Shroom Cutting

Ray and Todd stood next to each other.  Their knives were in reach, on the prep table.  Two five pound boxes of mushrooms waited.

It was their last chore for the evening.  They’d grated cheese and crushed garlic; they’d created mounds of cut vegetables and tubs of salad dressing; they had separated the eyeballs from a host of squid and baked cheesecakes.  It was all in a night’s work.  And there was one thing left:  ten pounds of mushrooms.

Behind them, the restaurant kitchen’s busy time had tapered off.  The line cooks were collecting food from the cooler, filling up the containers, wiping down the cupboards, and still putting out a few plates.  Ray and Todd paid them no notice.

“You cut yourself, you lose,” said Todd.

“Agreed,” answered Ray.  “Your mushrooms have to be off the cupboard and wrapped –”

“— but not in the cooler,” finished Todd.

“Right.”

“Ready?”

Ray gave it a moment.  “Go!” he shouted.

They both reached for the boxes, tearing the cardboard open with the bare hands and spilling a heap of mushrooms out onto the table.  They snapped up their knives together, and together they snapped their first mushroom into the right position and started slicing.

The knives made a machine gun chatter on the table and the mushrooms were vivisected.  Like lightning, reaching for the closest ones, they attacked the next mushroom and the next, in a series, and in a few seconds they’d each cut their way through the first five or six.  They didn’t look at their knives.  They didn’t look at the mushrooms.  Their eyes were on the next mushroom in order, which quickly disappeared under the knife.  Twin mounds of sliced mushrooms appeared in back of their left hands.

“Come on,” said one, “Pick it up, pick it up.”

“I got it I got it,” said the other rapidly, rattling through two mushrooms in succession.  They sliced without words for a half a minute, and the first of the got through the initial tumble they’d made from the box.  He slashed out with the knife, cut the box open, and more than half the remaining mushrooms rumbled out.  One threatened to tumble off the table, but he snatched it and a moment later it was slices.

“Go, come on, you’re slow,” he said.

“You’re slow,” the other snapped, cutting his box open, snapping up a few strays on the edges and chopping them up.

“You’re gonna cut yourself,” said one.

“You are, you can’t hold that knife, you’re a fucking girl.”

“Choker,” said the first.  “You were born a choker.  You’re parents were chokers.”

The piles of sliced mushrooms were building up fast.  The knives didn’t slow a wit.  They moved like machines, slipping over the knuckles of the two chefs, who knew where the deadly blades were by feel and nothing else.

“You’re the choker,” said the other.  “You’re going to choke any second now.”

They were going through the mushrooms faster than one a second now, nearing two a second, diminishing the hordes of whole mushrooms.  The first laughed, and the second did too.  It was dangerous and crazy.  “We’re gonna lose a finger or something.”

“You’re going to lose a finger.”

“Careful, you’ll take yours off at the knuckle.  Have to call you Stumpy.”

“You’re going to be Fingerless Todd.  Everyone will point and say there goes Fingerless, he’s worthless at cutting mushrooms.”

“Don’t get clever Stumpy.”

“Don’t choke, Fingerless.”

They were getting way past halfway now, and it was getting harder.  They both knew it was going to come down to who had more mushrooms in their box, or how far they had to reach for those last few mushrooms ... they tried to bunch their mushrooms together as they reached for them, tried to keep from knocking them further out of reach.

“Choke,” said one.

“You choke.”

“Ow!” shouted one, still cutting, still making slices.

“Did you cut yourself?”

“Why don’t you look?”

“You fucker, you’re faking.”

“Yes.  Wanna look?”

“Cut yourself you bastard.  Cut yourself and lose.”

“You cut yourself!”

The one laughed, high and crazy, knife blade banging and banging.  The other couldn’t help himself either.  For a minute they cut in silence and the mushrooms dwindled.  They each in their turn reached for their boxes and dribbled out the last of the mushrooms on their sides of the table.  Both Todd and Ray took two seconds to reign in the stragglers and collect the targets close together.  They nimbly snatched each mushroom between index finger and thumb, set it in front of the knife with stem pointing at their bellies.  Seven or eight cuts and the mushrooms were swept to the side, now making weaving ridges on the table, as the chefs pushed them off to make room for the next shrooms.

“Ten left,” said one.

“Nine,” said the other.

“Choke!” demanded one.

“You choke!”

“Three left.”

“LAST ONE!”

Ray made a grab for his plastic bucket and groped, tipping it as he brought it next to his cut mushrooms.  Then they were both sweeping the slices together with both hands, loading them up and over the lips of the buckets.  Ray was a little behind.  He gathered together the last of his, picked up the few big bits on the counter and flicked them in, then spun for the plastic wrap dispenser.  They each had one.

Todd had Ray cold.  He pulled a skein of plastic out, spread it over the top of the bucket, and ran his hand down the serrated edge that cut the plastic just as Ray was still pulling on his own dispenser.

And Todd cut himself.

“OH SHIT,” shouted Todd, reaching for a paper towel and at once swaddling his index finger in it.

Ray heard him, saw the towel going around Todd’s finger and knew he’d won.  He took his time finishing his mushrooms.  And then he finished Todd’s.

“I told you you’d cut yourself,” said Ray.

“Yeah, yeah, shut up.  How long did that take?”

Ray looked at the clock.  “About six and a half minutes.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

They both thought for a moment.  Then one said, “Let’s put this shit away and get a beer.”

Sightseeing

The foggy veil lifted and it was possible to see something now.  The Vlaxians drifted outwards from the middle of the vessel floor to the circle of windows, cackling with excitement as they did, anxious for a first glimpse of the weird, exotic landscape they’d paid to see.

The Master Guide Kaylon prodded his junior Prigg, saying, “Now.”

Prigg stood on cue, climbed to the guide’s platform and considered for a moment the nearly two hundred tourists gazing out at the contorted humps and gashes of mud amid a horizon of smashed vegetation.  Giant holes were scooped into the mud, and everywhere they looked were the remains of hundreds of dead creatures – a small portion of the planet’s native inhabitants.

“Excuse me ... excuse me all,” called Prigg, his voice a little strained, a little cracked.  He had no experience calling to order a crowd this large.  The crowd came to attention anyway.  The silence grew and fleshed out, though a few of the experienced travellers went on talking to their neighbours.

“While we reconstitute, this is a good time to talk about what you’ll be seeing and doing today,” he said.  “You’ve all been given your tools,” he added, and a few of the Vlaxians lifted the metal sticks in their hands in answer.  “I want to warn you, they’re not as precise as you might be expecting ... they can get frustrating at times, but don’t worry, that’s something everyone gets used to.  The important thing is to have fun.

Prigg looked at his senior, hoping for some sign of approval.  He got a quick glance and a hand wave, telling him to get on with it.

“Next thing,” said Prigg.  “The native creatures won’t be able to tell you apart from themselves.  The suits you have on will warn the creatures to avoid you or even try to hurt you, but as long as you don’t take off your breast-Coins, you’ll be all right.”  Prigg held up a Coin for everyone to see – it was a wide brown disk, an inch thick and four inches across.  “We’ll try about ten rotations today –”

He was interrupted by Kaylon, who gurgled testily.  “Tell them to turn on the Coins.”

“Oh, right,” hissed Prigg.  “Sorry, I meant to tell everyone that you need to turn on your Coins now.  Hold them tight for about ten seconds, and when they glow orange they’ll be on.  If anyone’s doesn’t come on, talk to a neighbour or someone else who might be able to help, and if there’s still a problem come up here in after and we’ll make sure it’s on before we disembark.”

The room was full of people chattering, now, eliciting sounds of happiness when their Coins came on as expected; some did have trouble, but it was almost always because they did not grip them tight enough, or long enough.  A few salts in the room moved about and helped some of the greener vacationers.

“As I was saying,” continued Prigg.  “We’ll be out for nine rotations today ...”

“Ten,” prompted Kaylon.

“Yes, ten rotations,” corrected Prigg.  “Some of you are going to find that a long time.  Remember that when you are resting, you’ll want to hide behind something.  Remember always that the less you are seen by the native creatures, the better off you will be.  They will try to hurt you, and though your Coin will keep you safe, it’s a fair warning that the native attempts to hurt you can sting quite a bit.  Keep low, use the terrain and try to learn from your mistakes.  You might try to watch some of the others who seem to be more confident, and you’ll probably find them ready to give some advice.  Take it.  It’s pretty hazardous out there, and we’d hate to find you’re not having a good time.”

He took a gasp, thinking he was doing pretty well.  The eyes in the room were all watching him, waiting for his next words, and that felt good.

And then he realized he didn’t know what those next words were supposed to be.  He looked at Kaylon, who put his hands together in the ‘killing’ gesture.  “Right, right,” answered Prigg.  “Some of you ... a lot of you, probably ... have never killed anything before, and so for you, today will be a new experience and probably a pretty strange one.  There might be a tendency towards sympathy, and as some of you are noticing now that we’re almost completely reconstituted, the creatures themselves make quite a mess when they come apart.”

It was possible for those nearest the windows to see that the dead native creatures were often missing parts of their bodies, and that a brownish red liquid seemed to clot over their surfaces.  It looked very messy.

“I first want to tell you, no one today needs to kill.  You don’t need to feel any need to prove yourselves.  If you just want to experience the environment, go ahead and do that without feeling any pressure to interact at all.  Try to remember that for some of the people here, this is not their first adventure, and if they seem quite comfortable with the experience, it is probably because they have gone through what you’re feeling right now before.  Take your time, take in the sights and move forward at your own speed.”

Prigg’s visage filled with a calming bubbles, and he emitted as much pheromone as he could to pacify some of the greeners.  “Let me reassure you ... these creatures have been bent upon killing each other since this planet was stumbled upon several spans ago.  When you land, you will appear to them as they will appear to you.  They won’t hesitate to do you harm.  Remembering this might help your consciences along.  According to our sociologists, there are natives on the planet who do not partake in these activities, and you may rest assured you won’t see any of those today.  You’ll only see those representatives of the species who are themselves killers.”

He paused.  “Let me see ...”

“Sounds,” said Kaylon.

“I was getting to it,” answered Prigg, who regretted it at once.  He looked away from Kaylon and continued, his voice cracking.  “One last thing before we open the doors.  It can get pretty loud out there.  If any of you start to get uncomfortable with it, or you just want to come back and rest, tap your Coin four times and we’ll answer and pick you up.  Hold it to your cavity like this.”  Prigg held it near his head.  “You’ll be able to hear us.”

He bit his proboscis, a bit angry at himself for snapping at Kaylon.  “Okay.  Best of luck to you.  You also might take a few moments to read your guides before heading off, if you haven’t already.  The ground is called a ‘battlefield,’ and its surrounded on both sides by networks of creviced earth called ‘trenches.’  Most of the noise will be made by things called ‘artillery,’ but you won’t see those today ... they are quite a long way off, farther than you’ll probably be able to travel.  Those tools in your hands are called ‘rifles.’  It’s all a funny mix of words you’ve never heard before and probably won’t ever use again, but knowing what you’re seeing is half the fun.  Now the doors are going to open in a few minutes ... if there are any of you still unable to get your Coins on, come on up and we’ll fix you.”

A few began to move forward, and the room shifted, the Vlaxians sorting themselves out between those looking over the things attached to their bodies, those reading their guides and those going straight for the yet-unopened doors.

Prigg looked at Kaylon and asked, “How was that?”

“Practice,” said Kaylon.  “With a little more practice you’ll hit that mark.”

Three Boys

They were three eleven year old boys.  According to plan, they laid away in their cabin until they heard their camp counsellor’s snoring.  They slipped out, packs and shoes in hand.  They tip-toed over the cold wet ground along the path until they came to Kaylee Kamp’s great open field.  As their feet touched grass, they stopped and put on their shoes.  Then they ran full tilt across the field to the mess house, wary of being seen and keeping low.

They slipped in through a side window they’d found was left open all the time, boosting each other or giving a hand so they all got in.  No one guarded the kitchen, and they plundered all they could fit into their packs, and all two dared carry.  The eldest climbed into the loft, having learned that afternoon that someone stored a small pup tent there.  Then the boys let themselves out the door towards the lake, and struck off.

For awhile, only twenty minutes, they followed a clear trail.  Once the trail had taken them a good ways from the camp, they abandoned the trail and started into the thickest part of the woods.  It was hard going, but they were determined.  They crawled over logs and started to climb into the hills behind Kaylee Kamp, getting a better and better view of the lake as they went.  The small trailblazers reached a low ridge that reached out from Gorman’s Peak – a 2,200 foot hill – and slipped down the other side.  The lake disappeared, and the camp with it.

Not long after, they found a deer trail and began to make good time.  They were cheerful, a little tired, but full of talk.  They chattered about the trail, and pointed out stars and planets to one another, and talked about what space travel would be like someday.  They fell into a lengthy discussion about what kinds of ship fuels might be invented.  They debated the hazards of ion gas vs. anti-matter, and soon found themselves talking about the mutational possibilities of the latter, and how they themselves would handle being mutated beings.

They were not scared of the dark.  They didn’t get lost.  They did not trip and fall.  They tripped, but it was only a little stumble and they didn’t mind.  They were bone tired as the stars turned a tenth of a circle above them, but they did not quarrel or argue – they were all very happy.

When the first dim signs of sunrise shone in the east, they quit.  One made sandwiches, and two built the tent, and they ate in the deep quiet of the dawn as it rose.  They climbed in and collapsed in their clothes, warm and exhausted.

They did not sleep long.  One climbed out and tottered a little way into the woods to relieve himself.  He shouted at his friends, and they came out to do the same, each in his own direction.  One by one they came back, and decided scientifically that it was just after nine.  They would have been missed for two hours.

They ate quickly and packed their camp and started off again, running a little, filled with energy despite their little sleep.  They laughed about being free from Chuckhead, or Mr. Chuck the counsellor, who had made their lives a living hell for nine days.  They made guesses about how Chuckhead reacted when he found their bunks empty, and they mocked him and enjoyed that enthusiastically.  They talked about the camp exploding, and wondered about the Mounties arriving, and who else might get called, and how long it would take before they began searching the woods and not the roads.  They predicted their distance from Kaylee Kamp, and how much farther they’d be in an hour, and how much farther in three hours.

They did not see any animals.  They did not get into any danger.  The deer path changed direction and they abandoned it.  They found their way blocked by creeks and rock falls and drops and they sprang or tottered or scrambled over each with ease.  The day got very warm and they found a cool place by a pool, where the sky was blocked out by poplars and one big spruce.  The ground was covered with grass and they saw little daddy-long-legs spiders that didn’t scare them.  They spread out their coats and slept.  They ate again, and nodded sagely that they couldn’t start a fire until it was dark and the smoke wouldn’t be seen.  The forest made sounds around them and they laid and listened to the water tumbling into the pool.  They felt it was the best time of their lives.  They made fun of the other counsellors, and talked about how they hated their parents for sending them to Kaylee Kamp, and what they thought they would do someday when they were grown up and they didn’t have to go to bed when they were told.

The sun had gone far to the west when they started off again, tired now, but game for a few climbs, until they came to a high spur on the back side of Gorman’s Peak.  They found a little crevice in the rocks, and cleared away some ground near a copse of fir trees.  They used a small knife that one boy had smuggled into the camp, and had been able to keep secret from Chuckhead.  They cut branches and covered the tent.  They didn’t injure themselves.  They got a couple of splinters, but they picked them out.  They got a few cuts that bled a few drops, but they washed them in the stream that went nearby.  As the sun began to set they slipped into a deep sleep, without talking.  Hours and hours passed, and each rose in the night to pee into the night, eyes heavenward as they listened to the spattering sound they made on the rock.

That morning they remarked about how empty the woods were, and how they didn’t see a single thing.  They talked about how there were no movie monsters in the woods, no hermits in cabins and no zombie graveyards.  It was all trees and rocks, with streams and thousands of little insects.  They were the only beings in this wide world.

They broke their rule and made a little fire, but there was not very much smoke and they only kept it long enough to cook the hotdogs they’d taken from the mess.  They kicked it out and poured water over it from the stream and made sure it was dead by putting their hands into the ash.  No fire started.  It was really out.

They started to wonder where they were going, and decided they would pick one place and wait for all the people who were searching for them to find them.  They agreed that if it didn’t happen in a week, they’d walk back the way they came.  They could see Gorman’s Peak.  They knew how to get back.

It began to rain a bit, but they all had slickers with them, because the camp insisted that every boy be ready for rain.  They walked a bit and waited a bit under an overhang, and the rain stopped soon.  The sun came out and it was dry.  The boys were fine.  They didn’t get sniffley noses.

It all ended when they came down an embankment and found themselves on a road.  A Mountie was sitting on the hood of his car.  The car had overheated and his partner had climbed down the other side of the road with a pop bottle to get water for the radiator.  The Mountie was drinking a root beer, and didn’t see the boys.  But as the three turned to climb up again, the scree shifted and the Mountie saw them.

There was a lot of shouting and excitement and people asking questions.  There were examinations and tests and the boys were all poked and prodded and hurt in the interest of making sure they were all right.  Then there came the angry parents, the angry questions, the concealed fear, the threats and, in the course of things, the long, sustained punishment.

And twenty years later the last part of the episode was all forgotten.  It drained away into the distance of time like all unimportant things must.  What remained was the distilled memory of two wonderful, unmatchable days, when three boys truly lived for the first time.

Waiting for the Rosa Lee

Eugene stared out from the observation deck of Marsport RH-4 ... a name which the residents of the port naturally presumed designated it as the fourth ring of Hell.  Most of the view was obscured by the freighter Rosa Lee, an 80,000 ton vessel that had approached for docking some four hours before.  As the rings were bare minutes from setting a firm contact between ship and port, an explosion had taken place somewhere in the biolab aboard the Rosa Lee.  As near as anyone could tell on RH-4, a deadly gas had been released, killing everyone on board.

“I don’t see that it’s moving,” said Jareth, standing next to Eugene, his hands flat against the polymer window, eyes squinting at the ship.

“It is moving.  At two point six-four millimetres per minute.”

“And it’s ...?”

“Seventeen meters from point of contacting RH-4.  Right now, I’d say its maybe thirty meters from us.”

Eugene calculated the number in his mind:  seventeen hundred centimetres, probably less, divided by 264, that’s six with a remainder of 116, which gives point four with a remainder of 104, which gives point zero three, multiply by one thousand makes 643, nearly 644 minutes, or less than eleven hour before contact.

“So we’ve got, what –” said Jareth.  “Ten hours?”

“Closer to eleven.”

“Big difference.”

Eugene shrugged.

There were efforts going on all over the station.  The crew inside were all dead, but the explosion had affected no port facilities.  Immediately a dozen teams had gone out to seize control of the ship and bring it under control.  They had to cut their way in.  From reports, they had been successful, had made their way past security points inside the ship and were right now in the captain’s offices and the Rosa Lee’s bridge.  At best, so far, they’d been able to scratch their helmets and poke at a few buttons.  In the worst possible way, the ship’s fundamental systems had apparently been jury-rigged six ways from Sunday.  The programming was amateur and looked – again, according to the reports – like some smart cookie had invented a personalized operating system for the whole ship.

There hadn’t been much luck in getting the ship’s thrusters operational.

Eugene’s office had reached a level of shrieking squalor, to the point where he had chosen to get up from his desk, climb down four levels to the observation deck, and put his thoughts together.

From here, it didn’t look to him either that the Rosa Lee was moving.  Two point six-four centimetres was awfully slow.

“So what,” said Jareth.  “It bumps the port and causes some damage.  We lose a couple weeks of peak efficiency.  A few hundred billion coin.”

Eugene looked at Jareth, who didn’t turn to look back.  They knew each other marginally.  Eugene remembered that Jareth was in operations.  He couldn’t remember if it was catering or housekeeping.  A manager of some kind – ten or twenty people under him, it didn’t matter, what was important was that Jareth was non-technical.  Eugene wondered how much he should tell him.

“It won’t be a bump.  It’s going to tear through the port like tissue paper.”

“Huh?”

“A ship that big ... it won’t stop no matter what it hits.  And all of RH-4 is 360,000 tons itself.  Stretched over three miles of space.  That ship out there will hit us, keep going, and wind up dragging the whole port behind it like a long string, like a cow flying through barbed wire.  Couplings will break over the whole port and for those people not spewed into space, life support is going to evaporate and every interior will be space-cold in about ten to twenty seconds.  Plus a minute or so for a few places.  Those of us in our suits – and that will be everyone – who isn’t killed by the power shocks and the coupling breaks might hold enough air to find out if the Rosa Lee drags this port into orbit of if we’re destined to crash into the surface of Mars.  But don’t worry ... if it’s the latter, we won’t have enough air to live until impact.”

Jareth was looking at Eugene now.  His eyes were large, terrified saucers, the more so because he was the sort of layman who recognized the cool, calm exterior of a techie who’s telling the truth.

“Then we’re dead.”

“If those thrusters don’t fire in the next ...” he calculated; “639 minutes.  Probably a few minutes less.”

“But ... if it’s moving so slowly ...”

“Makes no difference.  It’s huge.  I won’t go into it, but it has everything to do with mass and velocity and frictionless space.  Anything you care about?”

Jareth shook his head.

“Sure.  Worst thing is,” continued Eugene, “we’ve got nothing here that can push it back.  We had the tremendous bad luck of the port being empty today.  Every ship in dock is 6,000 tons or less.”

“God,” murmured Jareth.

“You should call your family.”

“Haven’t got one.  No wife.  No kids.  My father hasn’t got contact rights for space ...”  Jareth stared at the Rosa Lee.  “He wouldn’t ...”  He sniffed.  “It doesn’t matter.”

Eugene nodded.  “I’m 214 in the queue,” he said.  “Ten minutes to tell my wife and kids everything I never got to tell them.”

“That’s not very long.”

“Longer than they got.”  Eugene pointed at the Rosa Lee.  “That crew got no time at all.  Compared to them, I’m lucky.”

“I don’t see it.”

“Well, figure how it will be for their families.  All you’d hear is that their brothers and sisters and parents and kids died in a weird accident.  No last words of love.  No chances to make apologies for bad decisions.  No reassurances.  Your family is dead.  That’s all you get.  Rest of your life you’d wonder if your wife that went to space really loved you.  Or if your father ever forgave you.  Or what their last wishes might be.  Questions you’d never be able to answer.”

Jareth’s eyes were fixed on the ship.  Eugene turned to look at it as well.

“I’ll tell my wife I was a fool,” Eugene said.  “I wasn’t.  This was the best thing I ever did.  It was the only important thing I ever did.  But I’ll tell her I was a fool anyway, and I’ll tell her I love her.  I’ll probably cry.  I won’t be able to help myself.  I’ll try to pull it together to tell my son to concentrate on the things that make him happy, and not to listen too much to authorities, and to push himself towards doing something important like his old man.  I’ll cry again.  I’ll tell them both again that I love them.  And then they’ll be gone.”

Eugene wiped his eye, and pressed his lips into a smile: “And if those thrusters fire, next time we get to talk we’ll all laugh at the big joke, and I’ll have to make a promise about giving this up in a year or so and we’ll all be glad the horror show wasn’t real.”  He looked at his hands, as though in some way they were meant to fix everything, and couldn’t.  “It will be the most important ten minutes of my life.”

Jareth said nothing.

Eugene clapped him on the shoulder.  “Come on.  I’ll buy you a drink.  I can’t make that call for probably three hours, and I don’t want to be sober for it.  And you don’t want to be sober at all.  Right?”

Jareth nodded.  “All right.  That will be all right.”  But he didn’t move from the window.  “I can’t see that it’s moving.”

Eugene nodded too, pulling Jareth away.  “But it is.”

Being Done

Charlie sat between crowd rails and benches and plastic pants, glaring at red garbage pails as high as his elbows.  He sat with back against a chair’s back, screw heads on the plastic digging into his back, his feet wedged under a plastic table.  His feet rested on a cracked, unfinished concrete floor.  Above, a tin roof covering a dozen acres of discount store was partly obscured by the red and white plastic umbrella banged into the top of the plastic table.

His back was to the store.   He shut out habitually the steady din of customers and labourers, and carts and check-outs and squalling children, and PA announcements and the sizzle and banging of the little shopping grill on his right … and beneath it all, the steady drone of conditioners and the buzzing of lights, and of cars grinding by on the snow outside, carried in through the thin walls.  He was cold and miserable and still his winter coat and scarf and hat were piled on the table beside the umbrella pole.  He had on only his gloves.

Jane appeared behind him and sat down.  She did not look unhappy.  Her shoulders were straight, her forehead was held high and her head was slightly tilted.  She beamed.

“Well?” he asked.

She leaned in and grinned.  “It’s there,” she said, as if it were a holy thing.  “All of it.”

He felt a rush.  “Really.”

               

Jane nodded.

“My god,” he said.  “Oh my god.”

She laughed out loud, drawing attention, and stifled herself.  She leaned across the table and hissed in pure joy, “Yes, ‘oh my god.’  Lots and lots and lots of money.  Look!”  She slid a little banking slip across the table.

Charlie looked at it.  “Who would ever have believed it?”

“I would,” she answered.  “I told you.  I said you only had to stick with it, that someone would see that all those hours and nights on the computer weren’t a wasted effort.  I said you just keep at it, and don’t worry about how much you’re getting done and on what days and for how long.  You worried about that, not me.  I knew it would all come out in the end.”

“It’s a good thing I worried.  If I hadn’t worried, I wouldn’t have gotten it done.”

“Oh shut up.  It is done.  It’s all done and we’re here now and I love you.”  She launched herself over the table, grasped his face with both hands and kissed him hard.  He kissed back and then remembered where they were.  They both did.  Their faces glowed a little crimson, and she sat back down, grinning at him.  “Damn I love you.”

He stared at the bank slip, looking at the numbers, all of them, one piled on top of the next.  When he looked at her, she was chewing something, not looking at him, but at everyone else moving around them and grinning.

“This is so weird,” he said.

“What?”

“Well … I keep thinking I should do something.  I should get up and howl, and you should howl, and we should make a big scene.  But I don’t want to.  And then I start thinking that I should talk about all the things I want to buy, but right now I can’t think of a one.  A car I guess.  Or a house.  And yet that seems so stupid, so small.  Like what kids think about.  I don’t care what we drive.  I don’t care where we live.”

She smiled, and shook her head, and said, “That’s my Charles.  We are going to move.  We are going to buy a car.  I’m tired of the bus.”

“Oh sure,” he said.  “But doesn’t it seem … a little dumb?  Like that’s what we’re supposed to do because we’re supposed to do it?  Like right now, we’re supposed to go out and get drunk, and do it with our friends and blah blah blah.  But we don’t have friends and I don’t want to get drunk.”

“Charlie –”

“Seriously.  Do you want to get drunk?”

She shook her head.

“So this is what I’m asking.  What do we do?  We have almost – shit, I can’t even say it out loud – we have all this money, and I’m thinking I’m just tired and maybe we could go home and order a pizza and watch some movie and crash.  And tomorrow we could, I don’t know, go to a store?  To get furniture?  God … that just sounds awful.  Wandering around some place looking at furniture and dealing with some jackass salesman –”

“Charlie, shut up.”

“I’ve never had money before.  Ever.  I’ve had … let me think, the most money I’ve ever had in my hands at one time was about 2,200 dollars.  And that doesn’t go as far as you’d think.  Once you pay rent and –”

“God, Charlie, will you please stop talking?”  Jane put on her angry face and he closed his mouth.  “I know all this about you.  And you don’t have a thing to worry about.  We are not going to go furniture shopping tomorrow.  We are not going back to our place for a pizza.  And we are not getting drunk.  Do you believe me?”

“Yes.”  Jane was the one person he always believed.

“Good.  Then you can trust me.  I’ve been preparing my whole life for this moment.  I know exactly what to do.  First thing, we do not go home.  We go to a hotel.  A nice one downtown.  We get settled in our room, and then we start living there for about a month.  Tomorrow, we clean out the car of anything that has sentimental value, and then we give the car to your sister.  Then for a month we clean out everything that’s in our apartment that has sentimental value, and we give everything else away.”

“Everything?”

“Yes, everything.”

“Can we keep the red couch?”

“No.  It’s old and the stuffing is drifting inside and the one arm was burnt by the iron three years ago and in case you’ve forgotten that couch gives you a headache when you sleep in it.  The only thing you like about that couch is that its red.  They make other red couches, Charlie.  We’ll get one of those.”

He nodded, sniffed his nose and looked serious.  “Okay.  Okay, I can live with that.”

“When we get the apartment sorted out, we take all the sentimental things and we put them in storage.  Then we give everything else away.  We tell our crappy landlord to stuff his lease and we tell him to keep the deposit.”

“Why in storage.”

“We’re going to be busy looking for a place to live.”

“Ah.  So, a house again.”

“Charlie, I really do love you, and without you we wouldn’t have a thing, but you are the stupidest person alive sometimes.  No, we’re not looking for a house.  We’re looking for a place.”

“Huh?”

“Do you want to live this city?”

“Gah.  NO.”

“And you don’t care where we live, so long as there’s a computer, right?”

He nodded, and sighed.  “Yeah.  That’s right.”

“Okay.  You said once that you thought it would be cool to live in the Maritimes.”

“Yeah.  I used to look at real estate ads and they’d talk about acres with land next to the sea and ex-bed and breakfasts and forests and –”

“Have you ever been to the Maritimes?”

Charlie shook his head.  “No.”

“Me either.  So just in case we don’t like it, we’ll fly out there, have a look around for a few weeks, or months, and see how it feels.  We’ll drive all over Nova Scotia and give it a really good glance over.  And if we don’t like it, we’ll do the same thing somewhere else.  And when we find a place that we really do like, we’ll buy some kind of place there and settle down.  Sound good?”

“Jeez.  You’re brilliant.”

“No, stupid, you’re brilliant.  Are you ready to go?”

“Yes.”  He stood up, and reached for his coat.  “Can you promise me we’ll never set foot in a place like this again?”

“Swear to fucking god,” she said.  Her coat was under Charlie’s and she dug it out.  They both got dressed, pulling their heavy coats into place, tucking their hair under their hats.

Charlie flipped his scarf over his neck and stopped.  He looked at Jane, holding onto his scarf with each of his hands balled up in a fist.  “You know … I’ve never liked this scarf.”

“Leave it,” she said.

He felt an odd rush go through him.  Still, it felt wrong, to leave something behind that inherently had value.  He stripped the scarf off his neck, and let it fall on the plastic table.  He let go of it … and felt lighter.  Turning, he saw Jane was already on her way, not waiting for him, knowing he’d follow.

He took one look back, then went, quickening his steps.