Maudlin

"Alex, darling, tell me again just why you're *in* this fuckhole?"

Beloved slides on a foul mouth the second she walks into my house. That and she takes off her jacket and her pantyhose, so she's sitting on the only clean chair in the house with legs splayed wide, hungrily eyeing my cigarettes. In fact, she's lit one up, and now she's stalking around the place, looking for vodka, and she's so intent on misbehaving, so intent on being unCatholic that I haven't told her that I don't use vodka on the job. I don't think that I'll ever break her heart by telling her that I'm go to Holy Heart of the Savior every Sunday.

Scully told me once that she went to a Holy Heart from first through fifth grade, and she went to Mass every week. I go mainly because my mark goes, but lately, I've gone once or twice just because. The atmosphere, the candles, everything, it reminds me of the one my parents used to attend.

Of course I'm aware of the differences, but I never was very much theologically incline. A church is a church is a place to be with God.

Of course I believe in God. Don't you?

"Did you hear me?"

Her voice was a little on the shrill side, so I pay attention. Mulder ignores her even when she gets yappy: he's a braver man than I am.

"Sorry. What'd you say?"

She yawns, flipps her hair (always a danger sign), then struts up to me and wiggles her butt at me. When I ignore that, she hops into my lap, and when I turn back to my book, she snarls.

"What *are* you reading?"

"Akhamatova."

She takes the book from me.

/A choir of angels sang the praises of that momentous hour,
And the heavens dissolved in fire.
To his Father He said: "Why hast Thou forsaken me!"
And to his Mother: "Oh, do not weep for Me. . .

Mary Magdalene beat her breast and sob-- /

"I never knew you were so sentimental." She sniffs, tosses the book on the floor, where it lands pages down, and then she winds her legs around my waist and her hands around my neck. "I'm surprised, Alyosha, this is such juvenile, maudlin stuff."

"And you're one to talk, Johanna Ingsley?"

Technically, I'm not supposed to know her reading choices, and I'm a little surprised that she still reads that--the last time I went through her bookshelf was years ago.

She doesn't blink. "That's trashy, not maudlin."

"Same difference."

"I hate when people say that. It makes no sense, it's so imprecise." She nibbles on my ear. "And there is too a difference."

She sounds petulant, whiny, even more so than usual, so I dump her off my lap. "There's some vodka behind the kitchen counter, and maybe a couple glasses too. I'll talk to you again when you're decent."

The little girl pouts again, then stalks off to the kitchen in a reasonable approximation of a licentious sex kitten. Apparently, this is going to be one of those days where she was tolerable only when drunk or in the middle of an orgasm (or some reasonable combination thereof), and I had no intention of having the latter, so it would have to be the former.

There are clink, sounds of gulping, then disgusted snarling. "Absolut." Her voice is vicious, bitter, and I smile nto my book. Better already.

She comes out with two glasses and a quarter-empty bottle of Absolut. "So, Alex, tell me why you're in this wretched cockroach-infested hellhole, and, more importantly, why you're buying such *shitty* stuff."

Same words, same attitude, but different level of bitchiness. There's even a little humor in her voice, and she's got a little smile as she set the glasses down on the card table. With a vast sigh, she drops onto the couch next to me, hands me a half-full glass.

I take a small (very small) sip, so as not to insult her, and then, I set it back on the table. She smiles, and, in turn, takes a rather large slurp of hers.

"Don't tell me you're going to drive."

Laughter. "The Bureau only lets us rent one car at a time, and Mulder's got it today. Can you imagine me going up to him and saying, 'I've got an appointment with Alex Krycek--you know, your former partner? yeah, the one who shot your father--well, I'm meeting him for some hot monkey sex today. Drop me off in front of the crack house, will you, baby?'"

"I thought I was the only one you called baby."

"Oh, so are we jealous now?"

"No."

"My hopes are crushed." For a second, she really looks it, and then her face falls apart, and I realize that this is more outrageous vamping on her part. When she's done her giggling fit, I say:

"I'm sorry."

She gives a soft, contrary little sigh and settles back into the folding chair, legs crossed ever so demurely. "Since when have you *ever* sorry, Mr. Krycek?"

"Contrary to popular rumor, I do have a conscience." I look up from Akhamatova. "Further contrary to popular rumor, you don't."

"I do too!" she says, theatrically outraged. When I say nothing, she amends her outrage to "OK, so it's a tiny, little wizened one, OK?"

"Remember: those are your words not mine."

"Asshole." She sets her glass on the table and leans backwards; I wonder how drunk she is right now. "You know, I should get going. Mulder's due back at four. Wouldn't want the master coming home to an empty hotel bed, right?"

Silence as she puts on her clothing, smoothes her skirt, hair and composure back into her place, and then she snaps open a compact and reapplies the makeup that's been mussed, and when everything's pristine, rearranged, she stands up with a click of her heels on the cement floor, the very image of well-groomed professional woman and the very image of the crisp hell-raiser she so desperately wants Mulder to think she is.

It's surprising, really. You wouldn't think that our lady of the physics major and business suits is much of an actress, but, apparently, she did a few musicals back in her high school days. Rodgers and Hammerstein, a Gershwin or two, working her way up to major roles from stage crew. Never had a starring role, but then--

I've heard her sing too. She's got a warm, strong alto, albiet one that cracks whenever she tries something ambitious. When that happens, she laughs at herself for a while, then turns to me for a kiss and a glass of vodka. Once, though, I woke up to her purring an aria in my ear--some sweet little ditty about death and revenge upon a faithless lover. When I asked where it was from, she laughed, tapped me on the chest, and murmured.

/das mass der leiden steht bei dir/

Now, though, she's calmly considering me from the doorway. Her arms are crossed.

"You know, on the way here, I went by a Barnes and Nobles--think they have any Akhamatova?"

I frown. "Probably. She's a fairly popular author."

"I think Mulder'd like her stuff, maudlin bastard that he is. See you sometime soon?"

"Of course."

She locks the door on her way out, and I haven't the heart to tell her that this book was a present from Mulder on his last visit here.

Author's Notes: The poetry that Alex quotes is by Anna Akhamatova, and the translation is from Judith Hemschemeyer's 'The Complete Poems of Anna Akhamatova'. The little snatchlet of opera Scully delivers is Florestan's aria from Fidelio; Colleen Knix's translation is available at http://www.aria-database.com/translations/fidelio11_gott.txt