Touch

By Melody Clark

Her face buried in a hale of tissue, she could barely see her living room for her puffy, overcried eyes. It was her midnight sob session. Hormonal overload, doubts about the future, remembering bad times, guilty in the present, and of course it was always worse at night.

Oh, and of course she had to watch Pretty Woman. Of course. Not like she couldn't have watched some other movie to put her in a better frame of mind. A League of Their Own, maybe. Or Silence of the Lambs.

No, she had to do the Fallen Woman semi-sexist redemption bit, and right at PMSing time.

Now she was sitting here feeling like an incompetent mother, too, because her son had caught her crying. She once had been good about keeping these crying jags from him. But when it was worse, now that everything mattered more, it was hard to disguise.

She had spotted a pajama sleeve poking out past the doorway from his bedroom. Probably watched her several minutes, sobbing her heart out like some silly kid.

"It's after midnight, Benjy, go back to bed. I'm fine."

"You sure, Mom?"

"I'm sure, honey. I'm fine. Just fine."

He waited a moment. "You sure sure?"

"I'm sure, I'm sure.." She pinched the tissues to her nose. "You say your prayers and stuff?"

"Not yet. I was watchin' tv. It's Friday."

"Okay, then go ahead and say 'em. While you're at it, put in a good word for Mom with the big guy, huh?"

Benjy waited for a moment, looking a little confused. "You mean Monk?"

Sharona couldn't stop the laugh. "No, Benjamin. I mean God."

The boy nodded. "Oh, okay," he said quietly, and closed his bedroom door.

Her son's choice of personal deity had not gone unrecognized. Long after he'd shut his door, she occasionally interrupted her tears with a wry little laugh at the thought. Benjy might not have had a Dad, but at least he had a Monk.

And that was one reason she wasn't at all surprised when, ten minutes later, the front door opened and in her son's hero walked, quiet as a first thought. He sat down at the table across from her, so that she'd have nowhere else to look.

"Pretty Woman again?" he asked.

"Does my son tell you everything?" she said, pinching her nose again.

"No…well…yes," he said, matter-of-factly. He shrugged in his own Monkish way. "I'm not a Julia Roberts fan."

"It's the movie. Makes me sad. Makes me think about…"

"The past?" he asked.

She nodded. "Everything but the end. Not literally, I mean, just…"

He smiled as kindly as any human she had ever known. No…more kindly…

"It's okay."

She tried to smile in return, but it wilted before it rose. She felt the stormclouds building in her head. Distraction time, she told herself, then peered past his shoulder, to the empty walk outside.

"You took a cab?"

"I walked."

"At this time of night?"

"I'm over forty, Sharona. I was…a cop."

She flagged her tissue as if to withdraw the question. "Sorry, I know. I'm such a mother hen. You want some water…tea…something?"

"No," he said. "You were saying. About the movie... It makes you remember…"

"Oh, that." She leaned back into the chair, surrendering to its arms. She shook her head. "Nothing we can do about it, ya know? Just stuff I did…you know, to pay the bills…. Single mother, right? Me and Benjy, we had to survive."

He fixed his shoulders squarely, the way he always did to make less obvious his regulated twitch. He smiled, trying to seem casual. Sharona loved him for it all the more.

"Want to…talk about…it?" he said.

She shrugged a little. "No. But, that stuff with Dale the Whale. Biederbeck. Stuff he said. It got me thinking. You know, it matters to me a lot, what you think of me. I mean, you're my boss, right? And my friend, too. And, it's just, you know, my past - "

"Is…passed," he said, his dark eyes seeing deeply into hers - far deeper, she knew, than Dale the Whale could ever see. "Biederbeck is the devil, Sharona. Or as close as it gets in real life. He mixes the truth with your fears to attack you… control you. Biederbeck relishes attacking me by hurting the people I love. Don't let him get under your skin. It can destroy you."

Sharona smiled through fresh tears. She pinched a tissue at her nose.

by hurting the people I love

And that included her. In its way, through the heart of this very good man, it was its own form of absolution.

"I know," she said, nodding. "I won't let him."

"Good. Otherwise, I'll be forced to rent Runaway Bride."

She snorted out a laugh, before she could catch herself. She shook her head at last. She was broke, exhausted, never had a day off, and she'd never been happier in her entire silly life.

She smiled at him, reaching halfway to touch him. Remembering, she drew back.

"So," she said. "You don't mind. That the history of my life til now is a little, well, you know, blemished."

He laughed to himself, shaking his head at some unknown thought. He smiled, then removed his hand from its locked down position in the crook of his arm, staring at it as if an unfamiliar apparatus. He slowly deployed the arm across the deep space of Sharona's dining room table, toward the woman at the opposite end. He opened the fingers of his hand.

She understood the gesture he was making. It streamed a real, warming light through her dark mood.

She closed the distance slowly, so as not to startle him. She offered her hand, and he gently moved his fingers around hers. Their fingers touching. The soft in-between skin of his fingers whispering over hers - a tickling effect like a tender thrill. Beyond the merely electric. Full contact, unafraid, unflinching. His eyes misted over, but somehow she knew it was not from distress.

"Moist wipe?" she said.

The mist became tears. He shook his head. "No," he said. "Not with you."

And suddenly from another doorway, a voice surprised her. "Mom?"

Benjy was grinning at her, as if he'd caught his parents kissing or something. Or holding hands. "I said my prayers."

"Before or after you called Adrian?" she asked, grinning at him with grudging appreciation.

"Before. I had to put in a good word with the big guy, right?"

"Monk or God?" she said, explaining to Adrian, "Benjy was mixing up the two of you earlier."

Monk smiled drily. "We've been confused before."

Benjy pointed at his mouthful of metal appliance. "You help me with the retainer band, Mom? It keeps slipping."

"Sure." She stood up from the table, moved to the door to her son's bedroom. She looked back to Monk. "You wait for me? I can drive you home. We can talk on the way."

He smiled. Considering. Nodded. "Sure."

For the moment, she shrugged away this odd, nameless lightness of spirit, though the touch of his fingers still murmured across the skin of her open hand.

END