Clear Water (27 page)

Whiskey’s throat worked. “My parents died just driving in the snow, you know that, right?”

Oh, hells. “No.” Patrick wanted to claim sick now and say he wasn’t up for it, and he
was
getting tired. But it wasn’t fair, Whiskey being his everything and Patrick bailing now.

“And I’m going to… well, not Antarctica, I’m going to the North Pole, and looking at seals and polar bears and studying climate change. And I’m—you almost got blown up in your own backyard
with
me, Patrick. What’s going to happen to us when I’m 3,000 miles away?”

Patrick had never been good with epiphanies. He hadn’t realized his mother didn’t love him until she was gone. He hadn’t realized his father
did
love him until maybe just this minute when Whiskey made Shawn feel like shit. But suddenly, flat on his back in a hospital room, he looked at Whiskey, who had always been strong and always been capable and always been in control, and Patrick had an epiphany.

Wesley Keenan was just as vulnerable, just as fragile, and just as afraid of loneliness as Patrick Cleary.

Well, hell! Patrick snagged his hand where it rested on the bed, and held it to his cheek and let helpless tears come. “We’re going to be fine,” he said through them. “We’re going to be fine. I’m going to recover, and you’re going to come home, and we’re never going to be apart. And in the meantime, I’ll get my shit together, because I may be a fuckup now, but that’s not who you’re going to come home to, you hear me?”

Whiskey turned a miserable face to him—miserable, in part, because he seemed to be listening, truly listening, to what Patrick said. “I never thought you were a fuckup.”

“I know. And you’ve always listened to me.”

Whiskey closed his eyes like it hurt too much to keep them open. “I’m listening to you now.”

“I know. Keep listening. I love you like… like longer and wider and three times as deep as the fucking river. That’s not going away. I’ll be here when you get back. I promise.” Patrick kissed the back of his hand then, as soft as he could with lips that felt chapped, and Whiskey leaned over the rail of the bed and just stayed there, his eyes closed. They were like that—still and unhappy but at peace—when Patrick’s dad got back with the world’s biggest cup full of soft serve.

“Jesus, Dad—you think I can eat all that?”

Shawn flushed, the color blotching unevenly at his ginger-gray hairline and on his tanned, freckled skin. “I brought three spoons.”

Whiskey sighed and reached out and took the ice cream from him. “You got one more chance, asshole,” he said without preamble. He took a bite of the ice cream and then passed it to Patrick. “You fuck this up again and I’ll come back from wrestling polar bears in Alaska and totally beat the living shit out of you.”

Patrick took a bite of ice cream because, well, it was ice cream! And then watched his father to see what he’d say to that. Shawn Cleary didn’t do ultimatums.

“I’m only a little stupid,” Patrick’s father said. “I swear—you’ll get him back okay.”

“I’m not a CD!” Patrick protested through a full mouth, and Whiskey looked at him soberly.

“Do you think we’d be doing this over a CD?”

Patrick shook his head and had another bite of ice cream. “No,” he said, and then he decided to devote himself to his craft.

Shawn said, “So what’s the plan?” and Whiskey started giving him details about flight schedules and how Patrick would have his key and could use his crappy car when he was up for it, and Shawn said, “I’ll get him a new one. Maybe with all the shit he’s going to be doing on the houseboat, a truck would be a good idea.”

Whiskey looked like he was going to protest for a moment, but Patrick, who was not stupid either, bumped Whiskey’s hip with his hand and offered him a bite of ice cream. Whiskey sighed and took the bite. “Okay. Fine. Whatever. I won’t be here by that point. It’s up to Patrick. He’s got the car when he wants it.” And that was the end of it.

Patrick didn’t plan to take his father up on it, of course. Although he had never really objected to his father’s money and he had started having visions of half-ton pickup trucks and all the things they could do, he still remembered the part about being a leech. Besides, mostly what pickup trucks could do was look good, which Patrick had no objection to that either, but he found that vanity didn’t seem to be as big a thing as it used to. So no, he didn’t intend to get the big car—but he didn’t want the big argument either.

Since Whiskey and Patrick’s father looked like they could exist in the same room together, it seemed to be a good move. And Patrick’s father seemed to look like he could exist in the same room with
Patrick
, and that was saying something. Patrick gave the rest of the ice cream to Whiskey, who passed it to Shawn, and decided to let the sleep that was overwhelming him take over. Before he went under, though, he had one last question.

“Whiskey, if I’m going to live with my dad, who’s gonna take care of the frogs?”

Whiskey’s eyes crinkled the way they did when he was thinking of something that might possibly shock someone who didn’t know him. “Don’t worry about it, baby. I think we’ve got the frogs covered.”

H
E
WOULDN
’
T
say anything more about it in the next two weeks—and he was there at the hospital every day. Sometimes only for an hour, and sometimes for a couple of them. Sometimes he just brought the laptop and they’d watch a movie in companionable silence, and sometimes he talked about the ins and outs of the paper he and Fly Bait were writing so it would all be in order before he left. One day he brought a big stack of brochures and pictures and even printouts of scientific papers on climate change so Patrick could look at it and know what he was talking about when he called.

“Calls might be rough, because there’s not a lot of satellite coverage out there, and it’s still pricey. But I’ll text and send pictures—you should be able to get those whenever we get in range. I’ll get yours too, so, you know. Just keep sending.”

Patrick nodded, trying not to let his attention wander. This was about talking to Whiskey. This was important. “I’ll try to drop you a line every day, okay?” he said seriously, and Whiskey kissed his forehead.

“You’d better. You know I already miss you, right?”

Of course Patrick knew. He already missed Whiskey too.

One day Fly Bait and Loretta came in with Whiskey, and they played Scrabble and talked happily—this was toward the end of Patrick’s stay in the hospital, and apparently Loretta was there to help Fly Bait move the last of her stuff out of the house boat.

“Did you really buy that piece of shit?” Fly Bait asked after playing the word “zoon” for an ungodly amount of points.

Whiskey played “zerk” off of “zoon” and recaptured his lead. Patrick had given up asking them if these words were real or not back on the boat—they always had a reference book handy that proved they were right.

“Yup,” Whiskey said, looking at Patrick. “I bought it from Fish and Game for a song.” He sighed and Fly Bait grinned.

“Still cleaned out your bank account, didn’t it?”

“What little there was. Hopefully when I’m done with this, I’ll get a job that will let me buy pants without holes.”

Patrick looked at him in panic. “You’ve got gear and shit for the arctic, right?”

Whiskey smiled a little, and Patrick could suddenly see how tired he was. “Yeah—I’ve been pulling that together. Don’t worry—now that you finally know what to do with those parts, they’re not gonna freeze off.”

Loretta said “TMI!” with passion, and Fly Bait rolled her eyes. “Just be glad you didn’t see Patrick do yoga. God!” She shuddered delicately. “The fucking horror.”

That was a nice afternoon. Patrick’s dad stopped by after work at the end of it with two half-gallons of really expensive ice cream and spoons, and they’d shared, and then Fly Bait had given him a fierce hug.

“You take care of yourself, okay? We’re coming for Christmas—don’t let your old man tell you different.”

Patrick found he was smiling so broadly his face hurt—hell, he might even have been pulling some of the stitches in the back of his head. “Yeah? We’ll put ya up! I promise. We’ll get a tree and we’ll take pictures and send them to Whiskey and—”

Fly Bait kissed his cheek so hard it might have left a bruise. “I hear ya, kid. It’ll be epic. It’s a promise, then.” She pulled back, and her face was soft, and she looked like a girl named Freya Bitner and not a bitch named Fly Bait. “I’m really glad you fell into our laps, Patrick. You guys will make a kick-ass family.”

She left, and Patrick eyed his dad and Whiskey warily. They seemed okay now, eating ice cream together. He didn’t see “family” there, but then, he hadn’t when he’d woken up on the houseboat feeling like turtle crap either.

T
HE
next day, Whiskey left and it sucked. Patrick didn’t remember crying when his mom left, and he certainly hadn’t cried when he’d left his dad, but that day—crap.

“I can always call it off,” Whiskey said gruffly, and Patrick shook his head and reminded himself that he’d been the asshole who’d said he could do this. Patrick could be okay alone. He’d be better with Whiskey, but in the meantime, he could take care of himself.

“I’ll be fine,” he said, and then he lost all pretense of holding it together and sobbed against Whiskey’s shoulder like a little kid. Whiskey had stayed then, stroking his hair (shorn in the back, dammit) helplessly until the last possible moment.

“God, Patrick. This is your last chance, man. I’ll stay. I will. I’ll—”

“Kiss me and go,” Patrick whispered. “I swear I’ll pull my shit together afterward, okay? You said you were listening.”

“I did,” Whiskey whispered back into his hair. He shifted his ass on the hospital bed, preparing to move and get on a plane, and Patrick held him so tight for a moment he heard Whiskey hitch his breath. “I did. I’ll always listen.”

And with that, he tilted Patrick’s face up and kissed him long, hot, and deep, and even though Patrick’s shoulder still ached and his arm was plastered and a lot of him was still in bandages, he still got a hard-on, and Whiskey still kissed him until Patrick groaned a little. Whiskey released him, and he fell back against the pillows, and Whiskey gave him one more hard kiss on the forehead. “I’ll love you forever. You say the word, I’ll break my contract and chopper home. I’ll be listening. I love you.”

They rarely said it.

“I love you too.”

And then he was gone.

A
N
HOUR
later Patrick’s dad got there, and Patrick had barely stopped sniveling like a six-year-old.

“Whiskey’s gone,” he said miserably, trying to explain the red eyes and the pile of Kleenex and the fact that his favorite nurse (straight, male, and older than Patrick’s father, but still a fun guy with a good sense of humor) had brought him almost a half a gallon of soft serve peeking out of a jumbo Styrofoam cup.

“I know,” Shawn said, moving close enough to get a bite of the ice cream. “He stopped by the plant to threaten my life again.” (The plant was still closed, actually, and Shawn had been giving the grisly details of bomb cleanup when he visited. It would be open for business again in a week, and Patrick would be very relieved. That shit bored him senseless.)

“He doesn’t mean that,” Patrick said, stealing the spoon back.

“Sure he does. He should.” Shawn waved off the spoon and looked at his son unhappily. “He’s right. I had you twice, and both times I fucked it up. This time I’d better make good.”

Patrick shrugged, uncomfortable. “I’m grown, Dad. When I’m in recovery and can drive and shit, I’ll be out of your hair.”

Shawn’s look was inexplicably hurt. “Maybe that’s not what I want this go ’round,” he said quietly. “Maybe I want you in my life. I mean—I haven’t had any factory these last two weeks, and you know something? I got nothing else. Maybe I should spend some time with the one person I know still talking to me. Maybe that would be the smart thing to do.”

Patrick was skeptical but kept it to himself. “I’m not great at the smart stuff either,” he offered, and Shawn shook his head.

“Sure you are, kid. I’m just not great at seeing it.”

@Whiskey—I’m going home tomorrow. I have no idea what’s waiting for me.

@Patrick—No worries. I sort of know—you’ll like it, I promise.

T
HE
frogs were waiting for him in two giant terrariums.

Cal and Catherine got their own, and the other two (four?) had to share. They had water and a filter and a humidifier and plant vegetation and algae and earth and a maggot/fly cycle and, in general, were well cared for on their new pedestal in Patrick’s room.

Patrick was ecstatic. Shawn was appalled.

“Omigod! Cal! Catherine! Conrad, Chastity! Christopher, Courtney! Hello, guys! Didja miss me?”

Catherine moved her back leg as if to go forward, and Cal moved his as if to go back. The frog(s) did what it (they) always did: stayed perfectly still and breathed in and out. It was all Patrick could have asked for in a pet.

“You named them?” Shawn asked. “I don’t even know what they are!”

“Anomalous rana catesbianea,” Patrick murmured. “They’re what happens to your standard American bullfrog when drug-dealing assholes dump shitloads of atrazine in the water supply to keep their weed crop growing.”

Shawn blinked and looked at the frogs some more. “Oh for fuck’s sake….” He trailed off and looked at Patrick in wonder. “
This
is why you and Whiskey found the drug stash.”

Patrick was sitting on his bed, talking to the frogs, and he looked over his shoulder (gently—that whole area was still fucked up) and nodded. “Yeah. Why’d you think we were there?”

Shawn shook his head. “As God is my witness, I had no idea.”

Patrick blinked. “Why didn’t you think I was a drug dealer, then?”

Shrug. “I don’t know, Patrick. No father likes to think that about his boy. Here, let me go get that duffel bag Whiskey left me. He says it’s got clothes in it, but I took a look. I wouldn’t use most of that shit to wash the car.”