All Things Considered
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"Kate, we've got a problem."
The sound of the male voice startled her and Kate poked her head out from behind the shower curtain. Her initial terror at the thought of becoming the next Marion Crane turned quickly into sheer, unadulterated outrage.
"You're in my bathroom! Don't you know how to knock on a closed door! Now get out, right now!"
"There's no need to get proddy Kate," Heyes said with a hint of indignity.
"There's every need to get proddy," she sneered. "Now get out! She shouted with clenched teeth."
Heyes and Kid looked at each other with puzzled looks on their faces as they shrugged their shoulders.
"She don't ever seem to mind us being nekked," Kid grumbled to his partner.
"Get out! Go downstairs and wait by my desk,"she ordered. "Honestly!"
Heyes turned and shoved Kid around and pushed him toward the door. "We're going, we're going," he told Kate.
Still fuming, Kate stepped into the shower of water and rinsed the soap off her skin. Shutting off the shower, she squeezed the excess water from her hair, then wrapped her hair in a towel. After drying herself off, Kate reached for her navy 'Magnum PI' terrycloth robe (the dark blue one with the hood), slipped it on, and cinched it tightly about her waist. Finally she slipped her feet into some white socks and marched down the stairs to her study.
Kate paused in the doorway and watched as both Heyes and Curry, their backs toward her, were carefully examining several framed pictures on the walls and shelves. Folding her arms across her chest, Kate leaned on the door frame and made not a sound.
"You noticed anything strange about these pictures?" Heyes asked Kid, both still unaware of Kate's presence.
"Only thing I noticed is that I take a damn good picture," Kid replied.
"That's my point. All these pictures are of you!"
"That ain't true Heyes. She's got some of you. Look, see that little one up on the top shelf?"
"Where?"
"Behind that bag of chocolate," Kid replied.
Kate cleared her throat to announce her presence to hopefully get them off the subject before Heyes' ego deflated too much. Hearing her, they both turned around abruptly.
"Now, before we address whatever it is that the two of you think is some earth shattering catastrophe, I think we are long overdue in setting down some ground rules about the two of you showing up here every time one of you gets his feathers ruffled. Number one, if a door is shut, you knock and wait until you are invited in. Understood?"
Heyes and Kid both nodded. They had come to know Kate well enough to know that when she's mad, you don't argue with her.
Dropping her arms to her side, Kate entered the room. "Now, what is it that brought you here tonight?"
"There ain't no rule number two?" Kid asked.
Kate's eyes squinted and she pressed her lips together tightly. "Do you want rule number two?" she asked with teeth clenched.
Kid took a cautious step back and shook his head.
"So why are you here?" she asked, trying to curtail her frustration.
"Well, Kid and me have been talking about all the stories you've written," Heyes began. "And, well, if you was to write a story and have the governor give us our amnesty, well then we'd be free to move on and do other things."
"And we could drop those damn aliases," Kid added.
Kate's jaw dropped, and a look of utter bewilderment washed over her face. "You don't want to be Smith and Jones anymore?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
Kid and Heyes looked at each other pensively. They had never seen her look so lost and forlorn.
"Well Kate," Heyes said slowly and gently. "I know Kid and me never age, but we've been after this amnesty for fifty years now.
"Yeah. We got a Peter Pan complex," Kid said, then looked at his partner. "Another one of those things that I got no idea where it came from," he explained.
"It came from me," Kate confessed. One of those 'from my thoughts to yours' things. When Heyes said the two of you don't age, I just automatically thought of Peter Pan."
"I know you think that explains it, Kate, but Kid and me ain't never heard of Peter Pan."
Kate sighed heavily. "It doesn't matter. So you two want to move on?"
"Kate, being thirty years old for over a hundred and fifty years... Well at thirty, it sounds like a good idea but, a century and a half later... Well it gets kind of old."
Kate sighed and shifted the towel on her head. "I hate to tell you this fellas, but its out of my control. There are people, conglomerates even, that own the rights to Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry. All of we writers can put you in all sorts of short story situations only because those owners are willing to overlook certain legalities. If they told us we have to stop, we'd have to stop. We can write about your childhoods, your outlaw days, even your golden years, but we always have to come back to the fact that you are perpetually thirty years old."
"You mean...Forever?" Kid asked.
Kate frowned sadly and shook her head. "You know we have been over this before. I'm sorry, boys. It's out of my hands."
"Kate, who came up with the idea of Kid and me?" Heyes asked.
"A man named Roy Huggins."
"Sounds like a cowboy," Kid said.
"A cowboy at heart, anyway," Kate explained. "Actually he's a screen writer."
"A what?"
"He's the man that writes the stories that Ben and Pete act in."
"I thought that was John Thomas James."
"That's right," Kate replied.
Heyes and Kid both looked perplexed.
"This make believe stuff is really pretty complicated," Kid mused.
Suddenly a very confused look spread over Kid's face."Kate, if we're make-believe, it means we don't really exist, right?"
Kate nodded. "Right."
"Then there's something I don't understand."
"What's that?" Kate asked sympathetically.
"Why the hell did you get so mad when two make-believe characters came prancing into your bathroom?"
Kate closed her eyes, bit her lower lip, and sighed heavily.
"I guess it's because, well sometimes I forget that the two of you are make believe," Kate confessed.
Heyes and Kid visible brightened. "You do?' they asked in unison.
"Absolutely," Kate replied.
Kid looked at Kate with an expression he reserved for all the saloon girls. "You think of me as real?"
Kate blushed, wishing she had not just fed this outlaw's ego. "Settle down, Kid. You live in my thoughts, not the other way around."
"Uh-uh, and just where do them thoughts take you?" he teased.
"Well, when you walked in on me in the shower..."
"Yeah?"
"It made me start thinking of ways..."
"Uh-uh?" Kid prodded, mischievous smile spreading across his face..
"To douse you in cold water."
Heyes broke into a hearty laugh and slapped Kid on the back. "The wench always wins, Kid."
"I beg your pardon?" Kate replied indignantly. "The wench?"
"Meant purely as a compliment, Kate. I swear."
"Maybe we should get back to the reason we're here."
"I already told you that is out of my hands," Kate replied.
"So we should take this up with this Roy Huggins or John Thomas James?" Heyes asked.
"Or that there conglomerate you was talking about?" Kid asked.
Kate smiled thinking how much peace and quiet she might have if they were to go seeking out these other sources. "Precisely," she told them.
"Alright, come on Kid, let's go find them other folks," Heyes said, reaching out for Kid's arm.
"Wait, wait, wait just a minute," Kid said, pulling his arm free of Heyes' grasp. "Kate, you weren't serious about that cold water, were you?"
Kate gave Kid the sweetest smile she had ever emoted. "Of course not, Kid. Surely you know me better than that."
Kid smiled. "So the next time I catch you in the shower?"
"You just hop right in," she told him.
"Ok, Heyes. Now I'm ready to go."
Kate continued to smile sweetly as the two cowboys disappeared.
"The hot water heater is getting disconnected tomorrow," she vowed to herself.