Chapter Text
There’s a place, in the Kitchen. The beer is warm, but very cheap. The chink of the barkeep picking up the empties at closing time is slow and deliberate as an ME dropping extracted bullets in a tray.
Matt meets up in this joint about once a month with Jessica, who did not, as threatened, go to Mexico. When he asks why she stayed, she says it’s because a man you couldn’t say no to, told her not to. Matt considers saying to Jess that she’s the most contrary person he has ever known, because she would immediately deny it. This would be a lawyer move, though, and Matt’s moving – slowly – towards that healthier work-life balance.
Jessica holds forth about the irritations of her clients, whom Matt knows she will never abandon, or let down. On the TV behind the bar, a shopping channel hawks its wares. Jessica will not allow anyone to change the station.
The channel has only one presenter, now. Even a good Catholic couldn’t teach Jessica much about mortification.
You’ve got a big heart, Jessica Jones, says Matt, as she finishes an account of a family (Can you believe these ass-holes?) whom she has glumly reunited. Jessica snorts.
A heart just sloshes liquid, she says. You wouldn’t call the Manhattan Pump Station a humanitarian. A big heart doesn’t make you a good person.
Matt sits back, and listens. The resting rate of the human heart is usually somewhere around sixty to seventy beats per minute; in sportspeople, somewhere between forty and fifty. The heart of Jessica Jones tolls twenty times per minute. Strength defines her, and not just the kind that picks up cars.
Doesn’t exclude it, either, he says.
In the background, the shopping channel waxes eloquent on cashmere. Jessica harrumphs – uneasy, as ever, at even the ghost of praise – and changes the subject.