Page 16 of The Damage Man

Blake is scowling but the scowl doesn’t match what is happening behind his eyes. “I never knew you noticed.”

“I noticed. I noticed everything.”

“I had no idea you were even watching me. All I wanted was for you to do stuff with me. To come, dunno, show me how to make something, fix something, like your work.” Blake’s hand flares briefly, slaps against his hip. “Anything. But you never wanted to.”

“I did want to. I was just tangled up in my own mess. And I’d do anything to—”

Blake holds up his hand. His eyes are squeezed shut, his head tilted, as if he’s trying to drown out some deafening noise. “I’m sorry. It’s too late now. It’s too late.”

He turns and lurches haphazardly for the door to the backyard. It bangs opens and shuts behind him.

Rusty stands poleaxed in the middle of the living room, his face blotched, hands trembling. And now he cries and it is ugly, a broken man in his forties dry-heaving sobs, unaware that Evan is still there in the room.

Evan is grateful for that.

It makes it easier for him to slip out.

As Evan drives to Century City, he finds himself calling Joey. At first he isn’t sure why. And then he is.

“Hrmm?” Her voice, smeared with distraction.

In the background he can hear the keys clattering. She is at her workstation, tucked into her countless monitors.

“You at your desk?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I want you to…” The blackness in the cage of his ribs flutters, words leaving him.

“What? You’re cutting out.”

“I want you to…”

Again, they’re just fucking gone.

“X? You okay?”

“… look up my … Look up Jacob Baridon.”

The typing has silenced. Joey knows the name, knows its non-place in Evan’s story.

“You sure? I mean, I’m logged in right now. All the databases, all the deep-mining. I have access to … everything.”

“I know.”

“Instantly.”

“Joey. I know.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Where he is.”

“Why?”

An echo of Blake’s words: Did you even like me? Evan pictures the horror on Rusty’s face as the epiphany dawned on him. And what he was able to summon in the face of his past inadequacies: You were … the best thing.

There’s light-years’ distance between Rusty and Evan’s biological father, the man whose name he carries as his middle name. The man who spent the entirety of their seven minutes narcissus-drawn to the mirror, devoting his attention to his hairline, fingers crawling along his widow’s peak in search of thinning. A louche philanderer, rugged and handsome, with puckers at the edge of his movie-star grin. A stubbled cowboy visage radiating devil charm, slack-jawed not by the appearance of his son but at the sight of the folded hundreds in Evan’s pocket.