*

Value of Pie

*

Mulder had just slid into the booth, looked up, and caught sight of him. One look and years dropped away. Amazing. He hadn't changed at all. Same clean, apple-pie face, blandly handsome. Looking at him a stranger, a civilian, might think here was a man sane down to his toes, unimaginative. A bit sharp, sure--not flashy, but crisp, dapper. Banker? Lawyer? Hard to say. Caught in profile, chin jutting, his gaze dropped to gravely consider a newspaper, he might have been a young mogul on his way up, a man to the dollar born. To Mulder, he would have been recognizable as one of the bureau boys even had they been strangers. He had the walk, the scoping eye, the impassive demeanor of their kind.

Underneath, of course, was lunacy.

The man caught his eye, raised a waving hand, and flashed a smile so bright that it bounced off the diner mirrors and caused heads to turn.

Mulder grinned with only slightly more reserve, and sketched a little wave. By the time Cooper reached the table, the contagious exuberance had caught hold of Mulder and he was laughing.

Cooper reached the table and his smile dropped in wattage to a quirky lopside of the lips that gave him the characteristic appearance of breathlessness. "Get up," he said, without preamble.

Mulder hesitated, then stood. Within seconds, he was enfolded in a hugely unrestrained hug that made his shoulders hunch with instinctive defense. For a moment his arms moved awkwardly, unsure where to rest. Cooper was welded to him rather like a staticky sock. Aware of the spectacle they made, there was a brief hesitation before Mulder succumbed, but when he did it was utter. He was already fighting down his dick, he noticed, feeling its roused interest nudge Cooper's left hip. Jesus. Time *had* collapsed.

"Uh, okay, Dale. . .down, boy." He couldn't stop laughing. When they unglued themselves Cooper's face was bright, his smile back with manic wideness. His eyes pinned Mulder's, mad lances of vision Quixote would have envied.

"Damn, it's good to see you." Cooper straightened, and it was as if he shook his body out like a wrinkled suit, out of intimacy and into a show of bluff, straight manliness. He stepped back, still grinning, stuck out his hand and obliged Mulder to shake it with broad strokes. But it was no show, no tailored facade. Just Dale Cooper, a true-blue flag-waving, American eccentric, paradoxical down to his milk-bred bones and occasionally painted toenails.

"Good to see you," Mulder said, feeling already one step behind the other man. They sat down, sliding their bodies into the booth. "How was Tibet?"

Cooper, who had been opening his menu, closed it with deliberation and gave Mulder a fullness of attention that suggested he would not have slept nights until this question had been asked and answered, and that it was a question no one else could have uttered, completely original. By God, how had Mulder thought to ask it!

"Mulder, I stood on the top of the Red Palace on the Red mountain in Lhasa, which is the capitol of Tibet and the seat of the current Communist Chinese government, and I looked out over the city and do you know what I did?" His eyes burned brightly, centering on Mulder as if he were the conduit through which ideal truth would be comprehended.

"Uh, no. What did you do?"

"I *breathed*." Cooper smiled proudly for an endless moment, then dropped his gaze from Mulder--it was as if a high-tension cable snapped--and returned his attention to his menu, opening it with lively interest. "What do they serve here. Ah, eggs. American food. God, I've missed this."

The waitress arrived. Cooper looked up and before she could speak he had committed her nametag to memory and was paralyzing her with fascination, snake to bird. "Betty, I've been traveling in foreign lands. I have not stepped foot on American soil in four years." He beamed at her, then at Mulder, then back at Betty, who stood gaping. "I'll have two eggs, over hard--hard as streets of New York City on a poor man's shoe--and two strips of bacon. Incinerate them. Cremate them, Betty. Grapefruit juice--does it come in cans?"

The abrupt question took Betty off guard, but she rallied. "Uh--cartons."

Cooper gave this a lot of thought. "Betty," he finally decided. "I'll have that grapefruit juice. It's not freshly squeezed, but that's okay." Forbearance was emphatic in his voice. "And a coffee--black." He turned a zealous gaze on Mulder. "How's the coffee here, Mulder?"

Mulder glanced briefly and apologetically at Betty. "It's not Starbucks, Dale."

"That's a point in its favor, Mulder." His eyes admonished his old friend. "Betty, I'll have the coffee."

Betty nodded, realized after a stretching silence that he was through ordering, and took his menu with the care of one accepting a religious relic, then turned and received Mulder's much more mundane order.

When she'd gone, Mulder leaned back in his seat. Before he could speak, Cooper--who while Mulder was ordering had examined the tabletop, inspected the napkin dispenser, given far too much attention to his spoon (bowl side only), and scanned the street outside as if for a signal--gathered himself and said, "I lived in a lamasery. Do you know what that is?" His voice held urgency, and his eyes were once again dismayingly direct, but it was probably just another question.

"A monastery for lamas?" Mulder guessed.

Cooper looked bowled over, astonished with delight. "That's it exactly! I was following the path of study to enlightenment, Mulder. I was attempting to liberate myself from the delusions of the mind while pursuing the way of the Bodhisattva. I was seeking detachment and the embracement of emptiness."

"Did you find it?" Mulder asked curiously, with the gentleness he always felt when presented with Cooper's frank revelations, his ingenuous candor.

"No, my friend, I did not." Cooper seemed to suddenly lose steam. He stared down at his clasped hands and then out the window almost absently.

Mulder wasn't exactly surprised. The man spoke with the passion of one convert attempting to reach another, but Cooper's natural energy rarely cohered into anything lasting, from what Mulder had ever been able to tell. He was fascinated by everything the world presented, attached to nothing--it would seem natural, perhaps, that he would gravitate to Buddhism. And somehow just as likely that he would not stay planted there.

"You see me here, a man returned from his journeying. I have come home, Mulder. I stepped off the plane onto this good old American soil and my first thought was--" He paused, grinned with all teeth. "Where can I get a good ballpark frank?"

Mulder laughed with him.

"And a piece of cherry pie!" exclaimed Cooper. "I wonder if they have pie here?" His head turned sharply, and he gave the far counter an open, boyishly hopeful perusal.

"I'm not sure they do. It's not exactly four star."

"Well. . .few things are, my friend." Focus returned to Mulder. Eyes like those of a darkly bright bird. "You are though. You know--I think I've missed you."

"You sound so astonished," Mulder said dryly.

"I think I can speak honestly when I say that I have not thought of you in four years. Not once."

"Thanks."

"I thought of very little from my life, when I was there. I think I was close, Mulder. I think I was nearly there. I felt things that no man should feel, and then I felt nothing. For a long time I. . .I felt nothing."

Mulder could not help the small indentation of frown that brushed across his brow. It felt like a thumbprint of ash, but was merely his uneasy concern for his old friend. He didn't know what to say. With Cooper, he often felt at a loss.

They ate. They talked of Tibet and America. Cooper quizzed Mulder erratically and with haphazard pointedness on the events of the last four years. Things amazed him. He demanded--for his own unfathomable reasons--to know who had won best actor at last year's Academy Awards, marveled at talk of cloning, sniped briefly but cynically about the residential history of the White House during talk of Clinton, expressed flat-out incredulity at the O.J. Simpson trial ("My god, how our idols do fall"), and had not known Princess Diana had died, though he had heard about Mother Teresa. He seemed equally taken by this news as he had been to learn of O.J.'s likely murderousness. He looked bemused at all of it, and mildly depressed.

"Mulder, I begin to question the wisdom of my return."

They finished their meal, they paid and left ("Thank you, Betty, I appreciate your conscientious attention in refilling my coffee cup"). Outside, they stood on the sidewalk and Cooper examined the street with his quick, birdlike eye, as if judging its novelty, comparing it to memories. Mulder, who never let himself be in too much a hurry with his old friend, waited mildly by until Cooper's gaze slewed back his way. His chin jutted as he grinned, and a lock of dark hair fell into his face.

"Let's go somewhere and fuck, shall we?"

Mulder felt punched, dazed, and happy. He laughed. Cooper grinned zanily. And so they left, and went somewhere and fucked, and some other things happened too, as they always did when Dale Cooper came to town.

*

Good morning.