Making Promises by Amy Lane Page B

he was very small, and there had been no time for movies. In the rehab clinic in New York, their only entertainment had been paperback books in a language he did not yet speak and shelves upon shelves of movies he had never seen.
    “Me too,” Shane said, his voice soft. He probably really was in the dark. Mikhail, who did not consider himself an imaginative man, suddenly pictured Shane wearing an old T-shirt (green—it should be green) and a pair of sleep shorts, stretched out on a hotel bed in the dark. It was a comforting picture—Mikhail decided that was the man he was talking to as he sat on his camp stool under the stars.

    “Yeah,” that warm, dry voice said in Mikhail’s ear, “I sort of identify with that damned panda, you know?”
    “You are not fat.” Stupid man. He was big, warm, and solid. Mikhail had enough of whip-thin dancers, lean, hungry poets, or cold, substantial men who denied who they were.
    “I’m not you,” Shane said, and his admiration was so honest and frank that Mikhail found himself humbled. Irritating man.
    “Yes, well,” he sniffed, “who could be?”
    Shane’s low rumble of laughter in his ear was comforting. It said that somehow Shane heard what he was thinking as opposed to the spew of arrogance that came out of his mouth.
    “So what’s your favorite?” Shane asked, and Mikhail had to pull himself back into the moment.
    “My favorite what?”
    “Your favorite movie?”
    Mikhail was stumped. “No one has ever asked me… it is like music.
    I love it all, not just one kind.”
    “That’s sort of depressing from my end,” Shane said thoughtfully.
    “Are you sure you can’t think of a favorite?”
    Mikhail couldn’t think of why that would depress him, so he turned the question about instead. “You think of one, and I’ll see.”
    “ WALL•E ,” Shane said with satisfaction. “Hands down, that little robot ’bout broke my heart.”
    Mikhail found himself laughing in spite of himself. “How very appropriate.” And it was. WALL•E—the hapless knight in rusted armor.
    Except WALL•E had eventually been very important to the object of his affection, hadn’t he?
    “So what’s your favorite?” Shane asked with some insistence, and Mikhail sighed because he suddenly knew exactly which cartoon was his favorite. He shouldn’t say—it was almost too personal.
    “ Lilo and Stitch ,” he said facetiously.
    “ Lilo and Stitch ?” It was clear Shane was waiting for an explanation.
    “‘For such a small person’,” Mikhail quoted, “‘you have an unusual level of badness in you.’”

    Shane laughed obligingly and then said, “Now tell me your real favorite.”
    Mikhail flushed. “No,” he rasped, unable to suddenly brush off the question, to give another facetious answer.
    “I’ve asked a personal question.”
    “Da… shit !”Because his phone just beeped—the battery was low.
    “Battery?”
    “Da, I mean yes. And I need to make another call tonight.” Shit.
    He… he had been enjoying the conversation. “Well, I must go, stupid cop.
    It was a good day.”
    “I’ll see you later….”
    “Nyet… I mean I doubt it. I shall….”
    “I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”
    “Goodbye.” Mikhail couldn’t say all he wanted to say, so he figured it would just be better to end the conversation entirely. His phone snicked shut, and he sat for a moment and started to shiver. Cold. He’d put on his shirt—maybe it was time to go in his tent while he was letting his phone rest up before his call.
    The tent itself had a foam pad and a flashlight, a sleeping bag, and a pillow. The much laundered, all-cotton clothes worn at the Faire tended to shake out well in the morning. Mikhail took off his jerkin and his pants and rustled up some underwear from his knapsack (in case, well, whatever called him out of his tent in the middle of the night.) The shivers were still there. Common sense told him that it was still seventy degrees outside, but