Clear Water (26 page)

“If you wanted me to dress up, all you had to do was ask for a date, asshole.” His voice was fractured and gravelly, and his eyes were bloodshot, and Patrick’s hand floated like a kite on the way to his cheek.

“You didn’t get hurt, did you?”

Whiskey looked behind him and found a stool or something and dragged it behind him, sitting down heavily and leaning into Patrick so their faces were close and their voices intimate. Patrick smiled. He liked Whiskey like this—it was just like being back in their little berth with their bed that was too small and their teeny-tiny living space. It was the way he and Whiskey should be.

“Listen here, you little shit,” Whiskey muttered, and Patrick nodded. Whiskey rarely sounded this upset—it was good to listen. “If you ever scare the hell out of me like that again, I will probably kill you myself if my heart doesn’t give out first. I am an old man—”

“You’re thirty-six—” Patrick was getting floaty, light and bright, like a burning piece of paper in an updraft, but he remembered how old Whiskey had said he was.

“How old are you?” Patrick was lying on his back, running his fingers through that shiny, dark-brown hair.

Whiskey’s stubbled chin tickled Patrick’s bare stomach, and he blew a little bubble on the smooth skin as Patrick fought not to convulse and go fetal because it tickled. “Not old enough to be your father. Yet.”

“No, seriously—I like birthday parties and birthday presents. When’s your birthday?”

“October twenty-eighth.”

“How old will you be?”

“Not twenty-eight!”

“Whiskey!”

“And not here, either.” Whiskey looked at him seriously. “But returning, right? Can you have the party later?”

“If you tell me how old you’ll be.”

“Thirty-seven.”

“I’m not thirty-six after that.” The real Whiskey looked so much more serious than the remembered one, and his eyes were getting bright and shiny. “I’m at least a hundred and six after that.”

“I’m sorry,” Patrick murmured, although Whiskey didn’t usually like for him to say it. Patrick’s whole body hurt, and his brain was foggy and uncertain, and Whiskey looked horribly unhappy. In general, Patrick felt the definition of sorry, and like anything else he felt, he couldn’t keep his mouth shut about it.

“You should be,” Whiskey murmured back, taking Patrick’s hand in both of his blunt, sturdy ones and kissing it. His other hand was all heavy and white and plastered, but this hand was just fine. “We fed you, we housed you, and you try to repay that by getting yourself blown up? Fucking ungrateful, that’s what it is.”

We
. “How’s Fly Bait?”

“Fine. Still asleep in the houseboat. I couldn’t sleep there, so I came back here and slept in the waiting room. Then I heard you calling for me—that was good, by the way. You weren’t taking no for an answer. I was flattered.”

“They weren’t listening,” Patrick muttered. “I know everyone thinks
I’m
crazy, but
Jesus
,
no one was listening.”

The back of Patrick’s hand got a little wet. “You’re not crazy,” Whiskey said. “Although my opinion would have been totally different if you’d succeeded in killing yourself.”

“I’m glad I didn’t die.” Patrick was fading out, but there was a pressing issue he had to address. “How’s my dad?”

“Fine. But I may have to kill him before you wake up again.”

Fog and dark and sort of a gray numbness were seeping through Patrick’s aching head. “Hold off on that, wouldja? I wanna tell him I was fucking right.”

Whiskey’s laugh was low and rough, and it felt like the vibrations from his chest rocked Patrick off to sleep like the river rocked the houseboat.

W
HEN
he woke up again, Whiskey was there talking in a furious whisper to people Patrick didn’t know.

“Who the fuck’re you?” he croaked, and Whiskey turned around and offered him some water from a little plastic pitcher with a straw.

The man was a battered, grim Hispanic man wearing a suit and a don’t-fuck-with-me attitude. “I’m Agent Menendez, and I’m sort of the representative of the three different agencies that really need to talk to you, Mr. Cleary.”

“This couldn’t wait until his brain stopped swelling?” Whiskey asked, bristling with fuck-authority-until-it-bleeds.

“Mr. Cleary’s doctor has cleared ten minutes of questioning,” Agent Menendez responded with chilly civility.

Whiskey snarled, “Is he going to need a lawyer for ten minutes of questioning or not?”

Menendez sighed and defrosted a little. “I doubt it. You and Ms. Bitner have done a decent job clearing up matters for us—this looks like you stumbled into the wrong place for the weirdest reasons, and I just want a wrap-up.”

“Yeah, fine,” Patrick mumbled, thinking if this guy got his questions answered, maybe he’d get gone.

The questions were short and to the point, and Patrick was a little unhappy to realize he couldn’t remember the answers to all of them. “Why’d I leave you in the warehouse again, Whiskey?”

“Because I could probably defuse the bomb but I definitely couldn’t escape out the window.”

“Oh, yeah.” Suddenly his eyes, which had been drifting shut, shot open. “You defused that bomb, right?”

“Yeah, Patrick. Otherwise I’d be in the adjacent bed.”

“Adjacent means next to. You’d be in the bed next to me. I’d rather you be next to me
in
the bed.”

“Me too, baby. Now answer the rest of the nice FBI agent’s questions.”

“Okay, we’ve only got one more, Mr. Cleary. Now, your father reported you missing in May and then called us to say that you’d reported back in and were fine, and he volunteered to pay for the cost of hauling your car out of the river.”

“I’ll pay for that,” Patrick mumbled, falling asleep now.

He was surprised awake by his father’s voice saying, “I’ve got it, Patrick. No worries.”

“Dad?”

“Finish the questions, okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Now, we have Mr. Roberts in custody, and he’s pretty much told us you were his dupe,” Menendez said.

Whiskey said, “Who?”

“Cal,” Patrick told him. “The non-frog one.”

“Gotcha.”

Menendez cleared his throat and went on. “We’re just wondering why, if you had nothing to do with the crash, why didn’t you go back and talk to your father?”

Patrick’s head gave him a nasty kick right between the eyes. “Because I’d just told him I was gay and he seemed to think it was all part of my fuckup’s agenda. Why would I want to go talk to him after that?”

Patrick’s father made a sort of “oolf” sound, but Patrick couldn’t deal with that now.

“Can I go to sleep now? Whiskey, I want to go to sleep now. Make them go away. But not you. You’ll just be quiet and peaceful and strong, and warm… make them go away, Whiskey, and stay.”

He didn’t remember any more questions after that, but he did remember Whiskey’s hand on his forehead, so that must have been what happened.

W
HEN
he woke up again, it seemed to be the next day, and his father was in the room.

“Where’s Whiskey?” Patrick muttered, and Shawn sighed and came from the little couch in the room to sit in Whiskey’s chair.

“He had to take a leak—and I think he had to talk to someone on the phone. Something about Greenpeace and a trip. He’s not sure if he should go.”

Aw. Aw, fuck. “He’s got to go,” Patrick slurred. He was feeling sharper than he had, and stronger, but his speech—it was like the less his head hurt, the harder it got to keep his tongue, lips, and mouth coordinated. “He’s got to. How’m I supposed to make us a home if he doesn’t go and let me fix it up?”

Shawn sighed and made useless gestures in the air with his hands. Patrick had the feeling that he wanted to hold
Patrick’s
hand, but that seemed pretty baseless, didn’t it?

“You want to make a home for you?” Shawn asked quietly, and Patrick made an uhm-hm sound in reply.

There was a silence, and Patrick realized he had the words to elaborate. “The houseboat is as tacky as hell, but I think we can make it nice, yanno? And I was going to teach yoga and go back to school….” Patrick groaned and, for the first time, tried to move the broken arm. It gave a throb, and he groaned again. “Aw, shit. The yoga job. They were going to hold it to the end of August, but I doubt they want to hold it now!”

“Sure they do,” Whiskey said, walking into the room and glaring at Patrick’s dad. No one was more surprised than Patrick when Mr. Cleary moved off the stool in a hot hurry and let Whiskey sit down.

“I doubt it,” Patrick grimaced—and then grimaced again. God, everything hurt—almost worse than when he had first woken up.

“Here,” Whiskey murmured. There was a little paper cup with more water on the pull-over table. “The nurse came while you were asleep and said when you woke up, you might want some of this.”

Patrick took the little tabs and groaned as they went down. Just
knowing
he was going to be out of pain soon made it all feel better.

“I talked to your boss—Brittany something-really-WASP-y?”

“Radcliffe.”

“Yeah. She said they don’t have anyone to replace you yet. Give them a call in a month. Even if you can’t actually do the moves, she’s pretty sure you’ll be better than—and this is a quote—‘the braindead sewer-sump of vanity’ who applied yesterday.”

Patrick smiled a little through the throbbing in his head. Brittany was one of those girls who had majored in softball in college, no matter what her degree said, and as the manager of the gym, she took her athletics seriously. “Brittany’s good people,” he said happily. “That’s awesome. When am I out of here?”

Whiskey’s happy-for-Patrick-ness faded. “In, uhm, two weeks. In fact….” He cleared his throat. “You’re supposed to come home the day after I’m supposed to go. I was trying to get in touch with the director of the trip just now, try and get a replacement—”

“Don’t!” Patrick stopped short, trying to figure out where that word came from. Oh, great. Here he had no words when he needed words the most.

“Patrick….” Whiskey shook his head. “If you were okay, I’d go, because that’s what we planned, right? But you need someplace to stay that doesn’t rock, and you need someone to make sure you eat and take you to the doctor’s and get you to school until you get your cast off and shit. I mean, it doesn’t make you a fuckup.”

“I could take care of him,” Shawn Cleary said from across the room, and the look Whiskey shot him was so angry that even Patrick recoiled.

“Oh, please!” Whiskey snapped. “You’ve had him twice, and both times I got him back broken! I’m really going to trust you with him one more time?”

Patrick watched, shocked, as his father shrank into himself, became older, nervous, became sad.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Shawn said reflexively, and Patrick blinked. “I’m sorry I broke him. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to listen! I’m sorry you don’t think you can trust me with him. But he’s grown, okay? Maybe, if he thinks it’ll work, you’ll listen to him!”

Whiskey’s face hardened, and Patrick wanted to kiss his bunched-up forehead, his tightened jaw, all of the tensed-up, scrunched-up, angry parts of him until Patrick’s Whiskey was back.

“I
always
listen to him,” Whiskey hissed. “Not just when he was trying to save my life.”

Shawn deflated even more. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. Look. I’m gonna go get some coffee or something. You guys talk it over. Do you want anything?”

Patrick whimpered hopefully, and Whiskey smiled a little, the expression lightening up on the sudden anger that had darkened it. “Vanilla ice cream for Patrick—I already talked it over with the nurse.”

Shawn nodded and wandered out, casting one last, wistful look at the two of them, and Patrick was relieved to hear Whiskey sigh. There was a sudden shifting in Patrick’s head, a sort of spreading curtain of numb, and his shoulders relaxed completely. Wheeeeww, yeah! Those pain meds were
gorgeous
.

“I was hard on him,” Whiskey said softly.

“You were. You’re not hard on anybody.” Patrick remembered that—the patience, the gentleness, the way he’d taken those imperiled cell phones out of his hands without flinching once.

“Patrick….” Whiskey shook his head, looked away, said the rest of it to the window that looked out on a day so bright it hurt even coming through the blinds. “Patrick, I ran into that room, and you were yelling at him about the fucking bomb, and he wasn’t listening. And then… then you threw yourself in front of it and almost died.” Whiskey’s voice rose, cracked, crumbled. “You think I’m going to leave you with him? When… I mean, I’ll never let you down, man. Don’t you deserve someone who’ll never let you down?”

Patrick swallowed. “I have him,” he said. “And he’s got to go on a trip to freeze his balls off so that he can come back here and get a job he loves and then stay with me forever. I lived with my dad for twenty-three years. What’s another six months? I mean… hell, I can’t even have sex for… what?”

Whiskey laughed humorlessly. “A month. I asked.”

Patrick grinned at him, because his voice had been so full of longing. “Yeah?”

“Yeah! It was good.”

“Yeah, it was!” Patrick wasn’t sure if it was the drugs or the memory of Whiskey’s rough hands on his skin, but it really had been
good.

Whiskey turned to him, and for once he wasn’t smiling or relaxed or trying hard to show Patrick a happy face. “I haven’t had a home in so long,” he said softly. “I—I want a home with you. I don’t want to leave you when you’re hurt, or fragile, Patrick. I want to be a guy worth making a home for.”

Patrick nodded. “I don’t want you to stay with me thinking I’m with you because I’m fragile, Whiskey. I want you to know I’m staying with you because I love you and I don’t want anybody else. I want you to know I’m strong—and I want you to be happy. You go on this last thing, this last trip, and when you come back, I’ll make you a home and you’ll take care of me, and we’ll be happy ever after, okay?” And now Patrick’s voice was made of cookies, weak and crumbly with the bitter taste of truth.