( Spoilers for Walk On By; language caution)

I'm sorry to say that things ain't been cooking in my kitchen for the last few weeks, ever since Easter when I went to church with Michael. I know you hoped that it was all going to lead somewhere, that Michael would turn to me in that church and see me standing there beside him lit up by this shaft of golden light. He'd turn to me, his beautiful eyes would widen and like a bolt out of the heavens: Instant love. Then he would drop to his knees and say something like: " Oh, my darling, we've wasted so much time. Come home with me. Move in with me. I don't care what anyone at Section says. I must have you for my very own. "

Yeah, right, and as Wayne would say to Garth: And now monkeys are going to fly out of my butt.

As it happened he was called back in that afternoon and we didn't even get time to talk or anything, not that he mentioned us spending the rest of the day together. And it isn't that he hasn't been nice to me, he's just been scarce. He's been in Italy, something to do with Red Cell and I wasn't sent along with him. I keep imagining what he's doing there. I'm sure he's not eating pasta with some sloe-eyed Italian girl, but I can't help but wonder just what he's up to. I've been working a lot at Section with Birkoff and the boredom is about to drive me nuts. I have given him a new name: World Book because he figures that he knows everything.

I've been reading a lot. I went to the bookstore and looked at some self-help books. Interesting titles: Reclaim your Inner Child. Toxic Friends/True Friends. Excavate the Self. Stop Being a Victim. How To Get What You Want & Want What You Have. Finding Yourself & The Love You Want and this one called The Ten Second Kiss. The fly leaf said it will teach you how to make someone love you and stay in love with you.

There were all sorts of good hints, like my favourite. " In the car, every time you and the person you want to love you stop at a stop sign, lean over and give him a ten second kiss. The premise, I assume, being that he will become like Pavlov's dog and associate the kiss with the stop sign, so every time he's at a stop sign he'll think of you with abject longing. If you see a school bus, lean over and give your lover. . .You get the picture. You keep building up to longer and longer kisses. Where does that lead to? Blow jobs. I foresee a lot of car accidents.

I should try that with Michael. Uh, well, not the you know... the kisses. Oh, look Michael, a bomb! Give me a kiss. Is that a member of Red Cell coming at us with sub-machine gun? Lean over here and plant one on me, baby. I'm not even going to discuss the book called Nine Fantasies That Will Ruin Your Life.

Sigh. I already know the fantasy that ruined my life. I think it was the one that involved a truck full of chocolate sauce and a giant spray bomb of whipped cream Never mind. It's too kinky and yes, it involved this certain man with greenish-blue eyes.

I was kidding there. My biggest fantasy pertaining to Michael is this one where he just comes up to me, smooths my hair back from my face with those lovely strong hands of his and says he loves me. Not very kinky and not very possible either.

I just stood there in the bookstore yesterday looking at the books and thinking that if it was as easy to change your life as these people say it is there wouldn't be any fat farms or looney bins or kids shooting up high schools. Gee, I'll bet those poor parents are sorry they didn't get Johnny a copy of Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul before he knocked off the liquor store and knocked up Mary Sue. Too bad people rely on books to tell them how to do everything the correct way nowadays. What happened to good old instincts and common sense?

If I ever excavate my life and find my inner child cowering in a dark corner without any chicken soup I'm just going to kick her ass for being such a brat and a jerk half the time and not learning from all her stupid mistakes and nights of heartache.

************

I'm back. And miserable. Wednesday I got the shock of my life. Kind of erased all these thoughts I had about making myself into a highly effective person. I saw Jamie Parker.

I was floored. What in the hell was Jamie Parker doing in Section? A field op recruit, no less. I hadn't seen him since I left home at seventeen. And he was part of the reason. I stared at him. I was dressed in a suit and shoes that would have paid my mother's rent for six months. It didn't matter a lick. I was that girl again. The girl I was. Trash dressed up to look pretty.

This is where I get to tell you all about my history. Or shall we call that herstory. It's sketchy at best. My mother's name was Bobbie. Roberta Jean Wirth, born somewhere in upstate New York in 1951, though I'm sure she has shaved a few years off that date when she thought it was convenient.

She came from a middle class family. Her mother owned her own hairdressing shop and her dad was a manager for a grocery chain. Tom and Ethel Wirth, the dear departed grandparents I never met. I gather that Tom knew a lot about cucumbers and dick all about raising a family. I did see Tom once. I was nine years old and sitting in the back of a cab and he was screaming at Bobbie to get off his property. He didn't want to entertain visitors at that moment, I guess.

Bobbie was, as she described it, finding herself when she was young. Without the aid, I assume, of one of the above-mentioned self-help books. She told me she was at Woodstock. (I don't know if I believe her, Bobbie told me a lot of bull-shit growing up) and she met this young man from Germany who had it in his head to move to Australia. He asked Bobbie to go with him. He didn't speak much English, but I gather that he spoke the universal language quite well. He was cute, six and a half feet tall and blonde and had the most gorgeous blue eyes, and she thought, what the hell. So she ran off to Sydney with him. They bummed on the beach for a few months until she told him that she was pregnant and then he took off for Germany and she never saw him again. That's the story anyway. Bobbie just said he was a piece of shit and didn't feel like talking about him. I used to make up names for good old dad; Hermann Shit. Hans Shit. Adolf Shit.

So I was born. Nikita Dawn Wirth. Beloved daughter of a hippie hooker and a piece of shit. I'd like to see that birth announcement. My mother called me Nikita because she thought it was a cool name. I guess I ought to be thankful I wasn't called Wind Dancer or Treetop or Moonbeam. We stayed in Australia until I was almost nine. That's where I picked up the accent. No one, not even Mel Gibson, ever loses the Australian accent. Trust me. Anyway she worked as a cook in the mining camps or as a chamber maid. She retained her taste for loser men and gained a taste for booze. When I was around eight she got sober for a while and scraped up enough money to move back to New York because she was afraid of getting skin cancer from the Australian sun. She didn't worry too much about the three packs a day she smoked. Bobbie never was the sharpest knife in the drawer. Or so I thought.

Her father and mother wanted nothing to do with her. I remember we were at this really low point in those days. I was scared and I hated the city and the cold after living in Australia all of my life. I just wanted to go home and take my pail and shovel to the beach. I wanted to be with my friends. I remember I missed my favourite show. Skippy. It was about, you guessed it, an orphan kangaroo. Bobbie didn't even have a television set in America.

Bobbie was prostituting herself and drinking again and we were living in this one room suite over a garage. It was the dead of winter and Bobbie couldn't make the rent. Maybe it was because the guy who owned the place had the hots for her and the wife caught them. We got kicked out and wound up staying for a night in this back alley behind a Billiard and dance hall. There was some junk back there, an old car seat and we had some blankets. Bobbie left me there and she'd go into the dance hall and try to rustle up some business. I just sat there and froze and hoped no one would come back and kill me. She brought me back a hamburger. I didn't really like them. I wanted a hot meat pie or fish and chips but I was starved so I ate it anyway. Nothing ever tasted so good.

It was at that point when I stared really hating Bobbie. I don't know if she was trying her best or not. She was fairly bright and quite good looking. I figured that she could have looked after me better. I didn't give her much sympathy and sometimes I was downright bratty. I'm sure there were a lot of bad things she did that she just couldn't help and the fact that her father renounced her couldn't have been a treat either. I just wished that she could be more like the mothers of the other girls at school and less like Bobbie Wirth. Or Mrs. Wirthless as I called her when I was twelve and a real smart ass.

And I was a smart ass. That's why I fell in with the gang and drugs. And Jamie Parker.

I never liked Jamie Parker. To the girls I hung with, he was a dream. Very American. Very tall, blonde and blue eyed, and with those chipmunk cheeks some of the girls would compare him to the latest teen idol. He looked like he could play varsity ball. He looked like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. He was a small time pusher and a bully. He was into fighting, B&E, car theft and shaking down other kids for money and their hundred dollar Nikes when I knew him. Just before I left town he'd started into more hard-core crime like knocking off liquor stores.

I wasn't scared of Jamie, not really. I just didn't care much about him one way or the other. He was a means to an end. I used him to get what I wanted. He had a power that I, a mere girl, didn't have. He got me dope when I wanted it. It was a good deal because I never had to sleep with anyone to get it. I just acted as lookout for some of his B&Es. Sometimes I would help sell the things he stole, going into bars and pawn shops. I didn't mess with him. He didn't mess with me. Our mothers were pals. They'd booze it up together on most nights watching Dallas and Knott's Landing. They entertained this dream of getting me and Jamie married, sort of joining the dynasty.

I don't like thinking about what I was then. I don't like thinking about the dope and the stealing. I used to tell myself I ended up in the streets because of Jamie Parker and his gang. I was with them when he decided to break into this drugstore on Selman Street. It was an armed robbery. I remember them fighting like rats over a piece of garbage for the stolen narcotics and the cigarettes. It made me feel sick.

I got out of there, went home and packed my things. I ran away. I ended up running as far as I could and living out of dumpsters for six months until Section found me. I know now that I was mostly to blame for the trouble I got into. I had a thick head and I didn't need anyone telling me what to do. Back then I told myself that I really liked how the pot and the pills made me feel. Like I could forget everything. Like I was somebody else, not Roberta Wirth's unwanted brat. Thank God I wasn't into the heavier stuff. And that was no thanks to Jamie. If he'd have heard I wanted heroin he'd have gotten it for me.

I just looked at Jamie Parker right there in the hallway with the other recruits and felt sick. Jamie Parker with his handsome face, his half a brain and his bad attitude right here at Section. Well, if I'm here, I guess a prick like Jamie Parker could be here, too. God only knows why they'd want the two of us small time hoods when they could have the geniuses like Ben and Birkoff and the fallen angels like Michael. But I guess Jamie and I are scum and scum is expendable.

And that's how I felt at that moment. Right back to being scum. I hoped Michael wouldn't find out that we knew each other. He'd probably assume that Jamie was a former boyfriend. I know it's unreasonable to feel anxious because Michael knows all about my past. But what he knows is only on paper and I could pretend. I could pretend that I was intact, a regular Pearl Pureheart. I can't pretend now. It was all back staring me in the face like a turned over can of garbage. Why had I ever set my sights on Michael? Despite that he screwed up as an idealistic youth and set off a bomb in one act of defiance and despair, he was a different class than me. Girls like me don't get the Michaels of this world. We have to content ourselves with the Jamies.

Jamie deserved the punch in the stomach I gave him. It's the only thing that a guy like Jamie understands. On the mean streets it's all about control. You grab them by the balls first, and then when you have their attention, you say your piece. At least that's what I learned. Jamie still had that smug look on his face even after I hit him twice. He knew he'd screwed up out there on the mission but he could care less. He didn't give a damn about the lives of his comrades, the innocents out there or the hostage. That infuriated me.

He was late to the meeting I arranged with him. He came in with that cocky grin thinking I'd arranged some clandestine nooky. He figured he could saunter in and try to sweet talk me.

And then I remembered. I was just like that once. Only I didn't have any balls for Michael to grab. I just thought I did. He put me on my back with one flip the first time I lipped him. I didn't have the nerve to try it again. I just lay there on my back thinking that he was the most awesome man I had ever seen. And then, perverse girl that I am, I started thinking of more ways to piss him off. After all negative attention is better than no attention. He was extremely patient. A saint. Michael is naturally a lot more in control of his emotions than I am. I admit that.

All I knew was that Jamie was a screw up. He doesn't belong at Section. Yet I didn't want to see him dead or see him take the lives of my team or any innocents. I also didn't want him to open his mouth about knowing me. When he mentioned my mother I knew he had something to hold over my head. I also knew he wouldn't hesitate to use it.

He told me he knew that she was looking for me, that she didn't believe I was dead. I knew it was true. My heart sort of tumbled into my gut. Bobbie is like a pit bull when she gets her mind on something. I couldn't believe it when Jamie told me she was in Oak Bluffs. She'd been living there for more than a year, moved there while he was still in prison. It seemed his mother had told him all about Bobbie's quest to find out the truth about me when she was visiting him in jail, just before he "died". Bobbie didn't believe that I would ever commit suicide. She had stopped drinking the day after I left. I guess my leaving was like an epiphany. I reckon I'm glad I could do that much for her. She had inherited recently from my grandfather's estate. It seemed the old man wasn't such an SOB after all and Bobbie was using the proceeds from the sale of his house to find me while she did bookkeeping at home for one of Oak Bluff's small businesses.

I couldn't believe it. Bobbie expending that much energy on finding out what had happened to me when she couldn't have lifted a finger to help me when I really needed her as a kid. Why didn't she just give up? What the hell did she care now? It was too damned late for Bobbie to try to be a mother to me now.

I was looking for the detective Bobbie had hired in Sections files when Michael came up to me. I had to switch to another file but fast. The man is like a tawny, mountain cat, sneaking up on me all the time. The radar kicked in early and I realised that he was there even before he reached the desk. I am always aware of his presence. When he is near, it is as if he fills me. Takes over my body, fills the emptiness with his essence. It is a very strange thing. My cells feel as if they are full of electricity, ready to burst. Other times it is just an acute awareness, an answering shiver to his presence that goes right through the core of me. Just because he is close.

I just kept typing. I think he knew something was up with me because of the tone of his voice when he asked me what I was doing. When I asked him for some down time he said in that very aloof Michael way," Do you want to spend the day together?"

I think I looked cool. I hope I did. But inside I was a mess. I was ready to jump off my chair and do this wild, happy dance right through Section. I wanted to twirl and shout to the sky: He asked me out! He asked me out! And then I thought, damn. My mother. I have to find my mother. Thanks a lot, Bobbie. You just screwed me again.

I had to really compose myself. It was so hard to tell him that I had other plans. I added that some other time thing, just hoping he would ask me again. What else could I do? Grab his hand and write a reminder on it in wash-proof ink? Ask again. This did not mean defeat, Michael. Ask again. I really am stinking busy this time. I'm not shooting you down. I really, really, really want to go anywhere with you. Ask again. Soon. ASAP.

He looked surprised, a little hurt. I'm sure he is never abjectly turned down when he asks someone to " spend the day" with him. Am I the only one who has ever done it, turned him down? Am I the only unlucky fool?

What would he mean by spending the day? A cozy picnic with good wine and French bread? A drive through the country? A walk by the lake? Then later a delicious dinner and a chat by the fire. I could see his face, his flushed cheeks, his eyes two astonishing pools of pure jade. I could see myself reaching over and pushing that little lock of hair that keeps falling over his gorgeous ear back in place. I saw myself kissing the wine from those elegant, firm lips, sliding my hands down his warm, smooth bare chest. Oh, jeez, Bobbie. Why did you have to do this to me?

I guess I've said no to him one too many times. I think this will be the straw that breaks the camel's back. There's always been a reason. He always asks me to do something with him when I can't or when I'm pissed at him. His timing stinks. Why can't he call when I'm spending a Saturday night doing laundry? Well, this time it floored me. I didn't have a clue that he'd ask.

He did look dejected. He just walked away without a word. That was amazing. Michael, the man of steel. Michael, the terminator. The slayer of women's hearts from Paris to Timbuktu. Disheartened because I said no to him. I sat there and couldn't help feeling a little smug at first because he'd actually come to me and then I just wanted to lay my head down on the keyboard and cry. I know how he is. He'll never ask again. I just know it. Or if he does it'll be the weekend I'm having oral surgery.

I spent the next few days finding the detective she'd hired, learning just what Bobby Wirth was capable of sober and straight. She was one smart and tenacious lady. And if she didn't watch herself, one dead lady. She would compromise Section and she'd be terminated. As a security risk. No ifs, ands or buts. I might not have liked her much in the past but I didn't want to see her dead.

I watched her through the binoculars. She had changed. She was not the Bobbie I remembered. She looked so much older. She wasn't wearing very much makeup. The perm and the eighties clothes were gone. No spike heels and no spandex. She looked like a normal person in her jeans and loose cotton sweater. Not at all how I had imagined she might. Her rented apartment seemed clean and maybe a little shabby. I could see pictures of me as a child all over one wall. I couldn't believe that she had saved all that stuff. She had two cats and a pair of love birds. She kept going to the cage and talking with them. I could hear their deafening chirps from where I stood.

Bobbie. The woman who could never bother to look after anyone, even herself, had living things around her. Plants that thrived and cats who rubbed their faces affectionately on her gaunt cheek. When I got back to the car I was too shaky to drive. I just sat there, stunned. Then I leaned my cheek against the steering wheel and cried. Cried for poor Bobbie and her cats and love birds and myself, the girl who had finally gotten a mother who wanted her. Too bloody late. The story of my life.

I had to go to Michael. I had done all I could on my own. He was in his office with an operative called Hughes. I know I barged in. He was a little taken aback at first. He told me that he was busy. I was not taking no for an answer. I know that my eyes were red, my face swollen from crying. God, I am a mess when I cry. I don't cry prettily. I think he could see how close I was to losing it. I was overwhelmed with guilt and shame. I needed him so much. I knew he could feel it.

I was surprised when he asked me what I wanted him to do. I thought at first that he was being sarcastic. I asked him if he could speak to Bobbie, find out how close she was. He said he would do it, as simple as that. Risk it all for me again. Like he has done so many times before. I almost cried again with relief.

I went to bed that night, hoping that he could talk her out of it, hoping that she wasn't that close to the truth. When I slept I dreamed of her, holding me, kissing my forehead, telling me I was her sweetie, her big girl. She had done things like that for me. I know she did, and yet I only remember the bad things. The times she was drunk, the way she ignored me, chose to be with men instead of me. Did she love me? Had she loved me the best she was capable of? As much as her vices would allow?

I cried when Michael told me that Bobby was too close. I knew then that her death was written in stone. The tears were making me blind, choking my throat. I asked Michael if I could see her just once before she died. Please, Michael. Please. I couldn't stop saying it. He smiled at me and told me that he had liked her. She seemed to be a good hearted woman. He took my hand and led me to a chair and said that he would do what he could, that I could depend on him. That made me cry harder. Then he took my hand and held it tightly while I cried. I wanted to ask him to hold me but I didn't know how to do it. He was already giving me more than I deserved.

He told me after he took me off the mission that I would have to take her place. I don't know if that was what I wanted to hear, but in a way I was willing. It seemed a better thing. I told him that. I was willing to die for Bobbie. I really was. What sort of a life did I have anyway?

He just looked at me, with this strange gleam in his eyes. I thought for a minute that he was going to kiss me, say goodbye. We were in the car when he explained his plan. I could only stare at him in shock. He would do that for me? He must have been up all night arranging it. He knew that I would agree. It was already a go on the hospital. Then he grinned and said I looked pale and drawn enough that I wouldn't need any makeup. I looked quite brain dead already. I just stuck my tongue out at him. I have never loved him more than at that minute.

This part is hard to write. I was shaking as he and the nurse he had hired set me up in the ICU. He took my face in his hands, looked at me steadily and calmly with those disarming green eyes of his and told me that I had to take a deep breath and calm down. I was supposed to be brain dead. I had to look that way, or Bobby wouldn't be fooled. Her life depended on it. I didn't want to fool her. I wanted to see her, to talk to her, to ask her a million questions and get some answers. I just nodded and steeled myself not to feel. I tried to think of the times she'd left me alone, all the times I hated her as a teenager, all the rage and the pain of being unloved.

And then she was there. She was Bobbie and yet she was not. I remembered that somewhat deep voice, a lovely voice. She was calling me sweetie and asking what they had done to me. She was saying that she was sorry for everything. Her breath smelled like mint toothpaste, her scent clean, not the stale odour of cigarettes, cheap perfume, sex and booze I remembered. Her hands were more gentle than I could ever remember as she brushed the hair back from my face. She kissed my forehead, pressing her lips against my hair. She asked me to forgive her, told me how sorry she was, asked if I could look inside myself and find one good memory to take with me.

I didn't have to think hard. I was nine. We had been sitting behind the dance hall eating those cold, overcooked, delicious hamburgers and I was thinking how glad I was that she had come back for me. She grinned at me. So pretty with her hazel eyes and her wide mouth. I wished that I looked like her and not the man who had been my father. The man she hated. " That's a waltz," she said as the music started again. " Want me to show you how?"

She picked me up and held me. I was too big to be carried, too tall for my age. She didn't mind. She whirled me around. I buried my nose in the thick fake fur of her coat. She was warm and alive and she was my mommy and for that minute I loved her more than anyone else in the world. She whispered in my ear, " No matter what I do baby, I love you. I always wanted you."

Maybe I didn't really hear that. It doesn't matter. She was that now. She was my mommy and I knew that she loved me. I knew I would never see her again. Just knowing that she wanted me would have to be enough. I wanted so badly to whisper the words to her. I wanted to tell her how much I needed her now. How much I would miss her.

Before I knew it she was gone. Michael was walking her back to her car, seeing that she went off safely. I stayed there for a long time and cried. The nurse Michael had hired bustled back in and told me we would have to hurry. She got me unhooked from the machines and I dressed. Michael was waiting for me at the car. He asked if I was okay. I just nodded, unable to tell him, unable to form the words. We drove back in silence.

He gave me a few days off. I felt funny about it. I didn't know what I would say to him. How do you thank someone like him? He is a miracle to me. A never ceasing miracle. Sometimes I think that he is my only reason for being alive.

I went up to him and said something totally lame and inadequate. I said: That's the nicest thing you have ever done for me, Michael. Knowing that he has done other things that I can never, ever pay back. Nice. I called him nice. It doesn't describe laying down his life for another. For me and my mom. It was an act of supreme sacrifice. I knew that he had done it selflessly and that he would do it again. As I would do for him.

I think this week I have learned a lot about giving. About acceptance and grieving, about character and strength. From Michael and Mom. I am calling her that now, not Bobbie. Maybe I have grown up enough this week to toss aside this mantle of hurt that I chose to wear. The burden of the past is diminishing and I feel almost light, unencumbered. I didn't need the self-help books after all.

I turned back after I said those inadequate words to him. He said nothing. Michael knows, unlike me, that words are not necessary. He was still staring at me, waiting. I turned back and pressed my lips to his. Just briefly. Not a patch on what I wanted.

He was surprised. He trembled a little. His breath caught in his throat in a small sigh and when I left and looked back at him he was staring at me, his lips parted slightly. I looked through the window at him, wishing I could go back, wishing, hoping that he would follow me out and take me in his arms.

I went back to Oak Bluffs yesterday. My mother has gone. The plants and the birds and the cats are gone from the window and with her back to New York. The curtains were drawn. Michael went to see her last week with the death certificate and a letter that I pretended to write from prison. I told her that I loved her. It was the truth.

Michael told me that she was leaving and that I must never try to find her again. I wanted to come here once, though. To see if any of her spirit remains. To see if she left anything of herself behind. All that remains is me. Nikita Dawn Wirth, her daughter.

There was something under my door this morning. It was an envelope containing a picture. Me and my mom one Christmas morning. Mom looks hung over but happy. I'm holding a Barbie doll and laughing. Michael must have gotten it from her. I pressed the old cracked photo to my heart and smiled.

" Thank you, dear Michael," I whispered. " Thank you, dearest friend."

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