“Mase?” Crefloe asked, coming up beside me. “What’s the ‘what would William Shatner do’ mean?”
I sighed. “It’s an old game Suzie and I had before the invasion. We’d see something that needed to be done and ask, what would William Shatner do?”
“You mean that old actor used to be on Star Trek?”
“He’s not just an old actor, Crefloe. He’s the heart and soul of Star Trek. There wouldn’t have been a Jean Luc Picard or a Katheryn Janeway without him.”
Crefloe shook his head. “I’m not understanding what you’re saying. It was a TV show, right? You do know there’s no more TV much less Hollywood.”
“I know about Hollywood because I was the one who blew it up.” I sighed, staring at Suzie. “And I know there’s no more TV but that doesn’t change the lasting effect they have on us.” I turned back to Crefloe. “Let’s take you for example. What shows did you watch?”
“Brother, I didn’t watch television. I was on the street selling poppers by the time I was seven.” Seeing my look, he added, “Call it the family business or whatever. When you grew up where I grew up, there was one way to survive. But my Auntie watched television. Montel, Oprah, Sanford and Sons, that sort of thing.”
“Do you mean that you never watched TV?” I asked. “Never?”
“Well, there was football and basketball.”
“Who was your favorite basketball player?”
“Truth?”
“Truth.”
“Jordan. Smooth as can be.”
“Remember his Nike motto?”
“Just do it?”
“You ever thought about not doing something and then remembered Jordan’s motto?”
Crefloe nodded.
“And did that change your mind?”
“I guess.” He shrugged. “Sometimes it did. Others it didn’t”
“And that’s what I’m talking about. It’s the same thing with William Shatner. For good or bad, he had an effect on people. You see, there’s this thing where he’s ultra-heroic and wants to help anyone in need, except when he does, he does it so dramatically.”
Crefloe nodded. “I think I get it. But shouldn’t your game be what would Captain Kirk do? After all, it’s the character not the actor you’re talking about.”
I blinked at the amazingly lucid and super logical statement, realizing that Crefloe was actually right. What had Suzie and I been thinking? Still, we’d been playing it for so long you couldn’t change the name of the game. “But that’s what everyone thinks about when they think of William Shatner. They think Captain Kirk.” Then I stepped forward and pointed a finger at his chest. “And don’t even think for a moment about mentioning TJ Hooker because that show doesn’t count.”
“Whatever you say, boss.” He looked long at Suzie, then glanced toward the barn where two men exited, riding horses, heading away from them. “So when are we leaving? I mean there’s those aliens we need to investigate and we’re so close to these people that they’re going to eventually find us if we don’t move.”
“I totally get that and you’re right. The longer we stay here the greater the chance we’ll be caught.” I stared meaningfully at Suzie who was watching me with her right eye. “But it’s not up to me.”
After exactly one hundred and thirty-six seconds of staring at her, Suzie said from her place on the ground, “You do realize you’re being juvenile.”
“This coming from a girl who won’t get up.”
“I have a syndrome. I can’t help myself sometimes.”
“Are you about over your syndrome?”
“It’s not like that, you should know.”
“Can you at least get up, maybe wipe the grass off of you?”
She pulled herself to a sitting position and drew her knees up, but that’s as far as she got.
Another scream came from the house.
All three of us looked in that direction.
Worry chainsawed through me as I measured the weight of the problem against the three of us and our ability to deal with it.
“You want me to do something about this, don’t you?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, her voice no louder than a breath.
“If I do that then you need to share your origin story.”
“No,” she said with equal power.
“Then this is where the rock meets the hard place.” I sat on the ground, but didn’t look at her. Instead, I picked up a piece of straw and began to pick at it. “I stuck my neck out for you. Black Johnson said you’d destroy the mission. He said you shouldn’t come. But I argued for you. I fought to get you on the mission. Did part of me think we might have an event or two?” I nodded. “Yes. Definitely. But that same part of me felt you wouldn’t want to hold up the mission and would find a way to figure it out.”
Now, I did look at her, and saw her face redden and her eyebrows buckle. Her lips got tight like they do when she’s getting pissed.
“Did that same part of you think that holding people hostage just to find out what some fucked up people did to me was a rational and sane idea?”
“That’s the spirit,” I said, smiling probably a little too maniacally. “I knew you’d buck up. So tell me, darling Suz, how is it you managed to lose your arm and eye. Was it a card game?”
“Fuck you.”
“Or was it a horse race?”
“Double fuck you.”
“Not something William Shatner would do, I don’t think.” I snapped my fingers. “I know. You’d just gotten done watching a rerun of Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon and decided to pit praying mantids against each other.”
“You’re not funny.”
“To some I might be. Crefloe?”
She held up a hand. “Don’t answer him if you want to live, Cref.”
Crefloe looked at me, then turned away, surely wishing he was anywhere else but here.
“Come on, Suz. Origin story. Every super hero and super villain has one. What’s yours? What made you into the person you are today?”
She continued staring at me, but something inside broke. Her anger faded to sadness. “You did Benjamin Carter Mason. You’re the one who made me into the hot killer bitch I am today.”
I felt my grin slip, but laughed just the same. “Ha ha. Very funny.”
“I’m not laughing,” she said in a frigid voice.
I stared at her. “What do you mean?”
She sighed, grabbed the piece of straw from my hand and rubbed it between her fingers. Finally, she said, “I loved you so much. We were so good together. Then you left and went back to Afghanistan.”
I’d had two weeks of mandatory pre-deployment leave they’d just given me. I’d attached another twenty-five days of personal leave onto it giving me almost forty days. I’d met Suzie the third day and we’d been inseparable. It had been an awesome time. But she had to have known I had to return. I know I told her.
“But you knew. I told you.”
She shook her head.
“Seriously, Suzie. This isn’t funny. I know what I did. I’m absolutely fucking certain I told you and you said that was okay because it was just a fun fling. You said that. Fun fling. Are you saying you don’t remember that? At all?”
She shook her head again, but I could see worry lines form at the top of her nose between her eyes.
I felt my anger rise. Not only was it ludicrous that I was being blamed for her missing an arm and eye, but that she’d forgotten how we’d ended our relationship. No, not just forgotten, entirely reframed the narrative. I kept my voice low, but I couldn’t keep the anger out of it.
“You remember the month we had together, right?”
She nodded.
“You remember our dates. Seeing Matrix Reloaded. Santa Monica Pier. Ventura. That party off of Laurel Canyon Drive.”
Each date got a nod. Somehow she remembered those but not the way it ended.
“Do you remember dropping me off at the airport?”