Ellie Bartowski and Devin Woodcomb got married on Saturday, September 27th, at First Lutheran Church of Northridge. It was a beautiful ceremony. Just as Chuck had said, Ellie wasn’t showing yet, so nobody knew that underneath her Marc Jacobs designed wedding gown, there was a just barely visible bump on her abdomen.
There were far more people at the ceremony itself than Ellie had expected. Among them were a group of college-aged girls who Ellie had babysat for when she was in junior high. To her surprise and delight, they had, with Devin, worked out a song to sing at the wedding.
As Chuck stood behind Devin and to his right, he tried not to think too much about the song, but it penetrated through to the center of his conscience.
There’s a song that’s inside of my soul… it’s the one that I’ve tried to write over and over again.
I’m awake in the infinite cold, but you sing to me over and over again.
A few days the wedding, General Beckman decided that it was looking a little weird for Veronica to just be floating around Los Angeles without a job. And so, like Sarah Walker before her, she arranged for Veronica to work at the Wienerlicious at the Empire Plaza – someplace where she could easily keep an eye on Chuck.
Halfway through Veronica’s first shift at Wienerlicious, she came storming into the Buy More, grabbed Chuck by the arm, and dragged him into the home theatre room. “I swear to God, that guy has probably gotten more in the home theatre room than Hugh Hefner gets at the Playboy Mansion,” Jeff muttered as he watched the curtains slide shut.
Lester shook his head. “You’re disgusting sometimes, you know that?”
Inside the home theatre room, Veronica looked at Chuck with an evil glare. “No,” she said, indicating her outfit. “Not just ‘No’, but HELL NO.”
It was all Chuck could do to not start laughing. “I take it you’re not a big fan of the Wienerlicious?”
“I am NOT a big fan of the Wienerlicious,” Veronica growled.
“You gotta have a job,” Chuck replied. “I have no control over that.”
“Fine,” she replied. “Come with me, we’re going job hunting.”
And with that, Chuck had been unceremoniously dragged from the Buy More out into Empire Plaza. “Uh, what are you doing?” he asked once they were outside.
“I’m going to go along the way here, look at every single place that has a ‘Help Wanted’ sign, and see what it’s all about,” Veronica replied.
By the time they reached the other end of the plaza – nearly half a mile away - Veronica had collected applications from Target, Sports Authority, Barnes & Noble, and the Hampton Inn. Finally, they reached the last store – a little tiny place called “Spy World.”
“Manager wanted,” the sign in the window said.
Veronica’s eyes lit up. “Oh, I like the looks of this!” she said gleefully.
Chuck dragged himself inside behind her. “Hi, I understand you’re looking for a manager?” she perkily asked the man behind the counter.
“Yeah, I’m the owner,” he replied. “You got any background in this kind of thing?”
She nodded, her blonde pigtails bouncing in a very distracting fashion. “I’m a licensed private investigator. Oh, and I’m the person who solved the Lilly Kane murder case.”
The owner’s eyes went wide. “No shit?!” Veronica nodded, a big smile on her face. “When can you start?”
So I lay my head back down, and I lift my hands and pray
To be only yours, I pray to be only yours – I know now, you’re my only hope.
Shortly before Christmas, Chuck made two very important decisions.
The first regarded his car. For the longest time, he had been perfectly content to drive around the Herder, but his ego – and his bulging wallet – had finally gotten the better of him. And so, one day, he showed up at the Buy More driving a royal blue Corvette ZO-6.
The first two people who realized that it belonged to him were Casey and Morgan. They only realized this because as they sat at Victory and Burbank in the Crown Vic that Casey had bought off of Budget Car Rental six months prior, Chuck pulled up next to them.
He rolled down the window. “Wanna race, bitches?”
Casey glared daggers. “Way to keep a low profile there, bucko,” he shot back.
Chuck and Casey both revved their engines. In reality, there wasn’t much displacement or horsepower difference between the two – the Crown Vic just weighed about a thousand pounds more than the Corvette.
However, in this case, Casey’s automatic transmission turned out to have a rare advantage. When the light turned green, he hit the gas and the Crown Vic roared off, northbound on Victory. Chuck, on the other and, didn’t pop the clutch quite right, and the Corvette stalled. He was left in a cloud of Casey’s tire smoke.
Two minutes later, when he parked, Casey and Morgan were getting out of the Crown Vic. “Beautiful car, Bartowski,” Casey cracked. “Maybe now you learn how to drive it.”
The second decision was regarding his cover relationship with Veronica Mars. He finally admitted that them continuing to be just “friends” and yet spend so much time together was simply untenable. “Don’t get me wrong,” he told her, “I like being your friend… I just don’t think we can convincingly sell it any more without people getting suspicious.”
And so began their cover relationship. Everybody thought it was real – except for Casey, who knew better. All the people Chuck knew were quite happy that he was allowing himself to live again – nearly eleven months after Sarah’s death.
The difference, though, between Chuck’s cover relationship with Veronica and the one he had had with Sarah was that in the one with Sarah, Chuck had made his feelings for her quite clear, and she had bottled hers up, right up until the end. In the one with Veronica, it was exactly the opposite – Veronica made it quite clear that she was definitely interested in Chuck, and while he realized he was beginning to have genuine feelings for her, he just didn’t feel like he was ready to go there yet, and so bottled the feelings away.
Sing to me the song of the stars, of your galaxy dancing and laughing and laughing again.
When it feels like my dreams are so far, sing to me of the plans that you have for me over again.
There was nothing lonelier than celebrating Christmas alone. Oh, sure, there were plenty of places for her to go on Catalina Island on Christmas Day – a church in the morning, a restaurant for Christmas dinner – but at the close of the day, it was just Beth Reynolds, a bottle of pinot grigio, and the complete Friends DVD collection in a hotel suite.
A detached part of her mind was somewhat disturbed by the presence of the pinot grigio. She had started drinking again after seeing Chuck visit the gravesite back in September. Oh, sure, she kept it mostly under control, but she was terrified of losing control and reverting back to what she had become in college.
She couldn’t afford to become a practicing alcoholic again. That had led to misfortune, to despair, to waking up naked between a man and another woman with no memory of how she had gotten there.
But more frightening than that spectre was the thought that she might get drunk and call Chuck. A drunk dial to him would be an unmitigated disaster. It would mean she would truly become a fugivite, and that was not something she was ready to do.
And so, she watched her alcohol intake very carefully. The bottle of pinot grigio would be her limit for Christmas Day. In fact, it was all she had in the hotel suite.
As Beth sat on the bed, watching Friends, eating Wheat Thins and drinking wine, she noticed the surveillance indicator blink on the MacBook. Curious as to who would be visiting the grave at 9:30 in the evening on Christmas, she unsteadily rose from the bed and crossed to the desk.
She pulled up RealPlayer and turned on the streaming video feed. It turned out to be John Casey. He had a Christmas wreath in his hands, which he gently laid at the base of the headstone.
“Merry Christmas, Walker,” he said. “Um… this is a little weird, talking to you like you’re actually here, but I needed to come here.”
He sighed. “I’ve got your gun. You know, the Marine Recon Colt M1911? It’s a beautiful weapon. I’ve carried it every day since you left us – it seemed like a fitting tribute.”
Beth smiled. That definitely seemed like the type of thing Casey would do.
“It’s funny about Bartowski. He’s changed… and yet, he hasn’t. He’s still the same naïve, moron goofball that you and I met last fall… but, at the same time, he’s gotten more confident, more sure of himself – and more closed off.
“He’s just not as accessible as he was before you left. He doesn’t get as easily rattled, but he just seems to have lost a little bit of his humanity. And, don’t get me wrong, he’s still the good guy he’s always been. We practically had to twist his arm to get him to use a little of his money on himself and buy a Corvette.
“But here’s the funny thing. He and Mars finally struck up a cover relationship. She really likes him, a lot, and I can tell that he likes her right back, but he refuses to allow it to go anywhere. He’s bottling it up so that she doesn’t get hurt when it falls apart. Sound familiar?”
Beth’s eyes widened. She swallowed the lump forming in her throat. It sounded familiar, all right. Painfully familiar. And the green-eyed monster was certainly rearing its ugly head within her.
“Anyway, that’s all, I guess. I better go before the groundskeepers see me talking to a headstone and have me hauled off to the loony bin.
“Merry Christmas.”
And I lay my head back down, and I lift my hands and pray, to be only yours,
I pray, to be only yours, I know now, you’re my only hope.
11:30 P.M., Pacific Standard Time
January 30th, 2009
San Pedro, California
Chuck had been aimlessly driving the Corvette for quite a while. He’d been to Sarah’s headstone earlier, left flowers there. Then he’d gone to the Buy More for no real reason, and then he’d gone to downtown Los Angeles and driven past the hotel Sarah used to live in.
He hadn’t answered the phone for the past three hours, except when John Casey had called. Casey had explained that Veronica and Ellie were both getting rather concerned about the fact that he hadn’t picked up the phone since just after 8:00. Chuck had replied that he was fine, he just needed to be alone and be left alone for a while.
Casey told him that he understood, and that he’d see if he could call off the attack dogs for the night.
But now, here Chuck was. It was nearly midnight, and he had somehow found himself in the South Bay. He drove down the coast for a little while, along Palos Verdes Drive, until it turned into Twenty-Fifth Street. From Twenty-Fifth, he went down Western Avenue, back to the coast, to Paseo Del Mar.
He continued aimlessly along Paseo Del Mar until it ended at Pacific Avenue. He turned left and headed back north. He drove past Fort MacArthur, up into the City of San Pedro –
And then he saw it, the lights on his right. The Vincent Thomas Bridge.
Curious, he took a right on O’Farrell Street, and hopped over to Harbor Boulevard. He took a left on Harbor, and then took the cloverleaf onto Highway 47. A moment later, he found himself on the practically deserted highway out to Terminal Island.
Chuck saw the sign for the Vincent Thomas Bridge pass overhead, and then he saw the little blue signs – the ones for the Southern California Suicide Hotline. He shook his head.
A moment later, though, he let his speed begin to drop. Nobody was behind him to object, and he coasted to a stop as the bridge reached the end of the Catalina Terminal – the same place where Sarah’s Porsche had come to a stop.
Turning on the hazard lights, Chuck climbed out of the Corvette. It was cold out – nearly midnight in January. The air was thick with the smell of salt and diesel exhaust.
He walked to the guardrail, and looked out onto the blackness of Long Beach Harbor. Gingerly, he lifted a foot over the guardrail, and holding onto the wires of the bridge, stepped out onto the strip of concrete on the other side of the guardrail.
Chuck felt a thrill of terror looking down at the blackness below. I wonder if this is how it felt for Sarah, doing this in broad daylight, he thought.
He had no idea how long he’d stood there for when he heard the voice behind him. “What are you doing, Chuck?”
Chuck turned around, and came face to face with Logan Echolls. The Balboa County supervisor’s Jeep Wrangler was parked behind Chuck’s Corvette. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t want to die… but I just don’t know what to live for anymore.”
Then he looked at Logan curiously. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
Logan shrugged. “I don’t know. About forty minutes ago, I just got this feeling that I needed to drive up to the Vincent Thomas Bridge. Looks like that feeling was right.”
Chuck shrugged. “Listen,” Logan continued. “This is not something you want to do. I know. My mom jumped off the Coronado Bridge. I almost jumped off it. It’s just not worth it. Besides which, I know for a fact that there is a certain individual who will be devastated if you do.”
Chuck nodded. “I know,” he said quietly.
“Then you better get your ass back on this bridge, because if you break her heart, I will dig you up out of your grave and kick your ass to hell,” Logan Echolls informed him.
Chuck smiled. “Alright, I’m coming.”
I give you my apathy, I’m giving you all of me. I want your symphony,
Singing in all that I am – at the top of my lungs, I’m giving it back!
Veronica Mars was worried sick about Chuck Bartowski. He hadn’t answered his phone for nearly five hours, and despite the call from John Casey three hours earlier telling her not to worry – she was still worrying.
She had practically taken to pacing the room when her phone rang. She scooped it up anxiously – to see that Logan Echolls was calling.
“Logan?” she said curiously, answering the phone.
“Hey, Veronica,” he replied. “Listen. You can stop worrying about Chuck Bartowski. He’s fine.”
She narrowed her eyes. “How… the hell?”
Veronica could almost hear him smile. “I just know you too well.” And then he hung up.
A moment later, there was a knock on her door. Frowning, she opened it – and Chuck Bartowski stood in front of her.
“I think your apartment’s on the next floor up,” she said, smiling nonetheless.
“I know,” he said quietly. “Look, I’m sorry. I’ve been brushing you off for the last three months. I can’t do that any longer. It’s what Sarah did to me, and I’m not going to let everything get bottled up like she did.
“I can’t do this on my own,” Chuck continued. “But I think… if you were by my side… I’d be okay.”
Veronica’s heart leapt. “Really?”
Chuck smiled and nodded. “Really.”
So I lay my head back down, and I lift my hands and pray to be only yours, I pray,
To be only yours, I pray, to be only yours, I know now you’re my only hope.
No comments:
Post a Comment