Part 100 (1/2)

”It's good to have you back, Perry,” she said, once she'd kissed both his cheeks.

”It's fantastic to see you, Suzanne,” he said. He was thinner than she remembered, with snow on the roof, but he was still handsome as a pirate.

”We missed you. Tell me everything you've been up to.”

”It's not interesting,” he said. ”Really.”

”I find that difficult to believe.”

So he told them stories from the road, and they were interesting in a kind of microcosm sort of way. Stories about interesting characters he'd met, improbable meals he'd eaten, bad working conditions, memorable rides. .h.i.tched.

”So that's it?” Suzanne said. ”That's what you've done?”

”It's what I do,” he said.

”And you're happy?”

”I'm not sad,” he said.

She shook her head involuntarily. Perry stiffened.

”What's wrong with not sad?”

”There's nothing wrong with it, Perry. I'm --” she faltered, searched for the words. ”Remember when I first met you, met both of you, in that ghost mall? You weren't just happy, you were hysterical. Remember the Boogie-Woogie Elmos? The car they drove?”

Perry looked away. ”Yeah,” he said softly. There was a hitch in his voice.

”All I'm saying is, it doesn't have to be this way. You could --”

”Could what?” he said. He sounded angry, but she thought that he was just upset. ”I could go work for Disney, sit in a workshop all day making c.r.a.p no one cares about? Be the wage-slave for the end of my days, a caged monkey for some corporate sultan's zoo?” The phrase was Lester's, and Suzanne knew then that Perry and Lester had been talking about it.

Lester, leaning heavily against her on the sofa (they'd pushed it back into the room, moving aside pieces of the Calvinball game), made a warning sound and gave her knee a squeeze. Aha, definitely territory they'd covered before then.

”You two have some of the finest entrepreneurial instincts I've ever encountered,” she said. Perry snorted.

”What's more, I've never seen you happier than you were back when I first met you, making stuff for the sheer joy of it and selling it to collectors. Do you know how many collectors would pony up for an original Gibbons/Banks today? You two could just do that forever --”

”Lester's medical --”

”Lester's medical nothing. You two get together on this, you could make so much money, we could buy Lester his own hospital.” *Besides, Lester won't last long no matter what happens*. She didn't say it, but there it was. She'd come to grips with the reality years ago, when his symptoms first appeared -- when *all* the fatkins' symptoms began to appear. Now she could think of it without getting that hitch in her chest that she'd gotten at first. Now she could go away for a week to work on a story without weeping every night, then drying her eyes and calling Lester to make sure he was still alive.

”I'm not saying you need to do this to the exclusion of everything else, or forever --” *there is no forever for Lester* ”-- but you two would have to be insane not to try it. Look at this board-game thing you've done --”

”Calvinball,” Perry said.

”Calvinball. Right. You were made for this. You two make each other better. Perry, let's be honest here. You don't have anything better to do.”

She held her breath. It had been years since she'd spoken to Perry, years since she'd had the right to say things like that to him. Once upon a time, she wouldn't have thought twice, but now --

”Let me sleep on it,” Perry said.