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Jimmy stands in the doorway of the breakroom. The coffee smells strong and bitter that day, and there’s a bright summer light coming in through the small square windows along the outer wall.
Kim has an open textbook before her like nothing’s changed. She cradles a mug with one hand and, as he watches, she reaches up to brush a strand of hair behind her ear with the other. Her hair’s pulled back with a headband, but a couple of threads have fallen loose already, gold on her blue-green cardigan.
She’s striped with the squares of sunlight from the window and the flat blue of the overhead fluorescent bulbs. Glowing with their overlapping light, she seems like a projection screen, and he feels as if he can see all his memories cast atop her: Kim looking sideways to him from the driver’s seat, looking over to him in lavender-colored evening light, looking up at him from white-colored sheets.
“Hey,” he says.
She looks up to him now. “Hey.”
He smiles, small and careful.
Something unfurls in his chest as she smiles back. He shrugs to her, and she shrugs in response, and the dripping of the coffee slows, like a countdown.
Jimmy moves into the breakroom and over to the kitchenette. He frees the coffee pot from the machine and fills a cup, the one with the cartoon cactus. He pauses, and then leans over the table and tops up Kim’s mug, too.
She murmurs a thanks without looking back up.
He snags a couple of sugar packets and then pulls out the chair beside Kim and sits. A glance to the breakroom door—nobody else is in yet. He tears open a packet and pours the sugar into his coffee, then picks up the other and shakes it by the end. The granules rattle.
He feels as if he should play the old game, at least for a little while, so he nods at the textbook. “Still going with that?”
“Mm,” Kim says quietly. “Summer classes start next week, remember?”
“Right,” Jimmy says. He exhales carefully through his nose, and then softer: “Break’s really over then, huh.”
Kim’s lips fold inward, tightening. She nods.
He shakes out the sugar packet again, then rubs at the sugar with his forefinger and thumb. The granules crunch beneath the paper. “Kim,” he says. “Can we talk about this?”
She puts her pen on her notepad. Turns and looks at him.
“Look—” Jimmy starts. He crunches the sugar between his fingers again, then deliberately sets the packet down and moves his hand away. “I don’t want this weekend to have been just some…throwaway thing.”
Kim’s gaze darts to the packet and then back to his eyes.
It feels like she’s daring him to say what he wants to say next: I think we could be good together, I think we really have something here. “I mean, it wasn’t nothing for me,” he says instead. “I want to make sure you know that I—”
“It wasn’t just a throwaway thing,” Kim says quickly.
“Right,” Jimmy says, and he smiles. “Okay, well, good.” A short pause. “On the way back you said—”
“I said a relationship wouldn’t be fair on you.”
He nods. He fiddles with the sugar packet again. “Yeah,” he says. “Not fair.”
They’re silent for a while, though Kim doesn’t go back to her reading. She’s staring into nothing, a nothing near the side of his head. He wonders what she’s seeing there.
After a long time, he says, “Why wouldn’t it be fair?”
Kim sighs, and meets his eyes again. She gestures to her work, to the room. “I mean, hell, Jimmy, I’m either here, or I’m studying, or I’m asleep.”
He raises his eyebrows.
She gives a short laugh. “Okay, maybe not even that last one. I just…” She folds her lips inward, and her eyes skim off the empty air again, then she looks back to him. “I can’t give you…”
“Give me what?” he says mildly.
She’s slowly shaking her head. “Whatever it is you want. Enough time, enough…” Her head stills, and she stares at him intensely. “You don’t want to be the thing I keep pushing aside for summer school, or third year, or the bar exam. It’s not fair.”
He raises his eyebrows expectantly. “And you decide what’s fair?”
She studies him. “Yeah,” she says, after another long silence. “Yeah, sometimes I do.”
He scratches his cheek, then lowers his hand to the table, thumb coming down on the sugar packet again. He stares at it instead of at Kim. Shifts the packet over the wooden surface, the paper hissing. Back and forth, back and forth.
Then Kim covers his hand with hers. Her fingers fold over his knuckles, soft and warm.
He pulls his hand away, staring up at her.
Her eyes widen. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t,” he says softly. “Don’t do that.”
She nods, drawing her own hand back along the table now too, back to its place among her notes and textbooks. “You’re right,” she says. “That wasn’t fair, either.”
He wonders what exactly Kim does think is fair—if she’d be happy with an unnamed middle-ground between friendship and something more, be happy to return to the place where they can drunkenly make out but wake up the next day without any obligations, or drive off together up Route 66 the next time she needs an escape.
He watches as she curls her hand into a loose fist, pulling it in even closer to herself.
But he’s never understood fair and not fair, anyway. Unfair is just when you don’t see the ace up the sleeve, or know about the weight in the die. Unfair is for people who think that coins can’t have two heads, or that briefcases can’t have false bottoms, or think that, just because one ink-stained bill is real, all the rest must be real, too.
Unfair is just when you don’t see the real rules of the game.
He waves at the space between them. The coffees and textbooks and comfortable distance. “So how about just this?”
Kim relaxes. He sees a flash of something like fondness in her eyes, and he thinks that maybe she’d been afraid he was going to push this to the breaking point, that he was going to make her pick between everything or nothing.
So he tests the ice: “I don’t want this to be nothing, Kim.”
Her gaze softens more.
“We don’t need to do some When Harry Met Sally men-and-women-can’t-be-friends bullshit,” he says. “We can do friends.”
She gives a strange little laugh. “Good,” she says. “Good.” A slightly shaky smile. “Well, you’re my only one in Albuquerque, you know.”
“Am I?” he says, giving a little gasp. “No kidding! How ‘bout that?”
She chuckles, more naturally now.
He finally tears open the packet of sugar, then tips the white granules into the black coffee. They sink, vanishing, and then he takes a long sip. He was right, earlier. It’s strong and bitter. He has another drink, and he feels a smile playing on his lips, feels it edging the corners of his mouth. He’s never understood fair and not fair. He’s always been good at seeing the real rules of the game, at rigging the odds, at finding an ace up his sleeve or a two-headed coin in his pocket.
He’s always been good at turning nothing into a winning hand—and this isn’t nothing.
Jimmy stands in the doorway of the breakroom. The kitchenette is empty that day, mostly dark, but there’s a bright summer light coming in through the small windows along the outer wall. Geometric squares that fall cleanly into the space.
Kim isn’t there.
He moves inside, turning on the fluorescent lights. They flicker a few times before settling. He opens the top of the coffee maker and dumps the old filter and grounds into the garbage. Hunts through the drawer for a fresh pack of coffee filters, then heaps in some grounds, and closes the lid and sets the machine brewing.
His tie is tight around his neck, his shirt collar pinching the sunburn he got outside Kim’s apartment yesterday. He loosens the tie, but the scratching of the fabric makes it even worse somehow. Rough cotton on his neck. He grimaces and adjusts it again, but with every shift of the collar the skin feels angrier.
He lowers his hands to the countertop deliberately. Tries to put it out of his mind. The drip of the coffee slows, like a countdown stopping.
Jimmy pours a cup and turns to face the table.
Kim’s standing in the doorway. She looks at him.
He looks back.
You were right, he thinks.
And whatever part of himself is usually there to claw his way back to his feet, whatever part is always spoiling for a fight, whatever part used to make his mother ruffle his hair and murmur the word scrappy, is quiet. He looks for it and finds nothing.
He could take his coffee out into the mailroom. He doesn’t. He sits at the table, watching as Kim makes her way past him, watching as she pours her own cup. He stirs two sugars into his coffee then taps his thumbnail softly on the curving china of his mug, waiting for it to cool.
You were right, he thinks again. Always right.
And whatever part of himself is always looking for the shortest route between two points, whatever part is always there to offer a silver-spun story, whatever part sees a complex knot and wants to cut it, is quiet. He looks for it and finds nothing.
Kim sits a couple of spaces down from him, her hand curling around her mug. She lowers her gaze. He realises it’s the first time he’s seen her in here without a textbook. She stares at the empty table in front of her as if she’s looking for words that aren’t there. As if she doesn’t know what to do with herself.
You were right, then, he thinks.
It wasn’t fair.
It’s dark out the window. Jimmy stares into the quiet park opposite Chuck’s house, at the shadows of trees and park benches. The grass looks black. Along the street, yellow streetlamps glow softly, casting patches of hazy light.
“Jimmy?” It’s Rebecca.
“Hey,” he says, turning.
She hovers at the edge of the living room, a glass of red wine in her hand.
“You sure I can’t help clean up?” Jimmy says.
Rebecca waves a hand. “No, you’re fine as you are. Chuck’s wrestling with the new dishwasher. It’s better to leave him to it.”
Jimmy nods. “The chicken was really delicious,” he says. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she says warmly. And then more pointedly: “Again.”
Jimmy chuckles and holds up his hands.
Rebecca straightens a cushion on one of the armchairs then sits down, exhaling. She smiles over at him. “Don’t let Chuck be a stranger while I’m in New York, okay? Invite yourself over if you have to. God knows he’ll never think to do it,” she adds fondly, shaking her head.
There’s a loud bang from the kitchen, then a frustrated curse, and Jimmy laughs. He nods his head in the direction. “How’s he doing, anyway?”
“Well, busy, but I’m sure you know that,” she says. “This new case, what is it…”
Jimmy thinks for a moment, trying to picture photocopied documents. “Safework and Co.?”
“That sounds right,” she says. “He’s neck deep, I think he’d sleep at the office if I let him. Right next to the fax machine, of course, just in case.”
“Right,” Jimmy says, smiling.
“It’s funny,” Rebecca says idly, “I knew when we got married that I’d never be his great love.”
Unsure quite what to say, Jimmy just nods.
Rebecca seems to take pity on him, and she chuckles kindly. “But I’m sure he’d say the same about me and my music. Hey, we make it work.” She swirls her wine then has a sip and lowers the glass, studying him.
And under her gaze, Jimmy looks away, facing the window again. He draws the curtain back a little with his finger. It’s still quiet out there. Still just the pitch-black grass and empty park. He presses his knuckle to the glass and it’s cold, somehow, even in the warm summer evening.
“You’ve been a hard man to pin down, lately,” Rebecca says. Her voice is low. “How’ve you been, Jimmy?”
He turns to her again, releasing the curtain. A moment passes, and he says, “Good.”
“Hmm,” Rebecca says carefully, and her eyes sparkle.
He wonders how to answer more honestly—whether to tell her about Kim, or about college. God knows he doesn’t want Chuck to think he needs help with something, yet again. “I’m okay, I am, really,” he says, eventually. “I mean, I had a fight with my—with a friend last week, but that’s…” He waves a hand.
Rebecca mirrors his dismissive gesture and raises her eyebrows. “Just like that, huh?”
Just like that. The shift from something to nothing.
He thinks of Kim, a colored shape passing him in the halls, mailcart rattling. He thinks of how he doesn’t look up at all when she comes into the breakroom at lunch, how he still has another Kim staring at him in his mind, and he can’t get that one to look away. He needs her to look at something else.
“Nah, not just like that,” Jimmy says, finally. He chuckles bitterly. “It was…it was a long time coming, actually.”
“Ah,” Rebecca says. She gives a gentle smile.
Chuck comes into the living room then, wiping his hands on a dish towel. “I don’t know why they have to make these machines more complicated,” he says. “The old one was fine.”
Rebecca smiles. “I remember you complaining about water-stained silverware more than once.”
“Well,” Chuck says, and he slings the dish towel over his shoulder. “Perhaps.” He stands there for a moment, then looks over to Jimmy and gives him a small smile.
“So, you heading to New York too, then?” Jimmy says. “See Rebecca’s big show?”
“Concert,” Chuck offers. He looks down at his wife. “And we were thinking one weekend in September. Once Safework clears up.”
“Hey, nice,” Jimmy says, nodding. He perches on a sofa, fingers laced in between his knees. “So, uh, how’s the case going, anyway?”
“Well, Moore’s still refusing to take the deal,” Chuck says idly, scratching his shoulder, and then he glances to Jimmy. “But of course you wouldn’t have heard about that. We got them down to three-hundred thousand and he…” Chuck shakes his head. “Well, if he keeps this up, our side are going to be very happy after going to court.”
Jimmy blinks. “Right.”
“Could be looking at a couple million.”
Jimmy nods.
Chuck gives him another closed-lipped smile. “So, the case is going well, Jimmy.”
Jimmy tightens his interlaced fingers and wishes he had more to say. Something sparks in his chest.
“The sooner you can wrap it up, the better,” Rebecca says. “I won’t be in New York forever, remember.”
“I should hope not,” Chuck says. He holds out a hand, but it’s just to take Rebecca’s now-empty wine glass, and she passes it over to him. He thanks her, then nods across to Jimmy. “Well, Jimmy, it was good of you to come.”
“Of course,” Jimmy says, rising to his feet. He takes a shuffling step forward, then looks between them. “Thank you again.”
“Let me—did you bring anything?” Rebecca says, standing too. She peers around the living room.
“Nah,” Jimmy says, patting his pockets. “All set.”
“Very good,” Chuck says. “Well, get home safe, Jimmy,” he adds, with another nod, and he heads back towards the kitchen. There’s the sound of a drawer opening and closing and then Chuck’s footsteps continue, moving upstairs.
Rebecca shakes her head, leading Jimmy toward the front door. “He’ll probably go back into the office for a few hours, I imagine,” she says warmly, glancing in the direction of Chuck. “When he gets a case like this it’s hard for him to stop.”
Jimmy nods, opening the front door. He stares out at the night-filled park. The black grass is like a hole between the streets, a dark void between the hazing orange pools of light. He takes a step outside. The air is balmy—soft. “Thanks again for dinner,” he says, turning. “It was so good.”
“No more of that,” Rebecca says, holding open the door, standing in the threshold. “Seriously.”
“All right, all right,” he says warmly. “But it was.” He leans back inside and calls out, “Night, Chuck!”
There’s a muffled response.
Jimmy gives a soft laugh, then pauses. He pictures his brother upstairs, changing back into his work suit maybe, or gathering up documents. “He really loves it, huh?”
Rebecca raises her eyebrows questioningly.
Jimmy smiles and says, “The law.”
“Ah,” Rebecca says, chuckling. “Yes. He’s lucky I’m not a jealous woman.”
Jimmy laughs along for a moment, but then he stills again. Tucks his hands into his pockets. “What d’you think keeps him going?” he asks. “What keeps the love alive at, you know”—he checks his watch—“almost ten o’clock at night.” And he lets his smile fall, his face growing serious.
Rebecca curls her hand around the vertical edge of the door, leaning her weight on it, seemingly giving the question real thought. “Well, if you asked Chuck,” she says, eventually, “I think he’d tell you that serving the law is the greatest duty a man can perform.”
Jimmy nods, the sharpness in his chest growing.
“But you know your brother,” Rebecca says. “Sometimes he does just like to be right.”
Jimmy feels it again in the office of Vera Simpson, Academic Coach—it’s like sun on glass, a flash of sharp light in his chest. The careful woman is looking down at his final transcript, and she’s just said—what has she just said?
Jimmy leans forward in the hard-backed chair. “What?”
“It’s disappointing, I know,” Vera repeats. “But UNM is the only accredited college in the state right now, and they need a GPA of at least, well”—she looks down—“let’s just say you’re a few points off.”
Jimmy exhales. It’s stifling in the small office today. The casement window is pushed open as far as it will go, the stay on its furthest notch. There’s no breeze.
Vera taps his transcript with a finger. “It would’ve been nice to get you above a 3.0, but, well. You’d better put UNM out of your mind, at least, if you really mean to do this.”
And there it is again, the flash of light. “Of course I really mean to do it,” Jimmy says softly, almost without affect. He wants to ask what makes her think he doesn’t.
Vera nods. “Well then,” she says.
Something in her tone still grates at him, and he folds his fingers together, hands hanging between his knees.
He wants to say—Isn’t that step one done? Aren’t I one rung closer to the top? So why do you look less believing now?
And the feeling flashes in him again.
Vera shifts, her careful bob cut grazing her shoulders. “Should we come up with a plan for the LSAT, then, Mr. McGill?”
“Of course,” Jimmy mutters. He listens as she lays out some options, as she explains the new scoring system as if he was familiar with the old one, but more of him is still just searching for that glinting feeling. That spark of defiance in his chest.
It feels like stargazing, like looking to the side of a star so that it brightens in the corner of your eye.
He feels it again standing in the CNM library. The librarian today is a woman with severe hair and smudged glasses, and she gives him a wan smile as she speaks. “…can renew it. I imagine you probably will.”
“Three weeks?” Jimmy repeats.
“That’s right,” she says. “And then you’ll need to renew it, dear.”
He glances at the book on the counter between them, then back up to the librarian. There’s that flash of indignation. “Fine,” he says. “I’ll see you then, I guess.” He pockets his library card. Picks up the textbook and the matching set of cassette tapes that comes with it, then he heads away from the stern-faced woman and sits on one of the leather-trimmed benches in the library entryway.
He shrugs his backpack off and drops it between his knees. Unzips it and rifles through for the Walkman he bought yesterday. Cracks open the tall case of tapes, and then he wrestles to free the first one from the plastic pegs. Flips it over a few times, picking the right side, then slots it in and closes the Walkman.
A woman’s voice cuts through before he can put his headphones on: “Hey, why are you here?”
He looks up. It’s Ellis and Sam from his public speaking class, looking like an old-fashioned comedy act, tall and short. Sam’s grinning, eyebrows high above the top of her glasses, and Ellis’s eyes are gleaming. They’re each clearly waiting for something—
And then the words sink in, and Jimmy groans. “Jesus, guys,” he says. “Thanks a lot.”
“What, can’t make fun of that yet?” Sam says, grinning. “Come on, we all went through it.”
“And at least you didn’t run out to puke,” Ellis says. His long hair’s up in a high bun today, and the reason why becomes clear as he adds: “Man, I already feel safer around the buzzsaws than I did up there.” He pauses. “I’m taking a woodwork course.”
“We’re making birdhouses,” Sam adds, and her lips twitch. “Now that’s a life skill. You’re missing out, Jimmy.”
“Yeah, I bet,” Jimmy says, shaking his head but smiling.
She smiles warmly, too. “So, come on, how goes the big shot lawyer stuff?”
Jimmy holds up the textbook he’s just checked out of the library. Mastering the LSAT, the cover says, in sharp white text.
“Wow,” Sam says. “Light reading, huh?”
Jimmy gestures to the open case of cassettes. “Not just reading.”
Ellis makes a low whistling noise.
“Yeah,” Jimmy says, chuckling. “Time to enjoy the soothing tones of”—he flips the case closed and scans the front—“Albert van der Berg. Yikes.” He’s still holding the Walkman in his other hand, and he gestures with it. “I didn’t even get any music with this.”
“Oh, dude, no,” Ellis says. “No, no. I’ll lend you some stuff—hell, you can have my dad’s Kenny Loggins, that’s a freebie to a good home, any home.”
Jimmy grins, and the bright spark in his chest flickers again. “Yeah?” he says. “I mean, I can probably squeeze in some Kenny between tape thirteen and fourteen.”
Ellis makes a disgusted noise, and the three of them chat for a while longer in the entrance to the CNM library. Afterwards, Jimmy rides the bus home with his textbook open on his lap. The familiar buildings cast moving shadows over the white pages as the bus crawls through the evening traffic. He follows along with the problems as they flash light then dark, as the bus shakes and the deep-voiced Albert van der Berg talks slowly about logical reasoning.
When Jimmy feels the spark again, it feels like cupping his palms around a flame.
It’s cold in the parking garage, as cold as always—but there’s Kim, leaning against the wall. She doesn’t usually come down here this early, but he’s not surprised to see her. She’s in darker colors today. A dressier jacket. He wonders if she’s been meeting with someone.
As he watches, frozen just outside the landing doors, she ashes her cigarette and looks over to him.
He looks back.
“Hey,” she says, after a long time.
“Hey,” he says, nodding to her.
He thinks about the old safe questions—like asking about law school, or asking how long she has to wait for her bar results. Asking if she’s dressed up nice to talk to the partners.
“Sorry,” he says, instead. “Didn’t think you’d be here.”
Kim shrugs. “I just saw you upstairs ten minutes ago.”
Still, Jimmy thinks. He tucks his hands into his pants pockets, pressing against the cheap fabric of his slacks.
It’s silent between them for a long time, just the rasp of the burning cigarette. Just the rumble of a car in the level above them, and the whirr of an elevator in the nearby shaft, a barely audible metallic creak.
When he finally moves to leave, Kim speaks: “This isn’t some When Harry Met Sally men-and-women-can’t-be-friends bullshit, Jimmy.”
The words hit him hard even though he’s not surprised by them, hit him like a cold wind. So that’s it, he thinks, so that’s it, so that’s it—
“We can still talk. Stand in the same room, even.”
Sure. Talk and stand in the same room—best friends.
He waits there with his hands tight in his pockets. He thinks about asking if this is what she’s decided is fair, now. If fair is going back to whatever counted as just friends for them all those months ago. If fair is whatever counts as arms-length enough for Kim Wexler.
He thinks about saying anything. He thinks about saying nothing.
And he realises his only words to her so far are an apology, an apology just for being in the parking garage at the same time as her—the one apology to leave his lips since he left her apartment, and he knows that it’s not enough, and he imagines taking a step closer to her and spitting—Are you sorry, Kim? I’ll say it first, if you like. His own voice, piped back to him, echoing and cold.
He looks down at the concrete floor instead. “Sure,” he says. Friends, he thinks. He doesn’t say it, and neither does Kim.
He can feel the hollow wind in his chest again. He tries to find the guy who’ll always claw his way out of a pit, the guy who’ll cut the tangled knot. Tries to recall the feeling of his mother ruffling his hair. He cups his palms around the flame.
In the darkened garage, it’s just Kim leaning against the wall, the glowing end of her cigarette a star. He looks away.
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