It was almost noon when Peter knocked, peeking into the hospital room.
"Hello, Peter," Aunt May said warmly. He grinned and stepped in, a picnic basket in his hand.
"How are you doing today?" Peter asked.
"Oh, I was just laying here counting my blessings," Aunt May said as she manipulated the control on the bed to sit up. "What do you have there?"
"Thanksgiving feast," Peter said. He put a lap desk up on her bed, then a plate and a knife and a fork. Then he unwrapped, with great ceremony, the aluminum foil. Within was a turkey leg.
"Oh Peter," she said with a small laugh. "But where's yours?"
"I ate the rest of the turkey in the car, on the way over," Peter said as he sat down by the bed. "Okay, it's not really a feast, but I thought it'd put the shine on the day for you."
She picked up the knife and fork and daintily sawed at the meat, cutting off small pieces and cutting around the tendons and gristle and other obstacles in the leg. "Mm," she said. "This is quite good."
"I'm glad," Peter said. "The guy at the store assured me this was a feisty bird who spent his whole life trying to get tasty." He shook his head. "I don't know about those guys at the store."
"Well, what other plans do you have for today?" Aunt May asked.
"I figured I'd balance the national budget, graduate from college, and run off and join the circus. Course, that doesn't leave much for the afternoon," he said with a shrug.
She returned her attention to her turkey leg. "Peter Parker, you're impossible," she said.
"Don't I know it," he murmured to himself. He felt suddenly weary; his haunted night was catching up to him. "Tell you what," he said. "You finish that thing off and I'm sure the nurses will be more than willing to take it off your hands." He grinned.
"Are you off?" she asked.
He sighed. "I gotta find a nurse, then I'll be on my way. You take it easy today, Aunt May. Get better, okay?"
"I'm working on it," she said with a sage nod. He stood, smiled, and patted her hand. Then he left the room. After a few minutes of searching, he found a nurse.
"Hello," he said. "My name is Peter Parker, I'm May Parker's nephew. I was just wondering if they've scheduled her surgery yet."
The nurse checked her listings. "Hm," she said. "Looks like it's scheduled for next week." She looked up at him.
"Thanks," he said, and he felt a little dizzy with relief. "Thank you very much."
He went home.
xXx
Peter closed the door behind himself and only then did he notice the quiet. It hummed in his ears. He felt the house expanding around him, the small building becoming empty and vast.
Peter shook his head. "Holidays," he said to himself. He walked over to the answering machine. No message but the one Mary Jane left. He picked up the phone. "Talk to somebody," he muttered. "Wish them a happy Thanksgiving."
He punched in Dr. Strange's number. After a number of rings, eep "You have reached the Sanctum of Doctor Strange. I am unavailable this weekend, but your duty is to leave a message worthy of my attention." eep.
Peter hung up instead of leaving a message. He thought for a moment and then mashed in Logan's number. eep "Not here, somewhere else, call later. Bye." eep.
"Can't these people have normal answering machine messages?" Peter mused. He stopped himself before he called Mary Jane. She was in Florida.
"Fine," Peter said, and before he could change his mind he punched in the Stacey's number.
It rang for a while before the answering machine picked up. "This is the Stacey residence," the retired police captain's voice said, and Peter hung up before he could hear the rest.
"They would have a normal message," Peter grumbled. Then he thought over his list of friends once more.
He punched in one last number.
The phone rang twice. "Ramsey residence," came a clear voice on the other end.
"Doug, hey, this is Peter," he said. "I was wondering if you had your Thanksgiving feast yet."
"You caught me on the way out the door," Doug said. "Why?"
"I was just wondering if you wanted some company is all."
"Sure," Doug said easily. "The more the merrier. Chinese okay?"
"For Thanksgiving?" Peter said a bit doubtfully.
Doug chuckled. "They won't be crowded," he said. "If you're interested, I'm headed out to the Super China Wok Bar and Grill, you know the place?"
"Oh yeah," Peter said. "I'll meet you there."
xXx
The restaurant wasn't crowded, but it wasn't deserted either. Peter immediately spotted Doug, sitting in a booth with a baseball cap on and hunched in his coat.
Peter sat down opposite him. "How's it going?" he said.
"It's Thanksgiving," Doug sighed. "I hate Thanksgiving."
"Really?" Peter said. "Why?"
"You gonna get some food?" Doug asked, amused.
"Hold that thought," Peter grinned. A minute later he slid into the booth with a stacked, steaming plate of dumplings and rice and noodles all melting across each other. "What's the matter with Thanksgiving?"
"Disregarding the pilgrim feast, where they took advantage of the local generosity to survive so they could eventually spread like a disease across the surface of the land and build places like, you know, New York on what used to be beautiful wilds. Forget about that. I don't care about that one way or the other so much." Doug rubbed his pale eyes with his hand; he looked like he had rolled out of bed and dressed and come straight to the restaurant.
"You know what I really hate about Thanksgiving? People know they should be grateful. I mean, the United States of America has five percent of the world's population, and twenty five percent of its wealth. There's a reason to be thankful. But people have to have a holiday to remind them, because their default setting is to whine and complain, no matter how much they have. You don't have enough until you decide you have enough. I've actually heard people sniveling about how their stock options aren't performing as well as they'd like and they're unhappy because in these tight times they might have to cancel their cruise to Alaska. Meanwhile the guy two seats down is trying to figure out how he's going to cover his rent this month, and he's grateful he's not been shot on the way to the subway by a guy called Snake that he owes money to." Doug leaned back.
"Really Thanksgiving isn't as bad as Christmas." Doug shuddered. "You go out and see these tight eyed working executive mothers with their bags of pricey purchases and their hard, desperate voices, piling gifts and home improvements on credit cards that their salaries barely allow them to afford, families that can't buy food scraping together enough funding to purchase a console system for their five kids, not all of whom have fitting shoes, so they can play video games. Thanksgiving is a stab at being grateful for what we have before we blow it all on Christmas."
Doug kept talking, but Peter tuned him out. Lonely people get really depressing on holidays, he remembered a little too late. Not just a catchy truism. He looked at Doug, who was off on some commercialism against spirit kick, talking about cartoons and something about Dickens. Guess money can't buy everything, he reflected. Note to self. Get Doug a little optimism for Christmas.
Half an hour later Peter thanked Doug for a good lunch, paid for both their meals, and struck out into the rainy, blustery afternoon. As Peter walked down the street, his mind cast itself forward, thinking of that evening, sleeping in the house alone again. He already felt nightmares building. He gritted his teeth. "Why now?" he muttered. "I'm through the worst of it, right? Besides, there's nobody left to call."
His mind paused. "What?" Peter said. Well, there is Beck. He's from out of town. Might not have anyone to wish him holiday cheer.
"Well," Peter said to himself, "it's a thought." He headed back to his house.
After he strolled in the front door he took the stairs in a bound and was in his room. He sat in his chair, and turned on his computer.
What felt like an hour later the computer was finished booting up and he had managed to coax his dial-up internet connection to find some server in the great beyond to connect with. He went to the school web site, the faculty lists, scrolled down. There. Beck. Peter scribbled his phone number on a scrap of paper and got offline.
The phone rang twice. "Beck," came the voice on the other end.
"Mister Beck, this is Peter," he said, feeling really awkward.
"Peter, hello," Beck said, sounding surprised. "What can I do for you?"
"I just called to wish you a happy Thanksgiving," Peter said, feeling a little stupid.
"Your timing is great," Beck said. "I ended up with too much turkey. If you're not busy this afternoon, I sure could use some help disposing of it. You up for a little feast demolition?
Peter hesitated fractionally. Then, "Sure. Where do you live?"