Page 34 of Subduing the Shark

Jack was awake when Harold came in. He was sitting up on Amani's couch with a blanket pooled at his waist and the gauze on his arms stained faintly brown where the cuts had seeped overnight. He looked better than he had two days earlier. The color was coming back to his face. His eyes were clear.

"Lady Leo gave me a credit card and told me to take care of you," Harold said.

"No."

"She also said you'd say no and that I should explain the difference between charity and investment."

"Is that what she called it?"

"I'm paraphrasing. What she actually said was that you won't accept it from her because you still think you owe her, and that I'd have to handle it." Harold sat down on the arm of the couch. Close enough to touch, not touching. "You need clothes. The ones you had at the shiver house are gone. You need food that isn't leftover from Lady Leo. And you need a place to live that isn't someone else's couch."

Jack looked down at his hands. The gauze was wrapped neatly, Miriam's work, the raccoon healer who'd been stitching up KK's staff and clientele for years. She'd been gentle with Jack. Harold had watched her clean each cut with a focus that didn't flinch at the number of them, and when she'd finished she'd told us to have him to come back in a week to have the stitches checked and had patted his shoulder once, brief and warm, the way you'd touch a stray animal you were trying not to spook, even though he'd been unconscious.

"There's an apartment," Harold said. "Fourth floor. It's empty. Lady Leo says it's yours."

"For how long?"

"She didn't put a timeline on it."

Jack was quiet. Harold could see him thinking, the ocean scent shifted in the subtle ways Harold had learned to read over weeks of paying attention. The fear layer was thin, almost gone. The grief layer had settled into something permanent, a new baseline. And underneath both, the warm note that Harold had first caught at the sushi restaurant, the one that meant interest, was present and steady.

"Okay," Jack said. "The apartment. But I'm buying my own clothes."

"With what money?"

"Lady Leo's been paying me for extra shifts. I have a bank account." He said it with a stubborn flatness that Harold recognized as pride, the first pride he'd ever seen in Jack. "I'll take the apartment. I'll eat the food you buy me. But the clothes are mine."

Harold almost smiled. "Deal. Sushi first?"

They went to the place on Spring Mountain. Same restaurant, same bar seats, same chef behind the counter. Jack ordered for himself. Salmon nigiri, yellowtail, the spicy tuna roll. No ginger. When Harold raised an eyebrow, Jack said "That stuff tastes like a punishment" and went back to his yellowtail.

He ate more than last time. Harold watched him work through the order with the steady focus of someone who'd learned that food could be good and was still surprised by it every time. The chef noticed Jack was back and nodded at him, a small acknowledgement that Jack returned without smiling but without the blankness either.

After sushi, Harold drove them to a strip mall off Tropicana where a discount clothing store was open until ten. Harold wanted to treat him to better. He would have taken him to the most expensive stores possible. But he knew Jack would never go for that. So, the cheap option it was. At least he could get Jack to go into the store, though he had a bit of a sour look Haroldwished he could take off Jack's normally good looking face. Jack walked the aisles with the same methodical efficiency he brought to cleaning tables. He picked up jeans, held them against his waist, put them back, picked up a different pair. Tried three t-shirts, chose the two that were plain and dark and unlikely to draw attention. A pack of boxers, socks, a pair of canvas shoes. He paid with his debit card and the total was forty-three dollars and he stared at the receipt like it was evidence of something.

"That's the first time I've bought my own clothes," Jack said in the truck.

Harold looked at him. "Ever?"

"The shiver pooled money. You didn't buy things for yourself. If you needed something, you asked and someone got it or they didn't." Jack folded the receipt and put it in the bag with the clothes. "Forty-three dollars. For things that are mine."

Harold drove them back to KK. They took the elevator to the fourth floor and Harold unlocked the apartment with the key Lady Leo had left at the front desk. Bethany had handed it over without comment, though she'd looked at Jack longer than usual and Harold had noticed that the hostility in her eyes had been replaced by a bit of pity.

The apartment was small. A studio with a kitchenette, a bathroom, a main room with a window that faced east. The carpet was beige. The walls were white. There was a bed frame with a bare mattress, a nightstand, a counter with two stools. Nothing else. The space was clean and empty. It smelled like fresh paint and nothing.

Jack stood in the middle of the room and turned in a slow circle. He put the bag of clothes on the counter. He looked at the bed, the window, and the bathroom door. He walked to the window and looked out at the city, the rooftops and the power lines and the distant gleam of the Strip.

Harold watched him from the doorway and felt his chest ache with the ordinary sadness of a man seeing a person discover what an empty room of their own looked like.

"There's a lock on the door," Jack said. He was still facing the window.

"Yes."

"A real lock. A deadbolt."

"Nero installed them on every apartment in the building."

Jack came over and turned the deadbolt. The mechanism clicked. He stood there with his hand on the lock, feeling it, and Harold understood what he was touching. Not metal. Not a mechanism. The concept of a closed door that no one could open from the other side. A room where no one could walk in at night and hurt him. A bed where he could sleep without listening for footsteps.