Atta’ girl!
Frank pulled his misty-green punch, intended for the guy with the misty-green sword that was only a stage prop. Instead he used his now-luminescent fist to highlight the open water bottle that fuckin’ butcher Irwin had left behind. Karen should probably get some fluids in her first after all that blood loss, before she went for the French fries.
The other misty-green guy took advantage. Fuckin’ A! His only-a-stage-prop sword, blunt and inexpertly swung, still hurt like hell. Fugettaboudit…
How could that be? Frank knew he was dead. Nothing could have made that clearer than watching that butcher Irwin carve his body up with a fuckin’ chainsaw. Frank looked down. The only-a-stage-prop sword had cut him in half at the waist.
How was that possible? What the fuck were the physics of being a green mist?
Frank headbutted the other guy, but his head just passed through the other guy’s skull…
A rumpled letter, held in front of him in a gloved hand that wasn’t his own. From Switzerland. Dated 1898. A yearning he heard in his own head, although it was expressed in Shakespearean English. For a woman. The pain cut like the wind when he found himself in a flurry of men in top hats, women in long skirts, and horses whinnying and clamoring over cobblestones. Couldn’t find the woman. Again. Withering, unendurable agony.
Frank’s head came out behind the other guy’s. The other guy seemed to wither and finally slither out of Karen’s storage unit like a green snake struggling with its death throes.
Karen…
Frank swirled around Irwin’s open water bottle again, doing all he could to attract Karen’s attention to it.
No fan of that fuck Irwin. Had appreciated the other green mist’s sharing his outrage when Irwin cut up Frank’s body. But Irwin had done two things right. He hadn’t noticed Karen wedged in the back of her storage unit, or who the fuck knows what he would have done with her. Good thing he hadn’t bothered to clean up Frank’s blood inside her unit, just the hall. And he’d left his water and lunch almost within her reach.
Karen’s outstretched hand shook and dropped. She couldn’t reach the water.
The physics of being a green mist… Could Frank move it closer? He balled himself up and tried. Nothing happened.
Karen’s eyes closed again. Frank knew what he was looking at. She was going to die.
He had to. He had to move that water bottle.
A huge truck rumbled over a monster pothole outside, reminding Frank of how his crazy partner Alex drove.
Karen’s eyes fluttered open as the water bottle moved an inch closer to her. Had Frank done it or the truck?
Karen reached, shaking fingertips threatening to knock the bottle over when she made contact, then passed out again.
A thought cut through Frank that hurt much worse than that blunt sword: Karen, how could I? He had to move that water bottle.
Something happened Frank didn’t understand at all. For a moment he wasn’t in Brooklyn anymore. He was home in Sausalito, inside her the first time they made love. Thrusting. Then he was back in Brooklyn.
The water bottle, the French fries, and even Irwin’s sandwich were within Karen’s reach. Slowly, very slowly, she managed to eat and drink some. Woozy, she got confused and dipped a French fry not into the ketchup but into a huge glob of Frank’s blood that Irwin hadn’t cleaned off the floor.
Frank wasn’t sure what to think, watching her struggle to get that French fry dripping with clumps of his blood into her mouth. Much-needed protein? What the fuck. Wasn’t doing him any good any more. He swallowed heavily and thought, Eat up, baby. It’s the very least I can do for you.
She wrinkled her nose and licked her lips thoughtfully, before her eyes widened in horror.
Uh oh, thought Frank. She’s fuckin’ figured it out. It’s okay, he thought at her desperately. It’s okay. He had trouble with the next words; they weren’t words he thought often, no matter what he felt. But they burst out of him: “I love you!”
The word he saw burst out of her, however, was the only word capable of destroying a love even death hadn’t killed. It was, “Martin!”
