Beneath her sternum, Starling’s heart pounded against the ribs of its cage, drumming out a bossa nova beat.  She had managed to sit down, however, and to all outward appearances appeared her usual poised and controlled self.  Unfortunately, outward appearances didn’t mean anything to Dale Cooper, and he knew the moment he walked in the office that something significant had occurred.

            He looked at her from across the desk, noted the letter next to the computer.  The official FBI screensaver was on the monitor, but he had no doubt that it concealed something of importance beneath.  Moving casually, he reached as if to pick up the letter, then bumped the mouse as if by accident.

            Her swift intake of breath confirmed his suspicions.  He needed only a glance at the stars on the screen and then the puzzle fell into place, aided by an agile brain and years of stargazing during his camping expeditions.  His motion toward the letter this time was real, and he took it up to examine it.

            His eyes never got as far as the words.  The moment his finger touched the thick blue paper, his mind went elsewhere, sliding through darkened tunnels until he burst out into a brilliant white hall, sunlight dancing on marble and brass.  A large, curving staircase was the focal point of the formally appointed room.  To the right, he saw a large counter made of some fabulous wood, the grain alternating white and black, polished to a glossy shine.  Well dressed folk of all colors strolled through the lobby, passing through glass doors flanked by guards and bellhops, whose red linen uniforms provided a splash of color that matched the poinsettias which festooned the sides of the marble staircase.  The atmosphere was filled with perfumed tropical breezes and the scent of old money.

            Among the swirl of people moving to and fro, his eyes were drawn to one figure -- a man ascending the staircase.  From the back, he cut a dashing figure.  A white linen suit, an ebony cane, a jaunty fedora… and a powerful aura of danger.  Cooper knew without thinking that this was Hannibal Lecter.

            Cooper’s point of view began to move, following up the stairs, getting closer… the man he sought disappeared momentarily as the curve of the stair took him out of view for a moment… his vision flew up the marble, he was about to turn the corner…

            A woman garbed in black in front of him blocked his path.  Frustrated, he moved to the center of the stair and was about to continue upward when he felt a hand grip his wrist.  He looked down and saw long, red-lacquered fingernails.  He looked up and saw gray-green eyes boring into his.  Laura pulled his wrist, trying to lead him back down the stairs.  He resisted, grasping the banister with his free hand to give him some leverage.  She shook her head, and he could see her lips move, but no words issued from her mouth.  She tried again, and he could tell she was screaming now, her face contorted by the force of her cry.  Still, he could hear no sound.  She put her other hand on his wrist then, and tugged him down the stairs, tears leaking from her eyes.  She shoved him into a lobby chair, and he felt himself sink deeply into the plush cushion.

            She was not giving up.  As she knelt astride his lap, the heat of her overwhelmed him.  It was like sitting an inch away from a blast furnace, and he could sense the drops of sweat forming on his brow.  Her hands were on his shoulders, pushing him into the back of the chair, and she leaned forward, arching over him.  Her eyes flashed at him, and her mouth never stopped moving… she was trying so hard to tell him something, he knew.  But he could not concentrate on making sense of the motions of her lips when he was confronted with the undeniable presence of her cleavage, deep and soft in front of his face… her slit skirt riding high on her hips, forced up by the wide angle of her legs on either side of his… her hair, falling long around her face to brush lightly against his chest…

            This girl-child, this woman, this creature whom he had never seen in life except as a cold blue corpse, this dead spirit of his imaginings who haunted his dreaming and his waking hours… he wanted her so badly he could feel the need stretching vainly against his boxers, the frantic drumming of his heartbeat…

            “Laura,” he gasped, but heard no sound.  His hands traveled up her legs to rest on the curves of her hips, his fingers splayed across her back, pulling her in toward him even closer…

            She looked down at him, lips parted slightly, and her eyes closed for a moment.  Her hands moved then, down his shoulders to the center of his chest, and he felt chills radiating from every part of him she touched.  His head tilted back, his eyes began to close, and he was completely unprepared when she tore open his shirt, sending buttons flying through the air to skitter across the cold marble floor.

            His gaze traveled down with hers, and he saw a brand across his chest, the sigil of his doom burnt and smoking in his skin.  The pain hit an instant later and he screamed noiselessly.  His eyes closed and he writhed in torment, his whole universe reduced to the smell of searing flesh.  Until he felt a touch on his cheek.

            He opened his eyes again, only to see Laura crying.  Her tears sizzled as they fell onto his chest, and he felt a blessed coolness at every point they touched.  Her hand passed over his face and she ran her fingers through his hair.  Her eyes met his and her mouth opened in what Cooper was able to recognize as a sigh.  She reached over to the end table next to the chair and took something in her hand.  As she bent down to kiss him, he felt that something as her fingers twined with his.  Then her lips touched his and he was lost in bliss…

            The first thing he noticed when he came back to himself were Clarice Starling’s shoes, since they were right in front of his face as she bent over his body lying on the cheap Bureau carpeting.  Her hand was clapped over his mouth and her face was frightened.

            When she noticed that he was awake, she let out a great gust of air.  “Oh, Coop, thank God.  What happened to you?”

            He sat up and was pleased that the world stayed in focus.  He brought up a hand to rub his eyes and felt something rough scratch his face.  He opened his fingers and stared at the object in his palm.  It was a matchbook.  Printed on the silver cardboard was “Hotel Praia Plata, Praia Grande, S. P., Brasil.”

            Starling was staring too.  They looked up at the same moment, and their eyes met.

            “I’m going with you.”

            “Pack your bags.”

            They spoke simultaneously.  The air between them sizzled with anticipation, dread, and longing.  The hands she offered him were strong, and lifted him off the floor with ease.  He removed his hands from hers and began to unbutton his shirt.  She looked at him quizzically.  He pulled apart the placket and saw what he had feared.

            In charcoal ash on pale skin, the hieroglyph of the Black Lodge was drawn like a map on his chest.

Starling’s eyes moved over the pattern bleak upon Cooper’s bared chest.  The edges were sharp with no trace of a blur.  Blacker than night, it looked almost like a brand.  Unbidden, memories surfaced.  The animals at the ranch, the searing sizzle of flesh as iron burned skin.  She felt the gorge rise in her chest.

            “Oh, God, Coop… I…”

            Words failed her.  He just stood there, looking at her.  She fumbled for speech again.

            “You don’t have to do this, you know,” she whispered.

            When she dared to meet his eyes, they were cold and glittering.

            “I don’t have to do anything, Starling.  I never had to help you.  There was nothing stopping me from reporting you to Noonan.  He’s asked me enough times to keep tabs on you.  You could be in a mental institution right now, wearing a drab blue gown in a room with nothing sharp or strong enough to harm yourself, wondering where it all went wrong,” he said.  His voice held as little inflection as it had when they first met.

            She shivered under his gaze.

            He continued.  “There might be something for me in all this, you know.”  He emitted a short bark of laughter.  “But that’s the point, isn’t it.  You don’t know.  You take my help without really believing where it comes from.  You’ve never asked where my ‘visions’ have taken me, what I’ve seen, or even how I’ve brought you this far.  You are so wrapped up in your obsession that you’ve forgotten that anyone else is real.   Just like him, aren’t you now?  Don’t you ever wonder if you’ll come to him with your newfound veneer of cold, hard will and find out it was the human in you he responded to all along?”

            The words struck her like a slap across the face.  She wondered if she was going mad, if she was ever going to get this right, if she could ever find herself in the vast aisles of hopes, fears, constructs and masks she had put on, taken off, taken in, and shoved aside over the last month.  Her face crumbled, her shoulders slumped, and she suddenly looked weary and… old.  Older than her thirty-three years.  As old as all that had happened in those years made her feel.

            His tone held little mercy.  “Don’t you dare to condescend to me.  I am going to Brazil for many reasons, Starling.  Only one of them is you.  Perhaps someday you’d care to know the rest.”

            She did not trust herself to speak.  She nodded and looked aside.  The silence rose like a fog.

            He turned and walked out of the office.  She heard him say as he left, “Perhaps you’d better think of what you’re going to tell Noonan.  I’ll await your instructions, Special Agent Starling.”

            And then there was only the sound of staccato steps down the hall.

 

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            Starling drove the Mustang home mainly by force of habit.  God knows she wasn’t paying any attention to the road.  It came as a shock to find herself pulling into the driveway.  Ardelia’s brand new Chrysler 300M was already parked.  Starling hadn’t even ridden in it yet.  She turned off the ignition and leaned her forehead against the steering wheel.  Inhaling deeply, she took some small comfort from the warm familiar odors of the car.  But it wasn’t nearly enough.

            Sitting up, she grabbed her purse and her attaché case and slid out the door.  As she moved, she caught a glimpse of herself in the side mirror.  There was a pallor on her face she’d never seen, and even in the dim twilight she could see lines that had not existed a month before.

            She wrenched her eyes away and walked into the duplex.

            “Ardelia, are you decent?” she yelled before going over to her friend’s side of the house.

            “And when am I ever not?” responded Mapp, coming out of the kitchen to give Starling a hug.

            “I just didn’t want to catch you in flagrante delicto with one of your studs,” teased Clarice.

            Mapp smiled.  “Come have some dinner, honey, it’s just me, myself, and I.  You can tell me all about what the hell you’ve been up to for the last two weeks.”

            Starling paused for a moment before following Ardelia into the kitchen.  After a brief internal tug-of-war, she rallied and moved on.

            While Ardelia finished up the simple meal of rice and beans, Starling rummaged through the liquor cabinet and found a nearly full bottle of Jack Daniels.  Getting the Coke from the fridge, she poured generous amounts of each into tall Pilsner glasses.  Ardelia shot her a look that was equal parts curiosity and delight.

            “So it’s going to be one of those kind of nights?” Mapp asked with a devilish grin.

            “Damn straight,” said Clarice with perhaps a little too much vehemence.

            As they ate and drank, Ardelia peppered her with questions about “that divinely gorgeous partner,” which Starling answered honestly, and a few veiled inquiries into the progress of the investigation, which were neatly avoided.  Mapp needed little encouragement to fill Clarice in on all the doings in her own life, and Starling found herself slipping, with the aid of the familiar surroundings, into the old comfortable companionship.

            They adjourned into the living room, taking up positions of long tradition.  Ardelia sprawled across the couch and Clarice sat tailor style on the floor, playing DJ.  Nostalgia, as ever, grew with each shot from the whisky bottle, and they found themselves dissecting their Academy days while singing along to the tunes.  Ardelia eventually got drunk enough to do her best Patti LaBelle impression, and Clarice sang backup. “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi….”

            They laughed and danced until, winded, they fell back onto the couch.  Clarice couldn’t help but to remember that, at one point in her life, these had been the best moments she’d ever known… her closest connection with another human being.  But all that was changed now.

            With the wisdom of a friend, Ardelia held her as she shook, and asked no questions.  But when Clarice finally ran her hands through her hair and sat up, her eyes were dry.  She had found herself unable to cry.

            Mapp looked at her friend, so different from the one she’d known in school.  “Just remember, Clarice,” she said, “you are the strongest person I’ve ever known.  And that’s saying a lot.  You’ve been through hell, but you’re on the other side now.  It all gets better from here.”

            Clarice smiled wanly.  Looking at her watch, she discovered it was two in the morning.  With a final hug, she left Ardelia and found her own bed.  In the small circle of light cast by the lamp at her bedside, she composed the note she would leave.

 

“AM,

 

Been called away for the case.  Don’t know exactly how long I’ll be gone.  I promise I’ll be in touch if it’s more than a few days.

Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.

 

Love you,

CS.”

 

            As she switched out the light and went to sleep, her last thought was that she hoped every word of the letter was true.

 

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            Morning came early, and the birds woke Starling long before her alarm clock.  She sat up, wide awake despite her late night.  As she stretched, she felt a smattering of peace settle itself around her shoulders.  Only pausing long enough to pull on some clothes and grab a water bottle, she jogged out the door and set out at a brisk pace.

            Running always helped her think calmly, at least for that time before the endorphins really kicked in.  And then it was just free association.  Her thoughts stepped in time with her feet, forming a strange sort of poetry in her mind.

            Been… through… hell… that’s… for… sure… I’m… not… that… girl… any… more… can’t… look… back… won’t… stop… now… even… if… I… could… some… how…

            As she realized she was rhyming she laughed and felt a weight pass.  Picking up speed, she pondered her behavior towards Cooper.  He was right… she’d been terrible to him, and he’d put up with it for a while.  Suddenly she knew that she’d needed his warning about not losing herself.  Being with Ardelia had helped her reclaim some of that.

            Mentally, she shrugged.  Oh, well.  Her bags would be a little heavier, that’s all.

            As she went into the tough stretch of the run, when she could feel the burning in her calves begin, she drifted over all the changes in herself over just the past… month?  She could scarcely credit that it had been only twenty-eight days since she’d locked herself to Hannibal Lecter.

            “Well, I’m not doing half bad, considering,” she puffed, at last pleased with herself.  She’d done all she could.  And that’s all anyone could ever except to get out of her.

            Coming back to the duplex, she took a quick shower and threw the few things of her own that she would be taking into a knapsack.  All her other luggage was long since packed.  She put a call into the office to let them know that she’d be a little late, and got all the stuff, with some difficulty, into the car.

            She placed the note for Ardelia in her mailbox, and drove away.  And, while she didn’t look back, she did put a tape of Lady Marmalade in the stereo.

 

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            She walked into the ritzy salon called Eden, shedding the glances of the rich middle-aged women like a dog sheds water.  The young, blandly pretty receptionist looked at her with mild distaste and said, “I’m sorry, I don’t think you have an appointment.”

            Starling put on her best game face, the one she used on drug dealers and chauvinists, and said, “Perhaps you’d better check your book again.”  That look, combined with the thousand dollars protruding from her palm, definitely got the girl’s attention.

            “Well, as a matter of fact, we have had a cancellation…” the doe-eyed young woman trailed off.

            Starling had no idea if the girl was prevaricating or if she had honestly lucked out, and she didn’t care much either way.  “Fine.  I need a cut and a color, a facial, and a massage.”  The manicure she could handle herself.

            Shortly thereafter, she was comfortably ensconced in a beautifully appointed room, having scented oils worked into her scalp.  Even the stylist’s tut-tutting over the state of her split ends was humorous rather than annoying in her present mood.

            “My dear!” the man exclaimed.  “Your hair looks like it was hacked off with a knife!”

            He certainly didn’t understand why she threw back her head and howled at that remark.  But he was extremely competent and, when she left four hours later, she felt like a queen.  He’d added highlights and lowlights to her auburn tresses, and the sun danced fire on her head.  The cut was a simple short bob, really the only thing possible given the wreckage that Lecter had performed, but it was so well executed that it moved like waves on the sea.  All in all, she was thoroughly satisfied.

            And she became even more so as she walked through the halls of the FBI, feeling the eyes upon her.  She went directly to the basement.  As she surfed over to the travel website, she called Cooper.

            “Could I see you for a while, please?”

            “I’ll be there in a minute.”

            It was hard to tell if he was still angry over the phone, but she decided not to dwell and instead bought tickets.  This inner shopping thrill was a fairly new experience for Starling, who had never spent more than 10 minutes picking out an outfit before her reiving of Neiman-Marcus.  But she was enjoying it.

            A knock at the door.  She looked up, and saw Cooper.  Knowing from his sheepish expression that it was safe, she got up and met him at the door.  She ventured a small joke.  “I need spanking more often, I think.”

            That bought her a startled look and a laugh.  “You’re just finding out all sorts of things about yourself, aren’t you?”  At her gesture, he came in and seated himself.

            She followed suit.  “I need to apologize to you, and thank you,” she said, all traces of jest gone.  “Those were things that I needed to hear.  I regret the rudeness of my behavior.”

            She drummed her hands on the desk, hearing her words and realizing how awkward and stilted she sounded.  “Oh, Coop, that came out all wrong.  I’m sorry, okay?  I want to make it up to you.”

            “I’m sorry too, Starling.  I shouldn’t have said the things I said the way I said them.  You have enough to deal with.”

            She smiled.  “You have a little bit on your plate yourself, and I have a feeling I don’t even know the half of it.”

            He nodded and looked away.

            “Tell me, Coop, please.  I really want to know.  What was that thing on your chest… is it still there?”

            “No, it came off… eventually.”  He felt no need to elaborate on the hours of soaking and scrubbing it had taken.  “What you saw was the symbol of the Black Lodge.”

            She put her elbows on the desk and cupped her chin in her hands.

            He cleared his throat.  “I had not had one single… well, I call them ‘experiences’… since I left Twin Peaks.  It was just feelings, urges… I would see someone and have to hold down my arm to keep from striking them.  There was a need to hurt, with weapons, with words, whatever.  Not easy to control, but I got better at it.  I learned that if I didn’t let myself get emotional about anything, it got easier.  No highs, no lows…  I found that avoiding mirrors helps.  You can’t see it, I know, no one else can.  But when I look in a mirror, I sometimes don’t see me.  I see him… IT… call it what you will.  I see evil.  And it snarls.”

            He took a deep breath.  “So that’s how it was.  I was never happy or sad.  I just got through every day as best I could.  I couldn’t get close to anyone or it would just become unbearable.  I felt dead inside, except that I knew I had to keep going.  But I didn’t know why, or where that need was coming from.  It sure didn’t feel like it was coming from me.”

            Starling looked at him.  His blue eyes were dark and his hands were clenched into fists.

            He went on.  “I think I know now what it was.  I don’t know what it is about the things that Lecter has sent you… maybe I’ve just been more open since we’ve met.  I couldn’t not care about you.  I tried, believe me.  But there was something about you that night on the Chesapeake.  Something I couldn’t deny… I had a feeling that you knew.  Knew what it was like to live on that knife-edge of darkness and light.  I could see the veins running through you as if you were marble.  They still do.  I’ve had visions before.  I guess you could say I’m psychic, whatever that means.”

            He reached for his wallet and took out Laura’s homecoming picture.  “Twice now, I’ve seen her.  She was at the hotel.  She put the matchbook in my hand.  She stopped me from following Lecter.  She was afraid.  I saw her before that, too.  I was in a courtyard… tunnels all around… I could feel his presence, sinister and angry.  She made me leave, sent me away.  She’s trying to help me, I know it.  But I don’t think she realizes, like I’ve come to, that I have to face this thing, whatever it is.  I can’t keep going like I have been.  I need to take a leaf out of your book.  We’ve both been trapped too long.”

            He looked at the picture.  Starling could see the emotion in his eyes.  Suddenly, she understood even more than he was saying.  She sat back and let him finish.

            “Something doesn’t want me to go there.  Doesn’t want me to help you.  That’s the only direction I’ve got right now, so I’m going to run with it.  I know this all sounds bizarre, and I haven’t made it very clear, but… thanks for listening.”

            “We’ll help each other, Coop.  I know we will.”

            He shook his head, not in negation but to clear his thoughts.  “So, what now, Special Agent Starling?”  This time, the title was teasing.

            “We’re off to see the Wizard,” said Starling, smiling.  “Our flight leaves at seven.  Red-eye to Rio.  We’ll take a private plane from there to São Paulo.  I want to have a night just to ourselves before the appointed day.”

            “What did you tell Noonan?” asked Cooper, curious.

            “I told him that this is my goddamn investigation and that I’m doing what I see fit.  If he has problems with that, then, well, I know where the door is.  I’ve been shown it enough.”

            And, somehow, as the plane lifted off that evening, the FBI was the furthest thing from either of their minds.