Hulk, Peter David [best ereader for academics .TXT] 📗

the firmness, almost the ferocity of the denial, as if something had slipped ever so slightly. As if a curtain had been pulled aside just a few inches to reveal something unexpected and surprising . . . surprising to Betty, if not to Bruce.

And then, just like that, it was gone. A veil was once again drawn over Bruce’s eyes, and he was saying with far more restraint, “No. You’re wrong about that, Betty. You have to take my word for that: You’re very wrong. I know myself, far better than anyone else could.”

“But you see, that’s what a relationship is all about. Letting the other person know you as well as you know yourself.”

“Then I guess we don’t have a relationship.”

She was utterly taken aback by the words. Even Bruce seemed mildly surprised at his own pronouncement, but he made no effort to retract or elaborate on what he had just said. Instead his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, as if he had just swallowed something very large.

“Is . . . that how you want it, Bruce?”

“No,” he said very softly. “But apparently . . . that’s how it is.”

“But why? Why can’t you let me in?” she asked with growing urgency, desperate to comprehend why this relationship, which she felt was possibly the greatest thing that had ever happened to her, seemed to be slipping away between her fingers.

“It’s not a matter of letting you in.” He rose from the couch, his hands thrust deep into his pockets. “That’s not it at all.”

“Then what is it?” she demanded. “You owe me that much, at least. If it’s not about letting me in . . .”

“It’s not. It’s about letting me out.” He said it with the air of a doctor diagnosing a fatal disease.

“I don’t understand,” she told him.

Bruce had walked toward the door, and now he stood there with his hand resting on the knob. “Neither do I,” he said, as much to himself as to her, and then he let himself out the front door of the cabin, shutting the door gently behind him.

By the time he returned some hours later, Betty had cried and dried her tears and reapplied her makeup. They stayed the night at the cabin, she in the bedroom, he on the couch. It wasn’t how she had planned for the weekend to go, and late that night the tears came once again and Betty sobbed miserably into a pillow. She didn’t know if Bruce heard her, nor did she care. She wondered if, in that regard, she was getting to be more like him.

one year later . . .

Benny Goodman was a harmless enough fellow.

In his early sixties, with a perpetual smile, a thick beard, and a good sense of humor, which was necessary for someone who’d grown up enduring jokes about the Benny Goodman orchestra, Benny prided himself on not having an enemy in the world. So it was that when he heard a knock on his front door late one evening, he opened it without a second thought.

There was a man standing there who was about Benny’s height and weight, and sported a beard not dissimilar to Benny’s. Three ratty-looking dogs were grouped around him; well-trained, they stayed precisely in their places.

“Benny Goodman?” asked the man. His voice was low and gravelly.

“Yes.”

“Benny Goodman, who works as a janitor down at Lawrence Berkeley labs?”

Benny was beginning to get a faint buzz of warning. “Is there a problem down at the lab?” he asked.

“No, no. It’s just . . . my dogs are hungry.”

Benny stared at them. They growled. “I’ve . . . nothing to feed them,” he said.

“Not a problem. We’ll improvise,” said the old man, and he snapped his fingers. The dogs were upon Benny in a heartbeat, one of them—a pit bull—clamping his teeth around Benny’s throat before he could get so much as a scream out. The old man stepped through the door as the animals bore Benny to the floor, and as the janitor writhed in his death throes, the old man said, “By the way . . . love your orchestra,” as he closed the door behind him.

Not for the first time, Bruce Krenzler had the oddest feeling that he was staring into the mirror at someone else’s face. Or perhaps it was something other than that. Yes. Yes, it felt as if he were studying his own face, but eyes other than his were gazing back at him with intensity and curiosity and . . . hatred.

Why hatred?

Why not?

The query and the reply ran through his head, one stumbling over the other, and the impact of their collision nearly jolted him from his reverie. His mind split ever so slightly, and he saw himself from beyond the restrictions of his mortal shell, as if he were having an out-of-body experience. How ludicrous it would have seemed to someone on the outside looking in. Here he was, standing bare chested, a towel wrapped around his middle, staring into a mirror as if his own reflection were simply the most irresistible thing he’d ever laid eyes on. He would have come across to an observer as a world-class egomaniac. Or a narcissist. Or an actor, he added mentally, and tried to laugh at his little unvoiced jest. Oddly, he found he couldn’t.

His straight black hair was still slicked down from his having showered minutes before, but his skin had dried. He studied his face more closely. His ears stuck out a bit on either side. He thought he looked like a reasonably intelligent individual, and then wondered whether that again wasn’t the consideration of someone who was too self-obsessed for his own good.

Bruce looked a bit older than he felt. He was reasonably muscled. He didn’t get the chance to exercise all that often, because he was so busy in the lab. He used to have much more of a tan, but lately he’d been eating, sleeping, and breathing