Tipping Point

by Helena Maeve

  “I don’t know,” he confessed, observing the calluses on his hands rather than meeting Nate’s eyes.

  He felt too big for the narrow aisles on either side of the kitchen island and too tall for the cramped room altogether. He hated that he towered over Nate. Smaller men were always the first to want to take him down a peg. It was the Napoleon complex or something.

  Nate heaved a sigh. “Jules can be a little…forceful. But if you know her at all, then you know she’s trustworthy. She only wants what’s best for you.”

  “She always did.”

  “Right,” Nate echoed, taking his whispered remark for acquiescence. “So hear her out when she gets back, see what she’s got in mind. If you don’t like it, you can always walk out. You have my word that no one will stand in your way. In the meantime, why not enjoy the comforts of home?”

  Your home, Elijah wanted to correct, because that distinction made all the difference.

  He was tired and his run-in with the cops hadn’t helped. He was loath to think of going back to the underpass—a trip that would take him the better part of an hour—only to find his spot cleared out.

  Vultures abounded in the underworld. He knew that better than most.

  “What about you?” he asked instead. “What do you get out of this?”

  Nate shrugged. “Company. Someone to cook for.”

  Elijah waited for Nate to elaborate, but he didn’t. After a fraught moment in which neither of them spoke, Nate nodded summarily and went back to the dishes.

  “I have to go out in a little while,” he said over his shoulder.

  “Hot date?” Elijah wished he could snatch the words back as soon as they’d left his mouth. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean—it’s none of my business.”

  “Not a date.” Nate cut a glance at him. “You apologize a lot… Did you know that?”

  Elijah bit his chapped bottom lip. “Yeah.” He had every reason to. Sometimes, sufficient contrition saved him worse forms of castigation. He waited for the tap to shut off before he spoke, not trusting himself to make himself heard. “I don’t know how I feel about hanging out in your apartment by myself.”

  “Well, while you figure that out,” said Nate, “you should consider that I have both HBO and Netflix.”

  It sounded like a perk. Elijah tried to arrange his facial muscles into an appropriately delighted expression to satisfy his host.

  Nate directed him to the couch and armed him with the TV remotes, then stomped around getting ready for his not-a-date. He moved with the fluidity of a person who’d never been locked up in a six by eight cell. He took up space. It wasn’t as strange to witness after being on the streets for a few weeks.

  “You can call me on my cell,” Nate said as he donned a dark trench coat. “Number’s written down by the landline. And if you get tired—”

  “I’ll be fine.” Elijah cracked a reluctant smile.

  The leather couch was a little stiff under him, but he’d slept on worse. At least there was no draft in Nate’s apartment, no threat of cops or other itinerants come to steal his spot. He’d missed out on fifty bucks and gained safe haven for one night—albeit on unfamiliar turf, with a man who one way or another was implicated in whatever Jules was up to. Even if he didn’t stay until morning, it was still a good night.

  It was almost a comfort to be alone once Nate eased the door shut behind him.

  Elijah spent a long minute staring at the TV remotes on the coffee table.

  In prison, the rec room TV was only ever touched by the guards. They favored Columbo reruns—a rather apropos choice, the episodes always ending with the evildoers sussed out by a wily cop and tossed in jail where they belonged. The freedom to choose the channel was almost daunting. Elijah wiped his sweating hands on the thighs of his pants.

  He could give light entertainment a shot. Maybe it would do him good to disconnect for a little while.

  A shuffling sound by the front door stopped him short.

  Elijah forgot to breathe, throat locking up. Hyperawareness was a familiar bane by now. He had learned to cope with the blood in his extremities rushing to his face and his ears prickling, every squeak of bedsprings magnified into a clash of cymbals. Not tonight, not tonight. Memory burned the inside of his eyelids and vibrated in his eardrums.

  His knees were rubbery when he pushed up from the couch.

  A fifth-floor apartment didn’t exactly make for easy escape. Elijah didn’t even know if there was a fire exit.

  The floorboards didn’t squeak too loudly underfoot as he made his way around the chesterfield. He shot a wary glance at the closed but not locked front door. There was no one in the foyer. The doorknob did not turn.

  There, on the gleaming boards, a manila envelope slanted away from the crack under the door. In black ink across one side was written With regards, from Uncle.

  The script was unmistakably Russian.

  Chapter Three

  While he slept, Elijah was an oar-less boat drifting between foggy fantasy and acid-sharp recollections. A full stomach kept the worst of the nightmares at bay, but they were by no means forgotten. Every pregnant step through the mire of mental debris was a chancy undertaking. Landmines were everywhere. One wrong step and down the rabbit hole he’d go, plowing through cinder block and steel to collapse into a bottom bunk, an industrial washing machine.

  A workbench with swarf still catching beneath his cheek, his own voice cracking, pleading no, no, no…

  He woke to the rattle and chime of keys turning in the front door. He was still on the couch, still clad in his dirty, tattered clothes, exactly as he’d planned it last night. A powerful sense of interloping shot through him like a bolt of lightning.

  He concentrated on keeping his breaths slow and even, when the muffled echo of Nate’s return altered the stillness of the apartment. Peering through lowered lashes wasn’t easy. The smallest twitch of movement could give him away. There wasn’t much to see, either. A bruised, bluish dawn crept through the blinds, struggling to cast the living room in icy shadows.

  Nate lingered in the vestibule, envelope in hand. His expression was impossible to read, but the slant of his cheekbones seemed more like cut marble than tan skin.

  He recovered after the first few moments of surprise, nonchalantly pitching the envelope to a nearby end table and shedding shoes and trench coat. Silence settled over the room.

  Elijah fought hard not to hold his breath. Any alteration in his breathing pattern would be a red flag that he wasn’t truly asleep. And when that happened—what? Nate was in league with Jules and Jules was interested in Section intelligence on the age-old Russian question.

  There was nothing to fear here. It wasn’t as though Nate could dispose of him on a whim.

  Reasoning away the blush of dread blossoming in his gut did no good. Elijah could feel Nate in the room, a quiet, dangerous presence, evaluating his options. The churning of his thoughts was practically audible.

  Who’d miss Elijah if he disappeared? Hackers were a dime a dozen and most of them didn’t have a seven-year gap in the industry to make up.

  The rustling of paper on wood alerted Elijah to Nate’s movements. He dared let his eyelids open to slits when the stifled sound of Nate’s footsteps placed him behind the couch. His shadow bobbed over Elijah, jagged and oblique, and quickly vanished into the gloomy corners of the apartment.

  It wasn’t until the bedroom door clicked shut that the clutch of panic released like a millstone shaken from around Elijah’s neck.

  Nate was gone when he opened his eyes. So was the envelope.

  Elijah had no illusion of getting back to sleep.

  * * * *

  On the outskirts of civilized society, time was measured in palmfuls of sunlight and long stretches of torrential rain. Elijah had yet to experience a winter on the streets, but he was sure he’d revile that season as much as he did the cloying summer heat.

  In the apartment, though, time was the muted thud of doors opening a
nd shutting down the hall. It was the sonorous echo of the shower running behind the bathroom wall, or Nate swearing as his alarm switched on at the appointed hour.

  Time in the apartment was now divided in two extremes—the fear of leaving on one side of the pendulum and since last night’s delivery, the equally pressing fear of staying on the other.

  Elijah made a show of yawning as he pushed himself up to sitting on the leather couch.

  His joints ached for real, as though perplexed by the sudden ergonomic comfort of proper cushioning. His mouth was a desert only vaguely flavored with the ghost of weak, black coffee.

  He feigned a jolt as Nate swung open the bedroom door.

  “Shit.”

  “Sorry,” Nate said quickly. “Did I startle you?”

  “You think?” Elijah ran both hands over his face and slumped against the backrest of the couch. “Didn’t hear you come in…”

  I didn’t hear anything, I don’t know anything. I’m just Jules’ charity case. No threat at all.

  “Didn’t want to wake you,” Nate replied. “Did you sleep okay?”

  “Like the dead.”

  “Good.” Genuine pleasure seemed to brighten Nate’s features. “I can get breakfast going if you’d like to take that shower now.”

  Elijah nodded, surprised to find that lying still came so easy.

  After breakfast, Nate disappeared into the bedroom to dress for work. He didn’t say where he was headed and Elijah didn’t ask. He was too busy trying to figure out how the washing machine worked.

  “Need help?” Nate wondered. Judging by his stance, it was taking everything he had not to leap right in and show Elijah how to decode the many available programs.

  Elijah shook his head. “Don’t want to keep you.”

  “Oh, all right… I should be back by five. If you’re hungry, there’s food in the pantry. Or you can call for takeout. There’s a great Chinese place a few blocks away. They make a mean lo mein…” Nate hovered on the threshold for another beat, then sucked a breath and rallied. “Okay. I’m off, then— Oh!” Trench coat fluttering, he rounded back on Elijah again. “You probably know this, but don’t bother answering the door to anyone. Sometimes deliveries get mixed up. It’s no big deal.”

  “What if Jules comes by?”

  The suggestion seemed to surprise Nate, but he recovered nimbly. “She knows to call first. I don’t like surprises.”

  “That makes two of you.” Elijah shammed a smile.

  Nate rapped his knuckles against the wall and nodded. “See you this evening.”

  “Sure,” Elijah threw over his shoulder, as though that was a foregone conclusion. See you later because I’ll still be here when you get back.

  Yesterday, he would’ve said this was the perfect opportunity to hightail it out of the apartment, perhaps even out of the city.

  Jules had an impressive network of informants and a knack for digging up top secret data—thanks to said informants, who sometimes wound up in jail for their troubles. But even Jules would have a hard time picking up Elijah’s trail across the sheer breadth of the continental US if he hitched rides and steered clear of anywhere with a security camera.

  He knew how to keep a low profile. She’d taught him well.

  Yet the thirst for escape had dimmed a little after two generous meals and a hot shower.

  Elijah busied himself with the washing machine, an operation that took the better part of twenty minutes and some hefty second-guessing. He settled on a simple, run-of-the-mill wash cycle, without drying. He didn’t want to add to Nate’s power bill any more than he had to.

  As his filthy, threadbare clothes bounced and tumbled in the front-loader, Elijah settled reluctantly in front of the TV with his third cup of coffee of the morning. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a whole pot to himself, let alone the leeway to brew another if he so pleased.

  He tried watching some of the morning shows.

  Had they always been so loud? Every channel he turned to, the hosts smiled too widely, the women looked as if they’d stepped out of a magazine spread. Tickers and background animation crowded the screen. Elijah switched away until he found a 1960s spaghetti western. It was the kind of film he would’ve shunned seven years ago. The characters were caricatures. The décor was shitty cardboard. Overwrought romance, and death, and tragedy clogged the action scenes.

  But it also made for a harmless sort of background noise.

  Elijah stretched out on the couch, nursing his third—then fourth—cup of coffee and settled in to watch.

  He had little memory of time passing. From Kill Them All and Come Back Alone to Requiem for a Gringo, the light streaming through the windows behind the couch dimmed and brightened by increments. The shadows of the coffee table and couch slanted sluggishly along the shaggy rug.

  He fell asleep halfway through They Call Me Trinity and woke to the noisy churning of his own gut.

  Three o’clock found him eating cereal out of a box at the breakfast area of Nate’s kitchen island. The washing machine cycle had ended. Elijah thought of taking his clothes out, but he didn’t know if Nate’s offer only extended to temporarily loaning a pair of jeans and shirt, and didn’t want to find out so soon.

  Truth be told, he liked wearing Nate’s clothes. He even liked being in this apartment, though the windows caught only about three hours of daylight and the walls were paper-thin.

  It was going to be hell when Nate finally asked him to leave.

  That hour was coming and fast, whether Elijah wanted it to or not, though Nate’s expression betrayed nothing when he stepped through the door precisely at six o’clock that evening. “Bad news,” he said, when he noticed Elijah standing in the kitchen doorway.

  “What?”

  Not yet, please not yet. Somehow, Elijah managed to swallow back his appeals.

  “Jules didn’t call.”

  “Oh.” Despite himself, Elijah felt relieved. It was a short-lived sentiment. “I can still go…”

  “Don’t be daft,” Nate scolded, his forehead creasing when he glimpsed the cereal box on the kitchen counter. “Lunch?”

  “Yeah.”

  The crease between his eyebrows deepened as he rounded on Elijah. “What about the pantry?”

  “That was in the pantry…”

  “Takeout,” he went on. “I told you you could order anything.”

  “Do I strike you as loaded or something?” Elijah volleyed. He regretted it instantly. Nate had treated him better than anyone in years and what was he doing? Yelling. Contradicting him. Being right wasn’t worth much when it led to a smack over the ear or a summary return to the streets. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that…” But he had, which made it worse. He gestured vaguely to the living room couch, beating a retreat. “I should, um, wash that mug…”

  “I’m calling for takeout.”

  Elijah felt a pang of remorse squeeze his throat. “You don’t have to.”

  “Speak for yourself. I was counting on leftover lo mein for dinner.” Nate turned his back, but not before Elijah spied the hint of a rueful smile playing across his lips.

  * * * *

  “I honestly don’t mind the couch,” Elijah insisted later that evening as they made ready for bed. Jules still hadn’t called, much less shown up unannounced, which meant he would be imposing on Nate for yet another night.

  Nate, who waved a hand in dismissal. He didn’t seem to share that view. “It’s done.”

  “Because you’ve claimed the couch? What are you, twelve?”

  Elijah’s efforts were in vain. He could argue until he was hoarse, Nate showed no willingness to backtrack, much less move. He’d stretched out on the living room sofa in low-slung sleep pants and a black T-shirt, the barest hint of five o’clock shadow darkening his jaw line. Elijah averted his gaze when he realized he was staring.

  “I changed the sheets this morning,” Nate said, as if that was the problem.

  “Thanks. That’s… That’s nice of
you.” Elijah squared his shoulders and waited. And waited a little more.

  Unperturbed, Noah tucked a fitted sheet over the couch and fluffed up his pillow.

  He didn’t hint that Elijah was expected to invite him along into the bedroom. Or that he was supposed to pay for the privilege to sleep in a real bed for a change with his body.

  The moment stretched, brittle, until Elijah could take the wait no longer.

  “I’m gonna crash, then. Goodnight.”

  Nate smiled absently. “Sleep tight.”

  The last glimpse Elijah had of him, Nate was fiddling with the remote control to switch off the flat screen TV. Then the door closed and Elijah was alone.

  Nate’s bedroom went hand in glove with the man himself. It was simply decorated, with three taupe walls and one mottled purple accent. Venetian blinds filtered out the glow of streetlights behind a gauzy white curtain.

  The bed was all dark wood frame and shiny beige sheets that rustled when Elijah pulled back the covers. The bedsprings were silent beneath him as he sank down onto the mattress. And it really was a matter of sinking. The prison cots he was used to were three inches of foam on a bolted metal frame welded to a bare cement floor. The contrast was striking. The level of comfort in Nate’s room was slightly intimidating.

  Elijah had no choice but to make do. Nate had effectively exiled him into the lap of luxury.

  Don’t complain. It’s not forever.

  The thought was far less reassuring than it should have been.

  Elijah pulled the top sheet up to his chin and closed his eyes. He’d managed some shut-eye before Nate came home, not to mention last night, but even if he wasn’t dog-tired anymore, something about plush coziness lulled him into that hazy, in-between state between awake and dreaming. It was a short fall from there to a dead sleep.

  He woke what might have been an hour or three later, the shadows on the wall doing absolutely nothing to tell him which. At first he couldn’t say what had roused him—perhaps the creaking of bedsprings or the whisper of pants being pulled down.