“See you soon,” I whispered. I bit my lip; and, in a moment of sheer abandon, I added, “I think I might . . . you know . . . love you, by the way.”
“Too,” Joshua whispered back groggily. “Love.”
“Jillian,” I whispered, “I know you don’t know who I am. But I love your brother, and I know you do too. So . . . do you think you could wake up? Do you think you could at least try?”
For far too long she gave me no response. I’d just about given up—hung my head and prepared myself for the inevitable, impossible job of comforting Joshua—when Jillian whispered back.
“I guess. Since you asked so nicely.”
In spite of everything, a quiet laugh escaped my lips.
“Thank God. Because I have a feeling you’d be a huge pain in the ass if you died.”
“Not the kind of unconsciousness that torments the dead, but the kind that kills the living.”
“This is my first . . . ah . . .”
“Haunting?” he offered.
I snorted. “Yes, this is my first haunting.”
“Then I’m flattered.”
“My sense of direction would be the death of me. Metaphorically, at least.”
“Joshua?" I called out, a slight hitch in my voice.
"Yeah?"
"What do I look like to you?"
He tilted his head to the side, frowning.
"What do I look like to you?" I repeated urgently, afraid that if I didn't talk fast enough, I would have time to realize how absolutely, mind-bogglingly stupid I sounded.
Joshua smiled. He answered me, so quietly I almost couldn't hear him.
"Beautiful. Too beautiful for people not to have noticed you the other night.”
“Hours can pass like years when you wait impatiently for something, especially something you crave and dread at the same time.”
“I swear I’m not imaginary.” An uncontrollable grin spread across my face. “I would know if I was imaginary, right?”
“When he squirmed away from her, I felt the strangest mix of emotions. First, I wanted to jump into Joshua’s arms and give him a series of grateful kisses—rewards for his apparent disinterest in her. Next, I wished I was substantial enough to tackle this stranger and pull out her pretty hair”
“So . . . this means we’re buried in the same cemetery?”
He nodded, and then the tiniest smile crept over his features. When he spoke again, his tone had lost some of its bitter edge. “More proof that we’re fated to be together, don’t you think?”
“If that were the case, Eli, I’d have a whole graveyard full of choices, wouldn’t I?”
“My parents’ names are Rebecca and Jeremiah, by the way,” he whispered as I approached him.
I laughed, jittery. “Got it. So even though they’ll be too busy screaming at you, and they can’t hear me anyway, I’ll at least be able to address them properly?”
“I play DJ, and you tell me what you like.”
“Got it,” I said with a firm nod, fighting little jitters of excitement.
“And who knows? Maybe something will be familiar. As long as it’s not death metal, I think we can rule you out as a potential Satan worshiper.”
“I guess a case of nerves could survive even death”
“Anyway, it doesn’t matter where we go, because I just want to be whenever you are.”
“Never let them take what you're not willing to give.”
“All the great groups that stood about the Cross represent in one way or another the great historical truth of the time; that the world could not save itself. Man could do no more. Rome and Jerusalem and Athens and everything else were going down like a sea turned into a slow cataract. Externally indeed the ancient world was still at its strongest; it is always at that moment that the inmost weakness begins. But in order to understand that weakness we must repeat what has been said more than once; that it was not the weakness of a thing originally weak. It was emphatically the strength of the world that was turned to weakness and the wisdom of the world that was turned to folly.
In this story of Good Friday it is the best things in the world that are at their worst. That is what really shows us the world at its worst. It was, for instance, the priests of a true monotheism and the soldiers of an international civilisation. Rome, the legend, founded upon fallen Troy and triumphant over fallen Carthage, had stood for a heroism which was the nearest that any pagan ever came to chivalry. Rome had defended the household gods and the human decencies against the ogres of Africa and the hermaphrodite monstrosities of Greece. But in the lightning flash of this incident, we see great Rome, the imperial republic, going downward under her Lucretian doom. Scepticism has eaten away even the confident sanity of the conquerors of the world. He who is enthroned to say what is justice can only ask:
‘What is truth?’ So in that drama which decided the whole fate of antiquity, one of the central figures is fixed in what seems the reverse of his true role. Rome was almost another name for responsibility. Yet he stands for ever as a sort of rocking statue of the irresponsible. Man could do no more. Even the practical had become the impracticable. Standing between the pillars of his own judgement-seat, a Roman had washed his hands of the world.”
“the biggest damage to the Baghdad Zoo had not been done in battle, fierce as it had been. It was the looters. They had killed or kidnapped anything edible and ransacked everything else. Even the lamp poles had been unbolted, tipped over, and their copper wiring wrenched out like multicolored spaghetti. As we drove past, we could see groups of looters still at it, scavenging like colonies of manic ants.”
“Halte du ein Ende des Fadens,
mit dem anderen in der Hand
wandere ich durch die Welt.
Und falls ich mich verlaufe,
meine Mama, ziehe.”
“One's sentiments -- call them that -- one's fidelities are so instinctive that one hardly knows they exist: only when they are betrayed or, worse still, when one betrays them does one realize their power.”
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