The Wolf at Bay (Big Bad Wolf)

by Charlie Adhara

  “Thanks, Dad,” Dean said wryly. “Real nice.”

  “I’m just saying,” Ed said, launching into his favorite repertoire. “At your age I was married with two boys, doing what I loved for the town I love. What about you?”

  Cooper thought of Fasser snarling and Simpson sitting on his chest with razor-sharp claws fully extended. “True. Unlike Dean, I don’t really get a lot of opportunities to flirt on the job.” He caught Park’s eye, flushed, and murmured, “Not with civilians.”

  “But are you happy sitting back in an office?” Ed pushed. “Rachel always said you’d—”

  He broke off the way he always did when accidentally mentioning Cooper’s mother. There was an awkward silence, and then, “I’m just saying you used to always want to be running around, getting into trouble. I don’t want you thinking you have to do some stuffy job because, well, I can’t say I know why.”

  “I think Cooper still manages to get into plenty of trouble,” Park said, and Cooper kicked his foot toward his shins. An inhuman yelp pierced the air, and Cooper blinked at Park for a second before looking under the table. Beluga had moved to peer distrustfully at him from behind Park’s legs. “Shit.”

  “Language, Cooper Isaac,” Ed said, nodding at the doorway where Cayla had snuck back in, wearing a little royal-blue velvet suit jacket and matching pants and a different pair of ears, rounder and fuzzier and bear-like, on her head.

  “Er, sorry, my foot slipped.”

  The dog looked like she knew a lie when she smelled it. He saw the same expression on Park’s face right now.

  “Somebody isn’t very happy with you,” Cayla said.

  Cooper didn’t bother asking her who.

  * * *

  That night, Cooper shifted under the cool sheets and tried not to look too closely at his surroundings. The posters of baseball players—all retired now—that he’d hung up across his bed for reasons that were about forty-percent baseball-related, the battered dresser with CD cases scattered across the surface, his room preserved in time as if he had just walked out. In a way he had. Maybe that was the problem.

  Dean had stayed on longer, moving back briefly after college, slowly dismantling his room until it was an empty office space without even a spare bed. But Cooper hadn’t wanted to bring anything with him he didn’t have to, and his dad had apparently left it all untouched, same as the day he’d left home at seventeen. As if Cooper might still come back one day looking for his Walkman.

  Lying in the dark, surrounded by his childhood things, with the trundle bed pulled out and waiting, he felt like he was having a sleepover. He even had that same nervous energy. When Cooper was a kid his dad rarely let him have friends overnight, so it was a big, exciting deal when it happened. He had that same momentous feeling now. Though he and Park had shared a room plenty of times before, here in his old bedroom, his father asleep down the hall, the uniformed stars of his earliest fantasies staring down at him, it felt different.

  The door opened and Park slipped in, returning from the bathroom.

  “Hey,” Cooper whispered.

  Park nodded at him and then looked around the room with a neutral sort of curiosity. He hadn’t gotten a good look before. Cooper had insisted he stay with Ed while he set up the trundle and carried their bags in, wanting to limit the amount of time Park spent in here. He shouldn’t have bothered. Park was taking it all in, darkness be damned. Cooper could see the quick rise and fall of his chest that meant he was sniffing the room.

  Cooper wondered what he could smell. He wondered if the years of sadness and laughter and anger and frustration and loneliness and longing had left some invisible mark on the walls. Especially the longing. For something exactly like this. A man who saw him for who he was, accepted him, and could drive Cooper crazy.

  Though perhaps in his childhood fantasies he hadn’t pictured this mystery lover sniffing his room quite so intently.

  “Do you...want to come to bed?” Cooper shifted slightly on the too-small mattress. It would be uncomfortable and risky, and it took Cooper’s breath away how badly he wanted it.

  Park hesitated, then drifted over and sat on the trundle instead. A cacophony of screeches and whines sounded like a jungle brawl from the aged springs. Cooper laughed softly.

  “Yeah, well, the same back at you,” he said, and caught the shine of Park’s teeth. They sat in silence and Cooper began to relax into the pillow, bone-tired from staying awake all the night before, worrying.

  He had specifically wanted Park to come to the Valley so they could talk in a new setting. Fix things. Come to an understanding, as Park would say.

  He should open his eyes and do that now. But the familiar, steady cadence of Park’s breathing here in this room that had once been both his sanctuary and his prison made him feel safe, and he slipped into an almost drugged tranquility.

  “Are you falling asleep on me?”

  No, just resting my eyes, Cooper said. Or thought.

  He felt Park lean over and brush his lips against his hair. But he might have just imagined that as well.

  * * *

  His mother’s gazebo came apart in ugly chunks.

  Cooper had imagined it would be like a house of cards, toppling over into its original elements. Planks and beams and shingles all in a pile at their feet as if ready to be reassembled again.

  That wasn’t how it worked at all. Whether through solid construction or time melding its bones together, the gazebo was one whole entity now, and every toothed attack from Ed’s prized machine ripped hunks away like flesh, with all its skin, nerves, and tissue trailing behind.

  Dean helped Cayla keep a steady stream of water from the garden hose on each new tear to control the dust and debris. It flooded at their feet in a discolored pool. Cooper looked at that instead.

  “Okay?” Park asked, and touched his shoulder gently.

  Cooper twitched away from his hand and glanced automatically at his father, steering the excavator jerkily and yelling instructions no one could hear as he ripped into the gazebo again. “Fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Park was quiet and Cooper looked up at him. He looked...tired. Spiderweb lines crept out from the corners of his eyes and mouth, and he held his neck and shoulders stiffly.

  “I warned you,” Cooper said.

  Park quirked his brow. “About?”

  Cooper paused and then settled for a light tone. “I warned you this weekend wasn’t going to be fun. How horrible is the trundle bed?”

  “I’ve had worse nights.”

  The last of the gazebo, a crooked uneven spire that jutted into the sky like an accusation, crumbled under the machine’s final strike, and Cayla cheered.

  “Well, you look like you won’t survive another. Oliver 0, Mattress 1.”

  Park shook his head, smiling. “Porcupine,” he said.

  Cooper felt heat rush his face. It was something Park called him occasionally in private. When Cooper was being “especially prickly.” Whether it was meant out of affection or exasperation, Cooper wasn’t sure, but it sounded intimate in a way they both usually avoided and tended to do unpredictable things to Cooper’s physiology.

  “We could switch tonight,” Cooper said.

  Park looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “Switch what?”

  Cooper nudged him and then lingered with his shoulder pressed against Park’s for a moment. “Beds. I don’t want you in pain. Not that a thirty-year-old twin is going to rock your world, but it’s something.”

  Park’s eyes flickered with a sort of soft, pleased surprise, but he said, “I literally rearrange every bone in my body on the daily. I promise a mattress is not going break me.” He poked Cooper’s back. “Some company on said mattress, on the other hand...”

  “Might not break you, but would certainly break the bed,” Cooper finished with an incredulous laugh.
/>   “That sounds like a challenge.”

  He shook his head mournfully. “And you used to hear so well.”

  Park’s response was lost in the noise of Ed driving the machine over the pile of debris, crushing the rubble and the few lilac bushes left standing. Sophie had suggested trying to save the plants by digging them up and transplanting them somewhere, but Ed had flatly refused delaying the demolition.

  “Besides, I’ve always hated the smell of lilac. Dean? Coop?”

  Dean had just shrugged and Cooper followed suit. The lilacs, like the gazebo, reminded him of his mother’s last days, just before the final move to the hospital, when she was too weak to move around much and he spent most of his time visiting her in the gazebo. He supposed he should be just as angry that his father was destroying them, but the truth was he hated the smell as well. Especially during the very last days of the flower’s bloom, when the edges of the petals soured to brown and the smell thickened to an overpoweringly sweet rot, like a mouse forgotten in a trap.

  Across the field something caught the afternoon sun in the second-floor window of old Mr. West’s house and flickered a bright white light. Cooper squinted, but the light disappeared.

  Of course, Mr. West probably didn’t even live there anymore. Or live anywhere at all, for that matter. He’d already been old and terrifying when Cooper was a kid. Always watching the neighborhood kids play in the field. Still, it was the terrifying ones who seemed to live forever, and something about that flash tickled a sleepy memory in the back of Cooper’s brain.

  “I ran into your father sitting in the gazebo this morning.”

  Cooper looked at Park, startled. “What?” he said, not sure he’d heard correctly over the destruction around them.

  “Ed was sitting in your mother’s gazebo.”

  Cooper frowned, not sure what to do with that information, so he filed it away for later and focused on the second part. “Why’d you call it that? My...my mother’s gazebo.”

  “You don’t talk about her much, but nearly every time you have, you’ve mentioned that gazebo.” Park shrugged. “I took a guess.”

  Cooper didn’t say anything for a long time. “She liked to sit there and watch the birds at the feeder. She was so happy she cried when a little bird family started nesting in the birdhouse. They never had before.”

  “How old were you when she died?”

  “Eleven.”

  Diagnosed with ovarian cancer when he was nine. His clearest memories of her were from when she was sick. But she’d still managed to cement herself in his mind as his ally parent. Rolling her eyes when Ed would go off on one of his lectures at Cooper, she would tell a joke and they’d both relax. She made everything lighter, easier. He often wondered how things would be different with his dad if she hadn’t died when he was so young.

  “It was longer than they expected. She said she was hanging on for Dean to become bar mitzvah and make sure he didn’t chicken out. Talk about a guilt trip.”

  Park laughed. “Did you have a bar mitzvah?”

  “Nah. Not for me. All the personal responsibility, none of the gift cards. Dad made me keep going to temple for a bit, but I don’t think he even noticed when I stopped. He was pretty out of it after—afterwards.” Cooper felt oddly guilty saying it. His dad always presented a strong front, and to admit, even if it was just to Park, that he had once showed weakness felt like a betrayal.

  “They got married out of high school,” Cooper added quickly, as if that was the only reason Ed could be affected by his wife’s death.

  “Young.”

  “Yeah. Well, that was Dean’s doing, too, actually. But now Dad thinks anyone in their thirties and single is bound to die alone.”

  Cooper suddenly felt uncomfortable and exposed. He realized with a jolt that, aside from the cute little tree story last night, he knew about as much about Park now as he did within the first three days they’d met. Not that he asked that often. Accusing someone’s relatives of being involved in murder and mass conspiracy tended to make chats about the fam awkward later.

  Cooper knew he had been raised by his scary, rich, alpha-zilla grandparents, but Park was frustratingly vague about his past. The one time Cooper had asked what had drawn Park away from academia and into the agency, he’d said “I wanted to fix things” and left it at that.

  “What about your parents?” Cooper asked now.

  Park looked away to watch the last of the gazebo being flattened beneath the wheels. “What about them?” His voice was flat, but the strain around his eyes and mouth had deepened.

  Cooper took a step back. Park rolled his shoulders and shook out his arms suddenly, like he was fighting a cramp. “Sorry. Maybe you were right and the trundle bed got to me worse than I thought.”

  Cooper touched his arm gently. “This house makes porcupines of us all.”

  His words rang out across the suddenly silent yard as the excavator was powered off, and he yanked his hand away.

  Ed hopped down from the control box and clapped his hands. “Now we just got to clear this away. Coop, stop gabbing over there. It’s time for some real work.”

  October or not, Cooper was sweating hard by the time they tossed the last of the rubble into the back of his dad’s truck.

  “Now that wasn’t so bad,” Ed said, closing the back with a final thud. His face was red and his mustache dark with sweat, but there was a look of satisfaction and almost relief in his eyes.

  “Whatever,” Cooper mumbled, rubbing at his stinging eyes. The dirt and wood dust stuck to his skin and made his eyes burn more. In the yard, they could hear Cayla singing to herself and swinging a shovel, smack, smack, against the big dirt hole where the gazebo had been.

  Ed clapped him on the back. “We couldn’t have done it without you.” Cooper looked at him, surprised, and Ed continued, “If you hadn’t brought Oliver we’d still be breaking our backs.”

  “Right. Yeah. He’s handy like that.”

  “He’s a beast,” Ed countered, clapped him on the shoulder, and squeezed.

  Cooper stiffened. “No, he’s not.”

  Ed laughed. “Whatever, Coop. The point is, you could learn a thing or two from him. You’re skinnier than ever. Did you know I caught him sneaking out to go for a run at the crack of dawn? I told him he better save his energy for today, and it’s a good thing he did.”

  “Yeah, I heard about that.” Cooper paused, not sure if he should ask. “What were you doing up, out here?”

  Ed fiddled with the truck door and watched Cayla, who had given up hitting the dirt and was trying out digging for the moment. “You used to do that. Sing to yourself. All the time.”

  “I can’t sing.”

  “Believe me, I know. The whole neighborhood knew.” Ed looked past Cayla to the field and the houses beyond, like he was seeing a different time.

  “Dad...” Cooper hesitated. “Why tear down Mom’s gazebo now? Really?”

  Ed sighed. “Coop—” He shook his head and looked at Cooper, then squinted. “Are you crying?”

  “What? No!” Cooper scrubbed again at his burning eyes. “It’s just this stupid dust.”

  “Last bit coming through,” Dean called out. He and Park were carrying a chunk of support beam still attached to some shingles that Cooper was fairly sure Park could have carried on his own, literally single-handed.

  Cooper stepped aside as they tossed it into the back of the truck with a lot of grunting on Dean’s part and a scraping groan from the already full truck bed. Cooper pulled the bottom of his T-shirt to wipe the sweat off his face again and then just pulled the whole damn thing off to use the clean inside instead.

  “Woo. That’s the last of it. Too bad Sophe had that poodle surgery and didn’t get to see my masculine prowess,” Dean was saying, wiping his hands on his jeans. “Actually, what with the whole wood spider incident, m
aybe it’s for the best she wasn’t here to see me screa—”

  “What is that?” Ed interrupted. His voice was so sharp and urgent Cooper automatically snapped to attention, his hand reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there.

  But there was no threat. Ed was staring at Cooper with a twisted expression of anger and horror.

  Cooper blinked, a bolt of unease pulsing through him to see his father look so furious. “What?”

  “That.” Ed moved toward him quickly, hand outstretched, and in the corner of his eye Cooper saw Park step forward, watching Ed intently, while Dean just looked back and forth between them, confused.

  “What happened to you?” His eyes flicked across Cooper’s body, and for a moment Cooper thought he was going to make another critique of his muscle mass. Then he realized what “that” was and wished he hadn’t.

  “Oh.” He tried to cover the bruises and scratches on his arms. “Just some bumps from the last case. It’s nothing. You know how easy I bruise. Looks worse than it is.”

  “Does that look worse than it is?” Ed stepped closer, pointing to the thick scars running down Cooper’s belly. Park stepped closer as well, and Cooper stepped away from both of them, butt pushed up against the truck. “Because that looks like you were mauled by a...by a bear.”

  Close, but no cigar. “I wasn’t. I just...”

  Part of being in the BSI meant lying. He did it all the time. He’d been lying to his father about all sorts of stuff for a lot longer than he’d even been in the BSI. But something about the expression on Ed’s face, like he was angry enough to kill, turned his mind blank.

  Cooper looked at Park, but his partner had that closed-off, empty mask firmly in place. Beyond him, Dean was frowning.

  “It was nothing. A few stitches and I’m good as new.”

  “You were in the hospital?” Dean asked. “For how long?”

  “I don’t know. A week?” Cooper lied. “Maybe longer?”

  “You hate hospitals,” Ed said, so low Cooper wasn’t sure he heard right.

  “Yeah, well. They didn’t really give me a choice of venue.”