“HOTHOUSE”: Benson covers her apartment in flowerpots and long troughs full of black dirt, laying them among the destroyed remnants of her furniture. She plants basil and thyme and dill and oregano and beets and spinach and kale and rainbow chard. The sound of pattering water released from a watering can is so beautiful she wants to cry. Time to make something grow.
“SNATCHED”: A tiny Dominican girl is taken off the street by a man in a gray coat. She is never seen again.
“TRANSITIONS”: Every time Benson flips her bedroom light on and off, she hears the sound. Dum-dum. She feels it in her teeth.
“LEAD”: When she is tired, Benson lets the girls take over. They run her body all over town, buying hard lemonades and shimmying her chest at bouncers and, once, before Benson can take over again, kissing a busboy sweetly on his mouth, a mouth that tastes like metal and spearmint.
“BALLERINA”: She dances four nights a week for two years. He buys a ticket for every show, sits in the mezzanine, never goes backstage for an autograph. She always gets the uneasy sensation that she is being watched, aggressively, but never knows who it is.
“HELL”: Father Jones sends Lucy the intern out into the world, infected as Stabler was. He kneels from the rooftop of his building, and takes the demon with him.
“BAGGAGE”: “Yes,” Stabler’s mother says to him over the phone, carefully. “I did have an older son, Eli. But I haven’t seen him since you were a child.” “Where did he go?” Stabler asked. “Why did you never say?” “Some things,” she says, her voice thick with tears, “are better left unsaid.”
“SELFISH”: The medical examiner can’t bring herself to admit that sometimes, she’s the one who wants to be cut open, to have someone tell her all of her own secrets.
“CRUSH”: “I really care about you,” Stabler says. “And I know how you feel. I’m sorry that I’ve led you on. I’m sorry I haven’t been forthright. But I love my wife. We were going through a patch, but I love her. I should have told you after we kissed. I should have said that it wouldn’t go anywhere.” “We kissed?” Benson says. She probes her memories, and only comes up with dreams.
“LIBERTIES”: “I mean, not … not everybody,” the constitutional scholar scoffed, looking equal parts amused and scandalized. “Can you imagine if everyone had those rights? Anarchy.” Abler smiles, and pours him another drink.
“ZEBRAS”: Benson wakes up in the zoo again. She scales the wall, not caring that she trips the alarm, not caring that as she runs, cop cars are cruising, flashing, looking for her and only her. She is barefoot, her feet bleed, the street breathes, the street heats, the street is waiting, and what else is waiting? Beneath, beneath, beneath.
SEASON 11
“UNSTABLE”: Stabler listens to Benson. She tells him everything—the girls and their now-silent bells—and things he already knows—the heartbeats from the ground, and its breathing, and her love. He looks around at the apartment full of plants, more greenhouse than home. “You’re saying they’re inside of you now.” “Yes.” “Right this minute.” “Yes.” “Do they tell you things?” “Sometimes.” “Like what?” “They say, ‘Ow, yes, no, stop it, that one, help us, there, but why, but when, I’m hungry, we’re hungry, kiss him, kiss her, wait, okay …’ Also, I bought some bells.” She points to a ravaged cardboard box, overflowing with packing peanuts and glints of brass. Stabler frowns. “Benson, how can I help?”
“SUGAR”: The handsome older gentleman folds his cloth napkin in half before dabbing his mouth. “What I’m saying,” he says to Benson, who can’t stop staring, “is that if this continues, I will expect you to quit your job. Naturally, you’ll be compensated above and beyond your current salary. I’ll just expect you to always be available.”
“SOLITARY”: Benson trims her plants, and bats away regret over saying no.
“HAMMERED”: Benson wakes up to see Henson standing over her bed. She is holding a garbage bag, and she is grinning. She dumps the contents over Benson’s bed, and they tumble out like ghostly river shrimp. The stolen hammers from the girls’ bells. They weigh nothing and yet Benson can feel them, somehow. Inside her head, the girls explode in chatter. When the points of light stop flashing in Benson’s eyes, she realizes that Henson has left. She tries to pick up the hammers, and they dissolve in her fingers like fog.
“HARDWIRED”: The DA comes over to Benson’s apartment to talk about a case. “I like your greenhouse,” she says. Benson blinks, disbelieving. Then, she smiles shyly, offers to show her the plants. She shows the DA how to rewire a heat lamp. They laugh into the night.
“SPOOKED”: “You just gotta learn to live with it,” the bored officer says to the woman sitting in the chair across from him, shaking.
“USERS”: Everyone on the web forum wakes up to find a jagged crack up the length of their bathroom mirrors.
“TURMOIL”: Abler and Henson reverse the stoplights, flood bathrooms, and steal the interior workings of all deadbolts.
“PERVERTED”: “You can’t stop me,” the note, pinned to the body, reads. “I control everything. —THE WOLF.” Benson and Stabler start a new file. Stabler cries.
“ANCHOR”: They can’t prove that the naval officer was responsible, because the evidence isn’t waterproof.
“QUICKIE”: The DA finally throws Henson out of her bed. “You’re not her,” she says, her voice heavy with sadness. “One more story,”
Henson says, leaning against the door frame. “Don’t you want to hear just one more? It’s a good one. It’s a real doozy.”
“SHADOW”: If the day had been sunny and not overcast, she would have seen him coming. Everyone blames the weatherman.
“P.C.”: “It’s just that,” the guy says, pumping his head confidently, “my sense of humor is pretty subversive, you know? I, like, don’t submit to the P.C. brigade. I’m, like, a rebel. An independent thinker. Y’know?” For the first time in ages, Benson leaves her date. She’s desperate, but not that desperate.
“SAVIOR”: One night, Lucy knocks on Benson’s door. “Your gun,” she says. Benson frowns at her. “What?” Lucy seizes the gun from Benson’s holster. Benson makes a grab for it, but not before Lucy smears something on the handle. “A gift from Father Jones,” she says, handing it back to her.
“CONFIDENTIAL”: “It’s been nice having her come around,” Benson says to her plants, referring to the DA. Benson hates diaries. “She’s really great company. Really great.” She imagines that the plants are arching toward her voice.
“WITNESS”: There isn’t one. The DA can’t try the case.
“DISABLED”: Stabler goes to visit his wife and children. He worries that Abler is following him. He stops his car. He drives back to New York. He takes a train. He hitchhikes to the house.
“BEDTIME”: Stabler’s wife curls against him. She breathes into his ear. “When do you think we can leave my mother’s place?” she asks. “When we catch Uncle E,” he says. He feels her face pull into a sleepy smile. “What do you think Uncle E stands for, anyway?” she asks blearily.
“CONNED”: Stabler tackles Abler to the ground. “I know who you are!” Stabler says into his ear. “You’re my brother, Eli. Uncle E, indeed.” Abler chuckles from beneath him. “No,” he says. “I’m not. I just called myself that to fuck with you. Eli died in prison, years ago. Your brother was a rapist. Your brother was a monster.” Benson pulls Stabler off. “Don’t listen to him,” she says. “Don’t.” Abler grins. “Do you want me to tell you who Henson is? She’s—”
“BEEF”: The hamburger doesn’t give a fuck who it kills.
“TORCH”: A girl is raped and lit on fire. She comes into Benson’s head screaming, smoke curling off her burned skin, not understanding. It is the longest night of Benson’s life thus far.
“ACE”: Abler and Henson sense what is coming. They fuck, they eat, they drink, they smoke. They go dancing, tangoing on the chairs; a gavotte across the finished walnut. When the Beasley family comes home, there are heel marks i
n the soft wood of their dining room table, and half of the plates are broken.
“WANNABE”: Copycat mischief-makers reverse street signs and tie people’s shoelaces together. When Stabler falls over a fifth time, he slams his fist down on his floor. “THAT. IS. IT.”
“SHATTERED”: “Don’t you understand?” Abler howls as Benson and Stabler struggle to their feet. Henson laughs and laughs. “You think this is all some vast conspiracy, but it’s not. It’s just the way it is.” Benson pulls her gun from her holster and unloads a clip into both of them. Abler falls over immediately, an expression of surprise on his face. Blood gurgles from Henson’s mouth, drips in a long stream down her chin. “Just like in the movies,” Benson breathes.
SEASON 12
“LOCUM”: Without Henson and Abler, Benson and Stabler don’t know what to do with themselves. They go back, slowly, to old files. The missing girls and women. The dead. “Let’s get them out,” Stabler says, newly confident. “Let’s set them free.”
“BULLSEYE”: “The reason we didn’t catch him before is that his alibi was foolproof. But now, we know.”
“BEHAVE”: They start responding to no.
“MERCHANDISE”: They arrest the madam who had permitted so many of her girls to be drowned. “Not by my hands!” she howls as they drag her to the squad car. “Not by my hands!”
“WET”: Benson doesn’t know how she knows, but she does. They walk the length of the Hudson. They locate eight missing bodies—different murderers, different years. She names them as the gurneys go rumbling past her.
“BRANDED”: They catch the serial brander. His victims pick him out of a lineup, strange smiles pushing through their burned faces.
“How did you catch him?” one woman asks Benson. “Good old-fashioned police work,” she says.
“TROPHY”: “I’m looking for a wife,” Benson’s date says. He is handsome. He is brilliant. She stands up, folds her napkin on the table, and pulls three twenties from her wallet. “I have to go. I just … I have to go.” She runs down the street. She breaks a heel on her shoe. She skips the rest of the way.
“PENETRATION”: “No.” “Yes.” “No.” “No?” “No.” “Oh.”
“GRAY”: Benson plants some flowers.
“RESCUE”: Benson and Stabler take out the kidnapper even before he reaches his destination.
“POP”: Benson and Stabler think they hear gunfire, but when they come bursting out of the diner, it’s just tiny fireworks lighting up windows three stories over their heads.
“POSSESSED”: “Not for much longer,” Benson says, to herself, in her sleep.
“MASK”: Stabler and his wife dance all over the house, mouse masks on their faces. The kids stare at the scene in horror, and run to their room, where one is busy forgetting and the other is remembering what will, one day, be a chapter in her well-received memoir. Father Jones didn’t touch just Stabler and Lucy, you know.
“DIRTY”: The DA comes and helps Benson sweep up the wood chips from her floor. They clean the windows. They order pizza and talk about first loves.
“FLIGHT”: The city is still hungry. The city is always hungry. But tonight, the heartbeat slows. They fly, they fly, they fly.
“SPECTACLE”: On a Wednesday, they catch so many bad guys that Benson throws up seventeen girls in one afternoon. She laughs as they spill out of her, tumble into her vomit like oil slicks, and dissipate into the air.
“PURSUIT”: They chase. They catch. No one gets away.
“BULLY”: The last girl clings to the inside of Benson’s skull. “I don’t want to be alone,” Benson says. “I don’t, either,” Benson says, “but you need to go.” Stabler comes into Benson’s apartment. “Her name is Allison Jones. She was twelve. She was raped by her father, and her mother didn’t believe her. He killed her and buried her on Brighton Beach.” Inside, the girl shakes her head, as if to dislodge the sand in her hair. “Go,” Benson says. “Go.” The girl smiles and doesn’t, her bells barely rocking. “Thank you,” Benson says. “You’re welcome,” Benson says. There is a sound—a new sound. A sigh. And then, she is gone. Stabler hugs Benson. “Good-bye,” he says, and then, so is he.
“BOMBSHELL”: The DA comes to Benson’s door. Benson’s head, newly clear, feels like a vacant airplane hangar, a desert. Expansive, but empty. She knows there are more—there will always be more—but for now she relishes the space. The DA reaches her hand up to Benson’s face, and traces her jaw with the barest weight. “I want you,” she says to Benson. “I’ve wanted you since the first time I met you.” Benson leans forward and kisses her. The heartbeat is a hunger. She pulls her inside.
“TOTEM”: “In the beginning, before the city, there was a creature. Genderless, ageless. The city flies on its back. We hear it, all of us, in one way or another. It demands sacrifices. But it can only eat what we give it.” Benson strokes the DA’s hair. “Where did you hear that story?” she asks. The DA bites her lip. “From someone who always seemed to be right,” she says.
“REPARATIONS”: Stabler and his wife talk it over. They decide to take the kids and go far, far away. “A new place,” he says, “where we can have any names we want. Any histories.”
“BANG”: A bomb goes off in Central Park. It was beneath a park bench the whole time. No one is sitting on the bench when it detonates, and the only casualty is a passing pigeon. The serial killer sends a note to Benson and Stabler. All it says is “Oops.”
“DELINQUENT”: Benson and the DA are both late to work, and smell like each other. Stabler sends in his resignation by express post.
“SMOKED”: The DA and Benson roast vegetables on the grill, laughing. The smoke rises up and up, drifts over the trees, curls past birds and rot and blooms. The city smells it. The city takes a breath.
REAL WOMEN HAVE BODIES
I used to think my place of employment, Glam, looked like the view from inside a casket. When you walk through the mall’s east wing, the entrance recedes like a black hole between a children’s photography studio and a white-walled boutique.
The lack of color is to show off the dresses. It terrifies our patrons into an existential crisis and then, a purchase. This is what Gizzy tells me, anyway. “The black,” she says, “reminds us that we are mortal and that youth is fleeting. Also, nothing makes pink taffeta pop like a dark void.”
At one end of the store is a mirror easily twice as tall as I am, rimmed by a baroque gold frame. Gizzy is so tall that she can dust the top of the giant mirror with only a small step stool. She is my mother’s age, maybe a little older, but her face is strangely youthful and unlined. She paints her mouth matte peach every day, so evenly and cleanly that if you look at her too hard, you feel faint. I think her eyeliner is tattooed on her lids.
My coworker Natalie thinks that Gizzy runs this store because she’s pining after her lost youth, which is her answer for why any “real adult” does anything she thinks is stupid. Natalie rolls her eyes behind Gizzy’s back and always rehangs the dresses a little roughly, like they’re to blame for the minimum wage or useless degrees or student debt. I follow behind her, smoothing out the skirts because I hate to see them ruffled any more than they have to be.
I know the truth. Not because I’m particularly perceptive or anything. I just overheard Gizzy talking on the phone once. I’ve seen the way she runs her hands over the dresses, the way her fingers linger on people’s skin. Her daughter is gone like the others, and there isn’t anything that she can do about it.
“I really like this,” says the girl with the seal hair. She looks like she has just emerged from the ocean. The dress is the color of Dorothy’s shoes and has a plunging back. “But I don’t want to get a reputation,” she murmurs, to no one in particular. She puts her hands on her hips, spins around, and flashes a smile. For a moment she looks like Jane Russell from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and then she is seal girl again, and then she is just a girl.
Her mother brings her another dress, this one gold with a cobalt shimme
r on its surface. It’s the first day of the season, and there’s still a lot to choose from: bright teal slips and dusky pink thunder-puff, the Bella series, the one the color of bees. Mermaid cuts in salt-flat white; trumpet-style in algae red; princess gowns in liver purple. The Ophelia, which looks perpetually wet. Emma Wants a Second Chance, the exact shade of a doe standing in a shadow. The Banshee, with its strategically shredded, milk-colored silk. The skirts curl, ruffled, with layers of taffeta, except when they drag and slink. Their busts are crunchy with coral hand-stitched sequins, or studded with pebbles, or stretched with netting the color of frosted sea glass or neon early-morning buttercream or overripe cantaloupe. There is one that is just thousands of jet-black beads in midnight-black settings, that moves with every breath. The most expensive dress costs more than I make in three months; the least expensive two hundred, down from four because a strap is broken and Petra’s mother has been too busy to come fix it.
Petra delivers the dresses to Glam. Her mother is one of our biggest suppliers. The Sadie’s Photo crew has taken to skulking around Glam’s entrance to gawk at the customers and shout rude comments, but Chris and Casey and a rotating assortment of other assholes leave Petra alone. She always wears a baseball cap over her short brown hair and tightly laced combat boots. When she’s hauling the gauzy dresses wrapped up in plastic, she looks like she’s battling a giant prom monster—all petticoat undersides and rhinestone tentacles—with her bare hands, and that is not the kind of woman you idly mess with. Casey referred to her as a dyke once during a smoke break, but he’s too afraid of her to say anything to her face.