nightdog_barks | (Reply)

From:

Today was warm compared to recent weather. As for laughing at your version of cold, don't you laugh at our version of hot?
(rubs hands) It's hard to pick just one of your wonderful stories but here goes:

"Do you know where he is?"

"No," Wilson says. "And I don't want to know."

"But if you did know, you'd tell the cops, right?"

Wilson sighs and puts down his pen. Taub doesn't move from his position by the open door.

"We've been through this before," Wilson says.

"You know ... some of his stuff disappeared. From his office."

"Yes," Wilson says. "I heard." House's office is, of course, empty these days. Every day. Word has it Foreman will be occupying it soon.

"His ball," Taub says. "His spare cane. His -- "

"And you're telling me this because ... "

"No reason," Taub says. He shrugs, a quick up-and-down followed by a smile. "I'll just be ... getting back now."

Wilson waits a long time before he slides open his own top desk drawer. A chicken feather, lipstick-red, drifts free. Wilson watches it settle to the floor.

Six months go by. A year.

Wilson gets an engraved card in the mail, a simple announcement hidden beneath a square of tissue paper. On the back a handwritten note --

There are Jews in Minneapolis!

Wilson sets the card aside and goes online to order a wedding present. For the happy couple, he types. Best wishes, Dr. James Wilson. He gazes at the glowing screen for a long moment, then presses Submit.

He wonders if he'll ever find out what happened to House. If one day he'll receive another card in the mail, a picture postcard from somewhere far away, with no name or message, but only Wilson's address, scrawled in that familiar right hand.

Of course he won't.

That shit only happens in the movies.