Drive
By: Jess

for E

In Chicago, Rusty has a reuben so perfect that he takes a picture of the deli, even though he knows he'll never forget. More a commemorative thing, really. Tess sits across from him eating a salad, looking annoyed, as she does every time they eat out.

He asked her about it in Denver, when she spent more time staring at his meatball sub than eating her harvest salad.

"What?" he asked around the food in his mouth.

"How do you--" she said, and waved her hand in the direction of his sandwich. "And look like that."

Rusty grinned. "Just lucky, I guess."

Tess shook her head, muttered, "Bastard," under her breath, but she was smiling.

After he finishes the reuben, he dusts himself off and walks three blocks north, Tess half a step behind him, to Apartment 4D in a nondescript brick building. Knocks on the door.

Linus looks surprised and not exactly pleased when he opens it and sees Rusty – that is, until Linus looks to his right and sees Tess off to the side. Linus smiles then and trips over himself inviting them in, which makes Rusty smile too, remembering the kid in Vegas five months before.

Some things never change but people occasionally do and Linus has, Rusty notices. He's developed a reputation since the heist that Rusty didn't think compatible with the kid he knew but following him into the apartment, he knows it's true. The subtle half-hesitation in everything Linus does is gone, replaced with the quiet grace he only carried while picking pockets before.

Rusty likes the way Linus looks now, the sureness of his smile when he offers Tess a drink. He even likes the way it falters a bit when Tess declines, asks to use the bathroom, and leaves the two of them alone.

"Nice digs," Rusty says after walking over to the window. The building is simple and the apartment expensive in a boring, quiet way, but the view is killer.

"Thanks," Linus says. He stands with his weight back on his heels, hands quiet in his pockets; like most of the best pickpockets Rusty has known, Linus isn't a fidgeter. He is also characteristically and, in Rusty's mind, tragically devoid of style. Standing in his apartment now, staring at Rusty with something between confusion and annoyance in his eyes, Linus wears boring pants, a run-of-the-mill black T-shirt and unremarkable shoes.

But he wears it all well. Looking at him, Rusty used to sometimes see Danny there, lurking around the edges of the kid's daring decisions, and even himself, in the fleeting casual confidence. More than anything, Rusty saw both of them ten years before, when everything was new and exciting and terrifying. Now Linus just looks like himself to Rusty, filled out and whole.

"You look good," Rusty says.

"What?"

"You heard me," Rusty says.

"Well, uh," Linus says, and Rusty can't help smiling at the hesitation returning. "Thanks. I guess."

"You guess? That was a pretty unambiguous compliment," Rusty says. "A universally accepted nice thing to say, so I'm thinking the problem is with me. You got a problem with me, Linus?"

"No," Linus says.

"No? Sure seems like you do. Are you lying to me, Linus?"

"No," Linus says. "I'm not. I don't – "

"Settle down, I'm just messing with you," Rusty says. "Hey, got any gum?"

Linus hands him a piece from his pocket, peppermint flavored and warm from being close to Linus's body.

"Thanks," Rusty says, and walks over to a table stacked with pictures. Rusty picks up one and stares at it for a long minute, and then picks up another, of Linus and a blonde girl his age. "Who's this?"

"My sister," Linus says, taking the photo out of Rusty's hand.

"She in the family business?"

"She's a teacher," Linus says, and puts the picture back in its place. Rusty goes back to looking over the apartment, examining magazines on tables, CDs and DVDs scattered on the floor near the entertainment center. Linus stands a few feet away, watching closely.

After a stretch of silence, Linus says, "Is Tess okay, do you think, or –"

Rusty doesn't look up from the month-old copy of Sports Illustrated he's just picked up. "She always takes forever. She's probably putting on makeup or going through your medicine cabinet. She'll be out in a sec."
Linus nods, and then clears his throat. "So why are you here? Exactly? Is everything okay?"

Rusty isn't sure how long everything will mean Las Vegas and Terry Benedict and Danny Ocean, but for now, it does, and so he knows how nervous Linus is in spite of the casual question.

"Everything's fine," Rusty says easily, turning a page. "Tess and I are on our way to Jersey and Chicago seemed like a nice stop. Thought we'd say hi."

"Why, is that a problem?"

Rusty has always admired the way Tess enters rooms, sometimes so silently no one notices her presence, other times with a sway in her step that turns every head her way. From all Danny has said and Rusty has seen, she seems to be a straight arrow, or as close to it as someone in love with Danny could be. Rusty knows that should she ever turn a little crooked, she'd be formidable.

"No, no, of course not," Linus says, eagerness rushing his words. "You picking up Danny?"

"Yeah," Rusty says. He flips through the last few pages of the magazine, drops it on the coffee table and says, after a pause during which he folds his hands in front of him and puts on his most imposing face, "What kind of car are you driving now, Linus?"

Rusty can tell from Linus's hesitation that he will like the answer. "A Toyota," Linus finally says.

"A Toyota," Rusty says. He scratches the side of his head and squints at Linus. "Bobby Caldwell's son, and you're driving a Toyota?"

"Really, Linus," Tess says, and Rusty understands for a second why Danny loves her.

"It's a good car," Linus says.

"A very good car," Rusty says, with a nod. "You're right. My apologies."

"It's my old car," Linus says. "I'm going to get another one. I'm just waiting. Didn't want to drop all that money so soon after the job."

Rusty smiles, nods. "Now that's Bobby Caldwell's son. Good job, Linus. You pass."

"This was a test?"

"A little bit," Rusty says, and rubs his hands together and says, "Well, Tess and I should be going. Places to go, jailbirds to see."
"Good to see you, Linus," Tess says, leaning over to give him a kiss on the cheek.

"You too," Linus says. Rusty thinks he sees a blush.

"What, no kiss for me?"

"Get out," Linus says, with a grin. Rusty can't tell if it means he was happy to have seen them or glad to see them go; either way, Rusty knows he likes the way it looks on Linus's face.

~

Rusty leaves Danny and Tess at a small airport in southern Missouri where they’ve chartered an airplane through one of Frank’s contacts.

"You sure this is okay?" Danny’s squinting into the sunlight over Rusty’s shoulder, always shy about being considerate.

"It’s fine," Rusty says. "Frank says this guy’s solid, and we lost the twin buffoons three towns ago."

"That’s not what—"

"Danny," Rusty says, warning in his voice.

"Right, right," Danny says, with a grin. He looks at Rusty for a long moment before saying, "Now, you’ve got to promise – and I mean promise – that I won’t catch you in some den of B-List Hollywood talent when I get back."

"I promise," Rusty says.

"All right," Danny says and nods over his shoulder, looks back at Rusty with a sad kind of smile. "Thanks, Rus."

"No problem," Rusty says.

Tess walks over, the wind blowing strands of hair out of her sleek ponytail. When she gets to Danny's side she says, "See ya, Rusty."

"See ya, Tess," Rusty says, and nods at Danny, who nods back before turning around and walking away, reaching out for Tess's hand. Rusty stays until all he can see of them is a tiny speck in the sky, disappearing into the setting sun. He leaves before it's gone completely.

~

Rusty drives. He picks up Benedict's guys in the same town he left them, and then looks up Frank in Tucson, Basher in New York, his uncle in Florida, dozens of people in between, and then, finally, Saul, who has set up shop in Saratoga for the month of August. Even though he can afford his own box now, Rusty finds him sitting next to the same stooped gamblers wearing ill-fitting suits in the Grandstand.

At the end of the day they eat fried chicken at an outdoor restaurant a mile from the track. Saul's asked about Danny and Tess, is happy to hear they've gotten out, moved on, found a way to begin again.

"What are you doing, Rusty?"

Rusty shrugs, wipes his fingers on a napkin.

"You've got a chance for a life," Saul says. "Not here, I mean, but –"

"I know what you mean," Rusty says.

"You're young. Find a nice girl," Saul says, and it's amazing how much Saul sounds like his mother.

"Okay, Saul," Rusty says. "I'll look into it."

The trouble with finding a nice girl is that Rusty's known a lot of nice girls, liked a lot of nice girls, loved one or two, even, but not for a while now. He knows better. Nice girls want stable homes and guys with steady jobs and Rusty's never been that way, has never wanted to be. He likes the night, the road, dim bars, bad food, and as much or more than anything, the grace of a well-turned con.

But sometimes he misses things, wants things. He drives down long stretches of interstate with the windows down and an empty horizon ahead and thinks of Danny reaching for Tess's hand.

Not that he and Danny have ever been anything like that, of course. Danny isn't that way, never has been, and it's always been fine, because he understands or pretends not to see that Rusty is, and Rusty has never minded Danny noticing either way. Rusty doesn't want Danny that way now, not anymore, not for a while; what he wants is just Danny in the car next to him, on the other end of the phone, across the table at a greasy diner, on the next stool at a bar. Ready to hatch a scheme, form a plan, do the impossible together.

Sometimes he just misses having someone else to change the radio stations and run into the convenience store for drinks. Most of all he just doesn't like being alone.

~

Eventually Rusty runs out of people he feels like looking up and doesn't mind driving to see and ends up back where he kind of started a while before, in Chicago, across from the unremarkable brick building housing Linus Caldwell. He sits in a small café and crumbles a muffin through his fingers, watches Linus's door for hours until he emerges, wearing a tan windbreaker and jeans, worn out sneakers and a baseball hat. He looks five years younger than he did the last time Rusty saw him, but otherwise unchanged, the same graceful short strides carrying him down the street through the light summer rain.

He's gone four hours and he comes back alone, which gets to be a pattern, Rusty sees after three days. On the fourth day Rusty tosses his muffin in the trash after Linus turns right off of his doorstep and sets off at a slow lope down the sidewalk. Rusty turns out of the diner and pulls on sunglasses, matches Linus's pace across the street and twenty feet ahead.

Rusty wouldn't have noticed if he didn't know to look, but he does, and so he sees it happen around the corner and three blocks down: Linus brushes up against a businessman going the opposite direction, lifts his wallet easily, tosses it into the nearest mailbox before turning right, down a side street, away.

~

The next day Rusty arrives at the café to see his table already taken.

"Hello Linus," he says when he reaches the table.

"Rusty," Linus says.

Linus is opening his mouth to say something else when Rusty interrupts, points to the counter and says, "I'm just going to get a muffin. You want? The chai is excellent."

Linus stares at him for a second. "No, I'm good."

"Okay."

When Rusty settles in across the table from him five minutes later, the expression of vague annoyance hasn't left Linus's face. "What's this all about, Rusty?"

"What?"

"This," Linus says, shrugging his shoulders in a vague way meant to encompass the whole café.

"Oh," Rusty says. "That."

"Yeah," Linus says.

Rusty shrugs. "I was bored."

"You were bored?"

"I was bored," Rusty says. "Also, I was curious about your social life."

Linus watches Rusty sip his coffee. "Really."

Rusty sets his cup down. "I was wondering if you had a boyfriend."

"A boyfriend?" Linus's voice is high on the last word, panicked. "What – I – what?"

"Linus," Rusty says, breaking off a piece of muffin. "It's okay. No one's judging here."

"Well, sure, because I'm not gay."

"Sure you are," Rusty says. "A little bit, at least."

"No," Linus says. "I'm not."

"Linus, I saw that apartment."

"What about my apartment?" Linus sounds genuinely concerned.

Rusty swallows a bite of muffin, takes a sip from his coffee and pauses dramatically. "Nothing."

Linus stares at him for a second. "You're really starting to piss me off."

"Don't mean to," Rusty says. "Listen, if you're not comfortable with your sexuality yet, that's fine. It takes some people longer than others. But really, if you're going to try to hide it, maybe you shouldn't keep pictures of you and your boyfriend in the middle of the living room."

"What are you talking about?" Linus asks, shaking his head.

"That picture," Rusty says. "You know the one. By the water? With the fish?"

"With the – wait, that one? With Freddy?" Linus says. "Freddy wasn't my boyfriend."

"If you say so," Rusty says.

"I say so," Linus says.

"Okay."

"Fine."

Rusty's eaten another third of his muffin when Linus speaks up again.

"So, was that it?"

Rusty shrugs. "Pretty much."

"Really," Linus says, and then sits silent for a long minute before asking, in a tone implying he wished to forget the last conversation, "Did Danny get out okay?"

"He did," Rusty says.

Linus nods. "Him and Tess?"

"Together, off seeing the world."

Rusty finishes up his muffin and takes a last sip of coffee, throws out the rest because it's not very good and there's a better place four blocks south, near his hotel. Linus stands up after him, follows him out of the café into the street.

It's a warm day, sunny, and Rusty's pulling on his sunglasses when Linus says, "I just don't get – why?"

Rusty watches Linus's face contort with confusion and awkwardness. "Why do you think?"

"I don't know, that's why I'm asking."

"Think about it," Rusty says. "If you figure it out, I'll be at Emmit's at seven. Good seeing you, Linus."

And then he walks away.

~

It's the café all over again when Rusty walks into Emmit's. Linus is sitting at a tall table next to the bar, watching the door, a bottle of beer in front of him. He looks almost disappointed when Rusty walks over to the table, and sits down across from him.

"You figure it out?"

"Maybe."

"Maybe," Rusty says. "Maybe doesn't count for much."

"Hey Rus, the usual?"

"Yeah, thanks," Rusty says over his shoulder to the bartender.

It's only after Rusty's taken a sip of his whiskey sour that Linus speaks up.

"It's another job, right?"

"No," Rusty says. "Not another job."

"Oh," Linus says. "Then I don't know."

"Hmm," Rusty says, and takes another sip. "Okay. You need me to say it?"

"Yeah," Linus says.

"Fine," Rusty says. "The thing is, I'm bored. So are you - I saw you lift that guys wallet the other day. I'm on my way to see the biggest ball of yarn out in South Carolina and thought maybe you'd like to come along, have a little fun. If you need me to be more explicit than that, I'm out of here."

"Okay," Linus says, after a pause.

"Okay what?" Rusty says.

"Okay I'll go," Linus says and then, off of Rusty's stare, says it again. "I'll go."

"All right then. Pick you up at ten," Rusty says, and finishes his drink. "Good doing business with you, Linus."

~

Linus is ready when Rusty comes to get him, a duffel bag stuffed full sitting next to him on the front stoop of his apartment building.

"Didn't change your mind, I see," Rusty says.

"Nope," Linus says, and throws the bag into the backseat of the car, which is littered with fast food wrappers and empty soda bottles. He settles in next to Rusty and is quiet as they pull away, drive through Chicago, and eventually merge onto the interstate.

"He wasn't my boyfriend," Linus says three exit markers into the drive.

Rusty looks over and then back at the road.

"He wasn't," Linus says again. "He was a guy I knew growing up. We played football together. He wasn't – he wasn't that way."

Rusty looks over again. "Like that, was it?"

"Yeah," Linus says.

Rusty is quiet for a bit. "Has he seen that picture?"

"I don't know. I guess," Linus says.

"Because you're pretty much eyefucking him there," Rusty says.

"I am not," Linus says, and then is silent for a moment, considering. "Well. Maybe. I guess. A little bit. Shit."

Linus looks over and smiles then, a big one that changes the shape of his face. Rusty smiles too and feels something untie inside, relax, and then he's laughing. He looks forward at the flat highway and all the little toy cars in the distance, pushes down on the accelerator to catch up.

~

They pull over the first night at a motel off the interstate with a glowing green neon sign blinking "V C NCY".

The motel office has a citrus color scheme, a yellow formica counter accenting the lime green carpet. Rusty and Linus stand in the humid night on the other side of the glass door for a moment before walking in. The lone clerk sits behind the counter twining a lock of her feathered brown hair around one finger, reading a romance novel.

"You doing okay there?" Rusty says in a concerned way.

"I'm fine," Linus says.

"No, I mean, since the wedding," Rusty says. "The wedding that wasn't."

"Oh," Linus says, smiling. "No. I think I maybe had a few too many tonight. Maybe drank away our motel money."

"I think so too."

Rusty pulls the door open and Linus walks in ahead of him, slumps down in an orange plastic chair by the door. Rusty walks up to the counter and clears his throat to get the clerk's attention.

"Hi," Rusty says. "We'd like a room."

The clerk waves a finger in the air, mouth forming the words she's reading until she finally, slowly puts the book down, an annoyed, "Yeah?" dying on her lips when she sees Rusty standing there.

Rusty smiles in a winning way and looks down at the clerk's shirt. "Hi there, Brandy."

"Hi," the clerk says.

"We were -- "

"I just don't get it," Linus interrupts from behind Rusty, words slurring together. "Why'd she do it, man?"

Rusty shakes his head. "I don't know, buddy," he says, still facing the clerk, who is tucking hair behind one ear and smiling at Rusty.

"Is he okay?" she whispers.

"But I guess I shouldn't call her she," Linus says.

"Bad breakup," Rusty whispers.

"Oh," the clerk says knowingly.

"I should have known from the biceps," Linus says. "I just thought she was really fit. He. Dammit," he says, and buries his face in his hands.

Rusty shakes his head at the clerk, who looks concerned in a horrified way. "He's been like this for three days," Rusty says. "Ever since the wedding."

"The wedding?" The clerk's eyes widen.

Rusty nods in a sad way.

"She said she wanted to wait," Linus says, voice muffled by his hands. "I just thought she was really moral."

"I know, I know, the annulment's on its way. I'm so sorry about all this," Rusty says, turning back to the clerk. "Now, what were you saying about rates?"

~

Linus's shoulders stay slumped until they get into Room 9 and shut the door behind them, pull the curtains shut. Then he stands up straight, looks at Rusty, and laughs, mouth open wide in a toothy grin. Rusty laughs too, but in a quieter way, watching Linus.

Linus runs a hand over his face after a minute, smoothing the laughter and the grin away, leaving a small smile behind. "That was good," he says.
"It was," Rusty says. He tells himself he isn't nervous and it's only a little bit of a lie; he's about to cover it up with a lazy smile or smart remark when Linus cuts it short by leaning in to kiss him.

Rusty's surprised but doesn't let it show. He meets Linus halfway and even though their teeth bump, once, and at first it's kind of weird, but then it's nice. Linus tastes sweet, like the powdered mini doughnuts they picked up at a convenience store minutes before finding the motel.

Rusty pulls away, once, says, "You don't–"

"I know," Linus says. "I want to."

"Okay then," Rusty says. His hand is resting on the side of Linus's neck and it only takes a little pull to bring them back together.

Linus’s hands are careful; so careful, in fact, that Rusty’s feel reckless, even though he’s always been known for his soft touch. Danny taught him the fine art of pickpocketing years ago and though he never took to it as well as Danny did, he was good, better than good, but not as good as Danny and certainly not as good as Linus, who moves his hands over Rusty so quietly that he’s surprised, a little bit, every few seconds, by where they end up.

He’s not completely out of it; Linus has barely slipped his hand into the lining of Rusty’s jacket when Rusty pulls away and grabs Linus’s wrist in his hand in one smooth movement.

"Trying to be smart, huh," he says.

Linus’s mouth hangs open a bit, but his eyes are still sharp. "Trying."

"Failing," Rusty says.

"Really." Linus holds up Rusty’s watch in his other hand.

"Son of a bitch," Rusty says, and pushes Linus down onto the bed, silences Linus’s low laughter with a kiss.

end

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