by Rachel Kane
“You’ve already apologized. You’ve already explained.”
I shook my head. “I’ve tried, yeah, but I don’t think I’ve communicated it very well. I don’t want you to think I wanted to leave you back then. It’s the opposite. I was so horrified by it. My dad had just died—”
“Theo. Really. You don’t have to explain. Things were stressful for you, I know.”
“I just need you to know I’m not the same person I was back then. I’m not, like, carried along by events. I’m not a little boat on the lake.”
He reached across the table and touched my hand, the one that was still clenched around the whiskey glass. “It’s okay. I’m not just saying that. Ever since I saw you again… Look, all I want to know is that you’re here now. That’s all I need. I don’t require any big proclamations or promises. We work in different cities. We have different lives. So whatever happens between us, it’s going to be much different than it was before. So…it’s okay. Stop worrying.”
His fingers ran over my knuckles, and it made me shiver. I took his hand. “How did you get to be so understanding?”
“I was thinking of staying in Corinth one more day,” I told Val.
“You what? No, absolutely not. Theo, you have to get up here. The Missouri people can’t be ignored.”
Phoning Val again might have been a mistake; it certainly wasn’t the first thing on my list of fun ways to spend the afternoon. But Micah really did need to get back to work, and I felt guilty for keeping him away from it, although he had kissed me warmly at the door of his cute little offices and promised to call me as soon as he could.
Maybe I was a little dreamy right now. A little love-stupid. I was walking through a park I’d found down in the middle of town, the ground thick with orange and red leaves, thinking about how I would paint the leaves, how I would make them broad flames of color licking the ground, and imagined Micah lying in them, stretched out, unclothed, his muscular, angular lines contrasting with the fiery chaos of the leaves.
“I want to stay,” I said. “Come on. Buy me some time. I’m having fun—”
Val sighed so heavily I was surprised he didn’t pass out from lack of oxygen. “Are you forgetting your place in the world?”
“My place? What, are you going to chain me to the kitchen?”
“Don’t be obtuse. This company can’t run without you. We’ve been putting off this meeting for too long. This thing with Mother and her…her boyfriend, all that was a pointless interruption, and now you’re gallivanting off—”
“I’m not gallivanting.”
“—doing god knows what with Micah, instead of helping me here? You’re being very selfish, Theo.”
I was used to Val’s dry irony. I was used to his honest criticism, and the way he worried about me all the time.
But…selfish?
It was like the leaves around me had gotten a little duller, their brightness leached away. Like when Mother had called me a child.
“It’s not selfish,” I said, “it’s self-preservation. Getting to take a little time for myself, after the disaster of this weekend? Getting to catch up with Micah? It’s the only fun I’ve had in ages.”
That wasn’t the sort of argument that would sway Val. He didn’t understand concepts like fun. For him, working 24/7 was perfectly acceptable. He was satisfied by the job in a way I could never be. It energized him.
“I don’t want to fight,” he said. “I don’t like fighting. But I need you here. It’s not like you can’t see Micah. Corinth is a short flight away. But right now, I need you. The company needs you. Mother needs you.”
“Mother needs me? I thought she’d be busy burning down the house.”
“She called. She says she can’t be left alone with Mildred and Consuela. Until she figures out what to do—”
“She decided what to do.”
A long silence.
“Theo. I don’t want to have to debase myself to get you to come back. But I don’t know how to deal with Mother. I don’t know how to deal with the Missouri people. I can’t do all this on my own.”
Now it was my turn to sigh. “I know. Believe me, I know. I’m the brains, you’re the brawn—”
“Well, no. I’m the brains. You’re…whatever body part understands socially-based difficulties. The hippocampus?”
“I think that’s part of the brain,” I said.
“In any case, will you just get up here?”
I looked back in the direction of Micah’s office. I really, really didn’t want to leave him. It felt like something was just starting up between us, something interesting, something…life-affirming. The first thing that had really made sense in my life, in a long, long time.
20
Micah
Things had been happening so fast in my life, that it was a real surprise to find myself alone, with a lot of free time ahead of me.
Not free-free time, of course. I had years of files to go over, to figure out exactly what the state thought they had on Braddock Moore. I was busy as hell.
There was just one problem.
I looked up from a folder of bank statements, and blinked. How long had I been sitting here, looking at this same exact page?
I was still at the office. Outside, the city was dark. The building was strangely quiet, in a way it never was during the day, its floors and stairs happily creaking under our quick footsteps.
Trying to focus, I turned my attention back to the column of numbers in front of me, but it was no good.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Theo.
It made me smile. When he’d shown up the other night at my apartment, I didn’t know what to think. He’d swept me off my feet. And now he was gone again, but not really gone. We were going to meet back up over the weekend, and we’d texted back and forth.
Tossing the folder onto my desk, I rose from my chair and stretched.
I missed him. My body missed him. It had just been one night, hardly any time at all. Yet I felt like I could still feel his arms around me. Still feel his lips brushing mine.
He’d left his drawing pad here, and he’d done more sketches…of me. My face, my hands.
Nobody had ever studied me, nobody had ever been so interested in me, as he was.
“I was going to ask if you were burning the midnight oil, but I guess you’re just staring out the window,” said Bernard.
We both laughed at the way I jumped. “How the hell did you get up here without me hearing you?” I asked.
He lifted an unshod foot. “Sock feet. It’s been a long damn day.”
“I thought you left hours ago. Do you want a bunch of bank reports to go through?”
“Hell no. I’m going to grab dinner and head home. I suggest you do the same.”
I waved a hand at the pile of work on my desk. “Braddock Moore’s evil empire awaits my attention.”
“So, about that,” he said, sliding into the same chair Theo had sat in a few days ago. I wanted to tell him to get out of the chair, it was reserved. Theo inspired some pretty foolish thoughts.
“About what?”
“Look, I know I encouraged you to take this case,” he said, “but have you noticed people looking at us funny? I was before Judge Randolph today, and normally she loves me, but she had a real tone. Asked me if the client I was representing was, and I quote, Like that other client of yours.”
I scowled. “She can’t do that.”
“She’s a judge. She can do anything she wants. That’s not the point. She’s not the only one, Micah. I’m… Honestly, I’m a little worried. What if we start losing clients over this?”
“You said the phone has been ringing off the hook.”
“Yeah, but…it’s not our typical kind of client calling. It’s guys who sound like Braddock. But what about our usual clientele? What if they don’t want to be associated with a gangster like Braddock?”
“We don’t know he’s a gangster,” I said. “He hasn’t admitted to anything.”
/>
“Yeah, maybe he’s just a bad bookkeeper, sure. But here in the real world…”
“I know. Believe me, I know. But we need the money. You know that. Hell, you keep using phrases like putting us on the map. Are you changing your mind?”
He shrugged. “Call me ambivalent. Word of mouth is great…when it’s on your side. But what if the whole town turns against us? That man has a lot of enemies.”
I couldn’t deny that dropping Braddock as a client was a seductive idea. We could get back to representing grocery store owners and people who’d tripped on the sidewalk, those basic bread-and-butter cases that would never set the world on fire, but would offer a steady, if low, income.
“If I have to take my mom in—”
“I can’t believe nothing got decided about that over the weekend,” he said. “How is that all still up in the air?”
“That’s what happens when your fate is in the hands of rich people who are used to always getting their way,” I said.
But that made me think of Theo’s hands.
Nope, don’t think about them right now, you’ll get way off-track. I still loved the warm feeling that thinking of Theo brought to me.
“If Judge Randolph starts bombing my cases just because you need rent money for your mom, I’m not sure that’s a fair trade,” Bernard said. “This doesn’t just affect you.”
“Do we need to have a crisis about it right now?” I asked. “Weren’t you about to call it a night? Whatever we end up doing about Braddock, right this second we’re working for him, and I’ve got a ton to do.”
He raised his hands in a placating gesture. “No crisis. Just putting the idea out there. But tell your new boyfriend that you need some closure for your mom, so we can make a clear decision about things.”
“He’s not my—”
“Oh, come on. You think I haven’t seen you mooning around the office for days now?”
I smiled. “Go on, enjoy your night. Let those of us with a real work ethic get some stuff done.”
* * *
Theo never understood why I got summer jobs.
“C’mon, we’re rich, you don’t have to do that. Let’s go out on the boat.”
“Correction: You’re rich. I’m just a housekeeper’s kid, and I’m sick of not having any money.”
It was the summer before everything changed. Our first summer as a couple, although we didn’t call ourselves that. We didn’t use terms like boyfriend. All we knew was that we had a secret from the world, one that bound us tightly together, a secret that could set off peals of laughter if we were in the company of people who didn’t know.
“But mowing grass?” Theo huffed. “That’s the landscaper’s job.”
“Not everyone can afford a professional landscaper,” I said, “but nearly everybody can afford a guy to come around with a lawn mower.”
I’d managed to pick up a few bucks that spring, mowing and weeding on the weekends, and the freedom it had given me was unexpectedly satisfying. I could go into town, grab a burger and coke, pay for it myself. For the first time in my life, I felt like I’d actually grown up.
Theo hung behind me, as I began the walk into town. “Why don’t I just give you some of my allowance?”
“It’s not the same,” I said. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Are you mad at me?”
This was the problem with moving from friendship to…something deeper. Never in our lives had we really probed our feelings. We’d been kids. If we hurt someone, we felt guilty and apologized. If we liked someone, we hung out and laughed. Things had been simple, but now they were complicated.
Things hurt us, that had never hurt us before. A word, a tone, could set off uncertainty, fear that maybe this thing between us was not as strong as we thought. I guess it was Theo’s turn to worry.
Maybe it was because I was young and stupid, that his fear made me angry. Why was he keeping me from doing this? Why did it matter to him?
“I’m not mad,” I said. Back then, I couldn’t articulate what bothered me about this. Why the job was so important. Why freedom was so important. It just was, and either you understood or you didn’t.
We were a safe distance from the house, where no one could see us. Quickly, his fingers found mine, and tangled in them like the vines that crawled up the trees bordering the road. “Come to the boathouse with me,” he said. “Nobody’s there.”
I wanted to. Don’t get me wrong, half of me wanted so badly to do just that. There was a bench in the boathouse where we used to sit, where most of our discoveries had happened, nearly bare in our swimsuits, hands exploring, the shyness, teaching each other the names for things we’d heard other boys talk about in school. Just thinking about it got me hard, got me wanting to drop this plan for a job. He had that effect on me. The other day he had shown me drawings he’d made of me, naked, posing, and the care with which he’d portrayed me had awakened something in me, not just our usual summer lust, not that hunger we had to explore every inch of our bodies, but something different, something deeper.
A realization that he loved me.
It would be another year before that really sank in, and by then, it would be too late.
I didn’t know that then, as we stood on the road, our hands entwined, him begging me to stay.
“Okay,” I said. “But tomorrow I’ve got to go into town. You don’t know how important this is.”
He laughed and kissed me. “I’ll pay you. You’ll be my personal servant. How about that?”
I would think about that day, later on. I would think about how I’d dropped everything to be with him. Yes, I know my choice wasn’t as important as the choices he’d made after his father died; mowing the lawn or not mowing the lawn, it wasn’t going to change the world in any substantial way.
But it’s what I would remember, that I had sacrificed for him…and he hadn’t done the same for me.
* * *
Two in the morning, here in the present. My eyes were blurry from studying these figures. I had to stop. I began to see the outlines of the case, just barely; flickers of a strategy. If we could put the blame on the subcontractor who put in the building’s parking lot…
My phone rang, and I jumped. Who the hell would be calling at this time of night?
I hoped it was Theo. Maybe he was calling to tell me he’d made it home safely, and was tucking himself into bed. Maybe he wanted one last, slow, sleepy conversation…with his hand slipping down to his cock, encircling himself…
So I was smiling when I answered, not even glancing at the caller ID. “Well, hello there.”
“I thought you’d be up,” said Braddock Moore.
My throat tightened. Any dreams of Theo went scattering to the back of my mind. Back to business.
“Too much work to sleep,” I said. “Look, I’m going to need your email records, especially the ones involving subcontractors, and please don’t tell me you’ve deleted any, because—”
“Nah, nah, forget all that.”
“What do you mean, forget it?”
“It’s taken care of.”
I blinked and rubbed my eyes. “Braddock, it’s late, and I’m tired. I’m not following. What are you talking about?”
“Look, we’ll talk tomorrow, okay? I’m telling you, don’t stay up. Don’t worry about it. This is good news.”
My phone beeped as he hung up.
Don’t worry about it?
I had no idea what that meant. But it had the opposite effect on me: Now I was seriously worried.
21
Theo
“I’m not going to lie,” said the man across from us. Neil from Missouri. “The bank wants to shut us down. If we don’t get a cash infusion quick, there are going to be a lot of people out of work. We need your help.”
Val was next to me, his face frozen in concentration. You could practically hear the little wheels turning in his head as he took their need into his calculations. His water sat untouched on the table.
The Missouri men were on their second bourbons each, with me easily keeping up with them.
“You know it’s not that easy,” I said. We’d rehearsed this before meeting them. “If we come in, there will have to be changes. We can’t be sitting down this time next year, having the same conversation about you running out of cash.”
“No, no,” said Neil. “We know that. Change is good.”
But his partner Andrew shook his head. “Some change is good. Let’s be clear, we’re not looking for a total takeover. We don’t need you replacing the whole board. I think we’d do fine with the money plus a minor amount of tweaking—”
“You were two hundred thousand dollars in the red last quarter,” said Val.
I sat back. My role, as Mr. Nice Guy, was over for a bit, while Val told them the hard truths.
“That’s temporary,” said Andrew. “The fundamentals of the company—”
“Are increasingly shaky,” said Val. “Your bank sees you as a poor risk. You would need major restructuring to get investor confidence back. It would be a risk for us, as well, and we would need at least sixty percent…”
I could see that his emotionless voice was getting under their skin, making them worry.
People misunderstood Val. They thought he drove hard bargains, that he was cold, heartless, cruel. They didn’t know that this was just his affect, just the way he always presented himself to the world. He didn’t know any other way. To him, this was a great delight, talking objectively about numbers and forecasts. It’s what he loved most in the world.
This is how it worked, always: They’d come to me with their sad, sad story. Factory ready to close down. Bank ready to foreclose. I was chipper. I’d take them out, get them drunk, get a feel for the personality of the company, of the leadership. Meanwhile, Val was in the background, running the numbers.
It made me think about Micah, which really I should not have been doing right now, I needed to keep my mind on business.
