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“What day is it?” Mulder asked.
He dropped into the seat on the passenger side of the car. Tossed a Slim Jim in the cup holder, reached down between his legs. He slid the seat back as far as it would go, which was about an inch farther than its position already.
Scully said, “Wednesday,” not looking up from the page.
Mulder cracked his soda open. At least he remembered to hold it out the window, tipping the fizz on the asphalt.
“No, I mean, what date?” he said.
Scully had the file open across the steering wheel. She kept it from slipping, flipped to another page. “The fourteenth,” she said.
A pause. “February?”
“That month does follow January. The last time I checked.”
Mulder sighed. Ugh. “I knew it,” he said. Looking across the lot at the Sunoco station where he’d just purchased his snacks.
“Why does that make a difference?”
“I hate stakeouts on holidays. Nobody does their routine. It throws the whole thing off.”
“You hate holidays, period,” Scully pointed out, handing him the file she had closed. She glanced out the window— the Chevy was parked on the street, just as it had been since they had arrived.
Mulder found his packet of seeds, tore the top with his teeth. “I like Super Bowl Sunday.”
“I thought you’d say Halloween.”
“Too spooky,” he said.
Scully laid her head back, keeping the Chevy in sight. “Remind me,” she said, “how it makes any sense to sit on this guy all day, see where he goes?”
“You got me,” he said, as annoyed with these orders as she was, and flicked a hull out the window, crunching the seed with his teeth.
In an hour, this had changed: a blue Ford was now parked behind the red Chevy. Scully sat with the binoculars. The blue Ford was a woman, mid-thirties, with two toddlers in tow, unloading groceries in front of her house. Not quite underworld dealings. Scully sighed, slid the binoculars back to counting how many brown doors there were on the block. Eight brown doors. Eight out of thirteen.
Mulder was twanging the tab on his empty soda, the can propped on his knees. He shifted uncomfortably.
“You can’t pee in that thing,” Scully said, knowing where this was headed.
“Define can’t,” Mulder said.
“Not in this car, you can’t.” The binoculars lowered. “How many times have I told you not to drink whole cans of soda when we’re stuck in the car?”
Mulder, twelve years old, had his tie unknotted. He winced, bit his lip. Tried jiggling his knee.
“Go,” Scully said.
“Thank you,” Mulder said, true and utter relief, throwing open the door, beelining for the Sunoco. She watched his bright white shirt disappearing inside, then turned back to their quarry.
Do something, she willed, trying out her partner’s theory of psychokinesis, objects willed into motion by mental effort alone.
She was on the phone with Danny. Mulder was writing down plates; Danny was giving them names. Danny was also giving him a hard time about welshing on tickets to an NBA game. Scully kept relaying messages.
“Danny says make it up him. The Knicks are playing next week.”
Mulder held the binoculars up, scoping out a green Dodge. A new arrival to the block. “I’m taking Scully to that game. The Bullets play on the 20th, I’ll get him tickets for that.”
“He’s not taking me to the game,” Scully said to Danny on the other end of the phone. “Knicks tickets are yours.”
Mulder handed her the new number. Scully read off the plate, heard Danny tapping the keys.
“Traitor,” Mulder whispered.
It had been a long enough day already that Scully gave him a smile. Oddly enough, down two Knicks tickets, none of the plates getting hits, stuck in this purgatory for the better part of the day, Mulder did not seem to mind certain parts of their circumstances.
“Got it,” she told Danny, and wrote down two names for Mulder. He squinted in the bright light, trying to read her handwriting, not as neat as usual when she was passing him notes.
“Eyes?”
“Brown,” Scully said.
“Height.”
“Six-foot-seven.”
“Tattoos?” Mulder said.
“Top left shoulder,” said Scully. “Sic semper tyrannis.”
Mulder had the file open, spread across his lap. He was testing her memory on Red Chevy’s rap sheet, quizzing her like a game show. “Um. Birthplace,” he said.
“Too easy. New Jersey.”
Mulder gestured for more.
“Trenton,” she said.
“Lightning round,” Mulder said. “First assault. Aggravated?”
“Extremely,” she said.
“5 to 10 for…”
“Armed robbery. Out in 7,” she said.
“Stint in Mid-State Correctional?”
“No. New Jersey State Prison.”
“Ding ding ding,” Mulder said, tossing the file in the backseat. “I’m calling Alex Trebek. We’re putting you on TV.”
Scully forced back a deep yawn. “I’ll take State Penitentiaries for $600, Alex,” she said. Not objecting to the distraction, not when the only events within the last hour was a truck pumping diesel and branches moving on trees.
Mulder might have a point about which days of the year defied productive surveillance. This was how long the day was: Mulder might have a point about other things, too. This is what Scully thought. Like time that went missing. Clocks that refused to move.
She tried stretching her legs. Even at her short height, the brake pedal left her no space. “Switch places with me. I’ll trade you my soda,” she said. That’s how desperate she was. The offer was cruel, Mulder a foot taller.
He had leaned his seat back, a 45-degree angle. “Just slide the seat back.”
“Then I can’t reach the pedals.”
“Isn’t that the whole point?”
“And that’s when this guy shows up, takes off down the street?”
The look Mulder gave her said that of all the things in their life, a UFO landing in front of them would be more possible.
“Scully, I will bet you five bucks— no, fifty, that truck doesn’t move before nightfall.”
Scully made a sound of despair, not so desperate or dumb as to make a bet against that.
Mulder had long since disrobed. His jacket was in the backseat, along with his overcoat. His tie hung from the mirror. His shirt collar was open; his shirt tails untucked. Scully remembered with fondness a time in her life when such things might disconcert her. It used to seem tantalizing, his long legs wedged in small cars, his tall frame restless beside her in various interesting ways. Now, this was just her life. Scully seriously doubted she would even blink twice if he stepped out of the car wearing only his boxers.
“What?” Mulder said, when she checked her watch for the fifth time in ten minutes. “Hot date?” he said. “What could be more romantic than—” he gestured extravagantly around himself and the car.
On his latest sprint to the restroom, he had brought back boxed chocolates, the kind that sold for a dollar and made you doubt they contained a single natural ingredient.
“Yeah, hot date,” she said, and put one in her mouth.
The miraculous happened. Mulder set down his soda, straightened up in the seat. A front door opened. Brown door, six doors down. Scully saw it at the same time, a man who flipped up his collar against the cool breeze.
Neither one of them moved a muscle. The man moved through the dusk, his denim jacket flapped open. He dug keys out of his pocket. They fit the door of the Chevy.
Mulder turned, looked at Scully. Of all the things he believed, he could not believe that. She slid her hand to the ignition.
“Wait,” Mulder said, as if moving too fast would risk breaking the spell. Taillights flashed on the Chevy, white then red, then it moved. “Go,” he told Scully, and their gray Buick turned over when she twisted the key.
“I don’t believe this,” said Mulder.
Parked two blocks down the street. Watching the lit-up entrance of a Texaco station. He laughed once in the dark.
Their six-foot-seven denim jacket emerged with red plastic-wrapped roses, a plush bear under his arm, six pack hooked in his teeth as he reached for his keys. Scully turned, looked at Mulder.
He was shaking his head.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
Red roses went in the red Chevy.
Mulder pulled out his phone, already tapping a number. “Lifestyles of the armed and dangerous,” he said under his breath.
Scully checked over her shoulder for oncoming traffic.
“Yeah, Rollins? Fox Mulder. We sit on this guy for six hours. He’s going out on a date.”
They terminated surveillance at 803 Wiltshire. A blonde woman, mid-forties, answered the front door, grinned wide in the porch light, held her cigarette to one side and pulled Denim Jacket inside.
“Well,” Mulder said.
“Don’t even say it,” said Scully.
He said, “I’m going to kill Rollins.”
Scully wished for one of those cigarettes. Something. The six-pack of Stella Artois. “You’re buying me dinner.”
Mulder was still watching the porch light. He blew out his cheeks. “At least someone we know is—”
“I told you, don’t say it.”
“—getting lucky tonight.”
Scully ordered steak, hot pink center, a cold Pilsner, creamed spinach. Mulder drank half of his beer before he set the glass down. The place was otherwise empty, the wood-paneled walls coated with a thin sheen of grease, the decor dating back to at least Prohibition. And not in the way that was charming. But the steaks were hot, and against all odds, delicious, and the beer was ice cold, and that alone meant they reached the high point of their day.
“It wasn’t so bad,” Mulder said, on his second beer, starting to revise history. Until Scully gave him a look.
“Mulder,” she said, “next time you do someone a favor, just leave my name out of it.”
He pointed out, “I did it for you.”
“How?” Scully said, trying to get that to compute.
“You’re always telling me, ‘Make friends. Curry favor.’”
Scully realized she had in fact told him that within the past month. “Sorry,” she said, meaning it. Voice turning soft, sympathetic. “I think they just use you, Mulder.”
He shrugged. “So what? I use them too. That’s the way these things work.”
“But they just tell you no when you ask them for something.”
Mulder wrinkled his face. “Maybe at one point, they won’t.”
Forever the optimist. Her cynical optimist. A conundrum for her, just like: partner/best friend.
The bell above the door jingled. Two flushed kids entered, too much eye makeup, cologne. Holding hands, standing close. Scully smiled back when they smiled. Mulder raised his fork, hi. A strange kinship with strangers who would find themselves here.
“See? Not so bad,” Mulder said, this time meaning their steaks.
Scully had half a beer left. She tapped it against his when he raised his glass.
“To hot dates,” he said.
“To paroled felons,” she said, “who have more of a life than federal agents.”
Mulder drank to that one, then lifted his glass again. “To Rollins,” he said. “May he rest in peace.”