The abandoned gas station
We circled each other, wary, abandoned, full of longing.
-- Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
His father’s office was much bigger than originally thought. He didn’t know why, but he’d always imagined it to be a small room in someone’s basement where Henry typed numbers on a screen, and from time to time, his boss would show up to make sure he was doing his job.
This place was huge. The front door opened into a very impressive entrance hall, where the floors were made of marble and a massive chandelier hung from the ceiling. In the center of the room, a mahogany counter with two layers kept the secretary’s things out of view, except they weren’t here today. It was the weekend, after all.
Despite that, some people had still come in. They worked in the next room over, which was only accessed through the keycard in their lanyard. That room looked a lot more like the image of the accounting office Theodore had had in mind, except fancier and bigger. Desks were grouped up in four or six with partitions between them, carpets covered the floor and every window had blinds. It was daytime, but the blinds were drawn and the lights were on. Weird.
His father explained that this was the main office, HR was in the back and his office was somewhere else entirely. As they talked, a couple of employees greeted the two of them very shyly, without making much eye contact. Henry didn’t introduce Theodore, but they could probably guess who he was.
The office was clearly real, with real people who had real jobs and even came in over the weekend. Did Henry actually work for Burman? The evidence pointed to an overwhelming yes, but seeing this place, it was difficult to pin it as a front. It was easier to believe both theories were simultaneously correct, that this was a real accounting office and Burman was simply another client. Perhaps a big one that needed a little more of Henry’s attention and care, but still. That was the only way Theodore could fit all the pieces of the puzzle together.
“Is this where I’m going to start?” His question was genuine, something he’d been wondering for a while. Alternatively, would he be assigned to Burman as well, or was that a bit of a secret? How many employees knew about it?
“Yes. Who’s going to coach you will depend on what branch you happen to choose. We have bookkeeping right here on the left, tax accounting behind them and auditors on the right. You may also choose to specialize in HR.”
“Um.”
His pulse jumped. This was another conversation he’d been meaning to have for some time now. He’d thought the right time for it would be over dinner with his mother also present, but perhaps this was just as well. Rip it off like a Band-Aid. He breathed in, hands shaking. They disappeared into his pockets.
“Well, I was thinking, maybe—maybe law, actually?”
Henry’s eyebrows raised, impressed. “Accounting lawyers make a lot of money. We will definitely benefit from having you with us.”
Shit, that wasn’t what he’d meant at all. Dammit.
“Let me show you to my office.”
No, I meant I want to be a lawyer. I want to go to law school. Just say it. He licked his lips, hands gripping the lining of his pockets. Henry started across the entrance hall with him in tow, feet erratic and quick. Jesus Christ, just say it. The words came up his throat, but instead of coming out, they choked him. God, just say it! His lips opened and closed like a fish out of water. A shaky breath filled his lungs.
He couldn’t do this. Swallowing the confrontation down, he let his shoulders droop. Another failure for his collection. His hand closed around an imaginary dagger, and in his mind, he stabbed himself in the neck.
It didn’t matter.
On the right side of the building, another door locked by a keycard opened into two spacious offices and a flight of stairs. One of those belonged to his father. A long desk rested near the back wall with only a pen holder on it, a couch against the rightmost wall, and a round table on the opposite side of the room, by a whiteboard. It was very nice in here.
“Don’t you have a computer?” he asked.
“Of course I do. It’s at home.”
Right, that made sense. At this point, he was in the pole position for Idiot of the Year; the only award he had a fair chance of winning.
“One day, I hope to see you take my place.” There was a hint of emotion in Henry’s voice, buried under solemnity. It almost touched him. “I hope to see you become greater than me, smarter and far more powerful. I want to leave you a legacy.”
What if he didn’t want it? The thought crossed his mind very heavily, followed by a keen sense of shame. How ungrateful did he have to be to refuse such a gift? Ryan would’ve killed for this. A lot of people would’ve killed for this, yet here he was, throwing it away like it was garbage. His father should be hitting him right now.
“Do you know what happens when people start losing control over their own lives?” This question sounded a bit harsher than any of the points Henry had made so far. “When they don’t have a goal or a purpose?”
Theodore promptly thought of what Laith had told him last weekend, how feeling lost and worthless had pushed him to the bottom of the pit. “They get depressed?” That was his best guess.
“They turn to drugs. Every day is a void to be filled, so they get high and party, throwing their lives away, since they don’t think they have one in the first place. Now, I’m sure you know where they end up.”
His throat closed. “In the tunnels,” he answered.
“Have you been there?”
That question flew at him so quickly that it gave him whiplash.
“No, dad.” He almost choked. “Of course not.”
Henry leaned against his own desk, arms crossed over his chest. “You’re slipping, Theodore. You’re letting your piece of shit friends drag you down, so they can see you waste your life too. You’re a puppet in their game. Do you realize that?”
He grabbed his own hands, squeezing.
“I need you to see that,” Henry continued. “That’s where your new friend comes in.”
Oh god, he hated this. Nothing good could come out of it.
“You’ll meet him tonight.”
***
The wait was harrowing. Back home, he was expected to act normally and see the rest of the day through as if he weren’t counting the minutes until dusk. The only thing that helped was baking cookies with his mother, something that brought him back to the familiarity of living under her roof, their shared little hobby. She told him how much of each ingredient to put in the bowl and the order too, essentially baking it herself, only through his hands. That was the point, after all—to do it together. They made his favorite recipe, with lemon juice in the batter and lemon zest in the icing. He had a feeling she knew exactly what was going on.
“Do you know who dad’s friend is?” He kept his voice low, eyes down on the dishes. “The one he’s introducing me to.”
“I haven’t met him myself, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Do you know anything about him?”
“Of course. I know about every one of your father’s associates.”
The two of them spoke without looking at each other, voices barely above whispers as they did the dishes and put them away.
“Is he gonna hurt me?”
“That’s entirely up to you.”
That froze his heart and crushed it.
***
Sleeping through the afternoon was impossible. Locked in his room, or the one his parents had curated for him, he tossed and turned, tired but too scared to fall asleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw a dark figure beating him up while his father watched and immediately gasped himself awake, heart beating wildly. Exhaustion warped that image with each new try—his father got closer and the figure took shape. Eventually, they merged together. It stripped him naked and spanked him in front of a crowd, darkness pooling at their feet, consuming them slowly. The auditorium flooded, but the figure didn’t stop. His father didn’t stop. It held his head underwater, face pushed into the black sludge. He swallowed it, choking, drowning until the world turned black.
***
As the last minutes of sunlight filtered in through the front door, he waited. His pulse raced and his lungs barely worked, but he tried his best to keep calm. The glass panes behind him allowed the foyer to glow in hues of red and orange, shadows growing darker. The TV was on, he could hear it from here—his mother must be in the living room. In silence, he listened to the muffled voices, brain focused on trying to detangle them as a way to keep himself together. It worked well enough.
Once the sun fully set, his father came downstairs. He flicked some of the lights on and found Theodore by the front door, standing still, like a statue. That didn’t seem to strike him any which way though, emotionless. With a jacket over his shoulders, he simply put on a mask and pulled the door open.
They traveled to the outskirts of town, an area Theodore had never explored on foot before, always passing through in someone’s vehicle. At first, he couldn’t exactly tell where they were, unfamiliar with the street corner where his father had parked. It was weird to be here with him, actually leaving the car to walk around. Why was his friend waiting here? This wasn’t a place his father would ever go to.
As they walked, the unnamed subway entrance came up, always deserted. That one landmark allowed him to know exactly where they were. His mind went back to last weekend, Justin dropping everybody off before taking him home. Did Henry know about that? He’d figured everything out already; he must know about the others too. Justin must have told him.
They didn’t approach the entrance. Instead, Henry kept on walking, rounding corners here and there, crossing deserted streets. Aside from the busy interstate, the rest of this whole area was eerily quiet, abandoned almost, with shut down businesses in every block and no one on the sidewalk. Dread crept up Theodore’s chest, heart stuck in the back of his throat. This wasn’t safe.
He stayed very close to his father the whole way, choking on pleas for him to let this entire thing go and just drive them back home. He’d be good, he promised!—except that card had already been played. This far into the game, his hand was empty.
The very end of one of these blocks welcomed them to an abandoned gas station. This place was clearly forgotten about; the pumps were broken, the convenience store was empty and an old chain fenced the corner, dismantled over the ground. A figure paced leisurely near the convenience store, all the way across, cigarette burning orange in the dark.
His breathing ceased, feet stumbling out of shock—this was it, the point of no return. That was the man who’d beat him into a pulp to make his father proud, to teach him a lesson, to make him behave. Would they strip him naked? Would they leave marks? His eyes watered as possibilities began to pile up in his mind. He fell behind for a moment, but remained on his father’s trail anyway, following like a very small shadow. Would they make him bleed? His entire body trembled.
As the two of them walked, the figure slowly came to a halt. It was difficult to see, especially half-hidden behind his father, but the closer Theodore got, the clearer the figure’s shape became. Tall and broad, this man was built like a brick; the pain he could inflict, the damage he could cause was unimaginable. The cigarette burned between his fingers, hanging limp by his side. Theodore wished he’d toke on it so his face would light up, but that thought soon became obsolete. Close enough to see the shape of his face, Theodore realized he knew him. The shock that struck him then grew roots twenty feet into the ground below. His lungs didn’t even work.
Coming up to Laith, Henry motioned to him. “Son, this is the Great White Shark. He lives underground, but work has brought us together.”
They both held the stare, speechless, eyes wide. Theodore didn’t even know what to say. The only thought his brain was capable of producing was confirmation that Laith had spoken the truth when he’d unveiled Henry as the Crow earlier this year. That was it.
Would Laith beat the shit out of him?
“You see here, Shark, my son’s been really interested in the tunnels lately. He’s friends with a drug dealer and smokes dope. Next thing I know, he’s underground snorting coke off a whore’s back. So tell me, or rather, tell him a little bit about how things work down there. Tell him what you’ve been through.”
Laith finally broke eye contact to pass Henry a brief glance. The way he held his shoulders, the way he carried himself was extremely tense, similar to how Theodore felt. “You know, it’s a rough place.” His voice made Theodore’s heart jump, still shocked to see him here, caught in disbelief. “You get beat up and threatened at about every turn. The dogs—they’re above the law. They’ll kick the shit out of you if you’re not careful.”
The human dogs, right? The ones Hwan had mentioned weren’t actually dogs. That must be yet another term for thug.
“Is that what happened to you?” Henry’s voice was low, conversational on the surface, but something about it just felt menacing.
Laith stared at his boss. “Yeah. They got me good too.”
“And you’re what, six three, two hundred pounds?”
“Two fifty.”
Henry nodded. “Do you think my son has any chance of making it down there?”
“He just doesn’t belong there.”
That comment cut into him like a razor blade. He already knew how Laith felt about that, but it still hurt to hear it. His heart choked him.
“Right.” Henry glanced at Theodore next, eyes cold in the dark. “He doesn’t.”
“How come you guys work together?” That question left him on a whim, thoughtless. He barely even registered he’d said anything at all.
“We have an associate in common,” his father briefly explained. “Now, son, the Great White will be checking up on you every now and then. It’ll be random, whenever he has the time. He bashes skulls for a living, so he might not make it every night, but he’ll find you if you’re not home and he’ll let me know where you were. He knows your friend Justin too—he’ll tell me whether you’ve continued seeing him or not. Won’t you, Shark?”
Surprise was written all across Laith’s face. They must not have talked about this beforehand. Also, on an unrelated note, he bashed skulls for a living? Somehow, Theodore didn’t believe that. “Yeah. Yeah, of course.”
Henry turned back to Theodore. “Don’t take this the wrong way; it’s really all up to you. When you grow up, you’ll understand this was for your own good.” He touched Theodore’s shoulder. “I love you, son.”
This was the most dishonest his father had ever sounded, but those three words still doubled his heart in size. He couldn’t remember the last time Henry had said them.
“I love you too, dad.” That left him straight from the heart, a little piece of it in every word. He hadn’t said them in such a long time. Still poisoned by sincerity, he added his honest thoughts on this arrangement, and as he spoke, his blood curdled with something toxic. “And thank you. I think this is exactly what I need.”
His father was essentially handing him Laith on a silver platter, after all. The hand on his shoulder squeezed a bit, tugging an infinitesimal smile onto his face. “Shark, I expect you to report back to me tomorrow. Now, follow.”
With that, Henry turned to leave. In the split-second of privacy that his back provided, Theodore glanced up at Laith only to see green eyes already down at him. As his heart bounced, a slew of questions passed through his mind, led primarily by how. How had any of this happened? It felt like a dream, or the very thin line that crossed into nightmare territory. He’d still get beat up, after all.
In silence, the two of them started after his father, veiled by a bizarre cloak that hid their true involvement. At the end of the day, his efforts to pull Laith close had been outperformed by his father’s parenting. That said a lot in regards to what Henry thought of Laith, if he’d been the chosen one to run his son off the tunnels. In Henry’s eyes, he was a staple of what the tunnels produced; a perfect example of the kinds of people that populated their dark corners. The message wasn’t lost on Theodore, that he’d turn into somebody like Laith if he continued to explore drugs and get involved with the underground, but the reason it failed to have an impact was because his parents’ morals didn’t reflect on him. He didn’t think the rats were inferior to him. If anything, Laith was above him in every conceivable way.
What would his father think if he knew they’d been sleeping together? The world would catch on fire. If Henry already thought of Laith as vermin and couldn’t possibly imagine his son as anything other than straight, then learning of their involvement would shatter reality—Henry’s reality, carefully crafted. Deep inside, he must know that interfering this much removed any possibility of organic growth, interpersonal or otherwise, but then, that was probably what he wanted. He’d always been obsessed with control. The real reason he didn’t like Ryan had nothing to do with genes and family trees; it was because Ryan was the embodiment of all his failed attempts to control him too, to shape him into a perfect little box by sending him off to business school and giving him nice gifts, like an apartment downtown and a car for Christmas. Theodore, on the other hand, didn’t know himself well enough to decline any of those things. For all he knew, he could fall in love with business school in the next two weeks and find that following in his father’s footsteps was his true calling.
Henry ended up leading the two back to his car and telling them to get in. Theodore stopped in his tracks, eyebrows furrowed—were they going to a different location just to jump him? He got in suspiciously, taking the front seat to keep an eye on his father. It would also keep Laith from being able to hurt him at Henry’s command.
It didn’t take long for the turns that his father took and the streets he drove down to start looking familiar—they were going back to Theodore’s apartment. So he wouldn’t get hurt? His heart began to slow down, lungs breathing normally again. Of course his father wouldn’t do that; it’d be fucked up, right? Yeah, it’d be fucked up. Henry had wanted to teach him a lesson, scare him a little bit, not get him hurt. He didn’t even know why he’d believed otherwise; Henry had never so much as laid a finger on him.
The car pulled up to the curb. That allowed Henry to turn around and tell Laith what this place was—that he’d be coming here to check on Theodore. Then, he ordered him to leave, and obediently, Laith did. Theodore watched him through the side mirror, stepping onto the sidewalk, hands slipping into his pockets.
Suddenly, he needed to leave too. Every siren in his brain went off, screaming that it wasn’t safe to be alone with his father. Who knew what could happen? He quickly thanked Henry for the ride and pushed the door open. Part of him expected the man to say something back, if not an anecdote then a simple you’re welcome, but nothing came. Awkwardly, and a little disappointed, Theodore got out.
On the sidewalk, he glanced into the car only to find Henry staring back at him, perfectly impassive, unreadable. Theodore waited for a moment, holding the door with a hand, still under the impression that a comment would come. When it didn’t, he waved goodbye and closed the door.
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