When She Was Bad

There were only two things that kept Max going, or rather, that kept him from letting go of his tenuous hold on sanity. One was that it couldn’t last forever: when he’d first arrived, he’d overheard a doctor telling the nurse that on the life expectancy charts, a C-3 quadriplegic fell somewhere between a hamster and a house cat.

The other thing standing between Max and the Big Scream was that he still hadn’t given up on Lyssy. The little bastard was in there, all right, and Max remained convinced that sooner or later he’d come up with a way to get him out, to swap places. A few minutes ago, in fact, he’d come up with what felt like a very promising approach, but one that would require his complete concentration.

So he waited for the nurse to leave before closing his eyes. Lyssy! he called. Lyssy, it’s Lily. I’m in trouble-I need your help.

And again: Lyssy, it’s Lily. I’m in trouble-I need your help.

And again and again and again, without a hint of a response. Unable even to sigh unless he timed it to the hiss-suck! of the respirator, Max opened his eyes again and settled in for another long night in hell.

3

Lyssy, it’s Lily. I’m in trouble-I need your help.

Utter darkness. Lyssy was afraid for a moment-then he heard the creek burbling and remembered where he was. He opened his eyes. It must have been around sunset-the inside of the cabin was all lit up with a rosy, comforting glow.

“Lyssy, it’s Lil.” He couldn’t see her-her voice was coming from the porch.

“So who else vould it be?” A credible imitation of the querulous old man played by Billy Crystal in The Princess Bride.

She laughed. “I need your help.”

He hopped out of bed, crossed the room without a trace of a limp, on an artifical leg so natural he could hardly even remember which leg it was, and opened the door. Lil (that’s what she wanted to be called, to signify the consolidation of her two identities) was standing there with both arms so full of kindling she couldn’t manage the door latch.

Lyssy stepped back, ushered her in with a gallant sweep of his arm, then stepped out onto the porch. The clearing too was bathed in a roseate light. “You feel like going down to the rock?”

She joined him, brushing leaves and twigs from the front of her sweater. She was wearing that soft brown cashmere number-without a bra, Lyssy couldn’t help but notice as they negotiated the rocky path around the side of the cabin and down to the flat rock overhanging the creek.

But he wasn’t in a sexy mood-just mellow. Mellow as the sunset as he followed Lil onto the rock. She took off her sandals and dangled her legs over the side, her bare toes idly stirring the silvery clear, slow-moving current. Lyssy stood over her, looking down into the water. “See those waterbugs there, right on the surface?” she said, pointing to a few tiny, nearly transparent insects with two wide round paddles, larger than their bodies, for feet. “You know why they have those big feet? It’s so when fish look up, they think, ‘Duh-uh, those must belong to some really humongous bug, no way I could swallow that.’”

Lyssy laughed. “Maybe that’s what Bigfoot is-some monkey three or four feet high, with really big feet.” He lowered himself easily, even gracefully-his new leg was amazing, it felt like it was becoming part of him-and stretched out athwart the sun-warmed rock with his head in her lap. You couldn’t actually see the sun from here, but the sky was a melting rainbow of colors and the creek a fiery red-gold ribbon. “I probably asked you this before, but I can’t remember. How long did you say we get to stay here?”

“Forever,” she said without hesitation.

“And is it…real?”

She smiled down at him, her face in shadow, curtained by her dark brown hair. “You can have forever, or you can have real,” she told him, “but honey, you can’t have ’em both.”

Lyssy smiled back at her. “Forever,” he said dreamily. “I’ll take forever.”