At this, the Watcher laughed the way a person can only laugh if one has a Bowie knife to the throat and a rich sense of absurdity. I, however, was not much amused.
"You! Think! Ha, ha! About getting...(wheeze)revenge!" he said. I pressed the knife a little closer, letting him feel how sharp the edge was. "Oh, (sniff) that is too much. You're a little whack-job, aren't you? Ha! Ha! I'm going to tell you who did it just to see you get yourself killed! What the he-- do you think you're going to do?"
"Cut your eyes out and feed them to you. What do you suppose will be worse, the rhuemy fluid seeping out of your eye-less sockets, or the taste of...."
He cut me off. "Please! You are so bad at that! Look, it was this guy, Duncan MacLeod. And he's really good. Happy, now?"
"Any idea where..." I trailed off. Pointless, wasn't it. Even I knew I really wasn't that great. "Look. I'm going to turn around and drop you back off. No harm, no foul," I said, defeated. "You can just, I dunno, go do whatever it is you do."
And that was what I did. Went back to the pedestrian overpass. And I let him go. But as he went out the door, I noticed something in his pocket, and, without thinking, grabbed it. He didn't seem to notice. As he walked to his car (one of those new Volkswagons, silver), I glanced at the envelope. His electric bill.
With the return address sticker neatly pasted on. I smiled as he drove away.
I made it home, but I was a wreck from mulling things over--I hate when I do that. I think too much when I drive; it's all that time alone. Do I pay him a visit? Do I ransack the place for information? What would I be doing it for? Was I still entertaining thoughts of revenge?
First thing in the door, I grabbed a Collins glass and filled it with ice. It looked like another night in which I'd be seeking the counsels of Mr. Beam. I poured my drink and dropped myself on the couch. Once or twice, I've had nights like this. A fight, come home stiff, pour something stiffer. My husband must have been waiting up.
"Drinking again?"
"Yup."
"Do you know that stuff could kill you?"
"Probably not." I was in no mood for this crap.
"You can't just get a new liver..."
"Or a new head," I muttered to myself. "Look, I'm just kicking back, okay? Had a run-in, don't want to talk about it."
He raised his hands, almost as if he was about to clench his fists tight. He wanted to slam something. "Why can't you be..."
"You can have normal, or you can have me. You can't have both."
"Sometimes I wonder..."
Something in his voice made the decision for me. How did it get to this?
"I've got some things I need to do tomorrow," I said, poker-faced. "I'll be making some arrangements. I'll need to burn some vacation days. It's....a favor for a friend."
Posted on May 12, 1999, 9:34 PM from IP address 209.122.217.33