and now there shall be no sepparations
"And so we are borne…" she put down the book and glared down into his sleeping face.
"Ashley…" She shook his shoulder.
Ash came awake with a shudder and a groan. "Wah?" he mumbled.
"Ye fell asleep again." She closed the book upon her lap and glared. "Twas the conclusion of Gatsby's
life."
Ash shuffled his shoulders and grunted. "He learned what every guy learns; don't trust a dame." The
heavy book smacked against his forehead. "Damn it!"
Sheila glared down at him; he bit back a grin. Damn, she was adorable when she was pissed off. "Do
ye not trust me, Ashley?"
"Hmm," Ash said, pretending to think. He scratched his chin and made a moue with his lips. "You did
try to kill me a couple of times. But I almost had to kill you, so I guess it evens out."
"Ye deserved it," she said primly. "Ye were a bit of a Jekyll. Or a Heckle."
"Jekyll and Hyde, baby," he said, plucking a piece of sweet grass from the ground and tucking it
between his teeth.
"La, what do ye know of literature?" Sheila retorted, closing the book again.
"Four things: the guy always gets the girl, the girl's always build like a brick house, bigger guns make
more interesting heroes and if it's gonna have blood, it'd better cover the whole world."
Sheila simply gaped at him. "What of emotion, and feeling?"
"Of course there's feeling. That's what happens when the hero and the heroine get freaky on top of a
mountain."'
"Ashley…"
He had gone into full-on rant mode. "It's not always a mountain – sometimes it's a bearskin rug, or a
cave or the inside of an Astin Martin..."
Sheila's glare could have refrozen Antarctica. Ash continued on as if he couldn't see her eyes trying to
pin him down.
"That was when women were women and men were men," Ash said. "And the men knew how to
handle the women because, sister, if you didn't handle your woman she'd be handling another man!"
Sheila said absolutely nothing. In fact, her eyes were fixed at a spot just beyond his shoulder. When
Ash's hand reached skyward to make a dramatic gesture, his fingers brushed against something that
dripped slime and smelled like a can of steamy-hot garbage.
"'Scuse me, baby, duty calls."
He'd gotten good at hiding his fear around her, but she nevertheless knew he was nearly scared out of
his wits as he pulled the gun free and blasted the former jogger into teeny bits. In this, he was more
obsessed than Ahab had ever been, stronger than the Mohican of Fennimore-Cooper's heart, more
chivalrous than the Count of Monte Cristo. He was Galahad and a knight of her time. He gave a good
show. And when she' was the one to cut off the ghoul's head, he pretended not to notice. The roar
of his chainsaw and the sound of the Earth being split open filled the world. Then there was nothing
but birdsong.
They gathered again by the tree, coated in blood and dirt, scuffed and exhausted. He dropped his
head in her lap.
She pulled another book out of the messy, scattered pile beside the tree. "Perhaps the letters of the
Tsar and Tsarina?"
He nodded his head weakly. Sheila rested her right against the top of his head. "And now,"
she read, "there shall be no separations…"