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Thinking back, the moment he found out he’d gotten into the Bar is the moment things really started to go wrong. That one moment of total euphoria should’ve been a sign, maybe, a hint that everything was about to turn south; equal and opposite reaction, nothing gold can stay, et cetera and so forth. But maybe he can be forgiven for missing it; after all, who wouldn’t like to think that they’ll be happy forever? That one truly miraculous thing might be the start of something good rather than the first slip in an inevitable spiral down, and down, and down?
One success in a long line of failures was enough to make him cocky. Make him think he could save the world all on his own, take on any enemy he wanted, for any reason, because now he’s got the right, now he can do it for real, now he’s got the ink on paper to prove it. He can conquer any enemy at all, even the entire damn prison system.
Thinking back, he shouldn’t have yelled at Oliver. He was only trying to apologize with something meaningful, something real, but he probably should’ve known that the best way to show the poor rookie from the nearly-bankrupt clinic how sorry he was for screwing him over in court wasn’t to give him even more work, to send him up against a giant like Reform Corp., bleeding him for resources he didn’t have. Doesn’t have.
Thinking back…
Harvey was right to be furious when he found out.
Mike isn’t sure why he even bothered to forgive him at all. If their positions had been reversed, if Mike had been the one betrayed so stubbornly, so stupidly by someone he’d thought was a close friend, someone he’d thought he could trust, someone he could rely on—well. There’s really no telling where they would’ve ended up.
But it was worth it, in the end, to get all that money for those prisoners and their families. Worth it to use his corporate power, worth it to misappropriate resources from PSL, worth it to stab a dagger into the back of his very best friend, the guy who’s always believed in him, who’s always gone above and beyond to help him, to support him, to do everything in the world for him, even when he doesn’t deserve it (and usually he doesn’t). Because now the world knows what Reform Corp. is responsible for, the kind of business they run and the kind of shit they pull.
“The world.” The world of everyone paying the slightest bit of attention to class action suits. The world of people with the critical reasoning skills and the open-mindedness to side with convicted criminals. It’s a pretty small sector.
No. The recognition doesn’t matter. The important thing is that Mike found a way to use his part in the sickly world of corporate law to help people who really needed it, people who would’ve been fucked over by the system, people whose lives had already been ruined.
Mike is doing good work.
Mike is doing right.
“What’s going on?”
Mike will take every chance he can get to do it again.
“Well I don’t know how to say this,” Nathan says, “so I’m just going to say it: I got into a case.”
Of course he did. He’s a lawyer. He runs a legal clinic. That’s his job.
“It started getting to me, and the next thing I knew, it turned into a class action.”
Of course it did. He’s a lawyer for the vulnerable, the poverty-stricken, the downtrodden. He aspires to make the world a better place. Getting in over his head is his specialty.
“Nathan,” Mike says, “you don’t have the resources to take on a class action.”
“That didn’t stop you from taking on those miners last year.”
And look what happened to me.
“No, it didn’t. But I ended up needing to go to Pearson Specter for help.”
Needing to go to Harvey. Needing to beg and plead at his feet, needing to throw himself at the mercy of a benevolent higher power until he said “Yes,” until he said “Stand back,” until he stepped into save the day, until he committed so many crimes in the name of the greater good that Mike lost count. One for each dagger, maybe, one for each bloody wound Mike’s given him, because Harvey is a good man, a good and loyal man who never says no to Mike if he can help it, who never turns him away when Mike needs to take advantage of his generosity, his kindness. His love.
“Why do you think I’m here now?”
Why.
Because you’re useful, Mike. Because you’re our man on the inside, our ace in the hole. Because you’re selling your soul to the devil for money and influence but we all know, we all know where you heart is, where your passions burn. We appreciate the sacrifices you’ve made, but we all know who you really are.
It’s okay. He knows it, too.
And now there are a bunch of kids with lead poisoning, and Nathan just wants to do his best to protect them, and how can Mike turn his back on something like that? How can he be such a heartless bastard, how can he look Nathan in the eye and say “I won’t give you the tools you need to solve this problem, even though I have them right here to dangle in front of your face”?
“Alright,” Mike says, “I have an idea. But it’s not giving you money, and it’s not giving you our associates.”
It doesn’t matter that he’s snapping, it doesn’t matter that the words are grinding out over a bed of nails, because Nathan is relaxed, relieved, finally able to take a breath for the first time in god knows how long, and he smiles because he knows now that Mike will fix everything. Mike and his backdoor shenanigans, his secret sources, his bottomless coffers. Mike can do anything. Nathan believes in him.
Nathan has learned by now, so he goes quietly, and Mike would’ve appreciated a “Thank you,” but he knows he doesn’t need it. He knows he’s a given. He’s only as good to Nathan, to the clinic, as the last favor he did for them, the last cliff he pulled them back from, but he how can he not dive back into the fray? How can he turn down this chance to cleanse his soul of the rot of corporate law?
How can he betray every good thing he believes?
Mike rests his elbows on top of his desk and drops his head into his hands. The room begins to tilt around him; all at once, his stomach clenches, his heart pounds, his fingers slip on his forehead and sweat beads on his brow.
No. He’ll make it out, he’ll stay strong.
Everything that’s happening is for the best.
---
Everything is better in the clear light of morning.
Mike hangs off the side of his bicycle for a few feet until he reaches the rack, jogging up onto the curb and positioning the wheel next to the hoop to lock it down. Today will be a good day. Donna’s given her blessing for him to move forward on the Discharge Power case, to throw himself into it body and soul, and he doesn’t need money, or associates, or LexisNexis, because he’s giving the clinic something better than all that stuff, he’s giving them him, and everything will turn out for the best.
Harvey doesn’t have to know.
Not right now.
“Can’t say I know many lawyers who bike to work.”
Tell that to Mister Lexus-and-a-personal-chauffeur.
Slinging his bag over his shoulder, Mike resists the urge to lash out at this mysterious stranger in the slick suit and the pricey overcoat, this shadow in his morning light.
“Old habit,” he says tightly. “Helps me clear my head before I start a new trial.”
His hands begin to tremble. Clutching the strap of his bag, he hopes the stranger doesn’t notice.
“Whatever it does, I’d say it’s working.”
Is it?
The mysterious stranger keeps talking, his lips curling in a cocky smirk that Mike has seen a million times on the faces of a million different defendants, prosecutors, opposition parties, and the world narrows its focus to them, just them, as Mike’s breathing comes shorter, his lungs spasming with it, talk faster, talk faster, get to the point, man, get out of my fucking way.
“You sound like the kind of guy I want as a partner,” says the mysterious stranger, whose name is Andy Forsyth, who took a redeye from Seattle just to meet Mike.
“I already have a job,” Mike says. Two, in fact. Incompatible, but Mike is indestructible, he can do anything. He can do it all. “Not really looking to leave.”
“It’s inevitable,” says Andy Forsyth, and Mike hates him in the pit of his soul.
“How is it inevitable?”
“Because eventually, you’re going to be in a position where it’s your job to defend the indefensible.”
Eventually.
How many times has Mike crossed that line already? How many times has he sent men who belong in prison on their merry way with a big fat fucking paycheck instead of a death sentence, or worse? How many times has he split himself in two, how many times has he locked that part of himself, the part that knows better, the part that knows right from wrong, how many times has he locked it up in a cast iron box with a heavy chain across the lid?
“Look, I’m flattered,” he says, because he ought to be, “but I’m in the middle of a case right now, and the clinic that I’m partnered up with does not have the resources. I’m sorry, but I’m not just going to abandon them.”
And why not?
Because they need him, of course. He’d cut himself a thousand times to save those people who need him, those people who stand where he’s stood, struggling against ridiculous odds to do the impossible. It’s no great mystery.
Because Mike can do anything.
“You won’t have to,” says Andy Forsyth, and Mike doesn’t know if he’s the smartest guy in the room, or the richest, or the strongest, or if he just spends a lot of time and energy making it look that way.
Smug sonofabitch. Mike’s had just about enough of his kind.
“Let me lay this out for you. I’m looking to start a firm that takes on the big guys without relying on funding from anyone.”
Stupid. The money needs to come from somewhere, doesn’t he know that? Mike used to believe, too, that being right, that being true and fair and pure of heart was enough to summon a win from thin air, but he’s been beaten and bruised and he knows better.
“This is the case that’s going to make that happen. And when it’s over, I want someone to run the place. And that person is you.”
Forty-eight hours. Andy Forsyth tosses out his smug ultimatum and walks away with the confidence of a man who knows he’s going to get what he came for, even if he needs other people to do impossible things to get it for him, and Mike hates him with everything he is.
Mike clings tight to the strap of his messenger bag and thinks about the fact that even after all this time, he still doesn’t have a real briefcase.
---
If Rachel woke up right now, this very moment, would she be surprised? The right side of the bed is empty, the sheets and pillows cold, but it’s alright because she’s tucked away on the left with her hands cradled under her head as Mike sits at the kitchen table, staring at an empty mug and counting happy primes in his head.
Seven, thirteen, nineteen.
The clinic is funded for another year. The clinic is going to be fine. Louis is a good and kind man, handing over five hundred thousand dollars out of his own pocket without a second thought, and the clinic is going to be fine. With or without Mike, everything is going to be alright.
Twenty three, thirty one, seventy nine.
Forsyth has been building up his firm for an entire year. Forsyth has a year’s worth of practice establishing himself in the world as a thorn in the side of big business, and Mike had no idea. Mike had no idea, because the important thing Forsyth wanted him to know, the best way to reel him in was with the promise that he’d be conquering giants, taking down the worst of the worst without waking up every morning with the fear that today will be the last day he’ll be able to afford to keep the doors open and the lights on.
Ninety seven, one hundred and three, one hundred and nine.
Mike remembers being afraid.
One hundred and thirty-nine.
Mike remembers the first summer he slept without air conditioning to save a few extra dollars. He remembers telling himself he was skipping breakfast because he was going to be late, and he remembers, later on, giving up the pretense that he had any choice. He remembers eviction; he remembers selling answer keys for pocket change, he remembers sleeping on the floor, he remembers broken water heaters and vindictive landlords and taking LSATs for money to pay for Grammy’s medications and her contract at the home where she was miserable and paranoid but at least they took pretty good care of her and he didn’t have to worry very much.
One hundred and sixty-seven.
He remembers falling asleep and wondering if he would wake up again.
One hundred and ninety-three.
He remembers thinking death might not be such a bad thing after all.
Two hundred and thirty-nine.
He remembers knowing better.
He has to keep fighting. He knows he does. A glorious opportunity has fallen into his lap and he has to step up, he has to stand for everyone who can’t be sure they’ll wake up tomorrow but who would really, really like to, everyone who skips breakfast every day and doesn’t expect to ever be able to stop, everyone who’s never even had a floor to sleep on, or answer keys to sell, or a friend to tell the cops she didn’t see which way he ran, doesn’t know what they’re talking about, these are associate interviews for our law firm, please step aside to make room for the next candidate, sir, before I have to call hotel security.
Mike has to be the guy who stands up to take the bullet, the guy who falls down and the guy who refuses to stay on the ground. The guy who’s knocked down five times and gets up six.
Taking the empty mug to the kitchen sink, he sets it down under the faucet that he doesn’t turn on and reminds himself that death is not the answer, death is never the answer, that he might’ve almost died a couple of times, a few nights in a row, but he didn’t, and he’s alive now, and he has a responsibility to use his power, to use his abilities, to take advantage of this opportunity that’s been dropped in front of him. He’s on the ground, but he has to get back up, and he has to keep going, whether he wants to or not.
Iceland. What were they thinking? Iceland.
Two hundred and sixty-three.
He should go back to bed.
Two hundred and ninety-three.
Rachel will be worried if she wakes up, suddenly, to find the bed empty beside her, the sheets and the pillows cold.
Three hundred and thirteen.
Sitting on the couch in the living room, he tucks his legs underneath him, clutching a pillow tight against his chest, wishing it was any help at all and knowing that it won’t be, no matter how long he waits.
Three hundred and thirty-one.
Lying down on the couch in the living room, he puts the pillow over his head and holds still.
---
There’s nothing to worry about in the clear light of morning.
Last night is nothing more than a blurry memory, a vague recollection, because today Mike is going to bring his A-game, today Mike is going to be as good as he’s ever been. No, he’s going to be better, he’s going to get million-dollar settlements for those kids, and he’s going to demolish those bastards from Discharge Power, and they’re going to rue the day they decided to cross paths with Michael James Ross, Champion of the People, Defender of the Downtrodden.
Today, Mike is going into court with fire in his heart and the truth on his side, and nothing else matters.
The witness sits at the witness stand—what a fucking oxymoron (pro bono corporate civil rights prosecuting attorney)—and he’s got that cocky smirk on his fucking face, and Mike clenches his fists as the son of a bitch swears to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you god, and Mike’s got him now. He’s got him by the throat, he’s got the taste of blood in his mouth, and he’s not letting go, so help him god.
“Before I ask you my question, I wanna make sure you understand what the penalty for perjury is.”
Can’t say I didn’t warn you. Can’t say this isn’t gonna be a fair fight.
“I know what perjury is.”
Of course you do.
“And you also know that twenty of your executives pulled their kids from Treetop Elementary School within the first six months of that plant opening.”
Objection. Relevance?
Objection, badgering.
Objection, argumentative! Inflammatory! Counsel is testifying!
“Alright, we knew!”
Mike’s vision goes dark around the edges and his skin begins to tingle as Mister Evans admits that they tried to make the plant safe, they tried not to make those kids sick, but their profit margins were just too fucking important, and doesn’t money make the world go ‘round? Wasn’t a hundred thousand dollars apiece enough to make everything all better?
“A million dollars a family,” Mike spits. “Right now. Take it or leave it.”
Mister Evans doesn’t have that kind of authority, and this is hardly the time or place to install a deal of this magnitude, but Mike can’t remember the last time he was so laser-focused, the last time he was so absolutely, positively certain that he was doing the right thing, the completely right thing, no caveats or cut corners or sweetheart deals. Mister Evans doesn’t have the authority, but Mike isn’t going to stop, isn’t going to shut up, isn’t going to go away until he gets what he’s after, until he gets what he came for.
“Done.”
It’s the symbolism of it, is the thing.
---
The wedding is everything he imagined it would be.
Roses and ferns spill out of every vase and cascade down from the walls and the ceiling; fairy lights drape across spindly cherry blossom trees, and everything has a slightly yellow glow to it. Every seat is filled by someone near and dear to one of them, or both of them, and everyone smiles as though this is the most amazing thing they’ve ever seen in their miserable lives.
Harvey stands beside him in his black suit and his black tie and his white shirt, and Mike wonders if it’s the same sort of thing he’d wear to a funeral.
“I didn’t think you were gonna be able to make it.”
Would it have counted if he hadn’t? The wedding, would it have meant anything?
“What can I say?” Harvey preens. “I like to make an entrance.”
Mike looks down at his hands and wonders if Harvey knows what’s going to happen.
“It’s gonna be awkward when my real best man shows up,” he teases, because this is what they do, this is how they break the tension. Dodging hard truths until there’s no getting around them, putting on a happy face until the mask starts to crack, pretending things aren’t as bizarre as they are until they’re over and done and everything is back to the status quo. This is how they survive.
“Oh, I think it’s clear who the best man is,” Harvey retorts, because this is what they do, and he knows how to play the game.
“Mm, okay, maybe.” Mike looks up thoughtfully. “Good. Not the best.”
Harvey smiles as the mask starts to crack.
“Hey, you ready for this?”
He doesn’t want to play anymore.
Mike looks at the lamp on the wall behind him.
“Yeah, I am.”
This is a wedding. These are things that people say.
The lights dim and the piano starts to play, and everyone turns their attention to the makeshift aisle between the chairs filled by their delighted loved ones, and here comes the bride.
Rachel glides over the ribbons of pink flower petals spread across the floor to take her place by his side, looking up at him with a giddy little smile on her face and a bouquet of white rises clutched in her bare little hands.
Father Walker gives a lovely homily that fills the time, and Mike smiles warmly.
Rachel casts her eyes up at him through her perfect lashes, not a single hair out of place on her head, and he looks down at her and keeps on smiling.
“From the first second I met you,” she says adoringly, “I knew I wanted to be here with you someday. Walking down the aisle arm in arm. I know that I fought it at first, but now, Mike, I can’t imagine living alongside anyone else for the rest of my life.”
Mike looks down at his feet before he meets her gaze.
“If I’ve learned one thing,” he recites, “it’s that we never know what the future holds. And that could be a scary thing. But I know that there is nothing that I can’t handle when I have you by my side.”
These are prepared words.
“You are the strongest man I’ve ever met,” she swears. “And you make me stronger. You’re the husband I’ve always wanted. And I can’t wait to begin our adventure together.”
She could go on, he sees it in her eyes. She’s got more to say, more praise to lavish upon the future she’s imagining for them, more glorious words to describe how much better her life is with him in it.
He reviews the ceremony in his head and decides that it went about as well as it could have gone.
“This is the final seal locking my old life away,” a more honest vow might’ve started off. “This is a love I’ve worked long and hard for, this is a road on which I’ve paid my dues, this is a future on a path I can believe in, and this is the life I’ve chosen.”
It doesn’t matter now. That’s not why they’re here.
“I now pronounce you man and wife,” Father Walker says proudly, and Rachel clasps Mike’s hands and leans forward to kiss him, and the audience cheers, and this is the life he’s landed in. These are the things he’ll do to survive.
He smiles all the way down the aisle, all the way to the reception hall, and everything is just grand.
Time skips a beat, and the reception hall is full of guests milling about, chatting, laughing, pairing off and clutching each other as they move in monotonous circles and may or may not enjoy themselves, it’s hard to tell. Harvey stands at the wet bar, toying with a glass of scotch, and Mike gravitates toward the morose look on his face, the unvarnished realness of him without a spotlight pinning him down.
Harvey smiles when Mike nears, as is required on a man’s wedding day.
“I gotta say, Mike,” he says, “those were some beautiful vows. Especially the part about family.”
Mike tries to remember which part he might be talking about and finds that he can’t.
“Thanks, Harvey,” he replies anyway. “And I didn’t get to say it before, but I’m really glad you made it.”
Rachel is the one who didn’t want to tell him, but Mike is the one who forgot to get around to it.
“Me too,” Harvey says, and despite his sullenness, Mike believes him. “But I should be the one who’s saying thank you. You saved the firm.”
This is, of course, the part that Mike is supposed to have brought up before now. This is, of course, the part he was hoping to somehow avoid bringing up, ever, the reason he forgot to get around to it, because nothing about it is fair, and Mike is supposed to be a warrior for justice.
“Harvey—”
“And before you say anything,” Harvey interrupts as light begins to come back into his eyes, “let me just say I was wrong. You’re senior partner material. You are ready. And when you come back from your honeymoon—”
“We’re not coming back, Harvey,” Mike cuts him off, because as a warrior for justice, he can’t let this charade go on any longer. “Rachel and I were offered a chance to run a firm in Seattle.”
The light begins to dim; music from the dance floor fills the space between them as Harvey realizes this isn’t a trick. Mike would never do such a cruel thing as that. (But Mike would never leave.)
(Mike would never.)
I’m sorry, Harvey.
“It’s a,” Mike stutters, “it’s a place that only takes class action cases against Fortune 500 companies, and… Well, we decided to go for it.”
Please tell me you understand. Please tell me you know me well enough for this to make sense. Please tell me I’m being honest.
“Mike—”
“Harvey,” he interrupts, because he knows what’s coming next and his last memories of Harvey can’t be of him begging on his knees, they just can’t, “when Donna came to me, told me the firm was in trouble, I did exactly what I told you I would, but I don’t ever wanna have to make a choice like that again.”
“You don’t have to,” Harvey says frantically. “If you wanna do more pro bono cases—”
“That’s not the point, Harvey,” he says, “and you know it.”
(Remember how we keep each other honest?)
“This is who I am. It’s who I’ve always been.”
(Remember how you pulled me out of the gutter and we taught each other how to be better?)
“It’s time, Harvey. It’s time.”
(Remember how we used to live on borrowed time?)
This isn’t the same. This isn’t what we meant when we said that.
And you know it.
---
Sometime during the evening, Andy Forsyth must have dropped by to leave their plane tickets with the doorman, who delivers them as soon as Mike and Rachel return home from the wedding—their wedding at four AM Sunday morning. The flight to SEA departs from JFK at eleven thirty-two on Monday, they’ve got a meeting with a potential client on Tuesday morning, and Mike wonders what that forty-eight hour deadline was all about.
In the elevator, Rachel smiles at him playfully, and this is their wedding night, and they’re supposed to be happier than they’ve ever been, speculating wildly and whimsically about the wonderful future awaiting them. In a few minutes, they’ll shed their clothes on the way to the bedroom, falling together to have the best sex of their lives and then sleep until noon and while away the rest of the day eating chocolate croissants in front of a roaring fire.
Mike smiles back.
This is how the game is played.
---
The flight leaves right on time; Mike is perhaps unduly impressed by the minimal display of proficiency.
“What do you think our first case will be?” Rachel asks conspiratorially at thirty-five thousand feet. “Who do you think we’ll be taking on first?”
Mike regrets giving her the window seat.
“I don’t know,” he murmurs. Rachel watches him with her bright eyes, waiting for a wild guess, a spirited conjecture, and he doesn’t have the heart to tell her that he’s afraid he’s having second thoughts.
“Come on,” she goads, “who do you want to take down the most? Exxon? BP Oil? I think Verizon has pretty bad labor practices, maybe we could show them a thing or two.”
Mike hums.
Rachel frowns for a second. Just a second.
“What do you think our new apartment will be like?” she tries next. “I bet Seattle has a great real estate market. Hey,” she jokes, jostling his arm, “we could do our place up like Frasier, wouldn’t that be funny? Because we’re in Seattle?”
Yeah, he gets it.
“Not sure we’re gonna be able to find a place big enough for that,” he says.
She does her best to keep smiling.
“Mike,” she says, sliding her arm around his back. “What’s wrong? This is such a huge accomplishment for you, aren’t you excited?”
Isn’t he?
He smiles at the seatback in front of him. “Yeah,” he says, “I am.”
Pouting a little, she shakes his elbow. “I know it’s a big deal,” she says, “but we’ll be fine. You’ll be fine, you’ll be amazing. These Seattle bigwigs won’t know what hit them.”
He smiles.
Of course he will. He’s a hotshot corporate lawyer, he knows how to play the game. He knows how to rig the deck. He knows how to take ‘em for all they’re worth.
This is his saga of reformation. This is his chance to come into his own. To reinvent himself into someone he can be proud of, someone his grandmother would have been proud of, and his parents. Someone he isn’t ashamed to brag about to the rest of the world, someone who can go to sleep every night with a clear conscious, knowing he added something to the world that it’s better off having than not. He’s fulfilling his life’s purpose, embarking on a mission that needs completion.
(But is it, though?)
This is why he’s here.
(Isn’t it?)
It is.
(Are you sure?)
He’ll show them what he’s made of.
It’ll be amazing.
---
“Mike, don’t forget we have dinner with the Taylors tonight.”
“I can’t.”
Rachel walks into the cluttered sitting area that she insists upon calling a living room, even though it doesn’t have any defining walls. “What do you mean, you can’t?” she asks as she finishes dressing for work, tucking the hem of her chiffon blouse into her three hundred dollar skirt. “I told you about it a week ago.”
“I can’t,” Mike repeats, waiting for his motion for a preliminary hearing to finish printing. “I’m going to be working late.”
Rachel laughs disbelievingly. “Mike, you’ve been working late every night since we got here. We’re supposed to be friends with these people, friends do occasionally do things together outside of the office.”
“I know,” he says. “But the Lager case hit a snag, Charter just handed over documentation proving that they knowingly waived their right to privacy when they hired them and I have to make about a hundred phone calls today to figure out how to fight this.”
“They what?” Rachel says. “Mike, why didn’t I know about this?”
Snatching up the printout, Mike shoves it into his briefcase and fumbles around in the kitchen for a thermos to fill with black coffee.
“I don’t know.”
Standing in front of the hall mirror, Rachel threads earrings into her ears.
“Well why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know,” he repeats, “I guess I was more concerned with getting these people their livelihoods back than I was with making sure you were up to date on this case you’re not even working on.”
She sighs through her teeth. “I don’t need to know every detail of every case at the firm, but I thought we were supposed to be co-managers, so shouldn’t I at least know what you’re working on?”
Mike grabs his jacket and stands impatiently by the door as Rachel pushes hangers aside in the closet, looking for her favorite coat.
“I’m the managing partner,” he reminds her.
“Well, sure, on paper,” she says jokingly, “but you know what I mean.”
Yeah, well. Lots of things look good on paper.
Mike holds the door open for her and locks it behind them.
“You should have enough to worry about without having to keep track of this.”
Calling the elevator, she looks over at him nervously. “Mike, is everything okay?”
His tight smile holds back a barking laugh, and he waits for the elevator to arrive.
“Of course not.”
She puts her hand on his arm as the doors open.
“I know it’s been a rough start,” she says, “but these cases are really important, you’re doing really great work. Everything’s going to be okay; you just need a little more time.”
He scoffs as they ride down to the lobby. “You remember when we moved out here,” he says, “and you said getting this job was such a huge accomplishment? Well, we’ve been here for almost half a year and I haven’t accomplished a goddamn thing.”
“Is this because of the Johnson suit?” she asks as they walk briskly to the bus stop.
“You mean the one that took McKesson about thirty seconds to completely crush into the ground?” he bites out, feeling the dam holding back every awful thing inside him beginning to crack and doing his level best to stem the threatened flood. “No, it’s not because of the Johnson suit.”
“Because just because your first case didn’t go so well doesn’t mean you’re not doing great work.”
“It was a fucking disaster,” he corrects, picking up his pace. She tries to jog after him, but her spindly heels make it a bit of a challenge.
“Mike, that wasn’t your fault,” she insists. “It was your first suit at the new firm, you didn’t know what you were getting into. But you’re doing better now, you’re handling all your responsibilities well enough that I think you’re allowed to have a social life.”
Dinner with the Taylors.
Mike shakes his head disbelievingly.
“You don’t understand,” he mutters.
“So explain it to me,” she retorts.
He struggles against it for five pointless seconds as the dam splits right up the middle; she nearly walks into him when he stops short in the middle of the street.
“I’m not a managing partner,” he begins brusquely as irate pedestrians stalk around them, one making an obnoxious point of pretending to trip. “Do you even know how I got my license to practice in Seattle? Same way I got it in New York, my boss threatened the ethics committee at the Bar. Forsyth threw some money and some names around and got me confirmed, and half the judges in the state still think of me as a fraud, but they don’t have any recourse against me so they just side with whoever I’m up against for as long as they can get away with it.”
“Mike,” she says disbelievingly, looking up into his eyes, “that’s a miscarriage of justice. You could have them thrown off the bench.”
“None of them are gonna be thrown off the bench,” he snaps as his heart begins to pound, “because then they’d start looking into how I really did get my license out here, and they’d find all the shit Forsyth and the board members are trying to keep under the rug, and then no one would have anything left to lose except for me, because they’d yank my license, and then what? What would I do with myself then, when no one had anything else they needed me for, no one had any other ways to use me?”
She shakes her head. “The firm needs you,” she says. “You’re still an amazing lawyer and you are an amazing managing partner. And you’re still my husband. I still need you; I’ll always need you.”
“I’m a terrible managing partner!” he rages, shoving his briefcase at her as his hands tremble, his eyes wide and manic. “The only reason I’m not on top of this fucking Charter suit is that I have partners coming at me all day long with all their bureaucratic bullshit, everyone needs approvals and confirmations and assignments and advice and all I’m doing is putting up a front, all I’m doing is putting my name on these cases and taking the credit when things go well and the blame when they don’t! I came out here to fight for the little guy, I came out here to stand up for people who don’t have anyone to stand up for them and I haven’t been able to do that because all I’ve got time for is fucking paperwork!”
“That’s why I’m here!” she cries, clutching the briefcase to her chest. “Mike, I’m here to help you, we’re all here to help you, and we are fighting for the little guy, you are making a difference.”
“You?” he mocks, jabbing his finger at her reprovingly. “You’re not a senior partner, you’re a senior associate who got promoted because she’s sleeping with her boss! We don’t belong here, Rachel, we don’t belong at this level yet, going up against these monsters, we are way out of our league and it’s about time we admitted it to ourselves!”
For a paralyzed moment, she’s stunned into silence, staring at him with her eyes wide and a flush rising on her cheeks.
He winces when she slaps him; should’ve turned with the motion of it. He thinks he might’ve pulled something in his neck.
“I have worked my entire life,” she seethes, “to accomplish what I’ve accomplished, and to get what I want, on my own merit, because I have worked for it, because I deserve it. I came out here with you to do good work that I can be proud of, to do work we both believe in, to make this world a better place for everyone who deserves it, everyone who deserves a second chance that they wouldn’t get without me, without us, and the work we’re doing.”
As if she’d be here without him. As if she would’ve even considered devoting her life to this sort of undertaking, as if Forsyth, or anyone, would’ve called on her to do it if she wasn’t riding on his coattails. He glowers at her, and she shakes her head.
“We’re out here doing exactly what you’ve always wanted,” she says, and it falls on his ears like an indictment, “and if you think you still need someone to hold your hand and walk you through it, after everything we’ve been through, Mike, then I don’t know what to tell you. Because maybe you don’t think you belong here at this level, but I’ll tell you something I know for sure: I do.”
Someone to hold his hand? Mike has never had someone to hold his hand before in his life.
(That’s not true and you know it.)
Suddenly his chest is tight, his ribs pressing down on his lungs, squeezing the air out of him.
Oh, god.
A noose tightens around his throat and he tries not to gasp, tries not to hyperventilate, tries not to choke, tries to breathe, breathe, breathe.
Oh, god.
He shoves her away and turns clumsily, storming back the way he came, the city blurred around him, reduced to a narrow path to the apartment, to four walls ceiling floor that’ll close him in, hold him safe, nothing can get you in here, let’s forget about all the mistakes we’ve made along the way, this ill-conceived adventure, this catapult headfirst into the lion’s den; the blood you drew has stained your filthy hands but who’s left to save you now?
“Mike!”
“Shut up!”
“Mike!”
“Shut up!”
He slams the side of his fist against the brick wall, and she ducks low even though he wasn’t really aiming for her face.
“You don’t want this, either,” he says icily. “You tell yourself you do, but you don’t. You think because you’ve got it, you’re supposed to love it, but you’ve never wanted this.”
She jolts back as though he’s pushed her again, her mouth hanging open as she fumbles for words, struggling to see where this is coming from, what this could all mean, what he could possibly be thinking.
“Mike,” she manages, “what the hell are you talking about?”
He drags his hand down the gritty brick with a sour laugh as his skin starts to tear. “You don’t want to be a supervisor. You think you want all this power, you think it makes you strong, but you don’t want it. You want to be down in the trenches, you want to be out there making deals, cutting these fuckers off at the knee, you want to be winning cases, you want to be doing things.”
“Stop it,” she says nervously, reaching out to touch his raw knuckles. “Mike, stop.”
“Why?” he asks. “Because you don’t believe it? Or because you don’t want to admit that you do? That you know I’m right.”
Making every effort to be cautious, to transform her fury into tenderness, she places her hand on his shoulder and tries to turn him around, to guide him slowly back to the apartment. He yanks himself away, hauling his body out of her reach, and she pulls her hand back daintily as though she’s been burned.
“Mike.”
“No.”
She moves toward him again and he kicks his heel back, slamming into the wall, scuffing his shoe, dirtying his shirt, and it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t care. None of this is important.
“We’ve been here for six months,” he says, “and my record is zero and one, and that’s only because I’ve got about nine cases still pending, so lucky me, you can’t count those, right? Can’t hold them against me yet?”
“Mike, these things take time.”
“Yeah? Well you know what, maybe that’s time I don’t want to give.”
She folds her arms across her chest, and he starts to laugh.
“I’ve never been so goddamn miserable,” he says, because this is funny, if you think about it, this is really funny. “I was in prison, Rachel, I almost died, and this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”
She shakes her head.
“You don’t mean that.”
Yes. I do.
He smiles darkly.
This is the life I’m choosing.
“We gave it a hell of a shot,” he says, “but it sure as shit isn’t what I was expecting. Whatever good I thought I was gonna do, whatever—whatever change I thought I could make, it’s not happening, and it’s not going to happen if I stay here.”
“Mike,” she says again. “Mike, what are you saying?”
He shakes his head.
“I’m going home.”
She bites her lip. “You’re taking the day?” she guesses, and he smiles again, because she knows better. She does.
“I’m going back to New York.”
Rachel stares at him as though she doesn’t believe what she’s hearing. That’s fine; she’s allowed her delusions. Mike has certainly indulged in a few.
“What’s going to happen to the firm without you?” she asks, and it sounds like an accusation, and he doesn’t know what she thinks she’s going to get out of this.
“You can run it,” he says whimsically. “Or you can get one of the other managing partners to do it, except, oops, there aren’t any, are there?” His mouth stretches into a toothy grin; she recoils sharply, and he’s losing his mind, and he doesn’t care. “I don’t know if you know this, but our clients can’t live in good intentions, Rachel!”
She’s horrified by what he’s become, it’s plain to see, and to tell the truth, he would be, too, if he could convince himself that all of this was real and not just some deranged movie playing out in shudderingly high resolution.
“Mike,” she says, “I can’t go back there. Not now.”
She can’t go crawling on her knees to her father’s door, is what she means. She can’t go back to New York anything less than a rousing success.
Good thing that’s not what this is about.
“I love you,” he says, and the hope in her eyes would’ve undone him a week ago, maybe even yesterday, but they’re well beyond that now. “I do. But I’m going. With or without you.”
“I—”
“You can come back to the city with me,” he talks over her, “you can stay here, you can move to Chicago with Jessica, I don’t—” (He does care, doesn’t he? He has to, he should, he does.) “It’s not my decision, but I can’t do this anymore, and I’m going back to New York.”
“When?” she challenges, as if his plans (what plans?) might be derailed, undone by something as simple as logistics. As if she can throw him so far off his game that he’ll forget his desperation, forget his drive. Forget that he knows this is the way things have to be.
“Today,” he says. “Tomorrow. As soon as I can. Right now.”
Sharpening her glare, she shakes her head slowly. Disapprovingly.
As if he needs her permission.
“You have no idea what you’re doing.”
Chuckling, he smacks his fist against the wall again, pushing off it and moving past her.
“I know enough.”
“He’ll never take you back,” she says spitefully, hurling it at his back as he walks away.
As if that’s what this is about.
The thing is, though.
“I wouldn’t deserve it if he did.”
She stutters for a retaliation as he thinks about what would be the best route to the nearest taxi stand, moving with a juvenile spring in his step and a festering hatred for everything he owns that only deepens the more he considers stopping by the apartment to pack a suitcase.
“You’re a goddamn bastard,” she finally shouts.
At the moment, he’s hard pressed to disagree.
The sound of her retreating footsteps has a nice sense of closure to it; she deserves it, the anger she’s feeling. He’ll feel bad, later, about how loud the steps are, about how tense the line of her shoulders probably is, how stiff her spine, but for the moment, nothing in the world matters at all. Nothing is important; nothing has consequences. Memory is a transitory concept, a fiction invented by the dramatists and the historians, and the world is a castle up in the air, fantastic and unknowable and waiting for him to explore every darkened hall.
Forty bucks flat fare to the airport.
It’s a start.
---
By some fantastic stroke of luck, American Airlines has three economy class tickets available for a ten hour and forty-four minute flight to La Guardia, departing at six twenty tomorrow morning and making one stopover in Dallas/Fort Worth. Mike puts the three hundred and nineteen dollar charge on his credit card without a second thought and wanders the main terminal until he stumbles upon a quiet little meditation room on the second level.
He spends the night on the floor under a bench.
---
The majority of whatever mania dogged Mike’s mind back in Seattle is worn away by five thirteen the following afternoon, when his flight lands in New York and it strikes him properly how ill-prepared he is to be back in the city. Not that his bank account is drained or anything like that, but he suspects that wandering aimlessly through the streets will last him two days, at best, before madness takes hold of him in one form or another.
An old ingrained reflex prompts him to direct the cab from the airport to thirty-eighth and First, and he tries to remember who he and Rachel sold their apartment to; an older couple, he thinks, in their seventies, maybe. Nice people, according to the real estate agent, although he’s never met them himself. Maybe they’ll buy that old “I was in the neighborhood and I used to live here, do you, mind if I look around” excuse that always seems to work in sappy episodes of old sitcoms.
He watches the Queens skyline scroll by on his left until it begins to bore him.
EXIT 11 East 53rd Street RIGHT LANE EXIT ONLY
“Can you turn here?” he asks suddenly. “Can you take Lexington?”
“FDR is faster,” the driver cautions him.
“No, I know,” Mike says, “I want to go somewhere else.”
The guy moves into the right lane without signaling.
“Where we going?”
Mike looks up at the skyscrapers to his left and his right.
“Fifty-third and Lex.”
They stop at the near corner and Mike forks over forty-five bucks, accidentally slamming the door when he trips out onto the curb.
Okay. So.
Now what.
Across the street, Mike sees the coffee cart where he bought the weed he smoked after his grandmother died. Behind that, a bit to the right, is the entrance to the Citigroup Building; fifty floors up is the office of Specter Litt, or Zane Specter Litt, or Zane Specter Litt Wheeler, or whatever it’s called nowadays. Mike only knows the big ticket items that Robert tells Rachel, being that he hasn’t exactly kept up with the company newsletter for himself.
It’s good to be back.
But is it, though?
He’s got a list of crimes a hundred miles long and he deserves to be held accountable for every damn one.
And even if, even if Harvey forgives him, Mike can’t go back to corporate law. Not really, not wholeheartedly, not with the dedication Harvey deserves of a subordinate, much less a partner, and what else good is he, really?
He doesn’t belong here. He never should’ve come.
Squinting up at the massive glass façade, he takes a breath in through his teeth and sighs.
In a way, there’s a certain freedom that comes from not belonging anywhere; he just has to figure out how to embrace it. Lean into the skid or whatever. He’ll get back on his feet eventually; he always does.
“Mike?”
Inch by inch, his hundred-mile list begins to slip into the river.
But this is a hallucination. A delusion. A cruel trick of his clearly still-addled mind.
Surely this can’t be Harvey standing before him, holding himself in the cautious, spring-loaded posture he uses in first meetings with unpredictable adversaries. Surely he wouldn’t have happened upon Mike in the street, his street, and managed to approach him with any opening salvo other than his fist. Surely he isn’t standing here, now, watching Mike carefully, waiting for him to vanish into thin air as though it wouldn’t be surprising, as though it’s happened before.
Narrowing his eyes as if against a powerful wind, Harvey looks at a point a bit above Mike’s head and thins his lips in a cool smile.
“How’ve you been?”
Awful. I’ve been horrible.
Would it help you to know that?
No. Probably not. It’s alright; it’s true, is the important part.
Mike chews on the inside of his mouth.
“Don’t ask.”
Harvey frowns, and Mike wonders how this conversation usually goes.
“Mike, what are you doing here?”
What do you think?
Animal magnetism, he wants to say. I moved clear across the country to escape, and you keep dragging me back into your orbit. There’s no hope for me, I’m a lost cause.
He opens his mouth, already preparing himself to parry Harvey’s inevitable retort, ready to step back into old patterns, to return to life as it was, realign reality with indistinguishable fantasy. The axes have righted themselves and the world is fixed, back to normal. Back to the status quo.
Then a glare hits the Citigroup Building, piercing him in the eye, and Mike raises his hand to block the light, wincing and meeting Harvey’s weary gaze.
Normal. What a stupid thing to lie about.
Harvey doesn’t have a retort ready. Whatever Mike was going to say, he doesn’t want to hear it. Not now. Not ever.
It isn’t fair.
Mike isn’t being fair.
“Harvey, I really fucked up.”
This isn’t how things usually go.
Harvey looks like he can’t quite decide whether to hug Mike or to strangle him, and Mike doesn’t blame him, not even a little. Maybe if he takes a minute to think, he’ll figure out a way to do both, and he can decide which one he prefers.
Instead, Harvey looks back over his shoulder, casting his eyes all the way up to the fiftieth floor, and purses his lips in that way he has where it looks like he’s trying to force himself to swallow something that tastes like rot.
“Let’s talk.”
Having precisely no room for argument, Mike nods, following along when Harvey walks across the street and pulls out his cell phone. Five minutes later, a town car pulls up alongside the curb, and Mike walks around to the far side without waiting for Harvey to direct him.
Harvey’s door doesn’t quite close properly the first time around; he opens it again and slams it shut, and Ray starts the motor without a word to either of them.
Mike folds his hands in his lap. From experience, he knows that the ride to Harvey’s place will take about twenty minutes; there are certain landmarks he could look out for, the Chrysler Building and Baruch College and so forth, but it doesn’t matter. He’s at Harvey’s disposal, and this will take as long as it takes.
Later, maybe twenty minutes, maybe less, maybe more, Ray steps out to open Harvey’s door for him, and Mike watches for the oncoming traffic to stop before he gets out on the street side. Harvey doesn’t say a word as they enter the building, nor as he unlocks the door to his private elevator, nor as they ride up to the penthouse.
Mike sticks his hands in his pockets and looks the city sprawled beneath the window.
Harvey trudges into the living room.
“What do you want, Mike?”
Mike turns abruptly, quirking his eyebrows and parting his lips as he raises his hands in some weird reflex to begin gesticulating as he speaks, even though the words haven’t come. Harvey shrugs his hunched shoulders and shuffles around until he’s facing Mike, continuing to direct his words to the floor.
“You need money?” he asks. “Resources? Connections somewhere, you need me to use my pull at the Harvard Club to get you an in? You need me to throw a case? Put my worst guy on it, give you the inside scoop?”
It’s not any specific item on the list so much as his defeated tone that really cuts the deepest. Taking his hands out of his pockets, Mike crosses his arms over his chest and looks away.
“No,” he murmurs.
Finally raising his head, Harvey drops his hands on his hips and furrows his brow deeply.
“Then what is it?” he asks. “What did you come back here for, what do you want from me?”
It’s time, Harvey. It’s time.
Mike closes his eyes shamefacedly at the hateful reminder, his own voice reverberating in his ears. Well, to be fair, he had it coming. It’s his own goddamn fault.
“Nothing,” he says, because it’s the truth, because he doesn’t know the real answer beyond that. Somehow, he never really expected to see Harvey again, which is a heartbreaking revelation doubling as a mediocre beginning to the punishment he deserves.
Harvey collapses into one of his living room chairs and looks up at Mike with his hands spread before him.
“You gotta give me something.”
After everything you’ve taken.
Just one thing.
Mike sits in the chair beside him and forces himself to look him in the eye.
“I was wrong.”
Harvey waits impassively; Mike should’ve known better than to expect a response.
No more cutting corners, Michael.
“I was wrong about everything,” he carries on. “I was wrong about moving up the wedding, and I was wrong about not telling you. I was wrong about waiting until the reception to tell you we were leaving. I was wrong to take a job from a guy I’d never met after he gave me forty-eight hours to decide and basically no information about what I was getting into. I was wrong to think I could be a managing partner, I was wrong when I thought that was what I wanted to be.”
Taking a breath, he forces himself not to close his eyes, not to hide himself away, not to let himself ignore Harvey’s stony-faced indifference.
“I was wrong to cut you out of my life,” he confesses, his throat suddenly becoming dry, the words harder to force out, but he has to keep going, it’s still not enough.
“I was wrong to leave you when you needed me,” he says hoarsely. “I was wrong to put my loyalties to the clinic above my loyalty to the firm, I was wrong to ask— I was wrong to demand so much of you, I was wrong to abuse the trust you put in me, I was wrong to take advantage of you, I was…”
He sighs.
I was wrong about all of it.
“I’d take all of it back, if I could.”
Harvey stares at him, and Mike doesn’t remember his eyes ever being quite so empty.
Maybe once.
“I don’t need you forgive me,” he says, and he almost hopes he doesn’t because Mike doesn’t deserve it yet, or maybe ever. “I just want you to know. I made a bad decision; I made a lot of them, and you gave me every opportunity to dial back, and I didn’t take it, and I… I’m so sorry.”
And that’s it. The sum of all that he is. The world’s biggest fuckup.
The stage is a little bigger than usual this time around.
“After you left,” Harvey says abruptly, “all I wanted was for you to come back.”
Mike flinches.
“I kept thinking, what did I do wrong? If I could go back and change something, anything, what would it be? What should I have done differently? What should I have said that I didn’t say, what should I have done that I didn’t do?”
Mike wonders how much of what Harvey’s saying is meant for Mike and how much is mainly just for himself.
“But I didn’t have any time to dwell on it,” Harvey carries on as some emotion finally fires his dull tone. “Because Gordon was trying to steal my firm, and Zane was trying to steal my firm, and Wheeler was trying to steal my firm, and Louis was obsessing over his new girlfriend, and Donna was trying to prove herself in a job she’s all wrong for, and it seemed like every time a new problem came up, Alex was siding with everyone except me.”
Mike curls in on himself a little as he realizes how long this fury has been building up with nowhere to go.
“And Jessica said she didn’t want any more of my help,” Harvey rambles, “but she kept calling me for advice, or just to talk out her problems, and all our clients still needed to be taken care of, and anytime they didn’t get what they wanted, they wanted to jump right up to the top of the ladder to talk to me, and I hated talking to anyone because all that meant was that I was about to be blamed for something else.” He laughs without humor, shaking his head spitefully.
“The firm is the only home I’ve ever really known, and it was suddenly the last place I wanted to be, work was the last thing I wanted to do, but I didn’t have anywhere else to go, I didn’t have anyone to turn to who wasn’t wrapped up in it somehow, and I just…”
He drops his hands to the arms of his chair and stares unseeingly into the unlit fireplace.
“I didn’t know what to do but keep going.”
Mike folds his hands together and clasps them tight.
Having purged himself of all that’s been steadily destroying him for the past six months, Harvey doesn’t seem to know exactly what to do next, and Mike wonders if there’s anything he might say to help, even just a little.
Out the window, a piano melody begins to play softly. It’s one of Harvey’s downstairs neighbors, Mike remembers; Susan or Susannah or something, a lonely old woman with frizzy grey hair and bad posture who seems content to ignore Harvey whenever she encounters him and who baffled Mike by saying hi to him once when she ran into him in the hallway a few years back. Harvey hates her; Mike has never fully understood why, although they’ve talked about it once or twice.
The music stops short, then picks up a second later exactly where it left off.
Harvey laughs again.
“I thought I was never gonna see you again.”
Mike doesn’t try to kid himself wondering where Harvey could have gotten an idea like that.
“I should’ve called,” he says. “I should’ve emailed. I should’ve texted. I should’ve visited.”
“Yeah,” Harvey agrees, “you should’ve.”
You could’ve done it, too, Mike thinks sourly.
No. It wasn’t his place, it wasn’t his job. This is Mike’s mess, no one else’s, and it’s about time he owned up to it.
He sits up straight and tries to feel like a grown-up.
“You have every right to be angry at me for the rest of your life,” Mike says. “I wouldn’t blame you if you never trusted me again, I, I a hundred percent deserve it. And I know that me saying you can trust me isn’t going to cut it, that me telling you I’ll never turn my back on you again isn’t enough anymore, so before I leave you alone, I’ll just say that…I’m sorry. For everything I did. Everything I did before I left, everything I tried to keep secret from you, everything I did behind your back. Every time I thought about you after I left, every time I got in over my head and just…did what I thought you would do, every time I saved myself, thanks to you, and I still didn’t call, I didn’t tell you how much you meant to me… Every time I took it for granted that you’d just, know, somehow, that every good thing in my life is thanks to you.”
Harvey doesn’t smile, but nor does he look like he’s distracting himself planning Mike’s gruesome murder, so that’s something.
Mike clasps his hands in front of his chest, a weakly imitated prayer, a plea for understanding, and lowers them to his lap.
“I am sorry.”
Okay. So.
That’s something.
After a beat, the piano music stops again, and Mike holds his breath in anticipation until enough seconds have ticked by that he’s sure it won’t be starting up again.
A little while after that, Harvey nods slowly.
“Thank you.”
Mike smiles.
“Okay,” he says, rising to his feet and looking toward the door. “I guess I should get going; my, uh, my cell number’s the same, if you need to get in touch with me. Although I guess maybe I should get one without a Seattle area code, so, I… I’ll let you know when that happens. I’ll be in touch.”
“Mike.”
“Yeah.”
Harvey pauses a moment before he stands as well, flexing his fingers as though he’d like to be holding something.
“What are you going to do?”
Tapping the toe of his shoe against the floor, Mike shrugs. “Not sure. Find a job; I guess maybe I’ll go back to the clinic, see if they’ll hire me full time.”
Harvey nods again. “I think that’d be good for you.”
It would be good for him. It would be the best thing for everyone.
Mike’s gaze slides out of focus as he stares at his hands.
But would it, though?
I haven’t had a life in five years, which is why I hired you.
They didn’t hire him because they wanted him; they didn’t hire him because they thought he deserved it.
I’m not interested, because there’s something in it for you, like always.
They hired him because they wanted to have him around when they wanted him, when they needed him. They wanted to have him hanging from puppet strings to pull every which way suited them best, no matter what he thought, no matter what he wanted. No matter what he was capable of if they would just let him push a little harder, if they would just let him do a little more than they were used to doing, to being able to do.
He gave them his everything. He was probably the best thing that had ever happened to that damn clinic.
And they treated him like shit.
“I can’t.”
Harvey tosses his hands weakly, barely lifting away from his body. “I’m sure they’d take you back.”
“No,” Mike says, blinking a couple of times, “I can’t. I can’t go back, Harvey, I was miserable there. I hated it.”
“Mike, you didn’t hate it.”
Mike shakes his head as the revelation crystalizes in his mind. “I did. I loved the work, I loved that I was doing what I’d always wanted to do, from the moment I decided I wanted to be a lawyer, I loved that I was finally helping people who really, really needed it, but it was…” He looks up in wonderment, astonished that it could have taken him so long to come to such a simple conclusion.
“Harvey, it was awful.”
Harvey sighs the shattered sigh of a man who’s tired of trying.
“Mike, what do you want?”
Mike presses his lips together. “I want to help people,” he says, because that part will never stop being true. “I want to give people the help they need, the help they deserve, even though they can’t afford it, I want—I want to treat them like we treated our million-dollar clients, I want to be the best goddamn pro bono lawyer on the planet. I want to be able to put them first without having to worry about saving enough money to cover next month’s rest, without ever having to choose between giving them the best defense money can buy and being able to keep the power on for another day.”
Harvey arches his eyebrows mockingly. “Forsyth handed you that on a silver platter.”
“Forsyth wanted me to be in charge of a bunch of other people who got to do that,” Mike corrects. “I want to be in charge of me, I want to be able to put all my time and all my energy into the work—the real work, on the ground. I want to be surrounded by people who are willing to fight as hard as I am, who won’t shut down every idea that seems a little out there, people who won’t try to stop me from fighting hard enough to win an unwinnable case.”
It sounds so crazy, so impractical, so needy; how could he have thought that was what he’d be doing in Seattle? How could he have thought that he’d be doing that anywhere? How could he have thought that anyone would ever give him that, that it was even remotely realistic to expect?
Harvey smirks ironically. “I would’ve made that happen.”
And when you come back from your honeymoon…
Mike sniffs a reluctant laugh.
“Harvey,” he says pityingly, “I know you wanted to give me more pro bono cases, but honestly, I don’t think I have the stomach for corporate law anymore.”
Harvey shakes his head.
“If you’d told me that was what you wanted, I would’ve found a way.”
Mike stares.
But…but, no, Mike is being frivolous and crazy and this is all idealistic nonsense, and Harvey is letting him, letting him have his moment, because he gets it, gets that Mike needs to have room to aim high, higher than he’ll ever really land. Right? That’s… Right?
It’s not like any of this is real.
If it was, then…
Then…what?
“Harvey, I can’t…” Biting his lip, widening and then narrowing his eyes, Mike flexes his fists and steps out slightly to the side. “Harvey,” he tries again, “you know how much capital that takes, you’d—you’d be betting your entire life on me, you’d have to quit the firm, I could never have asked you to do that.”
“Well, you didn’t,” Harvey says, “so I guess we dodged that bullet.”
“Wait,” Mike says, raising one of his hands haltingly, “no, wait, are you serious? You would’ve done it? Because I mean I’ve got literally nothing to lose at this point, and you just walked out of your office at three o’clock on a Wednesday with zero notice, so I’m guessing things aren’t going so great for you, either.”
Harvey frowns again, and it might be Mike’s delirious imagination, but it seems to have more sorrow built into it than spite, for once.
“That’s not the point, Mike, you just said you know how much work, how many resources would need to go into—”
“Harvey,” Mike interrupts, “you are the king of kings of taking stupid risks like this. I crashed your associate interviews and spilled pot on your floor, and you hired me. Jessica threatened to fire me for being a fraud and you threatened to quit if she did. I bitched and moaned about coming back to PSL after Danbury and you doubled my salary if I’d come back.”
Harvey turns his head away, and Mike reaches out to grip his shoulders and pull him back.
“I know this is insane,” he says. “I know it is. I know I’m asking you to give up a lot just to take a chance. But I also know that I’m always at my best when I’m with you, and the past two years have been a fucking nightmare, and we’ve both made—so many mistakes, but we have learned from them. You know how to be a managing partner now, you deserve to have your own firm. Come on Harvey,” he presses as Harvey begins to waver, “let’s start over, let’s get off to a running start, together, let’s both do what we’ve always wanted to do but let’s do it right this time.”
Harvey chuckles through his teeth. “You’ve got this whole thing planned out?”
“I don’t,” Mike says, “but don’t you get it, that’s the whole point. From the moment I met you, the best decisions I’ve made have all been based on instinct, they’ve all been insane and spur-of-the-moment and—completely insane.”
“You said ‘insane’ twice.”
“Yes!” Mike shakes his shoulders back and forth. “Because they have all been completely fucking crazy! I took a job as a fraud in a major law firm, pretending to be a lawyer, surrounded by actual lawyers! I headed off a not guilty verdict in my own court case to make sure I went to prison! I nearly died like three times!”
Harvey immediately furrows his brow, raising his arm to shrug off Mike’s grip. “Mike,” he says lowly, “what’s wrong?”
How many layers to that loaded questions?
“Everything.” Stepping back, not quite back to the wall, but close, Mike makes an awkward gesture in between a shrug and a wave, clumsy and unplanned. “I’m going out of my goddamn mind, and my life is apparently a rotting shithole, and I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m back home where I belong, and this, right here, you and me, this firm, I want this more than I’ve wanted anything in a long, long time, and it’ll be hard as hell, and it’ll be a lot of work, and it’ll be the riskiest—the second riskiest thing either of us has ever done, but tell me you don’t want to take that chance.”
Lunging forward, he grabs Harvey’s shoulders again, drawing him closer and locking their eyes together. “Harvey.”
Harvey blinks.
“Mike.”
Mike sets his jaw and sharpens his gaze.
“You like to go all in,” he says. “You like to win big. Well, you know what, this time around, the opposite of winning big isn’t losing small; it’s staying in jobs we both hate because they’re comfortable, because they’re there. I’m sick of living like this,” he lowers his left hand to his hip, “when we could be living like this.” He stretches his right hand as far above his head as it can reach, and Harvey smiles, obviously unbidden.
“My contract isn’t up for another year and a half,” he points out. “The noncompete.”
“Prevents you from working for another New York State firm until the expiration of said contract,” Mike dismisses, dropping his hands, “so we won’t file until then. We’ll spend some time recruiting clients, scoping cases, finding a venue, getting our shit in order; the minute your time’s up at the old firm, we’ll register as an LLC.”
Harvey cocks his head. “You’re thinking pretty clearly for a guy on the verge of a mental breakdown.”
“It comes and goes,” Mike replies flippantly. It’s good, though, it’s good that Harvey knows he’s not well. He ought to have a clear head about who he’s going into business with.
Harvey watches him for a minute, his eyes darting back and forth across Mike’s face. It’s good that he’s thinking about this, it’s good that he’s not diving in and expecting Mike to catch him. He would, of course, come hell or high water, but that’s not the point.
“Are you gonna be okay?” Harvey asks.
Mike frowns as the last of his manic energy dies away. Just a second ago, this seemed like such a good idea.
No, it still is; or, at least, it’s no worse an idea than it was when he proposed it, or when Harvey raised an objection so meager that it might as well have been acceptance. With Harvey’s support, between the two of them, it really is possible, they really can make it happen.
That wasn’t the question, though.
“I don’t know.”
Harvey’s posture wilts as he sighs out his nose; that wasn’t the answer he wanted, though he doesn’t seem too surprised by it. On the other hand, he’s not running in the opposite direction, so that’s…good.
“Mike,” he says cautiously, “I admire what you want to do, but I don’t want you to hurt yourself to do it.”
Mike doesn’t particularly want that to happen, either.
Actually doing it, though. Actually putting in the money, the time, the effort. Dealing with the inevitable setbacks, the vaguely predictable surprises, well.
It’s a lot to ask.
“Will you help me?”
“Help you not hurt yourself?” Harvey snorts. “What do you think I’ve been trying to do since the moment you crashed my interviews?”
That’s true, isn’t it.
Mike averts his eyes and shifts his weight to the right.
“You know what, eventually you’re going to have to learn how to tell me ‘no.’”
Eventually. If I’m going to stick around. If you’re going to stick around. If we’re going to quit our jobs and leave our wives and build our own firm from scratch, if we’re going to force our dreams to come true if it kills us, if we’re going to hold each other up through thick and thin, if we’re in this for the long haul.
Eventually, if we’re not planning on wandering around in circles forever.
Harvey claps him on the arm, a gesture so familiar that despite his delirium only a moment ago, Mike thinks he might start crying. Harvey just smiles.
“We’ll figure it out.”
Years of chaos, years of luck both good and bad, decisions well-intentioned and poorly planned, victories and disappointments, celebrations and ascensions to madness, have all piled up in their wake, and the future stretches out in unknowability, the eternal going, but none of that matters right now. The important thing is the time being, the present, where Mike opens his arms questioningly and Harvey doesn’t even take very long to step forward and pull him into an embrace, and everything is quiet and very still.
Certainly they might be headed for disaster, but really, who knows?
They just might make it out alive.