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The walls reek of bitter coffee and printer toner, the sickly smell of late nights and early mornings and office-sanctioned attempted manslaughter. You’ll work yourself into the grave for this company and you’ll do it with a smile, and you’ll crack everyone you’ve ever known until they shatter and all you’ve got left of the love you used to share is ice melting through your fingers. You’ll put your life on the line and you’ll do it again and again until it sticks, and by the time you figure out which pieces you shouldn’t have left, which ones you should have gone back to pick up and put into your pocket before it’s too late, that road will be frozen over three feet thick and you’ll have nothing to show for it but the memories.
Harvey looks out the window at the sun shining down through the clouds, the early morning light brightening the sharp edges of the sleek city skyscrapers, blotting out the crumpled cigarette butts smearing the filthy city streets.
I didn’t mean for you to take me seriously, don’t you know that? I didn’t mean what I said. I didn’t mean for you to listen.
I didn’t mean for you to leave.
---
Does anybody know where to go from here?
Harvey walks slowly from day to day, looking for clues, listening for some happy noise. He asks Rachel if there’s anything she can tell him, if she has any secrets to share; she shakes her head and turns away, and it sounds like a lie, but maybe that’s just wishful thinking. Maybe nobody knows, maybe that’s the final word. Maybe he should listen, read the writing on the wall and forget that blinking moment in time when things were different, when our lives hurtled down those railroad tracks and we couldn’t see around the bend but we knew that wherever we were going, it was gonna be somewhere good.
Where did you go this time? Is it somewhere I can find you? Is it somewhere I can follow?
I didn’t mean to say goodbye.
---
Days turns to weeks, and months, and years. He loses track; they pretend that they’ve done the same, for him. He could ask, if he really wanted to know. They’d tell him; three years, they’d say. It’s been three years. I could’ve sworn it was four, he’d murmur to himself, and they’d shake their heads and he’d know they were right.
That’s what they’d tell him, if he asked. He won’t, of course. But that’s how it would go.
In the end, it doesn’t even matter. It’s right there in the newspaper, a happy sort of accident that he thinks he probably ought to regret.
Michael James Ross, criminal defense attorney. Legal Aide of San Diego.
Of course he ran as far as he could. Of course, when he tried to get away, of course he’d do it right. Harvey wonders how he got there, if he hitchhiked or took a train or two, or a plane, or maybe a car. Maybe he stays as far away from cars as he can, maybe he hates to drive. Harvey doesn’t know. Harvey never asked.
Closing the paper, Harvey finishes his coffee and books a flight.
---
Did you miss me?
I hope you did. I missed you.
Three years of silence. Three years of neglect, of isolation and fostering bitter feelings and asking unanswered questions. Three years of making up reasons for things that don’t have explanations, the pointless rationalization of a stupid mistake that had stupid consequences.
It’s okay if you don’t feel the way I do.
Harvey doesn’t call ahead, but it’s not hard to lie his way into Legal Aide with his New York attorney’s badge and his Pearson Specter pedigree. It’s not hard to lie about something that needs to happen this way.
Mike doesn’t even look surprised.
“Whatever it is,” he says, “I’m not interested.”
Not interested in mending fences, not interested in building bridges. Not interested in healing whatever hurt is making your heart ache and pushing your world off its axis. Not interested in saving you from your own goddamn self.
Harvey smiles and pulls out a chair.
“You don’t even want to hear me out?”
Mike doesn’t smile back. He doesn’t do much of anything. Harvey almost doesn’t recognize him.
“You want me to do something for you,” Mike says. “You want me to help you out. Let me guess, you got yourself in over your head with a client and you need someone to sweet talk them into listening to you. You’re due in criminal court and you need your human encyclopedia hanging around to rattle off the last fifty court rulings about admitting fraudulently obtained evidence under special circumstances. You need me to pull your ass out of the fire and shut up and pretend that I’m the one who needs you if I want to make something of myself.”
You knew this would happen. You knew.
Harvey smiles wide, crosses his legs and takes up more space than he’s allowed.
I didn’t.
“Not today,” he says. “You know, I’ve been thinking about you since you left; I didn’t know what happened to you after you left the firm, I didn’t know where you’d gone or what you were doing, but I read that article about you in the Post, and I figured this was as good an opportunity as any to get in touch.”
Mike doesn’t smile back.
“You want me to come back to New York.”
I want to set the world to rights. Back the way things are supposed to be, back the way we were.
Do you remember how it was?
“I’d love it if you came back,” Harvey says. “But I’m just here today visiting an old friend.”
“An old friend,” Mike says in a voice that says the words mean something else.
Harvey’s smile cracks along the edges.
“You think I don’t see right through you?” Mike asks like it’s a rhetorical question. “You think I don’t know that you’re doing the same thing you always do? Trying to use me? Drag me around behind you to pull out at parties for a cheap show? You think I don’t know that you’re just like everybody else in my life, you’re just another son of a bitch looking at me like a tool instead of a person.”
I wouldn’t. I would never. No, I’ve learned my lesson, I’ve learned it the hard way. Don’t you know? Don’t you understand?
Harvey clenches his hand into a fist, twisted in the heavy wool of his pants.
“‘Go through these bylaws and find me a way to get rid of Robert Stensland,’” Mike quips. “‘Fuck your personal life, who gives a shit about your grandmother.’ ‘Stop empathizing with the clients, Mike, it’s not getting you anywhere.’ ‘Go—do your mourning somewhere else, you’re fucking up the office décor.’”
“Mike—”
“Harvey,” Mike stops him. “People don’t change. Okay? I know it, you know it. We’ve both been through too much shit to lie to ourselves about it. I’m trying to build myself a life here where nobody’s gonna take advantage of me because nobody’s gonna have the chance, where I can be just another guy at the office who nobody knows, and after everything you’ve done to me, I think the least you can do is let me have that.”
After everything you’ve ruined. Everything you’ve touched and made broken, and dirty. After all the hurt you’ve caused, can’t you do something right for once? Can’t you do something good for once in your damned, despicable life?
But I didn’t mean to, don’t you know that? Don’t you understand? Don’t you see that I was only trying to do what was best for you?
Harvey clears his throat.
“You know,” he says, “you’re a smart guy, Mike, but I think you’re wrong on this one. I think people can change, and I think you know it.”
He thinks for a second that Mike is going to smile, finally. The light is going to come back into his eyes, the part of his lips is going to give way to laughter. Everything will be back to the way it was, if only for a moment.
Mike shakes his head.
“No.”
The man I knew would answer different. The man I knew would see the world in brighter colors.
Harvey smiles, just in case.
“I changed,” he says. “I changed because of you.”
Mike scowls.
“The only change you made because of me was to change into a criminal,” he says. “The only thing you learned was how not to get caught. And now I’m gone and all that change is up in the air with nowhere to land, and you want me back to make your life easier. You’re— You’re exactly like everyone else, you know that, you, Trevor, you’re all the same.”
Every person who’s hurt you, every person who’s told you that you’re not enough. Everyone who’s said you’re only as good as what you can give them, you’re only worth as much as you can pay. They’re wrong, don’t you know that? And I’m not like them. I wouldn’t do that. I know you, and you taught me better than that.
Harvey uncrosses his legs and sets his feet on the floor.
“What do you want from me?” he asks. “What can I do that’ll prove to you that I know I fucked up?”
Mike smiles. Cold and thin and dark, he smiles.
“You can go.”
Don’t you know that I’ll do anything you ask me to do? Don’t you know that I had the world in the palm of my hand and I would’ve given it all to you?
The dusty air sinks into Harvey’s skin, the thickness of it stuffing his lungs, and he stands, looking down.
“You want me to go?” he says. “I’ll go. But I think you know that if I leave here, I’m not coming back.”
It’s your turn now. I’ve said my piece and I’ve done my part, and now it’s you who comes to me. It’s you who brings us back together, fitting the way we do. Push and pull, back and forth. Give and take. I’ve started the journey, and now it’s your turn to keep it going.
Mike looks up at him.
“You shouldn’t.”
Set me free, is what you’re asking. Let me go my own way. Let me find myself, the man I am and the man I can become, and believe I’ll find the road back to you.
Harvey nods, just once.
“I’ll see you around,” he says.
Mike smiles, bitter and fragile.
“Sure.”
Won’t I? Won’t we?
Yes, of course. Of course we will. These sorts of things, this you-and-me, they only come around once in a lifetime, and we both know better than to let it slip through our fingers.
Harvey walks slowly out the door. Across the tile floor, around the bend.
The hall door closes, the one that leads out to the stairs. He walks down a little too fast, almost tripping, catching himself at every last moment.
The front door closes, heavy and loud. He stands on the street corner, the damp air filling his lungs with every breath, his shirt clinging to his skin underneath his jacket.
Harvey boards a plane to New York City and does his best not to look back.
I’ll see you again.
---
Days turns to weeks, and months, and years. Five it’s been now, I think. Five years and twenty-two days.
If there was anything more I could have done, I wish you would’ve told me what it was.
Maybe someday, I’ll know better.
Maybe someday, it won’t be too late.
Isn’t it easy to say we believe it to be true?