Chapter 26

There was nothing I could do but wait it out until he could speak. Meanwhile, I thought the worst. He was going to leave me. After everything, he was going to leave me. The lump in my throat made it impossible for me to say anything else, and I could barely breathe. Arthur's laughter seemed to go on and on, endlessly, until one of the other tenants yelled "Shut up!" through the wall. Then he stopped abruptly.

"Arthur?" I wasn't even sure I wanted him to answer. I didn't want to hear him say he'd had enough of me and all my crap.

"I killed seven people," he whispered. "Seven. It could have been eight. Or maybe nine if you hadn't taken the gun away from me outside that club."

"Arthur, you weren't yourself before," I reminded him. "We talked about this. Joker kind of took over, right? And today—you were saving me. I'd have died a long, slow, painful death if you hadn't been there to help me. You do know that, right?"

"But I killed seven people," he repeated. "I'm a murderer. A serial killer, don't they call it?" He dragged his hands through his hair and sniggered.

"They all hurt you," I reminded him. "Bullied you. Made you feel worthless. They got what they deserved. Didn't you say that?"

"Yes, but—"

"Arthur, look at me." I nudged him and eventually he dragged his gaze to my face. "Everything that happened back in Gotham is in the past. It doesn't matter anymore. You weren't the same person then."

"I know, but—"

"You left all that behind the same way you left Joker behind when you started taking your meds again."

He nodded.

"Tonight—"

"He came back. He took over. I killed someone else!"

"If you hadn't, Wizard would have." "Maybe," I added in my head. How could I make him feel better about this? "That wasn't Joker. That was you. You love me, right?"

"Yes!"

"That man was Sport's father. You know Sport? The child pimp I killed years ago?"

"Yes."

"He wanted revenge for his son. He said he was going to keep shooting me in different places to make me die slowly and as painfully as possible. He wanted to see how many bullets a human could take before it died. Even that one shot was agony. You stopped that. Just you, Arthur. You saved my life. So, don't think badly about it. You did what you had to do. Not Joker. You. Saving me."

He nodded slowly. "Okay. You really think that?"

"Yeah, I do. I saw what you were like when you were him, and you're not him now. You're you. You're not a murderer or a crazy person. You haven't got that snarky, cocky attitude that he had. You did what anybody would do if they got the chance to save the person they love from being hurt."

He blew out a shaky breath. "I guess you're right."

"I know I'm right. You're a good person, Arthur. It's okay to have a conscience. It just means you're normal. This time, you didn't have any choice in what you did." A sudden thought occurred to me. "Was it my gun?"

"Yes. I checked your car to see if it was there. You once said you kept it in the glovebox when you were working."

"Where is it?" The horrifying thought occurred to me that it might be in Sport's father's apartment, with both mine and Arthur's prints all over it.

"It's right there." He pointed to the cabinet beside the bed. "Wizard picked it up and gave it to me."

"Oh. Right. Good." I heaved a sigh of relief. "You know when you said, 'I can't do this anymore?' I thought you were going to say you wanted to leave."

Arthur's eyes widened. "I would never leave you. I'd rather die."

I smiled at him, despite the pain I was in. "That's all right then."

"I meant I want to leave all this behind. You're right about what happened today. I had to do that, or I would have lost you. But no more. I don't want to look back on my life in a few years' time and only be able to remember killing people."

"Do you want to leave New York?" I asked him. "My past is here. It caught up with me today. And yours is in Gotham. We could leave. We could go somewhere completely new where nobody knows either of us. What do you think?"

"But this is your home," Arthur said doubtfully.

"No, it isn't. It's just the first place I thought of going when I needed to get you out of Gotham. I knew I could work and find somewhere to live easy."

"What about Wizard? He's your friend."

"Wizard has a phone. We could call him sometimes. We have enough money saved up to go somewhere else and find a place to live. We can both do our jobs anywhere."

"We can really leave?" Arthur's face lit up.

"Sure. As soon as my shoulder's good enough to drive."

"I hear Punch and Judy is popular in seaside towns. I love the seaside. I've only ever been once. I can barely remember it. Penny took me there when I was a really little kid. We had ice-cream. Not long after that I was taken away." His face fell.

"Don't think about that, Arthur. Think about where we could go. In fact, if you get a map from the bookstore down the block, you could look at the towns along the coast and pick one." My head had begun to spin again. "I really need to rest." I slumped carefully down against the cushions and closed my eyes.

"Oh, shit, I'm sorry. I get an attack of conscience and act all crazy, and you need me, not the other way around." Arthur gently lifted my head with one hand and rearranged the cushions more comfortably. "Try to sleep. The nurse said you can't have sleeping pills, but maybe you can drift off for a while. I'll be quiet."

Sleeping without the pills wasn't as difficult as I imagined. Within minutes, I was gone. When I woke again, the room was dark, and Arthur snored softly beside me. I sat up painfully and shuffled off the bed to go to the bathroom. The pain in my head was still there, but only as a dull ache. My shoulder had stiffened up and I could barely move my arm without sending spikes of hot pain through the upper part of it. I managed to piss and brush my teeth one-handed. Then I went back to bed.

I couldn't sleep anymore, but the sounds of Arthur sleeping lulled me into a relaxed state. I lay there, drifting and thinking, until light filled the room. Then Arthur woke, made me coffee and breakfast, and lit a cigarette for me.

"I really need a shower," I said between sips of coffee.

"You can't have a shower. You have to keep the bandage dry. I can run you a bath."

"Can you sponge me down, too? I might struggle to reach some parts with only one hand." I hadn't meant it in a sexy way, but as soon as I imagined him rubbing a soapy sponge over me, my dick twitched. It seemed to have no issue with the fact that my shoulder throbbed with pain.

"I suppose your good hand can't reach your crotch." Arthur giggled. "I'm surprised you can even think about that right now."

"My dick has a mind of its own. Besides, when you have an orgasm you produce dopamine, which can help reduce pain."

Arthur stared at me. "You're making that up."

"I'm not. Seriously. You can look it up. It's a hormone, kind of like adrenaline. Don't ask me how I know this. Maybe I paid attention in biology at school. Believe me, at that age anything with the vaguest connection to sex would have interested me."

"I'll run a bath." Arthur snorted. "I'd better help you produce some dopamine."

"Apparently, it doesn't last long. You might have to do it a lot." I winked.

Arthur stayed off work for a couple of days, taking care of me. Wizard brought his nurse friend around to check on me and change my dressing. She confirmed there was no infection.

Sport's father was on the news—a short report to say he'd been shot numerous times and died with a gun in his hand. He was wanted for armed robbery, and the police didn't seem interested in finding out who'd finished him off, assuming it was some other thug he'd had an altercation with. We'd got away with it again, but it was time for that to end. It didn't affect me, knowing I'd killed people. They'd all been bad and deserved it, in my mind. But Arthur didn't want anymore to do with it and moving to a small town miles from the big cities would probably take us away from that life.

After a week, I could drive again. I worked two weeks of nights to stash some more money. Then Arthur quit his Punch and Judy gig, and we packed up our meagre possessions. Arthur had spent days poring over a map he bought, looking for a suitable town to move to. There were too many big cities in the vicinity, and he finally found a spot in North Carolina that he liked the look of. It would mean driving through several states, including Virginia, which looked endless, but what the hell. We didn't have a deadline.

"I'll call when we get settled," I told Wizard. He'd come to see us off.

"I still think you're nuts." He lowered his voice, but Arthur was already in the car with the door shut and wouldn't hear him anyway. "What if you change your mind about him?"

"I won't."

"You used to like women."

I shrugged. "I don't dislike them now. I guess I like both. But I love Arthur. I don't notice anyone else is alive. Betsy could walk past me in her underwear, and I wouldn't care."

Wizard shook his head. "I don't get it."

"Don't try. I'm about as happy as I'm going to get. That's all you need to know."

"What about all his issues?"

"What about them? I have issues. We help each other. There's no point trying to talk me out of this."

"I'm not. I guess I'm still not used to it. You're different from when I knew you before."

"That's because I'm less depressed. I care about being alive. Be happy for me."

"Yeah, yeah. I am." Wizard shook my hand. "Take care, buddy."

"Thanks. I'll be seeing you." I doubted I would, but I would call. I got in the car. "Ready?"

"Yes." Arthur smiled. He had the map folded to show the first hundred miles or so of our journey. We intended to drive halfway, stay overnight in a motel, and then complete the drive the next day. We could have done it in one day, but there was no rush. We could check out a few sights on the way.

Wizard waved as we pulled away. Then he got in his cab and drove off in the other direction.

"Are you sure you're okay with this?" Arthur asked. He'd asked the same question almost every day since we decided to leave New York.

"I'm sure."

"But the city's your home."

"No, it isn't. We've talked about this. Where you are is my home." I shot him a smile, then took my hand off the wheel to hold his. "I didn't care about leaving before, when I went to Gotham. Just think, if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't know you."

"But you came back. Surely that means you want to be here."

"I seem to remember telling you it was just the first place I thought of, because I knew I could find us somewhere to stay easily. Stop worrying that I'm only doing this to please you, Arthur. I do want to please you, obviously. I love you. But I'm pleasing myself, too. I've only ever lived in a city. I'm kind of looking forward to a quiet little town with a beach. We might even be able to afford a small house instead of an apartment."

Arthur beamed. "That would be amazing. I hope we can have a garden."

"I think we can have anything if we put our minds to it." I let go of his hand and switched on the radio. Frank Sinatra's "My Way" was playing. It was sort of perfect. We were going to do it our way, and nobody would stop us.