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Then he left. Like a shadow shifting on the forest's soil as the wind weaves the branches above, Dale Cooper was gone by the end of March, then back, then gone again in the fogs of a rainy April morning. He paid for his hotel room with a joke that made sense in the rarefied, hypnotic air of dawn, like in a dream, and that the concierge could never quite put back together; he then left a generous tip and an uneasy grin to the valet who led him to his car and disappeared on a westbound road. His Dodge Diplomat was never spotted again.
Agent Rosenfield was not allowed near the case. Too personal, his superiors repeated while the trail up North got colder and frayed, too involved.
Too competent, too qualified, he told himself, and shelved that thought at the bottom of a career's worth of doubts and suspicions.
He should have, at least, for comfort and decency, gotten in a car and driven up to that rural eldritch dystopia on personal business, to find closure for and from the other poor unfortunate sods Coop left behind. He never did. Obviously, he was not the only one left grieving. Obviously, it would have taken two blind eyes and a kick in the shin to miss the Sheriff's helpless gaze whenever Dale Cooper was in the room, a drowning man giving up one inch away from the shore. Sheriff Truman had a disarming simplicity etched in his very bones, which meant he was either faring a lot better than Albert, enjoying the perks of a life led with the thoughtlessness of your average dairy cow, or a whole lot worse. Either way, if someone really lives up there in a big cloud in the sky distributing roles to humankind and gave “consoling shoulder to cry on” to Albert Rosenfield of all people, that someone is a nitwit and an incompetent fraud and should be fired. Harry would drag him down, or he would drag Harry down, and they would both drown in this dense oily rage.
So when the case that had kept him in Seattle wrapped up, Albert was ready to pack and scram. Past expensive toiletries, a host of suits, blue silk pajamas and a veritable nest of ties, there wasn't much to collect in his motel room: five boxes of his favorite licorice, fortuitously found in Tacoma while restocking on cigarettes; a monograph on the Bay of Pigs invasion with the laconic handwritten dedication “Food for thought - Dale Cooper”; cufflinks from his father, rarely worn. At the very bottom of his suitcase, pressed against two identical yet mismatched socks, lay a few daydreams, well-worn fantasies that kept him company throughout the past couple of weeks.
Coop often blathered about parallel universes - Coop often blathered about all things under the sun and several which have only been recorded under the influence of heavy hallucinogens, but then again, it was always part of the charm. Albert won't say that desperation has made a convert out of him, but he has to wonder if things may have gone differently elsewhere, if some other Albert had more time, more chances before it all came crashing down. Thing is, he used to think about Sheriff Truman.
It would go like this: he would go back to that detestable hamlet for any old jolly perfunctory reason. To bring updates on a case? Sure, in person, just to spite Bell, Meucci and all that posse. To check on Coop? Story of his life. To move along a masturbatory fantasy with little care for accessory details? That too, on occasion.
Coop himself would be a reassuring presence at the margin of his vision. Albert was aware that it is hardly fair to make a move on the newest crush of your oldest friend, but it is not fair to take your crush's side when your crush has just punched your oldest friend either, so, as the saying goes, them’s the breaks. Fair play for fair play, Coop.
The details of his movements got bogged down in the fog. Albert was in the woods outside Twin Peaks, an abject receptacle of mud, lichens, fungi and the occasional skunk working in concert to make an attempt on his senses, or at least his brogues. Truman was there with him. A singular source of comfort among the trees, sturdier than a fir, and their surroundings would fade away to focus on his hoarse little laugh and on stray sunlight caressing dark curls. Albert would stand by him, or kick back in the passenger's seat of his pickup, and breathe in his presence. Truman was a fixed point, a sturdy pillar of banalities.
Or they would be in his office, back at the station. That place represented its occupant to a cringe-worthy degree and it was good to be surrounded by it like an embrace, all the while staring at that embarrassing “The buck stopped here” plaque, and at Truman, and back at the plaque and back at Truman as the perfect quip slowly formed on his tongue and he savored it in full before letting it loose. And that was the trick, the one sure-fire way he knew of getting his attention, of riling him up like Albert himself was shaken by this stupid attraction. He lashed out, poking at his composed lawman act until he found the crude instinct underneath. It just followed, logically, as these things go (when they do not end up in violence, i.e., always, but he'd learned how to let that thought slide), that when the Sheriff snapped, he shut him up by putting his arms squarely on Albert's shoulders and kissing him. In his daydream, he tasted of coffee and donuts, and resin, and Albert had imagined to run his mouth against that stubble for so long that he could feel his lips go raw. His hands were at once on the coarse texture of the man's goddamn warm, cuddly, purple insult of a jacket, tugging at his shirt's neckline, lost among unruly hair. Auspicably, he was being pushed against something - the desk would do; preferably a tree when outside, for the added image of rough bark clawing at his back. Harry didn't know how to handle him, so he would take his time to guide the oaf into a half-decent kiss.
Albert could get lost in him. His life was a struggle with contradictions, morals and the whole palette of human doubts, but here was this safe, rugged man who elicited a safe, rugged love and channeled a rare sort of peace (for someone who is not, in fact, a dairy cow). So he monologued the depth of his feelings, as these things go, still holding him close, fingers pressed against his bare sides under three layers or more of assorted rustic cloth, and then some feeling of shame eventually caught up with him. The guy had a girlfriend, or the girlfriend had just died, or it felt like betraying Coop, depending on how long this mess of a crush had gone on for. The fantasy was over; Albert Rosenfield kicked back in his chair and felt bad for himself.
Then he left. Dale Cooper was gone in the fogs of a rainy April morning and he wasn't allowed to run after him and the world had the gall to keep spinning. Albert packed his hopes and feelings and left for Philadelphia, eager to meet the next blue rose kid who wouldn't last halfway through their first assignment. With some luck, he'd get to know them long enough to mourn them once they disappeared. Someone had to.
And daydreams went and soured, past their expiration date. Truman was a good man, one of the few, but he was Sheriff in that pastoral hellhole, as deeply rooted in its rotten ground as the mountains and trees themselves, and Albert was not going back there just to cut his stitches and reopen all his wounds. He could not even bear to go back to his fantasies, where his memory of the man would be too gentle and allow him to curl up in an embrace and let go.
And Albert needed to be holding onto his composure, letting his rage condense and crystallize in his legs, his spine, a dense knot in his stomach to keep standing and fighting (if not for Coop, if he wasn't allowed to do that, then in his name along the usual banners of love and justice). One cannot always afford to break down and cry.
During that week, he did not see the signs. This happened partly because he was grieving and his eyes were fixed solely on his desk or on the ground; mostly because, despite Cole's best attempts, his forays into extrasensorial experiences amounted to having developed a keen instinct for telling whenever Dale Cooper had run out of coffee.
On Monday, waiting in a boring line for boring bureaucracy, he saw that someone had forgotten a guide of the Pacific Northwest. It was earmarked on Mount St Helens, its eruption, the stubborn man whose life it took, but Albert did not bother to open it.
On Wednesday, he certainly did not notice that the horoscope for Virgo and Taurus were switched, mistakenly printed one in place of the other.
On Thursday, he heard on the radio about a landslide ruining acres of forest, but other than a drive to donate some money to some ecologist organization or another, which he already had, he wouldn't know what to do with the news.
It is past the deepest hour of a stormy night, nearing the hypnotic quality of dawn, and Albert, who has been lying on his bed all night with barely a wink of sleep, is thinking about an old tale, a joke which almost made sense, once, in a dream, when the doorbell rings.
His steps across the corridor are rare and heavy: he is carving a path, like an astronaut on alien soil when dozens and dozens of corridors contemporary and parallel to the one he is traversing remain empty.
“I can hear you there, Rosenfield,” a deep voice says says, half prayer, half accusation. “You said- you said you love me.”
Albert fumbles the door open and blinks, taking in the sight. Harry S. Truman is waiting outside, shaking and smelling like a wet, drunk dog. Under the unflattering light of the porch, a patch of his jacket stands out, darker and torn where his badge used to be. Albert doesn't want to know how he made it to his doorstep in that state, all the way from Washington; the man crashes in his arms with a sob, resting his big, curly head in the curve of his neck. “You said you love me,” he repeats. “You did.”
He did. Not quite how he meant it back then, but that's life having a sense of humor for you.
“You heard me right the first time, you loutish boor.” Albert holds him and tries to make a physical, spacial sense of this man's presence in his arms, running his hands along the grain of his jacket, unbuttoning a cold, dripping wet shirt which is likewise soaking his pajamas but that's a complaint for another day, brushing his hair in a gruff gesture of reassurance. When he is finally holding him, when he is sure that he's there between his hands, firmly placed on his sides, he props him up against the door and hurriedly finds his lips for a kiss that's half alcohol, half tobacco and has them both recoil. But it's a start.
Two hours later, Harry is asleep on the couch, freshly showered if not yet shaven, wearing a mismatched set of Albert's spare gym slacks and a tank top courtesy of the Bureau. They haven't shared a word, aside from Albert's barked instructions on where to find the shampoo, and exhaustion caught up with his guest as soon as his head hit the pillow. There will be time. Albert isn't leaving his side, caressing his hand in his - the man may be pushing forty, but spread on the couch like this, he looks like a boy, an outcast whose roots weren't as solid as they looked.
“Keep up, Truman, this won't do.” Someone has to be a pillar and a beacon in there and it won't be Coop anymore. It won't always be Albert, either, who is just now feeling tears roll across his face, the first after their lives fell apart.
They are stranded so far away from the best of all possible worlds, but they’ll make do.