XVIII. His Sobs Woke Jane

It took an ominous and tricky thirteen minutes for Carlton to arrive, to bust his way through the front door that, mercifully, Shawn had been too lazy to lock. Shawn's head lifted, but he set it back down again. He was sprawled on his back, his hands cupped over each other on his abdomen. Somewhere music played. It sounded like ABBA—yet, oddly, not ABBA. An ABBA cover infiltrated the still and solemn air from Shawn's sixth appendage: his iPhone.

"Information Society," Shawn recited, wondering if Lassiter wondered. "Tommy Boy Records, 1988."

What other interesting tidbits were floating in Shawn's head? "This is why I won't play Trivial Pursuit with you. You have an eidetic memory."

"A good memory can be a curse," Shawn murmured in return, but he did not deny the eidetic memory bit. It wasn't true, but such a secret was a weapon. Something dangerous that Lassiter didn't know. Some assumptions were best used as spears and knives and escape routes. He stored that away for later, wiped a watery trace off the side of his eye. "I think Ingrid Bergman said that—or something similar."

Little white puffs decorated the bedspread, the floor. It took Lassiter a moment to realize the white puffs were wadded tissues. He collected a few, unafraid of Shawn's cooties. He could smell the place, too. A cross between faint fresh paint and mustiness. A window in the back could open, but Lassiter didn't touch it as he binned the wads in the only receptacle he could find in that place. He dropped the envelope on the bed next to Shawn's hip, close enough for Shawn to grab it, lift it to his eyes. He wanted to find a hint of anger or relief, but Shawn's gaze remained more bleak than blank.

"Do you want a ride to the bank, or are you okay getting there by yourself? They close at four."

"You know what bank—?"

"Oh, there's not much I don't know about you, Spencer."

Shawn remembered—wished again that he could forget. Hiking upward from the waist, he sniffed inward, got a nose full of tear-fresh snot, and rubbed his face. In the thirteen minutes it took to stop being alone, he had made a very difficult decision. He stopped the music on his phone. The apartment descended into an aching quiet. His vacant gesture indicated the area around him.

"Sit down, Lass. There's something I want to tell you."

In Carlton's gut, a bubble of anxiety bloomed like heavy steel flowers. He found a task chair, black and old, and sat in it. His heels ushered its sluggish wheels closer to the bed. Not too close. A distance was required to keep his sanity. Shawn looked ready for a guillotine.

Shawn saw Lassiter was not going to come any closer. He shifted over two feet on the bottom edge of the mattress. Unsure how to start, this was a confession without actually confessing anything he'd done wrong, only what was, and what had been, he was more sad than nervous.

"There's something you don't know—something about me and Adrian and the house you're living in."

Carlton listened. It was improbable—but, to mess with the Shakespeare quote that came into his head—it was not improbable fiction. The house he had bought had been his only because of Shawn. He'd known that. Shawn had told him about the house. Shawn had practically picked it out, told him about it before it was officially on the market. Shawn had had a friend in the real estate business, and Lassiter later met her at the house, Rebecca Dijon-West. He hadn't known that Rebecca Dijon-West was friends with Adrian, that Adrian was also, by proxy, in the real estate business. There'd never been an Adrian before. He'd never heard about Adrian—never heard a thing. Let alone—

"Jealous?" Carlton finally said when Shawn reached the ellipsis at the end of his part of the story. "Jealous—of me? Of you and me? Come on! That's not—! You can't be—! You did tell him that—"

"Relax, I told him. When he was sober. When he was drunk. When he was hungover," he said aloud, repeating what had been repeating in his head for the last half-hour. "I kept telling him. And he never seemed to just—he just didn't really get it." The heat hit his nose again, turned his face red and his eyes to sorry pools. Adrian would not listen. There was nothing between him and Lassiter, but there was everything between him and Lassiter that, right then, Shawn wished had been between him and Adrian: trust, honesty, the truth of emotions. "Anyway, he was so angry at me, said I had ruined it by telling you, and he backed out. Even though it was everything," he paused with a heavy intake of breath, "everything in a house that we wanted. You're better off with it than we would've been. And now you know," he gave a feeble lift of his hand, "why I like being there so much. Even if there hadn't been an Adrian, and there isn't, I still liked that house."

Carlton held up the words Shawn had said, let them echo. When he was sober. When he was drunk. When he was hungover. So—that meant that Adrian had a drinking problem? Or was that Shawn's anger whisking his ex out of proportion? It happened. Anger was no emulsifier of facts, only distended them, occasionally righted when it started to recede to show the truth. He found a box of tissues behind Shawn, plucked one out, gave it to Shawn. "Adrian was an alcoholic?"

"Was—is—assume he is, still. A functioning one," said Shawn, bundling the used tissue and holding it in his moist palm, "the kind that doesn't see it, doesn't have a problem because he doesn't see it."

Sounded like a few people Carlton had known, a few he knew presently, some he'd been related to. He brushed his forehead free of the burden of this, pinched his eyes tightly closed. "Shawn—it isn't your fault. Okay? Not this stuff about this house. Not Adrian's drinking. Not even his jealousy about you and me." He paused to give a scoffing laugh at that. Shawn did not laugh back.

"I didn't notice it until the last few weeks or so," Shawn admitted, as if he, too, had been an alcoholic lingering at the edges of realizing it. He hardly drank. And the knowledge of what it could do to a person, make a dark shadow of him as he stood in a bright room, would likely turn him off of drinking for a while. Not forever, of course, but a while. "I wanted to tell you. I don't know if it's because I feel guilty—"

"You shouldn't feel guilty. You're not the one who did anything wrong."

Now Shawn laughed, merely a titter, a bounce of his shoulders, a quivering, half-finished grin. "That's funny. That's what he kept telling me. And you don't know what I did. You don't know what he said to me last Saturday."

I would if you would tell me! But he knew Shawn wouldn't. Sometime, maybe, he'd tell. For now, Lassiter had heard enough. "Come on," he got off the seat, grasped Shawn's hoodie by the hoodie, and hauled him upwards, "we'll get you to the bank. Let's get out of here. No wonder you don't like this place. It's dark and sort of dank, isn't it?"

"A little. Home sweet home." Shawn put the money in the back pocket of his jeans, Lassiter witnessing it should the envelope suddenly vanish. "Lass," he stopped a second, before they headed for the door, "the money—the money's from the house. It was my contribution. It was a paltry sum compared to what Adrian had saved up, but I was really proud of it."

"I'm sure you were," he said without sarcasm, only meaning it. "And maybe you'll get to use it." He jetted towards the door, turned back again to explain. "Just—not with Adrian. I already wanted to punch him in the face, and now I want to kick him in the nuts and throw him in the ocean."

"Kicking him in the nuts seems a little intimate."

"And what he did to you isn't? I've known you longer. I get to kick your exes in the nuts if I have to." He took Shawn by the hand without really thinking about it. Not because he was into Shawn, or practicing any maneuver that would augment Adrian's unfounded jealousy, but because Shawn had never seemed so tiny and helpless and pathetic, and he needed encouragement to get out the door. He squeezed the cold fingers until they squeezed back, and let go when they got the front of the car, about six feet later.

"I forgot to tell you," Shawn started to say as they headed for St. Andres, "that what you did this morning for Gus was really great. He told me that he came to you all freaked out—weeping—"

"More like openly sobbing," Carlton corrected.

"And you said you'd go with me instead."

"I was all for letting you go alone, don't make me better than I am."

That was what Shawn liked about Lassiter. He was bone-hard, yes, but beneath it all was a tendency to be more modest and less arrogant than presumed. Around his friends, Lassiter was at his best, at his truest and most endearing realness. In front of others, he could be a genuine asshole. "Why did you go with me?"

"I wanted to go to breakfast," he started to respond, then, finding it wasn't the whole story, bravely went on. "I knew you would need two people in there. You couldn't sneak away from the classroom on your own and go snooping around, could you? That wouldn't work. They'd get suspicious too easily. Two of us, though? Two of us could do it. I didn't realize that you'd sucker them into your charms and wiles so easily, or that I'd have enough time to look around a bit more while you explained your—your—chaotic imaginal realm. Do you have a bank branch preference?"

"The one by the Market," Shawn answered perfunctorily.

In due course, Shawn deposited his money at his preferred bank branch, the cash in his checking account, the savings back in his savings account. He'd saved out a hundred dollars to keep it open without any sort of penalty—and his mom had dumped fifty bucks into it just to help out. It was a mom thing. And now that the money was back where it belonged, he hoped it grew into bigger and beautiful things. Something more than the house that Lassiter lived in. He could do a nice thing for Gus and Jules, maybe, a good wedding present that they wouldn't expect from him. He could plan a trip—maybe in August or September, when it was hot and stuffy in southern Indiana and he could get away from all of this for a while.

Back in the Crown Vic, Shawn stayed still and Lassie didn't throw the car into drive just yet. Tentatively, Shawn said that he had a coupon for Mission Street Ice Cream, and, just as tentatively, Lassiter drove them there. It was a short trip, and Shawn found the coupon in his wallet. They used it on a banana split—it was the only thing Shawn wanted, and the only thing Carlton cared about was that Shawn got what he wanted, without actually admitting it. Sixty degrees and cloudy might entice others from chillier regions of the US to sit outside, but Lassiter didn't like the cold breeze off the ocean—it'd be a few weeks before it started to warm up—and Shawn was fine sitting inside. They ate the banana split talking about culture and Carmina Burana, Russian Lit and the next handgun Lassiter was thinking of purchasing. Shawn knew a little about guns, mostly rifles. His uncle had handguns, and Shawn himself had one—it wasn't really his but it was sort of his, since he used it every time he was in Indiana.

"Shooting locals, are you?" Lassiter teased.

"Nah, that's no fun. They always run away when they see me coming."

Lassiter chuckled, mixing pineapple and whipped cream on a spoon. "That does not surprise me. You have targets?"

"Uncle Fenz usually saves up cans and we shoot those off hay bales out in the back pasture. It's fun. You should come next time I go. All the riding you can stand, too. It's been a while since the horses were ridden more than, you know, once or twice a year. And you and Uncle Fenz can talk Civil War precepts well into the night—believe me, he's as much of a nerd as you are."

"Comforting. I'll consider it," he said, trying to imagine being anywhere with Shawn Spencer that wasn't Santa Barbara, or in this unlikely location of a quaint ice cream parlor, and sharing a snack. "As long as I don't have to play Trivial Pursuit."

"Ah, someday, Lass, you will cave. You will join the Dark Side, Jedi Carlas Tonter."

"Never, Enser Shawpen!"

"I can feel the anger in you."

"That's my bladder, have to go the restroom."

Shawn smirked as Lassiter got up from the table. At least, money back in the bank and ice cream in his tummy, along with a healthy dose of banana, he was feeling better. Even when he was handling the cash, he didn't think about how Adrian had probably touched it, that it might be the last thing the two of them handled. Until—

Lassiter swept into the seat again, and they finished the banana split. Shawn was entertained by Lassiter's quirky tales of the Civil War, little stories that he had never heard before. Shawn had known that people stood on the rooftops in Charleston to watch the battle at Fort Sumter, but he hadn't heard the tale of the drunken fist fight at Congress in 1858 as they debated the statehood of Kansas.

"Wait, why were these guys drinking?" Shawn queried. "Upstanding citizens, polished American politicians, shouldn't be drunk on the job!"

"It was well after midnight," Carlton said, "and they were drinking just to stay awake while the debate went on. Well, the better angels of their nature did not prevail—and a fight broke out."

Shawn winced his eyes at Lassie. "Is that really true?"

"I swear," he said, raising his right hand, "it's a true story. Are you ready to go?"

"As ready as ever."

"Thanks for buying."

"Have to take my best guy out once in a while. Anyway, I'm, like, totally rich now."

Carlton thought the idea of having an extra two hundred dollars as making Shawn Spencer "rich" was kind of endearing. "I have a feeling you've lived at the bottom of your piggy bank most of your life."

"You could say that—and you'd be right. Even when I was a kid, my parents made me earn everything. Character building, they called it. And I have lots of character."

That was inarguable. Instead of taking Shawn home, Lassiter drove them to the Museum of Natural History. They couldn't stay too long, the place closed at 5, and Shawn was surprised that it was nearly 4:00 when they got there. It was a fun hour, and they were the last ones out. The curator and guard watched them go with flint in their eyes. It made Shawn laugh, like they'd done something uniquely unlawful, as they headed to the car. With plenty of daylight left, they ended up in Montecito, at Lotusland, where Shawn hadn't been since returning to the city. It was a cross between a garden and a museum. The amount of succulents alone was enough to make Lassiter rather giddy. Shawn had to rein him back from fantasyland.

Now only a couple of miles from Sunberry Lane, it was natural for Carlton to return to the house. Shawn was relieved to walk through the back door, catch the odors that he was more familiar with, more comfortable with, than the dank and mustiness of the laundromat. He sprawled, belly first, on the dining room floor. Lassiter used his long legs to lift himself over the body there, and landed in the kitchen. His own succulents, his "little pets," as Shawn called him, were fine on the windowsill over the sink.

"We don't have much to drink. Want some water?"

Shawn rolled to his back, staring at the speckled ceiling. "I can make iced tea."

"We don't have any."

"We do." He rolled to his side to see into the kitchen. A layover of cells, the past with the future, Lassiter in the kitchen and Shawn haggling with him about domestic things. "It's in the cupboard by the fridge. No—for real. Ugh—I'll make it."

He watched Shawn work magic with five tea bags—he did have regular tea bags and had had no idea—and throw in one peach flavored herb tea bag that must've been added to his collection from his ancient days with Victoria, or it was an item O'Hara had brought over. The end result was tasty, but it was too cold now to sit in the back yard. They stayed in the impersonal dimness of the kitchen.

"When's your date with Will?"

"At seven-forty-five," Shawn replied, dumping used tea bags into the bin. He liked the smell of used tea bags—sort of clean, refreshing, like Lassie's eucalyptus body wash.

"That's an odd time for a date. Are you meeting him? He picking you up?"

"We're meeting at the restaurant. He gets off work at seven-thirty and will be ready to meet up by then. Ergo, odd date commencement time."

Lassiter remembered that he'd sent Dobson and McNab to follow Shawn around that evening. They were both off the clock at nine. He trusted that Shawn could handle himself when it came to Will, and the rest was nobody's business but their own.

Shawn put the pitcher of tea in the refrigerator. It was void of magnets on the front, and Lassiter didn't keep many personal mementos around. He had a few in the guest room, not exactly a place open to the public. Shawn had guessed it was his mom and dad in one photo, his sister in another, and there was one of him and Victoria on their wedding day. It was still framed, but sitting flat, glass towards the shelf, ashamed it existed.

He thought of Adrian again, making him feel ashamed of his own mistakes. "You know what sucks?" he started to say, then doubted the sagacity of the upcoming statement. What the hell, though, right? He could say it now and mean it. "I hate Adrian for making me second-guess my friendship with you. I think that's what makes me so angry. Is hate just anger?"

"I think it's a lot of things. It's a lot of things—and sometimes those things aren't a waste of time to feel. Hate can be, you know, hate, anger, guilt, embarrassment, longing— I'm glad you can recognize what he did to you. Maybe you can take that and start to heal."

Shawn wasn't sure—it seemed like a foreign concept, one he would need time just to get used to, let alone implement. But what did that mean? Had Adrian been trying to turn Shawn against Lassiter, against the SBPD, his work, his friends? It seemed unlikely. Lassiter—yes, all right—maybe—Shawn could see that, even believe it. "His jealousy was way, way out of line."

"I'm not disagreeing," Lassiter said, quiet and still outwardly, trembling a bit inside. "I'm on your side, Shawn. And when it counts, I will always be on your side. The thing about Adrian, and guys like Adrian, is that they're jackasses. They use people until they can't be used anymore, until the use has been wrung out of them. Or they get too independent."

By a hardness and vulnerability in Shawn's eyes, that came and went with a flash, Lassiter knew he was on to something.

So that's what it was. Shawn had been too independent. Shawn had worked for the SBPD, and he liked it, and Adrian had wanted him closer to home. Away from Carlton Lassiter, well, that wouldn't have hurt any. Carlton's arms crossed even tighter over his middle.

"You should always do what you want to do, Shawn, and don't let anyone tell you that your dreams, your work, what you do, that it isn't worthwhile. Adrian was just trying to find a way to let it make sense to him. Why do you like working with the cops, with the SBPD? He couldn't believe that it was because you liked what you did, that you genuinely wanted to help people. So—"

"It had to be you," Shawn muttered, getting it—really getting it. "Oh, my God—he made it all up because it was the only thing that made sense to him."

"People are idiots. Men in love are the biggest idiots of all. Adrian was an idiot in the wrong way. Me. I've done stupid shit because of love—believe me. Yourself included. But we don't mind. We're not like Adrian. He didn't want to be an idiot because of love. It went against his character. But you didn't mind. I don't mind. That's what makes us better than him. We want to do stupid things because we're in love. That's what makes love worthwhile—it makes us live outside ourselves and our own pathetic self-expectations. You get it?"

"Yeah," Shawn said, playing absentmindedly with his too-long hair, "yeah—I think so." For the first time in over a week, he was almost feeling sorry for Adrian. Maybe pity was a stepping stone to forgiveness and forgetfulness, too. At least Lassie helped him feel less sorry for himself.

"Now—how do you feel? Good? Okay? Pep talk over?"

Shawn smiled, letting it grow and bring color to his cheeks. He thought about the little bug that Carlton had saved from the car that morning, and how much that'd meant to him. He felt the same sense of freedom and release and hope that he'd felt then. There were decent men out there. Carlton was one of them. Maybe Will would be. Maybe there'd be someone else for him eventually—man, woman, he didn't care. Just someone decent, that loved him, that let them have important talks of emotional things while standing in the kitchen.

Unembarrassed by what he'd said—didn't he just admit that love made him an idiot?—Carlton gave Shawn a slap at the shoulder. He hailed him to follow. "We never finished The Good, the Bad and the Ugly the other night. When it's over, I'll take you home so you can meet Will later. And don't wear that." He fanned a finger across Shawn's baggy old blue jeans and terminally ill green hoodie. "Please, don't wear that."

"Most of my nice clothes are in a box."

"One box?"

"I don't have that many nice clothes."

"I'll lend you something, you damn man-child. There's something you can buy with your extra money: a nice suit."

"Sounds ominous. Like an omen. Suits equal funerals in my head. Anyway, if it were up to me, you know what sort of suit I would get."

Lassiter's eyelids dropped down, reopened wider than ever in surprise, in shock. "My mind just exploded. So many potential disasters!"

"Come on," Shawn said, half-seriously, "you know it'd be a white sport jacket with white linen trousers and a pink t-shirt."

"Ah," Carlton understood, "Crocket: Miami Vice. Yes, of course. Please," he gave a shake of his head to the pathetic being in front of him, who would not be happy until it was socially acceptable to cosplay as an adult in the working world, "don't do that."

"Huh! We'll just see! It's my money, after all! Meanwhile," a little more modest now, "I won't say no to you lending me something."

"Good, remind me when the movie's over."

He hit Play on the remote, and they were back in Sergio Leone's world, exactly where they'd been just a couple of days ago.