Mason stared at the stump where his left arm used to be in the bathroom mirror. He still felt the arm, as alive and as attached as ever-it just wasn't there. Something about phantom pain, the doctor said. What he'd give for some real phantoms to do psychic surgery on his head right now. 

The doctors had commended Zinio for thinking fast enough to put the arm on ice. Wasn't his fault the only way out of that pickle was inside a tank with a mean temperature of a hundred and six. So much for the ice-and the arm. 

Marty walked in on him, fixated on the same reflection he was looking at. "You gonna stare at it until it grows back?" 

"That's the plan." 

"What about, 'The less of me there is in body, the more of me there is in spirit?'" 

"Got it off a fortune cookie." 

"Two billion Chinese can't be wrong." 

"They can certainly afford to be. In China, as in Japan, they have robotic maids. I need one of those to take care of Harper." 

"Trade me in on a robot? Nice guy." 

He finally looked away from the reflection of himself in the mirror and set eyes on Marty. "You know I will not stop until you're entirely miserable. The campaign will be relentless, and hard won, but I will achieve my goal. I'm not an ex-army grunt for nothing." 

"Ah, you're a lightweight. You should have met my real father. Now there was an asshole. He reached all shades of pitiful you haven't even contemplated yet." 

"Yeah, but he didn't have my stamina and determination." 

Marty leaned in to whisper, crooking his finger to get Mason to lean over. "I know you think you're really far behind Harper, and all, but trust me, you'll soon forget to feel sorry for yourself." 

"Your pep talk needs work, kid." 

"All I have to go on is Redbook magazines, cut me a break. If you'd like to take a twenty question survey to see if you're the man of Harper's dreams, I'm your guy." 

Mason returned his attention to the mirror. "Maybe I should just throw a towel over it." 

"Hey, you just lost your arm. They cut out my heart when they abandoned me with the rest of you. I didn't deserve that. I have-had my whole life ahead of me." 

"You ever stop to think that's why they left you? Maybe they figured you'd grow up a lot faster around us and be the kind of people they always wanted to be." 

"How do you figure?" 

"The secret to life, kid, is taking the lemons life gives you and making lemonade out of it. They could never do that. They have to make life larger than it is to stand it for five minutes. Maybe they didn't want you self-destructing like that." 

"So their leaving me with you was an act of selfless devotion and supreme love? God, and I thought I was good at spin control." 

Marty stomped out of the bathroom. Mason raised his voice after him. "Yeah, play dumb all you want. But we both know you figured this out already without me having to tell you." 

For a while, Mason went back to staring at the new him. Don't tell me you don't know when to do a strategic retreat, soldier. 

He went to open the cabinet the mirror was facing-with his invisible arm. Ending up cracking his spine instead with the torso twist. Good one. Looks like your rational mind isn't the only part of you trying to get used to things. He opened the cabinet-this time with his right arm.  

There, on the second shelf. He wrestled with opening the lid with one hand. Finally, he took a deep breath. I knew I should have taken that circus job as a kid instead of mowing lawns. He wrestled with the cap some more, then dropped the plastic bottle on the floor and crushed it under his foot. He pocketed the pills, checked his trousers. Just remember, grey pants, blue pills. 

He absconded into the living room where Harper was walking to the door-and getting nowhere. She had been tethered to a bungee cord wrapped around her waist, and her feet were getting no traction on the strip of material she was standing on. "What's this?" he asked. 

Marty followed his eyes from the sofa where he was sitting to see what he was talking about. "It's a repurposed slip and slide-think of the set up as a poor man's tread mill." 

"She doesn't get frustrated at never reaching the door?" 

"Sometimes. But so far today it's mostly a calorie burner." 

Mason shook his head. "I don't know how many more pick-me-ups I can take." 

"Look at it this way-" Marty kept talking as he played his video game, thumbs on the dual joy sticks, evidently playing both parts-"Zinio and Delaney travel around the world, rob banks, dodge the FBI in breakneck car chases, and you don't have to leave the house to get five times the excitement. Speaking of which, the doctor called, wants to know when you're going to schedule the surgery for the pacemaker. Says your heart can stop at any minute without any provocation." 

"Well, if it's waiting for me to have no provocation, I'll be fine." 

He grabbed one of the controllers away from Marty as he sat down beside him. "You have a plan to get us back in the game, right?-And I don't mean this one." 

Marty gave him a look like "Who do you think you're talking to?" 

"That's my boy. That's what I want to hear. Now what's your latest plan before I shoot it all to hell?" 

"I still like the idea of holding up a liquor store and taking hostages as a diversionary tactic while Zinio and Delaney rob the real target. Once they're away, we apologize, say Harper was off her meds, and it'll never happen again." 

"I told you, all that junk food... At our ages? We're likely to shoot people for real just off the sugar rush."  

Mason stepped up his level of play in the shoot out on the fifty-inch monitor-a rather frivolous purchase with the bank proceeds he had initially frowned upon, but consented to for the kid's sake, only to now be more addicted to it than Marty. With his eyesight going south, the big screen was a virtual bonanza. He hadn't seen that mole on Marilyn Monroe's face in nearly twenty years, and now it was back sharper than ever. 

Marty nodded at Harper. 

Mason looked over to see her flailing her arms. "She's swimming." 

"Nah, she was swimming earlier. She's cross-country skiing now." 

"Maybe Alzheimer's is the way to go. Now, that I can definitely do." He sighed. "Okay, back to business. What else you come up with?" 

"I still don't see what's wrong with leading a march up Philadelphia Avenue straight to the White House lawn, two million strong, all wearing suicide vests." 

Mason nearly choked trying to suppress his laughter. "It's inspired, I give you that." 

"They wouldn't dare try to take us out with sharpshooters for fear of blowing the state off the map. Hell, with all the press coverage we get, not to mention the cops and state militia, Zinio and Delaney could rob Fort Knox and get away with it. Not to mention we have the perfect platform for Delaney's social causes. I could keep talking with the script she prepared for me like one of those senate filibusters." 

"We can't handle big crowds at our age, kid. Five minutes into it, we'd need to use the bathroom." 

"You could wear those adult diapers." 

Mason gave him a face peel with his eyes. "The suicide vest I can do. But I draw the line at the adult diapers." 

Marty groaned and threw down the controller.  

"Relax, kid. We got four of the most incorrigible minds in the universe working on this now. It's not just you and me. Let's see what Charles and Rita come up with."

* * * 

Rita was panting by the time she had Charles all strapped in. "Okay, let her rip." 

Charles took over the remote and the crane lifted him out of the wheelchair, craned over to the hot tub, and lowered him in. 

Rita eyed the apparatus she'd created with the adult-version of a Leggo set. It rather dominated the expanded bathroom, which they could only afford courtesy of the money from the bank robbery. "Thank God I went back to school to finish that engineering degree, or I wouldn't have a clue how to deal with old age." 

"Now, how the hell do I get out of my clothes?" 

"Oh, no. This is a two for one deal. You can just wash your clothes while you're in there." She threw in the rest of the laundry, hit the thrusters on the whirlpool, and tossed in some detergent. 

Five minutes later, she came back in the room and Charles was parting the suds with the boat oar she'd left him for stirring the laundry. "Why the hell didn't you call me?" 

"I was waiting until it was up to my ears in the room so I could take a bubble bath next." 

Rita shook her head. "In any normal person, that would be sarcasm." 

Later that night, they sat across from one another staring at an austere dinner table. "Remind me again why there's just a potato in my plate." 

"You're allergic to everything else." 

"What the hell is that you have over there?" 

"Lemon juice and olive oil." 

"What do you plan to do with that, varnish the table?" 

"It's for my gallstones." 

Charles threw down his silverware. "We really need to get back in the game while there's still some quality of life left." 

"What do you expect us to do?" she screamed at him, crying at the same time. "To sit up straight is now a feat of advanced engineering. And you want us to rob banks?" 

"What did these ergonomic dining chairs cost, anyway?" 

"Less than the padded helmet for hitting my head against the wall." 

"Why do you do that?" 

"Looking forward to nights like this." 

He picked up his silverware and commenced the feat of cutting the potato with the butter knife. As it was rock hard, he figured Rita must have thought he needed the exercise. "Each person has one thing in life they do better than anyone else. We just have to figure out what that is. And then we'll be irreplaceable." 

He looked up from his potato to see her staring at him with wild eyes. "Am I sounding dense again?" 

"No, that's actually one of the most inspired things you've ever said. I'd give you a hug, only neither of our spines could survive the cracking." 

Getting nowhere with the potato, he said, "So, what's our one value-add, you think?" 

"It's a question I wish I'd asked myself when I was young. At our age, I'm guessing whatever that one thing is, it'll grow out of how we cope with our infirmities more so than how we capitalize on our inherent assets."