tibetanmethod

He's given it some thought, this proposition of Moiraine's.

He's thought about it while idling through the grocery.

He's thought about it over breakfast.

He's thought about it while waiting for a group of juvenile delinquents to finish dumping Everclear, orange juice, pineapple, and Kool-Aid packets into a trash can so he can scatter them.

It is perhaps this last occasion -- and there were many others -- that makes him comfortable with his decision.

After Cooper retrieves his lunch from the Double R, he stops at the pay phone outside, and calls Moiraine to ask if he can see her after his shift ends that afternoon.

Word gets around in a small town: Dale Cooper and the lady in blue who collects stories had dinner in the Timber Room, and he was perhaps more solicitous than usual.

On Monday morning, Sheriff Harry S. Truman calls him into his office. They go over Cooper's caseload, Cooper gives Harry the updates from the ATF and the BLM, and then Harry gets up and closes the door.

With that, Cooper knows what's coming. But he wants to hear Harry say it. And Harry does eventually get around to posing the question. Eventually.

Cooper takes some time. Drinks some coffee.

He says, finally:

"Harry, you know and I know that she wouldn't have said anything at all if she thought it would put Twin Peaks in danger. She said as much to me. And after everything -- I believe her. Is her word good enough for you?"

Harry answers in the affirmative.

Cooper knows what Harry is thinking about: Josie Packard. How she duped Harry (or didn't -- Josie was a victim, a woman who wanted to be loved, a woman who deserved better than the men who controlled her) and hurt him in the service of other men and other agents.

"If you notice anything," Cooper says, slowly, "Harry, I promise to hear you. Is that enough?"

It is. And then Harry asks, tentatively, if they had a nice time.

He could answer Harry with the full truth: that Cooper spent a lot of time being nervous, that the quality of their conversation was, he felt, honest in a way that it has not been in a long time (if it has ever been that kind of honest), that he got to spend a few hours in the company of an uncommonly beautiful woman to whom he could pay honest compliments, that he made her laugh (more than once!), that he is certain he was not punished for his presumption in his dreams, that he doesn't know if this will go anywhere but he intends to find out, that it's been a long time since he's had a reason to feel hopeful.

"We did," Cooper says. "Listen, Harry, about the ATF -- I talked to Herb Byerly last week -- "

It is April 1992, after the conviction of Manuel Noriega, before the Rodney King verdict. Dale Cooper is keeping an eye on state and national newspapers -- the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Seattle Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post -- even though they always arrive a day or two late at best. He tells no one. (He never has.)

A delivery, at the apartment that is at least nominally Dale Cooper's, comes the day after the Tupperware party:

Blue irises in a cut-glass vase, with elegant lines and a simple pattern.

There's no note.

Pete Martell was supposed to join them out on the Pearl Lakes for some fishing; Pete got taken down by laryngitis.

So it's Cooper and Harry in the boat. Cooper sits in the bottom on a life-vest; to the observant eye, it's clear Cooper is spending more time meditating than fishing.

Summertime, and the living is easy. It's not bad, certainly. Cooper is commuting down the road from Twin Peaks to Colville a few days a week to assist in an ongoing drug operation -- a gift from Gordon Cole's interim replacement; apparently Gordon was able to leave a few notes in files and a few bugs in people's ears before going on administrative leave. It's enough to let Cooper stay in Twin Peaks; it's enough to keep Cooper happy.

He's started doing the daily donut runs for the sheriff's station as well, before heading south. He does them even on the mornings his presence isn't requested -- it's nice to have structure, and it's good to keep a finger on the pulse of the town.

That's in the mornings, though. Evenings are meditation, reading, research. He could use a hobby or two; in a few months, he tells himself. Tonight he's in the Bookhouse, sitting at the round table, with two things in front of him. One thing is a shoebox. It's filled with microcassettes; he's sorting them.

The other thing is a mostly untouched longneck, beaded with condensation; it's a poor pale ale that never did anybody any harm, and soon it's not going to be any good any more. Somewhere deep and unconscious Cooper figures it'll just prove his point that beer isn't any good anyway. He also figures that a beer seems required, considering recent events. It's like a wake. Sometimes mindfulness, loving kindness, detachment -- sometimes they come a little hard.

What's black and white and red all over?

The answer of answers:

Not the newspaper or the Communist panda. Not the FBI agent in a blender.

The Black Lodge.

***

The vertiginous pattern on the floor never stops -- the black and white stripes, with each stripe coming to a point and receding until it makes a point in the other direction, like so many tessellated and spooning lovers. The red curtains aren't heavy at all. They just hang.

The corridor is so long, and the statue at the end -- the one with the Greek lady, or maybe she's Roman, the one with the missing arms -- it's like the mountains on the horizon: she's not getting any closer.

They walk, Leland Palmer and Josie Packard and Harry S. Truman. They walk, and they walk, and then







His eyes are wrong. Cooper's eyes are wrong. He's stepped out of nowhere, somewhere out of the curtains, and he's got a rictus grin that says he knows everything about you and everything you don't know, and his eyes are wrong -- milky and murky and utterly without sanity.

He points a finger. "mOneY cAn'T bUy yOU LoVE."

Leland is the first one to turn away to where Cooper -- if it is Cooper -- points, and to part the curtains. What's beyond them is a room: black leather chairs, a black leather chaise longue, a floor lamp, another statue --

And the midget in red, and Laura Palmer.

Their eyes aren't wrong.

Heidi is working the night shift tonight, as she has been for the last several weeks. Norma Jennings is in Brazil, and that means that Shelly -- Norma's second in command at the Double R Diner -- needs to be around during the day.

She looks up as the bell on the door jingles; Cooper is holding it open for Moiraine. He gestures to a booth on the lefthand side, and they take a seat.

When Heidi makes her way over, Cooper and Moiraine find out that today is a special on cherry pie, since cherries are in season. Also, there is peanut butter.

Cooper leans forward and says to Moiraine, very confidentially, "I recommend the cherry."

He goes to the bar to have a cup of coffee. Coffee is good. Coffee

(coffee that stays coffee)

smells good, it's a symbol of everything true and right and pure, it keeps the long arm of the law healthy and active. It cures what ails you.

Cooper takes a sip, and another. He's got a hand resting on the Bar, and the other hand holding his cup of coffee.

A moment later, he puts the cup down and goes down the (thank god) well-lit corridor to the men's restroom, moving steadily, calmly, as though nothing is wrong.




He notes absently in the stall a lot of Chinese, but he doesn't read it, because he's throwing up.


Ten minutes later the sound of a faucet turning on, and the paper towel dispenser fulfilling its function.

And then, eyes a little reddened, Cooper leaves the restroom and heads, head down, back into the main bar and up the stairs.



His cup of coffee is still resting on the barstool where he left it.