"Bird, horse or muffin?"
Silence fell, as five pairs of eyes turned to stare at Jane in disbelief. Making a slightly awkward silence far worse. (And drip, drip, drip goes the leaking pipe in the corner.)
Risa put down the gun she'd been attempting to fix. Pieces of metal that no longer fit together. "What the hell kind of question is that?"
"A great one. C'mon. Would you be a bird, a horse or a muffin?"
"Six, seven, horse," Chuck said, counting the bullets in Jane's pile. "Eight, nine, or maybe, ten, a mule. Eleven. Is mule an option?" He turned then to scratch an 11 on his clipboard—and with Chuck's handwriting it's lucky they could read it at all. Chuck who is at camp with his clipboard and soon she'll just be another lost tally on the sheet, the list, the list, she and all the others, and fuck Dean Winchester, fuck him, she's going to come back and haunt his ass.
Jane had let him have mule.
(She doesn't know why this matters so much, but that's all she can see, that room, and all she can hear is the drip drip drip and she knows that when she can't hear it anymore she'll be dead, that means something louder is coming.)
"Bird," Cas said. Then his face got all pinched. "But—but a ground one. Maybe an ostrich. Ostriches are really quite fascinating. They—" he stopped, gestured somewhat awkwardly at a pile of maps that somebody had left a few feet away. They didn't have anything on them that Risa recognized, might have just been there for scrap paper, but Cas muttered something about delivering them to their Fearless Leader and limped away on his broken foot.
They didn't continue the game after that.
It's not until now—hiding behind a wall hoping to survive the next five minutes—that she realizes that she's a bird. One of those birds that just follows the bird in front, going going going, assuming they'll end up somewhere good, and Dean's second betrayal—second betrayal of the week, at least—is so much more painful than his first.
All she has time to notice is the crack on the wall, growing larger and then she can't hear the drip drip drip anymore over the sound of—and there they are—croats croats croats and she's bleeding and she'll die die die before she herself can become one of them so she runs and she's afraid of looking behind her because of the nightmares, the nightmares, where she turns around and it's Kevin behind her, Kevin behind her trying to kill her, and there's blood all over. And a wall up ahead. She turns, raises her gun. She can't see. "God, Kevin, stop doing that!"
He laughs, and uncovers her face. "Will that ever not get you?"
"Screw you," she says. Swats him with her towel, just for good measure.
"But I thought you were worried about our water bill."
That joke wasn't funny the first time. It wasn't funny the second time. And it's definitely not funny the third time.
She rubs her forehead. Lists Kevin's good qualities before she bitches him out. It's something she read about in Dear Abby—one of the clips her mom sends her every other week because obviously you should send your unemployed daughter newspaper clippings about having unemployed daughters or non-adequate spouses instead of a flyer for a job or maybe a timely check.
You make me laugh until I feel like my stomach has split open, you can sing The Book of Mormon along with me, you watch every adaptation of Sherlock Holmes with me and don't laugh at me when I cry every time he fakes his death because you're too busy pretending you're too manly to cry yourself, you take the wilted flowers from work and press them and make collages, you switched character cards with that little girl at the Titanic exhibit when she was sad that her little boy didn't make it, you wait until I'm done yelling to tell me that "I don't know what could have happened to the check," she snaps. "That's not my division; I'll put you through to accounting."
Not worth it. So, so not worth it. Idiots. Paying to cancel a check is only the polite thing to do when you're the one who lost it in the first place. They can't just go reimbursing everyone twice. Assholes.
The incoming call light flashes on the other phone, and she's picked it up before it can even ring.
"Risa?"
Not now, Ted.
"Hi."
There's a brief pause on the other end, but it's never quiet. Not in their house, at least. She can hear Kevin in the background, having a very animated, one-sided conversation with his frog.
"The travel agent called back, said she has two options for hotels in Paris. How close do the Eiffel Tower do we want to be?"
"Farther. Less touristy. I liked the first one she showed us—the one by the cheese store. But there's also going to have to be somewhere nearby that Kevin will be willing to eat at—speaking of which, remind him to feed the cat."
"I already fed—"
"Well, make him do it tomorrow, then. It's his job." A silhouette on the other side of her fogged glass door, raising a fist to knock. "Gotta go."
"Okay. Loveya, spousey."
"Love you too." (I love you even though I told you at least three times that I wanted to be as far from the Tower as possible.) She puts the phone down—carefully, because if she puts it down too fast it might ring again, and—
"Risa, did you get the—"
"I'm sure," Risa says, before turning back to Kevin. It's just Titanic on TV again, and it's hard to care so much about Rose and Jack when she's not even sure how to pay for the privilege of watching them. Rose should have just given her the diamond.
"Weshould take a cruise," Kevin says.
"Watching Titanic makes you want to take a cruise?"
"Ellie and Jack went on a cruise to Paris," he says, ignoring her. "I'd like to go to Paris. And Antarctica. And the Galapagos islands." Pause. "While I'm at it, I want to take over the flower shop and invent a species of rose that doesn't ever wilt. I'd make a bundle."
"Until people started just recycling last years' Valentine's day bouquets." She kisses his shoulder. "We could just stow away. To Paris, I mean."
"I think your mom has us GPS'd."
Fair point. Plus, she doesn't speak French.
Risa turns off the TV. "How are Ellie and Jack, anyway?"
He laughs. "He wants a standard poodle. She wants a dachshund."
"Oh dear." She leans back into the sofa. Rests her head on his shoulder. "Trouble in Heaven?"
"Isn't there always?"