Only so many ways one can write "still waiting..."
I've been more or less assuming that Carter wouldn't just disappear, that there'd be some sort of second act coming soon. The idea that this would just mean Carter joining Michelle and Alexei falling in off the map as opposed to some sort of definite knowledge and change... I mean, that's just unfair.

Maureen is in the same pickle, only worse. When I came out, it was a jaw-dropping thing for her, but we weren't exactly close yet; when she came out, at least her folks' reaction was clear-cut if sadly negative. This, though, is torture for her. She's run through dozens of worst-case scenarios, most involving Carter having done something terrible or being dead or not noing what he was doing and both him and Alexei winding up vegetables with there being no way to know who is in which body. I say Nat's more trustworthy than that, that if something had gone horribly wrong, then she would have said something. Mo says we don't really know her that well, though, and more importantly, she doesn't know Carter - she could perhaps live with sacrifying him to punish Alexei.

In a way, though, I think she finds these dark, depressing scenarios kind of comforting compared to the others. Because otherwise, she's sure she's going to have to face Carter-mark-III sometime, and she's not sure how to feel about that. As she points out, we always say it's the person inside that's important, and it's not as if she hasn't dated men before, and it wasn't exactly torture or anything, but...

I don't try to say that who Carter-III would be "inside" would be different from the "Carter-II" she dated or the Carter-I I did (was that really less than a year ago?), although I suppose that might be a little more comforting than the idea that Carter just walking out on her without warning, or a phone call, or anything, on a night that was hugely important to her, says that maybe we didn't know this guy as well as we thought.

So, we've tried to keep distracted. We've gone to movies, ate out a couple of times even though we should be trying to pinch a few pennies, even went down to Games People Play and bought puzzles and board games to kill time with.

We went to the FBI office on Friday; they've got a map on the wall with a disturbingly small number of push-pins stuck into it - a few in Boston, a couple in Seattle, and some concetric circles around the two cities showing how far Carter could reasonably gotten from either city without flying. Even the ones from Seattle now encompass the entire country, so it's needle-in-a-haystack time.

Soon, we've got to start figuring out what we do instead of waiting for a break in this case, rather than while we wait. It sucks, but there it is. The feds are concentrating on the Atlanta area now - Carter's familiar with it and it doesn't have as dense a population of federal agents who know what's going on as Boston. Maybe he'd get back together with that old girlfriend, or at least go to her for help. That's my best idea. There's another nibbling at the back of my head, but... Well, I think I'd like to check something out or talk to the agents before posting it on the web for everyone (including Carter) to see.

-Martina
- posted 7:58 PM - - (archive use only)