XXI

Jameson—John Jameson—was stretched out on a couch in Mary Jane’s apartment, his hands folded behind his head. He was in his stocking feet, thanks to Mary Jane’s loud admonition of “Shoes off the couch!” Otherwise he was wearing sweats and a NASA T-shirt that read “Zero-G Wiz.” Mary Jane was lying on the floor, filling out an invitation list, with a tall stack of invitations at her side. John was busy studying a travel magazine. Then he lowered it and watched her motoring through the invites.

“M.J.,” he said, “are you at all concerned that we’re moving too fast?”

“We’re sitting still, John. Not a lot of moving going on.”

“No, I mean,” he nodded toward the invitations, “most people take months—sometimes even a year or two—to plan a wedding. And we’re, you know… plowing right into it. Dad had to pull a hundred strings to get the church, the caterers, everything on such short notice. We’re going at it with such a manic energy, half my friends have asked me if you’re pregnant and we’re trying to avoid the ‘Here comes the bride, big, fat, and wide’ syndrome.”

She propped herself up on one elbow and asked with interest, “What have the other half said?”

“Well… actually, there is no other half,” he admitted. “They all said it.”

“Oh, for crying out loud.” She rolled her eyes. “Can’t they just accept that we’re really anxious to start our life together? That that’s all it is?”

“Yes, I just…”

“You just what? You can’t accept it?”

“I just…” He took a deep breath. “I just want to make sure that you’re not feeling as if we have to get married in a hurry because if we don’t one of us might back out. That you just want to do it to ‘get it over with.’ Or because you’re not really sure, or there’s something you feel you need to prove, to someone, or—”

“John, that’s silly.”

“Is it?”

“Yes,” she said firmly. “I want to get married because I want to be with you. Don’t you want to be with me?”

“Of course.”

“Then that’s settled.” She slapped the magazine. “Go. Read. Plan.”

He nodded, feeling slightly mollified, and after another minute or two he read aloud, “ ‘The Bahamas. Fourteen tropical nights that captivate your imagination and stimulate your senses.’ ” He lowered the magazine and asked, “How’s that?”

“Sounds good,” Mary Jane said, which was exactly how she’d responded to the last nine suggestions he’d made. Staring at the invitations, she said, “Who’s Aunt Ida? It’s familiar, but I can’t—”

“Remember when we were at the lodge on Christmas? She called us with the trifle recipe. The gabby one.”

“We had a gabby recipe?”

“She was gabby.” He smiled.

“Ohh, Aunt Ida,” Mary Jane said, voice dripping with good-natured sarcasm. “I liked Aunt Ida.”

“My mother’s family,” John told her with a resigned shrug. “Actually, she drives everybody crazy.”

Mary Jane, sounding like the voice of experience, said, “Families can do that.”

John watched her out the corner of his eye as she continued working on the list. He was surprised when he saw her cross off a name with particular conviction. Wondering who could have possibly provoked the reaction, he lowered the magazine and studied the list more openly. He was mildly surprised when he saw whose name had disappeared beneath black pen strokes.

“Are you sure you don’t want to invite your friend the photographer? Peter Parker?”

“Positive,” she said with a finality that indicated the discussion should end.

John didn’t take the hint. He was someone who earned a living sitting atop thousands of tons of explosive fuel. He wasn’t daunted by a candid conversation with his fiancée. “I thought he was your pal,” said John.

“Peter Parker is a great big jerk.”

“World’s full of big jerks,” he said in a self-deprecating manner. “You’d be surprised how many big jerks end up getting the girl.”

She looked up from the invitations and smiled at him. “You’re adorable, ya big jerk.”

Gravely he said, “It’s the uniform,” and laughed. Then he reached out to her and gently touched her cheek.

She studied him closely, looking deeply into his eyes as if searching for something. “Put your head back,” she told him after a moment.

He frowned, puzzled, but did as she asked. He leaned far back, his head hanging over the arm of the sofa. She came around to the other side, then leaned in and kissed his upside-down face.

She had never kissed him like this before. He felt as if every nerve ending were on fire. It wasn’t just like they were kissing for the first time, it seemed as if this were the invention of the kiss. The first time man and woman pressed lips and thought, Oh, my God, why haven’t we been doing this all along?

The travel magazine slipped from his suddenly nerveless fingers. She withdrew, and he gazed at her in wonderment. “Wow,” he sighed. “You just put me back on the moon. Are you up there with me?”

Mary Jane smiled and stroked his hair. His feeling of blissful awe slowly gave way to vague concern that something was off.

“Are you up there with me?” he asked slowly. “Or are you… are you somewhere else entirely?”

She looked away from him. “I need to go out for a bit. Just… be by myself. Okay?”

“Sure,” he said guardedly. “Do you… want me to be here when you come back?”

“Hmm? Oh! Sure,” Mary Jane assured him. “Read the magazine, relax, do… husband-to-be stuff.” She was getting her jacket, her purse, and her voice sounded light, but in a forced way. “It’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. Everything will be fine. I’m just, y’know… being ditzy me. Later, okay, love?”

“Sure,” he said, and watched as the door closed behind her. As he did so, he realized if Mary Jane were that lousy an actress all the time, she’d still be waiting tables.

He looked back at the list, at Peter Parker’s crossed-off name. He thought about the way Mary Jane had reacted when he’d asked about rushing into the wedding because she wanted to prove something.

“Houston,” he said softly, “we may have a problem.”

As Mary Jane sat at a table in the window of Ari’s Village Deli and Bakery, she thought about what had been going through her mind when she kissed John. In the best school of method acting, she tried to recall the exact sensations that had pounded through her that night in the rain. That extraordinary night when, totally caught up in the romance of being rescued, she’d rolled Spider-Man’s mask partway down and they’d kissed in a long, lingering, frozen moment of desire while he hung upside down in the alley.

In many ways, her life had been upside down ever since.

She sipped her cup of coffee, glanced at her watch, and wondered how long it would take him to get here. Perhaps he wouldn’t come at all. If he didn’t, could she really blame him?

“Hiya.”

She looked up. Peter was standing right there, smiling down at her.

“Surprised?” she asked.

“Very,” he said, taking a seat.

“Thanks for coming.”

He leaned forward, looking concerned. “Are you in trouble?”

“You… might say so.” She discovered she was having trouble meeting his gaze, and forced herself to look him in the eyes. “This feels funny. Not sure how to begin. But… you know how minds do tricks on us?”

“Tell me about it,” he said ruefully.

“Well, mine did a real number on me,” she told him. “Uh… what it did was… it listened.”

He stared at her blankly, clearly not sure what she was talking about.

“It… heard what you said to me after my show that night,” she continued, still nervous, but beginning to grow in confidence with every spoken word. “I believe it was always listening, but it refused to let me accept it until… until it told me to. That you were different that night. But I was afraid to trust you. And… I’ve been thinking things through…”

She reached across the table toward him, and briefly it seemed as if he was reluctant to respond. But then he did, his hand grasping hers, their fingers interlocking. It was a connection being made between the two of them, something that she hadn’t even fully realized she’d lost until she discovered it again right then.

And then, just like that, the connection was broken.

Mary Jane jumped slightly, startled by the abruptness as Peter pulled his hand free. “Listen… there’s more for me to say now,” he told her. Her eyebrows knit in perplexity. “I… maybe rushed into things. I thought I was—”

Her voice went cold. “Wait a minute. What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I…” His skin was looking three shades of ashen. “Uh… I thought I could be there for you, Mary Jane… but I can’t. My mind was playing tricks, too.”

She wanted to kill him.

She wanted to pick up the bread knife sitting between them and drive it into his chest. She wanted to strangle him with the napkin, throw coffee in his face. She wanted to scream at him, to howl that nobody yanks her around like this, dammit, how dare he screw with her emotions, how dare he be so unable to commit that he couldn’t sustain even the possibility of a relationship for longer than thirty seconds? What kind of monster was he, what sort of freak?

And at the same time, she wanted to help him, to hold him. To find whatever great weight was occupying his obviously tortured mind and lift it from him. It was as if he were possessed by a malevolent spirit of misery that had briefly departed, only to come roaring back to him and seize occupancy once more, like a pestilent squatter. She wanted to know what magic words needed to be said to lift it from him forever, banish it to a realm where it could never touch him and he might therefore know happiness ever after.

The warring sides of her mind collided and canceled each other out, and the only outer reflection of her inner turmoil was a single tear that ran down her cheek. She tried to keep her voice steady and barely managed to do so. “Do you love me, Peter… or not?”

“I… I don’t,” he told her in a voice that he probably imagined was firm, but lacked any trace of conviction.

“Then I have one more request.” She paused and then said, “Kiss me.”

“Kiss you?” He looked confused. Why shouldn’t he be? She was. “Why?”

“I… need to know something.”

He drew back, hesitant, and she leaned toward him. He looked afraid. “Just one kiss,” she said with soft insistence. “Friend to friend.”

She drew closer to him, and he to her. Suddenly she saw his eyes go wide in what seemed unmistakeable alarm. His body stiffened, and then his head was snapping back and forth in a blur, like a radar dish gone amuck.

Before she could say anything else, before she could ask him what the hell his problem was, the plate-glass restaurant window shattered and a car hurtled directly at them.