Jasper sighed, running his hands over his hair and anchoring them behind his neck. “Bad,” he said, puffing his cheeks out. “But horribly merciful too.”
“Ah,” said Malcolm, nodding sagely. “The oldnot angry, just disappointedgambit, was it?”
Jasper released a dry, helpless little laugh and finally turned to look at his friend. “What would you know about that?”
“More than you’d think,” Mal said, his brown eyes soft and forgiving in the late day glow. “I want to ask you what you werethinking, but I imagine that wouldn’t be helpful or tactful at all just now, would it?”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Jasper. “I couldn’t answer even if it were. How’d Lem get on? And where’s… erm…” He trailed off, wincing.
Mal curled his lip and gave a quick shake of his head. “She had to deal with another mess she’s made,” he said. “She can sweep up what remains of you without the constraints of urgency, after all.”
“That’s true,” Jasper said with a little nod, releasing his hands and letting them flop to his sides. “God knows I’m never going anywhere. I think we all know that now, for certain.”
“Why the Devil would you want to?” Malcolm returned, frowning. “This is your home.”
“You left,” Jasper pointed out. “Libba left. Why shouldn’t I? Isn’t that what people do when they come of age and seek their own fortunes?”
Malcolm stared at him for a moment and then sighed, his shoulders sagging, wrinkling the crisp corners of his impeccably tailored coat. “You can’t start a banking career anywhere but London,” he said. “Or build a troupe of actors without the betting pool of a major city. We left because we had to in order to pursue our vocations. Yours was far more convenient.”
“My vocation?” Jasper repeated, dry and incredulous. “Well, we’ll see what remains of that on the morrow.”
Malcolm paused, his head tilting thoughtfully to the side. An odd, wry, little smile pulled at the corners of his mouth as his eyes swam out of focus, drifting off to the clutter of buildings at Jasper’s back.
“Do you remember,” he said, his teeth flashing at the memory, “when you decided we’d make our fortunes selling soap to the businesses on the boardwalk? How convinced you were that such a thing was a work of genius?”
Jasper frowned, his eyes narrowing. “I was nineteen,” he reminded the other man. “All nineteen-year-olds are idiots.”
“Maybe, but it’s not idiotic. It was just…” Malcolm cut himself off, chuckling and shaking his head. “I’m sorry. You wanted to approach the laundries first. As though those people don’t already have ironclad soap provisions in place from the outset. When Widow Thresher pointed that out, you gave up without pitching the idea to a single other business and I was left holding a rucksack full of goat’s milk, lye, and rose petals.”
“Yes, yes,” Jasper said, his frown deepening. “What of it?”
Malcolm grinned outright then, leaning back against the bench with a nostalgic, little twinkle in his eye. “You could be a soap king by now. You could be Brighton’s one and only soap provider, business to business, if you’d slowed down and thought it through and stayed the course. A week later, you had decided your actual calling was going to be selling maps to the offboards on the gangplank. Or was it the waterproof skirt hems you were going to pitch to Monica? They all meld together.”
“All right,” said Jasper, pushing himself to stand. “I’m going home.”
Malcolm sighed, his hand flashing out to grab Jasper by the wrist. “You’re not listening to me,” he said, squeezing. “Your schemes are notbadideas. Well, not all of them, anyway. The problem is the impulse of it all. You found success as a factor because it was never a scheme, just something you were plugging away at in the background while plotting otherwise. If you’d been selling soap to pubs and inns and washerwomen that whole time, it would have gotten just as far, just as fast. Don’t you see?”
“Obviously, I do not,” Jasper said, glaring down at the grip on his wrist. “Unhand me.”
Malcolm laughed, releasing his hold and pushing himself to stand as well. He inclined his head in the direction of the Restand nodded without comment as Jasper fell into step beside him, both of them sinking their hands in the pockets of their coats against the whip of autumn wind.
“So what?” he said after a moment. “Go back to soaps?”
“No!” Malcolm cried, shaking his head with enough fervor that it seemed to make his eyes water. “I’m saying pick something and stick with it. Even when it starts to go pear-shaped in the middle. Nothing is smooth all the way through. What was your plan with Templeton-Rath? Was it actually failing or had it just become more complex than you reckoned for?”
“Both,” Jasper snapped. “Decidedly both. And I’ll have you know that it was working almosttoowell. That was part of the problem. When she showed up with that pie this morning…”
“I likely do not want the details,” Malcolm said with a shrug. “But I believe you. I don’t think the problem is that you can’t get the things you want, Jasper. I think the problem is that you don’t knowwhatyou want. And while I still love you even so, you must see how that would give me pause in relation to… Well, to your pursuit of my little sister.”
Jasper almost stopped walking, his toe kicking against the heel of the opposite boot. “Now, wait a goddamn minute!” he snapped. “That is entirely different!”
Malcolm did not look at him, his shoulders hunching up around his ears as they turned toward the Rest. “Is it? That is good to hear.”
“Mal!” Jasper cried, tempted to grab him and force him to stop. “It isn’t the same thing at all.”
“All right,” said Malcolm. “I hope it isn’t.”
Jasper glowered. Usually, he couldn’t shut Mal up when he had a point about something. Why was he choosing silence now?
