A moment later, she turned back to Peabody. “Anyway, this poor man, this Justice of the Peace, I think he’d been eating lunch. Still had bread crumbs on his chin, his belt was damn near undone with his gut spilling out of his shirt, and his breath smelled like a bargain basement gin and tonic.” She giggled. “Lunch indeed,” she said with a wink. “Point is, our life together began with a very quick ‘I do’ followed by a Blue Plate special of biscuits and gravy and then Benji off to the Rexall around the corner for sleeping powder and furniture polish.”
Her hand darting to her mouth, she gave a quiet belch. “Excuse me. ‘Tis the champagne, me’thinks.” A small smile. “Down went the powder in a glass of water followed by a healthy glug of furniture polish. And, oh my stars, did we end up sick as sin that night before we went out like lights. Just poof! Like that. So quick!” She laughed. “Any-hoo, came to a day or so later, half on the bed, half off, pools of sick on the carpet, our skin hurting, our jaws aching and our stomachs swollen and hard as rocks.” She shook her head. “Lived on Saltines for awhile after that. Saltines moistened with water and mashed into bowls, isn’t that right, Benji? Oh, and neither of us could poop for a week.” The champagne to her lips, she took a sip.
“Sleeping powder and furniture polish. Sounds like a lethal combo.” Peabody put his glass down, his fingers resting around the delicate stem. “Not sure how you could mess that one up.”
“Well, if we’re being honest here, and we are, of course, it was Benji who messed it up.” She glanced at him sitting at the head of the table. “I’m sorry, sweetie, but it’s the truth. Wouldn’t be polite to lie to Mr. Peabody, now, would it.” She glanced over at Peabody. “I swear, my Benji can squeeze a nickel so hard the buffalo poops. And when you’re buying sleeping powder and furniture polish, you can’t go cheap! Only the best will do. And this was far, far from the best. So . . . here we still are.”
Her eyes scanned the plates—the good china, of course—lined up and waiting with anniversary food. “Well, I don’t know about you, Mr. Peabody, but I’m done with this rabbit food. On to the next course?”
With a smile, Peabody nodded with a glance toward Benji.
Benji sat silent, red staining his chin, his eyes on the ceiling above Marta.
And Marta, ignoring the chaos that was Eidolon, reached for the cheese plate.
***
“It may not seem like much, but we cleaned out our cupboards for tonight. Even emptied the fridge and took everything out of the freezer. Not that it was going to be too fancy to begin with.” She leaned in close to Peabody, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I also maxed out the credit card—shhhhhh—and closed the bank account. Couldn’t afford any of this extra stuff if I hadn’t, but, hell, what are they gonna do? Dig us up from the grave and put us to work in some debtor’s camp?” She laughed. “Listen, you, we’ve earned it. We deserve it. And after the lifetime of darn near comical disasters I’ve endured at the hands of my beloved, cheap Benji, why not go out on top, right?” She sat back. “Right.”
Peabody folded his hands over his lap. “Buying inexpensive sleeping powder and furniture polish on your honeymoon hardly counts as a disaster, I think. Unfortunate? Yes. Uncomfortable? Absolutely. But a disaster?” He shrugged. “I don’t know about that.”
“No, I’ll tell you what a disaster is,” she said between bites of cheese and cracker. “The tenth anniversary at, oh, where was it?” She looked down at Benji. “Dear, where’d we go for the tenth? The tenth anniversary, I mean. Where was it?”
Getting nothing from Benji,
“Oh, who the heck can remember? Some godforsaken State park in the middle of somewhere. Nothing but steep mountains, deep ravines, trees and allegedly heart-stopping views of yet more mountains, ravines and trees.” Another bite followed by more crunching, a smattering of crumbs landing on the table beneath her. “All you need to know is it was an unmitigated disaster.”
Though Benji’d said nothing, she shot him a look. “Didn’t I ask if there was a ledge below, Benji? Yes, I did. And what did you say? ‘No, no, dear. No ledge. Nothing but a steep drop into the ravine far below.’ And, boy howdy, were you ever wrong.”
“This was in the State park?” Peabody said as he gathered the cracker crumbs from the table in his palm and wiped them onto his plate.
“Yes, our tenth anniversary. A steep hike, a long hug, a quick kiss, and then, hand in hand, a jump off a cliff. Should have landed with a splat of broken bones and bashed in heads deep down far below, our mangled bodies dragged into the forest by god knows what.” She shrugged. “To be honest, I was perfectly fine ending up lunch for some bear or antelope or wild cougar or whatever. It just made sense, somehow. Circle of life or something, you know. But nope, not a chance. That simply wasn’t to be.”
“So there was a ledge.” Peabody spread cheese onto a cracker.
“Boy was there ever!” She popped a cracker in her mouth and chewed. “A nice big one.” A lone finger rose, indicating Peabody wait while she swallowed. “Hard to miss, unless you’ve forgotten your glasses back at the lodge and you can’t see two feet in front of you without them.” She shot a quick look at Benji. “Isn’t that right, darling? Forgot your glasses, didn’t you?” Her eyes met Peabody’s as she dusted the crumbs from her hands. “He said he didn’t need them. He promised he was fine without them. Insisted on his dear mother’s grave that he could see perfectly well, thank you very much.” A quick dab at her lips with the napkin. “He lied.”
Her fingers toyed with the stem of the champagne flute. “And that’s how I ended up losing the foot. And the rest of the leg, from the knee down. Hand in hand, we jumped . . . and we fell. I was told later that we probably hit some of the wall and a few branches on the way down, though of course I don’t remember that part. And that we probably bounced and tumbled and probably with a horrifying crunch—or at least that’s how I imagine it—landed on the ledge below.” She laughed. “Leg cracked on a big rock and dang near split in two. Arm popped out the socket at the shoulder. Poor Benji conked his head and darn near broke his neck. He did break his collarbone, though, and his pelvis. Or hip. I forget which.” She sighed. “But we only knew all of that stuff three days later when they found us.”
“Three days later.” Ignoring the champagne, Peabody reached for his chardonnay.
“Yes. Took the dang fools three days to get their act together, realize we weren’t coming back to the lodge, and then set out—in a helicopter, no less—to learn what the heck had happened to us.” She took a sip of her chardonnay. “Oh, that’s nice.”
“So you waited on the ledge for three days.”
“Yes! Just plunked there, suffering in agony and basically alone since the husband was off in dreamland. And I knew he wasn’t dead, by the way, because I could see the dang fool breathing. So I sat there, shooing away ants and other creepy crawly critters with my one good arm, my shin bone poking through the skin of my leg, the whole thing becoming horribly infected and swollen and yellow with pus.”
She shook her head. “I remember hoping to god that death would come before the buzzards did.” She leaned in close to Peabody. “Of course, I don’t know if that park even had buzzards. But I’d read once, or Benji had, anyway, that those ugly things will actually start pecking at you before you’re even dead and that’s the last thing I wanted.”
She sat back. “Can you imagine? Sitting there still alive watching yourself get eaten by some horrible creature? No thank you.”
From the other end of the table, Benji moaned.
“What’s that, dear?” She shook her head and glanced at Peabody. “The history of our failures weighs a bit heavier on him than it does me.” A sigh, her eyes back on Benji. “Do you need something, hon?”
“I think he does,” Peabody said.
She glanced at the various bowls in front of her beloved. “Hasn’t even touched his anniversary dinner, poor dear.”
“Tonight really is all about putting him out of his
misery, isn’t it?”
She paused and then nodded. “Yes, it is, Mr. Peabody. Like an old hound who can no longer hunt, his best days are behind him and it’s time to head on out to the woods and end it.” Her eyes found Peabody’s. “And that’s what we’re going to do, yes?”
The elegant stranger gave a nod. His head turned from her, his eyes on Benji sitting, wounded and lost.
Peabody smiled.
***
Red wine dribbled from Benji’s mouth. He did nothing, his hands and remaining fingers resting on the tablecloth, his dinner untouched.
“He doesn’t eat much, does he,” Peabody said as he wiped the cracker crumbs from his hand onto the empty plate in front of him.
“Not much. It’s hard to, I imagine, what with the lower part of his jaw, there on the left side, as you can see, basically gone.” She pushed the finished plate of crackers and cheese away.
“Another screw up?” Peabody eyed the remaining plates. The jasmine rice. The bow tie pasta drenched in a lemony butter sauce.
He reached for the pasta.
“The twentieth anniversary screw up.” She speared a bow tie with her fork. “Why on earth I thought it’d be a good idea to give that man a gun, what with his history of disasters, is beyond me.”
“You’re not saying he missed shooting himself in the head, are you?”
“No, no, I’m not. Actually, truth be told, that was my fault.” She sighed. “We’d practiced on tin cans and old tires, out back in the old place. The place with the field and the trees, far, far from town. Too nosey, those townsfolk. Couldn’t stand them. And so it seemed like an easy thing to do, shooting a gun. And it was.”
She looked back at Benji. “And had you not flinched and ducked and moved your head, you’d be dead right now, wouldn’t you? And we wouldn’t be sitting here, in pain, stuck in this rat trap on Eidolon discussing all this with you and your blended food and the red wine falling out your mouth and your jaw half-missing, would we?”
She turned to Peabody. “I put the gun to his temple and I counted back from three as we agreed—you know, three, two, one—and on one when I was supposed to pull the trigger, he flinched and moved and reared back.” A shake of her head. “Well, that scared me near half to death and the gun went off and struck him in the side of the face, at the bottom. Darn near took that side of his jaw clean off.” Another bite of pasta. “And I sat there for what felt like forever with him lying in my lap, holding what was left of his dang jaw in place until the ambulance showed up.” She swallowed, her lips wiped clean with a quick brush of the napkin.
“So instead of ending my days with a gunshot to the head, I just sat there, my hands covered in blood, with my beloved Benji in the back of the ambulance. Spent that anniversary explaining to the doctors, nurses, cops and anyone else who felt the need to butt their big bazoos in how my dumb-as-a-duck husband had accidentally fired the gun while cleaning it, or something.” A small shrug as she took a sip of chardonnay. “Small town cops. Couldn’t care less as long as they didn’t have a murder on their hands. I’m guessing that would have been too much paperwork.”
“That was your mistake, then.” Peabody placed his chardonnay back on the table. “Not Benji’s.”
“That’s right. I meant to make that clear.”
“No, no, you did. I was just clarifying.” He stabbed a bow tie with his fork. “Are there other mistakes we should talk about?”
“This whole fiasco has been one whole big Benji mistake after another.”
“What about your mistakes?” Peabody watched her.
“Other than the gunshot, I’ve been as clean as the Sunday wash.”
“Yet your hands are still stained with his blood.”
She looked at her hands. They were red, the stain sitting squarely on her palms and creeping around her fingers. The red even sneaking around the heel of her hand to sit on the top in a series of drops and specks and splatters. “This?” She laughed. “Oh no, no, no. This isn’t the gun. My goodness, me, that was some thirty years ago.” She held up her hands, the palms facing Peabody. “This is tomato sauce. For the spaghetti and meatballs.”
“Meatballs.” Peabody leaned forward, his elbows on the table, his long fingers resting on his forearms. “Sounds good.”
They looked long, she thought, her eyes suddenly captured by how elastic and pointed his fingers seemed. Although she couldn’t place it, there was something off about them. “It’s not ready yet,” she said, her eyes closing as she turned her head away. “Soon, I think.”
She shook her head, banishing the image of Peabody’s odd fingers from her mind. “Honeymoon, tenth anniversary, and then twentieth. That’s what we’ve covered. We should talk about the thirtieth now.”
“No, no. Let’s talk about the last one. Last year.”
With her eyes still closed, Peabody’s voice sounded far away. A whisper shouted from the end of the longest hall. And she could smell the room. More than just the mold and the damp, there was the slight stench of decay. Of death. Unwanted death. From somewhere. Perhaps the tiny skeletons of rats piled behind the walls. Or of beetles and bugs and snakes resting, molded and forgotten, under the floor boards beneath her feet. For a moment, just a moment, the air, heavy and hot, seemed to sigh with that final exhalation of unexpected darkness.
Had these anonymous corpses, like her, found themselves stuck? Had they, too, searched for a way out only to stumble, exhausted and beaten, to fall in battle?
In what? She stopped with a light laugh. “That last year?” she said, pushing away the thought of battles that didn’t exist. “The last one?” She took a breath. “Okay.”
Opening her eyes, she looked back at him. Peabody waited, a small smile on his face, his gaze steady.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Let’s go back.”
***
She had one plate left. Fork and knife in hand, she absentmindedly arranged the slender bites waiting in front of her before tucking in. “We had just moved to Eidolon. We knew this would be our last year, our last everything, really, and, honestly—” She glanced around the room, taking in the yellowing walls, the splintered baseboard, and flecks of ceiling dropping from overhead. “Can you think of a more fitting place for a couple of old fogies limping their way toward the Great Beyond?”
Peabody sat, the place before him empty, save for the glass of chardonnay. “The last anniversary. Tell me about it.”
“What can I say? It was nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“Why? It was a non-event. It was embarrassing.” She gripped her knife and fork, her swollen knuckles turning white.
“How so?”
“The toaster bouncing off the side of the tub? Dang cord popping out of the wall? Stupid thing landing in the water with barely a spark? Please.” She stabbed the slice of meat on her plate and sawed it in half. “That’s not even worth revisiting.”
Peabody’s long fingers toyed with the stem of his glass of chardonnay. “Oh, I believe it is. And I suspect it’s worth talking about.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Like I said, it was a non-event. And it’s not like I didn’t feel a little twinge of something maybe a little dangerous. But obviously it wasn’t enough to do us in, so why waste our time?” She shoved the fork in her mouth, struggling to bite the undercooked piece of meat as it squeaked against her teeth.
“But what happened after that?”
“After what?” She considered spitting the dang thing out, but decided to choke it down. The last thing she wanted was to look rude in front of Peabody.
“The toaster in the bath.”
“Nothing. Just nothing, all right? Nothing happened.” A quick pause, her stomach feeling nauseated. “I got up, got out, dried off and made dinner. Big deal.”
“And felt nothing?”
“Yeah, I felt something.” Her throat felt tight. She swallowed the sick creeping up her throat. Ignored the smell of hidden death in every breath. “I felt ting
ly and my heart was pounding like I’d just ran a marathon or hustled into bingo late. And I saw spots, little flashes of light, for a few days. So what? Does it matter?”
“And the headaches began, correct?”
“Yes, the headaches began. And I started seeing you. Finally admitted that, yes, I need someone to talk with and confide in. I need someone to help me get to the end of this epic comedy of errors.” Her eyes on Peabody, a second slice waited on her fork. She inched it past her lips and chewed.
“That’s why I’m here.” Peabody nodded, his gaze holding hers. “That and your spaghetti and meatballs.” He smiled.
She coughed, the meat catching for a quick moment before sliding down her throat. “They’re almost ready.”
“Your hands are still red.”
“Damn tomato sauce won’t come clean,” she said as she lifted her hand and looked at the deep red staining her palms, her fingers, the flesh under the nails. “Like the stains on these dang walls, it just lingers, refusing to leave.” She hid her hands in her lap. “Need a nice long bath. After this, that’s what I’ll do. Have a nice long bath.” She stopped. “Oh wait. I’ll be dead.” She laughed.
“How’s Benji?”
Looking down the table, her beloved still sat, still quiet, his eyes still fixed on the ceiling above her head, red wine still slipping from his lip to his chin. “Sweetie,” she said, indicating he needed to wipe his mouth.
“He can’t hear you.” Peabody watched him as well. “He looks so lost and wounded.” He turned toward her. “Go. Help him.” He paused. “For the last time.”
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