Hard Bitten

by M. K. York

  “Oh, yeah, definitely.”

  Mark took one look at Frank’s shirt and gave him a thin-lipped smile; Lukas didn’t think anyone else would have noticed how stiff and artificial it was. Frank pumped his hand, loudly proclaimed that any friend of Lukas’s was a friend of his, and made a fart joke.

  When Frank shuffled into the aisle first, hanging on to a massive Coke and a bucket of popcorn the size of his head, Mark hung back and gestured Nick in ahead of him.

  Mark and Lukas engaged in a brief nonverbal conversation where Mark tipped his head at the row. Do you want to go in first? Lukas barely nodded back and slid in, Nick at his left, Mark finally sitting down on his right.

  Lukas noticed at once and with an overwhelming sense of regret that Mark had worn cologne again.

  “Did you have any trouble getting out to Ballard?” Lukas asked.

  Mark shook his head, settling his more reasonably sized bucket of popcorn securely in his lap with the hand that wasn’t holding a pop. “Parking was kind of a pain in the ass, but the traffic wasn’t bad.”

  “That’s good.”

  “How about you? Did you have a case going on today?”

  “Met with a prospective client. They’re not sure yet.”

  “Makes sense. That’s what my friends in family law do. They have a fee for the first meeting, though. Consultation.”

  Lukas raised his eyebrows thoughtfully, nodding slightly. “Maybe I should charge for it. Right now, I only charge once I start working the case.”

  “Yeah, you should think about charging. Some people never really intend to pay at all. Having to pay for the consultation chases them off.”

  “Do your friends have a lot of people who don’t want to pay?”

  “Well, they do retainers. So the clients pay some chunk up front as a guarantee that they won’t stiff the attorney once the case gets started.”

  Lukas nodded. “I do the same thing. Makes sense for lawyers too.”

  “Yeah, at least the ones that aren’t on salary.” Mark jerked his thumb in at his chest. “They get paid for however many hours they actually bill.”

  “Which is hopefully how many hours they put into it, right?”

  “Right. I know there’s a lot of temptation to overreport billable hours, but it’s not as bad at the smaller firms. The really big firms are the worst.”

  “How big is really big?”

  “Well, like, one of my friends works at a firm with three attorneys. That’s small. And one of my—friends works at a New York firm with over three hundred. That’s big.”

  “Jesus,” said Lukas, impressed. “Three hundred lawyers in one firm?”

  “Most of them are junior associates. They’re doing background research kind of stuff. The big players are the partners—there’s only a handful of them. You can spend a decade in a megafirm and never see the inside of a courtroom if you don’t move up the ladder.”

  “Sounds awful.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Mark grinned at him, crookedly. It looked more honest on him than the usual megawatt smile. “I was happy for my friend when he got the offer, because it is a shit ton of money, but I already have trial experience, and he’s just written a bunch of briefs. Totally different lifestyles. I have a salary, he worries about billable hours. He works crazy hours, sleeps at the office. I just have to listen to drunk drivers try to justify what they did, which is crazy-making but, you know, it could be worse.”

  “I think I’d take your lifestyle over his.”

  Mark laughed. It sounded odd, a little gritty, like it hurt. After a pause he said, “Me too. Couldn’t convince him, though.”

  A thought flashed into Lukas’s head like lightning about what that meant, what it could mean. He let it go immediately.

  Nick leaned around Lukas, catching Mark’s eye. “So are you from here?”

  “Actually, no, I’m from Cleveland originally. Went to law school out here.”

  “Oh, that’s cool. At the U?”

  “Yeah, it’s a pretty good school. It’s not, like, top-tier, but it’s good enough that there’s a solid network of graduates in the area. That’s mostly how we get hired, is knowing people who can vouch for us. Attorneys hate risk.”

  “Not taking a chance on some random schmuck?” Frank leaned forward, looking interested.

  Mark laughed. “Yeah, exactly!”

  “And you’re not a random schmuck.” Nick grinned at his own humor. “You’re a U-Dub schmuck.”

  “Damn right.” Mark thumped his chest. “Husky pride.”

  Nick’s eyes lit up. “You like sports?”

  “I try to keep up with football. The Seahawks—”

  “Oh, man, this year is just not the same—”

  Lukas watched in some bafflement as Mark proceeded to bond with Nick and Frank over the Legion of Boom.

  He couldn’t decide whether this was better or worse than Mark not getting along with them at all. Mark even looked classier than they did—he’d come after work, surely, and he was wearing a nice black trench coat over a pair of dark gray suit pants. Mark started unbuttoning his coat; he paused for a minute, and said, in the middle of an extended thought about Russell Wilson, “Hold this for a sec?” and passed Lukas his popcorn. Lukas took the bucket mutely as Mark shrugged out of his coat. He was wearing a plain white button-up under it with a light blue tie, and he casually undid the tie and pulled it off, shoving it into a coat pocket, and then started unbuttoning his dress shirt, rolling the cuffs up to his elbows as he talked. He was at least wearing a T-shirt under it.

  By the time Mark took the popcorn back from Lukas, Lukas couldn’t have answered for Mark’s or Nick’s thoughts on the defensive line to save his fucking life.

  Thank God the movie started before too much more could happen. Lukas sat in tense silence, at first, holding his arms at his sides rigidly. Nick was used to how big Lukas was. He wouldn’t mind if Lukas crowded his space a little. Mark was another story.

  Finally, though, the siren call of the Skittles in his lap got to be too strong to resist. He tore the corner open and started eating them.

  There was a tap on his wrist. He jerked his head around and found himself much, much too close to Mark, again. Mark smelled like—like cloves, that was it, like Christmas cookies, like the cigarettes Lukas had snuck as a teenager when he was trying to be cool, the stupid black ones with the gold line, for Christ’s sake.

  Mark held out his hand, palm up, eyeing the Skittles longingly. Lukas rolled his eyes and tapped a few into Mark’s hand. Mark sat back, grinning, and started eating them.

  After the movie, Lukas got up too quickly and bumped right into Mark’s back as he tried to escape the aisle. Outside the guys started talking about the plot. Lukas said, “Yeah,” a few times, but he couldn’t remember most of it.

  “Thanks for inviting me.” Mark held out his fist for a fist bump; Lukas returned it automatically. “Good movie. Nice to meet you guys!” he added to Nick and Frank, who looked duly gratified.

  “You too!” Nick said, and Frank nodded. “You should get a beer with us sometime.”

  “Love to!” Mark waved as he headed up the street, presumably toward his car.

  “He’s cool,” Nick said to Lukas. “He should come watch a game with us.”

  “Yeah.” Lukas kept himself from turning to watch Mark go. “Sure.”

  He didn’t call Mark for the next game. The guys didn’t say anything about it. And with the case shuffled to the back burner for the time being, with the investigation ongoing, there was no reason for Mark to call or text him. And he didn’t, for a few days.

  Then he got a call, while he was having a cup of coffee after a meeting with a prospective client, staring out at a day that was almost sunny. “Lukas!” said Mark, voice bubbling with excitement. “We got the final autopsy report.”

  “Yeah?” Lukas sat up straighter. “What did it say?”

  “He was dosed up on Valium and grain alcohol.”


  “Holy shit. Suicide?”

  “No, I wish, that would make my job a hell of a lot easier. Get a load of this. He was high as shit and his liver was chewed up, but that wasn’t what killed him—he was suffocated.”

  “What? How did they miss that?”

  “I don’t even know! But apparently the final results were more consistent with him being smothered.”

  “Could still be suicide.”

  “It could, but the cops didn’t find anything like that around him. So either he offed himself and somebody tidied up, or somebody fucking murdered him.”

  “Jesus Christ. Couch cushion, maybe?”

  “The autopsy says not fabric. Bits of plastic bag up his nose.”

  “Wow. This puts a different spin on it.”

  “Yeah. Can you imagine our client drugging and smothering somebody?”

  Lukas tried, briefly. “Not a chance in hell.”

  “So! Definitely a murder investigation, not just arson plus accidental death. Somebody really wanted him dead and I’m wondering who. Neither our client nor the widow seems like a great candidate to me, honestly.”

  “Me either. What about the owner?”

  “He still giving you the creeps?”

  “Have you met him?”

  “No.”

  “Yeah. Well, he does.”

  “Okay. Lena’s going to try Dauer again and see if maybe this time he wants to put a little more money into investigating the company.”

  “Great.”

  *

  Thanksgiving rolled around, inexorably. He made the green bean casserole, showed up at his parents’ door with the dish covered in tinfoil still steaming hot in his hands. His mother took it from him with a smile and a benevolent peck on the cheek, and his father waved him in to watch the game on the television.

  “How’s Nick doing?” his mom asked. “I heard from his mother that they’re expecting?”

  “They are, yeah. He asked me to be the godfather, actually.”

  “Oh, honey, that’s so exciting!” She beamed at him, then her eye turned critical. “Do you have a suit?”

  “I do.”

  “One that fits?” rumbled his father skeptically. “You always look like a giraffe in those things. Got to get the cuffs to lie right. Not surprised you’re not having any kids yet.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Hey, don’t get sarcastic with me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Yeah, you are.” His father grunted, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray on the table. “Must be genetic. You get it from your mother.”

  “Must be.” Lukas glanced back at the kitchen. “We got beer?”

  “Anne!” his father yelled. “Bring us a beer!”

  “Yes, dear,” she called back, and a minute later she was putting the bottle into Lukas’s hand. Cap already off, of course. He took a long drink without looking at her.

  “Nice sweater,” he said after a minute.

  His dad looked over at him suspiciously and didn’t answer.

  The house filled up over the course of the day, slowly and steadily, with cheek-kisses and dishes. The smells built up until Lukas’s stomach started rumbling. At the family dinner, it was him, his parents, his sister, his mother’s parents, his father’s mother, and his father’s sister and her whole family. They barely fit into the dining room, crammed around the table, and the little kids (just two, his aunt’s) were relegated to a milk crate in the corner for their table.

  His father insisted on saying grace, of course. “Dear Lord,” he began, in his sonorous voice. If you didn’t know better, it would be easy to mistake Kristoff Nystrom for a benevolent patriarch, the real deal.

  But Lukas had seen way too many moments like this come and go. His father would huff into his whitening beard and pretend that he had the moral high ground. It was hard to be impressed by the show.

  His aunt did ask if he was seeing anyone, as he passed her the cranberry sauce. “Not much time for it right now,” he said. “Would you like the mashed potatoes too?”

  Chapter Nine

  Dylan came to get his stuff the day after Thanksgiving.

  Actual Thanksgiving, Mark spent alone. He ate a frozen pizza and fielded the call from his mom; she’d gotten more used to the distance while he was in law school and hadn’t been able to fly home every year, but she was audibly disappointed.

  Mark was ready for the visit, keyed up, the whole day. His foot wouldn’t stop twitching. He had to move, kept tapping it restlessly. He was wearing an old, soft, tight T-shirt that he hoped would simultaneously broadcast “wasn’t at all stressed about your visit” and “I’ve been working out.” (Which he had. Occasionally. At least since Dylan scheduled the visit.) He marathoned some shows and fretted, cleaning up around the apartment.

  So by the time the buzzer went off, he was more or less prepared for it. It still made him jump half out of his skin. He went to let Dylan in.

  “Wow,” Mark said, staring. “You look awful.”

  “Thanks.” Dylan smiled wryly. “You look great too.”

  “No, I mean it. What’s up with these bags under your eyes? They ain’t Louis Vuitton.” Mark started to reach out, to touch, and stopped himself.

  Dylan shook his head, laughing. “Not sleeping? Not eating right? Jesus, you name it. It’s tough.”

  “Come on in. You want something to eat?”

  Following Mark into the apartment, Dylan shook his head again. “Nah. I’ve got to get to the airport pretty soon, I need to make it quick.”

  And it wasn’t like Mark had been harboring any delusions—that Dylan would see him, would see their place, and remember how great it had been and come back—but that stung. He could have at least pretended to be a little more goddamn enthusiastic about it.

  Dylan was glancing around the apartment. “You changed it up.”

  “Yeah.” He had; Mark had swapped out the posters on the walls, which had been mostly crap from their dorm-room days, and now there were a few pieces of actual art. Nothing crazy, no oil paintings, but some stuff he’d found around town.

  Dylan paused in front of one of the pieces, a big topographical map of Seattle. Hand-drawn with love, Mark figured.

  “It’s nice,” Dylan said eventually.

  Dylan was wearing contacts, instead of his glasses, and his hazel eyes were a little red.

  “Thanks.” Mark waved at the door to the guest room. “Your boxes are in there. I pulled them out and they should be labeled.”

  “Great, thank you.” Dylan walked into the room and picked up a box. He hefted it and added a smaller one on top.

  “Need a hand?”

  “Yeah, if you could, that’d be great.”

  So Mark helped Dylan carry the boxes downstairs and to the car he had waiting, a rental, and piled them into the back. As the stack upstairs got smaller and the car got fuller, he felt like something inside him was stretching and pulling, getting more fragile.

  Finally the last box went into the car. Dylan slammed the back shut and turned to Mark, a rueful, awkward smile on his mouth.

  “Thanks for the help.”

  “No problem.”

  Dylan put his hand on the roof of the car. “Keep in touch, okay?”

  “Yeah, sure. You too.”

  Mark had wondered how the goodbye would go. Dylan gave him a little halfhearted wave and turned around and got into the car, and Mark walked back into the building and up the stairs, very deliberately, before sitting down on his couch and staring off into nothing.

  Dylan had been a smart guy. A great guy. And maybe if they’d been together longer, or if they’d wanted more similar things, they would have tried to make it work.

  But there was a reason Dylan was gone, all his stuff gone now too. They didn’t want similar things. Dylan wanted his East Coast megafirm job, he wanted that life. He clearly wasn’t having any wild regrets about it. Dylan wasn’t sleeping, and there’d been a moment in looking at him when a sensation of
tenderness had crept up on Mark by surprise, but Dylan was okay.

  And Mark—Mark was okay too.

  He sighed, pulling out his phone. None of his friends in the area were going to be free to hang out the day after Thanksgiving. His friends from law school were generally terrible about staying in touch, even the ones who were working close by. They were just too busy, trying to catch up and be as good as they needed to be. The attorneys from the office all had plans; he knew Gavin had gone home and Jennifer was spending the weekend with Mary Lynn’s family.

  He briefly thought about calling Lukas. After all, Lukas was the closest thing to a new friend he’d made in months—going to the movie with the guys had been good, socializing with people who weren’t in law, weren’t going to start talking immediately about the same work issues that were already stressing him out.

  But Lukas—how was he going to explain the mood he was in? He didn’t feel like having the awkward conversation where he tried to offhandedly toss his sexual orientation into it, like it was no big deal, and wait for the straight men to shuffle back, make sure they’d put the appropriate amount of distance in between. And he didn’t feel like pretending that he wasn’t in a mood.

  He got up, started wandering around the apartment restlessly. He stood in the doorway of the second bedroom. It felt so much more empty now, with none of Dylan’s things. The walls were a particularly buttery shade of yellow that he had never liked much.

  The idea came to him then easily. Of course.

  He started clearing the remaining boxes out, into the living room. He’d had the supplies in his closet for ages, ever since they’d moved. Drop cloths, brushes, rollers, shallow pans.

  He texted Lukas. Is it coercive if I ask for a favor?

  nah

  I’m going to paint my spare room, could use a hand

  when?

  Pretty much now

  OK.

  You sure? No worries if you’re busy

  no, just send me the address

  So Mark texted his address to Lukas and changed into a less tight, less soft and considerably more battered T-shirt, and a pair of badly fitting old sweatpants he’d been saving specifically for something like this.