“It sure is nice of you to finally visit. Seeing as you’re my mother and my daddy and my confessor now, you better make it all count.”

“The last time we met, you weren’t acting very familial.”

“You didn’t know my daddy. Are you Catholic, Marty? I figure I can ask you now without a conflict of interest.”

“Lapsed.”

“Oh, that’s real nice.”

Aaron props up one leg on the plastic chair that’s bolted to the ground opposite the metal bench; Vail took the bench seat with his back to the wall, pretty smart of him. In the visiting room, Vail is still wearing his overcoat like it’s the suit of armor that will protect him from whatever Aaron can deal out. True, they’re not breaking the bank heating this place during the winter months, but if he’d turned up three months ago he’d have been sweltering in all that cashmere and cotton. It vindicates Aaron’s decision to show up in a tight tee shirt — he’s put on muscle somehow even in this place and he wants to know Martin is looking at him.

“Did you like me more when you thought I was suh-suh-simple, counselor?”

“You were never dumb, Aaron. You chose that act for yourself.” Vail is smiling tightly. Boy, does he look tired.

“Sure, but you thought you had some kind of idiot savant on your hands. You liked it when I called you sir.”

You don’t get to be any kind of lawyer at all without getting a sick thrill out of feeling like the smartest person in the room, talking circles around the slack-jawed public. Janet Venable must have been the same way, just about the most arrogant bleach-blonde piece of ass the Illinois bar association had ever seen. The two of them must have just loved each other.

You can tell it hits the mark because Vail doesn’t talk for a second, then he clears his throat. “How are they treating you in here?”

“Good enough. I’ve got me a doctor who wants Aaron and Roy to play nice with each other, but he’s no Dr. Arrington, he’s got me doped up to the eyes and drawing pictures. I got my treatment plan, I take lots of classes.”

“Read any good books lately?”

“Some stuff.” Aaron straightens up and shrugs. The library cart comes around twice a week but he’s already burned through most of the greatest hits. The rest is trash, Westerns for the men and soggy romance novels for the women. Somebody slipped in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian there alongside all the Louis L’Amour shit and Aaron’s been reading it like the Bible, front to back and over again.

“You look like you’re doing pretty well. You haven’t maimed anybody. I thought you’d be telling me all about how they’re torturing you in here.” His verbal manner is glib again, sort of a way of recovering his status. That sleek smiling smug attitude that says I’m doing you a favor.

“Yeah, well, I keep myself to myself these days. Really it’s just like Saviour House. Everybody’s got their dogma, and you’ve got all these rules saying where you go, who you’re with. They all want to hear you say your catechism.”

Take your medicine, play nice, wake up, go to group, go to bed. Can’t stand still, can’t sleep, can’t come. He used to be able to jerk off without thinking about anything in particular, he could let his brain go somewhere else while his right hand did the work. He can’t do that anymore, the only thing harder than keeping a hard-on is getting to actually blow your load, and whenever he’s lying there in bed with his sad dick in his hand he can’t get Vail out of his mind.

Martin shifts on the bench when Aaron approaches, like he’s making a place for him. Aaron slides in close next to him, hooking his leg over Vail’s lap to snag him in place. Vail’s clothes smell so good in contrast with bleached institutional laundry and he wants to breathe that in while he’s making him squirm. Aaron wants to remember that smell, the smell of money and comfort.

People screw in here all the time — in the laundry building, in the empty rooms before group. This’ll give Marty something to come back for.

Aaron slithers into Vail’s lap, enjoying the way it makes him huff a breath and rock back gingerly to let him in. He wants him there. He wants him, he’s not too scared to push him away, he’s smiling an expensive smile and his small bright eyes are creased with amusement. This is Martin Vail having a good time, this is him playing ball. If he’s a little bit scared, then it just sweetens it for them both.

Christ, he smells so good, it’s almost insulting. Thick hair, crisp shirt collar, beautiful shoes sliding on the tile floor as Aaron leans in closer. His hand is on his waist, and Aaron can feel him through his white cotton undershirt like a splash of boiling water. Aaron wants to remember all of this, he wants this to hold onto when he’s playing Aaron. When he has to hold his head up the right way, let his shoulders slope inward, look out at the world with a face like a baby deer, and all he wants to do is scream and scream.

Aaron watches him for a while there, just watching. His fingers curl against the collar of his shirt. Any minute now the guard outside in the hall is going to bust that door open and haul the two of them off one another, any minute now, but not yet.

“You think you’re something ‘cause once in a while you take on some charity case and you feel real good about it all. You want to know what I believe? I think you’re all the same. The holier you act, the worse it is.”

Martin’s eyes flicker dryly over his body. “I see. You’re just too much for anyone to resist.”

Fuck him. Aaron leans back to stretch out his neck, letting his head roll from side to side — it hurts, walking around folded up like a piece of paper all day, and if the gesture is calculated to remind Martin Vail how much strength this body still holds, then good. He’s stronger than he looks.

“You don’t feel that way, do you? The two of us, we’re just good friends. I bet you do this with all your pals.” Aaron places his hands on either side of Vail’s chest, enjoying the solidity of him as much as the threat. “Now I may not look like much, Marty, but people can’t seem to keep their hands off me, so I must be doing something right. You’re just another one of them.”

“You’re really pushing it, Aaron. Is that what you want me to call you?”

“I don’t give a fuck what you call me, Marty. That whole thing was just a necessary evil. Didn’t want to get the chair, didn’t want to get facefucked for twenty years in the state pen, so what was I supposed to do? Everybody’s got a right to the best defense they can get, I just helped you along a little, helped you help me. Do you think anybody gives a fuck what happens to people like me, counselor? They never have. But I think you know that.”

Martin Vail wants to get his picture in the paper. He knows nobody cares about ninety-nine percent of the people who get charged, nobody cares about schizophrenic Polish grandmothers stripping naked in the street and poor Black kids getting busted for stealing a pair of sunglasses — nobody cares who gets knifed or shot or beaten to death as long as they’ve got no money. If the archbishop had been some shitty wino living out of his car, picking up chicken down at the Greyhound station, nobody’d care how much of him Aaron cut off or why. Martin Vail knows all that and sometimes he lets himself feel bad about it. Once every couple of years he’ll take on some case pro bono and see how it turns out and when it turns out bad he can tell himself he’s done his best for some kid who the public defender would hang out to dry. He just never planned on somebody like Aaron. It’s like he never really planned on winning.

Aaron exhales. There’s a tightness in his chest that needles at him, like he’s an animal caught in a trap. Back in Creekside, he used to set snares for rabbits and possums and all that but tell the doctor that here and he’ll start asking you if you used to start fires too.

“They watch you all the time in here,” Aaron says. “Can’t have a smoke without somebody riding your ass about it. You’ve got something for me, Marty, haven’t you? I know you ain’t forgotten what I asked you for.”

“Yeah, sure.”

The pack and the matches are there in the inner pocket of Vail’s coat — Aaron reaches in and feels for them, passing his hand through the soft envelope of warmth created by another human body. “Knew I could count on you,” he says, and grins.

The first drag is so sweet, letting the first breath of nicotine pour into him — displace one craving, trade it for another. Roy smokes, Aaron doesn’t. It made for a cheap prop for a while there but in this place, there’s not much else to do. Dr. Easton thinks it’s a positive sign, that the two ego-states are becoming better integrated. Aaron bends down to breathe tobacco smoke against Vail’s mouth — his lips are parted, and Aaron’s thumb presses into the corner of his mouth to keep it that way. Martin breathes him in without resistance, inclining his head back until it meets the tiled wall.

There’s no one else in this whole shitty place who knows the truth. He’s the only person who knows what Aaron really is, and Aaron’s sharing with him the best way he knows how.

When they come apart, still flush and face-to-face, Aaron straightens his back. Beneath him, Vail is turned on, but trying to play it cool; he’s got real fuck-me eyes and it’d make anybody want to hurt him real bad.

Aaron takes another pull, turning his head to exhale this time and let the nicotine smoke dribble from his lips. “It’s funny, Archbishop Rushman didn’t want any of us altar boys smoking cigarettes. He called it a dirty habit but really he just didn’t like the taste of it.”

Never said anything about shooting up a little horse, though. That was Alex’s preferred way of forgetting, but Alex didn’t get seven years maximum in a maximum-security state hospital ward; he got roughed up by a couple of jackleg lawyers and then thrown back out on the street like trash. Mentioning Rushman at all was a mistake; enough to kill anybody’s hard-on. Aaron watches as the look on Vail’s face cools, from desire to something else.

“You must think about him a lot, then. About the archbishop.” Marty says it like he cares, like he’s worried about him. All these months knowing the truth and he’s still holding on to the shadow of what he thought Aaron used to be. He misses the performance of wounded innocence.

Still, Martin wants him; he knows there’s a limit on how much he can have him, at least here. With all that money he makes he can fuck whoever he wants out there, but not here. He’s itching to touch him and it’s not that it isn’t nice but whenever he’s got a nice thing going for himself Aaron can never resist sticking the knife in and digging around a little.

Real close, voice low, so Vail can feel Aaron’s breath against his skin.

“I got what I wanted,” Aaron says. “I got that son of a bitch, and now whenever things are getting a little quiet over here I can just remember how he squealed when I really started cutting him.”

“I know, sweetheart, I know.” Vail’s fingertips ghost over his cheek in the shadow of a caress. “If you’re such a mastermind, why’d you panic?”

Aaron’s spine goes stiff. “Come the fuck on, Marty, are you serious? Do I look like a guy who panics?”

“You’re telling me you went into the archbishop’s bedroom with a butcher knife in your hand but without an exit plan?”

That’s about enough of that. Aaron slides out of his lap and stuffs the pack of cigarettes into his waistband, fuming. Martin doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Martin’s never had a problem in his life that he couldn’t talk his way out of. Little Aaron Stampler is the worst thing that’s ever happened to him. The pleasure of knocking that wry little look off his face might even outweigh the pain in the ass of having nobody to talk to.

Aaron crosses over to the door, leaning back against the glass in a taut pose of carelessness. If Vail wants out he’s going to have to grow a pair and push past him.

“Listen, man, I had shitty luck. There was a cop car down in the alley and I bolted.” His foot won’t quit joggling. Aaron hooks his hand in the crotch of his sweatpants.

Vail raises his eyebrows at that; his gentle skepticism is accompanied by a decorous crossing of his legs. “You never thought someone might see you leaving Savior House?”

“Didn’t plan on running straight into a cop, did I? Shit.”

“You must have planned what you wanted to do to him. I bet you thought about it a lot, over a year and a half.”

Aaron sucks down smoke, then exhales a rough laugh. “I had plenty of time.”

There’s one thing they’re pretty fucking good at here and it’s stomping on damn near any show of anger. You could come in here like Mother Teresa but the minute you squawk about some shrink trying to touch up on you or some psycho shouting in your ear all night they’d knock you down two levels’ worth of privileges and have you sleeping on the bare floor, eating with your hands. It’d make anybody crazy.

Vail makes a gesture as if he wishes he had something in his hand to take notes with— but in here it’s no pens, no pencils, no paper. It might as well be a useful piece of stagecraft, like polishing his reading glasses. “How long after you arrived did the archbishop begin approaching you for sex?”

Aaron’s leg is still jumping up and down, muscles buzzing with nasty energy. He has to try not to hug himself now, not to let the old sad-sack Aaron mannerisms creep into his body again, but the tension of resisting it makes his jaw tight. “It took him a while. I thought it was a come-on from the start, the way he came and found me in his big old Cadillac, but then a couple months went by and nothing happened and I kind of let my guard down.”

Martin frowns. “A couple months?”

“I don’t know, three, maybe. I was on my best behavior, must’ve been the longest three months of my life. Jesus Christ, have you ever heard something so stupid? If I’d have come in cussing and kicking shit over the bishop would never’ve laid a finger on me.”

“It must have been pretty galling, having to put on an act.”

“Yeah, well, I’m pretty good at taking direction.” Aaron finishes up his cigarette.

The two of them sit around eyefucking each other, waiting to see who’s going to break first. Maybe Vail wants him to beg for a favor — like their little dog and pony show in front of the jury didn’t wipe out any influence he might have in the whole shitty town. The whole reason he’s even free to drive across state to bring fresh shirts and socks and cigarettes to a former pro bono client is because nobody else wants to fucking hire him. Money isn’t a problem yet, not for somebody like Martin Vail, but it will be.

It’s Aaron who speaks first. “Now, I know you don’t like it when I lie to you, Marty, and as I’ve been thinking it occurs to me I’ve said some shit that wasn’t exactly true.”

Martin laughs. It’s sweet, the way his eyes crease when he laughs. “Maybe once or twice.”

What comes next, Aaron can’t help himself — it’s like the question is a living thing trying to claw its way out of him, warm and writhing, and it won’t hold still no matter how he digs into the heels of his hands with his fingernails. “When I get out, can I come and see you?”

“Are you asking, or are you telling me? I’m not your parole officer. I don’t have any say about if or when you walk out of here. I have no obligation to you.”

“I’ll have hearings. I can file for conditional release. You can vouch for me.”

“But you don’t want them to know what I know.” With the words something shifts in Marty’s bearing, something sharpens like a knife — his hands are laced together across his crooked knee, and there’s nothing in his face but indifferent coldness. “If you wanted me in your corner you shouldn’t have lied to me, Aaron.”

It’s like a dance: somebody leads and the other one follows, Vail presses forward and Aaron rocks back on his heel. He can feel himself sharpening too in response, stiffening — back to the door, hands thrust in his pockets, letting his shoulders square a little more and tightening his jaw to kill the last baby-fat softness in his cheeks.

Aaron lets himself give a real good sneer. “There’s some things I could tell you that might change your mind, counselor.”

“You mean Linda,” Vail says, flatly.

“Sure, I’ll tell you everything about the bitch. Do you want to know how I killed her? She begged me not to do it, but it felt kind of good, after everything. It kind of got me hot or something.”

“Well, the funny thing is, your girl Linda left me a voicemail last Wednesday. She says she’s ready to talk.”

Aaron snorts. “Bullshit. Bullshit.”

His anger, Vail’s pleasure -- there’s no hiding the sly enjoyment Marty takes in catching him out, and it’s got nothing to do with altruism or good intentions or the law, it’s all him. “She called my office from a women’s shelter. I thought you told me she was dead. ‘That cunt got what she deserved,’ isn’t that what you said? Didn’t she?”

“That’s a damn lie and you know it.”

“I’m sorry if I touched a nerve. Do you want me to call the guard?”

“You’re a fucking liar,” Aaron snarls. “I killed that slut with my bare hands, try and tell me I didn’t — I fucked her up good, choked her ‘til her eyes rolled back in her head. Don’t try and fuck with me, Marty, you’re not any good at it.” Aaron folds in on himself, raking at his arms with his fingernails, not because he’s scared because he isn’t, he’s angry. There’s a tightness in his chest like sudden nausea.

Marty’s lying, he’s bluffing, it takes a bullshitter to know one and Vail’s face is all warm amusement, all provocation, he’s testing him to see what he does. Aaron wants to hit him, bad, but he can’t do that, not here he can’t — whatever the warm living animal of his desire once was, it’s clawing him to ribbons now, eating into his guts.

“Linda Forbes is a sweet girl with a lot of problems. If you want me to put in a word for you, you might be interested in what she has to say.” Marty rises up from the metal bench, fixing the way his overcoat falls — maybe it’s just the low ceiling but he looks taller here too, older, stronger.

“Fuck!” Aaron strikes the metal door with the side of his fist, surging with satisfaction when Vail flinches. “I can’t stand you jerking me around like this, man, I’ve had it! You better get the fuck out of here, or I swear to God--”

Linda isn’t dead, but she should be. After what they did to her, Rushman and all his shitty altar boys, she’d be better off in a fucking landfill with all the rest of the trash people throw away. She should’ve offed herself for real instead of just trying, the bitch couldn’t even do that right. Better to be dead and buried than do what she did and still be walking around.

Vail’s expression is a fixed mask. His body language as he prepares to leave is pure imperial indifference. “What’s the matter, Aaron? Is something bothering you?”

“If you say a goddamn word to her I’ll cut your fucking throat, I swear to God!” But this is the wrong thing too, Aaron’s gone and said the wrong thing and he’s tripping over his own shoes in retreat as Vail backs him into the corner. He’s flinching back from the observation glass, he’s making himself look small again without even meaning to. There’s sweat on his forehead, and his guts are all tangled in a tight knot. Shit, even his hands are shaking.

“I think that’s enough for today, pal. See you in six weeks.” Vail doesn’t look at him as he presses the button to call the guard. They call them staff here, but there’s no real difference.