Second Sunday in May
"What do you think, Billy?" Murdock asked, "Do you think this looks good?"
Of course Murdock knew Billy would never argue with him about something as trivial as if his suit looked alright or if his hair was good, but still he thought maybe getting a second opinion would help him to feel better about this. He had been up since 4 o' clock getting ready, and he was so nervous. He'd slicked back his hair and put on his best suit, one of his only suits, one that he couldn't help commenting in an exaggerated Texan drawl, "Looks mighty fine for a hangin' it does." And he about felt like he was going to a hanging, his own.
He didn't want to mess up his suit so he didn't sit down, he just paced back and forth around his room, waiting for Face to show up. He would show up, he had to, he knew how much Murdock was counting on him to help pull this off; he just had to keep this appointment, he couldn't be late.
Murdock wasn't aware of when he started biting his nails but before he knew it he had about shoved his whole hand into his mouth, and immediately yanked it out, remember all the times as a child he'd been scolded about biting his nails.
He heard the tapping at the window and he about hit the ceiling; it was still dark out but he could see Face standing at the window. For all the time he'd spent getting ready he had done it in the dark, so he hadn't realized when the power had been cut; but he rushed over to the window and threw it open, "What took you so long?"
"Give me a break, Murdock, you know how long it takes to kill the power and remove the screen single handedly?" Face asked, "I told you I'd be here before six and I am, are you ready?"
"I've been ready for two hours, let's go!" Murdock said as he jumped out the window and just avoided landing in the bushes. He helped Face close the window, replace the mesh grating, and get the electricity on in the hospital again before making a run for Face's 'Vette and speeding out of there before anybody could see anything or try and catch them.
"Now Face are you sure you know where you're going?" Murdock asked.
"Yes, Murdock," Face replied a bit sharply, "You already told me the directions."
"I just don't want to be late," Murdock told him, "I don't think she'd ever forgive me if I stood her up."
"Don't worry, Murdock, we'll get there in plenty of time, now just relax," Face replied.
Murdock took the hint and decided to be quiet, but to keep from talking, for something else to do to release his nervous energy he resumed biting the nails on his left hand for a large part of the drive.
The sun had been up for a couple of hours and Face thought they were making good time, when all of a sudden Murdock yelled, "Stop, Face, stop the car!"
Without even knowing why, he buried the brake into the floor and turned to ask Murdock what was the matter. One look to the right told him what the answer was, the little store right ahead of them was a flower shop.
"Come on, Face, I need to pick up some flowers for her," Murdock told him as he fumbled with the door handle.
"Murdock, calm down, we've got plenty of time," Face reminded him as he calmly got out on his side and followed Murdock into the shop.
Stepping into the floral shop might as well have been stepping into a rainforest, as soon as Face went in the door he was assaulted by overhanging ferns and large multicolored hibiscus poked him in the legs as he walked by and found Murdock over by the displays of mixed bouquets.
"What would she like?" Face asked, deciding to help Murdock look so they could get out of here as quickly as possible.
Murdock was obviously wracking his brain as if his life depended on the answer, he stammered with a possible answer a couple of times before he figured out what he was trying to say, "Roses, roses, she likes roses."
"That's simple," Face said and reached into a large container storing 20 bouquets with the stems down in water and pulled out a dozen red roses.
"No Face!" Murdock's scream shocked him and he not only dropped the bouquet but about fell into the container completely, he looked over at Murdock, and without time to demand an explanation, he got his answer as Murdock told him, "Not red, she wouldn't want red roses."
Face felt like he was about to have a heart attack after that, and he couldn't help asking, "And the reason for that is?"
Murdock answered but it sounded like he was quoting someone else, "Red roses are too common, everybody wants them and then they're not special anymore."
Face didn't get it but he complied, he put the red roses back and picked up a pink bouquet, "How about this then?"
"She might like that," Murdock said as he took the flowers from him, "They look like the kind she always grew. I'll get these."
"Hey Murdock," Face drew his attention to a display of individual carnations being sold and told him, "Might as well do this right, right?"
Murdock nodded and Face picked up two white carnations and gave one to Murdock and each man stuck them through the buttonholes on their jackets and Murdock took the bouquet over to the register and paid for them, and they walked out of the shop and back out to the car.
"We should get there soon, shouldn't we?" Murdock asked Face.
Face looked at his watch and said, "Probably another half hour." He reached over and clapped a hand on Murdock's back and told him, "We're going to get there in plenty of time, just relax."
He saw Murdock's fingers curl on his left hand as he started biting his nails again, and he was glad they didn't buy poppies; maybe the thorns would discourage Murdock from absentmindedly switching from his nails and eating the roses on the way.
They pulled up to the gate and Face turned to see Murdock; the man had become strangely calm in the last few minutes and was very quiet. He looked very classy in his suit and the flowers had remained perfectly intact and thankfully uneaten.
"You want me to go with you?" Face asked him.
Murdock looked straight ahead but didn't seem to be actually looking at anything. He spoke as if he was in a trance and somebody was using him as a ventriloquist dummy. "No, that's alright…this is something I have to do by myself." He sucked in a deep breath and got out of the car and took two steps forward, and stopped, then looked back to the car and curled his finger and said, "Come on, Billy."
"I'll be right here," Face told him.
"Thanks, Face," Murdock said as he turned to the path ahead of him and forced himself to take one step forward, then another, and another, until he was inside the gates.
"Good luck," Face said under his breath once Murdock had gone in. He had a feeling the pilot was going to need it.
Murdock walked with the flowers in one hand and Billy's leash in the other, every step forward he had to force himself to take another instead of turning around and running back to the car. He swallowed hard and said to himself, "You've done this enough times before, you should be used to it by now." Maybe he should've been but he wasn't, it was like this every time.
He remembered the way very well, he went down the main road in and then turned to the right halfway through and went down a narrow sidewalk, and where it ended he turned right again and walked through the grass. And finally he came to the right row and to the third stone from the end and knelt down and laid the roses on the ground and said, in a low voice that tried to be cheerful, "Hi, Mama."
Face leaned against the front of his Corvette and checked his watch again. Half an hour, Murdock had been in the cemetery visiting with his mother for half an hour. He knew there was a long wait ahead; he had been bringing Murdock out here every Mother's Day since they first started busting him out of the V.A. and Murdock never stayed for less than an hour and a half. He liked to get in early and visit, and then get out before everyone else came to pay their respects for the holiday. And every time, Face waited here outside the gates until it was time to leave, he understood that this was a private affair for Murdock.
This had become a tradition of theirs shortly after they got back from Vietnam. It only seemed to make sense, Murdock's mother died on him when he was five, and Face had never known his own mother. B.A. often tried to get back to Chicago to see his mother for the day, so the two who had virtually never known their mothers banded together and spent the day in each other's company, but first Murdock always had to see his mother first thing in the morning. Murdock's white carnation had been fitting for the occasion, Face wasn't so sure about his own but he decided it didn't matter; if he hadn't found out who his mother was by now, she was as good as dead to him. Though it was times like this that he wondered if Murdock had been the luckier one since he had at least known who his mother was before she died. Or maybe he was lucky because he didn't know what happened to his so he never had to go through this himself; not knowing his mother there had been no love and also no love lost. And even though he had no experience with this, he respected Murdock's need to be alone with his mother. His mother's grave was too far into the cemetery for Face to see from the entrance, and though Face never pried into the matter, he wondered what Murdock talked to his mother about.
Murdock lay curled on his side in a ball beside his mother's grave, feeling the warm sun shining down on him as he spoke to his mother. He had traveled this path every year, it never got easier to come here, but he always did it, he always managed to make the journey, and suddenly when he arrived at this spot, all nervousness suddenly left him. Billy lay on the ground beside him, and Murdock could see he was curled up as well, his tail wagging but he kept his head on his paws and kept quiet.
"So let's see, what haven't I told you already?" he said as he tried to think of something new to talk about, "Face is outside waiting, I told you about him. He's a nice guy, I like him…he comes and sees me all the time at the hospital and breaks me out whenever the situation calls for it. You know, Mom, I think he can actually see Billy…I know sometimes he's just trying to humor me and he pretends he can see Billy, but I think sometimes he can really see him. Billy likes him, Billy likes everybody, but B.A. sure doesn't like him, I don't know why. I think somehow Billy makes him nervous, because he's always saying that Billy isn't there…Hannibal tries to be nice but he usually stays out of it entirely, doesn't say anything one way or the other. He's been a very good dog, Mom, he follows me everywhere I go, always stays out of trouble. I've taken very good care of him."
His brain shifted gears and he thought of something else to say. "I don't know why psychiatrists hate mothers so much. I know they say they don't but I think they must, they always want to have a mother to blame everything on. I've noticed, oh…I never tell them anything about you..." he shook his head, "I would never do that. I know what they'd do, they'd take the memories of a five year old child and twist what I remembered and what I said, and make it into something bad about you, and I will never…" he sat up and looked at the tombstone, "I would never let anybody say anything bad about you. But anyway, I've noticed they never try to blame anything on fathers, I don't know why, it seems to me they do the most damage. Maybe I'm lucky because even if I could think of something to blame on him, I can't because I don't remember him at all."
It was true he didn't remember his father, and maybe with good reason, but he suspected the truth of the matter was the man had never been there for him to see, he only remembered his mother, and his grandparents. Murdock would never admit it to anybody, not even Face, but there were times he was ashamed with himself; he remembered his mother but he couldn't remember what she looked like. He had convinced himself that that memory was on the tip of his tongue and if he thought about it hard enough, he would remember her face; but he never tried because if it turned out he tried as hard as he could and he still couldn't see her face, he wouldn't be able to live with himself. And he was afraid that she knew he couldn't remember her anymore, she always seemed to know just what was on his mind. From the little the doctors at the V.A. did know about her, they had suspected she was a large piece of what went on with him, and that was right, she was the only person who ever really understood him.
He could still remember those days, he remembered a lot more than he would ever tell anybody; and quite frankly it amazed him just how much could remain on the memories of a child under five years old. He couldn't remember being small, anymore it felt as if he had always been the size he was now, but he did remember everything looking so much bigger, and she was big, he was always looking up to see her and he loved to hug her knee and get dragged around holding onto her leg, and she would pull him along and just laugh at him.
His grandparents lived nearby and so it wasn't uncommon for them to come over and visit every few days, but aside from them, he had no recollection of anybody else coming to the house. Most days it was just he and his mother, and that was the way he liked it, and he always thought she did as well. Around the time of his fifth birthday, he remembered overhearing his mother and his grandparents talking about he would be starting school soon. And even now he could hear his mother, clear as a bell, as she said that even though he was old enough to start with the other kids in the fall, she would be keeping him home with her for one more year. That had also been fine with him, he didn't want to go to school, he wanted to be with her all day, all the time. It didn't make much sense that a child could be so in tune with these kinds of things, but looking back, he guessed he always knew that other people wouldn't understand him like she did.
He could remember the first couple of years after his mother died when he did go to school, getting in trouble because he bit some of the bigger kids that were giving him trouble. It didn't occur to him until he was older to ask, but as a young child he took a lot of grief from the other kids because of his name. Finally when he was about eight, he asked his grandmother just why his mother had named him Howling Mad; the school he went to was not a particularly large one but it was normal to see several kids with the same names and he knew nobody else had his name.
She had explained that he was born at home and it had taken a few days to get his birth certificate and it was just as well because his mother hadn't thought of a name yet by the time he was born. Over the next couple of days she had gone over every name she knew and none seemed to fit. Also, they didn't know what was wrong with him but he had come out of his mother screaming and howling like a banshee and he had scarcely stopped since, and finally it just made sense to her to name him Howling Mad because it fit him so well. His grandmother had told him that when she tried that name on him, he had stopped screaming and seemed to like it, so it stuck.
Even when he'd gotten older, people still bothered him about it, that was why to this day as far as most people were concerned, it was only his nickname and the true meaning of the initials H.M. remained a mystery to everybody. And if he had been a spiteful person, he could've easily repaid the favor a few years ago when he came back from 'Nam and people were naming their babies things like Flower Child and Rainbow; but he was not and he figured those parents had a good reason for picking the names they did just as his mother had. He could still hear her voice as she used to call him every day, either down to the table or into the house, "Howling Mad Murdock, you get yourself down here now!"
He could guess just where he had inherited his sharp vocal chords from, his mother had a tendency to yell at the top of her lungs to speak with someone rather than go into another room to talk to them directly. As far as he knew, there wasn't anything wrong with her hearing, but she knew how to command attention from people and if she ever would've preached a sermon in church he was sure she could've woken up the entire back pew.
Murdock couldn't remember what the first television show he ever saw as a kid was but he did remember that when they got a set, he loved the westerns. He guessed his mother must've too because before they got a TV set he remembered her taking him to the movie house on Saturdays and they'd watch serials with The Lone Ranger and The Eagle; masked vigilantes on horseback armed with six shooters, who every week would have to work their way out of some death defying mess. They had also seen action serials involving airplanes and the pilots who every week got into all-out brawls and looped their planes through the air and made crash landings they walked away from just in time. That was when he first fell in love with airplanes, and he told her he wanted to fly in one.
As a child, like all young children, Murdock didn't know much about money but he did know that they didn't have a lot of it. And when his grandparents had to start coming to watch him because his mother left every day, he didn't know at the time what was going on but he soon found out it was because she started taking odd jobs, and he soon found out the reason why. The day of his fifth birthday was the best day of his life and even now he had few memories that could match with it. She had gotten him up early and got him dressed in his best clothes that weren't for church, but she had to tell him no, Billy couldn't come with them. Murdock had been upset by that and Billy just hung his head low and whimpered. His mother had gotten down on her hands and knees to look at Billy directly and she told him, "You stay here and be a good boy while we're gone, you guard the house, and don't talk to anybody."
Then they got in her daddy's old clunker car and went driving. She wouldn't say where they were going but he knew they were going further from home than they ever had before, and he thought maybe they were running away, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. After they'd been on the road for a while, he could see something up ahead but he couldn't tell yet what it was. But then he saw the Ferris wheel and the roller coaster and it hit him his mother had brought him to a carnival for his birthday. Making their way through a crowd of people scattered all over the carnival, the first place they went was to the roller coaster. It was his first time on one and he looked around as the car started slowly moving up the tracks; then when they reached the top there was a slight pause, and then it dropped down the tracks and everybody started screaming. Everybody, he recalled, except for he and his mother; they were not screaming, true to his name he was howling, and so was she. He loved it and thought there was no other experience in the world that could compare with this, but he was about to be proven wrong.
For the next hour or so after that they went on the Dodgem cars, the Helter Skelter tower, the carousel, the Ferris wheel, and the parachute ride, and then, she took him by the hand and they walked away from the rides, and over to another place where Murdock thought he had died and gone to heaven. Straight ahead he could see airplanes, half a dozen different kinds of planes, and their pilots stood nearby, taking admissions from people who wanted to go up for a ride. He saw his mother go up to one of the pilots and she gave him a lot of money, and for that they got to go up in his plane for a few minutes. It was an old yellow biplane and he and his mother were put in the back and the pilot climbed in the front and they quickly took to the skies. He and she had both howled again almost nonstop during the flight; this was even better than the roller coaster! That was the moment that he fell in love with flying and knew that one day he'd be a pilot too.
When they got back late that afternoon, he had so much to tell Billy about. Murdock was pulled out of his thoughts for a moment and he looked over at the dog with a small smile on his face; Billy had been with him for most of his life, and he was just as healthy and agile now as he had been the first day Murdock had brought him home. He could well recall that day too, he had come in the back door carrying the dog in his arms and he proudly called out, "Mama, look what I got!"
She had also been in the kitchen, starting on dinner, and she moved away from the table and knelt down and asked him, "Howling Mad, wherever did you get that dog from?"
"I found him, Mama," he answered, "Can I keep him?"
She got down on her hands and knees for a better look at the dog and she said, "He doesn't have a collar or tags, so he could be a stray. We'll keep him for the time being, but if anybody comes looking for him, you'll have to give him back."
It was only fair but he still remembered the sad look he'd given her when she said that, and she just laughed at him and kissed him, and asked him, "What're you going to name your new dog?"
He thought about it for a minute before answering, "Billy!"
"That's a fine name, Howling Mad, now you get ready for dinner."
"Okay," he carried Billy with him, and stopped at the doorway and asked her, "How long do dogs live?"
She just smiled at him and said, "He'll be around as long as you take good care of him."
And he always had. That was how he knew his mother was special; Billy knew it too, most people couldn't see Billy but his mother had spotted him right away and she and Billy always got along nicely. He reached over and stroked Billy's head and communicated with him telepathically, between the two of them they didn't need to talk, they understood each other perfectly. "We sure miss her, don't we, boy?"
He looked at the stone again and said, "I know you didn't do it on purpose, and I know it's not your fault," he could feel the tears starting to build up as he said, "But I still don't understand why you had to leave."
At the time he hadn't cared the reasons why, but when he became an adult he thought back to his mother's decision to keep him home from school for another year, and it started to make sense; she must've known she didn't have long left and kept him home to have one more year with him. Only it hadn't been a year, it had only been a few months, but he was grateful for every one of those extra days he'd had with her. Oh, he loved his grandparents, there was no doubt about that, they were great, they did a great job raising him, but his mother was the first and last person in the whole world who ever truly understood him.
Murdock realized he must've fallen asleep because the next thing he knew, he opened his eyes and turned on his back and saw Face coming up to the grave as he called Murdock. Murdock wiped the tear running down his cheek and he got up and brushed the dirt off his suit.
"Murdock," Face told him, "We better get going, the others are going to be here soon."
"Alright," Murdock turned back to the stone and said, "Mama, this is Face." He turned back to the lieutenant and told him, "Say hi, Face."
"Hello," Face tried to be cordial but felt awkward doing so. He usually just stayed out at the gate and had hardly ever been up this close to the grave before.
"He says we gotta be going now, Mama, but I'll come back and see you again," Murdock walked over to the large granite marker and rested his hands on it for a second before he knelt down and wrapped his arms around the stone and said quietly, "I love you." He bent his head down and pressed his lips against the top of the gravestone and said, "Happy Mother's Day."
Face felt a stinging in his own eyes but he blinked back the tears and smiled at Murdock when the pilot turned back to him, he put his hand on Murdock's shoulder as the two of them headed back for the gate.
"You okay?" he asked Murdock.
"Yeah," he answered, a little too quickly for Face's comfort, it was a prepared answer. But he knew that's the way it always was, Murdock always came away with the same answer every year.
"You have a nice visit?" he asked.
Murdock nodded. Not as automatically as his previous answer, Face took that as a good sign. He wanted to ask something else to keep the silence from building again, but as always, he respected Murdock's privacy during these visits and didn't pry into the matter.
"I told her about you," Murdock said out of the blue, surprising Face for a second.
"Oh, that's nice," Face responded, not sure what else to say to something like that.
"Billy come on, boy!" Murdock called behind him, "We're leaving now!"
They walked past the entrance gates and back out to the corvette, it was going on 10:30 and Face knew that people would be getting out of church soon and coming here to visit with their mothers and they still had a long drive back.
"So where to now?" Face asked, figuring they could stop off at a restaurant somewhere for lunch. He had eaten before he came to pick Murdock up that morning but he knew Murdock hadn't eaten anything since the night before.
Murdock sat in the passenger seat looking depressed, but he finally said to Face, "I'm hungry."
"Alright, what're you in the mood for?" Face asked.
It took him a minute to think of it, "Fried chicken, I remember…I don't know why but we always had it on Mother's Day."
"Alright," Face told him as he got the car started and got them out of there.
They found a little family restaurant that promised cooking just like home, and they had a quiet lunch in the midst of 20 families coming in for lunch as a special occasion to treat their mothers to. Through the meal Face noticed that Murdock was eerily quiet and didn't seem to be quite all there, he pushed his food around on his fork more than he actually ate it; though a few times Face did catch him slipping tiny pieces of the chicken under the table for Billy. There was never any single right way to approach Murdock when he was in these kinds of moods so Face just played it by ear; for a while he just tried keeping quiet and figured that sooner or later Murdock would start talking, but he didn't. Finally Face asked, "Is something wrong with your food, Murdock?"
Murdock looked up at him as if seeing him for the first time and said blankly, "No, it's fine," with a little forced smile on his face.
Face was quickly getting the idea that he wouldn't be getting much out of Murdock for the time being, so he didn't press the issue. After lunch they got back in his car and resumed driving; about a mile down the road Face heard something and he turned and saw Murdock had his head down and his hand brought up over his eyes as he cried. Face hit the brake and the car was about stopped when he reached over and put his hand on Murdock's shoulder; but Murdock shrank back from his touch and said to him, "Just keep driving, Face."
Face didn't like it but he did as Murdock said; he kept his eyes peeled for a place they could pull off and get out of sight, and out of the open incase Murdock would suddenly become violent, though Face didn't think that was too likely. But he hated it when Murdock was like this and he knew there was nothing he could do to help his friend. It was always like this, almost every single year without fail; Murdock managed to keep himself pulled together long enough to visit with his mother, and then he always fell apart as soon as they were out of the cemetery and on their way home, sometimes worse than others. For half an hour Murdock was slumped forward in the passenger seat with his head in his hands as he cried before he finally seemed to calm down. And almost as suddenly as he stopped, both men about jumped at the loud BOOM overhead. The weather seemed to be reflecting off of Murdock's mood because out of nowhere the sky was full of dark clouds and now it looked like it was going to storm. Face put the top up on the 'Vette and found a motel to stop at.
"We're stopping here?" Murdock asked.
"Yeah, I want to get out of the car for a while," Face said, and nodded up, "Especially if we're in for bad weather. Come on, I'll get us signed in."
He did and they went to one of the vacant rooms, closed the door, and flopped down on the beds and both were almost asleep as soon as they hit the pillows. Murdock picked up the pillows from the top of the bed and threw them down at the bottom and sprawled out so his head rested down at the foot of the bed and his feet were up at the top. Then Face watched him as he turned on the TV, got up and messed with the antenna and the dials to fix the vertical hold, in the process he made everybody on the screen change from purple to green to blue to tall and short and wavy and fuzzy and snowy until he got the picture just right. Face smirked at his pick of something to watch; all that trouble so they'd have the pleasure of seeing Norman Bates in classic black and white while he put on his mother's dress and stabbed people to death. Then Murdock fell back on the bed and hugged the pillows under him and watched the movie with his face buried so far in the pillows that he could only be seen from the eyes up, like a dog.
"Murdock," Face finally said after watching him for a few minutes.
"Mmmm," Murdock growled into the pillow.
"I've got something for you," Face told him.
"Mm?" Murdock turned to look at him.
Face picked up his jacket that was discarded over the footboard and pulled a small box of chocolates out of the pocket. He saw Murdock's eyes light up at the unexpected gift and said, "Thought you could use a little pick-me-up."
It was obvious by the sounds of surprise that escaped from Murdock's mouth that he couldn't have been anymore awestruck than if Face had just handed him the pope's ring. He took the box and looked at it and was too stunned to say anything so he settled for hugging Face, tightly. Face laughed and told him, "You're welcome." When Murdock let go of him, Face added, "Come on, crack the sucker open and let's see what you got."
That was Murdock, complex as a million piece jigsaw puzzle with a handful of pieces missing, easy to please as a child, and tomorrow Face knew Murdock would be back to his usual crazy self; but for today, one day out of the whole year, the walls came down and Murdock became a very serious person, and because he'd seen this side as often as he had over the years, Face thanked God it was only once a year.
An hour later the candy was gone, the movie was about over, Murdock was asleep and Face was on the phone talking to Hannibal. He had decided it wasn't anybody's business what he and Murdock were doing today but all the same he thought it would be a good idea to call Hannibal and let him know that he was 'visiting' with Murdock.
"How is he?" Hannibal asked.
"Oh I'd say he's taking it rather well," Face answered as he saw the captain asleep on the other bed.
"That's good," Hannibal replied, "I appreciate you spending the day with him, I know he appreciates it too."
"Oh, I know," Face told him, "I've got to get going, Hannibal, Murdock wants to introduce me to a caterpillar he's met."
The colonel chuckled on the other end of the line and said, "Okay, Face, I'll see you soon."
"Bye." He hung up the phone and went over to the bed and looked at Murdock; half on his back and half on his side, the white carnation that had been in his jacket now held carefully between two fingers like it was a cigarette, and if he was dreaming, Face guessed it must've been about something good because the pilot had a big smile on his face. Face smoothed back the hair on top of his head that had gotten messed up and said quietly, "Happy Mother's Day, Murdock."
Apparently Murdock wasn't completely asleep because, without opening his eyes, he opened his mouth slightly and got out a half slurred, "Happy Mother's Day to you too, Face, thanks for everything."
"You're welcome."
Murdock forced his eyes halfway open and looked up at the lieutenant and asked him, "Same time next year?"
"You bet," Face told him with a smile.
"Thanks…hey Face, do you see Billy?"
Murdock's eyes were still open a slit and Face was able to follow their direction to the head of the bed and he said, "Yep, looks about as tired as you do." And he reached over and petted Billy.
Murdock's eyes were just about closed but upon seeing this, a big smile broke out on his face and he was happy; he always knew that there was something special about Face, and this proved it. "Thanks, Face…you're my best friend."
Face smiled in return and told him, "And you're my best friend too, Murdock."
Murdock's smile became sheepish and he asked, "Am I really?"
"Murdock, aside from B.A. and Hannibal, you're my only friend."
"And you're mine," Murdock said, he grinned and looked up at Face and said, "We're a pathetic pair, aren't we?"
"I think we're lucky," Face told him, "We know who we can count on."
Murdock nodded tiredly in agreement, "I think you're right."
Murdock fell back asleep and stayed that way for about an hour before Face woke him up.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Come over here and take a look at this," Face said from where he stood by the window.
Murdock pulled himself off of the bed and went over to the window and saw what Face saw; the rain had stopped, the sky was clearing and the sun was starting to come out.
"Storm's over, now what?" Murdock asked.
Face knew what Murdock was getting at; they never specifically made any plans for the day, but they would wait until tomorrow to return Murdock to the V.A., until then, Face was stuck with him.
"Hey," Face turned to him, "Have I shown you the new penthouse I'm currently using?"
Murdock shook his head, "I don't think so."
"Come on, let's get out of here," Face told him.
They left the motel, got back in his car and he drove them to a very upscale neighborhood, in the center of which was a 30 story building and they took the elevator up to a penthouse suite on the top floor.
"Now this is nice," Murdock said as he looked around at the very expensive décor and furniture and settled himself down on the oddly shaped couch that he guessed cost roughly $15,000, "So who does this place belong to who ain't currently here?"
"One very important movie producer who is currently in Hong Kong for six months on an extended vacation," Face answered.
"So then how'd you scam it?" Murdock asked inquisitively.
"I have my ways," was his only answer.
"Ah, another professional secret, eh?" Murdock smiled, and lay back on the couch and stared up at the white ceiling and the crystal chandelier and asked, "So what exactly does one do in a place like this?" He looked back at Face and added, "Besides entertaining lady friends that is?"
Face laughed and answered, "Very little actually, it tends to get rather boring around here after a while."
Murdock may have been in a better mood now than he was earlier, but he still wasn't back to his old crazy self yet so not much happened during his stay to improve the level of activity in the apartment. They got through a quiet dinner and after that Murdock returned to lying on the couch and stayed there staring at the TV for half an hour, then Face suggested they turn it on and see if there was anything good to watch. Murdock obviously didn't care, he didn't say anything either way and just stared ahead at the screen. There wasn't any rhyme or reason to why Murdock acted the way he did, at any given time, but especially not today of all days; but however the process worked, Face knew that come tomorrow when Murdock woke up he would be back to his own version of normal: cartoon voices, imaginary bug friends, talking golf balls and all, but until then, there wasn't anything to do except get through tonight as painlessly as possible.
Finally around 11 Face looked over to the other side of the couch and saw that Murdock had fallen asleep. He put his hand on the pilot's shoulder and shook him awake and suggested they both go to bed. Murdock was still half asleep but he was awake enough to joke, "I take it your bed's big enough."
It was, and Face had a spare set of pajamas for him to borrow; it would've been easier if when they did this, Murdock would pack some of his own things from the V.A. but they knew it was better if he only left with his own carry-on belongings, it was easier that way and they didn't have to worry about him forgetting anything.
Murdock emerged from the bathroom in Face's pajamas and pulled the large shirt up by the neck and used it to wipe his face, and he commented, "I don't know who does your laundry, Faceman, but either they stretched it out or there's some fat guy in this building with the same wardrobe."
"Just get into bed, Murdock," Face told him.
Murdock got a running start and jumped onto the other side of the bed and made the whole thing shake, and very nonchalantly pulled the covers up and turned onto his side. Then he turned his head back to see Face and asked him, "Oh Face, is it alright if Billy sleeps up here tonight?"
"Yeah sure, just keep him on your side," Face told him, "I don't want to roll over on him in the night."
"He can do that," Murdock whistled and gestured for Billy to come up on the bed, "You heard him, Billy, you behave yourself, and stay there." He reached down and petted Billy on the head and rubbed his ears and made a batch of small baby sounds like he was a father playing with his child. Face tiredly watched in amusement, before finally saying, "Goodnight, Murdock," and switched off the bedside lamp.
"Goodnight Face," Murdock pulled the covers up and curled on his side.
He lay awake in the dark room and listened to the steady breathing of his friend, and he looked out the balcony doors and could see a few stars in the sky, and he added quietly, "Goodnight, Mama," and then fell asleep.
Face had been watching him, and he watched as Murdock's back rose and fell slowly as he breathed deeply in his sleep, and Face turned over onto his back and looked up at the ceiling in the dark, and after a few minutes he said his own peace for the night before also going to sleep, "Goodnight, Mom, wherever you are."