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On the fifth floor of the Philadelphia offices, there is a break room everyone seems to have forgotten about. They found it with Diane, on a day they were trying to forget about the rest of the world, which is probably why neither of them is able to date the discovery. It’s just a plain, regular door, but its image sometimes hovers at the back of Albert’s mind. If pressed to explain how they first came upon it, he would have to insult the investigator’s intelligence to cover up his own confusion. But as Diane says, you should accept the twisty corridors’ gift for the blessing it is. So this is where they go, just the two of them, whenever they feel like pretending their colleagues don’t exist – a habit that has proven rather too efficient lately.
*
“Maybe it’s us, you know,” Diane had commented to the ceiling a week after Phillip Jeffries had walked into an Argentinian elevator and never quite reached his floor.
“I thought you got along like a house on fire. And he always seemed to enjoy playing the straight man to my straight man.”
Without lowering her gaze, she had waved her hand dismissively and raised her eyebrows, clearly conveying there were too many ways he was setting her up for her to elaborate on any. Still, he had to wonder for a moment if her eyes were not shining too brightly.
“No, I mean, maybe we’ve become too good at ignoring people. For all we know, this room could be a fucking magic circle with no reset button, and the more time we spend here, the more the other offices start to look like a blank slate.”
He knew she was only half serious, but there had been an edge to her tone that he had not liked. There was much to be said about double acts, but Jeffries’ disappearance had been a hard blow.
“I’m sorry to say, and not that you don’t have my full compassion, but that’s too many lunch breaks with Gordon speaking right now.”
He had not added that if that room really was the wishing well she was describing, those lunch breaks would have been the first thing to get crossed out of existence. But somehow Gordon’s corned beef sandwiches and personal weather forecast steadily remained more real than the rest.
“He has no one else to talk to now,” she had simply said, finally meeting his eyes with a seriousness that had surprised him at the time.
*
The room looks like a TV set, Diane decides the first time they see it. It is uncharacteristically long, and in the middle of its otherwise blank walls, a wide orange strip has been painted, that goes from above their heads to under their waists. Diane insists that she “works great with orange”, something about her hair doing wonders for it, and the “frame being just right”. He regrets having nothing substantial to contradict her with.
“You could sit in that thing,” she gestures toward one of the white egg chairs that seem to serve no particular purpose, “and pretend to be the guest on my silent talk show. Here’s the concept: we stare at each other in a judgmental way, say nothing, and from time to time we’re allowed to take aggressive puffs from our cigarettes. I’m still hesitant about the prerecorded laughs. What do you think?”
“God, I wish they let you run this place.”
She laughs and smiles the enigmatic smile of someone who possibly already does.
And so most days they simply sit in silence in their ridiculous chairs, looking up as the smoke lazily accumulates under the vent.
Then of course, there is the seahorse. They don’t know where it came from: as far as they’re concerned, it belongs to the room’s furniture, along with the egg chairs, the white plastic tables and the ashtray. It’s just there, floating in its bowl on a back table, with its pale, almost transparent skin. In itself, it’s not that much of a curiosity: some offices have ornamental aquariums, and the HR break room on the third floor has basically become a goldfish cemetery in the last few years. Albert keeps expecting that someone will run into the room with a can of disgusting dried up food in hand and ruin their carefully built peace. But no one ever does.
*
Diane has her back to the door when he walks in that day. She’s standing very still right in front of the fish tank, and for some reason that stops him in his track. He doesn’t call her name. And after a few moments, he thinks he hears the sound of a nail gently tapping against the glass.
He clears his throat. Immediately, she turns around, and there is a faraway look on her face, something he’s never seen there before. It makes him think of that trick old Hollywood actresses do with their eyes, turning them away from the camera to catch the light at the right angle. It doesn’t suit her at all.
“I found a stranger meditating in the lotus position on my office’s carpeting,” she says matter-of-factly, and she sounds like herself enough that he thinks he can follow through with the usual sarcasm.
“Wind must be in the west, they have rains of those in California apparently – not that you should trust Gordon’s weather reports. I hope you exorcised him properly. We can’t really afford the dry cleaning, or so I’ve been told the last time I autopsied someone who had kicked the bucket right after a finger lickin good meal in Lexington, Kentucky.”
He can sense Diane pause, her hesitation charging the air of the room.
“Well I…”
*
She had had no intention to set foot in the room, initially. In this job, it was all a matter of recognizing the signs, and as soon as she had caught sight of the brilliantine and the telltale suit through the doorway, she should have walked on as if her heels were on fire. After all, you could never be sure of the moment Gordon might decide to hire a psychic escort to lure you into the nearest plane to Cuba, intent as he still was upon all sorts of South American plans. Good for Phillip. She hoped he was living the life, lazily floating in a heated pool with the secrets of the universe.
She was going to move away, heading straight to Chet’s office to call Albert, because this was significant and needed to be discussed immediately – and she refused to do it with Chet, who didn’t even have a secretary because “he had his own way of remembering things”. She was going to, in a minute.
In times to come, her silhouette dark against the white corridor is something she will remember like a dream, from the outside. She’s standing a short way from the door, head tilted, the fingers of her right hand opening toward her chest as if to prevent her from leaning in. When she thinks about meeting Cooper, this is the picture that forms in her mind.
It's hard to put it into words, what keeps her there, her whole body tensed and on the brink of movement. It feels like time is cementing itself around her. From the angle she has into the room, she can see the clock, its needles ticking away quietly. The hair and the clothes are a given, true, but she is taken aback by the fragility of the stranger’s face. It's raw and honest like an open wound. This is not the face of an FBI agent, so disarming you can barely bear to look at it. After a while she senses, caught between sickness and awe, her own expression beginning to melt to mirror his serene vulnerability.
A quarter of an hour goes by, as she tries to rationalize waiting just a few moments more, to finally understand the scene, to break it. He still hasn’t moved nor said a single thing. If it is code, or one of Gordon’s tests, she's reached a whole new level.
“Latest rose on the vine, aren’t you?” she eventually says, the only phrase that could make sense in such a context, the only one to break the spell.
He doesn’t seem at all surprised by the sound of her voice, and his eyes stay shut, but it’s like he's just understood something.
“By any other name,” he answers, confirming he is who she supposed him to be. She never thought much of Gordon’s language tricks – this was not what a secret was, he should have known it better than anyone – but it gave one the upper hand, and she suddenly felt grateful for it. A slow smile forms on the stranger’s face, so earnest it seems to make the whole room brighter.
“You’re Diane,” he adds, and the name in his mouth feels like it belongs to a marbled goddess, someone with a different existence.
“I don’t think you have clearance to that information yet.”
It’s an automatic response, what she says to every agent asking for her name with a glint in his eye – and yet it rings differently. It’s probably what compels her to opt for honesty.
“I suppose there must be all sorts of flattering sayings about late blooms, but any gardener would tell you it’s also a lonely position. You’re only the latest on the branch when everything else has died.”
The one garden in which she has set foot for the last five years is the Japanese Garden, but she’ll have Gordon know she too can play this game. Trying with all her might to hide the fact she's glued to the spot, she continues sweetly:
“Of course, we have more of a glass-house tradition here. It’s a warm and welcoming environment, as long as you don’t bring in too many stones.”
At that, the man chuckles, as if he had just been found out.
“I apologize for the intrusion, I’ve been told you were out and I like to familiarize myself with the particular atmosphere of rooms, especially if I’m to work in them. What you’ve created here is quite special. But I’m glad to get to meet you. And I’ll tell you one thing, Diane: your voice is out of this world.”
To her own amazement, she can’t even find a snappy comeback to that statement. In fact, it’s like the remark has sucked up all the air from her lungs, rendering her entirely speechless. In front of her, the stranger straightens his posture.
“The name’s Cooper,” he says, finally opening his eyes to meet hers. “Dale Cooper.”
*
“Diane?”
The expression on her face makes him wonder for a second if he somehow got the name wrong. She blinks, but doesn’t seem in any way more present than before when she tells him:
“You know what this is, Albert.”
“No. No, no. He said he wouldn’t, not just yet.”
What this is, in truth, is a fucking distraction thrown at the only other reasonable person in the team, if you exclude Chet on his odd days. Diane is paralyzed. It’s perhaps the most worrying thing he’s seen on the job, and he was one of the few to look at Windom in the eyes during his last days of work.
“He was going to hire someone new no matter what we said. I honestly don’t know why I expected a warning.”
It’s in that moment, staring at Diane staring at the seahorse, who doesn’t seem to really care what is going on outside of its tank, that he first feels it. The beginning of a fatigue that will slowly grow and crawl up on all of them.
*
They talked about this for months. Not that Gordon would listen: in true Gordon fashion, he merely stared at the ceiling fan, counting in his head until he felt inspired enough to provide appropriate leadership.
“The universe is speaking to us”, Albert had said, desperate enough that he condescended to speak the lingo, “in fact it’s yelling in the sky in fiery letters that there’s something rotten in the state of Pennsylvania in general and in our HR management in particular. I don’t mean to tell you what to do, boss, but since you haven’t hire me for my diplomatic skills, I’ll just go and point out that two agents went AWOL on us in various interesting ways, for ineffable reasons. So maybe we should, as they said to Tricky Dick, pause the recording for a minute here.”
Though he tried to keep his spirits up, there was something in the pit of his stomach that he recognized from too many autopsies and unwanted contact with the deceased’s families. The bodies weren’t even cold, or locatable for that matter, and Gordon was already considering new candidates. He wasn’t giving them or himself any time to grieve.
“I still have one of Phillip’s tie in my closet,” Diane had said once he had gone, after a pat on the arm and the expected “NONSENSE, ALBERT, I WAS NOWHERE NEAR WASHINGTON IN 1972”.
He had raised an eyebrow at that, even though his chest had just slightly tightened.
“What? He lent it to me. I can’t afford silk that good, and he probably doesn’t need it now. He never really did.”
He remembered a conversation he had had with Jeffries years ago, when he was just beginning on the team and was seriously skeptic about the guidelines he was receiving from the head office.
“Take it from me, Rosenfield, if you’re going to survive here you’ll have to go through a counter-apprenticeship of sorts. Here’s a little secret: it’s not about the code, whatever Cole says, or the reasons you’ll be able to assign to what you’ll see. It’s about letting go. You can’t understand what you’re in here for. And that’s the thrill of it.”
Maybe he should have worried then. But it took some more years for him to take a step in that direction. Now there would be another bright-eyed, pink-faced simpleton waiting in line to join them. And Diane was right: Phillip had no use for ties.
*
“So how’s the new chosen one, then? No glint of budding madness in his eyes yet, I hope? No worrying penchant for chess?”
Diane’s gaze remains lost in the water of the bowl, and his sarcasm fall flat.
“He seems… easy. I don’t know. Just easy.”
Right as she says it, something flickers across her face, as if she’s struggling to express what she is putting behind the word.
Albert scoffs, for it will be snowing in hell before anyone would make things easy for him.
“Has he said something to you?” he suddenly asks, suspicion creeping into his mind. She looks pale, paler than when she’s hungover, and he hasn’t worked with Windom Earle for such a long time without picking up a thing or two.
“No,” she shakes her head, unsure of what he’s after. “He knew the code, that’s all. Still, he’s… You should see for yourself.”
“Oh no, I’ll pass for the next century. But if he's also easy on the eyes, I’ll gladly hear a description.”
That has her finally turn to him, so he can see she doesn't understand.
"You'll have to work with him."
“If Gordon can’t recognize a problem when it’s screaming in his face and kicking him in the balls, that’s on him, not me. I’m done playing the happy family when it’s all secret affairs and natural children in every asylum of the galaxy. It’ll be the scalpel and the syringe, sinister white light and four hours of sleep for me contractually, please and thank you. I needn’t make contact with this guy before he’s stiff and cold.”
There’s hurt painted all over Diane’s face now, and she finally looks like herself, the old Diane, his break and drinking partner, the one tangible apple in that elusive basket. Immediately he knows he should explain he doesn’t mean he’s going to ditch her, that this has nothing to do with French Martinis over smooth jazz and karaoke nights when he pretends to be embarrassed. This has nothing to do with making a team effort; he isn’t done with her. But then he would have to talk about what it did to him, losing Jeffries and then Earle – even Earle –, how angry it all made him, and while he suspects she feels it as deeply as he does, he can’t help but be ashamed. A missing agent isn’t something he can autopsy. And he wish he could cut open whatever had Diane in such a state, to make sense of it, but he won’t meet this agent, and he won’t shake his hand. He’s done it before and has ended up grasping at air.
*
For the next three months, he stays true to his words, and manages to avoid the new recruit. It’s less difficult than it sounds, since people don’t generally look for his company. He just has to take off to the break room at specific hours of the day, though he’s mostly alone there now that Diane has someone she’s actually supposed to work for. These days she looks illuminated and distant, and he tells himself it won't last.
He hears the man’s voice on several occasions, though he never sees his face. Once, it's a phone call he should have known better than to take, a simple “Doctor Rosenfield?” that haunts him for days on end, for nobody ever calls him that anymore. He had almost forgotten. The other times it's in the break room, while he's watching TV on the small set that stands in a corner and trying to ignore the seahorse. On paper, it makes no sense: no one ever walks around those corridors. Besides, they never heard any noise before: it is as if the walls are thicker over here, designed for quietness. But nothing in the world can filter a conversation that involves Gordon Cole; that, he knows from experience.
The first time, Gordon is comparing his favorite presidents with someone he doesn’t at first identify. And then, just when he’s beginning to suspect the old hack may be having that conversation one to one with himself, possibly just to drive him crazy on his lunch break, he hears:
“With all due respect, boss, say what you will about Kennedy, but that was a man with his heart in the right place. Until someone decided to go and make it burst, of course.”
Maybe this immortal line is reaching him through the pipes, because there is no way the person who just spoke is standing anywhere near in that moment. The voice is… easygoing, yes, if you ignore the earth-shattering level of bullshit, but nothing truly unusual here. No, what sticks is the echo around the words, the small vibrations that give them warmth. It leaves him with more questions than answers, though he resolves not to be interested.
The second time, he can’t really make out what they’re talking about, but the vibrations are there, he can almost feel them on the surface of his skin, half-expecting to see rings forming in the water of the fish tank. He only catches one sentence, and that one is without a doubt from Gordon:
“DO YOU GET THAT THING IN DREAMS WHERE EVERYONE ELSE IS YOU?”
*
After a few weeks, he gives in and asks Chet for an opinion. Hopefully Diane won’t catch wind of it, but he always privately thought that Desmond, by the sheer power of not giving too much mind to rules and human faults, was a better judge of character than her.
They’re out at a club, the one where he usually takes Diane, and he prays Chet won’t think he’s trying to hit on him since the atmosphere is a bit languid and there are too many men having hushed conversations in the nooks. So far he seems completely unfazed, but again Chet is the sort of person who would be at ease in the heart of a volcano.
“The new guy? I wish I could tell you. But that one, he doesn’t really leave a mark. To be fair, I didn’t get to see much of him. The Cavendish case kept me away from most of the drama.”
A whole family, locked in their own house and burnt alive, except for the youngest son who was still missing. He had seen the bodies.
“In fact,” Chet adds carelessly as he takes a sip from his double whiskey, “I can barely remember his face.”
*
When he finally meets Dale Cooper, it’s not without a warning.
He’s just put on his raincoat after a long day, preparing himself for whatever shit the weather of this city is about to throw at him, and doesn’t pay much attention as he locks the door of the lab for the night. There shouldn’t be anyone there. There never is anyone there, not if he can help it, and the team of lab operators who works for him knows better than to visit, especially at this hour. Yet, as he turns around, he finds himself face to face with the damned Weimar Germany chorus girl Gordon has hired, her hand raised in what can only be a parody of greeting. He jumps out of his skin.
“Holy fucking fuck!”
In response she only takes a step forward, and puts her hand in front of her face. Then, with three fingers, she taps her breastbone a little over her heart, two times, pauses, and then two more times. Her left foot glides on the floor in a slow sweeping movement. There is a red rose at her buttonhole, and he suddenly wonders if this is how his career ends, if they hired a pop out cake girl to give him the sack in a flurry of balloons and jolly songs.
He has always managed to dodge the mandatory code training, because he smelt a rat and had bigger things on his plate – mostly corpses. Gordon hadn’t insisted, surprisingly. But now he finds that he has next to no knowledge of what the ghost of Marlene Dietrich is trying to convey here, nor if she's on a mission or just making a social call. He knows of her, vaguely, and of her function in the team, but not to the point where they have actually interacted with each other. Diane sometimes has the girl over for tea, he believes, but she never talks about it.
Having recollected enough to address that problem he says, trying not to roll his eyes:
“Look, Lilian.”
This has her wrinkle her nose at him like he’s a decaying lemon – and after a whole day in the morgue, that’s not an unreasonable assumption.
“Lilith? Yeah, hoped not. Lily? Anyway, something tells me you’re not exactly good news.”
At that, Lil snorts, and waves her hand over her shoulder to chase something away. She puts an end to her little dance, winks at him and quickly turns on her heels before disappearing in the corridors.
The whole event is so brief that he’s still trying to figure out what the hell happened when he all but crashes into yet another person, letting go of his briefcase for good measure.
“Goddammit, when has this floor become a fucking freeway without anyone notifying me?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the person says, and all of a sudden his anger is muted by the familiar vibrations of his voice. “But I was actually hoping to catch you.”
A hand enters his field of vision, offering his briefcase back, and he raises his eyes as he reaches for it. Hesitantly, his fingers make contact with those of the man, who smiles at him as if he’s just won the shiniest cup on the shelf. A strange shivers runs up his arm, making his skin buzz on its way, as he hears:
“Doctor Rosenfield, I presume?”
He wants to say that please, ‘Doctor Rosenfield’ was his psychiatrist, or any such jibe he might normally use in this situation. But he doesn’t quite manage. There's something in that smile gagging him.
Diane was right, as always. It’s easy to smirk at that face while letting a friendly light reach his eyes. It’s easy to grab his other hand and shake it without the irony he often infuses the gesture with.
It’s certainly easy to lose oneself by looking at Dale Cooper, and as he finally lets go of that hand, he can only wonder if he’s ever going back.