Page 57 of Tito
“The rules for a true English butler are that I am not supposed to show—”
“But Max, you already broke rules a while back,” Tito reminded him. “I hate to be like a downer here but you killed someone and re-animated two people. That’s probably against the rules, right?”
I nodded at him and added, “And I don’t think you are supposed to love anyone, are you?”
The room got really warm and the fire in the fireplace suddenly roared up.
Tito and I looked over at the fire then up at Max.
His eyes were actually red. Not red as in tired or red rimmed. But all out red!
Suddenly, the room spun and I hung onto Tito while thinking I was about to faint again.
When the spinning stopped, I opened my eyes.
Tito and I were in his bed…in his room.
Lying on my side, I looked at Tito as he slowly opened his eyes. We stared at each other.
I felt afraid to ask but I did anyway, “Was that a dream?”
He stared at me. “Unless we had the exact same dream, no.”
“Max is a time traveler and we found him in the basement, coming out of…fire?” I asked him just to be sure.
“No,” he said as he shook his head at me. “Has to be some book you read.”
My mouth popped open in surprise.
Tito laughed and wrapped his arms around me. “I’m kidding, baby. That is what we found out. I won’t repeat it back, because if I do, I will then need to call a therapist.”
I laughed now. “The both of us would have to. We still might sometime soon?”
He gave me a brief but sweet kiss. Then he pulled his head back to look at me again.
“So what do we do now?” I asked him.
“I’m not sure. I think I need to speak to my uncle before we do anything else.”
“You aren’t going to ask him about Max, are you?”
“No…” He shook his head. “I don’t think you and I should talk about Max or look at Max. At least not more than we would have normally.”
I stared at him. “Really?”
“Really. At least for a few days. I think we upset him a lot.”
“Yeah, we did, I think?” I agreed. “But he really didn’t look at it right, ya know?”
“Yes, baby, but even humans don’t like it when someone comes along and tells them what they have or have not done correctly. Not employees, not a friend and certainly not a 300 year old butler.”
“Wow, 300 years old!” I exclaimed. “Unbelievable!”
“Right?” he agreed. “Can you imagine what that must be like? To live for more than three centuries?”
“No, I don’t think anyone can imagine that, Tito.”
“People think that they want to live forever, but not if you will be alone and no one you love will live forever with you.”
