Dim Sum Asylum(65)
“Um… Tsingtao? It’s what I’ve got—” I stopped talking, leaving the fridge ajar, its bulb a dim wash of yellowed light in my eyes. “Fucking cat.”
Bob—my Bob—who couldn’t be bothered to come see me when I came home and left hairballs the size of Chihuahuas on my pillows, was cuddling up to my partner, rubbing her tiny triangular face against his fingers as he stood by the back of the couch.
“What’s her name?” He scritched under her chin, and Bob began to chirrup her pleasure.
“Bob,” I replied, wondering what’d happened to my cat. “The Cat.”
“But she’s a girl.”
“It’s short for Kate.” I studied Bob. Yep, it was definitely the animal I’d paid thousands of dollars for the disbarred vet to open her up after she’d eaten the buttons off the television remote and refused to pass any of them. It’d been hard to find someone who’d do the surgery, but I’d been pushy, wanting it done that night because… well, it was Bob.
“What happened to her tail?” It was a stubby thing, cut to half the natural length of a tail, and it shivered erratically when Leonard stroked her back.
“Don’t know. Seemed impolite to ask. I figured when she was ready to talk about it, she’d tell me.” I grabbed another beer and twisted it open. I held it up for him to see, but Trent shook his head. Taking a quick sip, I swallowed carefully when he left off adoring Bob and turned his attention toward me. “She’s shy, you know. So, what’s up with you?”
“I was going to lie and make something up about being worried about how you were doing after Jie, but….” He stepped away from Bob, crossing the floor over to me in a few strides. “I need to say a few things to you, to talk to you about… before.” He looked away for a moment, the conflict raging in him flitting over his face before settling down to a firm resolve. “I wanted to shove all of it under a rock. My life before becoming a cop, being a splice, all of it doesn’t matter anymore. But I stood there today, watching you peel your life back in front of me, and I realized I can’t run from what’s behind me any more than you can.”
“Oh, I try,” I muttered. “You have no idea how damned hard I am trying to run from what’s behind me. And what’s in front of me too. I’ve had too many people die on me. I’m tired of digging black stars into my skin, Trent. Honestly, I think if you’re around me much longer, you’re going to join everyone I wear right now. People I keep close tend to end up as tattoos, if you hadn’t noticed. You share what you want to. I don’t need it, but you might.”
My mother’d been many things—not a very maternal woman—but a fierce advocate with strong ethics, a fairly decent moral compass, and a capacity for whiskey only rivaled by Fionn himself. She’d done her best by me, a surprise fluke of genetic stew she’d served up while screwing my artistic, scatter-brained human father senseless. Ailith MacCormick took me in stride, continuing to live her life as hard and fast as she’d done before, and along the way carved a few truths into my bones in the hopes I’d turn out at least halfway decent.
One day after coming through the doors of my elementary school in full uniform and wings furled, she’d told me a truth so strong it’d changed my life’s course. I’d been in a fight, one of many in my illustrious educational career, and most of the time I’d let my fists think for me, something my mother was all too familiar with. She’d taken one look at my bloodied face, picked up my school bag, and told the nun in charge they were seeing the back of me for the very last time. Then she’d taken me home and sat me down for a talk. I’d expected to have my ass blistered or at least a few strips of skin taken off my hide, but instead she sat down on the couch next to me and said something I’d never forgotten.
“I know you beat tha’ boy because he was bothering your friend, and I can respect tha’ loyalty. I do. But you can’t be leading with your fists all the time, little man. Talk less with your fists and listen more with your heart,” she’d told me, still dressed in her uniform, bars polished, and smelling of gunpowder and shoe wax. “Most people, they want to be talking ’bout themselves all the time but hardly e’er close their mouths long enough to listen to those who really need listening to. Those people who are hurting inside are the ones who can’t find their tongues, and it’s up to us to stop and listen to their rage, to their pain. That’s what you have to fight first, to heal first. Not the body, but the heart and mind. You learn how to listen, how to care, and you’ll become a man people run to, not away from. And that’s the man I’m looking forward to meeting one day. That’s the man I’ll be proud to call my son.”
I still got into fights after that. Fewer but more vicious. But I’d learned, or at least I’d tried to listen more to the anger inside of people, and right in front of me at that moment, Trent held a maelstrom of cataclysmic rage.
“You don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to,” I said softly, keeping a soothe in my voice. It was a cop voice, one learned on the job when there was nothing you could do but comfort. “I’m not going to tell you to hug something out or how sharing your feelings is going to make everything better. I can’t. I don’t know, but if you came here to work some shit out in your head, I’m here. Got it. That said, do you want the beer?”