by Rachel Kane
“What is it you want me to do, exactly?”
“I want you to talk to the damn hippies. Find out what they want. What their price is. Get them off the damn land, so I can get the place dredged and start laying it out. Everything above-board. You be as honest as you need to be.”
That swamp, as he called it, was a wetlands area. It might be protected under the Clean Water Act by the EPA.
But it might not be. I’d heard vaguely about some protests around there, trying to keep the land safe. These days, I tried not to pay too much attention to that sort of thing.
I swallowed the last of the wine. “And if I don’t?”
He laughed. “What, you think I’m going to threaten you? No, if you turn me down, then I find somebody else. But you miss out on all that sweet, sweet money. Money you could use to help your mom. So I guess it’s just a question of which thing you want more: To protect your mother, or to protect your little self-image.”
23
Theo
“Missouri?” said Micah, eyes wide with disbelief. His arms slid off me, our embrace interrupted by my news.
“I’m a fucking wreck,” I said. “I can’t believe Val would ask me to do it.”
The problem with Micah’s apartment was, there was no room to pace. I wanted to walk, needed to be able to move, so that I could think.
“Can we…can we go outside?” I said.
“You don’t know what he’s like,” I said.
“Are you kidding? I grew up around him,” said Micah. “I know exactly what Val is like.”
The wind was getting bitter, but I didn’t care. I welcomed it, even welcomed the hint of rain, just the tiniest drops so far. Around us, Corinth was slowing down, going dark, putting itself to bed.
“He doesn’t even understand what he’s asking me. To him, it’s nothing. Theo, go move a thousand miles away for a while. What does he care? He’ll be in his office, on his computer, working on spreadsheets, he won’t even notice I’m gone. He never goes anywhere. You have to drag him to dinner with clients and investors. But in his mind, this is a totally reasonable request.”
“You’re going to say no…right?” Micah’s shoulder brushed mine.
“Here’s the thing about that.”
“Oh no, Theo. Seriously? You have to tell him no.”
I paused when we reached the park. I think it was the same park I’d been to the other day, the one where I’d wanted to paint all the leaves. Everything was dark now, slick with rain. It would be a wholly different painting. Sinister, dangerous.
“When I was a kid,” I said, “I thought of my dad as a factory-owner or something. I pictured him at a plant, big machines roaring beside him. I didn’t understand that his business, our business, hadn’t been like that in years, not since Great-Grandpa’s day. The company buys other companies. That’s all it does. It only survives if it grows. Our investors have to have faith that that’s going to keep happening. They’re like skittish deer or something, one false move and they run. So we need this Missouri deal. If it falls through, boom, the money’s gone. Not today, not tomorrow, but it’s hard for a company like ours to recover from a lack of confidence.”
“Law isn’t so different,” Micah said. “Everybody knows you win some, you lose some…but if you start to lose too many, then clients start looking elsewhere for help.”
“Right, that’s how it is. So we have to make this deal go through.”
“But why you? Why can’t someone else—?”
I nodded sadly. “That’s the thing. I wish there was someone else. I’m not a fucking manager. But Val is desperate. He wants someone he can trust absolutely…someone who will listen to him, who will take his orders. He doesn’t say it that way, naturally, but it’s what he means. He wants me to go in and be his little drone. I’m the only one he trusts for it.”
Micah stepped away from me. This whole time we’d been walking, shoulder to shoulder, huddled together. But now he separated himself, walking a few paces ahead, then turning back. “You’re going to tell him no, right? I mean, you can’t do this, Theo.”
“I know, I know, seriously—”
“No! I mean…you’re not going to do this to me again, are you?”
That caught me short. “Do what to you again?”
“Leave me because Val tells you to? Leave me for your company?”
The pain in his voice was so unexpected.
It shouldn’t have been.
Because he was right. It was happening again, just like it had before. Just as suddenly.
“We’re not kids anymore,” I said. “A thousand miles isn’t the same distance it used to be. We can still be together, and—”
He shook his head. “Just…don’t do that. I need a minute. I really just need a minute.”
I watched him as he leaned against a dark tree, facing away from me, his head bowed.
“Nothing’s happening yet,” I said. “I haven’t agreed to anything.”
“I should’ve known better,” he said. “Why didn’t I realize it would just happen all over again?”
“Come on, Micah.”
“You don’t get it.”
I was right next to him now. I pulled him toward me, and he did not resist. “If anyone gets it, I do. Do you think I don’t understand? Do you think I don’t know? Hell, I think that’s the whole reason I’ve never managed another real relationship after you, not a real one. Because what if I fell for someone, and then got pulled away? What if I was asked to make the choice, between my heart, and my responsibility? What would I do this time? Would I cave in to Val yet again?”
“I don’t want to talk,” he said. “Let’s…let’s get something to eat, let’s talk about movies or art or anything other than this. Please?”
It scared me a little, honestly. Micah was such a pillar, so stable. I could almost feel him trembling. This wasn’t like him.
I realized how much I needed him to be that pillar. How much I’d counted on him being steadfast and strong. When I’d welcomed him back into my life, I think… I think I’d expected I’d be able to lean on him. To have my life descending into its usual chaos, while he stood immovable, a point of reference, a north star.
What I hadn’t counted on was the effect my life had on him.
And the effect on me, of always having to lean on someone.
Wasn’t that the way this always worked for me? I leaned on Val. I needed him to give my life structure, as much as he needed me to be the public face and voice of the company.
And now I was asking Micah to provide emotional stability for me, while all I felt in my heart was turmoil…except I was causing turmoil for him, too.
After a cup of sake, he looked better, although his sushi was untouched in front of him. I wasn’t much better, pushing my spicy tuna roll around my plate.
“It’s nice to be warm,” he said, rubbing his arms.
Keep it light. Keep it conversational. “So what have you been up to since I saw you last?” I asked him, as though we hadn’t texted back and forth a hundred times since then.
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting—a light-hearted anecdote about the foibles of courtrooms?—but what I didn’t expect was for his face to fall.
“Let me ask you something,” he said. “You work with all kinds of people, right? I mean, you see a whole range of them, when you snap up their companies.”
“Sure.”
“Do you ever just get a bad vibe off of them?”
“What, like sexually?”
That made him laugh…I just wish it had brightened his face a little. He sounded so bitter.
“No, no, although that part wouldn’t surprise me either. This guy I’m representing…he’s a crook. There’s no doubt in my mind. He’s trouble.”
“And?” I would do anything to keep him talking. I sensed he needed it. Room to talk, room to take over the conversation, to get his thoughts out.
As he spoke, I watched, not his face, but his hands. Those long fi
ngers, caressing the cup. The way they played over the surface as though he were studying the texture of the ceramic. The light overhead made the tops of his hands bright, but then they plunged into shadow. It would have been so nice to draw those hands. How was I ever going to paint in Missouri?
Of course I could paint. Nothing was stopping me. Nothing had ever stopped me…except myself. Except my sense that I didn’t deserve to do this thing that I loved.
I know myself. I’d get there, and be the big boss during the day, and a fucking drunk at night. Hiding from my thoughts, hiding from my feelings, until it was time to come home again.
But Micah was talking, and I wanted to hear him, not myself.
“Do I really want to work for a gangster?” he was saying. “Fuck, he’s literally talking about mowing down the wetlands to put in a housing development.”
“The owls,” I said.
“The owls! Are there owls? I don’t even know, there must be, but there’s also this fantastic variety of other birds there. Ducks, yes, but also herons, and ibises. That’s not counting the raccoons and alligators and… I just mean, god, Theo, it’s exactly the opposite of what I always wanted to do with my life.”
His cheeks colored with emotion, his eyes wide with passion, and I wanted to kiss him so badly right then. But I could feel this distance between us.
This distance. It was nothing compared to the distance I’d feel if I went away.
“Come with me,” I said.
He blinked. “What?”
“Forget about your gangster client. Forget all this. Just come with me.”
“You know I can’t do that, Theo. I have a life here.”
“Do you? It sounds like you’ve got a lot of stress here. Like you’ve got people asking you to do things that you know in your heart aren’t right.”
“What, like I’m the only one? You think what you’re being asked to do is moral and good? You think Val rushing you across the country to dismantle a company so you can make a few million more dollars is right?”
I sat back in my chair. “Well, that was unexpected.”
“I’m sorry. I am. I’m just in a bad place, Theo. When this guy brought up my mom in conversation today, I just about flipped out. Everything in my life is so fucking tangled.”
Later, we ended up back at his place, of course. Ended up back in each other’s arms. Pressed together by the closeness of the walls, by the smallness of the bed.
But it was different for me this time.
I felt like Micah was casting me as one of the villains in his story. I knew it wasn’t as simple as that. Life was tangled.
The problem with having money and a life of apparent ease, is that you forget that sometimes it’s hard to get what you want.
You forget what the struggle is like.
My whole life lately had been about avoiding the struggle. When painting became hard, I didn’t question my life choices, didn’t ask if the artificiality of my business life was blocking my creativity. I just…stopped painting. If you don’t try to do what you love, then it won’t bother you when you fail.
If you give up, everything’s easy.
Especially when it doesn’t look like giving up. Especially when you trade your dreams for a nice penthouse apartment and a driver and an important job title.
Is something wrong, are you okay?
Yeah, no, no, it’s fine, keep doing that—
Are you sure? You like it? Because you were—
No, keep going, I promise I like it.
What if you just stopped wanting everything you want in life? What if you put your dreams away?
At least then things wouldn’t hurt. You wouldn’t have to worry about losing anything.
Your heart would be safe.
Theo, Theo, he whispered in my ear.
I love you, I whispered back, then gasped.
But there was so much distance between us, that I might as well not have even been in the room. My soul, my heart, floating outside, staring through the window at the two men entwined on the tiny couch, the harsh autumn wind carrying it away, getting further and further from what was happening in that room. Flying me to someplace safe, someplace where I didn’t have to care, where nothing would ever hurt me.
Theo, Theo, Theo, please don’t leave me.
I kissed him so that I wouldn’t have to answer, so that I wouldn’t have to tell a lie.
24
Micah
“Bad news,” said Bernard.
“Naturally. Why would there be any good news?” I slumped into his chair.
Theo was already on his flight back home. We’d hardly slept at all.
We’d hardly talked at all, either. I think we were both wary of saying too much. We didn’t want to argue. He didn’t want to promise to turn Val down.
Intellectually, I understood that. People were counting on Theo. It wasn’t just a matter of, oh, poor little rich boy, with a few less millions. If his company went down, it would hurt a lot of people. All the little businesses they’d taken on over the years, all the people with jobs and families, who were counting on Harrison Holdings to stay strong.
I knew it wasn’t just a matter of Theo making a decision for me.
It still hurt like hell to know he was even considering it.
I didn’t want to show him how withdrawn I felt. I tried to be friendly and warm and loving. But god, I felt like a man in the middle of a desert, crawling past skulls and tumbleweed, looking for a drink of water. I was feeling desperate and alone.
The last thing I needed today was bad news. But I looked up at Bernard. “Well?”
He looked away. “I don’t know how to say this. It’s partially my fault, I know, for pushing you…”
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
Turning back to me, he said, “It’s just like I worried about before. We’re losing clients. I’ve already spoken to three. Debra’s got a stack of messages from others, that we need to return.”
“Losing…wait, why?” I was so muddled, thinking of Theo instead of work.
“You know why. Braddock Moore. Word gets around fast in this town. They don’t want to be associated with him.”
“They’re not associated with him.”
“There’s rumors about how he got that case dropped…”
“Jesus, Bernard, I’m not in the mood for a scandal this morning. Can’t you be your charming self and get these people back? We’re the same firm we were two weeks ago.”
“I take some responsibility for this,” he said. “I pushed you to take his business. I thought it’d be good for us. I’d heard the hints of who he was, what he did. But the money, man, the money.”
“Everything we do is above-board,” I said. “What happened with the fraud case had nothing to do with us. Our hands are clean.”
“Our hands are clean. You know how it sounds, if you say that to a client? You might as well be confessing to being mobbed up, you say something like that.”
“Shit,” I muttered. “I don’t want to lose everybody. What do we do?”
I know what I wanted to do. I wanted to hop a damn plane and go see Theo. Forget all this. If Braddock Moore wanted someone to cover his fucking tracks, if he wanted someone to burn the world down so he could put up some more ugly houses, then he could find someone else to do it. Surely there were attorneys in this town who would jump at the chance.
Maybe I should take Theo up on his offer. Go with him. Drop all this, leave it all behind. Start all over again.
Yes, and how are you going to take care of your mom if you do that? If you start up as a small-time attorney again, no clients, no business? Or are you going to ask Theo to bankroll your mom?
“Honestly, Micah, it’s your move,” he said. “He’s your client. If you stick with him, you better be sure he’s worth it, because we’re going to lose everybody else. I can’t believe how damn fickle these people are.”
“If I drop him, I’ll be the brokest lawyer in town. Pickin
g up pennies off the sidewalk.”
I thought again of the area he was planning to bulldoze. I’d been down there a few times years ago with my camera, taking pictures of the birds. I hadn’t done that in forever. I was never around nature anymore…except human nature, and that wasn’t nearly as soul-enriching as the real thing.
“Whatever your decision is,” said Bernard, “you need to make it fast. You have to let the community know where you stand.”
“I came across a box of your toddler clothes,” said my mom. “I couldn’t believe it, I thought I’d given nearly all of them away when Janice had her boys. But the missus and I were going through the attic, and there they were in a little box. Your little Easter suit, with the clip-on bowtie, you probably don’t even remember that, you were so little.”
“I can’t believe it’s really happening,” I said over the phone. “It’s the end of an era, it really is.”
Her breathing hitched, just a little, and she took a moment to be silent, before saying, “I’m trying to make my peace with it. Mrs. Harrison really wants out of here. Says all she wants is to get on with life, and she can’t do that in the house. Maybe I’ll learn to look at it the same way, and get on with my life.”
My office was chilly. The old building’s heating system was chugging along, but the air coming from the vents was lukewarm at best. You could feel the cold coming in from the big, wavery windows.
“I’ll be down soon to help,” I said. “I just have a few things to take care of up here.”
“Tsk,” she said. “Work always keeps you so busy. But I tell myself this will be good. I’ll see more of you, up there in Corinth. That will be nice, won’t it?”
