Read Death's Excellent Vacation for Free Online Page B

for him now. “I don’t do hospitals.” Never hospitals.
    “Not that kind of special.”
    “Or comic book conventions. Or”—he curves quotes with a finger—“ ‘media conferences.’ And I don’t talk with people who use the word
special
. Or
supernatural powers
or
superhero
. Town’s back there, you can get going.”
    “You take people fishing,” she says. “They just want to go fishing.”
    It’s been his cover for the past forty years: ice fishing. Up here, northern Maine, the lakes region. He doesn’t do summers, never joined the Ice Fishing Association, doesn’t have a Web site. People hire him, they don’t, it’s all the same to him.
    Back when Lana was alive, he pissed clients off regularly, so none of the fishermen kept coming long enough to notice that Lana got old and he stayed young. Now he pisses folks off out of habit.
    “They want to go fishing with you.”
    He stands in the doorway, keeping her outside.
    “They’re Talents,” she says.
    “No, they aren’t. Those days are gone.”
    “They are real Talents.”
    “What do they do?” he jeers.
    “They don’t know.”
    This tugs at him. He knows about that kind of talent. Strength and special powers don’t cure AIDS or end a war, and they don’t keep a woman from dying. What does a Talent do, these years?
    “I heard the story,” she says. “I heard about you and the other superheroes going fishing, once.”
    For a moment he visits a worn old place in his perfect memory. He’s among old friends, laughing friends.
Let’s go fishing like superheroes, boys.
And they did, for the only fish worth having.
    “Yeah? So?”
    “They’ve heard, too,” she says.
    “We were showing off.”
    “Talents were heroes once,” she says. “Talents knew what to do with their powers.”
    Super cleanliness isn’t one of his talents. He points back into the cabin at the pile of gear in the corner. “Auger,” he says. “Ice adze. Ice saw. That thing in the box, portable cabin. The ice gets thick. Fisherman bores holes in the ice. Cuts a bigger hole. Shines a flashlight through the hole. Waits for a fish to come investigate. Ice fishing. Boringest thing known to man unless you fall through the ice. ’S what I do now. That’s what I know to do with myself. They want to go ice fishing? I’ll take ’em ice fishing.”
    She crosses her arms, purses her lips a little, disappointed.
    “No,” he says. “They want pow, bang, thump. Big fights with big fish. Superhero fishing. There’s no fishing like that anymore.”
    “Let’s just say they want pointers,” she says. “They’re looking for advice.”
    “I don’t give advice.”
    “What’s your rate?” she asks.
    “For Talents? There’s a special rate.”
    She nods. “They have money.”
    “Not money,” he says. He knows what he wants. It’s what Atom got, the Captain. What Lana got.
    “I want somebody to kill me.”
    The little cabin gets airless. She opens her mouth to protest. Shakes her head. Closes her mouth.
    “All right,” she says. “It’s a deal.”
    He pads over to the stove, leaving her at the door. Pours cold coffee, scratches his bristly chin with his white china diner mug. (What does the last superhero drink his coffee out of? A diner mug. They really are unbreakable.)
    “Yeah?” he says.
    “I promise you. You will die.”
    “Who’ll do it?”
    “Me,” she says.
    He figures he has a foot of height on her, a hundred pounds, a thousand years.
    “You and who else?”
    “Me.”
    “How?”
    She shakes her head. “No proof until it happens.”
    He figures he’s being scammed.
    Life is a scam.
    Remembers his manners belatedly.
    “You want coffee?”
    “Do you have tea?”
    “Nope.”
    She looks around. The back ends of her hennaed hair waterfall to her shoulders. Green eyes, strange for Chinese, a green that reminds him of the color of the cloak gathering dust in his closet. He becomes suddenly conscious of dirty laundry on the sofa back and a