Known Associates

by Halfpenny

If Richard had to put his finger on it, it was more like he was a costly experiment Conan was expecting something specific from, and he wasn't delivering very promising results.

10. Chapter 10

AN: Reissued triggers for mentions of child neglect, bingeing/purging, depression, addictions, and self-harm.

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The postcard arrived in the mail on Monday amidst a slew of bills and a miniature catalogue with sample perfume inserts. Having planned to clean or do something that resembled cleaning, Richard instead jammed one insert under the sofa cushions and the other through the slits of the vent in the bathroom before shelving his supplies for another month. The postcard lacked a return address, sporting an out-of-season scene of fat little snowy birds congregated on a telephone wire. When he flipped it over there was a tersely written date followed by 11:23am sharp. Pick up the phone if you value your way of life. - JH

He careened to his knees to gut the supply closet. Faxed advertisements got taped up over the door's window and Rachel's barber sheet got stuffed into the crack along the floor. He closed the vents and switched up the cellophane tape for masking tape to block the sound from entering the ventilation system, then swept the room for bugs as he pulled down the blinds over each window.

The phone rang. "How did you get this number," Richard demanded into the receiver, heart pounding.

"I have my ways."

"I told you never to call during business hours."

"Shy?" The laughter tumbled out in a throaty purr. "If I didn't know any better I'd think you were trying to hurt my feelings. Perhaps you should have a care for your tone, dear detective. After all, it's me holding the cards this time, not you."

Richard lodged a hip on the windowsill and crooked his index finger in the blinds to peer out to the street. "Let's keep this nice and brief," the woman said. "While I'm sure you would enjoy nothing more than to spend the entire afternoon with a beautiful woman like me, I have more important business to occupy my time. Walk to your desk. Get something to write with. Do it now."

"This is too risky. I can't do this here."

"Your daughter's at school, isn't she? I hear it's where good little boys and girls go to avoid growing up into failures like us. Though of course, she has been acting as some kind of secretary for your agency for a while now. Perhaps I should leave a message with her at her school to let her know what her father is up to? Maybe her mother would know how to get a hold of her."

"You're a monster."

"A monster with a list of relevant phone numbers in my hand. No more stalling, Detective Moore. And I would highly suggest not testing my patience any further."

He jammed his tongue against his teeth. He jerked away from the window, fumbling, sending his lighter skittering off the edge in his search for a pen.

"Ready or not," the woman said.

"I'm ready."

"It will happen this Friday and last all weekend. Our usual fund has covered all but your travel costs. Normally our leader would have deigned to contact you personally, but apparently you've become a hard man to get a hold of. That's naughty, Detective. I believe I told you last time that you needed to… make yourself more available to me."

"It's not my fault."

"I think we both know that's not true."

"You know nothing about me."

"Nothing!" The laughter was utterly delighted. "Oh, sweetheart, I know everything about you. There's nothing you can hide from me. Now, I would very much suggest shutting that pretty mouth of yours and listening carefully to what I'm about to tell you. I'm certain you wouldn't want to miss a single thing."

Richard copied down all the times, dates, names, and locations she gave him verbatim. He was acutely aware of every muffled whisper of traffic and every shifting bone in the building as the sun continued to bake off the morning's chill. "I think that should be sufficient," the woman said. "My compatriots and I will expect your full compliance."

"Listen, I just don't know if I can do this," Richard said. "Things are different now. I'm different. There are more extenuating circumstances."

"If you're speaking of that little boy I've seen on the news with you, I'm sure arrangements can be made."

"It's the other kid. She's older now – she asks more questions."

"Then give her the answers she wants. In moderation, of course. Make it work, Detective," the woman said. "No more arguments. You will be there, one way or another, or there will be consequences. Am I understood?"

Richard closed his eyes and kneaded them, working out the logistics with some resignation. "Will there at least be beer?"

"Am I understood, Detective?"

"I understand."

"So can we can count on your cooperation?"

He thumbed his eyes a while longer. "Yeah."

"Oh goodie!" The woman's voice immediately chirped up an excited octave. "Oh I can't wait to tell the others! Yes yes yes, for god's sake, there is going to be so much fucking beer. So much beer, Richard."

"Not that you couldn't land a lead on Torrential Hearts with these performances, but you seriously have to stop doing this," Richard said. "You have any idea how much crap Rachel will give me if she finds out I'm going without her? She can smell secrecy. I'm probably going to have to scrub the phone."

"Oh that's some rich deflection, you absolute colossal pain in the ass," Jamie said. "Maybe you should pick up the phone once in a blue moon so we don't have to use hounds to track you down. Now stop bitching and tell me how I should make my threatening note more convincing next time. Different postcard? Cut the letters out of a magazine so you didn't recognize my handwriting?"

"I mean, most people who want to kill me don't usually give me a heads up. If you lived closer you could just knock on my door and kill me in person."

"You realize you really could just bring your daughter, right? We don't mind. She's adorable."

"She was adorable. Now she's an overgrown wart lodged up inside the ass of all my free time. Seriously, don't call again unless it's the middle of the night," Richard said. "She's old enough to stay home alone this time and it's going to be hard enough keeping her in the dark with you guys leaving breadcrumb trails. Is there really going to be that much beer? Are club funds covering it? I can't imagine Craig greenlit that."

"That tightass would try to charge for air if he wasn't so busy sucking it all into his head. Nope, the beer is bro bono from yours truly. Perks from my new job – got a nice pay hike and some windfall coming my way pretty soon. I figured I'd share the wealth."

"It's good to hear from you," Richard said grudgingly.

"How good."

"Good enough to let you kill me in person."

"Threatening me with good times, huh." There was a mysterious tremor of laughter in her voice. Somewhere beyond her he could hear cars jostling each other and he figured she must have hit a main street payphone on her lunch break. "I'll consider it. Gotta scoot, handsome. Believe it or not this girl holds down a reliable 9 to 5 these days. See you this weekend. Bring your swimsuit if you don't feel like going nudie in the baths."

"Everyone else going to be there?"

"They RSVP'd weeks ago. You were the only holdout. You pain in the ass." Another honk, and Jamie sighed. "Gotta jet. Come ready to party."

Richard hung up to dig out the miniature calendar he kept in his locked desk drawer. He crossed out booze and yoga boobs on his Friday through Sunday time-block and wrote in its place: Judo team reunion. Bring swimsuit.

---

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Rachel wasn't bouncing back this time. Richard punched out on his emotional support clock pretty early each day because he wasn't unionized for paid overtime, but even he thought he'd put in a pretty good effort after the Peterson case. Rachel called home from school at lunch the next day to check on his location and woke up that night with screaming inquiries over whether or not he or Conan had been eaten by dogs recently. The day after was a rinse-repeat. Conan was hollow-eyed at breakfast and clearly looking to pawn her therapy off on someone actually blood-related to her.

Richard's parenting lexicon was pretty slim. Having mostly been corrected with fists as a kid and not always a hundred percent on what fatherhood was supposed to look like when it wasn't being delivered with fists, Richard wasn't a parent as much as he simply was an intermittent drunk typhoon of transatlantic failure who loved his kid. Rachel's highs and lows thrilled him and hurt him in the same way staring into a sunrise both warmed your face and fucked up your retinas. Her brilliance and her darkness scared the hell out of him.

Richard could admit to himself that part of the problem with Rachel was that she was simply too much like him. He could probably pawn some of it off on genetic roulette but for the most part, the number of traits she'd inherited from Eva were actually pretty low. Rachel just didn't deal with her pain the same way Eva did. She stewed like Richard stewed. The difference between them was what came out of her pot once she was done stewing, and that's where Richard got lost. Same kitchens, different pots.

Richard had been right on the edge of enrolling her in some therapy as a kid when by some miracle, all the tantrums had suddenly stopped. One day Rachel had cared about the cakes in the bakery store window and the next day she hadn't. She went from whining for more food to pressuring him to eat food off her plate once she'd noticed the disparity. She'd put herself to bed when he was too drunk or too tired to put her there himself. Schoolwork got turned in without him hounding her, she didn't run up the phone bill with her friends, she didn't use either one of her X chromosomes to bitch about the heat in the apartment. She'd gone from a seven year-old to a forty-seven year-old in a matter of days, and for the most part all he'd had to do after that point was continue to make sure she didn't starve or get kidnapped by witches.

He now found himself in the weird position of knowing his daughter better than anyone else on the planet and also being completely unable to recognize this bizarre bawling mutant that'd crawled out of the sewers of teenagehood to smear her nose-slime on him. For lack of a better idea, he made her a homemade cinnamon roll and a sunny-side up egg to boost her mood and watched her drip tears into her milk throughout breakfast. "This is just so nice, Dad," she repeated helplessly. She set the glass down and buried her face against her palms. "You're a really good cook. I love you so much."

"Great," he said, and made her stay home from school while he escaped downstairs to brainstorm ways to parent this. Summoning Eva's attack helicopter would yield nothing because Rachel flat-out wasn't emotionally honest with her mother. She'd hate him forever if he called up her friends. Kudo was still somewhere out of dodge and her teachers were probably almost as drunk as he was. Mostly…

— mostly, Richard knew that while he might not be afraid of the same monsters Rachel was afraid of, he was plenty afraid of other dumber smaller shit, and this was probably the bridge he needed to build to get to her. There'd been a reason she'd come to him for ghost hunting and monster slaying as a kid: Richard had understood what Eva hadn't. Logic didn't always snipe fear. Sometimes monsters under the bed could only be conquered with nightlights and monster spray and someone sitting in there with you to keep watch.

Having finally channeled his confusion into healthy therapy ideas, Richard instead went out and bought a package of her favorite hard candies to bribe her to stop crying. He lay a plastic-wrapped trail from her bedroom door down the stairs to his office while she was taking a nap, then called the upstairs phone twelve times until he heard her fling open her door with a bang. He hung up when she answered it. Satisfied with his work, he scrounged around for a cigarette, slung his feet up on his desk, and killed himself very softly in smoke and beer while he waited for her to come kill him louder.

The apartment door up the stairs opened. Rachel came down in increments, pausing after each creak. By the time she'd shouldered open the office door, she'd had to form a cradle against her stomach to carry all the candies and was looking more resigned than murderous. "I feel fine, Dad."

"Who said anything about feeling bad? Shut the door, you'll make people think we're open."

"We are open."

"The great Richard Moore is always open for emergencies. Some skirt's lost poodle or some kid's stolen transit card isn't an emergency. Shut the door."

Rachel sighed but eased her weight against it until it clicked. "I'm not five anymore, you know," she added curtly, rescuing the next candy off the mat. She then got the other candy a foot in front of that, and despite her posturing Richard saw her greedy little raccoon eyes take a sweep of the room. "If you want to talk, just say so. I know that's the reason you let me stay home anyway."

"I didn't do anything, why are you always coming after me."

"Dad, you put down a food trail. People only do that when they want to lead someone to a bigger surprise or trick a dog into the tub for a bath."

"So maybe I have a surprise for you."

"Is the surprise that you're actually planning to work for once?"

The burn was hilarious and Richard had to work very hard to be mad that his daughter was being disrespectful to him or whatever. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm the parent who let you play hooky today. If it'd been your mom here she would've shoveled you out the door snot and all. Maybe can the backsass and show your old man a little more gratitude."

"I know." Rachel's expression softened. She squatted on her heels and looked up at him with about a quarter of her previous sauce. "I know, Dad. I am grateful. I mean, I definitely probably shouldn't have taken you up on it, but I… did sort of need the sleep. At this point I'm just feeling guilty about Conan. He's probably wishing he could've stayed home and caught up on his sleep too."

"Hey, feel bad for me. I'm the one who bought candy and then was viciously maligned by his ungrateful gene-thief. Don't dads usually get some kind of #1 Dad mug when they're killing it this hard?"

"Yes, Dad." Rachel was tolerant. "I'm very grateful for the no-strings attached candy and love you very much."

"Yeah but what about the mug though."

"I did get you a mug. You broke it three years ago when you got drunk and tried to follow the aerobics channel workout on your desk. You also broke the lamp."

"You say that like mug stores and allowances don't exist," Richard said, then waggled his foot when she fell off the trail. "There. No, the other way. That way."

Rachel long-sufferingly followed his to the one by the plant. She spotted the next one on her own by the sofa and the last one on the sofa cushions. "What a coincidence that this is where the trail ends," she marveled, settling on the cushion with eyebrows arched in infinite shock and wonder. "Here I am right in front of you – by coincidence – with an armful of my favorite candies and no strings attached to any of them."

"Dey didin have peash," Richard said, mouth full. He shifted his cigarette to the side so he could stick his own candies out at her on his tongue in solidarity. "Jus stawbey and banananna."

"Strawberry's the best flavor anyway. Thank you, Dad, seriously. I do mean it, this was really sweet. Strings or no strings."

Richard waggled his foot again triumphantly. Rachel surrendered an obligatory bratty teenage eyeroll but was smiling as she spread her bounty out on the coffee table. Richard worked his candies down to nubs, watching the suspicion melt off her face as she popped the first of her own into her mouth. Strong olfactory memories from childhood always made trauma taste better. "Now I kind of wish I did have some of the peach ones," Rachel admitted, but laughed off her own gluttony. She drew her legs up and worked them into a casually impossible pretzel as she bent over herself to grab another. "Oh, gosh, this brings me back. Remember how you used to bribe me with these when I was a little kid? I swear I would've done anything for them."

"'Do I remember'," Richard said. "You launched your entire criminal enterprise off those things. I used to find them smuggled all over your room. I don't know where the hell you got all of them because it sure as hell wasn't from me."

Rachel's palm flew to her mouth just barely in time to keep the candy from rocketing back out. "Yeah, laugh it up," Richard said. "If I hadn't already gotten booted from BPD I would've had to retire out of shame. Ace detective extraordinaire and I couldn't even catch the eight year-old kingpin living under my roof."

"I did have a criminal enterprise," Rachel said gleefully, muffled. "Oh god Dad, I hoarded so many. You didn't even know how many."

"Ten thousand ants leading in and out of your bedroom told me just fine what you hoarded."

"I think it was just the handful I hid in the register. The smell got everywhere."

"Handful? Doctor's office had them when I took you in to get your tetanus booster. You unloaded the whole damn tray in your pocket and I didn't find out what you stole until it was too late."

Rachel seemed to be having trouble breathing and laughing and eating at the same time, which suited him fine because he wasn't fucking finished yet. "You know what else? That one you left in your pocket the day I did the laundry. Finally got you to quit cramming tissues in there and what's my reward? Candy ooze in the washing machine and dryer."

"It made everything so sticky and gross," Rachel said. "And it made the horrible pink stain on the butt of those brand new overalls you'd just bought me. You were so mad."

"What's this 'were' crap, I'm still mad. Serves me right for buying a tomboy white clothes. I should've just dressed you up in a canvas sack every day and emptied you out into the bath to save my wallet the trouble."

Rachel was beaming at him.

He ducked her brights by rescuing another candy by his knee. Strawberry tasted a little grosser with cigarette smoke but in a way that felt familiar. Most of his addictions came bundled with a flavor profile. "But you could tell how much I wanted them," Rachel said, quieter. "Couldn't you."

He hid a noncommittal noise behind the crinkle of the wrapper.

Rachel's smile unfolded into something sweeter. She tongued the candy into the pocket of her cheek and focused past him out the window, smoothing her own wrapper absentmindedly out over her knee. She looked better than she had this morning, more pink than pallor, but she'd moved like a glass ornament slipping down a branch when she'd lowered herself onto the sofa. He wasn't sure if he was supposed to catch her or let her break and then sweep up her pieces, so he distracted himself with another cigarette while he waited for her to decide for herself.

Rachel didn't break. She reshuffled her feet slowly, tucked them under her, and propped her elbow on the sofa arm for a while. When she spoke it was distant. "Hey, Dad?"

"What."

"Do you remember that day? In the store, I mean. The day you bought me those little overalls."

"Why wouldn't I?" His mouth was full again. "Sold both kidneys to pay for those."

"Yeah." Rachel thumbed her unraveling braid out over her shoulder, transferring her hair tie to her wrist as she began combing out the sections slowly.

The phone rang. He ignored it and for once Rachel let him. She continued to thumb through her hair, pensive, waiting until the call clicked over to tape. "It's funny," she said. "I remember looking at them while you were over hunting around the bargain rack trying to find shirts that would fit me. They were so cute. Butterfly snaps, little rhinestones on the cuffs – I knew every girl at school would be jealous if I wore them to class. By then I did kind of know we were hard up for money, so I didn't say anything even though I wanted them so bad I thought I was going to die if I couldn't have them. But I promised myself I'd be a good sport and be grateful no matter what you got me. Then after we were all done and getting ready to checkout, you walked by and snatched them right off the rack on the way up to the register. Not one word to me. You just… did it. You didn't even complain afterwards about how expensive they were. And I thought…"

Completely taken aback by the monologue, Richard stopped rummaging to blink at her. Rachel was able to meet his gaze for only a second before being forced to drop her own. In a world of emotional shootouts Rachel shot about as cockeyed as he did. "I just remember thinking how cool you looked," she murmured. "It's silly, but right then it really did feel like you could do anything. That you could make miracles happen. You even helped me tie-dye them later so the candy stain looked like it was there on purpose. I cried like a baby when I finally outgrew them. I still have them in my hope chest, did you know that? Right next to Jimmy's artwork and the baby blanket Grandma knitted me."

Richard felt the sun on the back of his head. The forgotten wrappers in his fist crinkled in the silence.

"… which is why I emptied the dish of candy into my pocket, because I loved the overalls just as much as I loved my favorite candy and no other article of clothing was worthy enough to rescue them," Rachel said.

"Yeah, nice save, asshole," Richard said. "Remind me again why I bothered feeding you when you stole half your body weight in candy every time I let you out of your cell? They could have arrested me for harboring a wanted criminal, you know. You're lucky we're not both behind bars."

"It's only because you said that in order to truly understand the enemy, you have to become the enemy."

"I only said that so you'd stop crying over your bullies and start knocking the crotches off your bullies!"

Rachel set her own wrappers aside and uncoiled. She placed her feet flat on the floor and straightened to face off with him directly.

Richard still felt a little winded. He compartmentalized the conversation for a later binge and returned her volley, not bothering to move his legs from his desk. Bad parents didn't need good posture to intimidate their kids. "Dad, look," Rachel said. "I understand what you're trying to do, okay? And I know I probably won't be able to convince you, especially after… after the past couple of nights, but I really am fine."

"Australia and Russia both called to ask who was being set on fire," he said. "I had to let Meguire know what was going on in case people started calling the police to report a homicide."

"I know."

"Two research submarines crashed out by the docks because you scrambled their sonar. A knight came to your window to rescue you from the witch baking you in the oven. Six dogs jumped off the fire escape. The space station—"

"Dad." She covered her ears a moment to insulate herself from his stupidity. "Dad, I know. I know, okay? And I'm really sorry I've been such a hassle, but I promise I'm fine."

"You started bawling over an egg."

"It wasn't the egg I was crying over."

"Ah hah." He skewered her grill from across the room with an index finger. "So you admit you were crying."

"I think it's pretty obvious that I was crying, Dad. It just wasn't over the egg."

"So you admit it was over the cinnamon roll!"

"Dad oh my god." Her hands went over her eyes a moment. "Please stop talking. Just listen. Listen."

Richard kept her in his sights as he leaned forward to snag another hard candy off the desk. "Yes I was crying, and no it wasn't over the milk or the cinnamon roll or the egg," Rachel said. "Breakfast just happened to be there. And I wasn't crying because I was upset."

"Then what the hell, kid. What did I do."

"You didn't do anything."

"Then what."

Rachel's jaw worked.

Unironically bewildered now, Richard dropped pretense to stare at her. Rachel tried several times to answer and visibly failed. She swallowed, licked her lower lip, and murmured, defeated, "It was cute."

"What?"

"It was cute, Dad. It was just… it was all just cute, okay? You were being so cute and I'm just not…"

Richard watched her gaze roam back and forth over the coffee table for a while. "I know how you can be when you try," Rachel said at last. "Not just… sort of try, but try-try. The breakfast, the candies, the overalls… it's not like I'm surprised when you do those things, exactly, but it's still… I guess after what happened with Maya and Nikki and Jack, I was feeling a little fragile and it just hit me differently than usual. I'm just feeling sentimental lately, all right? But that doesn't mean I'm not okay. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with me. So no, you didn't do anything, and no it wasn't the breakfast, and no it wasn't Conan or even Jack or anything else. It was just… all of it."

Richard sort of parsed that. He bought himself some time by unwrapping another candy and scratching an itch off his ankle with the opposite corner of the desk.

Rachel searched his expression. "Does that make sense?"

"No," Richard said. "Explain to me why exactly I should believe you're magically fine now that I've put the screws to you versus yesterday when I didn't."

"I wouldn't say I'm fine-fine, but if this is all you trying to do some kind of intervention, you really don't have to try so hard," Rachel said. "I talked to Serena and she gave me some of her aromatherapy candles to help me relax before bed. There's also a couple of herbal supplements I can try to. I'm working out my problems on my own. You don't have to worry about me so much."

"If I cared about being woken up I'd just stick you out on the fire escape. And don't tell me what to worry about."

"I'm not. I'm just telling you that you don't have to worry so much about me. I know all parents sort of see their kids as being little no matter how old they get, but I'm seventeen, Dad. It's my problem to worry about, not yours."

"Oh, well, gosh, if you say so," Richard said. "Don't tell me what to worry about. And stop feeding me lines."

"I'm not." A bad-tempered breath rocked out of her nose. Agitated, she scrubbed the last of her hair free from its restraints. "Dad, I know it's hard and you've probably been drinking, which doesn't help, but I sort of… don't need this right now. I'm grateful you let me stay home and get some sleep but I'm dealing with it, okay? And no offense, but you're sort of not the best authority when it comes to self-care. If I wanted that I'd live with mom."

He regarded the toes of his shoes across the desk for a while as smoke curled up around his nose.

Rachel crumpled into herself. She hiked up her knees up and set her face against them. "I did it again." She sounded exhausted and muffled. "I don't mean those things. I don't know why that keeps coming out."

"Same reason I taught you to aim for the crotch in a street fight," Richard said. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I don't know. If you think your mom can help—"

"No. There's nothing wrong. I didn't mean it."

"Look, why don't you just, I dunno. Call her up. Something like that. Whatever this is."

"You hate when I call her on the house phone."

"Then don't talk with her on the phone."

Rachel watched him.

Richard scratched another itch off his ankle and stretched to rescue a candy by his heel. The motion wrung a ferocious protest from every one of his nearly forty year-old ligaments and made his back crinkle like bubble wrap when he sat back.

Rachel said, "Stop."

"Look, kid, I'm just saying—"

"I know what you're just saying. Stop."

Richard blew out a stream of smoke and unwrapped the candy enough to pluck it out of the packaging with his teeth.

Rachel's palms ricocheted off the coffee table like a gunshot. She stood, fists trembling by her side, scarlet again.

Richard tried pretty hard not to be intimidated but was running out of buffers. He scrounged around for more cigarettes and candy and attempted not to be too obvious that he was slowly muskratting himself into the piles on his desk.

Rachel said, enunciating horribly, "I'm not leaving, Dad.'

"I never said leave, I was just saying that maybe—"

"I'm not leaving. And you know you don't want me to leave, because you panic literally every single time I go out to meet Mom, so you know what? Let's just not. Okay? Let's not. I'm sorry I even put it out there. I didn't mean it."

"All I'm trying to say is—"

"And I'm saying that I don't care what you're saying!"

He blanched and windmilled as she advanced on him, nearly upsetting the chair and knocking his desk lamp to the floor. "It's not happening. Period," Rachel snapped. "I'm sorry, but you're s-stuck with me and you're just going to have to find a way to deal with that. If you didn't want that, then maybe you just shouldn't have had me, Dad."

"Was that a—" Richard had to do an honest fucking double-take. "Did you just 'maybe I shouldn't have been born' me?"

"No."

"Did you just teenage cliché me? In broad daylight?"

"No."

He straightened in a daze to pick up the phone receiver. "Don't call Mom!" Rachel lunged to snatch it away from him. She slammed it down and stuck a finger in his face like a pistol. "I'm staying here and I'm fine and tomorrow I'm going to school and I'm never having a nightmare again. There. Will you leave me alone now? Are you happy?"

"No," he blurted, terrified.

"Well, I am." The change in her expression was as abrupt as a thunderclap. She gave him a hug and Richard felt every hair on his body shrivel back into its pore. "Right here. With you and Conan. I have to take out the meat to thaw for dinner. Thank you for the candies. They were really good. I'll put them in a dish so Conan can enjoy them too."

He was frozen. "Conan, who lives with us," Rachel said. "The Three Musketeers, under one roof. Enjoying candies in a dish! Forever."

"Okay."

"Forever."

"Okay."

She squeezed him again tenderly and let go. "Dinner will be ready at six," she announced. She gathered up the candies in the cradle of her arm again and pranced up the stairs. Upstairs the door to the apartment slammed hard enough to knock a frame off his wall.

He sat there amidst a sea of candy wrappers and mutilated cigarettes.

The phone rang. "Fuck off," Richard answered it, then hung up and disconnected the phone with his foot. He was getting better at it.

---

.

He managed to book a deal on a train to Birinmon and leverage his history as an officer to snag another civil servant discount. Midori Meguire answered the phone when he called that afternoon and delightedly agreed to check in on the kids that Saturday to make sure they didn't get involved in drug trafficking while he was away. He set some money in a labeled envelope for her travel and grocery expenses and then forgot about the entire affair for a while when Yoga at Noon popped up on channel seven.

He'd begun to itch that morning and now sat chafing under the mummifying cocoon of TV boobs. A week ago he would've tried to fight it but this time he didn't bother. He finished the rest of his beer and went out to pick up three more packs of twelve, lugging them up the stairs in canvas shopping bags that strained at their seams. It'd been weeks since he'd been tanked. Not since he'd gotten sick. Little drips here and there to stop his body from detoxing, but not enough to unravel him the way he needed. Not enough to shut him up between the ears.

He got shitfaced, slept it off behind a locked door, and finished a tail on Wednesday morning. He took the train to collect his pay for two completed background checks and itched and itched on the way home while his wallet and stomach mouthed empty promises at him. One more. One and one and one more.

This time he did manage to stay in control, peeling the topmost layer off his sobriety with his liquor cabinet but prioritizing errands. The afternoon was unseasonably hot enough that the news channels were talking about it by the time he switched off the set. He kept his finger crooked in Conan's backpack as he navigated them downtown via the train's business loop, only letting go when they'd cleared the outflow of traffic from the train's doors. "Not that I'm not super-duper excited for these errands with you, Detective Moore," Conan said, "but is there any reason I needed to come along? I sort of had plans after school."

"Because Rachel said she needed to take you shopping for your art project and I need booze to help me survive your art project."

"Then why couldn't I have just shopped with Rachel while you shopped for beer?"

"Because she drains our entire life's savings down to a smear whenever you're with her is why," Richard said. "She's this screeching fiscal hawk right up until the point where it's time to buy things for you, and then the sphincter loosens and suddenly I'm left with none of the nest eggs and all of the crap."

"I don't ask her to buy things for me." Conan had been focused on a group of high school students congregated on their bikes on the opposite side of the road, his glasses catching the afternoon light. "I tell her all the time I don't want charity."

"You want to really piss her off, call it 'charity' to her face." Richard squinted at the faded map on the board and parked his finger on the YOU ARE HERE triangle to anchor his focus. Pedestrians streamed around their blockade. "Me, I'm just making sure we can afford utilities and cable by the end of the month. The rest is just white noise."

"You think it's charity."

"Don't tell me what I think."

The group of high school students finally dispersed, pushing off the sidewalk and biking in opposite directions. Conan watched them go, then turned his gaze up at Richard. It was flat. "Then what is it to you, if not charity?"

"A pain in my ass." Richard finally located the shop and thumped a knuckle against it. "Keep up," he ordered, tenting a hand over his eyes as he walked. The sun knifed off the store windows to his left and for a moment his buzz swayed into dizziness. He blinked until it was gone.

Conan stumbled as he quickened his pace to match Richard's. Richard cleaved his way through the crowd with some excuse-me's but mostly elbows and thirst. He had a brief flash of sympathy for Meguire's almost certain migraine under the influx of see-saw weather. If history was to be trusted, there was a good chance Meguire was stuck in bed in a dark room praying someone would put a hit out on him. "Where are we going?" Conan already sounded out of breath as he ducked around a stroller. "I thought you said you needed beer. The liquor store is down the adjacent street."

"ATM, and seven year olds don't say 'adjacent', snotsville," Richard said. "Keep up. We don't have all day."

"I'm trying. Couldn't you have done this earlier?"

Richard ignored him. He turned off the main drag, holding the map in his head during the detour as he scrounged for his wallet. Conan waited at the mouth of the bank's alley as Richard carded himself into the kiosk. "It's hot," Conan said. "I'm thirsty. Can't we stop and get something?"

"You had lunch already."

"Yeah, ages ago. It's after school. Can't we hit a vending machine?"

Richard itched. He tucked his wallet and cash into an inside pocket and tapped the back of Conan's head as he passed by. He nearly missed it in his distraction, but when Conan stumbled again rounding the corner after him he spared a glance down. "What's wrong with you."

"Nothing."

Richard eyeballed him without breaking stride. "I'm tired," Conan said irritably. "It's hot and it was a long day. I didn't sleep well."

This did flag his attention. As promised Rachel hadn't come to him with a nightmare that previous night, but he'd also locked himself in his agency to spare her his drunken war crimes and probably wouldn't have heard her even if she'd tried. Conan had more than likely spent another night as emotional support and had probably been coerced into keeping it a secret.

Mercy won out. Richard slowed his pace subtly enough to still put up a convincing façade of dickery while he reorganized the order of his to-do list. He led them around a deluge of tourists for another two blocks, then caught the back of Conan's head again to tilt him towards the craft store's entrance. He heard Conan take a greedy gulp of cooled air as the door swished open. "Look around," Richard told him, pushing him inside. "I'll be back in a bit. If someone from the black market tries to kidnap you, open your mouth and let your yawps spill out until they realize putting up with you isn't worth your price tag."

"You want me to shop here?"

"You're doing an art project, this is art project crap. Find what you need and either bring it to the front or pick a corner to park yourself in until I come back."

Conan slid his fogged-up glasses off his nose and wiped them clean. He looked sweaty and resigned. "I don't know how many other ways to tell you guys I'm not interested in doing this project."

"I don't care what you're interested in. Get it done and quit being an ass about it. Rachel's in my grill too and I don't need her barbecuing anything else off me this week." Richard's eyes flickered up to the security camera to make sure it was on before he pushed his way back out into the mutilating heat. A check back in through the window showed Conan trudging a perp walk down the main aisle, hands jammed deep in his pockets.

The nearest vending machine selling alcohol was flanked by two punks on bikes. They let Richard know what they thought of him but moved for him when he squared his shoulders to his full height. The first can had barely thunked down before he was scrabbling at the tab. The second one got lodged in the exit and he clawed up there like a bloodthirsty raccoon until it came out. He drank both of them in as many minutes, one in two long gulps and the next with smaller medicinal gulps. The alcohol rummaged around in his sinuses before dropping to his stomach.

He tossed the empty cans into the recycling bin and leaned against the building for a long time as the world rearranged itself in his head. Afternoon seeped into him in colors and sounds and bled back out of him in sweat. His pulse felt greasy in his neck. This was better, probably. He was a dick drunk but he was a bigger dick sober and that's probably why his daughter resented him. Sobriety came with strings attached.

When he could walk again without being maudlin about it, he shelled out for a last can of beer and a lemonade and jammed them inside his jacket pocket. The craft store was still mostly empty when he returned, a dusty tinkle of music coming from somewhere in the rafters. Conan had disappeared in the thicket of aisles and didn't turn up when Richard checked the mirror over the register.

He must have stood there too long feeling happy about it because the dimpled cashier flagged his attention. "Are you looking for your son?"

"Not all that hard."

"Well, you looked worried when you left, so I kept a special eye out for him. He's over in aisle thirteen looking at the oil pastels."

"He give you any trouble?"

"Oh, no, he's cute as a button," she beamed. "And so mature. He was so polite when he said no thank you to my help."

"You want him? I'll give you a discount."

"If I could I'd take him in a heartbeat. I mean it, I wish my baby brother was like him growing up. He's still so awful even though he's in college. Isn't that pathetic? You figure at some point they get better."

"Well, I'm not sure if you'd heard of me, but I am Richard Moore, the most famous detective in the world," he said. "If you ever need me to personally solve that mystery for you, you could swing by the agency. If you take the kid off my hands when you leave I'd even toss out the consultation fee."

She laughed delightedly at his marvelous sense of humor and declined. Her nametag said Suze and both her dimples and the fact that she was old enough that her 'baby brother' was in college kept him busy clear up to aisle thirteen. Conan was crouched on the balls of his feet looking at a colorful array of construction paper. There was a plastic shopping basket almost as tall as he was on the floor next to him, but when Richard craned his neck to see what was inside he found only a packet of ballpoint pens.

He blew six out of ten of his fuses. "You're still not done?"

Conan jumped. He blinked up at Richard for a moment. "It's hard," Conan mumbled, looking away. He shelved the package of construction paper in his hands and again took off his glasses to clean them on his shirt. "I still don't know what I want to do and you're asking me to pick out stuff on the fly. I don't care."

"And I already told you I don't care if you care. If you weren't shopping, what were you doing in here this whole time?"

"I was shopping. It's not that I haven't been looking, I just don't know what to do."

"Look, unless you're planning to do origami or paper chains you're not going to find what you need here," Richard said. "Just get some paints or something and slop a picture on some canvas for the grade."

"Apparently my paintings are bad enough to become a household joke so I'd rather not."

"She was talking about Jimmy's paintings, not yours, dipstick. She's never even seen you paint. Quit making excuses."

Conan looked somewhere between abashed and mulish. He shoved his glasses back up on the bridge of his nose and hugged his knees.

The switch from heat to cool air was making Richard feel a little nauseated. He disguised it by leaning his shoulder against a display of individual patterned paper to watch Conan dither around on the bottom shelf. "So what's your real problem," Richard said. "Be straight."

"I don't have a problem."

"You don't like art, you don't like doing art, or you're just hoping someone else will do it for you."

"I like art. I just don't have a lot of confidence in mine."

The cute cashier gunslung him some dimples as she crossed the main aisle to restock the fairy box supplies. Apparently she was moonlighting as a floor clerk. Richard was a famous PI and therefore not very obvious at all as he leaned back on his heels to watch her do floor clerk things.

Conan was sour. "I can see what art you appreciate."

"Can it." He worked himself back against the shelves and massaged a kink out of his shoulder, trying to actually think or do something like actual thinking. "Look, if it's a pride thing or whatever, just turn it off. Everything there's gonna suck. It's first grade."

"That's easy to say when you're a grown-up. Our problems seem smaller to you because you're bigger."

"See, you say shit like that and it makes me think that you know it's a small problem too," Richard said. "There's kits over that way. Just build a rocket or a model trebuchet or whatever."

"They're expensive."

"Then build something out of scrap. We've got a whole dumpster by the agency. I'll let you dive in it if you promise to stay in there until morning pick-up."

Conan straightened to his full height, sliding his hands into his pockets. He turned to Richard and began to speak, then stopped suddenly. He searched Richard's face. "What," Richard said.

"Did you go gas up on booze after you dropped me off?"

"What's it to you?"

"You don't look so hot."

"I'm fine."

"You don't look like it."

The timbre of the questioning surprised him a little but Richard didn't have the real estate for new developments. "It's none of your business."

"I guess I just… sort of thought you maybe weren't going to drink so much after you got sick."

"I don't get sick because of booze, I get sick because your fleas keep giving me plague. Pick out your crap and let's get out of here."

Something in Conan deflated, but the light didn't go out. "Did you keep the cans?"

"What?"

"The cans from the beer."

"No. Why."

Conan's gaze went distant.

Richard watched him run his thought process from start to finish. Conan struck up a rhythm with his toe, bopping it against the tile. He craned his neck a little to see out the mouth of the aisle.

He spoke abruptly. "Can we go over to the paint section after all?"

"How many times do I have to tell you to just get what you need so we can get out of here?"

"What's my budget?"

"More than zero, less than a space station."

"What is it with you and numbers," Conan said.

Richard shoveled him out of the aisle with his foot. He snagged the handle of the basket in transit and pushed it against the back of Conan's head until Conan gritted his teeth and snatched it out of his grip. "Don't break my bank," Richard said. "Hurry up. I want to grab dinner on the way home."

Conan stalked off ahead of foot range. His perusal was thorough but swift as he ran his finger along the rows of tubes. "There we go," he muttered. "This should work. Can I get this?"

Richard again shoveled him aside with an ankle. Conan dropped his stance lower to allow his body to be scooted sideways instead of toppled. Richard popped his own squat and plunked an arm down on Conan's head to steady himself as he read the label. "It looks like the acrylics are on sale," Conan said from under his wrist. "Are these okay?"

"What are you planning to use them for?"

"It depends on how many paints I can get."

"How many do you need?"

"How many can I get?"

Richard summoned some godless patience. Women liked when he was kind to children and Ms. Dimples was back in earshot. "Ten."

Conan looked startled. "Really?"

"Four."

"… which one."

"Seven."

Conan began to get up. "Look, would you quit being a pain?" Richard shoved him back down. "They're not expensive. Just don't go nuts."

Conan wordlessly began plucking them off and setting them down in the basket. Richard leaned over him to watch and heard Conan hiss as Richard's elbow dug into hopefully one of the soft spots in his massive head. "The metallics are more expensive. Can I…" Conan sighed as Richard's elbow dug in a bit more. "I'll get three."

"Seriously, what are you planning to paint."

"Aluminum. Maybe glass."

"Then you're wasting your time. Those paints won't stick."

"Sure they will." Conan unexpectedly brightened. He turned his chin a little, looking up at Richard from under Richard's arm. "Aluminum is a galvanized surface. As long as you remove all the rust from it and scratch up the surface with a wire brush or some sandpaper, the primer and paint will stick. If the aluminum is new, you just need to wash them in soapy water to remove the oil coating. People only think it doesn't work because they don't bother to primer the surface before they try to put the paint on."

Richard had many words at this point and most of them were cocked like bullets. They jammed when he realized the half-smile Conan was giving him was mostly without hope. He'd clearly already prepared himself to be shot down.

He remembered Rachel and her little white overalls and the look she'd given him from the agency's sofa when she told him she'd kept them. Maybe for the first time, maybe because it was hot and they were both tired and this was something neither of them had wanted in the first place, Richard swallowed his bullets instead of firing them. "Fine."

"So can I get them?"

"Sure."

Conan looked a little happier as he set the tubes inside the basket.

Richard stood to put in distance. Without knowing what else to do, he located a package of paintbrushes and tossed them down into the basket, and again the half-smile Conan sent his way shot unpleasantly up his spine. Conan led them over to another aisle and Richard watched him select sandpaper and bleached twine and metallic clips. At the end Conan was struggling to lift the basket, and after a few seconds Richard bent over to grab it off the floor himself. The world yawned enough that he had to catch the edge of the shelf. Two beers. It had to be the heat. "Find what you need?" Ms. Dimples grinned indulgently them as they approached the register.

"Yeah. Thanks." He stood by as she rang the supplies up and unearthed the wad of cash for her to sort through without listening to the total. He stayed up in his orbit to her worlds-apart chatter with Conan and for a moment couldn't remember why he was floating in their space at all. He'd come here with Rachel eons ago and it'd felt no different from this and that was the problem. Déjà vu cocktailing with nostalgia that he didn't want.

Conan stuffed what he could fit of the supplies in his little backpack and accepted the rest in an oversized paper bag with handles. "Thank you, miss," he chirped up at her with bright eyes. "I sure did appreciate your help back there. I just didn't know what I wanted to do yet. Sorry I didn't know sooner."

"You've raised him so well," Suze beamed at Richard.

Richard didn't remember making it outside. It was cold and then it was blisteringly hot and he was walking, belatedly tuning in to Conan's miserable puffs behind him only after they'd cleared several blocks. "—heavy," Conan gritted. "Would you just wait a second?"

"Keep up."

"I already told you I can't. You're walking too fast."

"Then walk faster."

"If you want me to go away and find my own way back to the agency, fine, but stop expecting me to keep pace with you when your legs are taller than my entire body!" Conan exploded. "Hot, cold, whatever, just pick a lane! Why are you like this?"

He was barely listening. He wasn't sure where he was going. He halted abruptly to grind his fist into the post office's brick side while Conan panted to a stop beside him. Food. He'd meant to hit a diner or a takeout joint before going home.

He turned sharply and heard Conan groan behind him. "Keep up," he said.

This time Conan didn't waste breath protesting. He broke into a jog in Richard's wake, bag slapping with crackling thuds against his legs as he lugged it with both hands.

Richard stopped at the unoccupied crosswalk and shoveled a path through his mental batshit. Rainier Park was now visibly within walking distance, the burger joint five or six blocks up the sidewalk from there. Once they'd gotten their food they'd be able to hop on the business loop and make the transfer over to the blue line that would take them home.

The crosswalk light changed. Evidently fed up with eating Richard's shadow, Conan hurried out ahead of him to get a lead on him, stumbling a bit as the bag hit the back of his leg.

Something in Richard's peripherals moved, and with a greasy snap the pieces of the world came back together.

He launched himself over the divide and just barely hooked a finger in the backpack's loop, yanking Conan back. The violence tipped them both ass over teakettle as Richard's heel caught on the curb; the bag flew and Conan yelped in pain as they hit the anchored trash can. The car rushed by without stopping. "Piece of shit." Richard was apoplectic. He shoved Conan off him and stood to cup his hands over his mouth to bellow at the retreating bumper. "I'm a detective, you fucking moron! I can find out where you and all your prostitutes sleep!"

Conan drew himself up cross-legged on the sidewalk, bending his arm to examine the darkening scrape on his elbow. There were a small number of people who'd gathered to rubberneck but Richard wasn't interested in parades. He stooped to swipe up the escaped paint tubes and shove them back into the bag. When his jacket didn't knock against his ribs the way it was supposed to, he realized that both cans had rolled out of his pocket and were currently getting steamrolled by traffic now that the light had changed back.

"Piece of shit." He was too livid to hurt. He shouldered the bag and reached down to snag Conan's torso with his other arm, ignoring the startled squawk. He waited for the light to shift, then carted Conan like a snot-stuffed duffel bag across the street and didn't stop until they'd reached the park.

Conan let out a woosh of air when Richard deposited him on the bench. "You look both ways when you cross a street, bowtie," Richard said, jabbing a finger in his face. "You wanna be some car's breakfast so bad, pancake yourself off my watch."

"I didn't see it."

"You didn't see it because you were too busy being a pain in the ass know-it-all show off to look where you were going."

"They were the ones who ran the light." Conan's teeth clicked together. "And I wouldn't have been so busy being a 'show off' if you weren't trying so hard to make it impossible for me to keep up with you!"

"So that's it? You were trying to make a point? You feel proud of yourself?"

"I didn't do anything wrong!"

Richard walked away. There was an outdoor kiosk of vending machines sandwiched between a bike stand and a phone booth at the park's entrance. Richard dug out his wallet and fished around for the coins and violently hated the fact there was no beer in this vending machine. He instead bought a can of the lemon punch Rachel had mainlined as a kid and wet his handkerchief in the fountain before walking back. Conan refused to look at him. He'd drawn his legs up onto the seat and was glowering at a family picnicking by the river.

Richard drilled the frigid can against his temple until Conan hissed with hatred. He yanked it out of Richard's hand. "Give me your arm," Richard said.

"It's fine."

"Give me your arm."

Conan didn't. Richard pried it away from his side and made sure there was nothing foreign in the scrape before cinching it up with his handkerchief. Rachel would take care of it later or she wouldn't. "It wasn't my fault," Conan said.

"Drink that."

"I don't want it."

"Fine." Richard left him for a while. He took a walk around the periphery to restructure his chemistry. His brain wasn't cooperating and the beer was still clambering around his stomach and abruptly, he had enough of both.

He slung his tie over his shoulder and found a relatively hidden trash can to purge in. Most of what he'd drank had soaked into him but what came up cleared his queasiness. He found the base of a tree to collapse against and worked his way through three cigarettes until nothing under his skin was running anymore. Just him, apparently.

Conan had visibly calmed by the time Richard returned. He was working on the dregs of his lemon punch, attention still on the picnicking family. Richard didn't bother to talk to him. He picked the shopping bag up and began walking, trusting Conan would know whether or not he wanted to follow. After a moment he heard little feet hit the ground.

He grabbed dinner while Conan waited outside by the bike racks. Conan didn't speak to him until they were well down the blue line's trajectory. He waited, legs swinging, for the train to gradually empty out of the remainder of the downtown traffic and dwindle to suburban traffic. By the time they were back in eastern Beika and had been off their feet for a good half hour, Richard's hip was starting to lock up and the splotch of blood had long dried on Conan's makeshift bandage.

Conan cleared his throat. "Thanks," he murmured, barely audible.

Richard didn't respond. He was half-asleep. Beika streamed by in sunbaked chrome.

Conan breathed beside him for a while. After another minute he hopped down from the seat next to Richard and moved further up the car, and Richard let him. Neither of them moved again until it was time to disembark.

They were only a block away from the agency when Richard pulled Conan to a stop by his backpack's loop. "Hold up, squirt."

Conan shoved his glasses up on his nose. The sheen on them was too bright to see his eyes when he looked up at Richard. "One other reason I brought you out today," Richard said. "It has to do with Rachel."

"I won't tell her if that's what you're worried about," Conan said. "She'd skin both of us."

"I'm not talking about—" okay but yeah. "Fine, but don't try to hide the arm. It'll just make her suspicious. Tell her you got it running from the police when they tried to arrest you for the shipment of molly you smuggled over the border."

"You always come up with the best and most convincing alibis, Uncle," Conan said. "That must be why you're such an amazing detective."

"I need to talk to you about the other thing. The nightmare thing."

"I can't. Rachel made me promise."

"What?"

"She said you were getting weird about it."

"Me?" Richard's jaw dropped. He stared down at Conan with honest offense. "I'm not the one up every night screaming about dogs eating me!"

"You have nightmares too."

"I do not."

"You just don't remember them in the morning. I've even woken you up a few times. They're worse when you go to bed drunk."

Well he didn't want to fucking compartmentalize any of that. Richard scrubbed his memory clean of it out of sheer orneriness. "I'm not talking about me, you moron, I'm talking about Rachel."

"I'm sorry, I can't."

"Why."

"Because I think she deserves her privacy. Even if I didn't, I made a promise."

"And you always keep your promises," Richard said.

The light dropped from Conan's glasses. His gaze was deadpan. He let the hypocrisy sit politely in the broad daylight between them. "Fine." Richard let it go. "Look, forget about the nightmares. I just wanted to know if you'd noticed anything weird, all right? You're the one who spends the most time with her."

Conan started to answer and then stopped. He shifted his weight. "Define weird."

"You for starters, but for the purpose of this discussion, anything that might have set her off," Richard said. "Something at school, something you might have seen when you were with her. Something that happened when you two were out shopping, I don't know. Anything out of the ordinary."

"I mean, murders keep happening, but that's really not all that weird in a big city. People die all the time. Look, why don't you just ask her yourself? I'd bet she'd tell you if you were just honest with her."

"I did. She spun a yarn and then made me eat it."

"I'm really sorry, but I honestly don't know any better than you." But Conan's tired eyes looked earnest for once. He shifted to slide his hands in his pocket and winced. Richard belatedly spotted an additional scrape on his wrist before Conan rotated it out of sight. "I think it's probably just stress," Conan said. "Nikki and Jack, you know? I think she just needs a break."

"A break from what?"

"I dunno. Everything. Maybe she's just overwhelmed and needs a break period."

"A break away from me is what you're saying," Richard said.

"I mean, not really. Not exactly. Just… maybe just a break from cases."

"Which means a break away from me, because I bring the cases."

Conan shrugged.

Richard felt the thunderclouds clear to reveal all his planets goldilocking into alignment. He was the magnet, not Rachel, which meant boozing it up with the Judo team that weekend would yield therapeutic results for all of them almost not accidentally. These were the kinds of parenting moments he lived for: those times where selfishness and gluttony were actually the correct responses and therapy didn't cost any more than the rate of a decent babysitter. All that was needed now was to think of an alibi that wouldn't stress her out or prompt her to poke too hard. He'd originally planned a cover story that involved him being pulled as a consult to Birinmon Town's PD a few cities over, but he could probably change that to something less nerve-wracking for her. He'd run surveillance for companies before and that tended to be pretty low-impact. She wouldn't squall at a fictional consult for a security company or him sitting in on a few interviews for a law firm.

"You've got a really weird look on your face," Conan said. "What are you plotting?"

"You're imagining things." Hot damn. Richard cheerfully plunked a hand on Conan's head, who looked a little revolted. Richard had a feeling that between the booze and vomit and sweat he didn't smell all that award-winning. "C'mon, let's get up there so we can tuck into our grub. I'll bet Rachel's home by now. We can wash up and chase down the meal with the next episode of Torrential Hearts."

"I think she is." Conan shrugged off his hand and pointed upwards. "Did you leave the shades open in your agency when you left? You usually lower them."

Richard steered him ahead and craned his neck as they approached. He'd definitely lowered the shades, but even with the harsh angle of the evening sunlight he could make out the shape of his desk behind the glass. "Huh," he said, recalculating. "Didn't think she'd bother haunting the agency today. I left the note in the apartment where we were."

"Do you think maybe she was manning the desk to take calls for you?"

"That's what the answering machine is for." He started to reach for his keys and then stopped when something else flagged his attention. Oblivious, Conan angled his way past him and then sighed when Richard absentmindedly hooked his backpack again. It looked like there was additional markings in the windows under the name of the agency. When Richard craned his neck a few more uncooperative angles, he realized something had been written there in pink glass paint. "Did we get vandalized?" he muttered, puzzled.

"What are you talking about?"

"Can you read that?"

"Read what."

Richard set the shopping bag down and snagged Conan under his arms to hoist him aloft. Conan gave a few halfhearted tortoise kicks before resigning himself to the miserable shell of his existence. "Oh, that," he said. "It looks like someone wrote on the window from the inside."

"Yeah, no shit, Watson. Can you read it?"

"'Lucky for you I'm free this weekend. I'll pack the swimsuits'."

It took a moment for it to register. When it did he just barely avoided dropping Conan six feet to the concrete. "We gotta get up there." He fumbled for his keys in a blind panic before remembering the bakery entrance would still be open. "Shit shit shit, we need to get up there now."

"What's wrong?" Conan was alarmed but thankfully well trained. He snatched up the shopping bag and sprinted as best he could with it in Richard's wake. "What does it mean?"

"If it means what I think it does, I'm screwed." His hand shook as he opened the door. "I left it out, I was drinking and I forgot to put it away, it was right on my goddamn desk for anyone to look at—"

"What was?"

His hip was too sore from the fall to let him take the stairs by two so he scrambled on all fours like a delirious corgi. He fell into the agency and rolled when he hit the mat, coming up into a crouch that wrung a shriek of protest from his ribs.

In front of his desk, Rachel turned deliberately.

Richard watched her in terror, hearing Conan pound up the stairs behind him. Rachel studied him with grizzled intensity of a mafia don. There was a spiral memo pad with new messages by his phone. The air smelled stingingly of cleanser and his bathroom door had been propped open to allow it to air out from its recent mopping. The carpet under him still had tracks from the vacuum. Her suitcase in the center of the floor was the only thing out of order in the immaculately cleaned office.

A dazzling smile burst onto her face. Rachel hefted his calendar aloft excitedly. "When do we leave for the Judo reunion?"

---

.

Rachel drove her way straight into his grill the next day and turned donuts until even his cigarettes got road rash. "For the last time, I am not taking either of you," Richard said. "Give it a rest. There'll be plenty of other opportunities for you to go places with me. Just let me have this one thing for me."

"What other opportunities? Dad, I'm seventeen and in school all the time. What opportunities are you even talking about?"

"Uh, let's take a cruise for one example," Richard said. "How many single fathers do you think take their kids on a cruise? Or to an art museum? Or the Tenkaichi Festival? How about that modeling gig you wanted? Don't you 'what opportunities' me."

"Uh, let's see." Rachel tocked off on her fingers. "Dead people, dead person, dead person… oh, and dead person. Real nice opportunities, Dad."

"Look, I can't help who gets dead on our vacations."

"Nooo, but you can help make up for it by providing healthy family therapy," Rachel said. "Like, I dunno, taking Conan and me to the Judo reunion with you. There's hot springs there. I could soak out my stress in a luxury resort while you catch up with your friends."

"Yeah, and who's paying for that 'luxury resort', may I ask? The Tooth Fairy? I can't even get her to keep up with inflation, let alone shell out for travel expenses."

"We went ten years ago and we had way less money back then. With all the work you're doing and the consultation fees you're getting, we're not even in the red anymore."

"I could afford it back then because I borrowed from Craig. It took me almost a year to pay it all back."

Rachel sobered a bit but didn't back off. She tightened her grip on Conan's hand as they bypassed a thick group of pedestrians pausing to survey the new art installation down at the park's entrance. "You never told me that."

"You think I'm proud of it? The only reason I accepted was because they wouldn't leave me alone about it. Truth came out about what happened and they all bugged me until I agreed to let them cover the costs."

"So Craig didn't actually make you pay him back?"

"If you'd stop spelunking in your nose and grow up a little you'd learn that nothing in life is free. If I had to owe him something, I'd rather it be money than a favor. Look, just shut up," Richard said. "Be happy I'm still shoveling food down your neck and stop asking for all these cherries on top. I deserve this."

"I never said you didn't."

"Then get off my case."

Conan had been quiet since they'd left the agency. He'd allowed Rachel to hold his hand for the last several blocks, but Richard had a feeling it was more exhaustion than actual tolerance. Rachel didn't speak for a record forty-eight seconds, letting him lead them around a thicket of sidewalk construction on the main drag and detour them through an alley behind a European bakery. Only when they were back on track and the crowd had thinned out did she say, too casually, "So what you're saying is that you don't want me here."

"I'm saying that I don't want you there."

"I guess I'm just wondering why you keep insisting it's such a huge hassle to bring me. I thought you liked having me around, Dad. That's all."

He weakened and hated himself for weakening. He rubbed the sweat of humidity off his nose and reconfigured his sugar-and-shit ratio. "Look, hon, that's just how reunions are. Some are to show off what you've got and some are to forget everything you've got. The vibe's different with kids than when there are just other thirty-somethings in the room."

"And can I assume your 'vibe' is flirting with the other thirty-something women there?"

"'Vibe' meaning anything thirty-something, including drinking and having adult-only conversations. You can't cut loose with kids around. You might as well just save your money and meet up at a playground. The only reason you went the first time because I couldn't afford a sitter service and Eva was out of town on business."

Rachel took this in with surprising grace. "I suppose you have a point about Conan," she conceded. "But with me there, I'd be able to take him out of the room most of the time and just check in with you now and then. I really would make an effort to stay out of the way, Dad. No offense, but adults are boring. I wouldn't want to stay in the room with you guys for long even if you were okay with it."

"Mark this down in your calendar and then apologize to me in twenty years," Richard said. "Spoiler alert: teenagers are boring too. Part of becoming an adult is just you realizing that you've never been unique or special, but now you can legally drink and smoke and bang to celebrate how useless everything and everyone is."

"Dad, all of that was extremely not okay and we'll talk about it later when Conan's not around, but I'm not boring and neither are my friends," Rachel said. "And stop changing the subject. I know what you're doing."

"The instant your friends have kids they'll get boring. I promise you."

"You had kids."

"Yeah, and I got boring," Richard said. "And the way I get un-boring is to go to these Judo reunions with my old friends and take the parent label off my jar. And you want me to keep the sticky residue from the sales tag."

"Conan, you want to go, right?" Rachel tugged on Conan's hand. "Don't the hot springs sound fun? And a hotel would be such a great change of scenery. The area the Judo club meets for their reunions is really beautiful. Birinmon is really well known for its temples and parks and mountains. It's gorgeous and right on the sea."

"Yeah." Conan looked a little startled to be keel-hauled into the conversation. "It'd be fun, I guess."

"It'd be nice to get out, right? Especially since all these terrible things keep happening?"

"Sure."

"See?" Rachel looked triumphantly at Richard as if this budged the needle even sort of. "Would you really want to disappoint the both of us? Would you even have fun if you knew how sad we were at home?"

Richard was fed up with this conversation seventeen years ago. "No, which is why I'm treating you both to a delicious dinner. On me. As always. To ease the pain of you not being spoiled as much as you usually are."

"Orr you could put that money towards train tickets for Conan and me," Rachel said. She used her free hand to dig out her wallet. "I even have money saved from dog-walking and babysitting Marina's daughter down the street after school. I could cover Conan's and you could cover mine. It all works out."

Richard passed by the laundromat and was giving careful consideration whether he wanted to die drinking bleach or smashing his head in the door of a washing machine when alarms started shrieking. The doors ahead of them burst open: a man in a low-slung ball cap tumbled out and veered towards them, cursing, duffel in one hand and a gun in the other. "Thief!" The shout was panicked. The teller stumbled out after him. "Stop him! He robbed the bank!"

Richard heard Rachel gasp. Gift-horses' mouths stank so Richard made a habit not to look in them. He bravely chickened out of the conversation to pursue justice or whatever, reaching for a gun that hadn't been at his side for seven years as he ran. "Put your hands up!" he yelled anyway.

The robber was nearly a full block ahead. Richard's hip was a tapestry of pretty painful bruising but adrenaline helped him deal. He did his best to keep up as people screamed and parted for them along the sidewalk and for a second he thought a cyclist might give him the break he needed, but the robber merely jerked the handlebars to the side and sent the rider crashing to the ground out of his way. Richard nearly faceplanted over it and cursed when the recovery sent pain smacking up his side. "Oh that's it," he gritted, shoving himself off the back of a bus bench to regain his momentum.

The robber shot a frantic glance over his shoulder at him before veering into the alley flanking the antique mart. In that instant the ex-cop in Richard knew exactly how this would play out. The alley offered a straight shot down towards the Beika Preserve, a natural area mostly unsecured by cameras and flanked by a complicated underground series of drainage systems to prevent flooding. Even with his hip slowing him down, Richard would likely beat him in a straight sprint as long as both of the man's hands were occupied, which meant that the man would probably take his stand in the alley to scare him off of further pursuit. Once the robber hit the drainage system he'd be next to impossible to fish out.

In a world of excellent and shitty decisions Richard knew which ones smelled the worst. He was probably going to get shot. The good news was he was capable of surviving a little ventilation and the bad news was that gunshot wounds were expensive and blood wouldn't solve Rachel's nightmare problem. The best thing to do would be to recognize that he didn't have a badge anymore and had dependents that'd complain on him if he sprung a leak in a dirty alley.

Fall back. His feet kept moving. He prepared himself to use lethal force and that right there was probably the problem: there was no such thing as ex-cops. He'd just squared himself up when two things happened simultaneously: the robber spun as expected to level his gun at Richard, and far, far too late, Richard realized that little feet had pounded into the alley after him and he was no longer alone.

He felt the instant his plan imploded. Richard was left standing stupidly in front of the gun with nothing but the panicked whites of the robber's eyes and a racing pulse in his ears. The robber screamed at him over his gun and there was no sound or color in Richard's world. Just reckless bullshit and two potential victims and no plan that would save both of them in time.

Richard froze. Conan didn't. "Move," Conan yelled, and Richard managed to jerk his head back just as the ferocious impact ricocheted through the alley. The brick shot forward with enough force to spark when it hit the gun and by some miracle the gun didn't discharge. The thief doubled over in agony to cradle his broken hand.

"Richard!" Conan slammed against the back of Richard's legs. "Go!"

Sound returned with the crackle of a radio station. Richard let muscle memory do the rest. He lunged forward and one seoi nage later the robber was on the ground spitting out curses between groans. Conan dropped to a crouch at a safe distance, wide-eyed and gulping down air. "The bank would've already called the police," he said. He was massaging his toes through his shoe. "If you can keep him there, we should be good in a couple of minutes."

Richard fucked off into his own orbit for a while. He had enough presence of mind to shove Conan off on Rachel once the police arrived, spearheading the witness statement alongside the bank teller while keeping his eye out for journalists. He peacocked in front of the crowd as was expected of him, working his PR with mercenary efficiency; when Conan finally crept out of the alley to try to duck past him, Richard dropped the smile and arrested him with an index finger in his collar. "So," he said.

Conan shoved his glasses up with his knuckle. "That brick," Richard said.

"It was just a lucky shot."

"How was it you were able to kick that brick that far?"

"It was probably just adrenaline. I thought you were in trouble and I just acted without thinking. Something tells me you'd have done the same for me. Right, Uncle?"

Rachel was in unfortunate earshot. Richard tried not to kill him. "I'm not saying you didn't help me out, I'm just talking about the fact you—"

"Wait, Dad, is that true?" Sure enough Rachel barnacled onto his sleeve. "Did Conan really help you?"

"I mean, he kicked a brick like a cyborg and is refusing to explain that, but if you wanna get technical—"

"Oh my god." Rachel melted. "That is so amazing. Conan, that's amazing. You're such a hero."

Conan rearranged some sidewalk grit with his heel. "Such a hero, in fact, that I really think Dad should give you something as a token of gratitude," Rachel said. "Like, I dunno. Taking you to a nice hotel for a relaxing hot springs experience. Something to help you recover from the trauma."

Richard was sincerely taken aback by the larceny. He glanced down at Conan. Outside her peripherals, Conan shook his head at him once, quick and surreptitious, dropping his gaze to the sidewalk.

Richard realized his stable had acquired some weird gift horses, among which being that Conan had apparently elected not to tell her about either the gun or the fact that Richard had been fully intending to swallow lead in exchange for gold. This meant he could either prompt more nightmares by shutting her down with the truth or play along and get fleeced out of his next two paychecks.

He was back to deciding between death by bleach or blunt force trauma when someone from the crowd gasped, "Richard?"

"What," he snapped, fed up. He turned on his heel and then stopped short. Jamie had separated herself from the throng, buttery in a yellow dress and sensible flats. She was clutching the strap of her purse.

The appearance of her in Beika was so out of place that Richard could only goggle at her for a moment. He heard Rachel make a noise of confusion behind him. "God, it is you," Jamie breathed. "I didn't believe it at first."

"Jamie, what are you—" Richard had to stop and fish up words. "How are you here?"

"I live here now, believe it or not. I was planning to surprise you by dropping by your agency, but you weren't there when I visited. I came out here to pick up some bakery items for the train ride and figured I'd hit you up this evening."

"You live here? In Beika?"

"Beika-Minami. My office itself is close by your agency. A job offer came through and I decided to pack it all up and make a change."

Richard couldn't stop staring. He'd seen pictures of the team over the years when they'd sent each other letters, but seeing the changes in person was a different animal. Fifteen years ago Jamie wouldn't have been caught dead in the style she was wearing now, but the rest of her had aged about as well as expected. Her hair was shorter and she'd put on a little healthy weight, but the lovely face and too-sharp eyes hadn't changed. "Oh go on, you flatterer," Jamie said dryly when the silence stretched.

"No, I mean…" Richard restructured. "It's just a shock to see you in person after all these years. Why didn't you tell me you'd moved in?"

"Like I said, I wanted to surprise you. I'm actually a little shocked you didn't figure it out sooner," Jamie said. "There's no way the post office would've sent a threatening postcard like that without a return address. I dropped it directly in your mail slot."

"Dad." Rachel had crept up behind him like high tide. She kept her eye on Jamie as she protectively snaked her hand through the crook of his elbow, and Richard was a little relieved that she apparently still cared about who offed him regardless of his vacation plans. "Who is this?"

"Rachel?" Jamie's jaw dropped. "Oh my goodness—Richard. How could you. She's ten feet tall. How could you let her grow up like that?"

"I kept feeding her after midnight by mistake," Richard said. "Rachel, quit eyeballing her. This is Jamie. You remember her. She's part of the Judo team."

It took a moment for Rachel's suspicion to clear. "Jamie," she murmured, then sucked in an excited breath. "Wait, Ms. Hummel?"

"Rachel, you've become so beautiful," Jamie said warmly. "Oh, I'd hoped I'd run into you. Richard was threatening not to bring you and I was so disappointed. It was part of the reason I wanted to come over."

"Dad didn't tell me he'd talked to you! I'd always meant to respond to your last letter you sent but I got so sidetracked by my tournament schedule that I forgot. I just figured it'd be weird to send it so long after the fact."

"I would welcome letters for you anytime. Two weeks, two months, two years. Oh, I hope you come to the reunion." Jamie reached out to clasp Rachel's hand and Rachel accepted it. "Don't listen to your idiot father. We all want you there. Craig adores you. He wants pong rematch."

"Craig." Rachel again blinked her way into a smile. "Oh, Mr. Newberry. That's right. He let me 'beat' him when I was a kid."

"He wants to reclaim his honor, wherever that went. Please tell me you're coming to the hotel."

"Of course, I wouldn't miss it for the world."

"Damn it, shut up," Richard said. "Both of you shut up. She's not going. I don't know how many languages you need to hear it in before it penetrates."

"I'll see you there, sweetheart." Jamie gave Rachel's hand a last squeeze. She waved to Richard as she walked away and he responded with a discreet bird. "Have to scoot before the bakery closes. See you both on Friday."

Rachel stood beside him like a cat who'd swallowed the world's fattest mouse.

"You're not getting dinner." Richard turned and stalked back to the train. "You can eat pocket lint and spider webs tonight. You're fired."

Rachel scuttled after him. "Does this mean I get to go?"

"Yeah, straight to hell. Pack a swimsuit."

"Conan, did you hear that?" Rachel tugged at Conan's hand. "Isn't this exciting?"

Richard skipped dinner to quarantine his extraordinarily foul-ass mood in his office that evening. He spent twice the usual amount of time locating all his coping mechanisms and violently resented the fact that chaos and grime was apparently the only way his life could run smoothly. By the time he'd finished tying up loose ends for the weekend and canceled the child care plan with Midori, Conan was knocking on the agency's door and Richard's homicidal anger had mostly been drowned by 81 proof and a Torrential Hearts marathon on channel 17. "Can I talk to you for a second?" Conan said.

"There's leather rock-chic boobs on the screen and Haruka is about to confess to deli-chick, so if you want my full attention it's going to have to wait until eleven o'clock." Richard reached for crackers and knocked his lamp over, squashing crackers. He righted the lamp and scooped the crumbs towards the corner of the desk for him to access, making sure a pile sprinkled onto the immaculate floor. "Shut the door. You're letting out the smoke."

"These are reruns, you already know how it turns out. And how do you not know Mari's name yet? It's been like twenty-five episodes and she's been in thirteen of them."

"You're not making a real convincing case for me to prioritize you over leather rock-chic boobs."

Conan sighed and shut the door. He was in one of Richard's old shirts again, his other set of pajamas presumably bundled in with the upcoming load of last-minute laundry. His stocking feet were barely audible as he padded across the floor, stopping to replace a handful of video cassettes Richard had knocked off their shelves before finishing the trek to the sofa. He climbed up into it and settled against the arm to wait.

Richard shoveled the rest of the crumbs into his maw as Haruka confessed to deli-chick, spent the next set of commercials pouring another finger of liquor, then sat on the edge of his seat as deli-chick told Haruka she needed time to grieve her last girlfriend properly before rebounding into something dangerous and leathery and new. "The best part is that they hook up in the next episode anyway," Richard told Conan, mouth full. "It's right in the cold open. They don't even wait until the credits. It's like a comedy smash cut but with rock-chic boobs and deli meat."

"Can you talk now?"

"What do you want."

Conan began to speak and then stopped long-sufferingly when the commercials once again blasted through the speakers.

Richard took drunken magnanimous pity on him and shut off the set. He leaned his chair back far enough on its hooves to paw the window behind him open and spotted Conan's eyes flare in alarm when the chair wobbled. "Why are you like this," Conan sighed.

"Like what."

"Like this. You can't even sit up."

"I'm fine."

"Are you drinking because of me?"

"Who gives a shit. No."

Conan visibly stewed. Even now he didn't fidget and if Richard was going to be real honest about it, it was one of the most disconcerting flags Conan had brought in with him. Rachel had scrabbled around like a weasel at age seven unless he'd medicated her with cartoons. "I just wanted to let you know that I set things up with Dr. Agasa," Conan said. "He said I could stay there while you and Rachel go to the reunion. She's almost an adult so she'll be able to go off by herself while you catch up with friends, but I'd just be in the way. He said it's fine if I crash there a few days, and maybe more after that if you wanted a longer break once you came back."

Richard flicked the rivet on his increasingly unresponsive lighter until his cigarette bloomed. He leaned back again and watched the room displace itself over the sill as the two temperatures clashed in the smoke. "I just wanted to let you know," Conan said. "As for Rachel, I know it doesn't help much, but I've saved up a little bit with some odd jobs I've done for Agasa. If you'd take it, I'd be willing to put it into—"

"What are you doing," Richard said.

Conan stopped. "No, seriously, what are you doing," Richard said. "You're not my daughter's caretaker. You're not my loan shark. The hell do you get off setting up arrangements without checking in with either of us."

"I thought…" Conan stumbled to a halt. "What?"

"I already bought the tickets, idiot. At this point they'd only be able to refund me half if I cancelled, so you're going whether you want to or not."

"You bought tickets?"

"What did you think I was going to do? You have any idea how far up into my ass I'd have to reach to pay for same-day tickets on a Friday?"

Conan looked bewildered. "I thought you'd be happy I was making an effort to stay out of your way."

"The hell have I ever been happy," Richard said. "You think you can get it done after thirty-seven years? After my own wife couldn't manage? Call him tomorrow and cancel. I mean it. I don't need him or any of his blinking beeping bullshit in my office or anywhere near you for that matter. I've already got Meguire breathing down my collar about the shit I let you get up to in your free time. You blow off any fingers or toes and it's coming straight out of my retirement fund. Just be up on time for the train and quit giving me crap about this."

Conan's silence was the most flabbergasted sound Richard had never heard.

Conan said, "What the hell."

"Watch your mouth."

"No, what the hell."

"You what the hell, you bowtied sewer carp," Richard said. "What was that earlier today? With the brick? You gonna explain that?"

Conan's face was red. "No."

"You gonna explain why Rachel's being an asshole?"

"No."

"Then go away. We're going to be early and I don't feel like hearing you bitch all the way to the train station. Just get some sleep and leave me alone before I decide to smuggle you in the baggage compartment and give your seat to the craft store girl."

Conan hurled himself off the sofa. He'd made it all the way to the door and had snatched it open before he stopped. He shut it and thunked his forehead against it with such visible frustration that Richard was filled with trollish vengeance. "Yeah, how does it feel," Richard said. "Drink it in. That's me. With you. Every day."

"I had something else to ask you," Conan said, forehead against the door. "Will you stop talking so I can say it?"

Richard turned the television back on. Conan peeled his forehead from the door and went to unplug the TV from the wall, and the nihilistic moxie was so tremendous that Richard only pelted the back of his head with two balled-up memo sheets instead of three. "Just tell me one thing," Conan said. "You were a cop for a long time. Why did you freeze back there in the alley today?"

"You ever have a gun pointed at your teeth? Try it and see how cute you feel."

"You don't freeze in front of guns."

"The hell I don't."

"You don't freeze in front of guns because you're not afraid of being shot," Conan said.

The cigarette smoke lodged in his chest. Some of the violent-edged mirth in him died. Richard held his breath a moment longer before releasing it between his teeth in a controlled snort. "So what happened," Conan said.

"I didn't freeze."

"Was it because of me?"

Richard blew out another stream over the divide.

Conan scrubbed the back of his head until his hair bristled. "You know what, never mind," he said abruptly, dropping his hand with a smack. "Just… forget it. Forget I asked. Forget I said anything."

"Next time stop talking sooner and you won't feel like such an idiot."

"I don't feel like an idiot, you just never take anything seriously!"

"I take rock-chic boobs seriously," Richard said. "Plug the TV back in."

Conan didn't because he was a dick. This time Conan did make it out the door. Richard bobbled the cigarette between his fingers as he listened to Conan linger on the second stair from the landing.

Conan came back down. He slowly leaned his shoulder against the door frame, and Richard was just liquored up enough not to surrender to the silence first for once. He let Conan lean into the silence as long as it suited him, reaching for another cigarette when the last one faded. "I think this'll be fun," Conan said abruptly. "I do think it'll make you happy. Even if you say it doesn't."

"Oh yeah?"

"Rachel too. You say you're not, but I think you really are excited. At least as excited as you can get about things."

His suitcase sat half-packed upstairs under his bed. Meguire had sounded warm over the phone when he'd hopped on after Midori. This'll be good for you, Dick. Try not to think about anything over there. Just shut off for a while.

"I wanted to say thank you," Conan said. "Even if you're… kind of a jerk about it. You did a lot of stuff for me these past couple of days and I did notice it, even if I didn't say anything at the time. So thanks."

"Fine."

"It'll be nice to get out of Beika. It's been a while."

"Oh yeah," Richard said. "How long."

Conan's expression didn't even bother to shutter, which was either an unflattering testimony to how drunk he thought Richard was or an unflattering testimony to how bad Richard was at enforcing bedtimes for exhausted children. "What about you," Conan said. "Are you happy to get out of here? Even if it costs you money you don't want to spend?"

Richard propped his elbow on the sill and massaged his forehead with the back of his hand.

He said, "Yeah."

Conan leaned against the frame for a long time.

Eventually he shrugged his way off. "Good night, Uncle."

"Yeah."

Conan shut the door. He opened the door back up, crossed the room, and plugged the TV back in. The sound coughed back into the speakers.

Richard waited until Conan was back up the stairs before switching the set off. Beika moved and breathed below him like tide.

---

.

"You do realize I'm going to be the only one there who's brought his kids," Richard said.

"Would you stop already? And stop stealing my meatballs," Rachel hissed, mutilating his knuckles with her fork.

"I'm just checking for ptomaine." He helped himself to another when Conan shook her shoulder excitedly to point out the pasture of fat cows through the train's window. It was as satisfying as rock-chic and deli meat, maybe.