Peter & Max - Bill Willingham [20]
“But this is the one absolute exception,” Bo said, finishing his sentence for him, since he seemed so reluctant to do it.
“Yes,” he said, not quite able to meet her gaze.
“You realize he’s going to kill you, don’t you? You won’t be back in a week because you won’t be back at all. We barely survived him the first time, when he wasn’t nearly so powerful as he is now, and we were both fit and whole and at the top of our training in every dirty sort of business that Hamelin’s underworld could teach us.”
“I know.”
“But you’re still going to try it, Peter?”
“Yes.”
Bo backed up abruptly from the table and wheeled herself over to the oven. Putting on a thick, quilted mitt, she pulled open the oven door, leaned forward in her chair to furiously and silently examine its contents. Then she closed the door, not quite slamming it, stirred the potatoes for a few seconds and then wheeled back over to the table.
“Ten more minutes,” she said, as if she were an ancient sea captain pronouncing some draconian ship’s punishment on a member of her crew. “Maybe fifteen.”
“I’ll come back to you,” Peter said.
“Is this such a terrible life we have? Is it so bad?” Bo said.
“No, it’s good, and I wouldn’t trade it away for anything else, except —”
“Except in the fantasy version of your ideal marriage, you never imagined it would include the grotesque hell of my body from the waist down. You never thought we’d have to live strictly platonically for — how many centuries has it been now, and counting?”
“That’s not what I was going to say,” he said.
“Then what?”
“I was going to say: Except that I can’t pass up the chance to end this with Max, once and for all. We can’t just hide out here and hope he never finds us. He got close once and look what happened. In this matter, time isn’t on our side. And once again, I promise you that I’ll come back.”
“What a grand gesture,” Bo said. “That’s such an easy promise to make, which is why it’s both insipid and unfair. It’s a no-lose deal for you. Either you do come back and you’re the big hero who’s kept his promise, or you die horribly, and I have to instantly forgive you, because I’d be a heartless bitch if I didn’t. I couldn’t even remotely resent the fact that you failed to keep your word. You get out of any consequences scot-free!”
“Well, except for the part where I die horribly,” he said, trying on a crooked smile — the one she liked best.
“Well, yes, except for that part. Don’t you dare try to make me laugh, or like you again, Peter Piper. I’m not done arguing and I don’t want to like you yet.”
“Then by all means, please do continue.”
She thought for a bit. It was obvious he was determined to leave, and just as determined not to be talked out of it. He spoke soothingly and diplomatically, but he’d already dug his heels in. Then again, there was one argument she felt would almost certainly stop him, except that it was cruel and cheap — a truly low blow. So she took a long moment, weighing whether or not she actually dared use it. Then she said, “Someone will have to come out here to take care of me.”
“I know,” he said. “I’ll be arranging that when I see Rose Red again, before I drive down to the city.”
“Some stranger will have to change me and bathe me and help me with all of my bathroom functions — all of the stinky, messy things I no longer have any control over. He’ll see my shocking and lurid disfigurements — everything that no one else but you has ever seen. And sooner or later he’ll let something slip. He won’t intend to. He’ll try to do the right thing and keep it to himself, but one day he won’t be able to help it, because there won’t actually be a compelling reason to stop him. He’s not my husband. He’s not family. He has no real obligations towards me and no duty to preserve my very reasonable shame, much less my modesty. He’ll tell someone, who’ll tell someone else, and pretty soon everyone will know our most private secrets. We’ll be a lovely bit of gossip then, the subject of a thousand