Clear Water (2 page)

Patrick fought the urge to sniffle like a toddler. “He didn’t even say I was cut off. I just don’t want to live with him if he’s not going to take me seriously!”

Cal snorted. “Well Jesus, Patrick! It’s not like you’re built for the real world or anything, you know? You don’t have a job skill—hell, I don’t even think you’ve ever worked a real job!”

Patrick cringed. “I have too,” he said, unhappy that Cal would forget this. “I waited tables for a year and a half in that restaurant across town!” He’d loved that job, actually. He’d worked hard, no one had treated him special, and he’d been, once again, up to his ass in ass. (Or rather, Ricky the cook had been up to his balls in
Patrick’s
ass. Patrick had quit the job when he found out that Ricky had been taking it bareback in the walk-in from Eduardo, the head bartender, the whole time, which was
so
not cool and made Patrick three times as cautious about always using a condom and twice as cautious about finding a boyfriend after that.)

“Oh yeah,” Cal said, and Patrick had to look hard at him to make sure he wasn’t rolling his eyes. “Wasn’t that just before we met?”

Patrick nodded, and Cal chewed his lower lip.

“So, uhm, this desire for independence has been building for a while, hasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Patrick said softly, thinking about all that excitement he’d had for going back to school. “I was good in school, when I took my meds—I’d like to go back, study something I’m interested in, you know?”

“But… I don’t know, Patrick—don’t you have everything you want right now? I mean, living on your Dad’s dime, nothing wrong with that, right?” Patrick was going to protest, but then Cal did that thing he did where he put his hand on the side of Patrick’s face and kissed him on the forehead and made him feel like a little kid, protected and cherished and small. “Besides, baby—who needs those nasty old meds polluting your system, right?”

Patrick smiled thinly. He’d never been able to get Cal to understand the Ritalin or how badly he seemed to need it sometimes. His dad hadn’t gotten it either, and his mom—well, his mom made sure he always had it, and then burst into tears when it wore off. People assumed that the drugs were a crutch, something that made keeping his brain on the right track easy, and that he was just lazy because he couldn’t focus. They didn’t understand that with the drugs, making little choices—listen or fidget, hear instructions or think about what he had for breakfast—became possible. He could
see
the little choices with the drugs—they were laid out for him as neatly as clothes folded on the bed, and all he had to do was take a breath and make a choice.

Without the drugs, his brain was one big hairy garage sale in the jungle, and he had no idea where to find anything, and sometimes, the sheer frustration just took over and made him a tense, whiny, squalling infant, even at the age of almost twenty-four.

When Cal patted his cheek like that, he did feel comforted and cherished and cared for, and he needed that, because he was totally incapable of navigating the uncharted garage sale of his own mind.

But he’d had his meds today. He’d been taking them for the past two months—they’d helped him negotiate the paperwork jungle of re-enrolling in school and deciding on a major and then even the complex reasoning behind his own delayed maturity. He’d been able to
think,
dammit, and he
liked
it. He just didn’t want to tell Cal, because then there’d be a big furry argument about it, and as much as he thought Cal loved him, he didn’t want to test that with the little prescription bottle in his pocket.

“I just want to be able to make my own way,” he mumbled now. “My father did it, right?”

“Yeah, baby—here, have a beer.” Cal gave the universal gesture for “draft,” and the bartender nodded his head, raising his eyebrow at Patrick, who’d been drinking soda for the past hour as he’d waited for Cal to get off work.

Beer wasn’t good—not with his meds—but he didn’t want to fight with Cal. He figured he’d nurse it—just take a couple of sips and leave the rest while they tried to hash out their future in the wake of the train wreck Patrick had just had with his father.

Cal smiled at him as the beers were served and rubbed their noses together. “It’s okay, Trix,” he promised gently. “I’m gonna make you feel alright.”

One drink of beer. He swore that was all he had.

Whiskey
A Regrettable Deed

W
ESLEY
K
EENAN
couldn’t sleep, which
really
pissed him off. The little houseboat in the delta had proved to be the one place he
could
sleep, ever, and that was a surprise, since most of it was a science lab and the bed in the back was a tad on the small side. But on this hot late May night, he couldn’t sleep, which was how he came to be out walking in the bogs and the marshes between the marina and the levee.

He sort of liked it out here.

Of course, he’d originally only ended up here because that was where the research had taken him. He’d seen the data, written the grant, rented the houseboat, and determined to live with the bog smell and the mild traffic noises and the diesel that the other houseboats kicked up because apparently he was the only one capable of converting a diesel engine to one that ran cleanly on biofuel. But eventually even the humidity of the delta and the weird mix of political town and cow town mentalities started to fade. On nights like this, he would listen to the traffic from the levee and the sound of the river lapping on the sides of the houseboats, then look into the sky, which was surprisingly free of light pollution this far from the city proper, and he’d think that maybe, when the grant ran out, he’d keep the houseboat and write his next grant from here.

It wasn’t an entirely
awful
idea, and that surprised the hell out of him too.

So he was picking his way among the grass hummocks, trying not to sink too far into the mud as the bog narrowed to the place where the river ran right alongside the levee, when he heard the nasty metal-bending sound of a car going through a guard rail.

He looked up just in time to see the bright yellow Honda Jazz cut a lovely arc through the air and do the plunge-n-bounce into the deep waters of the river.

He had that moment of shock that most people would have, that “Oh-my-God-I-can’t-believe-that-just-happened!” moment, and he saw two things.

One was that the driver’s side window had been rolled down and there was someone escaping through the driver’s side, and he was greatly relieved. The other was that the person in the passenger’s seat wasn’t moving at all, and Whiskey was suddenly panicked. The water here was deep, and there was a current, and if someone was going to rescue that still form in the passenger side, it had to be done
now!

Whiskey wasn’t even aware he was moving until he was halfway out to the steadily sinking car.

The water was cold enough to shock but not dangerous, and that was a blessing, but Whiskey’s heart was thundering in his ears, and he couldn’t say that was quite a good thing. He kept trying to remember how deep the water was here and when the car would level out, but he thought it was nearly fifteen feet, and it was night, so seeing in it was not going to be so easy.

And the car was filling up from the driver’s side—he could see that now—and it was starting to tip sideways and trap air in the passenger’s side. Fuck.

Whiskey worked out like a madman to keep his over-thirty-five love handles at bay, and he was damned grateful when he managed to wriggle in that window along with all of the water. When he got there, he flailed for a minute before he remembered that episode of
Mythbusters
that said the electronic windows would work even when wet.

He reached over the passenger—a young man who was still breathing out but not quickly—and rolled down the window, feeling some relief as the car leveled a little in its descent to the bottom of the river.

It was the eeriest thirty seconds of Whiskey’s life. He kept his face above water (and propped anonymous kid’s face up with his) until it was no longer possible and then went to work on the seat belt. Great. Floppy kid in his arms, seatbelt undone, no air… no air… no air…
blurg-thump.
The car made a sound as it hit, front wheels first, then back, and then Whiskey had endured about enough of
that
crap and opened the door.

Oh God bless
Mythbusters
and Adam and Jamie and their whole goddamned crew, because the door opened and he could drag anonymous teenager to the surface.

He got there, dragging air into his lungs with more appreciation of oxygen than he’d ever had before, his arm around his crash victim’s chest, keeping the kid up, and… was he breathing? Aw, fuck. Whiskey couldn’t be sure, but he couldn’t give him mouth to mouth in the river either.

Still gasping, he kept swimming, strong and steady, until his long legs found the silt under his feet and he started hauling himself and the boy’s body through the weeds and the muck at the riverbank. His battered tennis shoes squelched uncomfortably with every step, and the stench of the decaying marsh plants and diesel oil was almost overwhelming here. The next day, he’d be grateful they hadn’t surfaced at one of the parts of the river with the ankle-breaking rocks—but that would be the next day.

He had the kid under the arms, and when he got to a flat spot, he dropped him perfunctorily and got on his knees, prepared to do the mouth-to-mouth thing before calling for help. (Somewhere out there was a proscription against starting mouth-to-mouth without witnesses, but Whiskey had never been great at rules anyway.)

He didn’t need to—the boy’s body collapsed down enough to force a little water from his lungs. He started coughing, still unconscious, and Whiskey turned him over on his side, where he proceeded barf nasty water for a few minutes before settling down a little.

Not once did he wake up or even open his eyes.

Whiskey looked at the boy helplessly and then looked out to the river to where the car was probably being dragged by the current to parts unknown. He knew that somewhere downstream, where the river opened up into the Delta, there were breakwaters and places where bodies and junk and sunken motorboats washed ashore, but he was pretty sure the car was a write-off, no matter what. He looked around, expecting to hear sirens at any second, and realized that the boy’s companion, the
driver
of the damned car, had taken off.

Whiskey frisked the kid and came up with a small prescription bottle for—squint at it in the light—“Patrick. Patrick Cleary.” Whiskey blinked. Well. Wasn’t
that
name familiar. “So, Patrick Cleary, what are we taking?” He read the label. “Concerta. What in the holy hells is ‘Concerta’, and why would it put you in a coma? Should be called ‘Comerta’, oh yes it should!” Whiskey’s sense of humor was not always appropriate, he was aware, but since the only person there to hear him was
asleep
, he decided he didn’t give a fuck and laughed at his own joke.

“Okay, Patrick Cleary, who was your skeezy friend, why did he run, and what in the fuck are we going to do about your car? These are things I’d very much like to know.”

At that point the boy did maybe his first almost-conscious thing since the car had plunged into the Sacramento River—he pulled his knees to his chest and started to cry, soundlessly, like he was dreaming about something sad. Whiskey looked at him in the thin light of the moon and the dissipated sodium glow from up on the levee and sighed. What looked to be dark-blond hair was plastered to his head—either salon-streaked or naturally, it was hard to tell—but his khakis and summer-weight blazer were fashionable and expensive. The kid had a small face, piquant, and almost round, although he actually looked a little thin under his blazer. Whiskey couldn’t tell if he was awake or simply crying in his sleep, but either way—God, what a forlorn little kitten he was, wasn’t he?

Whiskey sighed and crouched down, sliding his hands under the kid’s knees and his shoulder. Now that he was done barfing, it was time to get him somewhere he didn’t look so damned sad.

With a heave, a grunt, and a muttered curse word, Whiskey pushed himself up, a gangly bundle of teenager in his arms, and resolved himself to hauling the kid’s scrawny ass to the houseboat. His wet, holey jeans made schwacking sounds against themselves as he walked, and his T-shirt dripped mud and silt down to keep his jeans wet, in case they had random drying thoughts during the trip.

Fly Bait would hate this kid on sight.

“
W
HO
in the holy fuck is that?”

Fly Bait didn’t often show emotion, which was why Whiskey no longer played poker with her. The houseboat had two berths, and she took one. Yeah, they’d knocked uglies before on another research excursion, but that had been out of sheer boredom. Whiskey tended to like his bed partners—female
or
male—to be a little more vocal. Fly Bait tended to like her bed partners a little more female, but, well, they’d been waiting for a species of fish to procreate when, in fact, the damned things had been all but sterile. Boredom? Whiskey swore his heart rate had been faster when he’d been sleeping than it had been on that job—or during the abortive sex with Fly Bait.

“An acolyte,” he muttered now, trying not to stagger down the stairs from the deck. Hell, he’d been half a mile away from the dock—who knew the little shit he was carrying weighed so much? The fun part had been walking on the unsteady quay on his unsteady legs—damn, he’d been half-afraid he’d pitch the poor kid off the edge and then follow him out of sheer embarrassment.

“Yeah?” Fly Bait had straight brown hair that fell right below her ears because she hacked it off herself that length whenever it threatened to overcome the ragged edges years of doing this had given her. She also had a thin oval of a face, flat brown eyes, and a sort of hidden patience. She could rip an unwary head and/or face off if she thought someone was skiving off or being deliberately stupid, but if she knew a member of a research team was honestly trying, she was perhaps one of the best field teachers Whiskey had ever met.