5

This is the present day.

This is the Monk Library. Once again, it's getting late in Hell's Kitchen.

Inside, Lee prepares to close. The last of the customers have left...thankfully. Lee's got something he wants to do later tonight. His mind is about to do a MAJOR 180 on him.

He hears the bell at the front door. He shouts at who made it ring, reminding them that the library's closed.

It's Jessica. It seems that her meeting with Lieberman has made Lee more desirable...in her mind. Ordinarily, of course, she's deeply committed to Oscar. But he hasn't been too emotionally available-or practically, even-and meanwhile, Lee's a client. Ordinarily, Jessica doesn't have sex with clients. But then again, ordinarily, her clients usually don't look like Lee.

They usually look like Robert Coleman... But this is no time to dwell on the past; Jessica and Lee have both got some SERIOUS courting to do.

It all begins in a cheap hotel. Jessica fucks him. O, the ecstasy! Unclear as to which whore Leland had to fuck to create this wonderful being...but then again, Leland just might've known what he was doing after all...

They don't talk much about Leland. At least not at first...

It continues at a bar-the same one where Lieberman bought her the White Russian. (Or is it the Belarusian? Or the tsarist? The times get so confusing...)

They have a drinking game. (Jessica wins.) Lee barely has one shot. Goddamn, Jessica reveres his tolerance of booze...

They play pool. (Lee wins.) It all ends, alas, when Jessica breaks a pool stick, shortly before breaking the nose of a guy who tries to grab her ass. Lee offers to deter him...until he's humiliated by how overwhelmingly capable Jessica is of defending herself.

They sit on the roof of a building, and watch a movie as it's projected on the back of a billboard. The guy up in that window still plays one every Friday. Seriously, it's as if the local cops have nothing better to do. Or then again, it's just as likely they've got TOO much to do...

They order a pizza, and have it. To her, this brings back memories of Trish, and when she still didn't hate her for killing her mother... But again, none of that. She's with a man, and she might as well enjoy it.

Lee confesses that he loves rooftops. Some have even dared accused him of having an obsession with them...

Up here, in an intimate spot, he tells Jessica about his father. He barely knew him. He felt bad when he found out he'd been killed. But he intends to repay his father...by avenging him.

Jessica asks how his father died. Lee sighs, and says he was killed by a vigilante. From what he's heard, that's a very common thing where his father comes from. If not for his father, he wouldn't miss the days when Hell's Kitchen's biggest fears were poverty and the Yakuza.

They're down to the last slice. For once in her life, Jessica lets him have it. She envies it as he eats it slowly. She's tempted to just rip it out of his mouth and take it for herself...

He grasps her hand. The movie shows a romantic scene. Lee pulls the pizza from his mouth, and looks Jessica in the eyes. He tells her he's glad he went out with her tonight.

All at once, Jessica's appetite for more pizza is sated. They kiss.

Would've been great if they could've blocked the projector beam...except the beam is too far up, and there's no one up here to be inconvenienced by it.

Jessica just doesn't get why Murdock and Lieberman hate the Owlsley family so much. Lee is a perfectly decent man with one of the most interesting problems she's seen in all of her career as a PI...