by Jeff Strand
Amy smiles and gives me a kiss. "Storage unit. We'll need a storage unit. That way we don't have to sell everything at a garage sale, but we can still keep ourselves easily mobile until we settle on a place. Unless you want to sell everything at a garage sale."
"I'm fine without the garage sale."
Amy gives me another kiss, and then takes a deep breath. She exhales slowly. "I apologize. I woke up this morning with a death scare, and even though it was an illogical death scare because I knew my brain wasn't bleeding through my nose, it kind of made me overly exuberant about the future."
"Hey, I started it."
"You're right. You did. Your heart attack made you thankful to be alive, too. So maybe our horrific medical issues are the best thing that could have happened to us. If we were in good health, we wouldn't be planning our future together like this. We'd be...well, we'd be at the hotel having more of that red-hot sex. So there are also disadvantages to brain aneurysms and heart attacks. But still..."
A nurse comes in to say that it's time for an EKG. I start to make a joke about how rude it is for her to have interrupted our conversation just to keep me alive, but not every joke I've made in the past couple of days has landed properly, and I don't want to offend the woman who is tending to my faulty heart. I send Amy off to go get a nice lunch.
By the time my tests are done, I have a new roommate. His name is Chip ("Like the chip!") and he broke both of his legs when he fell off the roof of his home. He's on morphine and drifts in and out of consciousness. He keeps calling me The Breath Mint Man, even though he can't smell my breath from over in his bed, and also keeps asking if I want to see where his bone came through the skin. I actually do, a little, but he'd have to unwrap the thick bandages and I don't think the doctors would like that.
"It's weird seeing your own bone," he tells me in a slurred voice. "It's weird enough seeing other people's bones. Bones belong on the inside, that's my motto."
"It's a fine motto," I say. I'm just humoring him, though at least his logic is sound.
"It's weird even when it's a skeleton," he continues. "When I was in high school, our science class had this skeleton, and I couldn't stop thinking 'That thing used to have a face.'"
"That is definitely weird."
"A face! But not anymore. Not after it became a skeleton. There's a skeleton in you right now. Did you know that?"
"I did, actually."
"A whole skeleton. If a skeleton walked in here right now, you'd shit your pants, but technically there is a skeleton in here. Two of them."
"There sure are."
"Do you want to see the place where the bone came through?"
"You shouldn't touch the bandages."
"Seeing my bone was weird as crap. And bones aren't as white as you'd think. I'm not saying that they're green or anything, but they're not the shade of white you see in a classroom skeleton." He chuckles. "Breath Mint Man."
"You should get some rest."
"Don't steal my skeleton while I'm asleep."
"I won't."
"Were you there when I fell off my roof?"
"No."
"You sure?"
"Pretty sure."
"My son threw his Frisbee up there. Do you own a Frisbee?"
"No," I say. For some reason this makes me very sad.
"He was showing off how high he could throw it, and it went right into a tree. He didn't start crying or anything, but I knew he wanted his Frisbee back. It was a purple one. I climbed up the tree and shook the branch, and the Frisbee came loose and landed on the roof. And then..."
Chip's story is replaced by the sound of his gentle snoring.
Dammit. I know how the saga turns out (Chip falls off the roof and breaks his legs) but now I'm invested in the details.
Life can be so cruel.
* * *
Amy returns with the update that the rental car was vandalized even more while she was gone.
The police have not recovered the money yet. The officer on the case explained to her that situations like these, in which money has been stolen, usually end with the money remaining stolen. They wish they could do more to help, but Rick's wife left him this morning, and it hit him pretty hard, because everybody thought they were getting along fine these days, and Brendan is back on the bottle after two years sober, so it's all really just a big mess.
"But that's okay," Amy assures me, "because do you know what time it is?"
"Time to join Brendan on the bottle?"
Amy shakes her head. "It's Tuesday night. Almost eight o'clock."
Whoa. I'd completely forgot. "Exit Red time!"
Amy picks up the remote control and turns on the television. They always show the previous week's episode before the new one, so we're in the final two minutes, where Alicia, mistakenly believing that Darwan was responsible for the death of her father, shoots him in the chest with a musket.
We hold hands and silently watch the new episode. (Darwan survived being shot, but the poor guy is in bad shape.) Shortly after the first commercial break, Chip mentions that he doesn't think the show is very realistic, and I learn that my girlfriend is capable of the most withering gaze I have ever seen a human being give. I'm not even the target and I can feel my testicles retreat.
Chip does continue to make the occasional comment about inaccurate physics, but to be fair, the morphine is probably clouding his judgment. I hope that I won't have to make a decision about whether or not to stay with a woman who has delivered a violent beat-down to a hospitalized man with broken legs.
She doesn't deliver the violent beat-down. Just the gaze and some shushing.
It's a damn good episode. In the final moments, Alicia discovers that she was wrong about Darwan. As she stands there in shock, two men in orange masks--the same masks we saw some villagers wear last season--jump out of nowhere and grab her. The screen goes black until the usual "Executive Producer: Blake Remark" credit.
"Holy crap," says Amy, shutting off the television. "If I don't live to see the end of this, I'll kill myself. Or something like that. You know what I mean."
And then I realize what our next adventure needs to be.
We need to find out how this thing ends.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
"Infinity is a hell of a long time to live with regrets."
"I think you mean eternity."
"Shut up."
--Exit Red, Season 6, Episode 6
"But I don't want to know how it ends," Amy says. "There are spoiler sites out there, but I never check them. I would stab somebody in the neck if they ruined it for me."
"I'm not talking about spoilers. I mean actually seeing the final episodes."
"So...time machine?"
"No."
"Cryogenics?"
"I'm being serious."
"Continue."
"We go to a convention. He's going to be at PhaserCon in San Francisco this coming weekend. We'll track down Blake Remark. Tell him your story. Ask him to show you how it ends."
"Why would he do that?"
"We wouldn't he?"
"I can't possibly be the only doomed girl who wants to know how Exit Red turns out."
"But you're probably the cutest."
"There's no way he'd go for that."
"Why not?"
"Because he just wouldn't."
"You don't know that. It's not like you're faking it. Maybe nobody else has ever asked before. Or maybe there are hundreds of women with brain aneurysms who have seen the final episodes. You could be one of them!"
Amy scratched her forehead. "I don't know."
"What's the worst that could happen?" I asked. "Worst case scenario, he says, no, absolutely not, why would you even bother asking such a stupid thing, get out of my sight, burn in hell. So what? What have we lost?"
"Airfare. Hotel cost. Convention registration fee."
"Okay, yes, there is a financial risk involved. And, yes, I did just lose my job, so offering to pay for it would be reckless and irresponsi
ble. But I don't care. So I'm reckless and irresponsible. So what?"
It suddenly occurs to me that "reckless" and "irresponsible" are two elements that might be a turn-off to Amy regarding our future together.
"I'm not comfortable with this," says Amy.
"I am. Let's do it. Right now. I mean, let's book the tickets now, and leave after the hospital officially releases me. No, I guess we should wait for the hospital to officially release me before we book the tickets, otherwise there might be a fee to change our flight time. But let's do this right after that."
"What if the ending sucks?" Amy asks. "What if we fly out there, convince him to show us the last episodes, and it turns out that they were dead all along? What if it was all a dream? What if it just suddenly cuts to black with no resolution?"
"That would indeed suck," I admit. "But it's worth the risk."
"What if my aneurysm pops right before he presses play?"
"I feel like you're focusing on the negative."
"You're right. I am. I'll stop."
"I didn't think it was that great of a show," says Chip. "If you want to fly all the way to California to find out how it ends, that's your choice, but it's a bit silly, if you ask me."
Amy gives him a sweet smile. "What's more silly is somebody going through all the trouble of getting his legs patched up, only to have them rebroken."
Amy's love for this show really brings out her violent side. I don't think Chip legitimately believes that she's going to rebreak his legs, but he does stop making disparaging comments about our taste in television.
* * *
Our cab driver is insane. I've used the word "insane" recently to describe Amy and me, in a We must be insane if we're talking about running away together! manner, but I did not mean that we were literally insane. Our driver, meanwhile, is (as far as I can tell without being a professional in the field of psychology) genuinely insane.
I'm basing this on the little giggle he lets out every time he misses another vehicle by quarter-inches. This happens often. I don't think he wants to kill anybody, since he is missing the other cars, but it's simply not how sane people behave.
The line to get through security isn't very long. Amy does get picked for a pat down, which--no judgment here--she seems to enjoy. It's a very attractive woman doing the pat down, and I wonder if there's an element of Amy's personality that has not yet been revealed. I won't delve into it anytime soon, but I will delve into it. It could be important and awesome.
As we sit at the gate, Amy does a lot of nervous fidgeting. I place a reassuring hand on her knee. "It'll be fine," I say.
"Easy for you to say. If we crash and die, I won't be able to hold you accountable for your bad info about our safety."
"It will be one percent as dangerous as the cab ride."
"That's not at all reassuring."
"One percent of one percent."
"Still not reassured."
"Cars crash every single day. People die in car accidents so often that it's not even news."
"All you're making me do is not want to get in a car."
"The odds of dying in your own bathtub are greater than the odds of dying in a plane crash."
"You want me to quit bathing? Really?"
"You're far more likely to die putting on your clothes than--"
She gives me a playful slap on the arm. "Enough."
A few minutes before we're supposed to board, we are notified that the plane has a mechanical problem, which shouldn't take too long to repair. Amy, to her credit, merely says, "Okay, then."
A few minutes after that, we are notified that the part will have to be delivered, but that it shouldn't take too long. "I hope it's not the engine," says a jolly woman next to us with a laugh. Amy, to her credit, merely says, "Me too."
A few minutes after that, they announce that everything is fixed and they're ready for pre-boarding.
"See, that wasn't such a bad delay," I say. "Compare that to how long we waited at the car repair place."
"And how did that work out for your car, Todd?"
I decide that silence is the best approach until the plane has taken off.
Soon we're on the plane. I take the middle seat. There are worse things in life than having the middle seat on a plane (global economy collapse, nuclear war, getting sprayed in the face with lava, etc.) but in simple plane-seating terms, I can't stand being in the middle. But if my sweetheart wants a window seat, my sweetheart gets a window seat.
Amy buckles her seat belt and smiles. "Okay, now I'm more excited than scared."
"Good."
She takes the motion sickness bag out of the seat pocket. "We may need more than one of these, though."
"You can borrow mine."
"I wonder how many other couples have seen each other vomit this many times this early in their relationship?"
Just as the flight attendant announces that they'll be closing the aircraft door very soon and we'll need to start shutting down our electronic devices, my cell phone buzzes.
"Hi, Craig," I say.
"Hey, Todd."
"We're on the plane."
"Is it a nice one?"
"Pretty nice."
"Cool."
"What's up? Are you just checking on me?"
"Yeah. I mean, no. I mean, that was part of it. How's your heart?"
"It's doing all right. Thanks for asking."
"No problem."
"You okay?"
Craig sighs. "You know that Margaret and her kids were staying at our place, right?"
"Yes."
"Good."
"What happened?"
"I didn't say that anything happened."
"Craig, they're going to make me shut off my phone any minute now."
"You knew that I was also seeing Julia, right?"
"Yes."
"Turns out, Margaret didn't know that. I thought I'd told her."
"You didn't."
"I meant to tell her."
"No, you didn't."
"I would have told her eventually. Anyway, these kids, they were running all over the place, shouting, getting into your things...I couldn't focus enough to tell Julia not to come."
"Oops."
"So Julia showed up at our door, and I told her that my aunt and niece and nephews were staying with us. And Margaret wouldn't go along with the lie! Can you believe that? She just started screaming at Julia and calling her a slut and stuff, which makes no sense, because I gave it to Margaret just as hard as I gave it to Julia. If you want to talk about being a slut, how about 69ing me when her kids are in the next room? So Julia left before Margaret could get all cat-fighty on her, and then Margaret started screaming at me. She wanted to know why I said she was my aunt instead of my sister. I said, hey, you're an older woman, that's just the way it is, what do you want from me?"
"Did that go poorly?"
"Yeah."
"Well, I'm sorry to hear that, but at least you've got the place back to yourself again."
"Yeah." Craig does not say "yeah" in such a manner as to imply that he actually means "yeah."
"What's wrong?"
"Which one of them is hotter? Julia or Margaret?"
"Julia."
"Right. So about a minute into the screaming match with Margaret, I realized that this fuck-buddy arrangement wasn't salvageable. So I figured, I'd better go after Julia. Which I did. And she said that thing women say where they're all like 'It's not about what you've done; it's about the fact that you lied.' And I'll admit it: she'd asked me if I was sleeping with anybody else, and I'd said no, so I guess that was a lie. But we worked it out."
"That's good."
"Yeah."
"And...?"
"Huh?"
"And is that the end of the story?" I ask.
"Not all of it."
"Seriously, Craig, I'm going to have to shut off my phone in a second."
"Margaret burned up our apartment."
"What?"
"
She sent the kids outside, and then just went batshit with her lighter."
I close my eyes and try not to emit any noises that might get us kicked off the plane. "What exactly do you mean by 'burned up'?"
"Well, it didn't reach the other apartments, so it's not as bad as it could have been."
"Okay."
"And there are no dead kids."
"Okay."
"Dead kids would be the greatest tragedy in the world, but like I said, she sent them outside before she started setting fire to things."
"Just give me the bottom line."
"All of our stuff is gone. She melted my Wii."
The flight attendant informs the passengers that we must now shut down our cell phones and other electronic devices.
"I've gotta go," I tell Craig.
"I just thought you should know."
"Thanks for the update."
"No problem."
I hang up and shut down my phone.
"Asking him what he meant by 'burned up' didn't sound good," Amy says.
"It was no big deal. He just called to let me know that his friend-with-benefits torched our apartment and everything I own has been destroyed. More considerate than sending it in a text, I guess."
"Jesus. I'm sorry."
I shrug. "Eh. Doesn't bother me. Possessions are stupid. I'm better off without them."
"I can't tell if you're being sarcastic."
"Neither can I."
"Are you going to be all right?"
"Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Fine."
"Are you sure?"
"I think I'd rather discuss something else."
"Okay."
The flight attendants begin their safety demonstration, which Amy watches closely, even following along with the printed safety brochure that nobody ever looks at.
When the plane begins to taxi along the runway, Amy takes my hand, but it's in a This is so exciting! way instead of a We are moments from death! way.
I expect this to be an opportunity to show off my tender, comforting side, but it turns out that Amy absolutely loves to fly. She can't stop grinning. When we pass through the clouds, she's like a three-year-old. (A giddy three-year-old, not the screaming one in the row behind us.) I keep thinking that at some point the novelty will wear off and she'll join the rest of the world in proclaiming that air travel bites, but she never does.