“We can’t travel together anymore.”
Or not. Dean looked around for help, but the sounds of vigorous excavation from the bathroom suggested Austin was in the litter box. “What did you say?” He felt as though he’d just been cross-checked into the boards and should be staring through Plexiglas at a row of screaming faces instead of across the remains of a takeout breakfast into a pair of worried brown eyes.
“We can’t travel together anymore.”
“But I though we were…? I mean, aren’t we…?” he shook his head, trying to find a question he could actually articulate. “Why not, then?”
“Someday I’ll run into something I won’t be able to keep from hurting you.”
He was about to tell her that he was willing to risk it in order to be with her when she continued, and the conversation headed off in a new, or rather an old, direction.
“It’s why Keepers don’t travel with Bystanders.”
“I thought we’d moved past that Keeper/Bystander thing?”
“We can’t move past that Keeper/Bystander thing.”
The sudden quiet resonated with the sound of clay particles being flung all over the bathroom floor.
“Dean? Do you understand?”
“Sure.”
She’d been working on the various meanings men gave to sure for some time now. This one escaped her. Sure, I understand, but I don’t agree with you was way too obvious as was, I’ve stopped listening, but since you’re waiting for me to say something, sure.
“Dean?”
When he looked up, it didn’t help. For some strange reason he looked angry.
“What about us, then?”
“An us will end with you dead because of something I didn’t do, and I won’t allow that to happen.”
“You won’t allow?”
“That’s right.”
He folded his arms. “So there’s no us, and we know where you stand. What about me, then?”
“You?”
“Or do I have no say in this?”
“I’m the Keeper…”
“And I’m not. I know.”
“I’m doing this for you!”
“And because you know best, I’m supposed to just walk away?”
“I do know best!” Claire shoved her chair away from the table. “And it might be nice if you realized I just don’t want you to get hurt.” The scene should have played out as sad and tragically inevitable, but Dean continued to just not get it.
“You know what I realize?” He mirrored her motion. “I realize, and I’m amazed it took me so long, that it’s always about you. You’ve got no idea of how to…to compromise!”
“A Keeper can’t compromise!”
“And I suppose a Keeper can’t wipe her feet either?”
“Unlike you, I have more important things to worry about than that, and,” she added with icy emphasis, “I have more important things to worry about than you!”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
Silence descended like a slammed door.
“Well, that doesn’t get any easier as I get older.” Austin jumped up onto the end of the bed nearest the bathroom and turned to face the table, swiveling his head around so he could look first at Claire and then at Dean. “So, what did I miss?”
TWO
“BUT I BROUGHT YOU INTO AMERICA, I should take you out.”
“It’s not necessary.” Claire shoved her makeup bag into the backpack—she used to carry a suitcase as well until Dean had asked her why. If she could fit a desktop computer, a printer, two boxes of disks, and the obligatory stale cough drop in the backpack, why couldn’t it hold everything else? She owed him for that as well as for a thousand other things her brain insisted on listing. For doing the driving. For giving her all the red Smarties. For cleaning the litter box. For patiently explaining the difference between offside and icing yet again. For being a warm and solid support at her back. For…
“This is upper New York State, not Cambodia,” she continued, almost shouting to drown out the list. “Canadians come here daily to buy toaster ovens.”
“Fine.” Dean jerked the zipper shut on his hockey bag, suddenly tired of being shouted at for no apparent reason. “You can catch a ride with one of them, then.” He swung the bag up onto his shoulder, but Austin stepped in front of him before he could make it to the door.
“I don’t want to ride with a toaster oven,” the cat declared. “I want to ride with Dean.”
“Austin.” Claire growled his name through clenched teeth.
He leaned around Dean’s legs to glare at her. “Is the site you’re Summoned to on this side of the border?”
“No, but…”
“Then he won’t be in any danger giving us a lift. And that is why you don’t want him around, isn’t it? To keep him out of danger?”
“Yes, but…”
“And we’re going to need a ride.”
“I know, but…”
“So say thank you and go settle the bill while we load the truck.”
“While we load the truck?” Dean asked a moment later, settling the cat carrier on the seat beside him and opening the top.
“Please.” Austin poured out and arranged himself in the shaft of sunlight slanting through the windshield. “Like you didn’t know I wanted to talk to you.”
“You need to talk to Claire, not me.” He started the engine, checked that it was in neutral and the parking brake was on, took his foot off the clutch, then began polishing fingerprints off the steering wheel with the sleeve of his jacket. “I sure didn’t expect to break collar so soon.”
“Break what?”
“Lose the job.”
“Job? You weren’t doing a job, you were just living your life. If it was a job,” the cat snorted disdainfully, “she’d have been paying you.”
“Then I didn’t expect this part of my life to be over so soon.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
“Yeah, it does.”
“You’re just going to let her tell you what to do?”
“No. But I’m not staying if she thinks she has the right to make decisions about my life as though I wasn’t a part of it.”
“Of your life?”
“Or the decision.”
“So you’re leaving not because she told you to but because she thinks she has the right to tell you to?”
“Yeah.”
Austin sighed. “Would it make a difference if I told you she’s honestly afraid of you having your intestines sucked out your nose because she was thinking about your shoulders and misjudged an accident site?”
“Well, I don’t want my intestines sucked out my nose either,” Dean allowed. Then he paused and blushed slightly, buffing an already spotless bit of dashboard. “She thinks about my shoulders?”
“Shoulders, thighs…as near as I can tell, she spends far too much time thinking about most of your body parts—sequentially and simultaneously—when she should be thinking about other things.”
“Like accident sites?”
“Like me.”
“Oh.” And then because the cat’s tone demanded an apology, he added, “Sorry.”
“And accident sites,” Austin allowed graciously, having been given his due. “Look, Claire tends to see things in terms of what she has to do to keep the world from falling apart. Close an accident site here, prevent the movie remake of ‘Gilligan’s Island’ there, keep you from being hurt, feed the cat—everything’s an absolute. She doesn’t compromise well, it’s an occupational hazard. Stay and teach her to see your side of things.”
“Only if she asks me to.” The steering wheel creaked a protest as Dean closed his hands around it and tightened his grip. “And since I know for a fact that Hell hasn’t frozen over, I’m not after holding my breath.”
Austin sighed and turned so he could see Claire picking her way across the slush covered parking lot from the office. “She’s getting her own way, you’d think she’d be happier about it, wouldn’t you? She looks miserable. Doesn’t she? You don’t want her to be miserable? Do you?”