This is for my father, who will certainly
never read it, on his 77th birthday.
And for Dargelos, who's been there and does
that, with a deep bow of respect and gratitude.
Last Set Before Closing
Kat Allison
The car that pulled into the parking lot in front of the Saguaro Assisted Living Center was an anachronism—a gasoline-fueled 1966 Mustang, fireapple-red, gleaming body perfectly restored, its only concession to modernity the eggplant-colored sheen of the UV-block windows. Its engine sounded rough, primitive, next to the sedate hum of the electric cars. The noise echoed off the steel and glass facade of the building, and roused the few residents who were drowsing in the deep shade of the verandah. They sat forward in their powered chairs, smiling a little, eyeing the car as covetously as they would have when it, and they, were new, a half-century earlier.
The man who opened the door and got out looked as sleek as the car, and far younger—tall, dark-haired, moving with the unconscious ease of youth and perfect health. He stood for a moment in the burning sun, not quite sniffing, not quite looking around; feeling, perhaps, the faint shifts of desert air on his skin, reading their messages like a scenthound. After a moment, he seemed to relax, and moved quickly toward the building.
Inside, he navigated the hallways with the unthinking sureness of long habit. Like a watchman making rounds, he stopped briefly at the doorway to a lounge, scanning the group of residents watching a basketball game on a four-foot screen, then moved on, quickly checking the dining area, the courtyard, the dim silent meditation room. He didn't bother looking in the exercise room, where stiffened bodies struggled with yoga under the direction of a serpentine young woman, but strode on down the hall, an incongruous figure in his long dark coat among old people dressed like children in pastel-colored stretchy playclothes.
He paused for a moment at the VR room, looking in at the bodies strapped into masks and gloves, wired, moving in slow trance, thralled; emptied vessels being refilled with fabricated experience. He didn't expect to find the one he was looking for there. ("I like my reality real, not virtual. Don't expect me to change my mind on that unless they make a VR where I could be sitting in a club in Chicago, jamming with Muddy Waters. And I'm not holding my breath on that one, since no one seems to listen to music any more, just that techno-crap the machines puke out.")
Turning away to resume his search, he came face to face with one he did not want to see, a sleekly-groomed young woman who wore a formal blazer over her nurse's coverall.
"Mr. MacLeod." She smiled with what could have been mistaken for genuine pleasure.
He smiled back, consciously amping up the warmth. "Ms. Hernandez. What a pleasure to see you, and how are you today?"
"Oh, I'm fine." He could almost hear a thud as his effort at charm slid off her glassy facade to the floor. "Listen, do you have a moment?" Without waiting for his answer she touched his elbow, steering him down the hall to an office.
MacLeod let himself be guided, seated, using the time to calm himself so when he spoke it was with no trace of irritation. "Is there a problem? How's he doing?"
"No real problems. Physically he's OK." She frowned, as if this were less than fully good news. "Another little episode of arrhythmia over the weekend, but we got that adjusted fairly easily. But those new prostheses we ordered for him? He's refusing to try them out. He just stays in that chair. And stays in his room, way more than he should. He has to get out and interact more, it's important in keeping him oriented. And he needs more exercise. I want him to give those prostheses a try."
He made a noncommittal noise, nodding. "I wanted to ask, did you recheck those scan results?"
"Yes we did." She sounded impatient. "It is not early Alzheimer's, just like I told you before. Gene therapy is not going to do a bit of good in this case. He's just had a series of small CVAs. Little strokes. That's something we can't do a thing about, unfortunately, it's just a progressive degenerative condition."
"And you don't know why it's happening."
"Well, this isn't a sudden thing. Mr. Dawson clearly has not taken very good care of himself for a long time. Alcohol intake, over a protracted period. And exposure to cigarette smoke, and judging by his hearing loss a great deal of high-decibel noise—"
"It's called music," MacLeod said, a cold edge on his smile.
"—no exercise, poor diet, lack of significant close relationships—"
He wanted to snap back, What am I, chopped liver? but stopped, trying to remember if he'd heard that one in the last few decades. The idioms were the hardest to keep up with, the easiest to scramble. Instead he looked at her—trim muscular body, taut sheen of skin, well-nourished sunscreened detoxified flesh. You really think if you do everything just right it won't happen to you. He could see the places where her jowls would someday sag, where her eyes would pouch and the cruel lines cut in around her lips. It was a skill he'd developed over the centuries, to run time back and forth in his head like a video, to look at a girl and see how age would settle on her, to look at a stooped old man and see the youth he'd once been.
"—it's a shame because seventy is not old. Need not be, at least. But in life," she added, "we end up withdrawing in age whatever we invested when young."
He couldn't help laughing a little at the squalid perfection of the metaphor, for her, for her time. She gave him an irritated look, but all he said was, "Joe's not had an easy life. He's lived hard."
"He's making it harder than it needs to be right now. I know we've discussed this before, but I want you to reconsider the hyproxetine. I think it would help his mood."
MacLeod felt anger returning. "Has he agreed to take it?"
"No, of course he hasn't." She sighed. "He won't even discuss it. He's not fully rational, as you know very well."
"He's rational enough to decide when he doesn't want to be drugged. Is he causing trouble?" She just looked at him. "No, of course he isn't. He doesn't want to be made happy. He wants to feel the way he feels. Life is not always happy, you know, Ms. Hernandez."
"Depressed people often forget what it's like to feel good. They have a hard time imagining life could be different. They deserve at least the chance to give it a try. You're denying him that chance. It's your responsibility—" she held up a hand to silence his retort, "—your responsibility to make those decisions he's not capable of making. You've agreed to be responsible for him, you need to follow through on your commitment."
"You think I'm not being responsible." Sudden rage flared through him. "Listen, I don't have to be doing any of this. There's some very good reasons why I shouldn't even be in this town. Do you know how easy it'd be for me to just take off? Every day I make the choice to stay here, and I keep coming back here, because I take responsibility for him, even though it's not safe—" He stopped. He'd said more than he'd intended, a mistake he rarely made any more.
She was looking at him with disgust. "Mr. MacLeod, your personal difficulties are not my concern. What is my concern is that you're letting him suffer. I know," she said impatiently, "believe me, I know how tempting it is to pretend that everything's OK with someone, that they're still capable of taking care of themselves. Whether it's because you want to take yourself off the hook, or you want to believe everything's just fine. But the result is he's suffering, and he doesn't have to."
The genuine feeling in her tone silenced him. He sat, feeling every breath an effort against the weight bearing down on him, crushing him, as if he were shackled to the ocean floor.
"OK. I'll talk to him about the prostheses, at least. I can't promise anything.'
"Well, that's fine, Mr. MacLeod." Her tone was once again cool, distanced. "I don't expect your to singlehandedly change his mind. I'm only asking you to use your influence." She rose, dismissively, and picked a few files off her desktop. "And try to keep an open mind about the hyproxetine, won't you? I wouldn't be pushing it if I didn't think it would help him. And you're too young to be so closed-minded."
He had to smile at that, reluctantly. He liked her no better for being forced to respect her.
He found Joe in his room, staring out the window. He was in a powerchair that was a technological marvel of gleaming metal and molded plastic. Its sleek perfection was a startling contrast to the man who sat in it, a crumpled wad of paper in a stainless steel wastebasket. Joe's plaid shirt was wrinkled, and buttoned askew, so that he looked slightly hunchbacked. His still-thick silver hair was pushed up at odd angles. The overhead lights were off, and the room was illuminated only by the filtered daylight from the window, which threw cold shadows in the deep creases of his face.
"Joe. How're you doing." The man in the chair made no movement, no acknowledgment.
He's got his hearing aid off, MacLeod thought, and moved into Joe's line of vision, smiling, lifting his hand in salute. For just an instant, as Joe focused on him, he could see confusion, and then the dawn of recognition, of pleasure. "Well, hey. Mac." Joe reached with stiff clumsy fingers into his shirt pocket, groping for the control, and MacLeod, who itched to reach over and help, curbed himself.
The hearing aid had been the cause of another argument—"That device is an antique, I fail to see why he continues to cling to it, there is no reason why Mr. Dawson shouldn't have the cochlear implants, with his degree of hearing loss they'd provide a much better level of—" Mac had not pointed out to her the obvious answer—that Joe liked being able to turn the aid off, to escape from tedious conversations and staff harangues. That would simply have gone in as another black mark on his record of psychosocial adjustment.
Joe finally had the control out, peering at it, and nudged the dial to a setting that had been emphatically marked with a red pen. Mac spoke to him again. "Sitting in the dark?"
"I hate those damn lights. They glare." Joe's voice was husky, and he cleared his throat a few times.
"Full spectrum fluorescents, Joe, they're supposed to simulate sunlight." MacLeod pulled a chair over and sat down.
"They do a crappy job, then." After a few misses, he got one finger hooked in his shirt pocket and carefully slid the control back in. His hands looked worse today, Mac thought. Stiffer, more painfully twisted. Arthritis was another thing no one had solved yet. Why did you have to get the unsolvable problems, Joe?
He glanced over to the corner where the guitar case was still casually propped. A little dusty. It had been more than two years now since Joe had finished playing one day, put the guitar back in its case as always, stuck it in the corner, and never touched it again. Once, a social worker had been ill-advised enough to suggest that MacLeod take the guitar away—"It can only be depressing to Mr. Dawson to have it sitting there, a constant reminder of what he's lost—" Mac winced slightly at the memory of how he'd snarled at the woman. The cleaning staff knew enough to shift it carefully when washing the floors, and then move it back again.
Another throat-clearing, and then, "So, Mac. How's Adam? You heard from him?"
Every time, it was always the first question, the same question, even though MacLeod knew that Joe knew that "Adam Pierson" had died some years back.
"He's fine. Sends his love. Says he wishes he could visit."
"Yeah, sure." Joe made a faint derisive sound, almost as if he knew the falsehood of that last sentence. "He's still down there at the bottom of the world?"
Mac nodded. This, too, was ritual, and each time it reassured him to find a fact that stayed planted in Joe's memory.
"Boy, if there is a God, you have to admit the bastard's got some sense of humor. Setting it up so that our mutual friend ends up at a research station in Antarctica, for christ's sake." As always, Joe found this thought freshly and richly entertaining. "I'm just glad I lived long enough to see that one. He must be so damn miserable down there..." He grinned up at MacLeod, inviting shared schadenfreude.
MacLeod gave the old man an exasperated look. "Well, that's the point. Anyone who knows anything about him will figure that's the last place he'd be. And he's not doing so bad. Tells me he's actually getting some very interesting qualitative data on cultural differences in how newcomers to isolated confined workgroups slot themselves into status hierarchies."
"Yeah, I'll bet, whatever that means. Adam as a psychologist, that is rich."
MacLeod shrugged. "A good racket, he says. And it was his only ticket in. Better than trying to set up as a geophysicist or something like that, you know he was always hopeless at math."
"Didn't you say something about him starting a fencing club down there?"
"Yeah. Keeping in practice." MacLeod refrained from pointing out that this had happened three months ago, and had been discussed in each subsequent visit. "He's got several people now, although he did say, as a psychologist, that letting members of an isolated research team loose on each other with swords might not be the brightest idea. He keeps the edges good and dull, at least on theirs." MacLeod watched as Joe reached for the water glass on the tray table, watched it wobble in the stiff hands for a moment before Joe regained control and carefully took a sip. "Actually, he wrote me last time there's one woman who's getting quite good, taking an interest. It'd be good for him to have someone who can push him a bit."
"Ah-hah." Joe invested the syllables with self-conscious importance, waggling a shaggy eyebrow at Mac. "Pushing him, huh? Sounds like that has—possibilities. Not that Adam ever needed much pushing, as far as I could tell."
"Glad to see you've still got your lecherous imagination intact," MacLeod said mildly. "No, he knows better than to get involved with anyone in that kind of situation."
Actually, Methos had e-mailed him ...after two years of this I must confess that there's not a soul—or a body, I should say— on this entire homely paunchy ill-groomed geekish team who isn't starting to look good to me, and that is the pathetic truth. You will see to what depths I've sunk when I tell you that I've started to avail myself of the extensive VR porn collection down here, and you know how I loathe VR. These ones capture all the trivia, and miss the essentials—the smells, you know that fine ripe bouquet of an armpit or crotch on a hot day, the taste of sweat, the feel of a nipple getting hard under one's tongue, the flavor of another's breath in one's mouth, the way that muscle right at the top of the inner thigh jumps when you bite it, the smell of... All right, I'm ending this right here, I'm going to go take a nice long walk outside. Hell, it's all the way up to minus 56 out there. Bracing. You'd probably love it, Mac, but then you've always been a total pervert ...
Joe's voice cut in. "You miss him."
"Well sure." The familiar phrases, a litany exchanged at each visit, each man reminding the other of connections not quite lost. "You miss him too."
"Yeah." Joe was motionless, one hand clutching the armrest of his chair, the other buried in his blanket. "I'll never see him again, will I."
That was not part of the routine. Mac looked up sharply, saw the dull glaze in the other man's eyes, the sag of his face. He fought back the urge to offer facile reassurances, and instead merely said, "I dunno, Joe. You might. Hard to say what's going to happen." He leaned over and put his hand gently over Joe's. "Stick around and see."
"Oh, I'll give it a little more time." Joe grimaced. "It may be last call, but I haven't finished my drink yet. I'll nurse it along a while."
MacLeod nodded, sitting back. "You do that."
"I used to hate customers like that, you know? The ones who never knew when to call it a night. You could try being polite, you could try being pushy, didn't make any difference, they just wouldn't go. Didn't want to leave. Didn't care what a pain in the ass they were being for everyone else." Mac was wrung by the almost childlike uncertainty in Joe's voice, the anxiety in the hands that moved uneasily on the armrests of the chair.
"As I recall, Joe, often enough it was me and Adam being the pains in the ass, sitting around all night keeping you up, and drinking up your stock to boot. You never threw us out, to my memory."
"Yeah, well, you guys were interesting at least. Not like this old fart." He shook his head.
"Hey. You insulting my favorite old fart?" Mac reached over and thumped Joe gently on the shoulder. "You think I'd keep coming around here if I didn't find you interesting?"
"Well, yeah, actually. Knowing you. Hell, if I were interesting, maybe you'd be coming around here a little more often, huh?"
Words like a knife in the gut. Mac had come across that phrase in stories and always thought it was a shame few writers knew as he did how accurate the metaphor could be.
"You know why I can't come here more often. We've been over and over this. I'm too easy to find as it is."
Joe appeared to not be listening. "You sure there's no way I could talk to Adam sometime? Just for a few minutes, you know? I'm not totally senile, I wouldn't use his name or anything."
Mac could have ground his teeth, but he kept his voice gentle. "That's not the point, Joe. It's just that you can't get a secure line out of here. It's no secret that he's an old friend of yours, and anybody with a mind to could trace all your calls."
"He could e-mail me. He could send me a message through you. He could do a lot of stuff. He just ... fucking ... doesn't want to. Right?"
"Joe, it's—" He paused, helplessly. Stood, and strode quickly to the far end of the room. Pressed his forehead against the wall, wishing Methos were there merely so he could strangle him, taking fierce satisfaction in the thought of him stuck there alone on the polar icecap. After a minute, he walked back and perched himself on the windowsill, facing Joe, forcing his voice to calmness. "You have to understand, it's just that—"
"Hm?" The eyes that glanced up at him were blank, untroubled by any emotion beyond mild puzzlement.
MacLeod shut his eyes. Maybe it was better in the old days, he thought. Back when no one lived long enough to get old. More merciful.
There was a long silence, as Mac listened to the floor polisher hum its way slowly past in the hall.
"So how are you anyway, Mac? Or did I already ask that?"
"I'm fine. Fine." He opened his eyes, pulled himself off the windowsill and sat back down in his chair. "Still around."
"How's—uh—shit, what's she called... "
"Jezannah."
As always, he ducked his head, muttering, "Christ, these names nowadays," before returning to the other man. "She still around?"
"Actually, no. She took that job in Raleigh." He looked over at Joe, saw confusion. "She'd been offered a promotion, in their main office. I told you last month."
"Damn. I'm sorry, Mac." Hard to tell if the regret was for the loss of the woman or of the memory.
"Nothing to be sorry about. Probably for the best."
"Now that's cold. What, nothing to be sorry about? Love 'em and leave 'em? You sound more like Adam now."
The words stung, on more levels than MacLeod could let himself feel.
"She was getting too close, it had to be tied off anyway. I was running on pure luck with her these last couple of months. Things are just getting too—crowded."
Joe was looking at him with some of the old sharpness in his eyes. "How many?"
"Three. In the last two weeks. Old ones too, strong. Not that any of them are easy anymore."
"God almighty." Joe was shaking his head slowly. "How do they keep finding you here, anyway? You post your address or something?"
"Beats me. I mean, this used to be a pretty safe place, that's why I moved us here, after all." That, he thought, and the silly hope that Methos might be more drawn to a desert climate, might be comfortable here. He winced, remembering that drawling scornful voice: "...of course, MacLeod, if it's something that you'd think of, then clearly it's the obvious simple thing that any headhunting idiot would think of. I mean, why not just send me back to Paris with a big red "M" stenciled on my chest..."
He shook off the memory. "All I know is, Amanda tells me it's worse if anything in Seacouver. Says they still show up there looking for me. Figure she's just a little extra bonus." He laughed without humor. "They figure wrong. So far."
"Wait. Amanda's in Seacouver?" It hurt, almost physically, to see again the confusion in Joe's eyes.
"Yeah. She's been there a while." You've phoned her there, Joe. More than once.
"Weird. So how long's she planning to stick around there? Doesn't seem like her kind of town."
"Funny, I called her last weekend and asked her that very thing." MacLeod started to say more, and then fell silent again. He stood, restlessly, and wandered over to the window.
"Well?" Joe prodded him.
Without looking at Joe, MacLeod said, "She told me she was—sick of it all. Bored with thieving and tired of running, that was what she said." He could hear her voice in his ear still, the lilting soprano light as ever, only missing the usual grace note of laughter: ... this show's had a good long run, Duncan, but after all, my schtick was always comedy, right? It's not like I'm doing Lear or anything. No big loss when the curtain goes down. You know, to be honest, if anyone deserved to have immortality, it sure as hell wasn't me. Joe'd be so much better at it. Don't you think? I mean, he'd have made better use of all that time than I did ...
"You think she wants to die?" It was not unknown to any Watcher—Immortals abdicating their lives, letting themselves be taken, a form of suicide.
"No. She fights when she needs to. She just ... she's fed up. Not only with the Game. She likes doing her stunt work well enough, the studios keep her busy, and she's got a couple of strapping young lovers, and all that. But it's all gotten kind of old for her. I think she's just going to play out her hand. Not draw new cards." MacLeod was still staring out at the courtyard.
"How many can there be left? I mean, how the hell many of you are still here? How close are we?"
"I don't know, Joe." His voice was more clipped than he'd meant, and he softened it. "I don't have my inside source any longer, you know. Didn't realize how spoiled I was, all those years."
"Yeah, well. Glad you realize it now, pal. You sure never did at the time."
"Too soon old, too late smart." Turning, he spoke without thinking, relieved at the lively banter in Joe's voice.
The words lay painfully between them, and then Joe said, "You're not old. I don't care how many years you've been around. You'll never be old. Trust me. You have no idea."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"You think you know what it's like to lose stuff, friends and your home and all that—but to lose yourself, one piece at a time, and to know it's happening, and not be able to do a damn thing about it—"
"I know," Mac repeated.
Joe was scowling, pushing his chin down against his chest, trying to hide the sudden wetness in his eyes. He fussed with the blanket draped over his lap, rearranging it, rucking it up and then smoothing it out.
Seeking to change the subject, MacLeod asked, "That chair comfortable for you? You need a pillow?"
"I'm fine." Joe muttered. "You're not supposed to use pillows with this anyway, they got it adjusted, it's orthopedic or some damn thing."
"You know—" Mac spoke with elaborate casualness as he stood and strolled around the room, idly gathering up stray papers and used tissues, "I'd think that chair would get kind of boring after a while. Doesn't it? Kind of limiting. You could probably get into a lot more trouble under your own steam." He straightened out the bedcovers, sounding even more airily unconcerned. "Weren't they going to have you test-pilot some new prostheses? But you've probably already got the hang of them, right? How about giving me a demonstration?"
Joe laughed, a phlegmy rattling laugh, but genuine. "Did that Hernandez bitch catch you on the way in?"
Mac cocked an eyebrow at him. Sometimes I think you haven't lost a step, old man. "She's not trying to be a bitch, Joe. She does care about your well-being, you know."
"Now that's a new one. Christ, she really must have hit another one of your guilt buttons. Didn't she?" He was encouraged by the sudden chuckle. "She did, didn't she? You're such a patsy, MacLeod."
Mac was laughing, harder than the sally warranted, washed with pure relief at the moment of Joe being Joe, fully himself. It was like the warmth of a sudden shaft of sunlight on a day of broken skies.
"So what does she want you to make me do now?"
"Joe, you haven't really given them a fair try, have you?"
"Fair." He snorted. "Only you would try to guilt me for not being fair to a damn pair of orthopedic appliances."
"Not being fair to yourself, is more like it." Joe glared at him. "Hey. Doesn't it make sense to try to keep as much mobility as possible? Keep as many options going your way as you can? Survival stuff, Joe." He paused a moment, adding, "Adam would approve of that."
"As if he'd care. I'm just an old crock, Mac. No, don't start trying to reassure me, damn it." He spoke with a weary, pained clarity, lining up the sentences with effort. "There's no point to it. As long as I'm stuck here, this chair's the easiest way to get around. Where the hell would I be going, anyway? The shopping mall, in the van with all the other old crocks? The Perkins, maybe? The Hernandez bitch told me if I snuck out to the bar she'd lock my ass up."
"Joe, you know why we're doing all this, it's—"
"Yeah, yeah. It's supposed to keep me alive. Don't you wonder sometimes if that's such a good idea, though?"
He tried to push aside the familiar suffocating weight of guilt, at this echo of his earlier thoughts. "You've got to find some reason to keep on going. I can't do that for you, Joe, you have to do it for yourself. Just like I've had to, more than once." His voice rose as he saw the impatient frown. "You think I don't know what it's like?"
"That's right, Mac. I think you don't know what it's like." Joe looked over and saw the hurt anger on the other's face. "Oh, c'mon, settle down. It's a moot point since I'm not gonna go on forever anyway. And there are a few things I'd stick around for a little longer."
"Like what?"
"Like, if Adam would stir his butt out of that cave of his get up here sometime soon. We could all go out on the town, the three of us. Not that I guess that's likely to happen." The skepticism in Joe's voice couldn't quite hide the wistful question.
"Can't for a while, Joe. It's winter there. No flights in or out for three months or so. It's pretty much cut off." He heard Joe sigh, and reminded him, "That's what makes it such a perfect hide-out, remember?"
"Yeah, yeah. Oh well. One upside, at least with him stuck down there I don't suppose the two of you can feud quite as much as you used to."
"Oh, you'd be amazed." Against his will, Mac remembered—was it a year ago, a year and a half? The time he had e-mailed Methos to say You have to come back, if only for a visit. Joe needs to see you, you need to— What had he actually written? I need you. I need you to— Wrong, all of it, the wrong word to ever use with Methos. The response had been three weeks of silence, at the end of which he'd been checking e-mail every few hours, testing the carefully nested set of bogus names and account shells for intrusion, and finally in terror driving in the darkness to a small desert town, finding an old-fashioned pay phone and placing an utterly forbidden call to Mawson Station in Antarctica. He remembered his relief at hearing the voice, tight with anger though it was.
"You were never to call here. You've forgotten that already?"
"I had to know if you were OK. God, it's good to hear your—"
"I was OK. I suppose you're calling on your own line, that'd be about your speed, wouldn't it."
"This can't be traced, I was careful. I have to know—"
"Careful. You. Right."
"He loves you. I thought you cared about him. How could you not make even the slightest effort to come see him? How can you leave me alone with this?"
"You sound surprised."
"Surprised. Yeah, I guess you could call it that."
"Don't start pouting at me, all right?"
"You know, I really didn't think there was a single thing you could do that would shock me any more."
"Glad to know I've some novelty value still. If no other."
And then, after a pause:
"It never fails to surprise me, the things you get shocked by. Think. Did it never strike you as significant, that when I did allow myself to be an idiot and fall in love, it was with a woman who was guaranteed to die young?"
And the click of the line disconnecting.
Think, Methos had said, and he had thought, through many nights, had peeled off the layers of painful meaning in that last remark, until all the feeling had finally been stripped away.
The e-mail correspondence had slowly resumed, and with time a guarded friendship had rewarmed. He had not heard Methos' voice since, might never hear it again, he knew.
He looked up, to see Joe watching him calmly. "I never did really get what all was going on with the two of you anyway, you know? All I caught was the trivia. When you were being pissy with each other, when you made up, when you were killing each other's old lovers. That kind of stuff. Never sure what was behind it all."
"I don't know that there was anything much to get. Likely it was all trivia."
Joe nodded absently, letting his chin settle down on his chest.
"You getting tired?"
"A little. My legs hurt some."
"You want to lie down, take a nap?"
"I want out of here. I want to go home." Joe's voice was soft but determined. "I want to go back to Seacouver. I want to sit in my own bar and see with my own eyes how it's going. Hear some music. Real music. I want to sleep in my own bed."
With effort, Mac held back his anger, knowing it to be at least partly at himself, at his own helplessness. "Joe. I know you want that, but it's not possible. You can't go back there."
"You can't go back there, MacLeod. I can. They're not after me. And Amanda's there."
"Amanda can't take care of you. She couldn't take care of a guppy."
"She could come around sometimes and wiggle her ass at me. That'd help more than all this damn medicine they got me on. No, but c'mon, Mac. I could hang out at the bar, you know, maybe run the till. Keep an eye on the help. I can tell when someone's skimming, shorting the drinks, whatever. I could be of some use."
Which bar are you thinking of, old man? he wondered. The new Joe's, over by the water? Or are you thinking you could still go back and find your old place, just like it was before it went down for the highrise? Think you could still plunk down behind the bar, wait for Adam to wander in and swipe a few beers, for me to show up and pour a scotch and start arguing with him about something, for another one of those nights when we knew, we just knew for sure, even if only for a moment, that it wouldn't end, that we were soldered together forever...
"It's gone, Joe. It's past. Let it rest."
"I was checking the ads the other day, I could get an efficiency for under twelve hundred a month, that's gotta be way less than this place is costing."
"We tried that. You know what—" He bit it back. Joe didn't know what had happened, not any longer.
Joe's mouth turned down. "You want me to just sit here and rot."
MacLeod wanted to smash something. Rot, he thought. Rot was what he'd found, when he'd made it back to Seacouver the final time, after that pointless painful trip to Bali, three years ago. Trash stacked floor to ceiling, garbage crowding the tiny apartment until only a few narrow trails were left, bed to bathroom to kitchenette. Rats, roaches. And Joe lying in the narrow bed, wrapped in soiled blankets, shaking with fever and delirium. Pneumonia. Malnutrition. Infected blisters in his stumps. Lice in his matted hair. The doctors had pulled him through, the social worker had told him he couldn't live alone any more, Mac had hired the lawyer and signed the papers.
Joe remembered none of it. The first few months in Phoenix, he'd asked Mac at every visit when they were going to finish repainting his apartment, when he was going home. Then that had slipped from him as well.
He looked over at Joe and saw that the conversation had already faded in his mind, could almost watch random thoughts drift through his head like smoke.
"So .... you taken any challenges lately, Mac?"
"Three," he said. "Three, in the last two weeks."
"Three in two weeks." It was clearly fresh news to him, and he mused over it for a while, moving his jaw. "You know, Mac, you really ought to get the hell out of Phoenix. This is not a safe place for you anymore."
"Well no shit!" He couldn't stop himself. "What are you trying to tell me, Joe? First you want to go to Seacouver, then you want me to leave Phoenix—you want me to get the hell out of your life? Is that what you're trying to say?"
Joe looked bewildered. "I want you to take care of yourself."
"I'm trying to take care of both of us."
"Well, you can't do that if you're dead."
"You want me to go into hiding," Mac said. "Just like Methos?"
"It'd make sense."
"You realize that then I couldn't see you. Or contact you. Just like he can't. For the same reasons. Is that what you want?"
"I don't want any of this," Joe whispered. "None of this was what I had in mind."
MacLeod put his elbows on his knees. dropped his face into his hands. He sat for a while, breathing, feeling time click ahead. "Yeah. Me neither, Joe."
When he looked up at last, he saw Joe's head slowly dipping, then jerking back up, eyelids almost shut. Without speaking, he rose and hooked an arm around Joe's back, slid the other beneath his hips, lifted him easily and settled him on the bed.
"I'm not supposed to be having naps during the day, you know," Joe mumbled uneasily. "That Hernandez bitch catches me she'll have a hemorrhage."
"Tell her I made you do it. That if she seeks a fight, she'll have me—" he struck a cheesily heroic pose— "Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod, to deal with."
Joe chuckled sleepily. "Don't think that'll faze her an inch."
"You're hurting my feelings, Joe." Mac snagged the hearing aid control that was sliding out of Joe's pocket and set it on the bedside table.
"Well, hell, she already thinks you're a gangster, you know, and that doesn't faze her."
"What?"
"Sure. I heard her talking to a new nurse one morning when she thought I had my ears turned off. It's the arrangements, I guess. All that stuff about what to do if someday you just stop showing up. Telling her that you might just disappear, no explanation."
"A gangster." Mac was smiling. "Well well. So what does that make you, the Godfather?"
"Now there's an idea. Hey, I like that." Joe launched into an weirdly-accented Brando imitation. "'You come to me on the wedding day of my daughter...'"
Mac started laughing so hard he sank down onto the floor next to the bed, resting his forehead on the mattress, shaking the bedframe. When he got his breath he said, "So which do I get to be then? Sonny, was it, or who was the other one? Michael?"
"I can't remember their names, for chrissake, I haven't seen that in ... twenty-five years?" Joe quietened, looked over at Mac, at the youthful face on a level with his. "Wasn't there one who stuck around? Took care of the old man?"
Mac looked back at him, and after a moment shrugged. He got to his feet. "You get some rest, Joe. I have to go. I'll be back when I can." He took Joe's hand carefully in both of his.
"Watch your head. And ... say hi to Adam from me. Next time you write."
"I'll do that."
As he started to pull away, Joe gripped his hand tighter. "Just tell me this. What are you going to do at the end? If it comes down to just you and him?"
"I don't know. I don't think about it."
"Mac. How can you not think about it?"
MacLeod took a deep breath. "Damn it, Joe, if someone'd asked you twenty years ago 'What are you going to do when you get old?' what would you have said? Were you thinking about that back then?" Joe made no response, and MacLeod growled, "I want an answer." He didn't think he was squeezing at all, but he saw Joe wince, and guiltily loosened his grip.
Joe made no move to pull away. He was quiet, and Mac couldn't tell if he was thinking, or wandering, or dozing off. But after a pause, he said softly, "I'd've said ... I would've said that'll probably never happen. I probably won't be around long enough to worry about it. I got enough on my mind right now, why borrow trouble? I figure it'll take care of itself, one way or another. That's what I'd have said."
Mac nodded. A long silence deepened between them, and he watched as Joe's eyes started to dim, the lids sinking shut, the breathing slowing. He let go of the hand, setting it gently on Joe's chest.
Joe spoke once more, in a rough whisper, without opening his eyes. "I'm glad I won't be around to see that one, I'll tell you that much."
"Yeah." MacLeod bent and tucked the blanket around the truncated form on the bed. "Til next time, Joe. Take care."
He walked out, closing the door quietly behind him, and stood in the hallway for a moment, feeling solitude closing around him. It was both a sorrow and a relief. He thought for a moment of Methos, and of Amanda, and felt a sudden sharp ache of craving—was it for their company, he wondered, to feel again the casual ease of their movement in and out of his life? Or was it a craving to be them, to feel in himself that blessed indifference he'd so despised in them?
He set off down the hall, but paused at the sight of a middle-aged woman struggling with a much older woman who was arching her back, whimpering, sliding out of her powerchair. "Mama, necesitas sentarte—shit—calmate, Mama—"
"Need a hand?" He moved forward and gently took the elderly woman under the arms, pulling her up, while the other woman fastened a strap between her legs and around her waist, securing her.
"Thanks." She was strongly built, with a round cheerful brown face and short-cropped hair. "Usually I can handle her OK, but I hurt my back the other day."
"No problem. Is she all right?"
"She's OK." She shrugged. "Her body, it could go for years and years. She just don't have much of her brain left."
"I'm sorry."
"I seen you here before, I think. With your dad? Nice gentleman, with the—" she made a vague slicing gesture at her thighs.
MacLeod found himself saying, "Yeah, that's him. My dad."
"I notice he don't seem to have many visitors. You got no one else to help out, huh?" Mac looked sharply at her but saw nothing in her face beyond mild sympathy.
"There are—some others," he said haltingly. "But they're just not—in a position to be of much help, I guess."
She nodded. "My brother, he always says, you just let me know how I can help, but every time I call him up, he's got some business stuff, he just can't make it now. I finally give up on him."
"Doesn't seem fair."
"Nope. Specially 'cause I got kids who need me too, they're pulling at me from one side, mama's pulling at me from the other. Tears me right down the middle sometimes." She laughed. "But hey, you probably know that one, right? You got kids?"
"No," MacLeod said. "I don't."
"Well, you're young yet," she said kindly. "Just don't leave it too long, cause it don't get any easier. None of it."
"So how do you handle it?" MacLeod felt a sudden urgent curiosity. "Don't you ever just feel like—you know, like running away? Just letting someone else take care of things for a while?"
"Well, sure." She looked at him like he was slow. "Of course you feel that way. Nice to think about it sometimes. I think about going to one of those spas, you know, where you get the massages and all. And just never coming back." She grinned at the thought. "But the fact is if we all did like that, it'd all just fall apart. Right? We'd all just be, like, putting knives in each other's backs all the time, is what it'd come down to. You can't live like that."
He nodded.
"We got to hang together. Even me and that crappy brother of mine. Cause really, you know, we got no choice, do we? Life's too short."
"Right," he said. "Listen, I have to go, but it was nice to meet you."
"Yeah, thanks for the hand, and you take care of that sweet old guy of yours."
MacLeod walked on to the lobby, pausing a moment at the door to check his sword and take a careful survey outside. He'd never been followed into the building itself, but several times he'd been picked up by a challenger lurking in the parking lot. He felt no Presence, though, just the familiar prickle of nerves between his shoulderblades. The awareness of how bare his back was with no one to cover it. But then, there'd never really been anyone, not since the day he'd been expelled from his clan.
"Alone," Methos had told him once. "We come into this world alone and we live out our lives alone and we face our deaths alone. The only time you will ever truly not be alone, in the entire course of your life, is the moment when you take a Quickening, or when someone takes yours. Someday, you'll learn to stop pretending you don't understand that."
Someday, perhaps, he thought. Not yet. Checking his sword one final time, he strode out the door, into the desert heat, alone in the burning spotlight of the sun.