Marvel Classic Novels--Spider-Man, page 15
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.
NINETEEN
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-thousand-year-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 learns 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 would, 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 goodbye.
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.
I rose from where I sat on the bed and felt suddenly clear, focused, and strong. Nothing had changed. I still had no idea how I was going to get myself out of this one. But I would. I would find a way. I suddenly felt as certain of that as I was that the sun would rise in the morning. I always felt that my powers came to me for a reason, and while I did not know what that reason might be, with God as my witness, it had not been to feed some psychotic monster-wench and her kin.
I would beat these things. I would find a way.
The phone in my hands suddenly let out a series of chiming notes, the theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I don’t know why Mary Jane used them as her ring tone. She said it just made her happy.
I flipped the phone open and said, “Hello?”
“It’s me,” Felicia said, her voice cool and professional. “We found Dex.”
TWENTY
MARY Jane appeared at the door, eyebrows lifted in inquiry.
“Felicia,” I reported, handing back the phone. “Oliver, her guy at the company, found Dex.”
MJ nodded, frowning. “What are you going to do?”
“They’re bringing him here,” I said quietly. “I’m going to go talk to him.”
Her mouth quirked at one corner. “Aren’t you getting a little old to be throwing parties when Aunt May is out of town?”
“We’ll party tonight and clean it up tomorrow,” I responded. “What could possibly go wrong?”
She put her hand over my mouth and said, “If you don’t shut up, you’re going to bring on a montage.”
“Is that some kind of seizure?”
“Actually,” Mary Jane said after a moment of thought, “that’s not a bad description.” The whimsy faded out of her face. “Seriously. Up here?”
“They’re bringing a car. I’m going to go talk to him.”
“I see,” Mary Jane said. She glanced from me to the recumbent Rhino. “And I stay here?”
“I think you’ll be all right. I’ll be on the street right outside the building,” I said. “I put Felicia’s cell number on your speed dial. If you even think there might be a problem, you hit that, and I’ll be up here inside of fifteen seconds.”
Mary Jane considered that for a moment, and then nodded. “I suppose I’ll make some coffee, then. Stay alert.”
“Keep the lights dim,” I said, “and stay away from the windows.”
Mary Jane’s eyes glittered. “I’ll keep an eye on our guest. If he gives me any trouble, I’ll subvert him with cheesecake.”
“There’s cheesecake?” I said. “I didn’t see any cheesecake. Why didn’t I get cheesecake?”
“Because I haven’t made it yet.”
I considered that for a moment. “I suppose I’ll accept that explanation.”
“You’re a reasonable man,” MJ said. Then she stepped close to me and pressed herself against me. I held her quietly, eyes closed, until her phone beep-beep-beep-BOOP-booped. She flipped it open and checked the screen. “Felicia.” Rather pointedly, she did not answer the phone.
I released her reluctantly, walked to the window, and looked down. A white van that looked like an unmarked bakery truck pulled up on the street outside. A pair of professionally unremarkable cars pulled out from spaces they’d somehow secured, making room for the van, which slid up to the curb and came to a halt.
I gave MJ a quick kiss, hit the fire escape, flipped myself across the street so that I wouldn’t be approaching the van from the direction of Aunt May’s place, and moseyed on down, landing on the van’s roof. Then I stuck my head down in front of the driver’s face and said, “I hope you guys take credit cards, ’cause I can’t find my checkbook and the only cash I have is a bucket of pennies.”
Felicia looked back at me without any amusement whatsoever in her expression. She shook her head, then turned and vanished into the back of the van. The side door whispered open, and I crawled on in.
The inside of the van looked like a cramped office. There were several low seats and an abbreviated desk, complete with a clamped-down computer and monitor. There were several people in there. Felicia, dressed in her bodysuit and leather jacket, sat behind the desk, her legs crossed, her eyes cool.
A small man hovered next to the desk, and he was the only one there short enough to stand up. He was a dapper little guy in a casual suit of excellent cut. He had sparse, grizzled hair, spectacles, an opaque expression, and unreadable blue eyes.
“Spidey,” Felicia said. “This is Oliver.”
I folded my legs, Indian style, only I sat on the ceiling. It’s a rare man who can honestly say that his butt has a superpower. “’Sup, Oliver?”
His eyebrows lifted. He didn’t say anything. He looked like the kind of man who was used to patiently suffering while other, more intellectually limited people tried to catch up with him.
Sitting across from the desk were three men. Two of them were bruisers—though older and more solid than most of the thugs I’ve tussled with. They also had suits and wedding rings. Law-abiding bruisers, then, I supposed. Security personnel.
“Mister Walowski,” Felicia supplied. “Mister Gruber.”
“Howdy,” I said to them. Then I tilted my head toward the last man, who sat between them, his shoulders hunched defensively. He was as skinny as I remembered, almost famished-looking. His hair was a mess, his eyes sunken and lined with what almost looked like bruises rather than bags. He hadn’t shaved in a few days. He was dressed plainly, in jeans, a T-shirt, and a blue apron bearing the words, “Sooper-Mart!”
