“Here, let me show you the way. I got a mini fridge and food and snacks, if you want them. You can pull out your briefcase there and get some work done while you wait.”
Lucius grinned tiredly at him. “Honestly, Carmichael, I’d really rather play the stupid little game on my phone, but don’t tell anybody.”
Michael grinned, not the least because Lucius was one of the few people who’d refused to shorten his name to Car-Car. “You can call me plain Michael,” he said. “I figured if I’m starting a new life, I’ll start with a new name.”
“Michael’s a very good one,” Lucius said. “Lead on!”
Michael got him settled with a soda and some apple wedges and was about to go back into the hangar to work when Lucius stopped him.
“Do you mind keeping me company?” he asked. “I could use some conversation.”
“Sure!” Uhm, that was a first. “Do you mind if I go clean up my workstation? I need to put my tools away. I’ll be back in ten.”
“Go right ahead. I’m sorry for imposing.”
“No, that’s fine. I just didn’t expect… I mean, nobody ever really asked me for conversation before. It’s sort of exciting. I’ll be right back.”
He made sure the tools were arranged against the workbench and the dolly was hanging from its pegs against the back wall, and then he spent about five minutes at the sink, soaping his hands. When he was done, he used some of the moisturizer that sort of appeared in the hangar by magic, along with toilet paper and air freshener in the bathroom.
When he returned, Lucius looked up from his phone almost guiltily, and Michael smiled.
“I won’t get you into trouble, I promise.”
“That’s kind of you.” Lucius pocketed the phone and gestured to Michael’s little “apartment” of cubicle walls, furniture, and area rugs. “This is really charming, but I thought you were staying at Danny’s old apartment.”
Michael shrugged. “I am, some nights. It’s just there’s a lot of driving back and forth, and I like to drive, mostly, but I don’t even have a cat at the apartment. Some nights, it’s nice to stay here.”
Lucius nodded thoughtfully. “I think Charles would like it if you stayed,” he said. “Maybe you should think about getting a cat.”
Michael bit his lip. “It’s okay, then? Me being here in Chicago? I know Chuck says it’s okay, but I also know I showed up here right after you guys got together, and that’s sort of… you know. Weird.”
“People have pasts,” Lucius said with a shrug. “To me, it means something that Charles wants to make sure someone from his past is happy. He likes to pretend that he doesn’t really care what’s in his rearview, but I think you and I both know he likes to leave things better than he found them.”
Michael nodded. “Can’t argue with you there. He certainly left me in a better position.”
“Indeed. So it would ease his mind now to know you’re settled. You’re happy. And he does like getting the chance to talk to you.”
Michael’s cheeks heated. “I… I didn’t really have folks I could talk to at home. My ex-wife, but I didn’t tell her everything either. It wasn’t a real forgiving place. Not for people like me—uhm, us—anyway.”
Lucius nodded slowly. “I imagine not,” he said, voice soft. “I hope the dating scene is a little easier for you here.” He brightened. “You do have people your own age who can show you where the good places to go are. I know when I was in college, a good scene was easy to find.”
Michael couldn’t help it. He tilted his head sideways, the way he did when his youngest child told him that eagles would fly through the sky, bring water to the masses, and save all the puppy dogs.
“Sir,” he said, his voice full of pity, “I know you’re trying to help, but I have the feeling that my twenties and their twenties are two very different decades.”
Lucius’s cheeks pinkened. “I would imagine so. Sorry.”
He bit his lip then, and Michael thought, Oh crap. Now I’ve gone and killed the conversation. But Lucius apparently didn’t stay cowed for long.
“You don’t have to be an outsider here, you know,” he said after a moment. “I know it might seem like it, but you might find you have more in common with the Salingers and their friends than you think.”
Michael opened his mouth to deny it, but Lucius kept going.
“People don’t always wear their pain on their sleeve, Michael. I know… I know you feel like you might still be wearing that orange jumpsuit from Texas, and everybody can see what your life has been like, but honestly, if Chuck hadn’t had to confess his past to me—and if you hadn’t been part of that past—I would have seen nothing but a rather nice man who is always polite and likes to work on cars.”
Michael nodded, struck by that. “But I’m different. I’ve got three kids,” he said. “And I’m not thirty.”
“True.” Lucius nodded. “But have you asked yourself why Julia Salinger looks so young? Her son isn’t yet twenty-one, if I understand it.”
Michael gaped. “But she can’t be more than—”
“Forty,” Lucius said, his eyes twinkling. “And barely so. So yes, Julia knows what it’s like to be a young parent. As do Felix and Danny.”
“I’d never thought about that before,” Michael said quietly. “But about that orange onesie—”
Lucius blew out a breath. “You got that running a job with Chuck, right?”
Michael nodded.
“Chuck hangs out with the Salingers for a reason, Michael. The things they do for me aren’t in the strictest sense legal. They help people, yes. But in my case, I’m hiding the vulnerable from the powerful. That can get you imprisoned very easily. You know that, right? It’s not my job to tell secrets, but you may want to hold back judgment and loosen up your reserve. It seems to me that you’re in a place right now in which people would understand you way more than you imagine.”
Michael realized he was gaping and closed his mouth.
“Didn’t think about that, did you?” Lucius asked smugly, and Michal recognized Lucius was jerking Michael’s chain.
“You’re very smart,” he replied, his eyes playfully narrowed.
Lucius laughed, and Michael smiled back. Chuck’s boyfriend was apparently not a bad guy.
“Hey,” he said impulsively. “Wanna see my birds?”
A HALF hour later, he was telling Lucius about falcons and the Tom Cade method of inviting them back into the wild and how he’d been reading up on what it took to keep one when they saw the Salinger jet come in low for a landing.
“They’re coming in hot,” Michael said, a little bit of alarm in his voice.
“They’re… oh, they’re pulling up.” Lucius, too, sounded concerned as the wheels barely brushed the tarmac before the plane rose once more into the air. “Are they circling around to try it again?”
This time the jet came in at a better angle and a more sedate pace. But when the wheels made contact with the tarmac, it bounced much higher than normal, and it came down hard enough to make Michael’s teeth click together, and he wasn’t even in the plane. But finally it was down and taxiing like a slowing snake winding across the tarmac.