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On the first Monday of every month, the Head Writer comes in with a bucket of souls. Staff Writers, who circulate in and out of the main conference room, are paired up in plotting teams. Each Staff Writer reaches in to the bucket and picks one soul at random. The writing partners are responsible for ensuring that the people who will eventually acquire those souls meet, fall in love, and build a life together.
The souls themselves are gray, rather squishy but just solid enough for the Staff Writers to grab on to, texturally not unlike raw chicken cutlets. They will eventually rest somewhere between the heart and stomach.
People are not born with souls; they acquire them when they get together with their soulmates, when they really start to recognize what they’ve found. If that never happens, they live with an empty space between their stomachs and hearts, a space that cannot be felt in the conventional sense.
The Head Writer doesn’t like it when people don’t acquire their souls.
The Head Writer doesn’t like a lot of things.
This is the story of something that the Head Writer did not like.
Two Staff Writers named Ara and Ish drew their souls from the bucket one Monday morning and headed out to take care of the next step: sailing around the world in a yacht while they taught the souls everything that their owners would eventually learn, every bit of knowledge that they would gather in their lives. Usually, this was a simple process that took anywhere from a few milliseconds to half a minute, depending upon the quality of the yacht. On this particular Monday, it was not a simple process.
Their yacht hit a seagull.
The seagull was fine, flying off into the horizon unharmed, but the yacht rocked violently back and forth. Ish was on the deck with Rafael Barba’s soul when the yacht bucked forward, causing the slippery soul to fly out of his hands and into the cold, dark waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
Ish dove in after Barba’s soul as it sank to the bottom of the ocean, suddenly becoming buoyant again about halfway under. Breast-stroking against the current that kept the soul just out of his reach, Ish reached for it, so very nearly saving it from the fish that had been swimming near the current.
But he was unable to save it. A scaly, silver-blue fish ate Rafael Barba’s soul.
When he was back up on the yacht, Ish told Ara all about his misadventure. “What do we do?” he asked, his whole body shaking with fear. Staff Writers had failed to bring soulmates together before, but no one had actually lost somebody’s soul. He was in trouble.
“There was a Staff Writer a while ago who paired up two people who weren’t soulmates, who went on to live their whole lives together, fairly happily,” Ara said. “Rumor has it the Head Writer sentenced her to an eternity of writing copy for native advertising, those ridiculous links at the bottom of news sites. They say her entire existence is now taken up by unsettling skin indentations and lies about which celebrities are and are not dead.”
Ish, terrified at the prospect of such a cruel and unusual sentence — he had just turned a prosecutor’s soul into fish food, after all — asked Ara what they could do short of him turning himself in.
“What if we just … wait?”
“Wait,” Ish repeated.
“We’re friends. I don’t want you to have to turn yourself in. We have a while to figure this out. A long while.”
So, they waited.
They waited until the Head Writer pointed out that more than forty years had passed. For twenty of those years, Olivia Benson and Rafael Barba had worked in careers that orbited each other, her in Manhattan SVU and him in the special victims department of the Brooklyn DA’s office. “How is it possible,” the Head Writer asked, “that these two soulmates have never met?”
“We kept them apart because we were waiting for them to get to this point in their careers,” Ara lied. “They’re both doing so much to help victims. We didn’t want to undermine that.”
“It’s been twenty years,” the Head Writer said, a hint of warning in his voice. “Do your job. Have them meet.”
With horrific visions of car insurance scams and sandwiches full of worms that want you to refinance your mortgage dancing in their heads, Ara and Ish arranged the soulmates’ first meeting.
The Head Writer called them into his office as soon as Barba finished working his first case for Manhattan SVU. “They don’t seem to like each other much,” he commented. “And Olivia is with someone else. She and Brian Cassidy are already looking at apartments.”
“We introduce soulmates to each other when one or both is with someone else all the time,” Ish reminded him. “This is no different.”
“I don’t know what’s going on here, but you’ve got one more year to get them to fall in love with each other or I’m doing it myself.”
Ish and Ara did their best, creating scenarios where Brian Cassidy had to be away from home for long periods of time while working undercover, where Benson and Barba bonded over coffee, double shifts, and tough cases, but all of their attempts were futile. Getting soulmates together was often difficult, but these two staff writers knew that getting their soulmates together would prove impossible, because one — and therefore both — could never acquire his soul.
A year after Benson and Barba met, the Head Writer briefly took over. He decided to get the pair together by having Benson kidnapped and tortured for days by a perp.
“How is that going to help them get together?” Ara demanded.
“Intense physical and psychological trauma,” the Head Writer said. “Works every time. I even used it to win a bet once, and it’s never failed me.”
When the Head Writer’s new plot began, Ish and Ara set up a small monitor in their office so they could watch Benson escape from William Lewis. “Ish,” Ara said, her voice trembling with near-human compassion, “we have to fix this.”
—
After William Lewis’s trial, what everyone hoped was his final one, Benson asked Cassidy to give her a minute before they headed home. She ducked into a stairwell, knowing that almost all of the court employees and defense attorneys took the elevators. She wanted to cry in private.
She was overwhelmed.
Her senses in overdrive, as they had been for the last four months, she nearly fell over when she heard footsteps behind her. A sharp pain hit her stomach, or a spot just above it, and she had to take a breath and wait for the pain to subside in order to reassure herself that she wasn’t having a heart attack. The pain disappeared after a few deep breaths. Rafael Barba did not.
“Liv,” he said, his eyes sloped with concern. “I don’t usually take the — I’m sorry if I —”
“It’s okay,” she said hoarsely.
He sat beside her and offered her his handkerchief.
“I can’t take this,” she said, sniffling.
“It’s been a long six months.”
“I mean, I can’t take this, your $300 designer handkerchief that doubles as a sail for your yacht.”
He waved the handkerchief in front of her. “I’m from the South Bronx. My Harvard scholarship that included housing was a stroke of dumb luck. Small inheritance from an uncle we no longer spoke to when I was 25, another stroke of dumb luck.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I don’t own a yacht.”
She took the handkerchief and wiped her face, leaning sideways so their shoulders touched. “Thank you, Rafael.”
“Any time. I’m sorry for what you had to go through.”
“Not your fault.”
He looked at her as if he’d wanted to say “well …” but thought better of making her tears about his own sense of guilt over not going in harder on Lewis in May.
“I have to get back. Brian’s waiting for me.”
Barba nodded quickly. He stood and offered her his arm, which she used to steady herself.
She went home with Cassidy.
—
“Why would you give her a baby? the Head Writer barked, flipping furiously through Ara’s and Ish’s latest script. “You’re on a deadline to get Benson and Barba together, folks, and this baby plot is only going to lead to another year of meandering.”
“We heard about a baby who needed a parent,” Ara said. “You’ve always told us that we’re allowed to make those kinds of matches.”
“When I was younger and more patient, perhaps.”
“We have a plan for issues to come up with the baby’s paternity — exactly the kind of “intense drama” you’re so fond of — and Olivia will have to turn to Rafael, who will be recovering from his grandmother’s death. There’ll even be a courtroom shooting.”
“A courtroom shooting. That could work,” the Head Writer admitted. “But I am adding in another appearance from William Lewis.” He started to mark up the script with his pen.
“No,” Ara groaned, “give Olivia a break.”
“You’re the ones handing her a baby whose father is a violent, manipulative pimp.”
“Give her a break from Lewis, I mean.”
“Trust me. Lewis is gone for good after this. IAB will be touch on her, but Rafael’s going to get her the best defense attorney out there. He and Olivia will bond. Maybe they’ll even raise that baby together.”
“They’ll bond,” Ish repeated nervously.
“Unless,” the Head Writer said, glaring at Ish, “there’s something you’re not telling me.”
“Of course not,” Ara insisted.
Ish hummed in agreement.
—
Barba called just after Benson had put Noah down for the night (for a six-hour stretch, she hoped) to tell her that he was in the neighborhood following his grandmother’s wake.
“You sound like you could use some company,” she said. “I’ll buzz you up.”
After she opened the door, led him inside, helped him with a coat and went through the formalities of offering him a drink, she drew him into a hug. With one hand on his back, she pulled him closer.
The embrace felt strangely familiar, like a memory from the future.
He eventually accepted her offer of a drink, and they sat on the couch together with glasses of Cabernet, her reassuring him that he was in no way at fault for his grandmother’s passing, him reassuring her that there was no legal reason for her to disclose Noah’s paternity.
They talked for hours. After midnight, they hugged again — “clinging to each other,” Ara observed as she watched them on the monitor — and Barba returned to his mother’s place uptown.
“They’re soulmates,” Ish said.
“Not anymore, since Rafael’s never going to get his soul.”
“But look at them. They’re soulmates.”
“You and I are two steps away from the deep, dark valleys of F-list celebrities who look different now than they did in 1978.”
“Are we — doomed?”
“You might want to see if you can find that fish.”
“From 45 years ago?” Ish asked. “The fish is probably long dead and decomposed.”
“Are we doomed?” Ara said, folding her arms across her chest as she mocked Ish’s question. “There’s your answer.”
—
“What have you two been keeping from me?” the Head Writer bellowed.
Ish fell out of his chair.
The big screen monitor above the Head Writer’s desk, in his private office on the building’s top floor, projected images of Olivia Benson in bed with Ed Tucker, her IAB adversary of many years. Both were naked, sweaty, tangled in bedsheets. Benson was smiling.
“You went too big on the townhouse incident,” Ara said.
“I didn’t get to be Head Writer by going “too big” on anything.”
“I thought you were always Head Writer, sir.”
The Head Writer let out an exasperated puff of air. “Do you care to explain to me how an attempt to get two soulmates together resulted in this? Because I have some ideas, and they all end in you two being demoted.”
“You traumatized her,” Ara said. “Her ordeal with Lewis was only two years ago. She needed comfort. She needed a distraction.”
The Head Writer considered her argument for a moment. “You have eighteen months. Until Olivia Benson’s fiftieth birthday. If they don’t get together by then, I’m cancelling the project and ordering a commission to look into what you two did.”
“Don’t worry about anything, sir,” Ish said, and he and Ara hurried off to their office.
“We’re screwed,” Ara said when they were in their office with the door closed. “We should just come clean and hope writing copy for native advertising is the worst possible punishment there is.”
Ish’s eyes grew wide. “I’ve heard stories.”
“So have I.”
“They’re not … true, are they?”
“We’re screwed. We are screwed beyond belief. There’s no way Olivia and Rafael will get together before the deadline, because Rafael’s soul is fish poop.”
“I did some research on whether this has ever happened before,” Ish said.
“And?”
“It hasn’t.”
“Great.” Ara stole a donut off of Ish’s desk and chewed plaintively. “We are —”
“Ara!” Ish shouted suddenly, jumping up.
“What the —”
“Watch!” He turned the sound up on the monitor. “Olivia just told Rafael about her relationship with Tucker. Look at Rafael’s face.” He pointed a shaky finger at the image of Barba on the screen. “Look at his eyes.”
“He’s angry that she messed up his case. I can relate.”
“He’s devastated that she’s with someone else.”
“He is not — oh. Oh, maybe. Unless it’s just wishful thinking on our part.”
“You and I are done talking,” Barba snapped.
Benson left, shutting the door behind her.
Barba paced the floor of his office. Back and forth, back and forth, grabbing a coffee mug on one trip, stopping in front of his desk on another. His green eyes turned dark, a scowl on his lips as he stared at the wall, almost as if he was contemplating shattering the coffee mug against it.
He shuddered and sat behind the desk, trying to concentrate on his work. Another shudder, followed by a wince. He cleared his throat. Shut his eyes.
When he opened them again, they were tinged with red.
He stood again, this time heading for the window, where he stared down at the street below until his expression was numb.
“Olivia,” he whispered at nothing in particular.
Then he let out a small, strangled sound, shut his eyes once more, and returned to his work.
Ara drew in a deep breath. “You’re right,” she said. “He’s heartbroken.”
“Where do we go from here?”
“I don’t know what’s in the cards for us, but soul or not, we need to get those two people together.”
—
The other guests, the rest of her work family, were gone. Noah was in bed — her bed, because that was where he wanted to be, and how could she possibly deny him that after all he’d been through — but Barba had stuck around to help with the dishes.
Ever since he’d been suspended because he’d once given a “loan” to a strung out witness to ensure she’d appear on the stand, because of his continued payments to the Abreu family, Barba and Benson had rekindled and strengthened their friendship.
“Liv,” he said, looking up at her as he loaded the dishwasher, “how are you doing?”
She bit her lower lip, sniffling once before she spoke. “Good. I have Noah. I’m good. But also, a mess.”
He shut the dishwasher and closed the space between them so he could embrace her. “Thank you,” she said, clutching reflexively at the material of his shirt.
“I’m here,” he promised.
He kissed her cheek.
She looked at him quizzically. He retreated to the living room.
“So, I’ve applied for a judicial appointment,” he said, scratching the back of his neck. “There’s talk of a few family and criminal court judges retiring this spring.”
Her smile was full of pride. “Your childhood dream come true.”
“You remembered that.”
“Of course I did. You told me all about it after your grandmother died, that night you came here and we talked for hours.” Her face was lit up, glowing.
She joined him in the living room.
He put his arms around her waist. One of her hands was in his hair. “Rafa,” she said wistfully, “there are a lot of important cases on our desks.”
They swayed gently, as if they were dancing. “If I get a judicial appointment this spring, will you —”
“Will I wait for you?”
“A stupid thing to ask.”
“Not stupid at all. Listen, Rafa, there’s clearly something worth exploring here, but I’ve made this mistake before, with a federal attorney. It only affected one case. If you and I dated, or — explored this further — it would affect six years’ worth of cases.”
“And the victims whose interest we’re sworn to protect, and the justice we’re sworn to zealously pursue.” A tired smile formed on his lips. “I understand. I do.”
“But you’ll get that judicial appointment.”
“You think so?”
“I believe that your grandmother had to have known what she was talking about.”
—
“We’re done,” the Head Writer announced one morning when he, Ish, and Ara were alone in the conference room. “Rafael Barba and Olivia Benson. I’m shutting it down.”
“Why?” Ara demanded.
“You know why.”
The know shook her to her core, but she continued anyway. “All we have to do is plot out the day Rafael learns he’s been appointed to the bench. They’ve already promised each other —”
“Rafael Barba’s soul is fish poop in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean,” the Head Writer said, circling Ish like a shark. “Isn’t that right?’
“Please don’t shut Olivia and Rafael down,” Ish begged.
“The VP of native advertising tells me that you dropped Rafael’s soul into the ocean, where it was eaten by a fish, and you two have been lying to me for Rafael’s and Olivia’s entire lives, going about your daily business as if you still had both souls in your possession.”
“To be fair,” Ish said, “Rafael is in love with Olivia, and has been for years.”
“Bullshit!” the Head Writer bellowed.
“It’s true,” Ara insisted. “And if you can’t see it, then —”
“How can he possibly be in love with the woman who would have been his soulmate if his soul hadn’t been turned into fish food? He might think he’s in love with her, as if often the case when there’s no soul to be acquired, no real endgame. I’m ending their friendship so they’re no longer confused by what’s between them, so Olivia stops having nightmares about lox.”
Ara, emboldened by anger, slammed a fist down on the conference table. “Don’t you dare talk to us about Olivia Benson’s nightmares.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know what it means,” she said.
—
When Barba told Benson that she’d taught him to see the world in color and that he had to move on, all of the Staff Writers cried.
They’d heard the story of Ish’s mistake and his and Ara’s attempts to cover their asses to avoid demotion — water cooler gossip — and had gathered in the conference room to watch the final arc of Benson and Barba’s story. Everyone from the newbies to the most senior Staff Writers held out hope that Benson and Barba would pull through as a couple, be each other’s endgame even if Barba was never able to acquire his lost, fish-digested soul. But their hope failed them, and like Barba, Benson too, they would have to move on.
“Sorry, Ara,” Ish said when they were alone in the conference room. “I never should have dragged you into this. Never should have dragged you down with me. If I’d have come clean, accepted my punishment, you could have paired up with another writer.”
Ara looked down, contemplative. “You know, I don’t regret it.”
“Really?”
“For those two, how they looked at each other, how they looked to each other for support, how broken his heart was when that awful townhouse plot drove her into Tucker’s arms —”
“Ara.” Ish nudged her with his elbow. “She’s going to his apartment.”
“What?”
“She’s ringing the bell in his lobby.”
“When is this?” She scrambled closer to the monitor. “How much time has it been since he said he had to move on?”
“A little less than a day in their time. It’s the next morning.”
“We need to talk, Rafael,” Benson said. She was standing outside the door to his apartment. “And if after we talk — no speeches about colors, no shutting down anyone’s feelings — you still want to move on, I won’t stop you.”
Barba’s eyes conveyed worry and sympathy, but he didn’t let her in.
“Hey,” she said, peeking inside nevertheless, “no boxes.”
“I’m spending a few weeks in Miami with friends. I have job interviews lined up there. If —”
“What about your judicial appointment?”
“Liv.” Barba finally stepped aside and let her in, closing the door behind them. “You’re a smart woman. Do you really think my appointment is going to go through?”
“Yes,” she said. She started to unbutton her coat. His eyes widened and he swallowed reflexively, as if he was holding back tears. “I believe in you, Rafa. I believe in all the things you’ve dreamed of for yourself. Until yesterday, until you told me you were leaving because I’d changed your life, I considered you my best friend. I’m furious at you, and I’m read to tell you that if you want to move on then go ahead and move on, but I still believe in you, and I love you, even though I’m so angry, angry like you wouldn’t understand.”
She grabbed his hand, which was balled up into an anxious fist. His fingers loosened, intertwined with hers, and she pulled his hand toward her until it was resting near her ribcage, just below her heart.
Tears welled up in her eyes, just like the day before.
“I love you, Liv,” he said, his own tears spilling past his heavy eyelids, onto his cheeks.
She was holding his hand in place with both of hers. He moved in closer, running his free hand through her hair, then leaning in to kiss her lips.
He deepened the kiss, his hands not moving, one in her hair, one just below her heart.
Then, with their foreheads pressed together, she said, “I love you. Never, ever, ever shut me down when I try to tell you that.”
“Never,” he said through tears. “Let’s talk. I’ll make coffee.”
From the quiet conference room, Ara and Ish watched as the people who were supposed to have acquired the souls they’d been assigned — Olivia and Rafael, their failed soulmates — talked for hours. Free of any plot machinations thrown at them by the Head Writer or even Ara and Ish themselves, they confronted the reality of what Barba had done, of his fears that he’d have been killed in prison, how he didn’t want to be another source of drama and worry in Benson’s life. They forgave each other as they alternated between tears, kisses, and declarations of love.
They’d been talking for more than two hours when Barba started kissing Benson’s neck, a sweet-but-mischievous grin on his face.
“Time to turn off the broadcast,” Ish said.
“Wait. I want to see something.”
“Her hand is inching towards his fly. You’re about to see entirely too much.”
“Turn on the internal camera. Quickly.”
Ish flipped a switch at the back of the monitor, revealing the pair’s internal organs. Situated between her heart and stomach was — if they saw correctly — Olivia Benson’s soul.
The corresponding space in Barba’s belly was empty, because his soul was not accessible to him or any of the Staff Writers.
“This is amazing,” Ara said as they hurried down the hall to their office.
“This is unprecedented.”
In their office, in the soul storage safe, was the box where they’d been keeping Olivia Benson’s soul. The box was gloriously empty.”
“We’re still getting sent down to native advertising on account of what I did with Rafael’s soul,” Ish said sadly. “On account of how we covered it up, how we lied to the Head Writer. I’m sorry.”
“I told you, I don’t regret it,” Ara said. “Especially not now. We gave Olivia Benson her son, and I’ll never regret that, no matter what horrible copy we’re stuck writing over and over, and look, even after all the crap the Head Writer threw at her, she marched over to Rafael’s place all on her own, and now she has her soul. That unprecedented thing that just happened, Olivia made it happen. Every time you have to match a picture of indented skin or a patch of earthworms to a car insurance scam, think of Olivia Benson and Rafael Barba and you’ll find a little bit of joy.”
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