The Gift
by Dorothy Elggren
Part 7

See Part 1 for comments.

	"I'd at least better call and tell my wife that I'll be gone
for a while, okay?  She's going to wake up and wonder where I went."
	"Okay, but don't tell her where or who."
	Mark shrugged his shoulder, "Okay."
	Minutes later he walked out of the hotel and stepped into
Natalie's Taurus.  As they drove away, Natalie turned and smiled at
him.  "Thanks for trusting me.  I know I sound deranged, but when you
deal with Nick, life gets a bit that way."
	"So," Mark said reasonably, "tell me why."
	"Nick is different," Natalie said.  "I'm sure that you
probably noticed that about him."
	"Well, he was the best pianist I ever heard, and yet he never,
ever played in public," Mark said.
	"More different," Natalie said, "than that.  Though his
abilities on the piano are a result of his difference."
	"Such as?" Mark asked.
	"His allergy," Natalie said.  "I'm sure you remember his
allergy."
	"To the sun, yeah, I remember.  It didn't seem to slow him
down much, though."
	"True," Natalie said going blithely through a mostly red
light.  "But it's just one of the signs of what is really going on."
	"And what is going on?" Mark said, trying to get Natalie to
say what she obviously was having a hard time saying.
	Natalie glanced at him briefly took a deep breath and spit it
out.  "When I met Nick, he was DOA on my examination table.  He came
back to life right in front of me.  He opened his eyes, sat up and
literally scared the hell out of me.  That's what's so different about
Nick.  He was there because he was tossed a pipe bomb.  You or I would
be very dead from that.  He was just temporarily incapacitated.  He
can't be killed by the things that would kill us.  Mark," Natalie said
carefully and succinctly, "Nick is immortal.  He's lived a very long
time and seen and done more than you can possibly imagine."
	Mark laughed, "Oh, come on!  You want me to believe that Nick
is living forever?  That's a fairy tale, Natalie."
	Natalie pulled the car over to the side of the road and parked
it.  She turned and glared at Mark, "No, it's not," she said fiercely.
"And, yes, I expect you to believe it.  When you see him, you'll have
to believe it.  He doesn't look one day older than the last time you
saw him.  He is immortal, and for Nick, living forever is living in
hell."
	Mark stared at her, stunned.  "You're serious..."
	"Deadly, and so should you be."  She fumbled through her purse
and pulled out an envelope.  She opened the envelope and rifled
through a batch of photos, finally extracting a picture.  She handed
it to Mark.
	He stared at the photo in disbelief.  Staring back at him from
the photo was Natalie, encircled in Nick's arms.  And it was Nick,
without a doubt.  Nick's image was burned in Mark's mind.  As she
said, Nick didn't look any older.  Only the clothes and hair were
different.  On the bottom of the photo, the date stamp plainly read:
06/27/1994.
	He looked at Natalie.  "It isn't possible."
	Natalie took a breath.  "Trust me, anything is possible.
Absolutely anything."
	"How can he be immortal?"
	"That," Natalie answered, shifting the car back into gear and
pulling out into the light Saturday morning traffic, "is up to Nick to
tell you, if he decides to.  He may not.  If he doesn't, then let it
go.  Nick has a lot of secrets--and sometimes it's better to not know
them.  Safer.  Saner, come to think of it.  You don't have to go
through such huge reality adjustments."
	Mark stared at her in disbelief.
	"Anyway, it is beside the point.  You and Nick need to see
each other, you have both missed each other for long enough.  It's
time that something good happened.  You both deserve some happiness
here.  Nick lives with enough guilt and pain as it is.  He just
deserves to be reminded once in a while that he is a good guy."
	Mark stared at her.  "But you know."
	"Yes."
	"And it isn't dangerous for you?" Natalie thought she heard
just the slightest tone of jealousy in his query.
	Natalie glanced at him and then looked back at the road.  "It
is dangerous.  I damn near died because I know.  I still might.
Knowing Nick is dangerous."
	"But it's worth the risk," Mark said shrewdly.
	Natalie smiled and looked at him.  "Oh, yes," she said.
	"You...love him," Mark said incredulously.
	"I think I have ever since he came to life on my table,"
Natalie said.  "I can't help it."
	"But you're not going to tell me more."
	"No.  I've told you all you need to know.  Nick loves you, he
keeps an eye on your career, and he'd give anything to see you, but he
won't take a single step in that direction--he's so stubborn, you
know.  So I'm doing it for him.  Let's just hope he doesn't get
really, really angry.  Nick likes to think his decisions are royal
decrees.  I like to think he's stuck in a very deep rut and can't see
straight.  Sometimes he just needs someone to whack him on the side of
the head.  He can be *so* blind."
	Mark blinked in surprise, and then raised an eyebrow.  Somehow
he suspected that in a battle of wills, Natalie gave as good as she
got.
	Natalie pulled up and parked next to what appeared to Mark to
be an old warehouse.
	"You ready?" she asked.
	"Here?" Mark said, suddenly feeling like he was eight all over
again and caught red-handed with two apples and a hunk of cheese in
his pocket.
	"Here," Natalie said and got out of the car.
	Mark followed Natalie across the gravel to the elevator and
watched her punched in a security code.  The elevator door opened
reluctantly under her hands.  Natalie hesitated, and then turned to
Mark.  "Wait in the elevator until I tell you to come out, okay?  Nick
has no clue.  He might need a bit of calming down first."
	Mark nodded and followed her into the elevator.  It seemed to
take forever to rise, and Mark wondered if he was going insane to
believe a single word this small, petite and very determined woman had
told him.  But then he remembered the photograph--and her words.  No
one could have known what Nick had said to him just before he had
left.  The elevator stopped and Natalie nodded to him as she pulled
the door open and let it fall shut behind her.  And he waited.

	"Nick," Natalie said without surprise, seeing Nick sitting at
the piano staring at the keys moodily.  He looked up, startled.
	"What are you doing here?"
	"I thought a lot about what you said last night, Nick, and I
still think you need to see Mark.  You need him--and he needs you."
	Nick's face closed down and he turned away.  "I've already
said all I'm going to say on the subject, Nat."
	"I know, Nick, but I haven't," Natalie said.  She went and
knelt by the piano and put her hand on his knee.  "Nick, don't you
know by now that you are one of the good guys?"
	Nick closed his eyes against her words in anguish.
	"Nick," Natalie whispered, "all your arguments were good, but
there's only one problem."
	Nick looked down at her, but said nothing.
	"You're hiding behind them.  You're afraid that Mark will hate
you.  That when he looks in your eyes he won't love you--because you
left."
	"Because of what I am," Nick said bitterly.
	"No.  Because you can't bear to lose his love."
	"And I would, if he were to know."
	"No," Natalie said confidently.  "Because he knows you.
You're his hero and you always will be no matter what.  You gave him
the world, Nick.  It won't hurt you to let him love you."  She got up
and walked back to the elevator, and only then did Nick realize that
he could hear another heart beating.
	"Natalie," Nick said fearfully, "you...didn't."
	Natalie smiled brilliantly at him.  "Oh, but I did.  He
doesn't know what you are, Nick.  That's up to you.  You can tell him,
or not.  All he knows is that you are immortal.  That you don't look a
day older.  And you know what?  He doesn't care.  He just wants to see
you."
	Natalie flung the elevator door back, and Mark stepped out,
blinking at the candlelight.  He looked around and saw Nick frozen
solid by the piano.
	They stared at one another in absolute silence.  Then Mark
choked on a sob and ran to Nick, threw his arms around him and hugged
him as if he would never let him go.
	"Oh, Mark...," Nick said, in astonishment, then in joy.
"Mark."  And he put his arms tightly around Mark and closed his eyes.
	Natalie smiled at the beautiful expression on his face.  There
was such joy radiating from both of them.
	She stepped into the elevator and left.  "See, Nick," she said
as the elevator groaned it's way down to the ground, "that wasn't so
bad, now, was it?

                                ******

	Natalie, her hands deep inside the chest cavity of Chester
Morton, III, sang softly to herself.  "Some enchanted evening, you may
see a stranger.  You may see a stranger, across a..." she met with
resistance and stopped to peer at what the problem was, and then
getting a better grip on his lung continued, "across a crowded room.
And somehow, you know.  You know even then....that somewhere you'll
see him again and again...."
	She extracted the lung and made a face.  "Oh, Chester, you
should have quit smoking.  This is definitely not pretty."
	She laughed at her mood.  Despite getting very little sleep
today, she was higher than high tonight.  Though she hadn't heard
anything yet from Nick, she was unworried.  She'd done the right thing
and she knew it.  She felt so great.  Absolutely wonderful.
	Mark had called her before leaving for the airport.  He'd been
on top of the world.  "If I didn't have a concert tomorrow in L.A.,
nothing could drag me away," he'd assured her.  Though he hadn't had
time to say much, he'd said enough.
	"Oh, Natalie," Mark said, "I can't thank you enough.  For the
first time in years, I feel complete again.  Do you know we sat and
played duets together?  Silly stuff, really.  Things we used to play.
The Hungarian Rhapsody."  He laughed at some inside joke.  "And then
Nick played for me.  Really played for me.  I used to think I was
crazy, y'know, because I was sure he was better than anyone I have
ever heard-- certainly better than me.  Now I know he is.  It was like
sitting at the feet of a master.  It was incredible.  To think, I...I
learned from somebody who learned from Chopin and Beethoven and
Debussey...  I can't even begin to take it in.  I just can't.
	"I made Nick give me your number, so I could thank you.  I've
got to go; my plane leaves in twenty minutes, but I couldn't leave
without thanking you.  Thank you for having the courage to override
Nick."  Background noise in the airport drowned him out for a minute.
"Damn, I've got to go, but I'll be back.  Nick and I have a lot more
catching up to do.  I still have a lot to learn from him, and
hopefully I can somehow give back to him something to let him know how
much I appreciate what he did for me."
	"I think he understands, Mark," Natalie said softly.
	"I hope so." Then Mark laughed, "He's not getting rid of me
ever again.  I even managed to talk him into collaborating on some
pieces with me.  I'm really excited about that.  I always wanted to
write a piece with him--now I can.  And I will.  I feel like a kid
again.  Thank you, Natalie.  Thank you."
	She'd hardly got a word in edgewise in the flood that had
poured out of Mark.  She wondered briefly what his wife was making of
his manic mood, and smiled at the thought.  It had turned out so
right.
	No, she wasn't worried.  Nick wasn't going to kill her today.
	She carefully put the lung aside for further tissue
examination and began to sing again, "Who can explain it?  Who can
tell you why...Fools give you reasons..."
	"Wise men," Nick whispered in her ear, "never, ever try."
	"Aaaackkk!" Natalie gasped.
	Nick caught her in his arms and kissed her, despite the lung
lying on the table, despite Chester Morton's very dead presence,
despite her gloves and the wicked-looking surgical instrument in her
hand.  He kissed her.  Deeply, passionately, thankfully.
	"Thank you, Natalie," he whispered against her lips. "Thank
you..."
	And Natalie smiled.

                              - Fin -

End Part 7
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delggren@es.com.