she lost track of where she had gone wrong. After that she stuck to Freecell.

She brought Lorelai to work with her now. Ironically (there it was again), even though Lorelai couldn't run or speak or hatch elaborate plans to make Alex's life as complicated as possible, Alex found herself worrying even more, checking on Lorelai every fifteen minutes or so, lifting the lid of the Tupperware container to make sure that Lorelai was still there. She made no attempt to hide it, keeping the container within reach at all times, locking it away in her drawer when she had to go to the restroom or to a meeting. Everybody saw, she was sure, but nobody commented, at least not in front of her. There was an unspoken consensus that each person in the office was allowed to have one weird thing. Tim in accounts shouted motivational sayings at himself, and Laurence collected potato chip bags.

Emily carried a Tupperware container around like a security blanket.

Alex drew the line at talking to Lorelai when other people were around. Alone, once or twice she would say, "Good morning, Lorelai," or "We're going home, Lorelai," mostly out of habit rather than any anticipation that Lorelai would answer back.

(She never did.)

"You should come over for dinner," Margaret said one day, as Alex absently trailed her fingers along the edge of the Tupperware with one hand and put a 6 of hearts on top of a 7 of clubs with the other.

Alex looked up. "Sounds good," she said, because it was easier than to make an excuse, and she counted on Margaret forgetting about it eventually. "Thanks."

"Tonight," Margaret decided, in an authoritative tone that she used with everybody, even the boss, which probably was why she was the secretarial manager but not, and would never be, anything higher. "We'll stop by KFC, grab a bucket of chicken, and go back to my place. The kids will be glad to see you."

Alex blinked, unsure of what just happened. She vaguely remembered the little girl with the friendship bracelet. Blonde hair, freckles. "What?"

"You didn't expect me to cook, did you? My daughter learned to make pudding at Girl Scouts though, so at least there's homemade dessert."

Margaret wouldn't take no for an answer, and Alex figured that eating fried chicken with several strangers would not be all that different from eating KFC by herself at home, and kids needed to go to bed early, didn't they? The evening couldn't possibly last too long.

Margaret's house was ten blocks away from Alex's, an older subdivision, where the trees had had a chance to grow tall enough for rope swings and climbing. "Dinner!" Margaret yelled when she came through the door, Alex trailing behind her. Her husband materialized and took the food away as a small, blond whirlwind attacked from behind and hugged Margaret's legs.

"Mommy!" the boy hollered blissfully. Patrick, Alex though his name was.

Margaret planted a kiss on her son's head and said, "Say hi to Emily."

"Hi, Emily!" Patrick chirped, and then Sienna appeared, saying something about having set the table, and before Alex knew what was happening, she was sandwiched between the two kids. Sienna chatted incessantly and wanted to share every deal about her third-grade life. Patrick only wanted to eat the skin of the chicken and did not even deign to poke at his coleslaw. "Emily, do you want my coleslaw?" he offered as Margaret shook her head at Alex.

"I'm good for now," Alex said. "It's actually really delicious. You should try it."

"You're a liar," Patrick told her.

"Patrick!" his parents said in unison, but Alex just laughed it off. Almost ten months in witness protection, all that effort by the DEA and the federal marshals, and here she was, found out by a four-year-old.

"Tiffany wants my coleslaw," Patrick said.

"Are we doing this again?" Sienna asked, exasperated.

Margaret spooned a generous amount of coleslaw onto the empty plate next to Patrick's. "Tiffany has her own. Now eat yours."

"Who's Tiffany?" Alex asked.

"My best friend in the world," Patrick said.

"She's not real," Sienna explained.

Her brother responded by kicking her under the table, and several bruised shins later (including Alex's, such was the danger of sitting between children), Margaret threatened them both with no cartoons and Bruce tried to distract everybody with the promise of pudding. Alex offered to help with the dishes, but Bruce refused to let her, so she sat on the sofa and waited for Patrick to bring his favorite toys from his bedroom to show her.

"I'm sorry about my brother," Sienna said. "He's really weird."

"No, honey, he's just sad." Margaret stopped braiding her daughter's hair and added, sternly, "Be nice to him, all right?"

"What happened?" Alex asked, wondering why it was that even here, in this new, strange life, she couldn't seem to stop attracting herself to damaged children.

"His best friend moved away," said Sienna. "His real best friend. So now he has an imaginary best friend. Isn't that weird?"

"No," Alex said, feeling warm and cold at the same time. Her head throbbed.

"Thank you," Margaret said. "You heard what Emily said. Now stop picking on your brother."

"I still think it's weird," Sienna said, but left it, opting in favor of combing the mane of her My Little Pony instead.

Patrick appeared with an armful of action figures and Hot Wheels and what was likely the biggest collection of Thomas the Engine merchandise in the world. Alex pretended to listen with fervent interest as he introduced each one to her. Not to be outdone, Sienna intervened and began asking Alex's opinion on the Powerpuff Girls. This type of NITA-approved cross-examination continued until Margaret decided that it was bed time and Emily had to go home.

"There's a girl engine named Emily," Patrick said, and Alex had to commend his persistence in trying to convince her to watch Thomas & Friends.

"I'll think about it," Alex told him. "Bye Patrick." She hesitated, then added, "Bye, Tiffany."

The grin that bloomed across Patrick's face brought a smile to hers as well.

"Thanks," Bruce said, as he walked Alex to her car, even though it was less than ten feet away, right across the street. "That was kind of you."

Alex felt better on the drive home, replaying Bruce's words in her head. She did a kind thing for Patrick, so she still had that left. Kindness. Something Alex Cabot was never particularly well-known for.

In the end, only kindness matters, Lorelai would say. Ugh, kill me now. I'm quoting Jewel.

Alex laughed to herself, quietly, and at the next red light, she took the Tupperware container out of her purse and opened the lid. She lifted Lorelai out, gently, and placed her back in her usual spot in the cupholder.

"Hi, Lorelai," Alex said. "It's been a while."

*

Talking to a cookie that didn't talk back was only slightly crazier than talking to a cookie that did. Or maybe it was the other way around, Alex couldn't tell for sure, but she didn't care, and there were worse ways to be crazy.

She rode her bike around the neighborhood on the weekends, with Lorelai in the basket. She made it all the way to the edge of town once and ached all over by the time she came home, a good kind of ache, the kind that reminded her that she was still alive. "That was fun, wasn't it?" she said to Lorelai, who smiled as she always did now, but Alex knew riding in the basket had always been one of Lorelai's favorite things to do.

One Sunday she passed by a church as the service was ending and people were filing out, and Alex realized that they were the same. These people talked to an unseen god who did not talk back and believed in a man who died and came back from the dead. How was that any different than Alex talking to a cookie and believing that Lorelai had once been alive? Huang would probably have words to say about how justifying her own insanity proves just how far gone Alex is, but Huang wasn't here, Lorelai was.

"I just compared you to the Messiah," Alex told Lorelai as she pushed the bike back into its place in her garage. "You would be so flattered."

Alex could have sworn that Lorelai's smile gets a little wider.

Margaret invited her to dinner again, this time with real home-cooked food that Bruce made and cookies for dessert. "I made these myself," Sienna said proudly. "I washed my hands too, so they're safe."

"What's your favorite cookie?" Patrick asked as he bit into an Oreo, obviously having far less confidence in his sister than the adults. "I like chocolate chip the best."

"Gingerbread," Alex said without thinking.

*

The days passed.

*

Her alarm clock malfunctioned in the middle of the night, and Alex woke up half an hour late. "Fuck fuck fuck," she muttered to herself as she jumped into the shower. She was out the door in less than fifteen minutes, the ends of her hair still damp, and it wasn't until she was two blocks away that she remembered she had left Lorelai on her nightstand.

"Fuck," she said, glancing at the time. She wouldn't make it on time to her 9:30 client conference even if she turned around now and headed home for Lorelai. She would have to wait until lunch.

The conference call dragged on forever. The client was calling from South Africa and had trouble connecting. Alex's boss had no idea what was going on and ended up repeating the client's questions to him in an effort to detract from the fact that he didn't have a clue how to answer them. Alex took notes, mostly, and watched the clock. Analog, she discovered, moves much more slowly than digital.

Eventually they lost the connection, and Francis made a half-hearted attempt at dialing back before giving up and asking his secretary to reschedule. Alex excused herself and dropped off the files at her desk.

"Where you going?" asked Margaret, and Alex mumbled something about an early lunch.

She left the car running in the driveway. It took longer than she would've liked to open the front door, fingers fumbling for keys through stray Mentos and business cards from the marketing event the company hosted last week. As soon as it was open, she darted up the stairs and into her bedroom, only to find the Tupperware container lying in pieces on the floor.

"Lorelai!" she shouted, and in that same moment, she thought, This is how I'm going to die.

There was a muffled noise from below, and then the sound of somebody walking up the stairs.

Velez, Alex thought. They've found me. They've found me and they've killed Lorelai and they're going to kill me too, and she was going to let them, because she didn't care anymore. She didn't have anything left in her to care.

But it was not Velez.

"What?" said the woman in the doorway. "What the hell are you screaming about? I'm right here."

No. No, this couldn't ---

"You look like you've never seen me before," the woman continued. "Honestly, I'm a little hurt."

"You're not Lorelai," Alex said, and there was a part of her that wondered why she was having a conversation with an intruder in her house instead of calling 911. There was another part of her that just wondered.

"Of course I'm Lorelai," the woman said. "Who else would I be?"

"You can't be."

The woman shrugged. There was something familiar about her eyes. "Why not? You loved me to life. Stranger things have happened."

"Prove it," said Alex. Just because this woman had curly brown hair and blue eyes and ruby slippers and --- was that a pink scar on her elbow? --- didn't mean anything.

"Oh, Alex," the woman said, in a tone that Alex knew, almost for certain, that she had heard before.

"Prove it," Alex repeated.

The woman rolled her eyes and walked the length of the room until she was standing in front of Alex. "Look," she said, and turned around, unzipping her green dress.

There, on the small of her back, were the words ALEX CABOT.

Alex heard somebody gasp, and then Lorelai saying, "Come on, now, you're not going to faint on me, are you?"

"You're back," Alex said, reaching out to touch Lorelai's cheek, which was warm, it was warm, her neck was warm, her lips were warm, she was alive, she was alive. Alive.

"I never left," Lorelai said and closing the distance between them, kissed her.

AND THAT IS THE END. It's been fun, kids. Let's never do this again.