Chapter 7:

In this Corner, Weighing in at 113 Pounds…

As was expected, Yzal’s lawyers came after Nathan as a credible witness. Kelly, who served as special council to the D.A., allowed nearly every question. She knew Nathan had to defend himself in order to earn the jury’s respect, and subsequently, their sympathy. Although she’d prepared Nathan well, and he managed the stand just fine from the D.A.’s point of view, Kelly could tell the testimony was wearing on him. After nearly three hours on the stand, most of it defending himself; Nathan was spent. He went home with hardly a word.

With the day of court finally finished, Kelly went home to find Nathan in the theater, the speakers so loud they hurt her good ear. She cupped her hand over her left ear, and pulled the curtain aside. “HEY!!!” She yelled at Nathan, then snagged the remote and turned the volume down. “What is going on?!” she asked.

Nathan’s eyes were puffy and swelled. She almost laughed. The only time she’d seen him so much as tear up was at the funeral. The trial really must’ve bothered him. Too much stage fright. Too many questions about the past. Too much probing with indelicate fingers. It must all be so unbearable, especially for someone so painfully private—oh how she relished the prospect of comforting him!

“Well now… Is the invincible Nathan Marvelous bothered by lawyers?” she teased.

Without a word, Nathan flipped the channel to SporTV3. He waved at the screen as if it should explain everything.

Kelly shrugged. “It’s just a Gatorade commercial,” she noted.

“Just watch,” Nathan said. The commercial ended.

Kelly waited, figuring the program would be about boxing, a bio on Marvelous, something that entertained a few of the unflattering theories; the blood doping rumors, or other chicanery. She didn’t know what to think when the Pan-American games came on. It was track and field: foot races, pole vaulting, jumping. There was no boxing at all.

“One moment I’m watching the Red Sox lose to the Yankees—proof that everything’s right in the universe—and the next thing I know, this comes on and they cut from the first race to do a piece on Michelle, this fare-thee-well tribute!” Nathan whined. “They showed her running her first professional race, then on the stand with her relay team after they won silver, barely able to keep from laughing. You should have seen the way she giggled! The four of them couldn’t control themselves, and I realized I’ll never see that smile again!” Nathan had barely taken a breath as he said this, and now his breath was coming in short panicky sobs.

Kelly’s heart sank. How many times had Michelle attended the Pan-American games? How often did they hold the Pan-American games? From the amount of medals Kelly saw about the mansion, it must be often. She stroked Nathan’s hair and pressed herself against him. “It’s been four months,” she noted, her head on his chest as he gasped each breath.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, leaning back into the couch, trying to distance himself.

“I think you should let go, is all I’m saying, for your own sake. Perhaps you should do something besides sit on this couch and watch TV all day.”

“And what would you suggest I do? Should I take up a briefcase and swindle fools out of their money?”

Was that aimed at her? Is that what he thought of her? “I don’t swindle,” she bristled.

“Not you. It’s just, all those fools asking me to endorse golf clubs or dish soap. I like to think that’s not my purpose. That’s not what my life is for.”

“Then don’t do it. Do something else.”

“Like what?!” He yelled.

“I don’t know, anything,” she answered.

Nathan’s eyes caught fire, as if everything was suddenly so obvious. “I know!” He shrieked. “I can work in a grocery store, or at the bank! I could get a job at the Star and Siren, or Villacasia’s, waiting tables! I’ll be just like everyone else! I’ll go out and be normal, and nobody will notice me at all! People won’t mind! They won’t ask why I look so damned familiar, that is, if they don’t recognize me immediately!” Nathan cried, exasperated. “Come on! I have picketers at my front gate for something I did, by accident, almost eight years ago! Do you remember the fiasco after I joined the police?! Do you remember that mess? I was in the paper a month before I swore in, and nearly a year afterward, and I was on the force for three whole days!”

“So you joined the police. Anything you do is newsworthy. You’re a celebrity.”

“I was a celebrity before that,” Nathan explained. “Now I’m a scapegoat to boot.”

“What are you talking about?” Kelly asked.

“Psychoto set me up, that bastard! You don’t remember that, the robbery, the shootings, the inquiries?! You never saw any of that?!”

“I didn’t,” Kelly confessed.

Nathan stared at Kelly. “I finally found the one person that missed it all,” he said, mystified.

Kelly was at Stanford at the time, a long way from Cityopolis. No wonder she’d never seen or heard anything. The last two years of school were a bog, 104 weeks of caffeine-induced consciousness. She barely kept her head above water for all the studying. She missed everything: the Super Bowl, elections, Christmas, the World Series, even her own birthdays.

Obviously Nathan was no longer a policeman. Marvelous never did anything anymore. She could barely coax him out of the mansion for a meal or shopping most the time. It didn’t help that everybody recognized him and half of them bothered him to boot: Can I get an autograph? Can I get a picture? Can you sign this for my brother? He’s a huge fan! I just want to shake your hand! You’re a legend! A living legend! You’re so goddamn cool!

Some of them pointed but kept their distance. These were the ones that said bad things. Bully. Cheater. Fascist. Goddamn quitter. They always said these things quietly—but not so quiet that they wouldn’t be heard.

Nathan seemed to ignore them all, positive or negative. The only ones he looked at, the ones he noticed were the few people that didn’t know him; that walked by oblivious to his celebrity. These were the people he looked at longingly when the others pressed about him with their requests and accusations.

“You need to get out of this house from time to time,” Kelly stated. “You need to let Michelle go.”

“Twenty years, Kelly! Twenty years and I’m not going to forget her in three months!”

“Four months,” she corrected.

“Fine. We shouldn’t even be talking about this in terms of months. What is a month anyway? Thirty days?! That’s nothing! It took everyone I ever fought more than four months to prepare! It took most of them far longer to recover—the ones that were lucky enough to recover!”

Tears welled, but this time they were not Nathan’s. He saw Kelly pout and noted the thick water in her eyes. How was he to know she counted their relationship in days? In hours?

“What is it?” he asked, bothered.

“She was my friend too,” Kelly began. “She was my friend, and I gave up my life to be here with you. You could show a little appreciation for that,” she noted, wiping her eyes. “This is hard for me too!”

“Aren’t we being just a bit dramatic?”

“What? You can be dramatic, but I can’t?!”

“This was your idea, not mine. You came to me. And it’s not like you’re suffering. You have good work. You have me. Work is something you do because you want to, certainly not because you have to. So what if you can’t wave your hand and make me forget Michelle? I’ll never forget her! She was the one for me and she’s gone! She’s dead and gone, and I have to patch myself back together! Those wounds will always be there, marking me forever, because she was my life! And now, now I have…” Whatever he was thinking, Nathan didn’t finish. Not that he had to. It was obvious that Kelly was winner by default. Did she not realize that if Michelle was still around… but Michelle was never coming back, so why even think about it? Why bother with the question at all? Why not leave well enough alone? After all, isn’t “well enough” by definition, enough?

“What about me?!” Kelly asked, now standing, back and away, with iron in her stare. “What about you and me?!”

In some circles second best is dreaded, a sign of inadequacy, a synonym for insufficient. Perhaps Nathan should have realized this is exactly what Kelly feared. But how could he know such a thing? He never fell short in any comparison he’d ever cared about. To think of it, he wished someone would beat him outright, take a bit of pressure off, and dull the expectations of those watching. To Nathan, second best sounded like a bit of vacation. “Why should it matter?” he asked. “You’re here and you’ll always have that on Michelle. So why bring it up? She’s gone! Dead and gone, and I can’t stand all the reminders of what I’ve lost!” He admonished, waving at the screen.

“Why…? Why?” There were too many questions. Instead of spilling over each other, they jammed in Kelly’s mouth, and clogged her mind. She couldn’t understand how he could settle. She did not realize that he saw everything as a compromise. He could not avoid the disappointment and loneliness of everyday life—even before Michelle’s death. And now he didn’t even have Michelle to temper the shortcomings of this mad, mad world.

“I realize I have a decision in this,” Nathan began. “I mean, I agreed to it, to you, to you and me. I like you, Kelly. I love you. I need you.”

Kelly picked the remote of the couch and used it to point at herself, “‘Like’ me? You ‘like’ me? That’s so very sweet of you! I’m glad you ‘like’ the woman you fuck every night! I don’t think I could be with a guy that only ‘tolerated’ or ‘abided’ to see me naked! You will tell me if it ever gets to the point of open revulsion, won’t you!?”

“That’s not what I mean! You know I love you! And when did this become about you anyway? I’m the one that lost his life!” Nathan lambasted.

Kelly stood, mouth open and staring. Her eyes narrowed to slits and her jaw clenched. “Unbelievable! I can’t even compete with a ghost!” Kelly flung the remote at Marvelous. The remote glanced off Nathan and crashed into the wall. Nathan stared after Kelly, but she was already gone.

Nathan sat on the couch for a moment, unsure what to do. It seemed pointless to chase her down, pointless to talk about it, pointless that they even fought in the first place.

This never would have happened with Michelle—but Michelle was gone and Nathan realized he needed Kelly. She took the edge off the pain. She was the only thing that took the edge off.

Nathan picked up the remote and set it gently on the armrest. He slumped down, stretched out over the couch, then pulled himself into a fetal position. He was hungry. He needed to eat something. He needed water. He needed a hug—as silly as it sounded. He needed to be on Kelly’s good side. She mattered to him. She did. She needed to know that.

He would tell her.

But he couldn’t pull himself off the couch. Instead of hunting Kelly through the mansion and attempting to make things better, Nathan turned up the volume and prepared to take a nap.

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