Home-->Mom, Don't Go Here
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Harvey had never been more grateful in his life for the senior partner perk of having a private washroom adjacent to his office. After Jessica had left him to the Clifford Danner file with a request to keep her updated, he’d lasted five minutes before pulling the Glenlivet 18 year old single malt out of his desk drawer and pouring himself a neat two fingers. Ten minutes after that he had thrown the empty Waterford rocks glass to the floor where the steel grey area rug absorbed the last drops of Scotch, dropped the file folder back in the box on the low-slung glass table in front of him and stormed out of the office. It was late and even Donna’s desk was deserted; there was no one in the hall to see him march briskly into the private washroom. There was no one to hear the door slam hard enough to echo down the empty corridor. There was no one to call security when the violent sounds of a fistfight came out muffled from behind the washroom door. Harvey held his hand under the cold water running in the marble basin and ignored both the blood and the throbbing pain in his knuckles. His workout regimen included enough sparring and speed bag practice that he knew he hadn’t broken anything. Except maybe his moral code. Or his word. Or his trust in his mentor. Or his relationship with his associate. Or Clifford Danner… “Fuck.” Harvey picked up one of the towels sitting on the counter and wrapped it around his hand as he slowly sank to the floor in the corner of the room. “Fuck,” he said again. “Dammit, dammit, dammit…” The first tears were slow to fall and Harvey swiped at them like a bewildered child, like he honestly couldn’t believe they had come out of him. But, as if the sight of his wet thumb was the crack in the floodgates, the next round of tears were like a freshet after a thaw, explosive and painful. He was unable to contain the harsh sobbing sounds tearing out of his throat, and he buried his face in his hands as his shoulders bowed and his body was wracked with fine tremors under the onslaught. It took many long minutes for the tears to taper off, for the breaths to stop hitching and gulping between his lungs and his mouth, for the ache in his stomach to settle into something like hunger instead of sick defeat. Slowly, Harvey pushed himself up the wall, steadied his two thousand dollar bespoke Berluti shoes on the tile floor and made his way back to the sink. Removing the towel from his hand revealed that the bleeding had stopped and he only winced a little as he flexed his fingers. He splashed cold water on his overheated face several times, but carefully, so as not to wet his shirtfront. Once he had dried his face using another one of the towels, he started unrolling his shirtsleeves. He kept his eyes on himself in the mirror as he did up the buttons on his cuffs, and he muttered softly, “I am not a screw-up. I am not a screw-up.” After the gauntlet buttons were snug against his wrists, he undid his tie, which had already been loose and was now a stretched wreck lying on his chest. He retied the striped silk into a neat Windsor knot and pulled it snug to his throat. His voice was a little stronger now. “I am not a screw-up. I am not a screw-up.” A deep breath through his nose, a severe glare and half a dozen practice smirks later, he turned away from the mirror and twisted the lock on the door. He stepped out into the hall— And froze at the sight of Mike Ross standing three steps away from the door, holding out his Paul Smith suit jacket. They stared at one another and Harvey looked for it—the pity, or the disgust, or, considering how the last few days had gone, the mean pleasure—that he was sure he would see in Mike’s eyes. Maybe he deserved it; maybe he didn’t. And how long had it been since Harvey had been that unsure of himself? But all he saw in Mike’s gaze was calm acceptance and the warm hint of respect that had always been there. I am not a screw-up, he reminded himself once more, this time just in his head. Mike helped him into his jacket, smoothed a hand across his shoulders and down his back without comment, and then followed him silently back to his office, where they were going to find a way to give Clifford Danner his life back. |
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