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There’s snow on the Sandias as Jimmy returns to Albuquerque, a fine dusting over the crumpled peaks like frost. He leans closer to the airplane window, watching folded terrain pass beneath the jet engine and wing. The mountain range rises from the New Mexico desert so suddenly it’s as if some giant has reached down and pinched the land there, pulling the earth around it taut and flat and smooth.
The plane hits a patch of turbulence and shakes, the fuselage creaking, before steadying again. Below, the desert is mottled by the shadows of clouds, bruised in dark blue. Jimmy wonders whether, if he watched for long enough, he would start to see patterns in the cloud shadows, too: animals and countries and people he’s known.
He breathes out, sinking into the hard fabric of his seat. Closes his eyes and then opens them quickly, opens them to the bright world beyond the thick window, to the world ahead of him.
And there, over the mountains: Albuquerque. Even from above, he can see the lines that cut through the earth, right angles and grids, marking out developments and suburbs that will soon rise in the same invisible style as the rest of the city. New houses waiting to be filled with new people.
Then the city itself, the tangled mess of streets and buildings patterned on the desert surface. The twisting green belt of the Rio Grande that splits it in two. Albuquerque is still unfamiliar to him from the air, but Jimmy tries to find his apartment building all the same, tries to lay the colorful lines of the bus map onto the terrain beneath him. Nothing quite fits.
Then the plane banks, and he can see the freeways and the taller buildings of downtown—
—and his mother had hugged him on the stoop that morning, his cab idling in the street, and she had felt so small in his arms until she had let him go, and then, as Jimmy slid into the backseat of the taxi she had turned, closing the door—
—and there finally below the window is the airport, between the city and the desert edge, like a harbor, and Jimmy grits his teeth and watches the dirt rise up to greet him.
Jimmy ashes his cigarette, leaning against the cool concrete of the parking garage wall. “It’s not too late, you know,” he says. “We could go back to mine instead, maybe watch a movie, maybe…” He wiggles his eyebrows.
Kim chuckles. “Jimmy,” she says, carefully.
He shrugs. “Just saying. Couldn’t hurt.”
“What, and waste that new shirt?” Kim asks.
Jimmy looks down at the white dress shirt he bought for the occasion—nicer than his mailroom attire, accented with a patterned tie.
“Looks good, by the way,” Kim says.
“Thanks,” Jimmy says, holding out the cigarette to her. “Same to you.”
Kim’s wearing a dark blue dress, much darker than the usual muted blues, beiges and turquoises of her cardigans and skirts. The fabric clings to her sides, hugging into her waist out over her hips, and it’s a wonder she’s not cold in the parking garage because it’s so thin Jimmy can every curve of her.
Kim brushes his hand with hers as she finally takes the cigarette from him, and he tugs his gaze back up to her face.
She grins at him. “I just hope nobody remembers I wore it last year, too,” she says.
“Be a shame to only see it once,” Jimmy says softly.
Kim breathes out smoke and smiles.
“How was last year, anyway?” he asks, raising his eyebrows.
Kim just closes her eyes in response.
“Hah,” Jimmy says, grinning. “Gotta say, closest I’ve ever done to a work holiday party is when Merna would bring us regulars out back of Arno’s and we’d throw a year’s worth of empty whiskey bottles at the brick wall.” He chuckles, then mimes throwing bottles, one, two: “Just kshh! kshh! you know? Like fireworks.”
Kim raises her eyebrows, smile twitching on her lips. “Wow.”
“Always had a bit of a competition going to see how many we’d end up with for the next year’s celebrations.”
Kim laughs gently. “Just what HHM needs.”
There’s a beat of silence. “Yeah, maybe I’ll pitch it to Howard,” Jimmy says bitterly.
Kim’s eyes soften. “Still haven’t heard?”
“Nah,” Jimmy says, holding his hand out for the cigarette again. “Saw some of the new billboards up, though.” He draws in smoke, then exhales it with his next words: “Down on Lomas.”
Kim reaches out and brushes a fleck of ash from his shirt breast silently, then she looks back up and tilts her head at him.
Jimmy raises and lowers his shoulders. “They’re okay. Definitely very blue.”
“Very blue,” Kim repeats, and then she gives him a soft smile. “Sounds like they could get lost in the sky.” She holds up a hand and looks at it studiously for a moment, then returns her gaze to him. “You know, hard to see.”
“Yeah, well…” Jimmy says. He takes another drag on the cigarette and looks out into the darkened void of the parking garage for a moment, out at the long shadows and rust-stained walls. There seem to be more cars here than usual tonight, their drivers and passengers already upstairs at the party.
Kim shifts against the wall, and he turns back to her.
“So, you’re still sure you wanna go up there?” Jimmy says. “Because I’ve heard there’s a perfectly lockable supply cupboard somewhere in the mailroom.”
Kim laughs. “Rumors and hearsay,” she says lightly.
“Yeah.” Jimmy takes another smoke, then says, “All right, I fold. Go schmooze with your future lawyer friends.” He waves the cigarette. “I’ll finish this.”
“Okay,” Kim says, pushing off the wall. She walks a few steps then turns back. “You’re gonna come up though, right?”
Jimmy shrugs. “Sure.”
She still lingers.
“I’ll see you. Someone has to make trouble,” he says, flashing her a smile.
Kim grins back at him and then leaves, heading through the door into the landing. Jimmy waits in the cold garage for a little while longer, for a little while after he’s ground out his cigarette with the base of his shoe. He grits his teeth at stares at the darkness, at the long shadows of the pillars, at the curved shadows of the lined-up cars, seeing patterns in the shapes of them.
Jimmy rides the elevator up to the first floor and steps out into the HHM lobby. It’s crowded with people, associates and assistants who are harder to recognize out of their usual business suits. Lively chatter and bubbly Christmas music fills the air.
It’s night, and the world beyond the Hamlin, Hamlin and McGill lobby has vanished into the darkness. String lights hang over the tall windows of the foyer and twist around the railings of the main stairs and second floor balcony. As Jimmy walks deeper into the lobby he turns, craning up at the people who lean against the banister with drinks in their hands, and then running his gaze down along the walls, where silver tinsel lines the edges of the usual art pieces.
Catering staff move around with trays of canapés, and Jimmy snags a mini quiche from the first woman to pass him. He stands eating it for a moment, scanning the scattered groups of people gathered in conversation, the occasional Santa hat and reindeer antlers decorating the close heads of the participants.
There’s movement alongside him, and Jimmy turns to see Chuck coming to a stop at his side. Chuck looks as if he’s just stepped out of his office and is seconds away from heading back there again, one hand tight at his hip as if he’s clutching an invisible case file.
“Hey, Chuck,” Jimmy says. He gestures around the lobby with his half-eaten mini quiche. “Great do. Really nice.”
Chuck nods, examining the party, too.
They stand in silence, tension visible in Chuck’s shoulders. Jimmy studies his brother’s face for a moment, then asks, “You still working?”
“Ah—well, you know how it goes,” Chuck says, and he grimaces. “We have to pick these dates so far in advance.”
“I’ll cover for you,” Jimmy says. “Keep the family distracted while you go upstairs and read your college textbooks, huh?”
Chuck gives a little laugh. “Yes, well. Maybe don’t do a song and dance number on the kitchen table this time.”
Jimmy shakes his head slowly. “All right,” he says, making a disappointed tsk noise. “These guys all would’ve loved it, though.”
“I have no doubt,” Chuck says. He remains for a moment longer, looking out at the party beside Jimmy, and then he moves on, stopping by another group, who greet him with warm smiles and part to welcome him into the fold.
Jimmy pops his last bite of quiche into his mouth. He still hasn’t spotted Kim, and he stands for a moment longer beneath the overhang of the first floor balcony, catching fragments of the conversations going on around him. Some gossip about a judge and her golf game, or a scandal involving a man Jimmy’s pretty sure is the Green of Reeves and Green.
He takes another canapé from a passing waiter and then heads deeper into the party, weaving his way across the lobby and then up the main flight of stairs, where well-dressed people he barely recognizes linger unevenly against the banister.
It’s less crowded up on the second floor. Jimmy stops to chat for a moment with a couple of the third floor associates—Trina and Nate, both ready drag him into their debate about famine relief and Bush’s lame duck days—but then he finally sees Kim, standing in the corner of the hallway.
His eyes snap to her as if he’s somehow always known she was there but he’s only now looking, a precise and targeted movement: there, Kim.
Beneath the hanging Christmas lights, she’s luminous. She’s holding two glasses of red wine, talking easily to a bald man beside her: Bruce, a new first year associate, who’s cradling a scotch and grinning.
Jimmy wanders over.
“Jimmy,” Kim says warmly, eyes lighting up as she spots him. “I was just about to come looking for you, maybe send out a search party.” She holds out one of the glasses of red wine. “Here.”
Jimmy accepts the glass. “Thanks,” he says, smiling at her. “So what’d I miss?”
“Bruce is scaring me with stories of the bar exam,” Kim says.
Bruce laughs. “Inspiring a healthy dose of anxiety, maybe! Can’t be resting on your laurels yet.”
Kim chuckles, shaking her head, and Jimmy sips his wine. It’s soft and velvet on his tongue.
“I’m serious, Kim,” Bruce adds. “You just wait. Next semester’s gonna kick you in the ass. I think it’s their last ditch attempt to weed out the weaklings.” He grimaces. “Felt like I was shoveling snow in a blizzard, getting through all those readings. I almost died of exposure.”
“And now what, smooth sailing?” Kim asks.
Bruce gives a little self-effacing smile. “Don’t let Mr. McGill hear it, but working here is a cake walk compared to taking another 3L class with Halbert.” He quickly looks to Jimmy, as if Jimmy is in the habit of regularly sharing office gossip with his brother.
Jimmy holds up his free hand innocently.
Bruce taps the side of his nose and then turns back to Kim. “I’m serious. I don’t know how you’re going to manage with night school and the mailroom,” he says, voice lowering.
Kim makes a little face. “Nothing for it but to try, I guess.”
“Now, why do I suddenly get the feeling you’re going to make it look easy?” Bruce says, shaking his head.
“Well, Kim’s actually just a stack of law textbooks in a long trenchcoat,” Jimmy says.
Bruce laughs. “That I’d believe!”
“Don’t poke her too hard, they’ll all come spilling out.” Jimmy prods Kim on the shoulder.
Kim swats his hand away. “All right, enough. This is supposed to be a party,” she says, but she’s smiling. “No more fearmongering, okay?”
Bruce lifts his palms. “I make no promises.” He sips his scotch. “Especially when it comes to Halbert’s class. You need to start preparing before it’s too late.”
“You talking Hellish Halbert?” Nate asks. He and Trina join the group, and Kim groans but soon joins in commiserating with the others—all recent UNM graduates eager to tell Kim the kind of horror stories Jimmy has no doubt were once told to them. He drinks his wine and laughs with them, the key names familiar enough after months of talking to Kim that he can follow the gist of the gossip.
As they talk, more catering staff drift by with plates, and it’s easy for Jimmy to stand there and listen, eating his way through canapé after canapé. At some point after the second go-round of the pigs in a blanket, the conversation shifts, and Kim starts picking the others’ brains, weedsy legal talk that slides off Jimmy like water. He nods along when he can, trying to judge the right reaction from their tones, from Kim’s eyes as they dart to his every so often, but, as the minutes drag by, it gets harder and harder to even pretend to concentrate.
“Another drink?” he murmurs to Kim when she looks to him the next time, and she nods. He takes her empty glass and heads downstairs.
As Jimmy descends the main staircase, he sees Chuck slinking off on his own again, weaving between the groups. Jimmy slows to a stop beside the banister, staring down at his brother.
Chuck’s hair is thinning on the top, and his shoulders are a little stooped, and he looks, Jimmy thinks, suddenly old. Maybe it’s the evening bags under his eyes, or maybe it’s being surrounded by all the bright young associates, or maybe Jimmy’s just remembering those graduation photographs again—Chuck on mottled grey, smiling and proud in his dustless frames, kept clean.
Then Chuck moves out of sight. For a few moments there’s still the gap in the crowd, still the parted route his brother took, until that, too, closes. Jimmy chews his lip, staring at the space for a time longer, and then someone jostles him on their way down the stairs, and he shakes himself and keeps moving.
He’s handing over his dirty wine glasses to the woman behind the drinks table when Howard comes up beside him. Jimmy raises his eyebrows and nods.
“Ah—Jimmy!” Howard says, white-toothed. “Good evening.”
“Nice party.” Jimmy does another little gesture around the room.
“Well, the caterers are quite good. Dad’s been using them since we moved into this building, you know,” Howard says mildly. “Very reliable.”
“Sure,” Jimmy says. He takes two glasses of red wine, then pauses, standing there.
Howard smiles, eyes flicking between the two wine glasses and Jimmy’s face. “Well, I shouldn’t keep you.”
“Uh, right,” Jimmy says, distractedly. He glances over to the bank of elevators and the closed door to the stairwell and frowns, then looks back to the man before him. He clears his throat. “Hey, Howard, you got a minute?”
Howard pauses for the smallest of moments, and then smiles. “Of course, my friend! What’s eating you?”
With a gesture to the stairwell, Jimmy says, “Maybe somewhere a little more private?”
Howard beckons for Jimmy to lead on. They head over to the stairwell, and Jimmy holds the door ajar for Howard and then closes them both inside. The party noise is immediately diminished, music and voices and laughter muffled, and it feels too dark after all the festive lights: the stairwell illuminated only by a single blueish wall-lamp up on the switchback.
“Now, Jimmy, before you start, I’m sure I can guess what this is about,” Howard says mildly.
Jimmy shrugs. He realizes he’s still holding the two glasses of red wine, and he moves past Howard to set them down atop the square stair-rail, lingering there with his back to the other man.
“It was a very difficult decision,” Howard says behind him, his moneyed voice echoing in the stairwell. “The partners went back and forth over a number of options. But we wanted to give each and every submission the benefit of our expertise, so we’ve been drafting a letter of critique to assist you should you pursue this again.”
Jimmy shifts one of wine glasses slightly further away from the edge of the rail.
“I apologize that it’s taken so long to get back to you,” Howard says.
Jimmy turns.
With a little smile, Howard inclines his head to Jimmy regally.
Something hot begins to boil in Jimmy’s stomach. He breathes out carefully through his nose, then says, “So that’s it?”
Howard opens his mouth but pauses, furrowing his brow. “Well, as I said, we’re drafting a letter.”
“Yeah,” Jimmy says, nodding slowly, and then he frowns. “Was I close, at least?” He gestures between them, back and forth. “How did the presentation go?”
Howard makes a little obscure face. “We just went in a different direction, Jimmy. We loved your enthusiasm. Lots of great passion.” At Jimmy’s silence, he continues: “Though I have to say, the, ah”—he holds up his hands, the ice in his scotch clinking against the glass—“well, the whole rhyming slogan thing is a little sixties.”
The boiling in Jimmy’s stomach intensifies. “Right,” he says. “I get it.”
And Howard smiles now, the expression breaking brightly over his face. “Good, Jimmy, I’m glad. And I hope you’ll give it another shot some time.”
Jimmy folds his arms, fingers tightening on his biceps. “When were you going to tell me?” he asks slowly. It’s been over a month, he thinks. And— “The new billboards have been up for a week.”
“The new billboards, yes,” Howard says, eyes widening, and he waves a hand as if brushing away Jimmy’s first question. “So you’ve seen them? What do you think?”
Jimmy almost jokes about them getting lost in the sky, but then he clenches his teeth. “Very sensible,” he says instead.
“Yes,” Howard says, nodding. The ice cubes tinkle in his glass, settling. He glances to the door, then back to Jimmy. In the dim stairwell, Howard looks like a little kid in his father’s suit.
Jimmy feels the sneer build on his face and does nothing to stop it.
“Well, I ought to be getting back,” Howard says blandly.
“Yeah, you do that,” Jimmy murmurs. He turns away, and he hears the door open and then close. In that split second, the party is briefly audible again, raised voices and laughter, before a heavy silence returns to the stairwell.
Jimmy picks up one of the glasses of wine and drinks it slowly. It spreads warmly through his body, humming. He sets it down empty on the banister then picks up the other full glass and starts to walk up the stairs with it, footfalls heavy and echoing.
He lingers on the first floor landing. Blurred shapes move past the frosted glass window in the door, hiding and revealing the light of the hallway beyond. Jimmy stands there watching them, fingers tight on his wine glass, and he suddenly remembers late nights at his childhood home, sitting on the top step with his arms wrapped around his knees, studying the shadows that fell against the wall at the bottom of the turning staircase: dark shapes that drifted and warped on the white wallpaper as the adults moved up and down the hallway, in and out of his mother’s living room.
They had seemed so mysterious, then—great, exaggerated figures moving darkly when he should have been asleep.
They had seemed to walk through a world much larger than his own.
Later, Jimmy returns to Kim's group, holding two new glasses of wine to replace the pair that he downed in the stairwell and that he can now feel moving liquidly beneath his skin, sluggish and fuzzy. He hands a glass over to Kim and she smiles to him, her fingers brushing his as she takes it from him.
“You good?” she murmurs.
“Hm?” Jimmy says, looking up from her hand to her face. “Oh—yeah.” He smiles broadly. “What are we talking about?”
“Hiya, Jimmy,” says a woman it takes him a moment to place—Clara, the nervous assistant he once spilled coffee all over a stack of papers for. “We’re just talking shop.”
“Yes, I hate to say it, but still the bar exam,” Kim adds, and she smiles at Jimmy wryly, her eyes flashing. “Almost enough to make me think I’ve taken it already.”
Jimmy chuckles.
“Clara!” a voice calls, and the group splits to admit Carl Vernon, his usual Rolex gleaming on his wrist, his thinning hair slick beneath the strings of Christmas lights. “Clara, how are you? I must admit I miss you,” he says. “This new girl is nowhere near as efficient.”
Clara raises her eyebrows as if it’s the first she’s heard anything of the sort.
“You moved up?” Jimmy asks her.
“—you really need to show her your system for keeping my case notes,” Vernon says, and he rises to his toes to peer around over the top of their heads. “Track her down, she should be here somewhere.”
“Sure,” Clara says indulgently, and then she turns to Jimmy and nods. “HHM took me on as an assistant while I was studying for the bar. I had more trouble passing it than I should’ve, but I got there in the end.”
“Congratulations,” he says, tipping his glass to Clara.
“Thank you,” Clara says. She looks to Kim. “You have one semester left, right?”
Kim grimaces.
“Oh, I took a break after I finished,” Clara says quickly, “and I think that made the bar much harder for me than it needed to be. Just rip it off like a Band-Aid, yeah?”
Jimmy takes a long drink, feeling their conversation dissolve into a low level buzzing that it’s hard for him to really pay attention to.
But then Rolex Vernon's voice cuts through it: “Well, it’s not so bad if you have the aptitude for it.” He abandons his scanning search for his new assistant to smile slickly at them. “I’ve always tested well. And the right study system is key, of course.”
There's a moment of silence, nobody quite ready to fill it. So Jimmy nods. “Well, she’s a wizard with a post-it note, this one. Actual magic!”
“Right,” Vernon says, gaze skimming over Jimmy. “Do you have a schedule planned yet?” he asks Kim. “I set aside a couple of months purely for bar study. I know it can be hard to say no to having fun for that long”—a nod to the wine in her hand—“but it’s necessary, I believe.”
Kim stares at Vernon, her face a blank mask.
“I might still have my old study schedule if you’d like to run over it,” Vernon says, after the short silence.
Kim inclines her head. “Thanks.”
“I’m sure you’ll do great,” Clara says, glancing between them all. “Magic, huh?”
“Not quite,” Kim says. She turns to Jimmy, and she seems to study him. Her expression softens, her eyes shining a little from the wine. She touches his arm briefly and says, “But I have my good luck charm.”
It takes Jimmy’s brain a second to catch up with his ears, and by the time it does, Vernon is already talking again.
“—good luck charm?” Vernon says, lip twitching.
“Jimmy helped me study for finals,” Kim says crisply. And for a moment Jimmy expects her to make a joke about all the ways he mispronounced important case law names, but she doesn’t. She just stands there, face still a mask, eyes gleaming in a way that Jimmy’s sure only he can see.
After a beat, Carl Vernon gives an short little laugh. “Well, well,” he says. “We’ll make a little lawyer of you yet, then, huh?” As he turns to the others, he thumps a paw down on Jimmy’s shoulder. “This guy! I still remember him on his first day—ran into him in the lobby that morning, like a lost duckling. Looked like one, too, didn’t you?”
Jimmy stares at Vernon’s hand on his shoulder. The simmering returns to his stomach, seething and hot.
“You had that tufty hair,” Vernon continues, releasing his grip, and Jimmy looks up at him. He’s staring directly at Jimmy for what seems like the first time in the entire conversation. “Like you’d waddled in from some park. And there’s me saying hello, no idea you were the boss’s brother, I mean, look!” He points to Jimmy’s face. “Who could ever see it? Chalk and cheese.”
The finger drifts in and out of focus until Vernon drops his hand.
“I hadn’t heard the rumors then, of course,” Vernon says loudly, really holding court now. “The prodigal son! Right, kid?”
Kid? bristles Jimmy, looking at the man who must be barely five years older than he is.
“Of course, we’re not really supposed to talk about that, are we?” Vernon says. He sniffs, then exaggeratedly glances around. “But I don’t see Mr. McGill anywhere now. And didn’t we all wonder what the great Chuck McGill’s brother was doing down in the mailroom?”
Kim lays her palm gently on Jimmy's back, then lowers it.
Vernon looks between the other listeners, and seems to read agreement on their faces, because he grins and raises an eyebrow. “But we also all know case records aren’t as secure as they’re promised to be.”
The words hang in the air.
And whatever’s been bubbling inside Jimmy finally boils over, and he thinks: I could get you. It would be so easy. It would be as easy as blinking, as easy as opening my eyes. He feels acid burning at the back of his throat, the rising bile of a familiar mood. It’s an old mood, a well-worn mood, and he’s a little out of practice with it, but it settles over him like a second skin. Or like a shedded skin, found again.
It’s the kind of mood that once upon a time would have seen Merna wordlessly sliding him another beer. Instead, he finishes his wine, swallowing tightly around the last grainy dregs.
Someone beside him is still talking. It buzzes in the background.
And he can feel Slippin’ Jimmy coming back—the real Slippin’ Jimmy, not the grinning clown who dances coins over his fingers or bends cigarettes in half, but the guy who fractured his knee in front of an elderly woman’s porch just for a chance at a few hundred bucks; the guy who screamed at his own brother so loudly he couldn’t bear to look at him again for five years; the guy whose wife ran out on him—Slippin’ Jimmy, dumb and drunk and angry, always angry—
His vision tunnels, his grip tightening on his glass.
And the burning, unstoppable feeling rises, angering Jimmy more than anything else, angering him just for feeling it; angering him like seeing Howard reflected in the glass of the lobby, a kid pretending to be a king; angering him like Kim’s hand on his elbow—Kim, who hasn’t fucked him again since White Sands, and he doesn’t know why, and he thinks—he thinks—
—what the fuck is wrong with these people, standing here dying in this room.
He looks at the empty wine glass in his hand. His knuckles are white on the thin stem.
He imagines the fireworks the shattered shards would make beneath the thousands of Christmas lights. Little fragments of glowing—
—and his mother looked back, hadn’t she, had looked back for a split second before she closed the door, had looked out to him sitting in the back of the cab, her eyes glowing beneath the streetlights, and her lips had lifted—
“I’m gonna go hit the head,” Jimmy says harshly, words spilling from him.
He’s aware, suddenly, that he’s interrupted somebody, but he’s not sure who. He looks at the group, at the blurred faces of everyone, and then he turns and walks away. There’s an elevator, its doors already open like they’re waiting for him. He steps in just as they're shutting so that by the time he turns around they’ve closed, and it’s just himself staring back: mirrored and warped.
Some asshole in a new shirt and tie.
When the doors break apart again, Jimmy launches out of them, through the space where his reflection had been and onto the landing of the parking garage.
He pauses, breathing heavily—but there he is again, his red-patterned tie flashing on the curve of a trashcan—so he slams his foot into the reflection, slams his toes again and again into the metal until it bends and buckles, falling over against the wall. The blood rushes in his ears.
He feels a hand on his arm and he stills.
“Kim,” he hisses, not needing to ask.
“I followed you,” she says, behind him. “Sorry.”
The wine is drumming under his skin. He turns. It takes a moment for him to really focus on her. When he does, he can see the stillness in her like he would see movement in anybody else. Stillness like an expression on her face.
“Jimmy,” she murmurs, eyes soft. “Let me drive you home.”
“I talked to Howard,” he says, gaze trained on hers, his voice harsh and thin.
Kim looks down at the trashcan beside him. “It went that well, huh?”
“Yeah,” Jimmy says acidly. “Yeah, it went that well.”
She doesn’t touch him again. She just nods, once, and then walks off towards her car, and Jimmy follows.
They drive. He can still feel the bile at the back of his throat, still feel the hot anger burning beneath the surface of him, still feel the ugly old skin that now clings to his new one like slime.
He clenches his teeth. Kim’s music sounds discordant tonight, the lyrics inaudible and the guitars harsh and jangled. But he doesn’t touch the volume, just sits there and watches the darkened houses of the city go by, one by one, interminable.
They stop outside his apartment building, and Jimmy heads inside without looking back. It takes him a few tries to get the key in the lock, but he manages it, and he’s not even sure that Kim’s going to follow until he hears the door open and close again behind him.
He doesn’t turn to her, though. He moves to the kitchen instead and runs the faucet, splashing water onto his face, and then he stands there with his hands clenched on the edge of the sink. The room drifts a little at the corners.
He hears Kim move behind him. She lays a hand on his back, up by his shoulder blade, and holds it there. He can feel her thumb moving ever-so-slightly over his shirt. He can feel the cool water drying on his face, soaking into the top of his collar. He can feel the white hot anger beneath his skin, and he wonders if Kim can feel it too, burning through his shirt.
Slowly, she shifts her hand downwards, grazing his spine and creeping into small of his back. He thinks he can sense her breath on his shoulder, thinks he can sense the presence of her behind him like a weight in the space.
But he still doesn’t move. He presses the pads of his fingers tighter against the cool metal of the kitchen sink.
Kim strokes her thumb back and forth again, up and down over the curve of his lower back, the movement making a soft noise on the fabric. Jimmy sighs, and gradually she trails her hand around his right-hand side, lingering for a moment in the dip of his hips above his trousers, and then shifting to his stomach.
And he can see her hand now, see her fingers dancing gently over his white shirt. She splays them out, pushing her palm against his belly—and Jimmy suddenly feels the rest of her press up against him, her hips and stomach and breasts warm down his back. He exhales, one long shuddering breath.
Slowly, she moves her hand up, fingers catching on and skimming off the buttons of his shirt.
“Fuck, Kim,” he says, closing his eyes.
“Shh,” Kim says, and she’s speaking right into his skin, breath warm on his shoulder. She shushes him again, and her lips press open-mouthed against his back, and then she starts to drag her hand down again, and Jimmy opens his eyes again to watch. Her palm is light on him again, barely there, moving with a quiet hiss over the fabric.
She arrives at his belt—but Jimmy jerks around, facing her, grabbing her upper arms.
Kim stares up at him intensely, eyes boring into his. She’s so close he can see the flecks of white in the blue of her irises again—the streaked, paintbrush clouds. Her brows pull together and she looks, he thinks, curious. Like she’s waiting to see what he does next.
So he kisses her, closing the short distance between them quickly and inelegantly, their teeth clashing. Kim grabs his chin, pulling him closer, and she kisses him back just as violently, snagging his bottom lip and then releasing it.
He digs his fingers tighter into her arms, but it’s still Kim who seems to pull him, to direct him, dragging him backwards towards his bed—and his apartment is so small they reach it even sooner than he expects. He slams his bad knee into the wooden bedpost as they topple down onto the mattress, and he hisses, rolling onto his back and breathing through clenched teeth.
“You okay?” Kim asks, moving to kneel beside him, her brows folded with concern.
“Fuck,” Jimmy says. He pinches the bridge of his nose, the room tipping sideways as he closes his eyes. “Yeah, I’m—” But he doesn’t know what—he’s good? he’s okay? He opens his eyes and stares at her and he thinks—you never met this guy, Kim. You wouldn’t like this guy. I tried to bury this guy in Cicero, but a quick visit home and a couple of low-grade assholes and some drinks and now he’s come clawing back.
He stares up at her, breathing heavily, losing himself in her dark and blown-out pupils. She trails a hand lazily over his stomach, back and forth, stoking him, studying him right back. After a while, she pulls her hand away, and just kneels there, staring at him.
So, gritting his teeth against the pain, he pushes himself upright so that he’s kneeling, too, facing her. And he kisses her, hard and fast, breathing raggedly into her mouth.
She reaches up and grabs the side of his face, her fingernails digging into the soft skin around his ears. Jimmy can feel the sharp points of the contact even after she lets him go minutes later, desperately moving her hands down to his belt again, tugging at it and unbuckling it.
And Jimmy pushes her dress up frantically, too, bunching it over her hips; and he was right earlier, it’s so thin it feels like liquid in his hands. He rubs his palms up the side of her thighs and over her waist, pausing to dig his thumbs into the little dips of her bone for a moment.
Kim hisses into his mouth and he laughs, pressing his thumbs down tighter. She bucks her hips up into his grip and then starts moving her own hands again, pushing at his trousers frantically, shoving them down over his hips, taking his boxers with them. She trails her fingers up the top of his thigh and then grabs him, sliding her palm almost painfully over his cock.
“Jesus,” Jimmy gasps.
“Shh,” Kim says against his mouth, tightening her grip, and he groans. She gives him another couple of strokes and bites at his lip quickly, then moves back.
Jimmy stretches over to his bedside cabinet, trousers still down above his knees, half trapping him, but he manages to pull open the drawer and snag a condom with his fingertips. He shifts upright again, and Kim plucks it from his grip then gently pushes his hands back until he lowers them to his sides. They twitch there, small aborted movements, as he watches her roll the condom on for him, breathing harshly, his mouth hanging open until she's done.
Kim lifts her hips and shimmies out of her underwear, kicking them away clumsily, and she grabs him again. She strokes him slowly, teasing him—too lightly.
And she seems to sense it, because as soon as he finishes the thought, she lets him go again, and Jimmy hisses through his teeth, clenching his hands in fists on the bedspread either side of his knees.
Kim lifts her palm to his cheek and holds him like that for a moment, scrutinizing him. He thinks she must be looking for something. He doesn’t know what to show her. He breathes out harshly through his nose.
“Fuck them,” she says, crisp and precise, and then pulls him down.
He kisses her open-mouthed, messily, digging his fingernails painfully into his own palms, hands still at his side, still not touching her. She strokes him lightly and teasingly over the condom, and he groans into her mouth, nipping at her and breathing heavily.
Until, eventually, she directs him towards her. As he presses into her, Jimmy grunts, unable to stop himself from moving finally, grabbing her waist, his fingers tangling in the silky fabric of her dress, tugging her even closer with it.
He closes his eyes at the rush of heat, dropping his forehead down onto her shoulder, pulling at her, fingers locked so tightly in her dress that soon his knuckles start to hurt and he has to unclench them. He trails his hands loosely over her breasts and her sides, sliding over the flowing blue dress like it’s ice melting.
As they move together, Kim struggles with the buttons of his shirt, fighting with each one before finally getting it open. She scratches her nails over his back beneath the fabric, sharp tracks of pain across his shoulders and down his spine—up and down, up and down, like electrical trails over his skin. And then, down at his hips, she tightens her grip again, pulling him into her insistently.
So Jimmy drives into her faster, moving his hand down and swiping his thumb over the slickness between them and then rubbing it against Kim, steady circles. She bunches her hands up into his shirt, pulling him toward her, stretching the fabric, gasping open mouthed against his neck.
Jimmy holds her head there with his free hand, fingers tangled loosely in her hair, driving into her harder and harder until he feels her clench around him and he squeezes his eyes closed and follows, choking.
Later, Jimmy pushes himself off the bed and walks to the doorway of the bathroom.
Kim’s in the shower. The water makes a steady hiss, and he can see the shape of her moving behind the frosted glass. She’s fluid, and small—smaller than he sometimes thinks she is.
He leans against the doorway. He can tell the moment she sees him there, though he can’t read her expression, just the tilt of her head and the subtle intake of her breath, barely audible over the rush of the water. When he doesn’t immediately say anything, she continues moving, reaching for his soap then rubbing it over herself in long careful strokes.
He imagines the water on his own skin, running and curling over his body and down the drain. He can almost hear the sound of it. The slow bubble, and then nothing.
He clears his throat, a soft noise that he can barely hear. He inhales. “Listen, I’m okay with it,” he says sharply, and the figure in the shower stills again. Something simmers in him, pushing the next words to the surface: “But what are we doing here, Kim?” More silence, and he can't stop himself now: “You just wanna fuck every now and then and otherwise forget about it?”
Kim remains frozen. The curve of her neck, the glow of her hair through frosted glass. The only noise is the rush of the shower.
It sounds like static. Like a dead channel.
Later still, Jimmy lies on his bed, waiting until she returns. When she does, he drapes an arm over her, and she pushes her back against him and reaches for his thigh, pulling his legs up to fold closely behind hers.
Jimmy stares into the curve of her shoulders and watches her breathe.
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