"Heh. Yeah." I kept at the task. The hot water on my hands was soothing. Cleaning the plates and the pan was comfortable, a job at which I could achieve tangible, immediate progress. I found myself moving more and more slowly, though. If I finished the dishes, I'd have nothing but time—and not much of that.
"You should try to rest," she said. "Even if you can't sleep. Get a shower, lay down, and close your eyes. It will be good for you, and you'll need your strength."
"Maybe," I said.
"Definitely. After you kick the Ancients back to wherever they came from, you're coming with me to the driving test Monday. You'll need all the nerve you can get."
I tried to smile at her, but her flippancy didn't change the facts any more than mine did. I was alone, and I had no idea how to survive the night.
"All right," I told her. "I just need to make a call first."
She'd figured me out a long time ago. She already had her cell phone in hand, and she passed it to me. "Aunt May left me several numbers in case we needed to reach her. They're in the phone book."
I took the phone and got a little misty-eyed. "What in the world did I do to deserve you?"
She kissed my cheek. "I have no idea. But I'm fairly sure it isn't the sort of thing to happen twice."
I took the phone into the bedroom with me and opened up its list of contact numbers. The time flashed sullenly on the little display screen, the seconds ticking down with relentless patience.
Chapter 19
The silence wore on as
I
stared down at the little clock on the phone. I really, really didn't want to die.
It's going to happen eventually. I know that. Death comes to all of us, sooner or later. That's just part of the deal of being born. All the same, though, I didn't want it to happen today.
I'd faced danger before, too, situations where I could have lost my life. Most of those situations, though, had been blazing seconds of fast-moving action, while I was high on adrenaline and the fury of a fight.
The fear I felt now was a different flavor. It was patient. It had hours and hours in which to keep me company and it was comfortable doing so with each inevitable second that went by. To make things worse, I was relatively rested, alert, and not in any particular pain, which meant that all my attention was free to feel the fear. To watch death coming.
There was some part of me, the part that had made me try to walk away from the mask, that was simply furious at my stupidity. I didn't have to be doing this. I could run, and to hell with all the people who would suffer for it. What had they ever done for me? I'd spent my life trying to protect them, and despite that I still got scorn and derision and hostility as many times as I received any gratitude. Even if a thousand people died because I ran, I figured I had saved the lives of three or four times as many as that—and that was directly, face-to-face, not counting the times where I'd shut down some maniac who would have killed tens of thousands with various gases, bombs and death rays. If I bugged out (ha, get it?) now, I'd still be ahead by the numbers.
Maybe I was just getting set in my ways, because I knew I wouldn't do it. But part of me really, really wanted to. It made me feel ashamed. Weak. Tired. Simultaneously, though, there was a sort of peace that came along with it. That's the one good thing about inevitable death. It clears the mind wonderfully. Once it's done, it's done. There would be no more agonizing questions, no more of others suffering for my mistakes, no more madmen, no more victims. I had done all that I could, and I would be able to rest with a clean conscience, more or less.
The worst part was that death would mean saying painful good-byes.
I wasn't sure how much time passed before I turned my attention to the phone, but the lighted panel had gone out, and seemed far too bright to my eyes when I turned it on.
When I finally got through the cruise ship's phone system to Aunt May, there was a lot of talking in the background and a slight lag in speech from the satellite transmission times. "Peter!" she said, her voice pleased and warm. "Hello, dear."
"Hi, Aunt May," I said. "How's the cruise?"
"Scandalous," she said happily. "You wouldn't believe how many self-styled Casanovas and Mata Haris are on this ship. It would not shock me to find a complimentary Viagra dispenser in every bar."
That made me smile. "Sounds noisy there. What's going on?"
"We're at a glacier," she told me. "Everyone's quite impressed that the water is blue and that one can see through it. They're off cutting ice from the glacier now, so that we can have hundred-thousandyear-old ice cubes in our drinks. Despite the fact that up until now we've been given perfectly good fresh ice. And there are whales."
"Whales?"
"Yes, some sort of whale, at any rate. They look like half-sunken barges to me, but everyone's at the rail taking pictures. Then there's going to be some kind of drinking game, as I understand it. Most disgraceful."
I laughed. "Just don't drive afterward."
"Oh, I won't be drinking, naturally. It's far more amusing to watch a fool drink than to be the drunken fool. The sun is still up, can you imagine? It must be, what? Nearly midnight there."
I checked the clock. "Pretty close."
"Apparently, night is only a few hours long this far north. I think it may have contributed to how juvenile everyone is acting."
"You're loving it, aren't you," I said.
"I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard."
she confirmed with undisguised glee. "We're having a ball. How are you?"
"Oh, great," I said. "They put me in charge of basketball practice at the school Friday afternoon. I'm supposed to coach the team until next Thursday."
"Well, you always did have such a fondness for sports," she said, her voice dry. "How is it going?"
"I'm supposed to be teaching their star athlete to play nice with the team," I said. "He's not having anything from me, though. And everyone else is following his example. I figure by Tuesday they'll try to give me a wedgie and shut me into a locker. Gosh it's nice to be back in high school."
Aunt May laughed. "I take it your star player is talented?"
"Too much so for his own good, apparently."
"That can be difficult," she said. "Sooner or later he'll run into something he can't do alone. It's important that one learn to work with others before that happens."
"That's why the coach wanted me to teach him different." I sighed. "But I've got no idea how to get through to him."
"Think about it for a while," she suggested. "I'm sure it will come to you. And I suspect it might be good practice for when you have children of your own."
I blinked. "What?"
"Oh, I'm not lobbying for an instant baby, mind you," Aunt May said. "But I do know you, dear. You'll be a wonderful father." She paused for a moment and said, "Is that enough small talk now, Peter, or shall we make a little more before you tell me what's wrong?"
"Oh, nothing's wrong, Aunt May."
"This is a cruise ship, Peter dear. Not a turnip truck."
I didn't have another laugh in me, but I smiled. Aunt May would hear it in my voice. "There's nothing unusually wrong, then," I said.
"Ah," she said. "A business problem, then. Have I mentioned, Peter, how glad I am that you are willing to discuss your business with me now?"
"About a hundred times," I said. "I was so glad that we could… talk again."
"It is a very good thing," she said in warm agreement. "How is MJ?"
"Worried about me," I said.
"I can't imagine what that must be like," Aunt May said, her tone wry. "But I'm glad she's with you. She loves you to no end, you know."
"I know," I said quietly.
"And so do I," she said.
I closed my eyes, still smiling despite the quiet ache in my throat and the wetness on my cheeks. "I know. I love you too, Aunt May."