Flying Dreams: Goren & Eames Appreciation Page: Requited Liner Notes

Notes on “Requited”:

I culled much of the idea for Alex’s emotional state from a book I read before I retired. Like Goren, I gravitate to books when I need information, and I bought a specific retirement book because it came highly recommended. The first 83 pages of this 300 page book was the author reassuring the about-to-be retired that they would not be worthless upon leaving their job! I despised my job, and had so many things planned to do at home after I retired that I wondered who needed this kind of reassurance. Well, to someone whose job was their life I suppose it would mean something...

As a former Rhode Islander, I had to use that Rhode Island joke.

In the 1990s we played trivia with friends at a place called Rockford’s in Stone Mountain, GA. Their Asian salad was to die for, the other food was good, and to sweeten the pot we'd all meet up at the Media Play across the parking lot—trivia, friends, a good meal, and a book/CD/DVD store in one night! Bliss! When Rockford’s closed, we found another place where the food wasn't as good and the music was too loud. So when I designed the Dark Crystal I did wish fulfillment: jazz music, music played low so you could talk, in a vintage building nonetheless, with blues and purples predominating, a great bunch of people running and working there. Now I want to go and eat TJ's food and play The Wizard's game!

Did not know until I was halfway into this story that Vincent D’Onofrio was in Emerald City, let alone what role he played, so, seriously, this was all just coincidence, and the coincidences are what led me to keep writing. Several weeks after I started this story, we went to Spycon and, lo and behold and all that, one of the panels was a spy trivia contest. (James won, by the way. :-) ) The verse that's a coda at the end of the story also popped up about the same time.

Mrs. Perrino is based on all the Italian grandmothers and neighbors' mothers I grew up surrounded by. I think they would have loved Facebook, too, once they figured out how to work it.

For the uninitiated, Art Fleming was the host of the original Jeopardy. At the time Goren would have watched, Robert Earle was the host of College Bowl.

The Law & Order: Criminal Intent wiki says Alex’s sister is named Elizabeth, although I've seen all the episodes and don't remember her mentioning her sister's name. I figured Johnny Eames' son would have to be a junior, which is where "Jack" came from; the rest of the family names just popped up as needed.

If you want an idea what Goren's replacement supervisor Cavanaugh was like, watch fifth season of Longmire and get a load of the snotty attorney they have prosecuting Walt. I realized watching the episodes six months after I wrote the story that this jerk is Cavanaugh to a T.

I keep putting Alex in blue because Kathryn Erbe looks absolutely gorgeous in nice pure blues. And Goren in a cape and a wide-brimmed hat...is just a lot of "hell, yes!"

Supposedly in the original script to "Acceptable Loss," the SVU episode where Eames appears, she states Goren is in Maine writing a book, and I know there's at least one piece of fanfic that starts with him on his book tour. CI was always so into flipping tropes (the male partner being the emotional one, the female partner being more "all business") that I decided to flip this one, too, and have Alex being the one writing. Can you imagine the stories she came home with about her trippy partner?

Sam came from a dog by the same name in a story I never wrote in a different universe, a loveable, friendly but awkwardly big dog who "didn't belong"; whose story would appeal to Goren. He's based on "Howard," the eighth dog in the "Lassie line," who appeared in the 1994 Lassie film and in the Canadian-made Lassie series, who was indeed eighty pounds. (Incidentally, a bit of Goren-type trivia: the original "Lassie" in Lassie Come-Home was a tricolor, like Sam, and not a sable as the character was portrayed in the films/television series.)

If it sounds like I'm intimately acquainted with Goren's house, I am. It's the house I grew up in, 782 square feet on the main floor. (The bathroom was pink, not blue, and the kitchen yellow, not green.) But we never did fix the unfinished second story; it was our attic instead. Again, wish fulfillment on it being full of books!

As for the drawing class, I picked out the most un-Eames thing I could think of just to bracket Alex's depression.

The Commissioner's au pair wasn't a televised case.

Borrowed from Rupert Holmes, four words that led into one of television's most romantic kisses.