Breakfall (18 page)

Gay stuff.

Asbjorn heard the word echo through the small room, but neither he nor Sean stirred, as though they were afraid it might start bouncing around the room, causing a ruckus.

“We could shower together,” Sean suggested, causing a diversion from all things unwelcome and dangerous. “The bathtub is big enough, and there are towels.”

“Okay, then. You go first,” Asbjorn said. “I’ll count to ten and follow you. I’ll enter if the coast is clear.”

Enter.

Sean snorted. “You’d probably
enter
even if the coast was fully occupied.”

M
ANY
HOURS
later, the mouthwatering smell of roast turkey flooded the whole downstairs of the house as Ken pulled it out of the oven. Meanwhile, George, the one responsible for the carpentry around the dojo, was helping Dr. Margaret Verbosa with setting up the buffet table. Sweet potatoes by Nell, stuffing by George, dessert from Dean & DeLuca by Dud, cranberry sauce by Jill and Josh, green beans by Alim and Cecile, and a fruit and gelatin mold by an elderly student of Ken’s whose name Sean could not remember. Jeff, as always, fussed over the flower arrangements. Sean met so many new people that night he doubted he’d keep all the names and faces straight.

The table extended into the living room using sawhorses and plywood and good tablecloths, and the eclectic mix of unmatched dishes and silverware looked festive as it glinted in the candlelight.

“We have some new guests this year,” Margaret said once everyone settled down. “The tradition at our house is to name one thing you’re thankful for before we attack the buffet. Kenny, you start.”

“Uh… I’m thankful you still put up with me.” They all laughed, and Margaret leaned over to kiss his scruffy cheek.

“I’m thankful I have three days off this year,” she said.

Asbjorn was next. He looked a bit hesitant for a while. Then he glanced at Sean. “I’m thankful for sunshine being so warm.”

“That’s cheating,” Jeff declared. “It has to be something personal.”

“Who says it ain’t?” Asbjorn retorted, his eyes studiously moving away from Sean’s direction.

“I’m thankful for being here. I mean, alive.” Sean said, his voice soft.

The doorbell rang.

“Who could this be? Could we ignore the door just for once?” Ken asked Margaret, who sighed and, with an air of resignation, got up from the table and left the room.

They heard the words of greeting and of surprise, and Margaret reentered the improvised dining room with a humorous gleam in her eye. “It seems we have some extra guests.”

Everyone’s eyes were on the entryway. Mark sauntered in. His police badge was hanging off the pocket of his blazer, and the gun bulge from the shoulder holster was barely visible under his left arm.

He dragged in a young man in handcuffs. He had long, bottle-red hair tied up in a ponytail, and his scowl gave him the look of a street thug.

Sean turned his bruised face to him. “Gino!”

Introductions were brief, as the food was cooling just a few feet away.

“Surely you will eat with us, Mark?” Margaret asked, unfolding two chairs.

“I’m on duty so I can’t drink….” Mark surveyed the buffet table. “Maybe pulling duty on Thanksgiving isn’t so bad after all—but I can’t stay long. Business first, though. Sean, in the kitchen, if you please.”

Sean rose from his seat and followed the detective to a more private area, closely shadowed by Asbjorn.

Mark’s eyebrows rose. “Asbjorn, this is private.”

“I’ve got his back,” Asbjorn retorted.

Mark looked at Sean. “You want this lummox around?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, then. Here’s your phone. You’ll want to check the messages carefully, in case the perp called.”

Sean swallowed dry. He should have expected this.

“You’ll want to record the calls. We have a warrant so it’s nice and legal, but the gear is a bit cumbersome to carry around. You’ll need a special pocket in your bag….”

“Excuse me.” Asbjorn interjected, keeping his face impassive. “I know someone who can fix the phone so you can record the calls. She can add memory too.”

“Oh yeah?” Mark flashed his prominent, even teeth. “Who is it?”

“An MIT student—a karate student of mine. She’ll do it only if you make sure it doesn’t get on her record.”

“What, she been busted?”

“Yeah. A hacker.” Asbjorn smiled. Nobody was better at going where she shouldn’t be than Rachel.

T
HEY
SAT
around the Thanksgiving table with plates laden with the still-warm food. Sean’s ear was cocked toward Gino’s narrative.

“When you didn’t show up yesterday, I texted and called and e-mailed. No response. So I called the school, but they wouldn’t talk to me. So I called the Pile, and there was this girl there with some guy and she said there was some fight and your room was a crime scene now.”

Gino ate some of the stuffing with gravy before he continued. “I figured the hospitals wouldn’t tell me anything, and I didn’t wanna roust your students, most of who were gone anyway. So I jumped in my truck early this morning to come and have a look-see.”

Mark snorted and added his own two cents. “Gino was apprehended by campus security, breaking and entering a room, having burglar tools in his possession, and breaking the police seal. He apparently didn’t hear you shouldn’t contaminate the crime scene.”

“I wore gloves, you idiot,” Gino said. “And I found out some useful things—Sean’s duffel bag was gone and so was his laptop. And his jacket. The whole room was tossed, and it was a mess, but Sean wouldn’t leave without his basic stuff.”

“Sean was
forced
to leave without his basic stuff.” Mark glared at Sean, who just shrugged and continued eating.

Mark turned his baleful eye to Ken.

“What?” Ken said from the head of the table.

“You people are impossible to work around.” Mark rolled his eyes. “Don’t go back there until it’s cleared, okay? Just two more days. I promise. The school has to replace that busted door, anyway.”

“When Gino insisted his best friend Sean Gallaway went missing and his room is now a crime scene, I made some calls, sprung him from jail, and brought him here,” Mark said as he picked at the fruit that used to be inside the gelatin mold. “Damn, this stuff is pretty good. Makes me feel like a little kid again, y’know?”

The topic of the conversation turned to more peaceful things, the people at the table complimenting Ken on brining the turkey just right and marveling at Jeff’s seasonal arrangements of branches, berries, and assorted flowers.

“Hey, Gino. Thanks for coming up.” Sean’s voice was barely audible, intended only for the redhead to his left.

“No problem, man. You’d have done the same for me. I already called my aunt. She was worried about you.”

A wave of warmth spread through Sean’s chest—a sense of connection—that somebody would actually miss him if something untoward occurred. He might be in a different state, on a different coast, but he wasn’t alone.

“Casey’s worried too. We oughta call her.”

“Yeah.”

Casey.

Sean didn’t want to talk to Casey. Last time Casey saw Sean, he was the conquering hero. Now he had been vanquished and was hiding out in a stranger’s house with naught but a change of clothes and his schoolwork.

“So what happened, man? Are you okay?” Gino’s gaze traveled up and down Sean’s face, taking stock of the developing bruises and the diminishing swelling. He reached to move the collar of Sean’s shirt aside, surveying the characteristic pattern of choking bruises and a collection of… love bites.

Sean flinched away from him, and Asbjorn growled on his right side.

“If you wanna talk, Sean, I’ll always be your best friend. And you know I won’t blab.”

“Yeah. Thanks.” Sean’s hand slid under the table, soothing
Asbjorn’s knee.

Dinnertime conversation was steered away from potentially controversial topics—which is to say, everyone was careful to ignore the large pink elephant in the middle of the room. The dishes were cleared from the table, the dishwasher loaded up, and the kitchen cleaned by Ken’s students while he and Margaret sat on the sofa, watching the flames in the fireplace burn down.

Sean had just accepted a glass of cognac when his cell phone began to ring.

He felt his eyes grow wide. He lowered the snifter onto the coffee table and looked at the LED display.

“Unknown number,” he said.

“Answer it.” Mark’s voice was flint-hard.

Sean flipped the phone open and pushed the green button. “Yeah?”

“It’s me, Sean.”

Color washed from Sean’s face as he allowed himself to drop onto the loveseat. “What’s your name? I can’t just be calling you ‘hey you.’” Sean tried to make his voice steady, but he felt his heart race and his adrenaline spike all the same.

“…Joe. Joe Green.”

“Okay, Joe Green. Why are you calling me?”

Sean felt the electronic silence stretch between him and his attacker and felt rather than saw other people drift into the room, standing at the periphery like a silent, motionless honor guard.

“Jus’ t’ remind you not to testify, in case you’re still alive.”

Alive. Alive. Wait…
.

Sean thought back to that awful night—yesterday, long ago—and what he said, and what the other guy said, and… yeah, the suicide threat. And the promised haunting.

“I cannot kill myself just yet, Joe Green. I have to wait for the most auspicious phase of the lunar calendar, so that my ghost has great power—for now, all I can do is pretend to have a normal life.”

“Don’t do it, Sean. We should catch up with one another, give it another try.” The voice on the other side sounded half serious, almost intrigued.

“Why’d you care?” Sean asked. “Like I’d want to give you ‘another try’—when hell freezes over! You kicked my door in and beat me up and near raped me and—”

“
I am not a rapist
!” Joe Green screamed.

“Then don’t act like one.” Sean sounded tired. That, at least, wasn’t an act. The adrenaline spike he experienced at hearing his attacker’s voice again was bouncing around his system, having nowhere to go. “My battery’s low. You can call me again after Thanksgiving, if you insist on finding out when I will kill myself.”

Sean clicked the phone shut, thrust it into his pocket, and pushed his way through the small crowd. He needed air.

“S
O
THAT
’
S
what happened. Fuck, man. I wish I’d’ve been there.” Gino ran his hand up his face helplessly, then stroked it down over his bound hair.

“He’s gotta feel like shit. After that alley thing, where he defeated three guys to save that guy—he was all over our website, y’know. He was a regular hero, but now….” Gino stood and looked around and, having nowhere to go, sat down again.

“He’ll be all right.” Ken’s gravelly voice sounded from the corner by the fireplace. “He’s been studying techniques other than aikido—that tells me he has a flexible mind. That’s his greatest asset right now.”

“He has?” Gino looked up, incredulous. “But Burrows-sensei… Burrows-sensei doesn’t allow the hybridization of his style with any other styles. If he finds out….”

Ken leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees. “Didya say Burrows? As in David Burrows?”

Gino nodded.

“From San Diego?”

Gino nodded again.

Ken threw his head back, letting a bellow of laughter out. “David Burrows is expanding his aikido style all the way here. Who would have guessed?”

“You talk like you know him,” Gino said defensively, displeased by Ken’s irreverent tone.

“Kid, you probably don’t know this, since I don’t think David would have advertised the fact, but he and I met picking bar fights in Yokohama. Right by the harbor—the dirtier the better.” He lifted his eyebrows. “Your sensei, young Gino, has won a number of fights. He also lost enough of them to understand that there is always somebody better and stronger out there.”

Gino stood again. “This is all new to me. Sean needs to know this. Knowing him, he expects to be cast out of the dojo.”

A glimpse out of the kitchen window allowed Gino to discover Sean’s hiding place. He stood at the edge of a small koi pond, shivering in his shirtsleeves. The wind picked up. A few white flakes began to whip through the air.

Gino was minded to go out and bring him his jacket and talk when the sight of a tall man stopped him. Asbjorn, was it?

He watched Asbjorn approach his friend from the side. He tilted his head to say something. Sean shook his head, his stubborn expression painfully familiar. Asbjorn then grabbed Sean by his upper arm and dragged him under a tall old pine tree at the opposite edge of the lawn. He took off his bomber jacket, wrapped it around Sean’s shoulders, and leaned against the rough bark of the tree. Gino saw him spread his legs so his head was the same height as Sean’s. Then he grabbed the lapels of the jacket and pulled his friend in for a close embrace.

Impossible.

Sean didn’t slug him.

Sean let himself be…
manhandled
.

His best friend, Sean Gallaway, tilted his head to the side and took Asbjorn’s lips in what looked to be a thorough and passionate kiss.

Incredulous, Gino watched Sean melt into Asbjorn’s embrace, nuzzling his neck as this stranger with a foreign name wrapped his arm around Sean’s waist and ran the other hand up and into Sean’s hair.

Not wishing to intrude on a private moment any further, Gino turned away, only to meet Margaret Verbosa’s calm gaze.

“You are a very good friend of Sean, are you not, Gino?”

He shrugged. “I try.”

“What do you think of what you have seen?”

Gino blushed, his cheeks engulfed in a red that rivaled his vermilion hair. “As long as he doesn’t get hurt, I guess it’s okay.” He looked at Margaret’s placid face. “So who’s his boyfriend?”

Margaret hesitated. Her eyes followed Gino’s movement of rubbing his sore wrists absently. The memory of his arrest on Sean’s behalf seemed to make up her mind.