Part 6 (1/2)

Not so much at Gus' choice. By the time you start tracking your partner through airports and subways to find out whom he's going to see, you can pretty much a.s.sume the best days of the relations.h.i.+p are over.

What surprised Shawn was his own choice. He had let Gus go.

Not that there was anything he could have done to make Gus stay. It wasn't like he'd signed a contract with Psych, or that Shawn had people who'd break the legs of anyone who crossed him But Shawn understood Gus. Understood how he thought. Understood him so well that nine times out of ten he could predict what Gus would do or say in just about any situation. And because he knew what Gus was going to do before Gus did, he also had a pretty good idea of how to make what he did match up with what Shawn wanted him to do.

Not always, of course. Gus wasn't just Shawn's puppet. He had a will and a mind of his own, which is what had made him such a valuable partner as well as a friend. But if they were trying to decide what movie to see or where to eat or who should drive, Shawn was generally able to lead Gus to his preferred choice and do it in a way that Gus thought it had been his own idea.

When Shawn learned that Gus was not interviewing with another detective agency but was instead talking to a pharmaceuticals company about an executive position, his first instinct was to beat him around the head and neck. But once that first instinct faded he started working out his strategy for bringing Gus back into Psych.

Once D-Bob had skipped off down the street--at least Shawn remembered him as having skipped--Shawn began to put his plot into action. The first step was easy.

”I'm hungry,” Shawn had said. ”Is there any place to eat in this town?”

Using their unique detective prowess, they managed to track down a '50s-style diner with a sign proudly advertising HOT DOGS AS BIG AS YOUR HEAD AND BURGERS THAT MAKE THEM LOOK SMALL. Once they were seated in a red-vinyl booth and the waitress had done a quick check of their hat size to make sure their food would live up to its billing, Shawn launched into step two.

”So,” he said, ”pharmaceuticals.”

It wasn't much of a second step, but it was more than he'd planned for the next one. Shawn hadn't actually come up with a step three. Or, rather, he'd planned several possibilities. It all depended on how Gus reacted. If Gus seemed angry about Shawn spying on him, Shawn would have to be hurt by his friend's lack of trust in him. If Gus claimed he was actually working undercover on a case and that the interview was part of his investigation, Shawn would keep pumping him for details until the lie fell apart under its own weight. If Gus claimed that he had no idea what he was doing in San Francisco and that all he remembered was going to sleep in his own bed last night and waking up on that street corner and being hugged by D-Bob, Shawn would insist that Gus check himself in for observation at the nearest mental hospital and refuse to leave him alone until he did.

But what Gus actually did was something that even Shawn had never thought to prepare for. As soon as the waitress had departed with their order, he leaned across the table and gave Shawn a warm smile.

”I can't tell you how happy I am you followed me today,” Gus said. ”Thank you.”

Shawn studied Gus' words as closely as he studied the face across from him. Now matter which way he looked at them, they made no sense.

”You're thanking me for spying on you?” Shawn said finally.

”Yes,” Gus said.

”For violating your privacy, breaking your confidence, and basically being a complete jerk?”

”Yes,” Gus said.

Now Shawn understood. His face tightened. ”Because that just makes it easier for you to tell me to go to h.e.l.l,” Shawn said. ”It's one thing to screw over a friend and colleague. But to do it to a creep--no big deal, right?”

Gus looked more surprised than hurt. ”Because I've been looking for a way to tell you about this for weeks,” he said. ”I never had the nerve. But you took the kind of bold action I was too chicken to try, and now everything is out in the open. Which just goes to show why you're the best friend anyone has ever had.”

Shawn ran through his catalog of response scenarios, and none of them fit the situation. Even his ultimate fallback of sticking a fork into Gus' eye and running away didn't seem to be appropriate. Although he'd thought he'd gamed this out in every possible way, he had completely overlooked the idea that Gus might use simple honesty. Shawn was crossing unknown territory here and he had to work his way through it with extreme caution.

”I'm such a good friend you couldn't tell me you were interviewing for another job?” he said finally. It was more of a stall than a move, but he thought it might buy him a little time until he could see the board more clearly.

”Exactly,” Gus said. ”Do you have any idea how hard it was to get this terrific, exciting news and not be able to share it with my best friend? There were times I thought my head was going to explode from the pressure of keeping a secret from you.”

That made Shawn think of his own attempt to blow up Gus' head with logic and he suddenly felt ashamed. But he hadn't gotten where he was in life by paying attention to useless emotions like shame or guilt.

”So you want me to feel sorry for you?” Shawn said.

”I want you to be happy for me,” Gus said. ”Until just a few minutes ago I didn't know what I was going to do if they offered me this job. When I was first contacted by Rutland Armitage, I didn't even think I'd answer the e-mail. I had two jobs already--why would I be interested in a third one? But to ignore it seemed rude, so I e-mailed him back and asked for more details. I figured I'd see what he had to say, then politely decline, having given the appearance of considering it seriously.”

”You've always been thoughtful toward strangers.” Shawn congratulated himself for that response. On its surface it was complimentary, but it could easily be spun into an attack with addition of a single phrase like ”too bad you don't care about your friends,” if that looked like the way to go.

”I wasn't even sure I was going to open Armitage's follow-up e-mail,” Gus said, apparently oblivious to the conversational trap Shawn had just set for him. ”I glanced at it to be polite. And then I looked at it again. It was all about Benson Pharmaceuticals. They're an old company, but they're under new management and it's like an entirely new world. They don't work like other companies. They're small, fast, vital; able to maneuver like a shark where the big firms move like dead whales. The entire executive staff seems to be under thirty-five, starting with the chairman and CEO--but you met D-Bob already.”

”Oh, yes,” Shawn said. ”D-Bob.”

”There's almost infinite room for growth,” Gus said. ”The promotion track is incredibly fast. And they wanted me to come in as a junior vice president. Vice President Guster. Pretty incredible, isn't it?”

”Incredible,” Shawn said.

”I still wasn't convinced I wanted to make a move,” Gus said, his enthusiasm growing with every sentence. ”But I agreed to meet with Armitage and then with some of the other executives. That's why I've been so unreliable lately--all these meetings. I wanted to tell you what was going on, but I think I was kind of afraid to.”

”You were afraid of me?” Shawn said.

”I wasn't ready to admit to myself that I wanted this,” Gus said. ”If I told you about it I knew I'd have to make that decision. So I kept it secret, thinking that way I could always drop out at any time. But the further in I got the less I wanted to drop out.”

”And Psych?” Shawn said. ”You wanted to drop out of Psych?”

The smile left Gus' face. He looked down at the table. He picked up his fork and bounced it on his napkin.

”You did want to leave,” Shawn said, realization flooding through him. ”It wasn't just about being an executive at some new company. You were looking for a way out.”

”I wasn't,” Gus said, still staring down at the table. ”Not until ...”

”Until?”

”I think it was when we started looking for Macklin Tanner,” Gus said.

”You mean you didn't want to leave Psych until we started on the greatest case that any private detective has ever had?” Shawn said. He was too astonished even to be angry.

”It was when we got into the game,” Gus said.

”I know, the virtual world was so vivid and exciting it made our own reality seem dull by comparison,” Shawn said. ”That's why we stopped at BurgerZone after every session--to remind ourselves that there are some things that can't be duplicated in pixels. Yet.”

”It was vivid,” Gus conceded. ”And the characters in it seemed completely real at first. But as we got killed those first few times and had to restart the game at the beginning, those characters always said and did exactly the same things.”

”Not exactly,” Shawn said. ”Look at the mailman. One time he shot you in the head. Another time he sprayed acid at you.”

”That's actually my point,” Gus said.

Shawn knew what he wanted to say. He wanted to say No, it's not. Spraying acid in the face isn't anything like getting shot in the head except that the head is attached to the face. And then they could debate all the ways that the two modes of death were different or similar and by the time they were done the food would have come and for a long while they wouldn't say anything because their mouths were full and then they'd be full and happy and n.o.body would want to leave Santa Barbara and be a junior vice president of anything and they'd go home together and everything would be the way it always used to be. But one look at Gus' face told him that it wouldn't work.

”It is?” Shawn said.

”The game is filled with all these well-defined, incredibly lifelike characters who seem to be acting with free will,” Gus said. ”But once you look a little more closely you see that their range of options for movement is limited to two or three minor variations on the same small set of actions.”

”They are just characters in a computer game,” Shawn said.