by Jim Butcher
"I am curious," said the Rhino as he sat on most of Aunt May's couch, with a cup of hot tea. The Rhino hat occupied the leftover space beside him.
He held the cup between two fingers and stirred very carefully as Mary Jane sat the sugar bowl back on the coffee table. "What kind of salary does a high-profile superhero's majordomo require?"
"Never as much as I'd like," Mary Jane responded. "But the hours aren't bad and there are decent benefits." She walked back toward the kitchen and rolled her eyes at me. I gave her a thumbs-up, while she plundered the freezer. Aunt May had a bunch of frozen hamburgers left over from the big end-of-summer cookout we'd had, and some pasta, and some tomato paste, and Mary Jane set about making something out of it.
"Benefits," the Rhino said. "Never have gotten anything like that. That is a problem, working as an independent contractor."
I had a cup of tea, too, but I wasn't sipping. Still too weird seeing the freaking Rhino on Aunt May's couch. Sipping tea. "I like that phone," I said. "Great speaker."
"Da, is also MP3 player," the Rhino said, pleased. "When I first get into this business, tried to carry radio with me, but I had no pockets in the suit. I lose or break half a dozen radios, then cell phones, and one day think to myself, Rhino, what kind of idiot designs suit with no pockets?"
Mary Jane turned her head away and bit down on a wooden spoon to keep from laughing.
"Yeah," I said, glowering at her. "Idiot."
I was going to design pockets into my costume.
Eventually. It wasn't like I didn't have better things to be doing with my time.
"Got to be practical in this business," I said.
"Exactly," the Rhino said. "Is business. Lot of people cannot accept this."
I was quiet for a minute. Then I asked, "Why'd you get into it?" The Cat had told me why he'd gotten his start already. I wanted to hear what he had to say.
The Rhino sipped his tea for a moment. Then he said, "The money. I had other ideas, back then. I was younger. Very naive. Stupid." There was more than a little bitterness in his voice.
"When you're young it isn't necessarily stupidity," I said. "It only means that there's a lot you haven't learned."
He shook off what looked like bad memories and resumed speaking in a neutral, conversational voice. "No, this I admit: I was stupid. Made stupid, young-man mistakes. After getting the strength enhancement and that first job against the Hulk, I had to find work. If you believe this, I had planned to enter professional wrestling. To become a wrestling star and make money." He let out a rumbling chortle. "Of course, I am stupid, but not this stupid. I realize in time what a disaster it could be and ask myself, Rhino, what kind of moron gets superpowers and sets out to enter professional wrestling?"
"Hah hah," I chortled with him. "Hah hah, yeah. Heh."
Mary Jane's face turned bright red, and she had one hand firmly covering her mouth as she stood over the stove.
"Of course," the Rhino continued, "you know what happened next. The armored suit began to bond to my skin, and I could not take the costume off." He shook his head. "There I was, young man, big, strong, plenty of money, stuck in a gray suit I could not remove. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to pick up girls when you have been stuck in armored suit for six months?"
I thought about it and shuddered. In that suit? "Ugh."
"Da," he said with heartfelt agreement. "The smell alone... I had to go through car wash to get even a little clean. So I start taking more jobs, to get enough money to remove the suit." He shook his head. "Is like low-budget horror movie. I thought that suit was an incredible asset, but it turns into horrible curse. You have no idea." He shook his head, finished the tea, and carefully put the cup back on the table. "As I say, stupid.
What kind of moron gets himself stuck into costume he cannot even remove?"
My face turned red and I glanced at Mary Jane.
Her whole upper body started jerking in little hiccuplike motions from the effort of holding in her laughter, and she had to leave the room.
"I've got to ask you something." I said.
"Just something I've wondered."
He nodded. "Da."
I did my best to keep my voice neutral and calm. "Why do you keep that look? The big gray rhino suit. And... the hat."
"Bozhe moi."
He sighed. "The suit and hat. I hate the suit. I hate the hat."
I tilted my head and leaned forward. "Then why do you keep them?"
He waved both hands a little, a gesture of helpless frustration. "I have no choice," he said. "They have become business asset. Trademark."
I frowned. "What do you mean?"
"When I finally get the first suit off, I swear to myself never again.
Hired a public image consultant. Bought myself business suit. Armani.
Dark glasses. Big trench coat. Was good look, very hip, very professional." He sighed. "First contract was in Colombia and it falls apart."
"Why?"
"Because I reach employer for meeting, and he does not believe I am the real Rhino. He says I am fake. That real Rhino has hat with horn on it and big gray body armor suit. He says everyone knows that. So I must be fake, and I must prove I am real Rhino."
This conversation was like listening to a train wreck: fascinating, novel, and more than a little confusing. "What happened?"
"I get angry and prove it," he sighed.
"How?"
"I throw his yacht into his billiard room." He shook his head. "After that, no more questions, but contract falls through. Unprofessional. Is better for business to wear stupid costume. And stupid hat."
I shook my head. Good grief. Felicia was even more right than I thought.
I had also been young and ignorant when I got my powers. There but for the grace of God, Spidey.
"You ever see yourself retiring?" I asked him.
His body language shifted, from politely conversational to totally closed. He shrugged a shoulder. "Do you?"
"Tried," I said. "Couldn't really stay out of it."
"Da," he said quietly, nodding. Then he relaxed a little and did a half-credible Pacino impersonation, complete with hand gestures. "They pull me back in."
I broke out into a sudden laugh, and he joined me.
Maybe three seconds later, both of us realized we were laughing with one another and not at, and there was an abrupt and awkward silence.
"Dinner," Mary Jane said with absolutely angelic timing. She'd returned to the kitchen unnoticed, but when she spoke I got a whiff of something delicious and my stomach threatened to go on strike if I didn't fill it immediately. She came out with spaghetti and meat sauce, flavored from Aunt May's own spice rack, and both me and the Rhino started wolfing it down.
In the afterglow, the Rhino sat back on the couch and covered a quiet belch with one hand. "Excuse, please."
"Why not," I said.
"You are not what I expected," the Rhino said.
I grunted. We were both guys, so the Rhino heard, You aren't what I expected, either.
"I do not like you," he said, his voice thick. "That is not something that changes."
"I hear you."
He nodded, evidently satisfied at the response, and settled onto the couch a little more comfortably. Even if his face hadn't been all messed up, he would have looked exhausted. Add in the damage of Mortia's touch and he looked like death. He was asleep and snoring within seconds.
Mary Jane frowned at the Rhino for a moment. Then she set her plate aside, took one of Aunt May's quilts from the little trunk next to the couch, and spread it over him. She turned to me and reached out a hand.
I took it and regarded the sleeping Rhino for a moment. Then we gathered up dishes and went back to the kitchen together. She sipped a cup of tea while I did the dishes.
"It was good to hear you laugh," she said after a while. "I like it when you laugh."
"It's weird," I said. "It's like he's a person."
Her eyes sparkled. "Amazing."
"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."
She was silent for a moment before she said, "If I could do more, I wo
uld, but in case no one has told you, remember this: You have a good heart, Peter. You've grown into a man to be admired. I am more proud of you than I can possibly describe - as Ben would be. You have always faced the true test - the times when you are alone, and when it seems that everything is as bad as it possibly could be. That's the moment of truth, Peter. There, in the darkest hours, not in whatever comes after.
Because it is there that you choose between music and silence. Between hope and despair."
I sat with my head bowed, listening to her voice. I could smell her perfume in the room around me - the scent of safety and of love and of home. I hoped the phone was waterproof.
"You have only to remember this, Peter: No matter how dark the night, you are not alone. There are those who see your heart and love you. That love is a power more potent than any number of radioactive spiders."
I couldn't say anything for a minute. Then I whispered, "I'll remember, Aunt May."
"Listen to your heart," she said, her tone firm and quiet, "and never surrender. Even if you are not victorious, Peter Parker, no force in creation can defeat a heart like yours."
What can you say, faced with a love, a faith like that, warm as sunshine, solid as bedrock?
"Thank you," I whispered.
"Of course," she said, and I heard her smiling. A bell rang somewhere in her background. "Well. It is time for me to go to supper and wait for the floor show. I'll leave you to your work."
"I love you, Aunt May."
"I love you."
We hung up together.
Neither of us said good-bye.
My peace was gone, shattered by the conversation. Hope can be painful that way, and part of me longed for the return of peace and quiet. That peace, though, is not for the living - and I was alive.
And I intended to stay that way.
So long as there was a breath left in my body, the fight was not over and the darkness was not complete. I had faced and overcome things as deadly and dangerous as Mortia and her kin, and I'd be a monkey's uncle before I accepted defeat. I was rested. I was smart. I had the kind of home and life and happiness a lot of people can only dream about.
I refused to let Mortia take that from me. I refused to allow my fear to make me lie down and die.