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CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

INTENTIONALLY THREATENING A MEDICAL WORKER WITH AN OFFENSIVE WEAPON (AND MORE THEFT)

L eo and Althea rode the train in silence until Althea broke it with, “Sorry I did that.”

Though he was looking away, she saw a flash of his smile, just at the corner of his handsome face. “Thanks for taking it.” He followed that quickly with, “He’s not doing well, you know? He would never ask me to do that. Not usually. He doesn’t even let me drink.”

She knew it probably wasn’t wise, given his apologetic tone, but she said, “He puts you under too much pressure.”

“No.” There was such conviction in the word, such a forbidding frown, that Althea began to think it was a hopeless case. But Leo went on, “I need it. I need to stay busy. He knows that. And he told me. From day one, he said he’d never go easy on me.” The grin returned, almost as wide as the last one. “But he does. Even if he doesn’t realise it.”

Relieved to have him smiling and talking, she asked, “How did you get involved with him?”

Leo glanced across at her, a furtive sort of glance, then he lowered his eyes to the train floor, and closed them, looking a lot like someone about to take a leap from a very great height. His brow drew tight, and on a long breath, he commenced, “So, you’re right. I was— am —a heroin addict. Because, like Percy says, it won’t ever stop. I haven’t touched it in years, but if all the elements were just right, it’s an easy thing to slip back into. And feeling that little plastic bag in my hand, being around people like that, in this city… It’s not a world I can be part of. Not without that temptation. So I live in Paris where I run his office. Sometimes he sends me off to Krakow to hide money and weapons. Sometimes he fills entire days with cigarette and shirt orders. Other days I need to fly last minute to Tunisia to smuggle some girl out of the country.”

“Some girl,” she muttered, adding a blush when he gave her a full dose of his playful smile.

“It’s non-stop. He’s into art theft, forgeries, but then also art preservation. He’s got real work at real universities, and he’s in constant demand there, but then he’s off to deal with some weird supernatural thing, or find some enchanted item. And then there’s the even shadier stuff. He has a lot of enemies. The death threats are constant. And it never gives me a second to stop and get mixed up in anything.”

Althea laughed. “I’d say you’re pretty mixed up.”

“Yeah, but not…” Leo set about fiddling with the sleeve of his sweater as his smile faded. “I need to tell you that I was fifteen when I met Percy. And I was a call boy.”

“Like…” Althea tried not to look shocked, but thought she must have misheard or misunderstood. “Do you mean like… Julia Roberts?”

“Yeah, but without the boots.”

“Leo…” She gave him a shove, taking heart in the shoulder he pressed back against hers.

“I started a few years before that, and um… Home life wasn’t good. So…” He trailed off, running a hand through his hair.

“A few years before? How young?”

“I don’t remember. Twelve or thirteen?”

“That young?”

Leo provided a shrug for an answer and skipped over it. “So I was working this party. This guy who owned the place, he was a regular. I was just meant to look pretty and then wait and see what the host said to do later, with whoever. It was a thing he did. I’d done it before. But anyway, I was high, as usual, and I was looking at this painting on the wall in this guy’s apartment. And then Percy’s just there next to me, out of nowhere, like a ghost. He looked at the painting for a bit, and I was about to walk away, but then he asked me what I thought of it.” Leo fell quiet, conjuring up the image in his mind’s eye. “It was a picture of this… It’s this dead lamb, lying on the snow. And blood’s coming out of its mouth, a stream of red on white. And its mother’s standing over it, protecting her dead baby. But she’s surrounded by crows. Dozens of crows all around, and this blackening sky, like a storm’s coming. And the mother, she’s not ready to say goodbye to her baby, and she knows, the second she moves away, those crows are going to rip the little lamb to pieces and devour it. But she can’t stay there forever.”

“Fuck,” whispered Althea, pulling Leo back to the present.

With a flush of pink about his cheeks, “That probably sounds stupid.”

“It doesn’t sound stupid at all. It sounds beautiful.”

He breathed out the nervous spectre of a laugh. “Percy asked me what I thought of it. And, ‘cause I was high, I guess, and because he was the only person who talked to me, I was honest. I said, ‘I feel like the dead one. Like I don’t care that they’re coming for me, because I can’t feel anything anymore, because I’ve already moved on. But then I feel so sad for her that she doesn’t understand how hopeless it all is. That she hasn’t given up yet. It breaks my heart that she’s mourning for her baby and it’s all so pointless. It breaks my heart that anyone has any fight left in them.’ Percy didn’t say a word. He just looked at me, and I hated the way he looked at me. And I think it was because it had been so long since anyone really looked at me, properly, and so I walked away, and he didn’t come near me again. The night went on, and they gambled at cards while I served drinks, and Percy won some priceless artwork, which is what he’d come for in the first place.” Leo laughed then, heartily, with a wide smile. “The guy who owned it was furious when he realised he’d been played. So Percy, cool as ever, says, ‘I’ll give you one last chance to win it back, then we’ll both walk away, no hard feelings.’ The guy screams at him that he has nothing left to bet. ‘One last game, winner takes all,’ Percy says, ‘but you throw that boy in.’” Leo glanced at Althea, aglow with a mixture of pride and good humour. “You can imagine my face. Percy pointed at me, the host stared at me, I looked over my shoulder like there’d be someone else there. And the deal was done. No one asked me. Not a word. And can you guess what happened next?”

Althea chuckled. “I guess he won, and you both lived happily ever after.”

“He lost,” Leo said. “Percy lost, that guy opened his mouth to gloat, and Percy stuck his gun straight in it.”

“Jesus.” Althea covered her mouth with both hands, her shoulders shaking with laughter.

“He’s got his gun in there, between this guy’s teeth, and in the most polite voice ever he calls over to me, ‘Grab that painting, would you?’ Everybody in the place looks at me, and I’m frozen to the spot, so he adds, ‘Or I could blow his brains out?’”

“So you did it?”

“Of course I did it! I took it, I shoved his money into my shirt, I opened the door for him, then we’re in the hall. He pushes me onto the fire escape, and before I even know what’s happening, we’re in his car, speeding across town. He bundles me into his apartment, slams the door, takes the stolen painting and hangs it directly on the wall where it had a hook waiting, and he offers me a drink. Then he gave me the option: take all the money he’d just won and go, or stay and work for him, and get even more money in the long run.”

“Fuck,” she repeated.

“I know!” he agreed. “I was terrified of what ‘work for him’ meant. I mean, you’ve seen the size of his dick.”

“Yeah, just that once.” She shook her head slowly. “I don’t know how Joe deals with that.”

“Well, he’s one giant asshole, so he should be able to handle?—”

Althea slapped his arm. “Joe’s lovely!”

“Anyway, long story short, Percy promised me a fresh start, and I agreed. I didn’t expect him to nail the door shut and start weaning me off drugs that same night. He took over the whole thing. Fuck knows where he got the meds, but he did it. Then, when I recovered from that, he got to work having me tutored. Got me from reading like a third grader to now, where he makes me read two novels every week. He taught me French and Italian, though I’m still shit at Italian. He got me new clothes, specially made, never off the rack. New shoes, money, deportment and elocution lessons. He says I’m going to Cambridge in a few years. But that he won’t pull any strings, so I need to be ready. He pretty much gave me his Paris apartment. He’ll stay there too if he’s in town, but he almost never is, anymore, so it’s essentially mine.”

The sadness that had been in Leo’s voice at the start of the tale had given way to gushing excitement. “And this work I do for him, I love it. I can really do things to pay him back for all of it. Not that he sees it that way, because he says I don’t owe him a thing, but it makes me feel like I can. And…” He shifted in his seat, facing her as much as he could, searching her eyes deeply as if to confirm she understood the importance of his words. “You only ever see him when he’s stressed. You don’t get to see the guy I know who did all of that for me. Who lived with me. Who, for a while, was like…” Leo grew embarrassed, glancing away again. “I’m not going to say like a dad or anything, but… he, um… I don’t know. I don’t know that much about his past, but I know it’s fucked up. I think he’s had a really hard life, even if he doesn’t let on. And what I said to him that night, about the painting, it must have sparked something in him, because… I think he just wanted to bring me back from where I was. Like that dead lamb. And he did it. And now, it’s nice that he pays me, really well. It’s nice that he does all those other things, but I’d do anything for him without it. He’s the only person who ever loved me, and I love him.” He shuffled back to front-facing, letting the first hint of bitterness for some time slip into his tone. “And when he gets bored of Joe, things will settle down again.”

Althea took several seconds to state what she thought, and she did so as gently as possible. “I hate to break it to you, but there’s no way Percy’s going to get bored of Joe.”

The train slowed on approach to their station, and Leo stood with a grimace. “I don’t even know what he sees in him.”

“Besides the fact that he looks like a model?”

On a derisive snort, “He’s had plenty of hot guys. Giordano’s way better looking.”

Althea rolled her eyes. “Giordano looks exactly the same.”

“That’s racist.”

“You can’t be racist against Italians.”

“You just found a way.”

Althea breathed out a silent laugh as she hopped off the train by Leo’s side. “I think your bigger problem will be what happens when we get this thing out of Joe’s body, and he dumps Percy’s ass for treating us all so badly.”

“Dump his meal ticket? Not likely.”

“Is that really what you think of him?”

“Name one useful thing he’s ever done.”

“He saved my life.”

“Percy did.”

“Joe did,” she corrected on a curt note. “Percy wouldn’t have even noticed me that day. He would never have sat down next to me, asked me my name. Joe had no idea how bad things really were for me, and he had his own stuff going on, but he stopped everything just to listen to me. A complete stranger. Because that’s who he is.” She threw out a demonstrative hand. “Meanwhile, Percy goes in guns blazing, dick against the wall?—”

“Dick against the wall?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Not re?—”

“And that’s what everyone sees. The big show, the largesse. All the things he does for you, buys for you. But in Joe, I think I get what Percy likes. Because I got a taste of it. Joe is just a really good person who cares deeply about people. And I know it’s probably hard for you to watch, but if I were as messed up as you make Percy sound, and if someone like Joe put his arms around me and told me it was all going to be okay, I’d never want to let him go. I’d probably chain him to a chair, too. I’d probably even think I was in love with him.”

With a look of abhorrence such as she’d never seen on Leo’s face, he interrupted, “Do you have a crush on that twat?”

“No, you idiot,” she muttered. “I have a crush on you.”

“Oh.” He walked on a little further, then, “Good.”

“Good?”

“He’s a twat.”

Althea rumbled out a long, low groan, then finished the thought that had been so rudely interrupted. “Joe’s wonderful. And I think Percy’s infatuated. But to give love—real love—you have to be capable of being loved. And I don’t know if Percy is. I think he’s fundamentally broken. He’s all prickles and smashed glass all over. Don’t get me wrong, I like him, mostly. All the things he’s done for me, and for you, by the sound of it. There’s a real goodness in there, but that dark side of him… I just don’t know if he can let someone in like that. Completely and forever. It’s why he pushes you away, puts you in danger, leaves you all alone in Paris. It’s why he talks to me the way he does, why he goes through lovers like they’re disposable napkins. And that’s what he’ll do to Joe, only a thousand times worse.”

“He’s just tough. That’s what keeps us safe. And you and Joe too.”

“No, Leo. One of these days, he’s going to go too far, and I just hope Joe comes to his senses before he gets hurt too badly. That’s the only reason I’m still here. To try to prevent that and repay Joe for what he did for me.” Althea pulled up at a phone box at the top of a leafy and expensive-looking street. “Now, do you want to pretend to be the overdose victim, or should I?”

It took Leo a moment, processing her words, to respond. “You call. I’ll jump the paramedics with my knife when they try to help me.”

Fingers already tapping out 999, she replied, “One dose of Narcan coming right up.”