Dr. Rookwood and the Big City

Three Years Ago, Baltimore, USA

"You're late, Doctor."

Josiah laughed and waved her off. "Sorry, Glo." Gloria Great, his boss and senior by some 25 years, a larger than life sort of woman who embodied Baltimore in all of the good ways and few of the bad. He shook out his umbrella and left it in the foyer, open. "Bus. You know." He shrugged.

"You should get yourself a car," she said, tsking over him without actually tsking. She looked up at him over her glasses and quirked that eyebrow the way she had of doing, the way that made him want to shrug sheepishly and make excuses. "You know them busses don't run on time."

"Sometimes they do," he managed weakly, gingerly pulling off his coat. He ignored her frown as he hung it up. "You got that study I put on your desk?"

"Mmmhm." Oops. Mmmhm meant that she wasn't interested in anything he had to say excepting what he offered as answers to her questions. Questions he had to guess, of course. How unfortunate that she was so much smarter than he was.

"Ah..." he foundered, flipping through possible targets. "The principal isn't pressing charges," he suggested.

"Oh, I know. That's my doin'." Josiah must've looked surprised. "We go back," she said simply.

The linguist nodded uncertainly. "Ah... ha. Well, then..."

"You're dripping all over my rug. Sit yourself down," she ordered, and he did, raising his brows. "There's hot water on, if you want."

"Uhm, sure." Tea sounded good. Or coffee. Or a nice warm bed. It was only 11 am, though. And he couldn't just turn around and come home after standing in the rain to catch the third bus to pass his stop. "Hey Glo?"

"Yes, baby?"

Josiah smiled. It was Baltimore, which meant any woman more than 20 years older than you was allowed to call you little cute things. Expected to, even. Same as servers in restaurants in Hampden were allowed, expected, to call you "hon." Doctor Professor Gloria Great, PhD times two, called him "baby" because he was a little white boy from the midwest, because she felt protective of him, and he had to be fine with that. So he was. "What's up?"

"You have to ask?" She turned to face him full on, and her serious gaze was a little startling. She was imposing of stature and not given to lightheartedness to start with, so when she got serious, she got very serious. "You ok, kid?" Kid? That was like a mom using someone's full name, and it got his attention even more than the head-on seriousness she was exuding.

"Yeah- Yes. Fine." Oh, ok. This was about - He smiled minutely. "I'm fine, really."

"So if I told you I had an assignment for you back at that school, you'd be fine with it this time? What about the Y?"

"The Y? What's..." He trailed off, and felt his face go pale as he mentally traced the route he'd have to take to get there.

"Look in a mirror this morning?"

"Uh... Yes?" He hadn't liked what he saw, either, but more because he was embarrassed by the questions. How'd you get that black eye, buddy? Whoa, what happened to your face?

"Then you got no excuse for that scraggly shit on your chin."

"Ah..." As usual, he was at a loss. "Sorry. I'm just gonna go up to the study, get some of the pre-lim done..."

"I didn't tell you you could go," she said firmly, gently. She leaned forward, the whole mass of her, and he suddenly couldn't meet her eye and found himself staring at her cavernous cleavage instead. "Joe." He hated being called Joe, but it never made him angry. Now, he felt angry.

"Josiah," he corrected, softly, but just as firmly. She smacked her palms on the desk in annoyance and the sound shattered his anger into a split second's worth of terror. He jumped. And then he dropped his head forward to rest his forehead on the heel of his hand, elbow propped on the chair's arm. "Crap..."

"Didn't shave."

"I don't want to talk about this, not just now," he murmured.

"Were you actually afraid I'd hurt you?"

"No." Crap. He sounded petulant- petulant for cryin' out loud.

"I got a new kid upstairs in the study. Bright boy, top of his class. He's a black kid. You're not gonna have a problem with that, right?"

That snapped his head back up. "What? No!" He'd expected her to be frowning at him, maybe even... if she thought he was a racist or something, if that's what she thought, maybe she'd even be angry enough to fire him, and he didn't know where he'd go then, maybe back to Boston, maybe IBC would take him back after all these years, maybe - but she wasn't frowning at him. She looked concerned, her big ol' face done up in laughlines turned now into creases of worry. Over him. "No," he repeated insistently.

"I didn't think so."

"I mean, unless he put 'beats up scrawny nerds for their bikes' on his resume. Then I think I'd be pretty mad at both of you..." He smiled weakly.

"Did they find it?" She was just Gloria again, now. No mysterious 'figure out the questions to the answers you already know' sort of thing going on. "The cops called earlier for you."

"Yeah, they found it," he replied, leaning back and trying to relax again. His heart hadn't stopped pounding from the totally terrifying sound of a 50-something lady smacking her hands on her equally horrifying desk with pictures of cats on it. "Not salvageable." His beautiful seafoam green 1969 Vespa. Totally demolished. "They got me at home."

"Had a bad year, huh?"

"Uhm..." Josiah thought about it. Losing the Vespa - no, call it Being Beaten and Left for Dead in the Street, that's the part she's talking about. Whatever - last week had just been the latest in a string of bad luck. Witnessing the near rape had been horrible and he'd almost gotten his behind handed to him, except that he'd called 911 before yelling and rushing in headlong, and so saved himself from too much hassle and prevented a girl being just another statistic. So that was good. And coming home to find his lock'd been wrenched and lots of his stuff was gone or broken had been... harrowing, to say the least. But he hadn't come home when the robbers were in the middle of the act, so he hadn't been party to any violence or anything, so that was good too. "Not really," he replied then, and smiled.

"There it is," the old black woman said enigmatically. "Been waiting around for the real one for this whole week. So, you gonna shave tomorrow?"

The linguist scratched through his thin, reddish stubble. "Ah... maybe." She was harping on it, which meant she knew. Stupid intelligent woman. But maybe, sure. "Ah..." He gestured with his eyes toward the ceiling. "What's with the new guy? Throwing me over? Damaged goods?"

She laughed. "Hell, no, child," she exclaimed. "This city takes too much. I ain't about to let it take you, too." Josiah pinked up, and felt all warm and squishy. Being loved really, really never got old. "He's working on your project."

Josiah frowned. "My project? But the budget can't support two-"

"No, it can't-"

"You're moving me? Glo - you can't - this is my--"

"Would you calm down and let a lady talk, you great gaggling oaf!" The linguist shut himself up, but all the questions and protests were written across his face already, and he didn't feel like trying to erase them, even if he could. "The budget can support exactly one chief researcher and one assistant. So I'm giving it to you."

Josiah stared.

"Giving it to you. Understand? Give?" She made the universal motion of giving something to someone else and cocked her head like she was talking to a complete moron. Which he was, for the moment. Shake it off, Jack.

"Giving it to me," he repeated dazedly. "I'm the..."

"Chief researcher."

"On the project... I get my name on the... And I'm... And you're?"

"Still your boss." She grinned. "Get to work. You got a kid up there probably filing everything wrong and crashing our 800-year-old computer."

Josiah grinned back. Yeah. He was a boss now. Maybe he'd shave tomorrow. Maybe his hand wouldn't shake every time the blade got too near this throat. Maybe the close, dark hallway leading from his room to the bathroom wouldn't echo with teenaged laughter, heckling him until he could get to the switch just inside the bathroom door. Maybe tomorrow.