Participants:
| Scene Title | Checking Up or Calling Out? |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Dealer's Choice |
| Date | July 20, 2021 |
Erin's Neighborhood
With so many events, a nonstop wave of punch after punch right in the proverbial kisser, it’s funny to think that any building in any of the few remaining neighborhoods in the City that Still Never Sleeps could be called “prewar.” To which war does this term refer? We’ve never known for sure, have we? Is it The Great War? World War II? Vietnam? 9/11? The settlement of colonists and beyond on this land dates back nearly four hundred years, and until a certain November of a certain year, some of those earliest landmarks remained. There was the graveyard by Trinity Church that held the bullet-holed bones of Alexander Hamilton, the bones of contemporaries marred by smallpox and cholera, and who knows what other pathogens from the cesspool of “collect pond” not a mile away. There was that old brick bar down by what was the Staten Island and Governer's Island ferry terminals that, when wandering, could have been stumbled across by happenstance nestled between so many glittering stiletto loci of financial power, and which had a bona fide historical plaque on its facade claiming that none other than George Washington himself, yessir, that George Washington, he drank with his troops here during the Revolutionary War, right near the Battery where that war was partially won. And Congregation Shearith Israel was holding Shabbat services before either of them were even born, before nationhood had been conceived of, before the French and Indian War and before it was New York at all but rather was New Amsterdam, and even their new building would be over 100 years old if Manhattan still existed.
But it doesn’t. There is no Manhattan. By any measure, the original “prewar” meaning is moot. A new war popped up. The city endured. The city continues to endure. You could say it endures in spite of the odds, but you’d sound like a schmegegge, for the odds are truthfully in its favor: the spirit of the New Yorker is hardened by piss-soaked puddles and pigeons dive-bombing your head and complaining that the subways are late again (this is the fourth time this week, and it’s only Monday!) even though the whole tunnel has flooded and realistically you shouldn’t have even left your house this morning because the viscous-smelling rainwater is shuffling dutifully through the cracks in the concrete ceiling and splattering you repeatedly on the crown of your head. Well, at least it’s not in your eyes: no New York baptism for you today.
Erin wakes up in her prewar third-floor walk-up in Bay Ridge to the sound of rain thundering down onto her window-mounted air conditioner. The sky, it should be clear, is not thundering. The sky is gentle. The sound of large, heavy drops on the hollow metal unit is a timpani without an orchestra. It rattles her brain and the brain melts out of her eyes and mouth and into the nearby toilet.
I had too much to drink last night.
It takes her a long minute to realize amid the regret of waking exactly why she's awake when she really doesn't want to be – the sound of Cop Knock at her door.
BANG! BANG! BANG! "Open up, Gordon, it's the police!" Apparently Lieutenant Harrison is a sadist. She is making enough noise at that door to wake the dead. Clearly deliberate.
When Erin finally stumbles to the door, the blond greets her subordinate with a wrinkled nose and a bright, almost malicious, smile. "Go get in the shower. Here, take this coffee with you. Move it, Gordon, time's a-wasting." She is obnoxiously alert and awake.
Erin is absolutely staggered by all of this, mouth half-open, last night’s eyebrow mascara smeared and making her expressions appear as out of focus as her brain feels. She numbly takes the paper cup – she is, as ever, not HAPPY TO SERVE YOU – and turns around, leading Liz wordlessly into the apartment. It’s charming in its own way, a brick-walled junior one bedroom with a defunct fireplace and bay windows, a leather sofa stuffed beyond that of a Thanksgiving turkey occupying most of one wall and covered in mismatched blankets, with wooden end tables and a coffee table all having found their way here from different curbside journeys, another wall with an old IKEA bookshelf packed to bursting with haphazard and disorganized titles, and it all has the slight funk of a laundry pile that should have been done yesterday and vodka sweat sloughed off overnight.
“But I am the police,” she mumbles, before taking a long draw from the coffee, nearly spitting it out as it singes off the top layer of her tongue, and shrugging off a cardigan donned who knows when.
The living room is a half-octagon, and Erin gestures vaguely at it in a make yourself at home expression as she heads into the bathroom, flips on the light, and starts messing with the tap, never sure if the water will be scorching or glacial.
As Elisabeth waits in the living room, she takes a look around. Not a warrant search, but … she doesn't miss much. She meanders to the windows, taking a brief look out to see the lines of sight. Wanders through the kitchen, not opening the cabinets but walking about as she sips her coffee. She pulls out her phone to fire off a couple of texts while she waits.
There's something about having your boss standing in your living room with her badge and gun on her hip that might be a little disconcerting to some. Liz might be testing the younger officer's paranoia – what got touched? What got moved? Is there anything that looks different?
Erin doesn’t even bother fully closing the door – it doesn’t close properly anyway, having warped under humidity many summers prior – as she takes off her clothing, but she does wrap herself in a towel as she pops her head out the door, mousey brown hair dangling down past bony shoulders.
“What are you…uh…doing? Here? At this hour? Not that I don’t appreciate the coffee, but given we have to be at work later and we just saw each other last night, I figured you’d need a break from me for a minute.”
She reaches out of the bathroom to a stool near the door, nestled somewhere between kitchen and bath, upon which the coffee in question innocently waits, plastic drinking flap on the lid standing at a crooked attention.
Glancing back toward the bathroom door, Elisabeth seems to have zero concern about the fact that Erin's left it open. Too many years where modesty wasn't exactly the easiest thing to hold onto. Too many locker room showers. Just a general lack of self-consciousness? Her blue eyes take in the bedraggled appearance of her officer and she shrugs slightly, that wicked imp of sadistic amusement still lingering. "We're taking the long way to work. Neutral ground," she informs Erin mildly.
Sipping her cup of coffee, she glances at the watch on her wrist. "You're down to five minutes. Chop chop." There was no mention of a time limit! It's possible the lieutenant is just fucking with her. Nothing in her demeanor really communicates that it's a joke, but maybe she's just that cool a cucumber.
“Neutral – what?! Okay, I know you’re my boss, but in my house I get to make the rules and that means I get ten minutes!”
She mostly closes the door and hops in the shower, recoiling and yelping as the water is, indeed, the temperature of the Red Sea in the story of Exodus. The tap squeaks to the left, and then to the right, and then to the left again, and it could possibly deglove a human.
“It takes three goddamn minutes to get the water temperature right anyway. Give me a break. It’s like you don’t live in one of these old – oh wait, you probably – argh! – don’t.”
She definitely does not. Benefits of being the wife of a very wealthy man who built his own state-of-the-art complex. Elisabeth's laughter is low and although Erin can't see it, her expression is pained. Thank god she doesn't have to actually hear the squeaks after the first jarring sound grates her nerves. She'd offer to send someone around to fix it… but it's not really going to matter for much longer, not for anyone. Not something Liz can say aloud, though. Not something anyone should have to know before there's no alternative.
The audiokinetic continues to meander the small apartment, mostly just watching out the window and sipping her coffee, checking and returning texts or emails as she waits. It's not until Erin finds her way out of the shower and is dressed that she really puts her attention squarely back on the other woman. "C'mon then," she says with a small smile. "Sunshine, fresh air, and food will perk you right back up."
At this, Erin frowns. “I’m perky. What do you mean, perk me up. I’m fine.”
But she obliges nevertheless, holding a hair clip in between her teeth as she unsuccessfully but with wanton hope scrunches gel into her hair before grabbing sunglasses, keys, and opening the door to follow Liz out first.
The key turns in the lock and she jogs down the three flights, proud of herself being only slightly winded after this, and then turns to Liz, already feeling the heat of a humid July morning moving, as though by osmosis, from the concrete sidewalks and into her shoes, her body, and her skull. Sunglasses are a blessing and she tips them down from the top of her head squarely onto the bridge of her nose. She bunches her hands in her pockets before she proceeds further, having a feeling, but asks nevertheless, “Okay, so why are you really here? I can count on one hand the number of times you’ve been to my building and that number of times can’t be rounded up to five.”
Elisabeth tosses her empty cup in the trash on their way out of the apartment and her smile is faint as they make their way down the stairs and outside. Picking a direction with no real destination in mind, she tucks her own sunglasses on her nose as they start walking. She pays no attention to Mike Gordon, who falls in behind them and takes up his position with the ease of long practice.
It's second nature to keep her hands free, and Elisabeth walks with them casually swinging at her sides. Behind the sunglasses, her blue eyes are constantly moving, something mostly hidden behind the dark lenses. The woman is always watchful, perpetually situationally aware. "Mainly to check up on you," Elisabeth tells the younger officer candidly as they walk. "I have no room to cast stones about getting blitzed on a girls' night out, mind you. I have a friend who makes sure I actually go out and do that occasionally," she grins. "You've never given me cause to think we have a problem at work. That said, though? The sheer volume of alcohol you put away last night before you really started to feel it has me a little bit … concerned."
Slanting a glance at her companion, Elisabeth asks bluntly, "Are you okay?"
“Am I – what do you mean?” Erin dodges, dumbfounded, mouth slightly open. She wishes she had brought some sunscreen, as she feels her skin burning, but that’s not important now; her face, too, is red. “I’m no different than most others on the force, I think. The bars around the precinct” (using an old word, out of fashion, hardly even relevant any longer, she notices) “are always packed. I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
A faint smirk quirks Elisabeth's mouth upward and she notes, "Asserting that you're no different than most others on the force only makes my concern more valid, Erin. We all see so much of the worst of humanity … alcohol problems have always been rampant on the force."
As she walks, her body language is still open and casual. "I'm not judging, Erin. I'm asking you to take a hard look and be certain that you're only having fun and not hiding in the bottle. If you're not okay, especially right now, I need you to talk to me." Her blue eyes shift to her companion and Elisabeth says softly, "With so much of our squad out, with what we're facing with Humanis– Pure Earth and their shenanigans? I have to be able to count on you. With my life. With the lives of the younger officers on the team."
Erin bristles somewhat. “Ah, okay. Yes. I see. I feel like the mixed messaging of ‘I care about you as a person’ and ‘I care about you as a peon’ is a bit confusing here. Which one is it? Am I a person, or a cop with too much PTO to blow?”
A brow quirks up and Elisabeth stops in the middle of the sidewalk to look Erin in the eyes. "If I were going to call you on the carpet about something, it would be in the office where we are both clear that I'm your boss and that's the hat I'm wearing," she says evenly. "I don't have the temperament to tiptoe around things; never have, never will. I've been a cop too long and have seen too many friends cope by falling into the bottle. And you said a whole lot of things on the way home last night. You've seen me as low as I can fucking go, and you walked through a panic attack with me sitting on my office floor. It doesn't get much more personal than that, I promise you. So I'm returning the favor the only way I know how – I'm asking you as a friend and your partner, are you in trouble, Erin?"
The fire in Elizabeth’s eyes makes Erin momentarily yearn for the chill of a frigid early March sunset, too early in the day and too crisp as the darkness sets in. The searing sun on bright concrete and the emotional bubble closing around her is enough to give anxiety sweats right through her thin tee shirt, blooming to the size of Texas.
“I…no? I don’t think so? What does that even mean? I can afford my rent, and I’m not in trouble with loan sharks, and I barely even get hangovers any more, so I can do my work… I don’t know. What does that even mean?”
Studying the younger woman, Elisabeth purses her lips. She can hear the uncertainty of tone, but she can hear the way Erin's heartbeat kicks up, the uptick in respirations. Some might call it cheating – Conrad called it 'training' to listen to the body's normal sounds. Letting her breath out slowly, she nods to Erin. "'Barely getting hangovers anymore' is a telling phrase, you know," she says quietly. "It means that yes, you're edging into territory that could become a problem. But only you can say for sure, Erin. I have your back. If you tell me you're handling your shit, I believe you." Right up until you're a threat to others or yourself is the thought that whispers through Elisabeth's mind, but she keeps it very firmly squelched – out of her expression and out of her tone. It just means she'll keep a closer eye out on Erin, for Erin's own sake. Liz doesn't want to lose another friend to the bottle; she's lost too many.
“Is it?” Erin inquires, with a hint of irritability. “I mean, I know. I’ve heard this. Even before the war and everything, I remember thinking, ‘God, why doesn’t the NYPD just address the alcohol issue?’ Everyone here has PTSD. Everyone. There wasn’t a single one of us who was whole, then. The pieces of us that were broken in 2008 are even worse now, after everything.” She slows down her walking pace, sweeping her tongue over her teeth back and forth in her closed mouth, thinking. “But tolerance is also a factor of aging, isn’t it? I’m 35, so I can’t drink as much as I could when I was 25. I like to think that I just hit it better. I don’t know. This all sounds like self-justification.”
Shrugging slightly, Elisabeth replies in a quiet voice, "I can't know if it's justification. I can only take you at your word that you're okay – getting shit-faced now and again is not something I'm gonna be on your ass about. It'd be hypocritical as hell." Her lips quirk upward slightly. "PTSD from all angles. But that's why I'm checking in on you. I'm no teetotaler and I'm sure as hell not a saint. It was just something in the way you phrased yourself that pinged … let's call it my mom-radar." A roll of her eyes accompanies the amused tone. "Richard has always teased me about the fact that even years ago I tended to mother the ones I consider my own."
A flash of something darker passes through her expression, hidden somewhat behind the sunglasses that shield her eyes, and her tone is pensive. "So many of the so-called rebels were so damn young last time we dealt with Humanis First types…" and the end of the world, of course. "It's hard for me not to flashback and forget you're all well past the age I remember in my head. So much of what's happening now feels… like stepping back in time." She tries to shake it off, lightening her tone. "I'm pretty sure my tendencies have not gotten any better. Especially because Joe is one of 'my kids.'" The officer calls her Aunt Liz. It makes sense that she's anxious.
Elisabeth fights all the time to push away a feeling of helplessness, the weight that comes with foreknowledge of what's coming soon. Things she cannot say to the young officer. She finally shrugs. "Chalk it up to seeing far too much and an overdeveloped sense of taking care of my people. I can't help it. I clearly have a little bit of a control issue going on, yeah?" she asks with a rueful lilt to her tone.
“Busting into someone’s apartment before they clock in for their shift isn’t exactly a point in your column, but the sentiment is appreciated all the same.” Erin awkwardly and half-heartedly soft-punches her boss in the shoulder, visibly cringes, and then clears her throat. “Joe seems like a bit of a kid, really. A good kid, but I’m scared that he’ll run into danger and I’ll be the mom responsible. I didn’t even have a mom! But he’s such a baby. How are you okay with it? Sometimes I feel like you mom me, and that’s fine, but also, you’re the same age as my ex-wife. Don’t worry about it. But Joe? He’s, like, twelve. I don’t understand why any of them are allowed to do this. I guess I was, like, 21 though, so…”
"Ha!" Elisabeth scoffs out a laugh, looking a bit apologetic. "I'm 45 going on 80, it feels like some days. But my kids are young enough to remind me I'm not really that old. Seriously, if I'm momming you too hard, call me out. It's a bad habit. You all lived that war, you don't need or deserve it from me." She pauses and pulls in a breath, then offers honesty as they start to walk again.
"He's a fantastic kid. Always has been. His adopted dad was one of mine, one of ours, way back when. Having Joe and Hailey on the team, having Lance Gerken as a liaison to SESA? It's… jarring. Don't ever tell them I said so, but they are why I feel so old. I'm not really as okay with it as I might seem. Abby, Kaylee, Colette even – though Demsky was quite young back in the day – they were all combatants." Elisabeth grimaces slightly. "I know what happened to me, to my partner Ivanov, to other people at the hands of Humanis First. Fighting those fuckers still? Sending these officers right out into the fray and a lot of times being the one who stays behind to supervise? I feel like I'm going to throw up every time," she confesses softly. "Rescuing Ames and having the hunter-bot going straight for all of you? Christ Almighty, Erin, I about had a heart attack right there and then. You saw me afterward. That's… how I handle it every goddamn time." A beat. "But this is the world they live in. This is who they are. So I have to be okay with it."
“No, I don’t think you do, actually,” Erin replies in short order. “Isn’t that the whole point of this job? The thousand-hour workweeks, the personal life sacrifices, the borderline alcoholism, the stupid fucking situations we put ourselves into? The whole reason we do any of what we do is because we aren’t okay with this world, and we want it to be better.”
Realizing that she doesn’t know if Liz is as familiar with this area as she is, she adjusts her pace to be slightly ahead and points around a corner to imply we’re taking this next right.
“Just because things are how they are doesn’t mean they are how they have to be. I really hate that stupid phrase, ‘it is what it is.’ Of course it is! Everything is what it is! It’s nonsense! Nothing is what it isn’t! It’s a goddamn tautology! These kids – well, maybe I shouldn’t even call them kids, Joe is at least old enough to have a whole-ass job – were born into a world that turned to shit, like, immediately. They were molded by The Shit – “ speaking in capitals, somehow? “– like I was molded by 9/11. The things get in you and shape your perspective. And that’s fucking terrible. But they’re not lost, and the kids that come after them sure as hell aren’t lost, either. You and me? We know the world doesn’t have to be this way. We saw something before. We know things can be different, even if it’s a garbage mess hot fire dumpster right now.”
She smoothes back her hair a bit and pushes her sunglasses back up her nose, which had slipped down in the oil of her furor.
Tipping her head, Elisabeth listens to the venting and can't help but smile just a little bit as she shoves her hands into her pockets, walking in the direction Erin gestured. "Annnnd… now you know why I have to be okay with sending them out there. Because Erin? They were shaped by a world where they knew they couldn't trust the very system that should have protected people. Where the people in power were trying to eradicate them because of fear. And yet… these kids are now adults who are stepping into the system and still have hope enough to change it. To make it better for everyone not just themselves." She almost sounds wistful at that. Certainly she sounds amazed.
"We were called traitors when we tried to do the right things. We didn't always do it well – we have blood on our hands." A lot more of it than Erin will ever know. Liz tries to shake that thought off. "But we managed somehow to not raise anarchists and sociopaths. We didn't kill the light in their souls with our experiences and our rage and despair. We managed to teach them, even amid a corrupt regime and a civil war, that the system – as broken as it is – is still fixable. And instead of burning it all down, they believed us and now they're doing their best to fix it from within." Swallowing hard, she pauses. "They're choosing hope. I'm pretty proud of all of them. They are what gives me hope."
“Believe me, you’re talking to a gay cop, you don’t need to explain to me the choice inherent in joining a system of violence and hatred against your people and feeling like you have blood on your hands. I know my history. We’re all al–” She kicks an errant piece of gravel out of the way, and then hangs back, pauses as Liz proceeds a few steps forward, and self-corrects.
“We all have our systems that torment us and the systems that give us hope, and then the systems that give us hope can sometimes be very bad for you. The reason so many gay people have drinking problems is because bars were literally the only place we could gather away from the cops in a semi-safe manner for, like, decades. You think I don’t feel like a goddamn kapo? But things got better. They yo-yo, but they get better. I just want to hope we’re on an upswing for the kids right now, even though it’s hard to see with Pure Earth coming back again.”
Stopping to let Erin catch back up, Elisabeth eyes the younger woman. "I don't know what that word is – a capo in the only context I know the word is a mob boss," she admits, her lips quirking faintly upward at the corners in amusement. "I gather it's something like being complicit." She pulls in a long breath, looking around at the place they're standing. She doesn't even have to look to know that the man-mountain known as Mike is just far enough back to give them privacy.
"Felix would tell you they never left. Ta zhe pésnya, da na nóvyy lad." Erin has met Felix Ivanov, before he had to leave SCOUT for health reasons. Elisabeth's Russian is fluid and comes as easily to her as English. "It means 'same song, but in a new way.' They just laid low and waited for a new chance." Her tone is somber. "There are days I wonder why I came home at all," she admits softly. "My family is the only answer I have. So… I will keep doing what I do to make things better for them any way I can." She shrugs. "What else is there?"
Erin smirks, having grown up around the Russian community in Brighton Beach, but says nothing. “Not much, is there?” She looks up at the sky, regrets her decision, and then stares back at her boss. “It’s not super different than any other challenging era in human history. There’s shit to do, but there’s also people that need feeding and kings that need paying. It’s about what we do in the short term to support each other that makes all the difference, even if the history books won’t know that we fed the guy down the street or saved a kid from bandits in the woods. So…” She grapples for words, not really sure what to say, before finishing lamely, “full steam ahead, I guess?”
Liz bumps Erin's shoulder lightly. "We got this," she assures the younger officer quietly as they make their way toward the precinct to start their day. At least for now.