Others arrived not long
thereafter. These other guests were the
usual combination of friends, family, neighbors and associates one often finds
at social functions amongst Reginald and Kathy’s class in society. Ken, despite a change of clothes and a
shower, still moved like the working-class man he’d always been; wearing the
guise of his hosts’ social station did little to conceal his outsider status. Some of those other guests remembered Ken;
they were old friends from Kathy’s college days, and glad to see that the two
old lovers remained close friends. Some
were associates of Reginald’s, and found it curious that he kept a friendly
association with someone so out of their league. The relatives, by and large, sat in the
middle; they knew that Ken was okay by Reginald and Kathy, but still found him
odd.
All
of them, however, soon found that Ken was also anything but boring. Ken joined in tossing horseshoes, playing
Bocci, talking about sports of all sorts, holding conversations about anything—even
those topics one would not expect a man believed to be a rough sort to know
much about, like cooking or caring for the sick—and demonstrated a mastery of
tact that few expected out of him. Well,
other than Reginald and Kathy, that is.
Reginald’s
mother took Kathy aside as the two watched Ken play with the kids and whispered
“I can’t believe that this is the same man that risked a prison sentence for
you. Has he settled down?”
“Not
at all.” Kathy said, laughing, “He just got back from Argentina yesterday.”
“What
was he doing down there?” her mother-in-law asked, curious.
“Do
you remember Marisol?” Kathy asked in response; her mother-in-law nodded. “Ken went down there because Marisol’s
husband got gunned down in broad
daylight by one of the cartels, and the government did nothing.
Then they went after her husband’s family, and still nothing. When they went after her parents and her
children, she begged Ken to help her.”
Kathy’s
mother-in-law took another look at Ken.
He organized the kids into a group, teaching them how throw a horseshoe.
“What
did he do?” asked the elder woman.
Kathy
pulled her away from earshot. “He killed
them all. It took six months, and he
uncovered a CIA plot to overthrow the government in the process, but he made
good on his word to Marisol.”
Her
mother-in-law looked at Kathy, unbelieving.
“It
nearly killed him. He hobbled away from
the last fight, and had to be rushed to a nearby hospital. He recuperated at Marisol’s home after that,
leaving just the other day.”
Kathy
then smiled. “Now, at last, do you see why I married your son?”
The
old woman let that thought, and many others, work itself through her brain for
a long moment. Then she kissed Kathy on
the cheek. “Yes, I do.”
“Now,
then, do you also see why Reginald made peace with him? Would you not want such a man as your friend?”
Reginald’s
mother, like his father, was not a stupid woman- just unaccustomed to thinking
in unconventional ways. Kathy, like
Reginald, did not have that problem- nor did they have the problem of being
unable to, as it were, translate. Once
again, the lightbulb went on and the elder woman nodded in appreciation.
“What
I don’t get, dear, is how this man can be so good with kids and yet do such
things?”
Kathy
smiled. “He’s one of the rarest amongst men.
Like normal people, he’s got empathy.
Unlike us, he can shut it off when he needs to- and when he does, he can
think like the psychopaths he kills.
That’s what makes him so unnerving, until you understand his special
psychology. Right now, he’s switched it
on and he can fit right in. When he
switches it off, he can just as cold and unfeeling as those he fights, but
rarely is because—unlike his enemies—he knows, and remembers, empathy. Thus, with proper discipline, he maintains
his moral center when he needs it most.”
