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        + doomed to obscurity + special issue four + july 31th, 1999 +


                        $$$$$$ $$$$$$
                        $'   $ $    $sssssssss  .s%&$$$""$$&%s.
              .s%&$$$$""$....$ $....$           $'    $  $    `$
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              $::::::$  $::::$ $::::$  $......$ $:::::$  $:::::$
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              $iiiiii$  $iiii$ $iiii$  $||||||$ $iiiii$  $iiiii$
              $$$$$$$$  $!!!!$ $!!!!$  $iiiiii$ $!!!!!$  $!!!!!$
              `"Y$$$$$ss$$$$$$ `"Y$$$ss$$$$$Y"' `"Y$$$$ss$$$$Y"'


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"novels in zine format should not have introductions"
- by jamesy

        today, doomed to obscurity is lucky enough to release work from
 a professional writer.  that's right -- a professional writer!  one who
 writes [professionally] for a living!  he who is paid to be a writer!

        all of us in dto have dreamed of it, sure.  to someday have a job
 where all we have to do is write.  well, one of us in the last few months
 has actually accomplished this -- puck!

        yes, the author that brought dto "space & the reason tomithy's
 pudding is on the floor" is being paid to write.  not fiction,
 unfortunately, but it's a start.

        and since professional writers do not give unsolicited submissions
 to electronic zines (they're professionals, after all), we had to pay
 steev quite a bit to purchase the rights to this following piece.
 yes, dto owes puck a few dinners at taco bell.

        dto 29 is due out soon.  i'm not going to go into a discussion
 about why it's a "little" late, but plan on seeing it in your favorite
 irc channels shortly.  if you're actually interested in submitting,
 please do so as soon as possible; email (please send ascii, not word
 documents) to: submissions@dto.net

        i hope you enjoy this file.  steev's story in dto issue 21,
 "herpes is forever", was taken and extended into a full-length
 novella.  do not fret if you've already read the short story, however;
 the short story only touches on the content of this file.  enjoy!

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"Herpes is Forever"
- by Steve Gadlin (Steev)

I


      Herpes is forever. Czech repeated this phrase to himself as he woke
up to find that his particular case had come out of remission for what must
have been the zillionth time since he contracted it in the early sixteenth
century. He rolled slowly out of bed, giving his legs time to adjust to his
five hundred and fifty-six pounds. When they finally locked in support, he
lifted them: first the left, then the right, and in this manner he moved
into the bathroom. He swung his large arms around, groping for the familiar
chain, and tugged it. A bulb flickered to life, and he woke up to the
120-watt glow of a new day. Another Saturday, he lamented aloud, another
day of life.

      With his eyes closed, he palmed for the cabinet over the sink and
picked out his tube of medicated salve from memory among a small selection
of other medicines. Czech sighed as he twisted the cap off the nearly
exhausted tube and squeezed a dab of the medication onto his finger. He
pulled his boxers to his knees, sat on the toilet, and tediously applied
the salve to the newly formed blisters. His fingers went through the
process like clockwork, going through a dance that had been choreographed
over hundreds of years. Czech capped the tube, placed it back in the
cabinet, and slid the door in place.

      "The eyes come next," he said aloud. "Windows to the soul? I prefer
to keep the blinds shut." He placed his thick hands on the little white
sink, leaned into it, and counted to himself. One, two, three. On three,
his eyes opened. For a few silent moments he stared at himself in the
mirrored cabinet door. His face was large and round, pink, and peppered
with three-day-old whiskers. His eyes were gray. He remembered them being
green at one time. The corners pointed down, as if tiny weights hung from
each side of his face. The black mop of hair on his head had attained
perfect entropy during his rough sleep, and he brushed his fingers through
it quickly. Through his worn features peeked a degree of youthfulness. On a
good day he could pass for a man in his late twenties, while on others
seemed no younger than fifty. Today, like most days, he was somewhere in
between. Czech had boyish lips, full and red, which he now forced into a
cracked smile. Unpleased with the sour results, he crunched them up into a
pucker, and then, resignedly, let them lie flat in a straight line. Outside
the bathroom window he could hear the busses squealing as they stopped and
started, like some wicked metallic chorus. Five hundred songs played on
five hundred car radios, each part of a larger symphony that roared,
thumped, rocked, rattled, and rolled through the air.

      "But the ears," Czech said, "Oh the ears. Thank goodness they never
close." His head swum with the sound of Evanston on a Saturday.

      "And there's you," he said, turning his attention to the mirror.
"Good morning, Czech," he said to his reflection. "Here we are again, eh?"
He twisted a knob on the sink and water poured out of the faucet. He cupped
his hands, placed them under the flow, and then slapped them against his
face. He did this a second time, and a third, but on the fourth he stopped
his hands halfway and emptied the water into the sink. A blue scribble on
the palm of his right hand had attracted his attention, faint now after
having been through the running water several times. Czech pulled the palm
closer to his eyes, squinted, and made out the word "Necessarily" scrawled
in what seemed to be ballpoint pen. A smile formed naturally, this time, as
he mouthed the word, then said it aloud.

      "Necessarily." He winked at his reflection. "Today will be a good
day."

      Today the immortal had a date.


II


      The 208 route was silent today, save for the rattling of the
handrails as the bus explored all of Davis Street's bruises, bumps, and
irregularities. All eyes but four rested on a robed man in the back seat.
The driver's rested on the road, and robed Ripco's rested on the chocolate
bar that was currently squishing past his toothless smile. A trail of brown
spit reached from his lips to his lap, settling in a neat, repulsive
puddle. It was this puddle that caught and held Beverly Hidgegrove's
attention; it was her obvious staring technique that eventually caught
Ripco's. "Hello," he finally said to her. "Want a bite?" He pushed the
candy bar towards her, but pulled it back quickly when he realized that it
was still partially attached to his lower lip. Beverly, aghast at the
prospect of actually conversing with this man, giggled nervously and turned
her attention towards her own shoes.

      Shoes, she thought. Just look at your shoes, Beverly. Beverly was
seventy-seven years old, but something about the way she giggled suggested
a person much younger, as if she were a nine-year-old playing dress-up in
her grandmother's closet. On the seat, to her right, serving as the only
barrier between Ripco and herself, was a plastic bag filled with toilet
paper rolls. On her left sat a young man in a floppy brown hat and a Winnie
the Pooh sweater. The young man quickly hid his head behind a comic book,
conveying to Beverly that he offered absolutely no protection. Beverly's
hair was silver, and today it was tied up in a bun. The bun, she thought. I
knew the bun would make me look friendly. Damn the bun. In her many years
of bus riding she had made many casual acquaintances. In fact, she was
usually the one to initiate conversations with complete strangers. She
considered shyness a great weakness in others. But Ripco was different, she
told herself. Robed drooling men don't count. She had never seen anyone
quite like him, and had absolutely no intention of being dragged into
conversation. A small legion of imaginary lawyers argued her case to the
twelve stubborn jurors of her conscience.

      "He's drooling," they said. "He's sweaty, sticky, scary, and a host
of other s-words."

      "But he's another human being," returned the defense.

      "Hardly," screamed a dozen prosecutors.

      "He's lonely too," said a young public defender.

      "Can't you see why?" hollered a slick, handsome prosecutor.

      "He could be dangerous," said the Judge. "Case closed." The jury
returned a guilty nod, and in her mind she was absolved. She would not
budge. Shoes, shoes, shoes.

      Ripco, on the other hand, lacked not only a conscience, but any
semblance of tact. He had gone about three months without having a good
discussion, and saw Beverly's staring as a welcome invitation to incite
one. It wasn't her input he was after, anyway. He'd be just as happy
talking to a brick wall.

      Ripco's face, though beardless, sported what seemed to be a permanent
shadow that made it difficult to distinguish where the dark brown hood
ended and Ripco began. What he lacked in tact he also lacked in teeth,
leaving it hard for him to keep the chocolate bar in any identifiable
condition. It quickly deteriorated into the gooey, drool covered blob that
Beverly had originally refused. He gracefully wiped the side of his face
with the hood of his robe, separating the puddle in his lap from his pointy
chin.

      "Bees," he said, "are interesting. They experience life in a way that
humans can't begin to fathom."

      Beverly let out a non-committed, "Oh," emphasizing the part of the
word she felt most embodied her indifference. She smiled, giggled again,
and returned to the safety of her quiet little courtroom in the clouds.

      "I'd like to plead my own case," she said, approaching the jurors.
"I'm not anti-social. I talk to the bag boy and the cashier, for goodness
sake. I always invite the pizza delivery boy in for a slice, and I never
leave a movie without thanking the ushers. Just give me today, please? Let
me be anti-social right now. Now if never again."

      After making various other pacts with God, including a strictly
regimented church schedule, and three church dinners hosted in her house,
she turned to Ripco, expecting him to have been sucked up into the heavens.
The eye contact she inadvertently made thrust her stomach to her stocking
covered knees. Her forehead started to sweat. Beverly pursed her lips.

      "I'm Ripco," he said, after a small pause.

      "Beverly," she responded, completely by reflex. Damn. She cursed to
herself. Damn, damn, damn. Shoes, shoes, shoes.

      "Anyway, bees, as I was saying, get to experience things that humans
never do."

      "Flight?" she asked, hoping to end the conversation with a right
answer.

      "What?" Ripco was surprised that she had offered a response. Few
people ever did. He was quite content to hold a one sided conversation,
almost preferred to, in fact. He was used to philosophizing to unplugged
televisions in empty motel rooms, or non-responsive derelicts in alleys
late at night, even to street lamps when an idea struck him. Now he was
bound to holding up his end of the conversation. "What?" he asked again.

      "Flight. Is it flight? The bees. They fly. People don't. It's
flight." She spoke intensely at first, quickly lowering her voice as she
became aware that an entire busload of people was not only all eyes, but
ears as well. The audacity she displayed in challenging him was even enough
potential entertainment to draw the young man away from his comic book. He
eyed Ripco and Beverly inquisitively from behind his cartoons.

      "Oh. Flight. Well yes, but that's not what I was."

      "Honey? Pollinating? That sort of thing?"

      "No, look. Stop guessing." Ripco pushed the last of the chocolate bar
past his lips and wiped his face clean once more. He pushed the hood back
onto his shoulders, letting his long, thick, greasy black hair suck up the
light around them. He gave his gums a quick going over with his fingers,
separating his lips from the long thin strand of drool that had resumed
feeding the puddle in his lap. He let a few minutes of silence go by, and
then turned back to Beverly. "If you're wondering why I've stopped talking,
it's because I'm very angry."

      Any hope Beverly had fostered during his short silence was flushed
down the toilet. She was now only more convinced that he was a danger to
her. "I'm sorry that you're angry, Ripco. Maybe if you can just ignore me,
you'll feel a little better." It was a long shot, she thought, but one
worth taking.

      "I don't want to ignore you. I want you to understand my point about
the bees, and what they have that makes their life experience different
from that of a human."

      "I was only trying to."

      "It's a very tangible, much larger sentient race of beings stomping
around their feeding ground." He let his words cake in their own arrogance,
and searched Beverly's face for any sign of the awe he was certain she must
be feeling.

      "What?" Beverly pulled her purse tighter into her lap and eyed the
toilet paper that kept them apart. She had read an article once, about
using common household items as deadly weapons. Toilet paper wasn't one of
them. This wasn't going to be a quick conversation, either. He had used
words like tangible and sentient.

      "Humans. Bees get to experience humans from a whole separate reality.
They have to keep an eye out for this creature that thinks and is much
larger."

      "What?" She looked around the bus for some sort of assistance, but
the entire bus suddenly seemed to be too fascinated with their own footwear
to offer any distraction. The young man in the floppy hat was mentally
mummifying passengers with Beverly's toilet paper, indulging in a secret
fantasy which also involved all of the members of KISS.

      "Humans don't have that," continued Ripco. "Humans can go prancing
around doing whatever they please without having to worry about getting
swatted to the ground for prancing in the wrong place at the wrong time by
a giant angry picnicker."

      "So you're saying that bees are different from humans because they
fear a higher power? That's ridiculous. Humans are just as God-fearing as
any bee if not more so. Well I am, at least." She had made a point. Not
just any point, but a point in the name of God. Granted, it was a God that
had denied her most recent prayers, but one who had also given her a few
Sundays off and freed her from the dinner promise as well. Beverly looked
towards the sky and winked, oblivious to the hemorrhoid cream advertisement
that hung between her and her target. She was stuck now in conversation.
Twelve jurors shrugged. The prosecution hung its head. The judge sucked his
thumb.

      "No, not just a higher power, but a very present, very concrete
higher being. A completely arbitrary and unusual higher being. Humans
aren't gods. Bees fear the higher power of a non-god." Ripco was
struggling. It had been so long since he had to dumb down his language so
one of them could understand it. He knew what he was trying to say. Why did
he have to spell it out to her?

      "Arbitrary and unusual?"

      "Well, from the bee's point of view," Ripco snapped, "humans are very
arbitrary and very unusual. I'd even say they're unreasonable at times."
Ripco saw he was losing Beverly, so he took a deep breath and said calmly,

      "I'm sorry. Humans don't have a concrete, tangible higher being. They
just have invisible airy gods whose existence is eternally in dispute.
There aren't any hands swooping down out of nowhere swatting humans out of
the way."

      "In your social circle, maybe. In my circle of friends, nobody
questions the existence of God. And he's hardly an invisible. As for hands
swooping down out of nowhere, I've had three friends swatted away to the
afterlife in the last two months, so I'd appreciate it if you'd keep your
metaphors to yourself." Beverly smiled an angry smile. She fidgeted with
the clasp of her purse, and considered once more the fatal nature of toilet
paper.

      "Ah. Well, there's still one part I'd like you to hear, actually."
Ripco's face struck a worried pose as he considered having to cut this
conversation just as it was getting interesting.

      "No, I'm sorry, this is where I get off." Beverly stood up before the
bus completely stopped, and her small body lurched forward as the brakes
locked. Her arms searched for Ripco's knees to keep her from hitting the
floor. "Goodbye." Beverly brushed herself off and marched off the bus.
Ripco pulled his hood back over his ears and slouched.

      "The thing is," Ripco said to no one in particular as the bus began
to move, "that that humans are afraid of the bees, not the other way
around. I really wish she'd have stayed to hear that part. That's the part
I wanted her to know."

      Fifteen minutes later, Ripco stepped off the 208 and onto the curb of
the Davis CTA station. He tugged at a section of his robe that had gotten
caught between his legs in the back. "I hate those," he said. Ripco's long
black hair, now completely saturated with sweat, hung low over his eyes,
and he parted a few strands to give himself a clearer view of Evanston.

      It was a busy town, at least it was on that Sunday morning. The bus
station was across the street from a large parking garage, which was
covered with advertisements and signs for "The World's Largest Garage
Sale." People poured in and out of the garage, and the sidewalks were
covered with tables and vendors that couldn't fit into the already packed
garage. A young boy was hitting a younger boy in the head with a plastic
hammer over and over again. A large redheaded woman walked quickly past
Ripco with her small redheaded daughter in tow. From where Ripco stood, the
entire town smelled like spinach pizza. A Woolworth's was next to the
garage, above which was strung a row of windows.

      "Apartments. Those would be apartments." Ripco sat down on a bench
and studied the windows. "These are what I came to see," he said aloud.
There was a sign in one of the windows, the one furthest to Ripco's right.
It said in big black letters, "PALMS READ, FORTUNES TOLD, Necessarily
Williams, Psychic." Ripco smiled. The idea of a human psychic was
laughable, he thought. Even he, with his immortality, had been forced to
refuse the idea of such a thing as readable destiny, or fate. "These
humans," he laughed, "and their silly egos." He sat down on a bench
directly across from the Woolworth's and closed his eyes. He had come to
Evanston on a very definite mission, but found the promise of this morning
nap too exciting to pass up. For Ripco, sleep was an escape from his
immortality, an escape from a mind that sometimes tortured him with darker
thoughts. He was an existentialist, but his immortality had forced him to
rewrite its doctrines a little. The human existentialist's beliefs that
true freedom came only through the acknowledgement of death didn't apply.
Instead, Ripco found liberation through the acknowledgement of his life's
infinite span. He had developed a completely selfish lifestyle, and at no
point would he suffer himself to the restrictions of any society, wherever,
whenever it might be.

      He shuffled on the bench, readjusted his robe, and focused on a
pigeon that was hobbling around. "I'm Ripco," he said, savoring the moments
of non-response that followed. "I'd like to tell you about the bees. They
get to experience life in a way that humans can't even fathom, see." The
pigeon bobbed its head, spun around, and flapped off to a patch of bread
crumbs across the street. Ripco sneered, rested his head once more, and
soaked in the city's symphony.

      When his mind quieted, and he slept, he dreamt of a single bee, and
the mountain of Gods it had disturbed.


III


      His wounds completely dressed, Czech went into the living room to sit
in his favorite brown chair and watch people get off and on the busses at
the station across the street. This was his favorite way to pass time.
Finding an agreeable way to pass time was important in the immortal's case,
so every time he established a new residence, finding such an occupation
was his first priority, more important, even, than finding a job. Czech
never stayed in the same town for more than thirty years. This was, of
course, for the obvious reason of disguising his immortality, and also to
fend off any onset of boredom. He had moved to Evanston, Illinois from a
small town in Ohio called Copper where he had lived for twenty-five years.
His time in Copper was spent writing opinion columns for its small journal
and helping to run a small general store. When his business partner died of
old age, Czech packed up his few things, sold the store, and left town. He
arrived in Evanston accidentally, having hitchhiked most of the way, and
bussed the last stretch from Chicago. When he stepped off the bus on his
arrival, the first thing he saw was the "For Rent" sign on the apartments
across the street, and within the hour he had a place to stay. Two weeks
after his arrival, he found a data entry job for an Internet Service
Provider in the city, a bus pass and a fifty-cent transfer from his
apartment furnished apartment. His job was in a small office, and try
though it might to suck the life out of him, Czech could generally keep a
decent pleasant demeanor throughout the long day.

      Czech's apartment was sparsely decorated, and its brown shag
carpeting made it seem perpetually dark. His living room contained a worn
brown couch that sagged in the middle, each cushion covered with a thick
plastic dust cover. The previous tenant had left a low brown coffee table
and the large brown recliner, which Czech turned towards the large bay
window, deeming it fate, and immediately sunk into its worn cushions,
establishing a pattern that would work its way into his daily routine. It
was here that Czech sat now, studying a man in a thick brown robe who had
settled for a nap on a bench across the street. The man looked vaguely
familiar. Vague took on a whole new meaning in Czech's mind. Thousands of
years of life, perhaps even millions, had given birth to a whole new array
of emotions, completely foreign to any mortal creature. Just as the ant,
with its one-day life span, could feel no sense of "nostalgia," any
ordinary creature could not possibly fathom the degree of absolute
vagueness that overcame the immortal upon seeing this robed man.

      "Shrug," he said aloud, and stood up from the chair. It was time to
pick out an outfit. It had been years since he had a date, at least four
hundred, and he wasn't quite sure how to properly dress himself for the
occasion. Various style changes had happened since the fourteen hundreds,
try as he might to keep up with every one, a few managed to slip past him
over the years. After flipping through various items, he settled on a pair
of tan slacks, a white button-down shirt, and a brown belt with a brass
buckle that said "Alfred's Steak and Barbecue" on it. He cringed at how
conservative the outfit made him look, especially considering the
avant-garde style of his date, so he quickly slipped on a bright red
sleeveless cardigan. He pondered his reflection. "I look like a giant stop
sign," he said, and just as quick as the sweater was on, it was lying on
his bedroom floor. "Too hot for those, anyway," he said. On most occasions,
Czech had no desire to dress in any manner other than conservatively. He
preferred to pass by unnoticed, to blend in when he walked the streets of
Evanston. He attracted enough attention with his large figure, the last
thing he needed was a bawdy wardrobe. He modeled the outfit one last time
for the bedroom mirror, and carelessly winked at his reflection. It was
noon. He picked up the phone and called his neighbor.

      "Necessarily Williams, psychic," she answered.

      "Necessarily. It's Czech. Would you like to walk down to Roxy's with
me?" Roxy's was a small diner locally famous for its Philly cheese steaks.
In the years that they had lived in Evanston, neither of them had tried
one, so they decided to jump that hurdle together.

      "Actually, I'm in the middle of a reading. Tell ya what. Why don't
you hop on over there now and get us a table? I'll be over there once I
finish up."

      "Sounds good." Czech placed the phone back on the receiver, laughing
at the image Necessarily placed in his head, Czech hopping through the
streets of Evanston. He compulsively checked the mirror twenty times before
he could leave the apartment, the nervous feeling in his stomach building
up considerably as his lunch date drew nearer. He straightened his shirt
with his hands, double checked each singular button, mussed his hair to
give it that "unintentional" look, and practiced his winning smile. After
much deliberation, his rumbling stomach squelched all opposition and he was
out the door.

      The immortal suffered the long, thin staircase of his apartment
complex and quite suddenly emerged onto the steaming streets of Evanston.
"Sweltering," he said aloud, as sweat produced two transparent spots around
the armpits of his white shirt. He rounded the corner onto Church Street
and took his first nervous steps back into the world of dating and romance.

      As Czech disappeared behind the red bricks, Ripco stood up from his
bench and walked across the street. He had woken up from his morning nap
moments earlier to the sound of screaming, only to find that he had removed
more of his robe than was decent in his sleep. He took a wadded receipt
from his pocket, and studied the words that had been inked onto its back.
"Czech Biter, 227 Davis, Apartment Three." He rolled it back up, slipped it
into his pocket, and sat on the pavement to await Czech's return. "Minutes
earlier, and I would have caught him," he mumbled. "Oh well. I'll wait."
Two small boys found their way to the odd looking stranger and stood
staring at his robed form for a few minutes.

      "Hi," said one of them. He was eight years old. His ten-year-old
companion quickly nudged him.

      "Hi," said Ripco. They remained at his side, staring, for three more
minutes before Ripco decided he had better break the awkward silence. "I'm
Ripco." The two boys stood silently. The eight-year-old wore a wry smile.
"Well, so much for being friendly. Have you ever noticed man's obsession
with the smell of shit? I find it odd, myself. We always recognize that
smell. We'll take one whiff and say `That's shit.' And then we'll take
another one a minute later. `I still smell shit.' We all say we hate it,
but I think deep down we have a fascination with it that transcends any
social boundary. What does that fascination suggest to you? Do you think
maybe man was spawned from shit? Maybe shit is the primal ooze from which
we sprouted millions of years ago. Or mayhap." Before he could finish his
mayhap, the eight-year-old frowned, turned around, and walked away. The
ten-year-old waited only long enough to spit on Ripco's hood before walking
away as well. Ripco used the spit as fuel and continued his tirade.

      "I think it suggests that society's boundaries are unnatural, and
they don't allow for instinctive inclinations. No, they don't allow for
those at all. They only make them seem dirty." He talked louder and louder
as they walked farther and farther away. "I'm not bound by such structure,
though. I appreciate the smell of shit and I'm not afraid to shout it in
the streets." Ripco stood up, raised his hands in the air, and stretched
the limits of his voice, hollering, "I find the smell of shit fascinating!"
Traffic seemed to stop, all heads seemed to turn, and Ripco sustained a
mild bruise to his forehead from a stone that the ten-year-old had decided
to hurl in his direction.

      "Better to wait inside then, eh?" Ripco put his hand to his forehead,
opened the door, and climbed the stairs to the apartments above. As he
walked down the hallway towards apartment three, the door to apartment two
swung open, knocking Ripco once more on his newly formed bruise.

      "Shit!" hollered Ripco. "Not a good day."

      The sight of a bleeding, screaming Ripco gave Necessarily a small
sensory overload as she bounded into the hallway from behind the culprit
door. "Oh my God, I'm sorry." Necessarily Williams was a large black woman
with tightly beaded braids in her hair. She was in her early thirties, and
seemed to perpetually bounce with a contagious youthful energy. There was a
definite sense of excitement in her step. She hadn't had a date since her
divorce, and though her neighbor seemed an unlikely candidate, Necessarily
was definitely charmed. She had on a long dress, covered with moons, stars,
and runes, and had donned a pair of high heels for the first time in years.
Any joyful anticipation she may have had on her way out the door was
brought quickly to a halt as she bumped into Ripco. Her mind stuttered as
her eyes took in Ripco's appearance, but she quickly regained her senses
and excused herself to the stairwell. "I'm sorry, I'm in a rush. If you're
here for a reading, come back around two. You're not here for a reading,
are you?" Please don't let him be here for a reading, she thought. She
fished nervously through her large purse through a maze of lipsticks, loose
change, and mace, pulled out a tissue, and handed it to Ripco. "Here, put
this on your head. Hold it there tight until it stops bleeding." Ripco
smiled as he watched her notice that the bleeding had already slowed to an
insignificant dribble, and the cut had almost vanished.

      "The children in your town," he said, drawing her attention away from
the healing bruise, "are animals. They respect nobody, they're thankless
little fools. I think I like them."

      Necessarily furled her brow, failing to see how Ripco jumped from one
subject to another. She smiled politely, privately confused at Ripco's lack
of concern for his forehead, which had turned from a gushing fountain of
scarlet into a gentle scratch in only seconds. "Come back around two for a
reading," she muttered before hurriedly stumbling down the steps.

      "I'm not here for a reading," Ripco hollered after her, but she was
already out of earshot.

      Czech didn't mind waiting for Necessarily to arrive. If he had
acquired one admirable trait in his hundreds, thousands, millions of years,
it had been an unsurpassable degree of patience. He stared at his menu,
wondering how they came up with the name Roxy. "Perhaps," he said aloud,
"it is the owner's name."

      "Can I get you something?"

      "Hmm?" Czech rejoined the living world, knocked from daydream by the
tin, grating voice of his waitress.

      "Can I take your order?" She wore blue jeans, a T-shirt, a green
apron, and a nametag that said `Becki', its "I" dotted with a red heart.
She smiled as if each exposed tooth guaranteed a bonus in her tip, and
stuck her breasts out so far in front of her that Czech was sure she was
offering them as the special.

      "Actually, no. I'm meeting someone, Becki." Becki glanced at Czech's
enormous body, possibly musing about the appearance of his date. Any
expectation she may have had was well met as Necessarily came running
through the door with the grace of a swan. A large-headed, bloated swan.
Becki put on a smug grin as Necessarily stumbled towards the table, then
looked down at her own high heels with pride. "Ah, and here she is now.
Necessarily!" Czech waved his hand to catch her attention. "Give us a few
minutes." The waitress, her breasts, and her red high heels smiled back to
the kitchen, and Necessarily joined Czech at the table.

      "I'm sorry I'm late. My eleven o'clock appointment came in late, and
he wanted me to toss together a tarot reading at the last minute too. I
wasn't built for heels, I think I tripped here all the way from the
apartment. On the way out the door, I drew blood from a magical monk. I
think. Heh. It's been one of those days."

      "Not a problem. If time were of import to me, I wouldn't have waited
three years to ask you out for lunch." They picked up their menus, and
thumbed through the pages, stealing candid glances at each other from
behind them. Czech had seen her hundreds of times before. They were
neighbors. They had shared countless hellos, hundreds of nods, thousands of
smiles, but it seemed that today every twitch, blink, and word of
Necessarily's was a completely foreign event, one caked with magic and
intrigue.

      Necessarily was on much the same page. She never imagined Czech would
ask her out on a lunch date. Ever since he moved into the apartment next
door to hers he had been somewhat of an anomaly, saying very little. She
always assumed he was just painfully shy, and for the most part she was
right. One day, while she was carrying groceries into her apartment from
the hallway, he just appeared from his apartment and asked her out to
lunch. So far, she was having a pretty decent time.

      "Czech Biter. Such an interesting name. What is it? Czechoslovakian?"

      "You're the psychic, you tell me."

      "No, seriously. I'd guess you look Russian, but it's such an odd
name. You must be mixed. You've got traits from all over the place."

      "Well. Your guess is as good as mine, to be honest."

      "Ah. Just a case of odd parents?"

      "Probably." Becki took their orders, having turned up the volume on
her feminine wiles in an attempt to intimidate Necessarily, and returned
shortly with two Philly cheese steaks, no mushrooms. Necessarily excused
herself to the bathroom, and Czech sat and stared at his plate. The
immortal differed from the mortal man only in his immortality. His memory
suffered the same rate of decay as any other man's. He was embarrassed that
he didn't know his name's origin, but even his own origin, or the origin of
his immortality, was a mystery. He could remember important events, small
pieces of life from long ago, but most of his mind was taken up with the
events in the past fifty or sixty years. He remembered that date in the
sixteenth century. He remembered waking up to find his first blisters a
week later. The rest of his past was pretty blurry. Were there more like
him? He had vague recollections of dealings with another, but every time he
approached a memory it would slip away in his enormous mind. "Perhaps I'm
God," he mused aloud. "God is an overweight, senile fool."

      "I'm a psychic, not a Catholic priest. If you wanna make a
confession, we can stop off at church on the way home." Necessarily slid
back into her chair, her face flushed from the heat.

      "Oh. Sorry. I lost myself for a minute. My mind searches, wanders
sometimes. I think I'm going senile."

      "Nah, you're too young for senility. There's nothing wrong with
searching. When I was a kid," Necessarily continued, "my mother used to
drive me around Evanston on weekends. Whenever we'd pass that church on
Davis Street I'd ask her if it was a castle, and she eventually taught me
that if it had that big stone T shaped thing on top that it was a church.
So until I knew better, I kept my eye out for churches without crosses on
the roofs. When I was about twelve, I realized that we booted the Monarchy
in the eighteenth century, and I finally stopped searching."

      "I remember that," said Czech, laughing.

      "Well my point is," she said, "that people tend to hang on to old
beliefs simply because they forget to question them. By eight I knew there
weren't royal castles in this country, but I'd look for them anyway. It
wasn't until four years later that I made a connection. So let your mind
search, Czech. That's what I tell my clients. Let the child in you take
control once in a while."

      "The child in me? The child in me is a long way off."

      "Tell me more about yourself, Czech. We've been neighbors three
years, but I barely know you. Do you work?"

      "Yes. I work for an Internet service provider here in Evanston."

      "Sounds interesting," said Necessarily

      "Not particularly. They've taught me how to set up accounts. I bus to
work, sit in a desk, answer the telephone, and set up accounts all day. I
feel like a robot. I have a hard time working in a small office
environment. Office work's nuances can become predictable and annoying.
Before I moved to Evanston I wrote an opinion column for a small newspaper.
That was a great job. I wrote something different every week."

      "Oh, you're a writer?"

      "When I remember to be one. The office work is fine. Definitely not
quite as interesting as your line of work, but it pays enough to keep me
living like I am. It keeps me fed. It pays the rent."

      "Well hey," said Necessarily, "whatever keeps you fed, right? How
about goals? Any of those? Any dreams?"

      Czech closed his eyes. Goals. Dreams. So foreign to the immortal. He
had always figured that he would accomplish everything eventually, there
was no need to rush anything. He was immortal. He would reach `infinity'.
Eventually, he would exist as all things, and accomplish all things.
Somewhere, in the back of his mind, though, he felt a tugging. A goal.
There was one.

      "I have one goal," he said, before he could stop himself.

      "What's that?"

      "I'm not quite sure. Maybe I spoke too soon. I just know I've got
one. Heh. That sounds pretty dumb."

      "Well, not really," replied Necessarily. "You do seem more like the
hiding type than the searching type, if you'll excuse my frankness. I've
always had the sense that you were hiding from something. I picked that up
the first time I met you. You should let me read your cards one night. I'd
give ya a free reading. Here, give me your palm." She reached for his arm
and tugged it across the table, palm up. "Wow, this is one heck of a
lifeline, Czech. It goes all the way up your."

      Czech pulled his arm back across the table, knocking his drink over
on the table cloth. Chips of ice skittered across the tile floor, and
Becki's smile turned into stone. She quickly thrust her breasts inward and
stamped into the kitchen to get a towel.

      "What are you hiding from, Czech?"

      Hiding. The tugging grew stronger, and Czech put his hand to his
head.

      "Hiding. A man my size would have a hard time hiding from anything
with eyes, don't you think?" Czech let out a loud laugh seemed to shake the
walls of the tiny restaurant. "How about you? Any goals? Dreams?"

      "Nah, I get by on other people's dreams. Hell, I make a living out of
it. Suits me fine."

      "Sounds like a plan. So, do you date much?" Czech gazed deeply into
Necessarily's eyes.

      "Nah. I gave up on that after my divorce. This is my first real leap
back into the dating world. How about you?"

      "The last date I had was in the sixteenth century. In England. I got
a venereal disease."

      "Ouch."

      Two hours and two Philly cheese steaks later, one psychic and one
immortal emerged from Roxy's to the streets of Evanston, linked by the
hand.

      "So, think they were worth all the acclaim?" asked Necessarily.

      "What, the sandwiches? Nah. I've had better. The company was
noteworthy, however."

      "Come on, big boy. Are ya going to walk me home?"

      "Gee, I'm not sure. It is an entire ten feet out of my way, and I am
so pressed for time. The doctor says I've gotta take it easy, with all this
weight, you know." The doctor. Czech loved going to the doctor. He got a
real kick out of the doctor's frantic concern for his life. Czech had a
physical every two years, mostly to provide some sort of entertainment and
to keep filling his prescription for salve, but partially to help him
maintain the guise of a normal disease fearing mortal.

      "This may sound rude, and it might sound a little stupid, but have
you always been a big guy?"

      "I don't think so. I do remember deciding to `let myself go' after
that date in the fifteen hundreds. After this afternoon's, perhaps it's
time for me to shape up again. I've got time. Why do you ask?"

      "Because you act like you just came into your weight. I can tell when
a person's been fat their whole life. I've been overweight since I was a
baby. But you, you're different. It's a hard thing to explain. Your face
looks so tight. It's just something I pick up on, one of those crazy
psychic things I can do."

      "Well, that's your line of work, I guess." Czech laughed and gave
Necessarily's hand a playful squeeze. Across the road, through the large
bay windows of a Barnes and Noble's, faces stared at the odd couple
traipsing down the road. Czech's shirt was almost completely transparent
with sweat, and Necessarily wore a wild smile. They disappeared into the
stairwell of the apartment complex and stood close in the hallway.

      "Would you like to come in for a while? I make a mean cup of coffee."
Czech moved awkwardly close to Necessarily, and searched her eyes for an
answer.

      "It's tempting, but I have a reading in a few minutes. Stop by later
tonight, though, and maybe I'll make you one myself." Necessarily flipped
through her braids and unlocked her door. "Thanks for lunch. Next time
let's make it a dinner, eh?"

      Czech fumbled through his pocket for his keys, but as his hand fell
on the knob he noticed the door was slightly ajar. He slowly pushed it open
and walked in. The light was already on, though nothing seemed out of
place. "I must have left in a hurry," Czech said aloud. "I really am
getting senile."

      He unbuttoned his shirt and peeled it off of his body, flung it on to
the floor, and turned the air conditioning down a few degrees. Czech
reached into his pocket and blindly hurled his keys across the living room
towards the dish where he normally kept them, their path interrupted by an
unplanned collision with a bruised forehead that had carelessly gotten in
the way.

      "Shit!" hollered Ripco, as the cut on his forehead started bleeding
for a third time. "Shit, shit shit!" Czech's stomach dropped as his eyes
met Ripco's.

      "Ripco?" he said.

      "Czech," replied Ripco, dabbing his brown robe to the fresh blood on
his forehead. "The stupidity of others will be the death of me."


IV


"I thought so. I knew I recognized you. I watched you napping on a bench
from my window." Czech flipped the living room light off. "I like the
lights off in the day, if you don't mind. It saves on electricity."

      "Czech, my old man, you've really got to start writing things down.
It makes this all so much easier." Ripco dabbed his forehead with the side
of his robe, trying to catch the last of the blood.

      "I've been hiding. That's what I've been doing. Hiding from you. I
remember now. It's been one hundred years, hasn't it?"

      "Not quite. More like eighty. And I must admit you've been doing a
nice job of it. You're all out of shape, I hardly would have recognized
you."

      "How did you find me?" Czech asked.

      "You got careless. You're listed in the phone book, Czech. I called
one of those people search services that advertises on daytime talk shows
and they found you in an hour. You're the only Biter in Evanston, did you
know that?"

      "It's my memory," Czech said. He slapped himself in the forehead. "I
forgot what I was doing. I came to Evanston three years ago knowing only
that I was an immortal, and that I needed a change of scene. I had
forgotten there was another. I had forgotten about you and our stupid
game."

      "Well," said Ripco, "you need to start writing things down. I can't
stress that enough. Though our minds are obviously superior, our memories
are no better than theirs, you know. We're hardly super heroes, Czech. You
remember what happens now, though, I trust?"

      "Yes, it comes back to me all too fast. Just one look at your sour
face hits my senses like a brick wall." Czech sighed. He eased his heavy
body on to the ground in a kneeling position about a yard from Ripco's
feet. "Go ahead, Ripco. I've been found."

      Ripco inched closer to Czech's massive body. He lifted his right arm
and held it up in the air. Slowly, carefully, he moved his arm down until
his right hand was an inch from Czech's shoulder. With a rushed swoop, he
patted his hand down until it met Czech's bare flesh.

      "Tag," he said. "You're it." Ripco stood back and gave Czech room to
stand.

      "That's it? Isn't there some silly chant that's supposed to go along
with it? That's all you're going to say?"

      "No, Czech, the silly chants went out years ago. They were just for
show."

      "Well I don't remember you ever letting me off the hook without some
snide victory speech, Ripco. You're softening. This was not as humiliating
as I remember it." Czech lifted himself to his feet.

      "Well. I went easy on you this time. I no longer see the need for
overblown ceremonies. They're a waste of time. And I'm only chasing you
because you found me last time. Hardly worth gloating over." Ripco sat
cross-legged on the floor and pulled another chocolate bar out of a pouch
on the side of his robe. "I get ten years to hide, right?"

      "I'll give you fifty. I want to stick around here for a while, I've
got vested interests in the place."

      "Hmm?" Ripco began gnawing the candy bar with his gums, letting bits
of it dissolve past his lips.

      "I went on a date. This afternoon. I'd like to stick around and see
what becomes of that. I'm not ready to go running around the planet looking
for you again. Why don't you stick around for a while? It would be nice to
have you around. It's not very healthy to keep forgetting that you exist. I
can get you some clothing, and possibly a job." The word `date' hit Ripco
like a wrecking ball. He rolled his eyes at Czech. "Slow down. A date? You
need fifty years to see what becomes of a date? We don't date mortals,
Czech. It only causes heartbreak, for us and for them. They get old and
die, we don't. It won't take you fifty years to learn that. I get ten."

      "Well, it isn't as if there was a large selection of immortals to
choose from, is there? Look at yourself, Ripco. No offense, but you hardly
fit the bill. And I didn't say I've fallen in love or anything, I just had
a date. A good date. And I'm giving you fifty years whether you like it or
not. A guy gets lonely. You of all people should understand that." Czech
sank into his easy chair. "Are you going to want a bandage for that? It's
really gushing." Just as Czech uttered those last words the wound sealed
itself and vanished behind a wall of fresh skin. How come that never
happens with my herpes? he thought.

      Ripco shrugged. "There are things besides dating that can extinguish
the lonely bug. Dating and relationships. They're just sex with a lot of
red tape. Another ridiculous invention of the modern age. And you don't
want me to stick around, Czech. You hate me. You keep forgetting that."

      "No, I don't think I hate you. We've got our differences, that's for
sure. I think with my mind, you think with your genitals. I speak out of
reason, you speak out of your ass. I think you hate love so much because
you refuse to accept it. I'm not as cold a person as you are."

      "I hate love? And if I told you that I was in love right now?"

      "I would laugh. You're too obsessed with the smell of your own shit
to let yourself love another." Ripco's face turned indignant, and he hurled
the remains of his chocolate across the room.

      "My obsession with shit is no stronger than any other man's. It's my
acknowledgement of a darker side to the soul that's unique. I've lived too
long to let my mind be shaped by any society. The fact that I appreciate
things that you and everyone else consider dark or disgusting just
represents your own attachment to the constructs of your social group."

      "Quit preaching to me, Ripco. And quit grouping me with the mortals."
Czech stood, crossed over to Ripco, and lorded over his thin, wiry body.
"You forget that I've lived just as long as you have. You're as socialized
as I am, you're blind if you don't see that."

      "Czech you're a fool. You want to be one of them so badly. You're
constantly falling in love, constantly making yourself fit into their
societies, getting jobs, making friends, subscribing to magazines. You keep
making the same stupid mistakes, and I always have to come swooping in to
bail you out. We've got something over them, Czech. We've got perspective.
A perspective that only an eternity of witnessing their folly can give you.
Quit ignoring that."

      "I'm starting to remember why we're playing this game. You're right,
I hate you. You can stay here tonight, but tomorrow you go and hide. I'm
giving you fifty years. I'd like to give you a thousand, to be honest, but
I'll play the game. Just hide well, eh?"

      The two immortals spent the rest of the day avoiding each other.
Czech spent it high atop the city in his recliner, sorting out all of the
new memories that Ripco brought with him, watching people get on and off
the busses. Ripco, for lack of anything better to do, wandered the streets
in search of mental stimulation. He stopped in a coffee shop called "Cafe
Nation" and found a seat on a torn-up sofa near the bar. Slowly a cushion
of empty space began to form around him as the regular patrons became
increasingly repulsed by the way he freely pandered his morbid
philosophies. When the owner started up the open mic poetry reading, he was
first in line, and he delivered an arrogant free-form scatological
extravaganza amidst groans and hisses.

      "And you call yourself beats?" he concluded. "A cynic can't even find
himself at home in a coffee shop anymore?" He pulled his hood tight over
his face and pushed his way towards the exit. "Feh."

      When Ripco awoke on Czech's couch Monday afternoon, Czech had already
left for work. He pulled a stalk of celery from the refrigerator and gnawed
on its stem, his less-than-effective version of brushing his teeth. There
was a note addressed to him on the counter that read:

      Ripco: I'm sorry that we argued. You don't have to leave in the
morning. I admit that at times, when I remember you exist, I get lonely for
your company. There is some benefit to the company of another immortal, as
stubborn and grating as he may be. Meet me for lunch today at two o'clock.
There's a pizza place on the corner of Benson and Church called Gigio's.
The letter gave directions from Czech's apartment. Ripco folded it up
neatly and placed it in the pouch tied to his robe. He glanced at the clock
on Czech's microwave, and saw that it was already half past one. The large
amount of caffeine he had ingested the night before had not only ruined his
sleep, but was also tearing apart his stomach early this morning. The
celery he chewed did little to settle it, and he had exhausted his supply
of candy bars. "Gigio's it is," he said allowed, and his stomach agreed. He
straightened his robe, which had become quite wrinkled from a night's sleep
on the plastic covered couch, and exited the apartment to find that the air
was as hot and dry as the day before.

      "Hello again," said a voice, as a fragile hand tapped Ripco on the
shoulder. "Destiny keeps bringing us together, I guess. I was waiting at
the bus stop and I saw you coming out of those apartments, so I figured I
had better approach you before you approached me. I'm sorry if I was rude
yesterday. I'm usually very outgoing. You just didn't seem like a very safe
person."

      "Beverly!" he said, turning around. "And I look safe to you now?"

      "Well, the absence of drool and chocolate does a lot. You're
harmless, I can tell."

      Ripco smiled. "I was hoping I'd find you again. We hadn't finished
our talk about the bees. You seemed so eager to get away."

      "You'll have to forgive me. I thought you were drunk, you looked like
a mess. My son and daughter-in-law have been instilling me with all sorts
of new paranoia lately. I don't want you to get the wrong idea. I'm a
people person, I really am. You're just a new kind of people. Maybe if you
worked on your eating habits. I couldn't really tell if you were eating the
chocolate or if the chocolate was eating you. I could help you with that if
you'd like." She reached out to touch the fabric on his robe, and Ripco
flinched as she rubbed it between her fingers. "My God how do you tolerate
this weather in that robe?" Beverly was carrying two shopping bags, both
from Woolworth's, and both filled with, as far as Ripco could see, more
toilet paper. She was wearing a light summer dress, yellow, and a large
pair of mirrored sunglasses. Her silver hair was down today, so Ripco saw
for the first time how it lightly danced over her shoulders while she
talked.

      "It is hot, yes, but it is no less tolerable than not-hot.
Temperature is of no import to me, Beverly. My mind is too advanced to
obsess with the world of the physical."

      "Well, you get no points for modesty. Ripco, was it?" Ripco nodded.
"You're too busy contemplating the existence of bees to look out your
window and check the weather, is that it? Let me give you a tip. In August,
it's hot. Buy some shorts."

      "Did you run out of toilet paper already?" asked Ripco, gesturing
towards the bags. Beverly smiled, embarrassed.

      "It's a compulsion of mine. A paranoia. I can't stand the idea of
running out of toilet paper. I had a very bad experience with that one
time."

      "Very bad?"

      "Terrible. I'd rather not talk about it. But there, now you know one
of my little secrets, and I just met you on the bus yesterday. Your turn.
Pull a skeleton out of your closet."

      "I have very few skeletons," said Ripco.

      "Oh really? Men who dress in dark brown hooded robes always have
secrets. That's one of the lessons I've learned in life. You must have some
little secret. Do you collect odd things? Any compulsions?"

      "Well, I'm immortal. Does that count?" Ripco pulled his hood back and
squinted at Beverly, trying to adjust to the daylight. His stomach reminded
him of his lunch date, and he quieted it with a stern look.

      "Oh sure, that counts. I won't tell anybody, don't' worry. Now we're
friends, see?" She reached out her hand and pumped Ripco's in a delicate
manner, her hair bobbing with each shake. "So, immortal friend, what
thoughts are going through that `advanced mind' of yours today? More bees?"

      "Ah. Actually, today I'm filled with thoughts of love. It's enough to
nauseate me. A friend of mine is going to fall in love. Well, perhaps he
has already. He does that a lot. I need to convince him how bad that would
be for his health."

      "Well I'm going to have to side with your friend on this one. Love is
never a bad thing."

      "I'm surprised to hear you say that, Beverly. You're not exactly
having the best of times, lately. Your friends are dropping like flies, you
said so yourself yesterday."

      "Well, friends die, Ripco. It's nothing I'm not prepared for."

      "I would think that you of all people could see my point right now.
Loving another is only setting yourself up for pain. Always. There are no
exceptions."

      "For your friend's sake, I hope you're wrong."

      "I'm actually on my way to talk to him," Ripco replied. "I'm meeting
him at a place called Gigio's. That's just down over here, right?" He
pulled out the folded directions and showed them to Beverly.

      "Yeah, that's the way. So what are you doing after lunch? I should be
in Evanston for a while, and I'd like to talk to you some more about the
bees. The more I thought about it afterwards the more interesting it all
seemed to me.

      "You're starting to sound as persistent as me. I've been craving
philosophical conversation ever since you got off the bus. I tried finding
it at a coffee shop last night, but the kids there couldn't handle it.

      "Great. The fountain at six then?"

      "The fountain?"

      Beverly pointed to a row of square of stone benches surrounding a
fountain next to a bank down the street. "The fountain," she said. "I
haven't been able to stop thinking about those bees, Ripco. And I thought
of something that you might consider profound. There's irony in the
situation. The bees aren't the frightened ones."

      "It's man that's afraid," finished Ripco, "it's man that's afraid of
the bee." Ripco clapped his hands together. "You understand." He smiled.
"There's wisdom in old age, I knew it. We will talk at six, Beverly." Ripco
hopped up and down a few times, bowed to Beverly, and watched her walk back
across the street to the bus, her hair flipping constantly, the sun
exposing the silver in all its radiance.

      Ripco couldn't shake that last image of Beverly from his mind, her
thin fragile legs poking out from under the yellow dress, her silver hair
flapping with each gentle step. He felt like he had made a connection for
the first time in ages. Ripco's opinion of mortals had always been less
than flattering, and though he was generally cold towards all people, he
did leave a special place in his heart for those few mortals who displayed
some form of "higher" reasoning, as he put it. So it wasn't correct to say
that Ripco had no friends. Czech was his friend by default, inasmuch as
they shared company once every few hundred years. Ripco did make friends
when he could. His forceful rejection of all things social made this
difficult, but when he chose his friends, he would pursue their friendship
vigorously, and though reciprocation was often refused, a few close
friendships managed to stick. The degree of intimacy reached with these
friendships only helped to cement Ripco's cynical attitude as he slowly
learned that all good things come to an end. In fact, every welcomed
prospect of friendship was quickly met with the depressing realization
that, due to the physics of the mortal life span, its end would come too
soon. A hundred years was nothing to the immortal. Time could be
manipulated so easily through their perspective. If Ripco chose, he could
live hundreds of years having the days pass by like seconds. They could
also appreciate the awesome infinite time span of the mere second, forever
splitting its halves in half, drawing out time to its most basic unit. But
the former was more common, as the latter lent only to the torturous
boredom that mortals associate with the concept of immortality. And so
Ripco's encounter with Beverly left a bittersweet impression on his heart,
and it was this heavy heart that permeated his mind as he walked through
the door when he finally reached Gigio's.

      A little bell signaled Ripco's entrance, and he looked up to see that
Czech had already found a table and was occupied with a large meat covered
pizza. He walked up to the table, and sat in an empty wire chair without
saying a word. Czech looked up his food.

      "Hey. Thank you for coming. I was half convinced that you had fled
the city by now to hide. If you had, I wasn't sure how resolved I was to
ever seek you out."

      "The food is paid for, I assume? How could I refuse? My stomach has
been hollering for it. I ran into a woman I met on the bus. I'm meeting her
again at six tonight."

      "A woman? Have the tables turned?"

      "Hardly. She's an old woman. In her sixties."

      "Ripco, don't begin to tell me that any living woman could possibly
be too old for you."

      "I don't want to speak about it, Czech. Say what you want to say.
After I meet with Beverly tonight I'm leaving town to hide. I'll be out of
your hair, I'll leave you here to interact with these ridiculous humans,
and when they all die off you can come looking for me."

      "Well, I was just thinking that it would be nice to have you stay
with me for a while. I've been waxing philosophical lately, like you tend
to do. I want to seek out the origin of our immortality. We call each other
these names, and neither of us can remember who gave them to us. We prance
around this planet, passing time with games of tag, perhaps ignoring some
higher mission we were sent here to perform. Maybe the time for games has
past." Ripco laughed. "Czech, Czech, Czech. Always the seeker. Sometimes
you have to take things as they are. We're immortals. We are because we
are. That's pretty much the only explanation there is, understand?"

      "But how do we know, Ripco? There must have been a beginning for us.
Christ, people have only been walking around this planet for a few thousand
years or so. Where do we fit into that? We couldn't have existed as we are
before that, could we?"

      "No, and I'm sure we didn't. We're not people. We're immortals.
They're not the same." Ripco picked up a slice of pizza and began eating it
to quiet his stomach, talking while he chewed. "Look, I'm as confused as
you are. But I don't question. I know that I'm immortal. I know that you're
immortal. Get past the why stage and get into the what stage. You're mind
is still obsessing over basic truths."

      "That's blind faith. I'm not like that. I don't assume that I'll wake
up alive tomorrow. All I know is that I was alive yesterday, and I'm alive
right now, eating pizza. Granted, I've racked up a shit load of yesterdays,
but a large amount of yesterdays in no way secures a large amount of
tomorrows. In my mind, at least."

      "Shit load? I love these intermittent encounters we have, Czech. The
years do such fun things to your vernacular. It's quite an interesting
study. Shit load. I've got to use that one sometime."

      "I just think you take too many things for granted," said Czech. "I
mean, were we created for a purpose, Ripco? Was there even a creator? Maybe
we are that creator. If so, then what? Are we shirking some giant
responsibility that we don't remember we have?"

      "Yes, yes, and maybe we're just characters in a dream, right? Or
maybe the universe centers around our perceptions? Or maybe we don't exist
at all? Keep asking the questions, Czech, but don't expect to find answers
to them. You sound like an angst-ridden teen. It's time to recognize the
futility in such questions. Yes, Czech, there is a truth. But it can't be
sought out. We're a part of that truth regardless. Maybe ignorance of its
purpose is the only way we can fulfill it."

      "You're missing the point," said Czech, as he nibbled disinterestedly
at his food. "There's got to be something to be sure about."

      "I'm sure of two things," said Ripco. "I'm an immortal, that's one."

      "The second?"

      "To this day, to this very day, I have never, ever, ever been stung
by a bee."

      "Odd."

      "Both common points," continued Ripco, "of the same importance. Start
treating your immortality like you treat your mundane human activities.
Pissing. Brushing your teeth. Having hair. You've got hair on your head,
you never question that truth, do you?"

      Ripco stood up from the table, pushed his chair in, and covered his
head with his brown hood. "Do yourself a favor, Czech. Start worrying about
your common social needs. Subscribe to magazines, fall in love, have a kid.
You're only killing yourself. And you just keep on doing it. The sad thing
about your immortality is that you can never learn from your mistakes, and
you don't listen to reason when it's standing right in front of your face."

      "Brown hooded reason, Ripco? Please. The only thing reasonable about
you is your wardrobe budget."

      "I can see now that the metaphysical world is far too lofty for you
to consider. You'll give yourself too many headaches." Czech squinted and
looked away. Ripco suddenly felt sorry for confusing Czech with his empty
rhetoric. He knew more about Czech's immortality than Czech ever could. He
had watched Czech follow the same patterns hundreds of times, kept track of
his many lives, studied his very existence, and the only conclusion he
could reach was that history is bound to repeat itself. Instead of filling
the holes in Czech's memory, he kept it all to himself, convinced that the
futility in sharing information would be too depressing for even him.

      "You're lucky, you know, you really are," he said, trying to pepper
his words with the slightest hint of optimism. "You've kept your teeth.
Once you lose them, they're gone."

      "Yeah? Well try living with herpes. It's forever, you know." Czech
uttered this just as every other conversation in the restaurant seemed to
go into a lull. They all quickly resumed, now fueled by Czech's public
confession. Czech's cheeks reddened, and he bowed his head towards the
pizza.

      Ripco backed up towards the door. "Give me your fifty years. Live
this lifetime in Evanston. I wish you luck with the girl, I really do. I
hope you find happiness." As positive as his words were, his voice was
thick with cynicism. "And write it down, for God's sake. If by chance
things don't work out between the two of you, I don't want to be hiding for
an eternity because you forgot you were looking for me." Czech nodded. "And
lose some weight. You might have a little more success traipsing around the
globe if your body could handle it. Fifty years ought to be enough time to
work yourself back into the Herculean stud you used to be."

      "You always were a nag, Ripco."

      "Yes, I always was." Ripco left the restaurant, his head low.
"Futility," he said aloud. "Here we go again."

      Czech walked back to his office, and tapped away at his computer
during the remaining hours of work. Back in the hallway of his apartment
complex that night, he tapped on Necessarily's door and she let him in for
a cup of coffee. The two drank and talked for hours, and when he left there
were very few areas of his large body that weren't said goodbye to with a
kiss. When he got back to his apartment, he took a pen and paper from his
desk and scrawled a few words down. He sealed the paper in an envelope, on
which he wrote the date and the words "OPEN IN FIFTY YEARS." Czech retired
to his chair by the window for an hour, watching the people get on and off
the buses, their facing nothing more than fleeting images to be lost in a
giant memory as it lived its infinite lives. Necessarily flashed through
his mind, and every image was accompanied by a nervous feeling in his
stomach. The immortal yawned. He removed his pants and laid on his mattress
to stare at the ceiling, overcome with a strange grief that always
accompanied the initial separation from Ripco. Czech considered Ripco his
twin in all respects. Ripco seemed to know Czech's every move, to
anticipate everything he did. Czech knew there were mysteries to uncover in
Ripco's head, perhaps answers to all of the questions he perpetually asked
himself. They were two parts of one whole, Czech was sure of it.

      He would talk to Necessarily out again tomorrow. That much was
decided. He would push for another cup of coffee, another date, another
kiss. If he fell in love, he fell in love. He had been through it before,
and thought he had always been the better for it. Unlike Ripco, he didn't
feel any tinge of suffering upon every friendly encounter. Rather, he felt
a rush of optimism, the same rush that Ripco would attribute to his foolish
innocence, his reluctance to acknowledge the sorrowful lot of immortality.

      "What a grump," he said aloud. "What a cynical fool."

      Czech sighed. Sometimes, when he relaxed his mind enough, his
immortality would suddenly shift into perspective, and for a fleeting
moment everything was understood, and he was comforted. Tonight no such
moment occurred, however, and after many restless hours he succeeded at
silencing the questions in his head long enough to get some sleep.


V


For an immortal, Czech had an unnatural aversion to the subject of death.
He feared it, in fact. To Necessarily, Czech's fear seemed quite natural,
despite his adamant protestations to the contrary. She was afraid of death,
many of her clients were afraid of death, the whole living world was scared
to death of death. When Czech would wake from one of his frequent
nightmares sweating and crying, Necessarily would slip comfortably into a
maternal role, soothing and comforting him until he fell back asleep. "It's
normal, Czech. We all fear the unknown," she said one morning following a
particularly restless night. "I swear, boy, you need a mother, not a
girlfriend. You're so like a child sometimes. It's cute."

      "Necessarily, you don't understand. I shouldn't fear death. It
shouldn't be on my mind. And I'm not one of your clients, I'm your
boyfriend."

      The dreams had started the first night Necessarily slept over, and
they seemed to become more frequent as she slept over more often, both were
now nightly occurrences. Now six months after their first date, Necessarily
practically shared Czech's apartment, her own having been converted into a
larger studio which she devoted almost entirely to her work. Czech's
apartment began to take on some subtle d‚cor changes. He started buying
wall art. There were always flowers in the kitchen. His chair by the window
began collecting dust as more and more of Czech's nights were spent cuddled
up with Necessarily on his brown sofa in front of a new television. Czech
began losing weight as well, which came as surprise to him, as the weight
seemed to shed off on its own, without any real modifications to his diet.
His herpes remained, however, constant as the moon. Necessarily tolerated
the ailment without much fuss, but was extra careful to keep their sexual
exploits risk-free. During the first month of their relationship, she would
bring home pamphlets almost every night, some describing the newest
break-through in treatment, others advertising new medicines, and some
proclaiming that herpes by no means ended one's sex life. Those were his
favorites.

      It was February. Each time Czech went to sleep he expected to dream
about death. As terrified as he was, some part of him looked forward to
these dreams, each one bringing him a little closer to this concept so
foreign. He would die in each dream, always falling a great distance before
feeling the weight of the entire planet rocket into his back. His
consciousness would then float upwards, and watch his body lie still on the
ground as he lifted towards the sky. It felt so real. His stomach sank with
the fall, and one night it even caused him to vomit in his sleep. The pain
from impact would rock his joints, the soreness remaining until afternoon
the next day. Despite the fear and annoyance the dreams caused him, they
satisfied a hunger he never knew he had, one he was afraid to acknowledge.
"Nessy," he said. He was on his back, holding up his body with his elbows
on the bed. "Necessarily." It was three in the morning, so he gently rocked
her awake. She rolled towards him, and her eyes slowly opened.

      "Czech? Did you have the dream again? You're all sweaty." She ran her
fingers down his chest before reaching her arm around his neck.

      "Yes," he said, "a variation at least. I was walking through
Evanston, the streets were cold and empty, everything was gray. Suddenly
this old Chinese woman jumps out from behind a corner and starts cursing at
me in Mandarin."

      "You know Mandarin?"

      "I guess. I know a lot of languages, I think. Anyway, she's naked,
and she's old and wrinkled, and she's hopping up and down, cursing. We're
the only people on the street. Suddenly she shits in her hand and starts
hurling it at me, and I start running away but every time I turn around
she's standing right in front of me again, cursing and hopping and shitting
and throwing. Then we're on top of a building, and she pushes me, and then
it goes back to the falling part and the death."

      "Czech, I think that must be the most disturbing thing I've ever
heard. Do me a favor. In the morning, when I don't remember it, keep it to
yourself."

      "Try dreaming it. I don't think my tired words do it justice, I
really don't." Czech was silent for a moment. He rocked Necessarily's head
back and forth in his arms and gently stroked his fingers through her
braids.

      "What's your first memory, Nessy?"

      "What?" She pulled herself towards him and let her head sink into his
chest, losing the battle against sleep.

      "No no, this is important. Don't go back to sleep. What is your very
first memory? The first thing you can remember?" Czech sat up in the bed
and began running his hands through his own short brown hair, stopping to
massage his temples with his thumbs.

      "I guess my third birthday. I remember sitting in the living room
with my mother and sister opening presents at sunrise. I only remember
because when I woke up I didn't even know it was my birthday. Why? What's
yours? A naked Chinese woman throwing her shit?"

      "Funny." He rolled over and faced the wall.

      "Well fine, Czech. Come on, what's the point of all this? Tell me
your first memory."

      "My first memory is death. Dying."

      "Does this have something to do with the dreams, baby?" Necessarily
reached to turn on the light, but Czech grabbed her hand and pulled her
towards him, trying to find her eyes with his in the dark.

      "I don't think they're dreams, Nessy. They're memories. The falling,
the dying, it's my first memory. And it's been playing in my head over and
over ever since you started sleeping here. I don't understand it. But this
last time it finally made some sort of sense. It didn't end with the death.
I fell, I landed, I died, and my spirit rose. Everything went dark, and for
a minute I just stopped existing. It was the strangest non-feeling in the
world. Suddenly there's this bright flash of light, and bam, I'm there
again. I can see, feel, hear, I'm alive again. But I'm a baby."

      Necessarily loosened herself from Czech's grip and sat up. She rubbed
her eyes, trying to piece Czech's story together. "Czech, I hear this story
all the time. You're not remembering a death, you probably just had a near
death experience some time in your past, and you've been repressing it all
that time. Or maybe you're having flashbacks to one of your past lives.
That stuff really is possible, you know. I deal with it every day. I wish
you'd let me give you a reading one day so I could look into them. We could
learn a lot about these things. You just need to calm down, baby." She
pulled herself towards him again and kissed his neck.

      Czech laughed at the idea of a near death experience. "I wish," he
said, "that being near death could be a reality to me, Nessy. I don't have
any past lives. I've got one life. That's all. Just one."

      "You've got a very long life, though, don't you Czech?" asked a voice
from across the room. Necessarily screamed. Czech reached over and flipped
on a lamp. Ripco smiled. "Hey, you're losing weight, Czech! You've lost a
shit load of weight, eh?"

      Necessarily grabbed the cordless phone from the nightstand to hurl at
the robed stranger who sat near the doorway to Czech's bedroom. During her
toss, she realized that she might need the phone to call the police, so she
tried to halt it halfway through the swing. This quick thinking resulted in
her whipping the phone directly at Czech's foot. Czech howled, Necessarily
screamed again, and Ripco sat calmly. His smile remained.

      "Relax, relax," said Ripco. "Tell her I'm not going to hurt her,
Czech. I'm an old friend of his." He pointed to Czech, who was now bent
over his foot, tending to his big toe. Necessarily looked at Czech for some
sort of explanation.

      "Yes, don't worry, Nessy. I know who he is." Czech waved his hand
between the two of them and muttered a quick introduction. "Ripco,
Necessarily. Nessy, Ripco."

      "That's the monk!" she shouted. "That's the monk I ran down when I
was late for our date. You know him?" Czech nodded. "Well in that case, I'm
very pleased to meet you, Mr. Ripco." Necessarily pulled the sheet up over
her half-naked chest. "How nice of you to break in unannounced at three in
the morning. Could I get you a drink?"

      "That would be nice, thank you."

      "Your friend is a stranger to sarcasm." Necessarily further
exaggerated her angry glare.

      "Not only a stranger to it," Ripco chimed in, "but a thirsty one."

      "He always does this," Czech interrupted. "It's his thing. I don't
know how he gets in. I thought he'd be halfway around the planet by now,
though,

      I'll admit, so I am a little surprised to see him myself." He turned
his attention to Ripco. "Aren't I supposed to be looking for you?"

      "I have my reasons for sticking around." Ripco pulled a candy bar out
of his little brown pouch and began peeling away at the wrapper. He traded
a few evil glances with Necessarily, hissed at her, and shoved the
chocolate into his mouth.

      "So you never left?" asked Czech.

      "No, I've been staying with a friend. A lady named Beverly. I told
you about her at lunch in August. But you probably don't remember that,
because you never write things down. Even the most trivial details are
worth remembering, Czech." He began tossing bits of foil onto the floor.

      "I never see you with a pen and paper, Ripco."

      "I'm different than you."

      "Wonderful. Look. Did you come here at three in the morning to scold
me?"

      "There are some interesting people in this town, Czech. I'm staying
in a house with Beverly, two live-in servants, and her grandson Simon, who
can't be older than twenty-four. Beverly's a wonderful woman, one of the
first I've ever met." He winked at Necessarily. "The woman has a toilet
paper compulsion. She has an entire closet devoted to toilet paper, and
it's always full. There are two paper rolls at all times in each bathroom,
as well as a cabinet full of spares. She bases this entire compulsion on
one incident, Czech. One incident has moved her to such absurd compulsive
behavior!"

      "Not so strange," said Necessarily. "This one incident has moved me
to obsessively lock the door before bed."

      "She's witty, Czech," said Ripco. "Does she sing and dance, too?"

      "What are you here for?" asked Czech. "Say what you're here to say
and then get out." He rubbed Necessarily's back in support.

      "Simon, the boy, has an obsession of his own. He is completely
infatuated with a twenty year old named Margaret who works at the
PittsBurger drive-through down the street from here, actually."

      Necessarily made another grab for the cordless phone and flung it
across the room at Ripco's head. He calmly pulled his head to the left and
watched the phone smack into the wall. It cracked open and fell to the
floor in many smaller pieces.

      "Get to the point Ripco," said Czech.

      "I was getting there," he said. "Anyway, Simon's become absolutely
obsessed with this Margaret girl. He calls the PittsBurger and gets her
work schedule every Monday. On the days she works, he puts on nice
clothing, stands at the drive-through microphone, and acts as a courier of
information between the drivers and Margaret. Even when it rains. He won't
let anyone else talk to her. He takes down peoples' orders on a pad of
paper and reads them to Margaret through the intercom. Isn't that
fascinating?" The looks on Czech's and Necessarily's faces hinted that it
wasn't. "Do you understand this wild devotion he has? As far as I can tell,
she has no interest in the boy. She's scared of him, I think."

      "I know that guy," said Necessarily. "I went through the PittsBurger
last weekend and had some kid take my order. He just stood between my car
and the intercom. When I tried to order into the microphone, he covered it
with his hand. The boy is strange."

      "You say strange, not I. He's a lot like your Czech, there,
Necessarily. But yes, that's the boy." Ripco stared at the couple and
waited for them to respond.

      "That's it?" asked Czech, after a moment of silence. "That's the
story? That's why you scared the hell out of us at three in the morning?"

      "I thought the message in that was straight forward enough," said
Ripco. "I should have remembered how desperately you cling to
interpretations. The business of love is a bad business. It makes people
forget themselves and do stupid, time consuming, meaningless things. It
makes them stand outside at drive-throughs in the rain taking orders for
Beefy Burgers and Fuzzy Fries on a notepad from hungry motorists who don't
give a damn. That's it in a nutshell. You didn't catch that?"

      "Aha." Czech glanced at Necessarily apologetically, and wondered if
it was too late to deny any previous knowledge of this man. He looked at
smiling Ripco, then at the pieces of the once-phone on the ground, and
sighed. "And this lady lets you live in her house? Doesn't she realize
you're a danger to society? Can't she see that you're a danger to the moral
fiber of her impressionable son?"

      "And her two live-in servants. She considers me a charity case. She's
positive that we ran into each other for a reason. Beverly's a religious
woman. She thinks it's her job to bring me into God and assure me eternal
life after death. I keep telling her `who needs death?' She's smart,
though, smarter than most. We seem to draw the same conclusions on a lot of
things. So I stick around. I keep her company, I entertain her once in a
while with some theological chitchat. She thinks I'm very charming."

      "Ha," laughed Czech.

      Necessarily leaned over to Czech's ear and whispered. "Ripco," Czech
said,

      "Would you mind going out and sitting in the living room for a bit?
Nessy and I want to get dressed."

      "Oh, I'm sorry. My manners are terrible." He bowed to Necessarily,
winked at Czech, and shut the bedroom door behind him.

      Necessarily shook Czech by the shoulders and crawled on top of him on
the bed. "Baby, what the hell is going on? Where do you know this guy from?
What the hell is he talking about?"

      "It's a long story, Nessy. A very long story. Let's just say that
he's an old friend. He drops in from time to time. I know he's a little
raw, you'll have to excuse him. He's not big on being sociable."

      "Boy, you've got some past. One of these days I'm going to sit you
down and you're going to lay your story on me." Czech smiled, laughed, and
rolled out of bed. "And we're not done talking, mister. We're going to talk
about this whole death thing some more."

      Five minutes later the three of them were sitting in the living room
suffering an awkward silence. Czech and Necessarily sat close together on
the couch, while Ripco rocked menacingly in the chair by the window, its
creaks small victories over the pervading quiet. Necessarily finally broke
it.

      "So why are you so concerned about love, Mr. Ripco?"

      "Just Ripco, please. And maybe you should pose that question on
yourself? Why are you concerning yourself with loving Czech here? Has the
happiness love brings ever outlasted the pain that piggybacks its way into
your life?"

      "Listen, Robey, we're going to have to get on some closer terms
before I go spoutin' about my love life to you."

      Czech squirmed, watching Ripco's face for any hint as to why he might
be here. Ripco's silence was almost as unnerving as his conversation.

      "It's three-thirty in the morning, Ripco. Do you know that?" Czech
began tapping his feet.

      "Yes, I'm aware of that. The two of you have gone to great lengths to
keep me updated on the time. I commend you both. I'm disappointed in you,
Czech. Since when has time been so important to you? You weren't made to
play by their time rules. Is the woman making you soft? I was hoping she
would be out of your life by now. I wasn't pleasantly surprised to find the
two of you in bed together."

      "Hey, I'm not so happy to meet you either," said Necessarily. "I've
still got half a mind to call the police. We've got other phones."

      "I'm going to have agree with her," added Czech. "I thought you were
going to be gone for a while. Fifty years, remember? Then I was supposed to
come looking for you. What happened to your patience? You could have at
least knocked."

      "Knocking's not my style. The girl is going to cause problems for
you, Czech. The girl always does. It's time to break this damned cycle."

      "Always? What do you mean always?" Ripco's eyes darted directly
between Czech's legs, reminding him of his condition.

      "Does she know about the herpes?" he asked. Czech's face turned red
out of anger, Necessarily's out of embarrassment.

      "Yes, she knows about the herpes, Ripco. We're taking the necessary
precautions, you nosey son of a bitch. Is that what you came here for? To
stick your nose in my private life?"

      "Does she know about your immortality?" Ripco leaned forward in his
chair, trying to gauge Necessarily's facial reaction. Her eyes were on
Czech for much the same reason. Czech's eyes completed the circle by
resting on Ripco, their nonverbal darts piercing through the air.

      "Ripco, you're a fool and a pest. Please leave." Czech stood up and
grabbed Ripco by the hood, lifting him out of the chair. "You're talking
nonsense. If you want to talk to me, we can meet alone sometime. But I'm
not talking to you as an intruder in my apartment at three-thirty in the
morning on a Sunday. Get out." Ripco didn't resist to Czech's
protestations, and his smaller, weaker frame was led easily out the door.
Czech slammed it, locked it, and walked back to the bedroom to bury himself
in bed. Necessarily was right behind him.

      "You don't want to know," said Czech, anticipating Necessarily's
confusion.

      "I'm sorry for that. He's a friend from the past, and you know it's a
past I'd like to forget." Like to forget, Czech repeated to himself. As if
he had any choice. Sometimes his shattered memory was something he
resented, but tonight he wished it wash away the evening's events right
away. He pulled Necessarily onto the bed with him and she slid up on to his
stomach.

      Necessarily had never had an easy time falling in love. She had been
married once, when she was twenty, to a man she had dated for three weeks.
He was perfect, she had thought, and he came with a slew of good
references. Unfortunately, they were all ex-girlfriends, and they slowly
began reappearing in his life. She handled his first affair with poise, but
the second through fifth put a very tangible bump in their relationship.
That's when Necessarily became aware of her psychic abilities. She began
having prophetic dreams of her husband and other women. Her persistence in
uttering the steamiest details of these dreams in front of company only did
more to alienate them, as he found her pursuit of the paranormal
ridiculous, and the public attention it was getting absurd. He soon became
so annoyed with her psychic abilities that he left her for a non-psychic
flight attendant after only two years of marriage. Necessarily took that
divorce as the boost she needed to take those abilities seriously. She
moved out of Chicago, into the outlying town of Evanston, and set up her
own shop for the first time. Despite the surge in popularity of the
telephone psychic, Evanston contained enough souls in search of
fifty-dollar face to face guidance to keep her in business. Location was
key. The first thing a person would see when they hopped off of the bus at
the Davis CTA station was Necessarily's sign in her apartment window, and
after enduring the craters of Church Street on a city bus, a little peek at
their lifeline was just what a person needed. After two months, she was
able to quit her job at the grocery store down the street and put all of
her energy into reading people's minds. Fifteen years later, business was
booming, the income from her regulars alone enough to support herself. She
was independent, and had grown used to living alone, but just one look into
Czech's gentle eyes as he rocked her back and forth on the mattress was
enough to remind her that solitude was definitely lacking in some
departments.

      Which brings us to Czech. He was large, yes, but since his first date
with Necessarily the pounds seemed to shed of their own volition. Czech was
now a slimming four hundred and ninety pounds, proof once more that an
immortal, set out to accomplish something, would invariably succeed given
time. Despite his size, he carried himself with a certain charm, that could
only be cultivated over hundreds of years of life. It was this charm that
Necessarily had become so attached to, a false innocence that pervaded a
personality that had no lack of experience. Czech's fa‡ade of innocence was
shattered the first time they had sex, an act they repeated four times that
night at Necessarily's request. Sex, for Czech, was an extremely physical
event despite his prone position throughout. His arms and legs went through
such a workout, exploring pleasure zones that Necessarily hadn't even known
existed, that he spent the following day totally stiff. Czech wasn't the
only party whose joints weren't up to par. The bed was now reduced to a
mattress on the floor, its frame having been destroyed after time number
three.

      When Czech woke up again at eleven, it was to the smell of bacon and
the sound of slow jazz. He slowly rolled out of bed, plodded into the
kitchen, and cast his hungry eyes first at Necessarily, then at the bacon.

      "There's nothing sexier to me than a woman cooking bacon at eleven in
the morning." He crept up behind Necessarily and hugged her at the stove.

      "I brought a radio over from my apartment. I hope you don't mind, I
just thought some music was what we needed after such a restless night."

      Necessarily stepped from side to side, dragging Czech's tired body
along. The two of them bobbed like a metronome at the stove until the bacon
was crisp.

      "So it would be safe to say that you remember something about a man
in a brown robe from last night?" asked Czech.

      "The toothless one with the obnoxious smile?"

      "Yes, that's the one."

      Necessarily flipped the bacon out of the pan and onto two plates. "I
just assumed we weren't going to talk about him for a while."

      "Thanks, Nessy. You're a very understanding woman." Czech attached
his face to Necessarily's, savoring her morning breath.

      "I do want to talk about your dreams, though," Necessarily said as
she sat down at the table. "I'll ignore Ripco. If he shows up again at
three in the morning I might just bring it up. Last night is his freebie.
But you said some things about dying last night. I don't know, maybe you
were half asleep."

      "No, I remember," said Czech. "The dream just made more sense to me
last night. It's not a dream, it feels like a memory. My earliest one. I
can't expect this to make much sense to you, Nessy. There are still some
things about me that you just don't know."

      "Isn't this a good time to learn them? I'm not going to judge you.
I've met all kinds of people in my life. Did you kill somebody? Have you
spent time in jail? If I'm going to keep sleeping with you I'm going to
have to know a bit more about your past. It's a rule I've got. You've told
me about the herpes, Czech, and I handled that pretty well, didn't I? I
think I'm a very reasonable person." Necessarily turned over a piece of
bacon with her fork and stared at the plate. "Do you really think there's
anything about you that could turn me away?" Necessarily speared the bacon
and started nipping at the fat.

      "As far as I can remember I have a pretty clean criminal record,"
said Czech through a mouthful of bacon. "If I told you, you wouldn't
believe me. You'd think I was joking around and when you saw how serious I
was you'd only think I was crazy."

      "Jeez, Czech, you're talking to a woman whose husband left her
because she was engrossed in her psychic powers. If I called you crazy,
what kind of person would that make me?"

      She had a point, thought Czech. Even if Necessarily did think Czech
was crazy, their relationship wouldn't have to change very much. He wasn't
wholly convinced that she had any sort of psychic ability, and it just
never came up in conversation. Maybe the same treatment could be given to
Czech's immortality.

      "Ok. Here it is. Plain and simple. I wish I had some explanation for
what I'm going to tell you, but it's not exactly the easiest thing for me
to grasp. I just know it's true. Well, I think it's true. I'm pretty sure
it's true, Necessarily."

      "Spit it out, chubby."

      "Necessarily, I'm immortal." Czech braced himself for an intense
reaction. He repeated himself in case she hadn't heard. "I'm immortal. I
live forever. I don't know how, I don't know why. My memory only spans back
a few hundred years, but I'm fairly certain that my life has spanned a
great deal more than that." Necessarily continued to offer a null response.
"I'm immortal. So's Ripco. That's why he's such a bitter asshole. We're
pretty sure that we're the only two, but hey, maybe there are more. His
memory is a little bit better than mine, but he's as clueless as I am to
our origin. I never write things down, see, he always yells at me for that.
So that's the problem with the dreams, and death being my first memory. It
makes no sense. I'm babbling now, aren't I? You're not responding."

      "Czech," Necessarily began speaking, hoping the words would come out
on their own, but none did. "Czech."

      "I should get Ripco here. He can explain this all much better than I
can. You see, he has more faith in immortality than I do. I'm in a why
stage, he says. I guess you can say I've got an identity complex over the
whole issue. Heh. Isn't that silly?" Czech's anxiety rose with each word he
spoke. Necessarily's silence wasn't helping him any. "That's why he was
here last night, I think. That's why he doesn't want me seeing you. You'll
grow old and die, see, and I won't. He's protecting my feelings, as odd as
that sounds. Oh, not to sound morbid, I'm sorry. I think I should stop
talking now, Necessarily, because I'm starting to not make any sense."

      "Czech. Czech Czech Czech." Necessarily put her head in her hands and
rocked it back and forth. "So, this friend of yours, Ripco, you say he's an
immortal too?" Czech nodded. "Now Czech, I'm not going to call you crazy.
I'll be totally honest with you." She spoke slowly, calmly,
condescendingly. "I don't believe that you're an immortal, but I really do
believe that you think you're an immortal. Which is fine with me. I can
live with that." Necessarily stood up and began walking around the table,
stopping to rub Czech's shoulders.

      "No, see, there you go. You believe that I think I'm immortal? What
kind of patronizing bullshit is that?" Czech took hard deep breaths, trying
to curb his temper. The breathing wasn't enough. "Look, Nessy," he
exploded, "this isn't exactly something I wanted to tell you in the first
place, because just telling you would strip away my dignity to a degree.
Shit." He stood up from the table and pulled a butter knife out of a
kitchen drawer.

      "Czech, relax," said Necessarily, standing up, her voice switching
from its patronizing tone to a worried one.

      "Watch." He furiously began poking at his chest with the butter
knife, which only bounced off his skin with every plunge. He poked harder,
but the blade was too dull to pierce the skin at all. "Damn it!" Czech
frantically sliced at his wrists with the knife, still unable to make the
slightest cut. "Shit!" He began smacking himself in the forehead with the
blunt end, but only succeeded in some minor bruising and looking silly.
Necessarily grabbed for the knife and threw it on the floor.

      "You crazy motherfucker! What the hell are you doing?"

      "I've got to prove it to you, Nessy. I'm not going to date a woman
who secretly thinks I'm nuts." He started rummaging through the cabinets
under the sink, coming back up with a box of powdered bleach. "Watch." He
flipped open the lid and started shoving the blue crystals into his mouth.
With a mouthful of bleach, he shoved the box towards Necessarily, pointing
out the poison warning with his waving finger, muttering something
unintelligible that only served to spray blue powder in her face.
Necessarily screamed and slapped at the box, knocking it to the floor,
spilling the contents all over the kitchen.

      "Czech, you don't have to prove this to me, really! Just stop this
for God's sake!" She grabbed his wrists and tried to hold them at his
waist, but he flung them free and ran to the living room, his mouth
frothing. When Necessarily reached him, he had taken an antique sword off
the wall and removed it from its bamboo sheath.

      "Observe," he said, as he plunged the blade into his chest. He took a
deep breath, grunted, and with another burst of strength pushed the length
of the blade all the way through, its point sticking out his back. Blood
began pouring through the wounds, and Czech gallantly spun around to show
Necessarily the extent of the stab. He grunted one more as he slid the
blade out of his body. It had been a while since he had pulled off an
impaling, it took much more arm strength than he remembered.

      Necessarily howled and dropped to her knees, her eyes glazed with
absolute confusion and terror. "No no, calm down," said Czech. "Just
watch." Through short, quick breaths, Necessarily's tears gradually slowed
down. Czech's wounds continued to bleed, and the two of them became so
silent that they could hear the blood slapping at the floor. "Any second
now," said Czech, glancing at the bloody gash on his chest. And again,
minutes later, as the blood still flowed fresh, "Any second."

      After fifteen minutes of confused silence and continued bleeding,
Czech began to get a little nervous. His head started swimming and his
limbs started weakening.

      "It doesn't usually take this long," he said, embarrassed, trying to
halt the blood flow with his hands. "It's just been a while since I've done
this sort of thing. My body probably needs some time to readjust." Czech's
left went numb and he dropped down to his knees. Necessarily started crying
again, no longer able to focus on anything in the room.

      Finally, a familiar warm feeling started at Czech's feet and slowly
rose up his body until he regained strength in his legs. The flow of blood
ceased, then the flesh began resealing itself on Czech's chest and back.

      Necessarily rubbed her eyes, gawked at the healing wound, then after
a few more minutes of silence, quietly whispered, "Okay. I believe you."

      "Well I guess that's all I needed to hear." Czech wobbled on his
feet, ashamed of his frantic outburst. "I'm sorry for putting you through
that, I just couldn't stand for you to think I was crazy."

      "So you'll never grow older?" asked Necessarily. "You'll always stay
the same age?"

      "I'll never grow older, and I'll never die. Don't ask me how, don't
ask me why, please don't ask me any more questions. I can't answer them."

      "But Ripco, he's one too?"

      "Yes. And you're just going to have to take my word on that one,
okay? No more impaling. It's bad for the carpet. Besides, you think I'd
associate with him otherwise?" Czech went to the bathroom to towel off the
drying blood. "We've been playing hide and seek to pass the time. Lucky for
us I was hiding here, eh?" he said as Necessarily fainted in the living
room.


VI


It was two in the morning, and Beverly was asleep. Ripco was tucked safely
away in his bedroom on the floor below. Beverly had plenty of space in this
house by the lake, and Ripco placed very few demands on it. The house,
owned by her son and his wife, had been designated as her final
resting-place, a place where she could live in relative safety out of their
care. It was better than a retirement home, they had assured her. She had
the servants, Derrick and Daniel, to look after her and a beautiful view of
the lake and the Chicago skyline. Their son, Simon, was to remain in her
care while she lived in the house. Simon had been babied so much by his
mother that he stood little chance of surviving on his own. He was a smart
boy, but prone to obsessive compulsive behavior like his grandmother. He'd
been fired from every job he ever had for various reasons, including one
incident where he let out all the air from all the tires at a used car lot
where he worked, proclaiming it "Flat Tuesday". Beverly was to keep an eye
on him and care for him while his parents were abroad, doing exciting
things to further their own careers.

      "Keep him out of their way, they mean," she'd say to Ripco. "They're
so busy they can't give him the attention he needs, so they pawn him off on
me for two years while they prance around in Europe. Well I don't mind. I
like him. He's a bit odd, but the second you moved in he seemed normal as
cheese in contrast."

      Robert, her son, and his wife Dawn knew little about Ripco. They only
heard snippets of his existence from Daniel, the older servant who fully
disapproved of his eccentric behavior. There was little they could do from
Europe to discourage Beverly from keeping him, so they just shrugged it off
as another one of her pet projects, and assumed she'd soon tire from it and
let him go. Beverly knew they'd disapprove, Dawn especially, but Ripco
spiced up the place more than any of her dusty miniatures did. He
stimulated her mind in a way that the servants never could. Ripco was
Beverly's little way of rebelling against the cautious nature of her son.
When she brought him home for the first time, she sported such a `can we
keep him' expression that Derrick, the younger of the two servants, helped
make him feel right at home in a downstairs room. If he was going to have
that money grubbing floozy, she thought, then she would damn well have her
robed, toothless stranger. Plus, there was the chance she might set Ripco
straight. Interesting, he was, but by no means virtuous. Beverly believed
in a forgiving God, but she also believed very strongly in a fiery,
tortuous Hell. She slept with a smile on her face, and dreamt of her
daughter-in-law paying regular visits to that Hell.

      "I think I invented cards," said Ripco, creeping into Beverly's
bedroom. He spoke quietly, trying carefully not to wake her up. It wasn't
conversation he was after tonight, just a listening ear. "It's entirely
possible. I get angry whenever I see people playing with them. I get angry,
like I have some special claim to the game. So I'm pretty sure it's mine. I
think I invented cards." He pulled a small wooden stool up to the foot of
the bed and draped his robe over the back as he sat down. He had held this
vigil before, unburdening his soul on Beverly's fragile sleeping body.
These were perfect moments for him, ways to talk about himself without
slipping over that dangerous line where acquaintanceship becomes
friendship. And while Ripco held his late night meetings, Simon would hold
vigils of his own, listen cautiously at the door, enchanted and mesmerized
by Ripco's fantasy-filled confessions.

      "I bet I could make a lot of money if I ever laid claim to that, eh?
Cards are pretty popular. I'm sure they sell pretty well." Ripco sighed.
"Money, though, is nothing. If I wanted money, I could have money. Money
can't buy happiness, Beverly. This entire house is testament to that.
Trinkets everywhere. Little glass miniatures. Maybe they provide some sort
of pleasure for the servants or Simon, but they sure as hell don't
entertain the two of us." He pulled a chocolate bar out from his pouch and
began sucking on it. "This," he said, "is happiness. This moment right
here. Sitting in the dark, eating sugar and caffeine. Of course minutes
from now it will be nothing but a wadded up foil memory, and we know how
worthless that can be. Happiness is fleeting.

      "I went to Czech's last night and found him with that woman, that
Necessarily. He's falling in love again. Poor boy, searching for some sort
of constant happiness. He's looking in the wrong place. Love is a lie, and
it gets him into trouble. I know. I've seen it happen before." Ripco paused
to pursue his chocolate.

      "I think he's looking for something that doesn't even exist. He's
trying to take happiness to some sort of higher level. There is only
suffering. Yes, it's pocked with individual spurts of pleasure, but what
happiness can be found in those? What happiness can be found in pleasure
when it's inherently fleeting? How can a person ever really appreciate a
moment that is happening in the present? You humans take a lifetime to
figure that out. I'm sure I took a human lifetime to figure it out as well,
but that was just the tip of the iceberg." Ripco finished off the candy,
crumpled the wrapper in his hand, and tossed it to the floor.

      "I envy Czech. He's such a baby, so innocent. His memory is so
incomplete. He still searches for meaning in things. Like your grandson.
That boy has been blessed with such an ignorant mind. How lucky for him
that his mind is so shallow. Perhaps it's consciously making a stand. These
innocents are unable to let go of hope, to resign themselves to the fact
that the only constants are life and suffering. Well, for Simon there is
only suffering. He's fortunate as well that his battery eventually runs
low. In a year or two, if this love interest of Czech's remains, he'll
start all over again. It's how it always is. I'd tell him, but it would be
futile. He'd somehow find it all worth it, find it romantic, find himself
skipping gallantly towards death for the sake of love. It's a cycle. I can
accept such things. Of the two of us, his fate is the sweeter one, I'll
admit that." Ripco stood up from the stool, contemplated the candy wrapper
on the floor, and squashed it with his foot. He watched Beverly sleeping,
and wondered what she was dreaming about. He envied her as well, so close
to death, yet so filled with peace. Ripco longed to be close to death. A
cold breeze blew through Beverly's open window, and Ripco pulled her
blanket over her shoulders. He leaned forward and hugged her awkwardly,
thinking it followed some natural order of events. Ripco shrunk back,
embarrassed.

      "If there was a way I could die for him, I would, Necessarily. I
would squish out my own existence for the sake of his, let him fall in love
and play out his cycle to the end for a change. But who am I? I'm just
Ripco, another pawn in the game. I didn't create this cycle. I'm not the
reason Czech is such an optimist. I'm just the unlucky observer, the one
who gets to watch it happen over and over again."

      Ripco touched Beverly's hair lightly, and carefully felt a few
strands between his fingers. "Maybe I'm being punished. Maybe I'm supposed
to learn something watching Czech fall in love and die all the time. I tell
you, I should pick up smoking again. Chocolate just isn't cutting it
anymore. I'm getting too depressed." He bowed his head and brought his
fingers to his eyes, squeezing them together to hold back a tear. He
thought of fifty more things he wanted to tell Beverly, fifty more ways he
wanted to touch her, hold her, cry on her shoulder, lay in bed with her,
and even love her. He shook the notions out of his head instinctively the
moment they formed and kicked over the stool.

      "Anyway," he whispered, "I'm almost positive. Cards. My idea. I think
I was an idea man on the lever, too." Ripco placed the stool back against
the wall and slowly backed out of her room, half hoping she would wake up
and find him there, and ask him what he was doing. These late night talks
were becoming less satisfying for him, especially now that he was skirting
the prospect of actually talking to her when she was awake, of throwing
caution into the wind and becoming her friend. He was starting to need
something more than a sleeping ear and he wouldn't be able to suppress the
urge for contact much longer. If he finally succumbed to the desire, he
knew, he'd have to leave to escape it. For hundreds of years he had lived
without friends, without lovers, and the urge to make one was so strong.
"How am I to set an example for Czech if I go around befriending every old
lady I meet on a bus?" he asked aloud. Beverly continued to sleep,
peacefully bringing her daughter-in-law to a nice simmer, dreaming up some
demons to poker her around a bit with their poison tails. Her smile widened
and Ripco wondered aloud once more what she could be dreaming about.

      "When I dream," he said, "it's practically torturous. I think I've
had every dream my mind could possibly have a hundred million times over. I
haven't developed a new fear or insight in hundreds of years. My dreams are
stale. You, just having reached the tender age of seventy-eight years, your
dreams are probably just starting to get good. Oh, I hunger, Beverly, I
hunger." He quietly slipped from the room and closed the door, completely
unaware of Simon, hiding in the next doorway. His bare feet stepped
silently on the well padded carpet as he tiptoed down the steps and into
the room that was, for all intents and purposes, his.

      Six months ago, at their fountain rendezvous, it was Beverly who had
done most of the talking.

      "She's got him wrapped around her little finger, Ripco. The boy likes
a domineering woman, I guess. He had to deal with me until he was
twenty-five, so I guess I can't blame him for slipping right back into that
routine. But he could have done a better job. This woman, I tell you, she's
Satan. She's Satan himself. I wouldn't be surprised to find a pair of red
horns under that shell of chemicals she calls her hair. And she wears
enough makeup to make all the minions of the dead look pretty. He had a son
with that woman, my grandson Simon. He's a little off kilter. You'd like
him, I think. You'll meet him one day. They've treated him like a
two-year-old his entire life and now he can hardly brush his teeth by
himself. Well they've got him living with me, now, while they're in Europe.
The servants are babysitting me, and I'm babysitting Simon. I'm trying to
toughen him up a little, I've got him helping out the servants once in a
while. He doesn't have job or anything, he keeps losing them. My son works
in engineering. He's loaded, pulled in a lot of money with his first job,
and Dawn was right there to snatch it from him. They're in their late
forties now, the both of them. He works fifty hours a week and she shops
fifty hours a day. The bitch." Beverly blushed and covered her mouth,
embarrassed at the language she had used. "I'm sorry, she brings that out
in me.

      Ripco lowered his head, completely disinterested in the account.
Human affairs, he thought, are so mundane. "Yes," he said.

      "Well you get my point, though. She's wrong for him. It was her idea
to stick me in that house by the lake. They used to use it as a summer
cottage. After my husband died four years ago, I tried to move in with
them. I hate living alone, I like having people around. Robert had no
problem with it. When Dawn, his wife, heard about it, she let him have it.
We don't really get along too well. Could you tell?" Ripco nodded. "So
anyway, they moved me out here. There are two live-in servants, a man named
Daniel who's in his sixties, and a younger man named Derrick who's in his
forties. They've both worked for Robert for years, and neither of them are
too happy about having to look after me, so they don't make for the best of
company. They're nice people, well Derrick is. we talk once in a while, but
I feel uncomfortable around them. I can't get used to the idea of having
servants. A person is a person, you know? Nobody should have to serve
anyone. And Daniel, he's hard to deal with, so set in his ways. I feel like
a little girl when I'm around him."

      "How big is the house?" asked Ripco. He didn't care, but he didn't
despise Beverly. She did understand his point about the bees, however.
Maybe if he pressed this conversation forward he could get bend it into a
more interesting one.

      "It's huge," Beverly said. "It's big enough for twenty people. Where
do you live?"

      "Oh, everywhere," Ripco responded. "I'm a wanderer."

      "Well where are you staying?"

      "I'm not. I'm wandering."

      "You're leaving town?" Beverly grabbed Ripco's hand.

      "I was planning on it. Czech's falling in love. He'll need me to come
back in a year or so, but for now I really have no reason to stay in
Evanston."

      "That friend of yours? You two must be pretty close. Why don't you
stick around, Ripco? I was just beginning to enjoy your company."

      Ripco thought about staying in town. He knew the course Czech was
going to take. Cycles repeated themselves. Could he stand actually watching
it happen? He was used to abandoning Czech when he fell in love and
swooping back in later to pick up the pieces. Would Czech's innocent quest
for happiness do anything other than nauseate and frustrate Ripco? He
looked at Beverly. Ripco was drawn to her, and he couldn't understand why.
She was the first woman he ever remembered considering beautiful. When he
talked to her, he felt nervous, like a thirteen-year-old boy in the
presence of a drama queen. Ripco had no idea how to handle these feelings.
It's not a crush, he thought, and he continued to convince himself of that.
"I have no place to stay."

      "You can stay at my place. I could set you up in a bedroom
downstairs. You'd hardly get in my way. I'm out of the house a lot anyway,
so we wouldn't even get on each other's nerves. You could consider it like
a hotel stay. Find your own food and do your own laundry, and the rest is
free."

      "Laundry? This is it," said Ripco, gesturing towards his robe.
"Really, Beverly, it's a very kind offer, but I doubt I'd be the sort of
company you could really appreciate."

      "Oh get off it, Ripco, you're staying. You can come home with me
tonight." Ripco shrugged, dropped his shoulders and sighed.

      "Fine." Ripco had been won over. He followed Beverly home that
evening and set up his modest camp in one of the downstairs rooms, filled
with dusty miniatures and archaic wall hangings. There were glass and
ceramic containers everywhere, each of them empty. Ripco mused as to what
they must be for, their shapes so varied. He spent the first few days just
walking the halls of the house studying all of its relics. On the fourth
day, he encountered Simon for the first time while patrolling the house.
Simon was wearing a pair of blue jeans and a plain green T-shirt.

      "I've watched you eat in the kitchen, just so you know," he said.
"One morning I was laying on a couch in the living room and you came in the
kitchen and started eating. You put pop in your cereal. I watched you and
you didn't even notice me."

      "That's nice," said Ripco, unsure what else he could say in response.

      "You eat like an animal. You eat like you're not even a person. I
don't think I've ever seen anyone that hungry before."

      "I guess I'll take that as a compliment. I'm Ripco." Ripco extended
his hand. Simon shook it.

      "I'm Simon. What do you think of all these miniatures?" "They bore
me," said Ripco.

      "Me too. I'm in love with a girl at the PittsBurger." He told Ripco
about Margaret for the first time, and his daily post at the drive-through
microphone. "I'm just trying to make her job easier. Other people, they
mumble into the microphone, you know, and she has to strain to figure out
what they're trying to say. It's not fair to her. If you're going to order
from a microphone, it's your responsibility to speak up clearly, to project
your voice, not mumble. If your food isn't worth projecting, maybe you're
just not as hungry as you thought you were, you know?"

      "I guess," said Ripco. "Seems inconsequential, to be honest. If she
doesn't understand what they say, she can always ask them to speak up."

      "She's shy," said Simon. "She would have a hard time doing that. I
know she's shy because I've been doing this for a year and she still won't
talk to me."

      "You mean you've never actually spoken to her face to face?" asked
Ripco.

      "Nope," said Simon. Ripco's mind boggled.

      "You're in love with her, and you've never even spoken to her? How do
you know she's not crazy?" Ripco reconsidered who he was speaking to. "Who
am I kidding? You're obviously devoted, kid. You're right, she must be
shy." Simon nodded. "Simon. Listen to me here. Love is a bad thing. This
woman you're after, she isn't worth all the work you're putting into it.
She can't see how dedicated you are to her. Forget her. Move on. Have some
chocolate." He handed Simon a candy bar from his pouch. "I don't give these
out to just anybody."

      "She's beautiful, Ripco. I can't stay away from her. You should see
her in her uniform. Her hands are so special, her fingers are so short.
It's wonderful." Simon tore open the chocolate and delicately nibbled at a
corner. "Her face, her voice, everything about her."

      "I can't imagine that her voice would be that captivating channeled
through a drive-through intercom, Simon."

      "It's her inflection," Simon replied. "I'm in love with her
inflection. Hello, may I take your order? She goes up on the last syllable
of order in this fascinating way."

      "I've got a friend like you, you know. You guys just can't get enough
of this love thing. I don't understand it. Can't you see the pain it's
bringing you?"

      Simon looked at Ripco with a blank expression. "What else is there
but love, Ripco?"

      "There's everything. There's pain, there's suffering, there's
philosophy. There's plenty besides love, and it's all a lot more real."
From their first meeting, each man was fascinated with the other. Simon
couldn't seem to understand that anything existed other than love, that a
human relationship could be any other way.

      "Everything's measured in degrees of love," he'd tell Ripco. "Hate
isn't real. Hate's just love in disguise."

      Ripco woke up with a skull splitting headache, one of such intensity
it brought all mortal ones to shame. He slipped into the kitchen to find
that Beverly had already gone. She'd left a note for him on the table, with
Ripco's candy bar wrapper taped to a corner. "Were you in my room?" it
read. "I'll be home this afternoon. We'll talk." Ripco winced at his
carelessness, and feverishly began formulating excuses in his head. "I gave
some candy to the servants," he said aloud. "They must be leaving wrappers
around the house."

      "I beg your pardon?" asked Daniel, who was drinking coffee at the
table. He flipped casually through the morning paper.

      "Sorry, I didn't see you sitting there." Ripco's stomach sunk into
his feet. In the presence of Daniel he always felt like a little child who
had just broken something very, very expensive.

      "Well what's this about you giving us candy? And who are you talking
to?"

      "Ah. Well Beverly found a candy wrapper in her room. She thinks I've
been in it I guess."

      "You have been. Simon and I watch you go in there every night. It's
quite an odd practice if you ask me. But then again, most everything you do
is odd, Mr. Ripco. In fact, I think you living here is an odd practice.
Simon has been listening at the door, too. He says you just walk in there
and whisper. We figured you were sleepwalking."

      "Sleepwalking," said Ripco, latching on to this new idea, "I must be
sleepwalking."

      "You say some pretty interesting things in your sleep, according to
Simon. He's obsessed with you, you know. You'll have to pardon me but I
don't think that's doing him any good. Robert and Dawn have him living with
Beverly to protect him from radical ideas, Mr. Ripco. The boy needs to be
sheltered, not bombarded with ridiculous fantasies about love and
immortality."

      "Look, Daniel, if Beverly wants me to leave then I'll leave. But I'd
appreciate it if you'd keep your mouth shut this morning. My head aches.
And when I say it aches, I mean the sort of aching that a mind of your puny
size could not possibly fathom. I mean the sort of aching that can only
exist in a mind that's fostered years and years of higher thought. And your
voice, you tiny, tiny man, is driving me to tears." Ripco pulled some toast
out of the toaster and began eating it dry, gumming it until it became
soggy and then pulling pieces of it into his mouth.

      "You're rather irritable this morning, Mr. Ripco. Perhaps if you
actually left the house today and saw some sunlight your attitude would
improve. Far be it from me to make lifestyle suggestions, but."

      "I don't think you understand," Ripco whispered. "My head aches.
Process what I'm saying, then multiply it by a billion. Then shut up."
Daniel began to speak again, but promptly quieted as Ripco's eyes met his.
He was beginning to have enough of this visitor. Today he had been pushed
too far. He stood up from his chair, rapped his paper on the table for
effect, and stood in Ripco's face.

      "I will speak when I choose to, Mr. Ripco. You've been nothing but
rude to me, despite the lengths I've gone to in putting up with your
subhuman behavior." Daniel brought his lips inches away from Ripco's ear.
"FEH, Mr. Ripco, FEH to your headache!" He stepped back, made a quick
glance into Ripco's eyes, then nodded to affirm his outburst. Ripco stood
still, half shocked and half amused by Daniel's emotional stand. The pain
in his head, however, had disappeared, presumably from the screaming
itself.

      "Thank you, Daniel," he said, "that seems to be just what I needed."
He left Daniel to his coffee and paper and moved to the living room, where
Simon was sitting on a large leather couch watching television. Simon's
face was completely blank, and Ripco found it hard to tell whether Simon
was watching the television or the television was watching him.

      "That's quite a stare you got there, kid." Ripco sat down next to him
and studied the screen. It showed a single goldfish in a glass bowl with
two thin wires sticking into his head and extending to the top of the bowl
off screen. "What's this?" he asked.

      "You haven't heard? About the goldfish?" Ripco shook his head. "Two
months ago some scientist figured he could stick a couple wires in a fish's
head and make him happy twenty-four hours a day. They've got one wire
hooked up to some brain parts or something, and supposedly it's constantly
stimulating some gland that produces happy chemicals or something. I dunno.
I don't really get it all. The other wire, that green one, is just a small
tube sending food to the fish, keeping it alive. They call it `The Fish
They Sent To Heaven.' They stuck it on its own channel, too. I'm kinda
hooked on it. It's good watching."

      Ripco leaned forward and watched the fish for a few minutes. "So this
is it? Twenty-four hours a day? He's just floating there."

      "Yeah, but he's happy. The scientist says he's in heaven. He's the
happiest goldfish in the world. Think of that, Ripco. The happiest goldfish
in the world!"

      "That doesn't mean they have to stick him on television. Let him be
happy in private. That's ridiculous. How do they know he's happy? He
doesn't seem to be showing any outward signs of it."

      "They found the part of the brain that makes a person happy, and
they're just stimulating that part constantly with the wire. It's all
chemical." "Right, I heard you the first time. They're shocking his brain.
But how do they know he's happy?" Ripco marveled at Simon's naivete.

      "They just do, Ripco. They just do. Next week they're going to drop
another fish in the tank with him to see how they interact. I can't wait."

      Ripco could not understand Simon's fascination with the fish.
Television, he thought, had always been a medium for lunacy, but this was
taking things a little far. "Why do you watch this crap? This fish isn't
happy, it's bored. It doesn't even swim around. Look at that. When you're
happy, do you float around in a comatose state? No, you move around and do
things. Simon, if you're bored with your own life, I could offer you all
sorts of other means for escape. Go back to the drive through. Court your
Margaret. Stay away from this lunacy."

      "Not everyone's life is as exciting as yours, Mr. Ripco. We don't all
play around in fantasy worlds like you. I rarely get out of this house. I'm
rarely let out of this house. Day after day after day after day. I like the
fish. He's not going anywhere, but he's happy. That's some sort of hope,
you know?"

      "No, I don't know. Where does one find hope in a goldfish that's got
wires in its head? Unless you're a fisherman, I really don't see it."

      "I guess you just don't understand monotony." Simon turned from Ripco
and concentrated once more on the goldfish. A small plastic treasure chest
opened and closed with the small current in the tank, and the green gravel
shuffled a little bit, but other than that the bowl and its contents were
still. The fish's mouth opened and closed in a slow rhythm, but its eyes
remained in a fixed position. Simon's mouth hung open as he watched the
fish, and Ripco imagined wires sticking out of Simon's head, and running
into the ceiling above.

      "You don't know the meaning of monotony, Simon. Spending every day of
your eternal life among the hopelessly optimistic, that's monotony. That's
Hell." Ripco stood up and straightened his robe. "And stop listening in at
the door. That stuff is not for you."

      Simon looked at Ripco long enough to give him an embarrassed smile,
then returned his attention to the happy fish. Ripco marched away full of
disgust for all mortals. "They act as if each day counts," he said aloud.
"They're spoiled. Their days are limited and they take it for granted.
Well. I'm deciding that today doesn't count. It's a non-day for me." He
crept back to his room, leapt face first onto his bed, and slipped into a
dreamless sleep.

VII

Czech lay in bed singing loudly while Necessarily put on her bedclothes in
the bathroom. The room smelled of sweat, sex, and perfume. The sun was so
hot through the bedroom window that Czech was sure the glass would melt.

      "Do you always sing after sex, Czech?" Necessarily called from the
bathroom.

      "It's a habit," he sung, with no recognizable melody. "An old habit."
He launched into something Italian, the sound of his voice filling the
entire apartment complex. He looked at his clock, noticed the early hour,
and quieted down. Necessarily came back into the bedroom, wearing a light
blue nightgown with her braids tied up in the back. "You're beautiful,
Nessy. Come to bed." She knelt onto the mattress and slid onto Czech's
body, kissing him on the nose.

      "No visit from your friend last night. I'm glad we took advantage of
that privacy. Though I'll admit, this time the prospect of him showing up
at any moment did lend some excitement to the evening's events."

      "Well I'm pretty sure he'll be keeping away for a while." Czech was
hardly sure. Ripco was in town for a reason, he knew, and he wouldn't leave
him alone until he got what he wanted. "Even if he does show up, I'm sure
he'll knock." Necessarily rolled over onto her back, then pulled herself
out of bed.

      "I'm going back to my apartment," she said, as she pulled on a pair
of jeans. "I've got to straighten up a little and get ready for a reading.
You have a good day at work, baby." Czech stared at the ceiling for twenty
minutes after she left before pulling himself out of bed. He was glad he
was losing weight, especially now that the mattress was flat on the floor.
He used to be completely indifferent towards his personal appearance, but
Necessarily gave him reason to care. "I'm probably losing weight every time
I stand myself up from that thing," he said aloud, and he proceeded to put
himself through his tedious bathroom ritual before dressing himself for
work. He exited the apartment complex and appeared on Benson Street just as
Ripco was heading towards the stairwell.

      "Morning, Czech," he said.

      "Morning, Ripco. I'm on my way to work." He pushed his way past his
robed friend and continued down the street.

      "I think it would be wise if you took the day off," he hollered after
Czech. "Just talk to me today and I'll leave you alone. For a long time. I
promise."

      "I'd settle for announced visits, Ripco. Just learn to knock, okay?"

      Five minutes later, after a quick telephone call to work, the two
immortals sat staring at each other in Czech's living room. Ripco gnawed on
chocolate.

      "De ja vu, Ripco. This scene is becoming all too familiar to me
lately." Czech leaned back on the couch, putting his feet up on the side.
The sun was still coming in strong through the living room window, so Ripco
was lit from the back in the tall recliner, giving him an angelic
appearance. Czech laughed aloud at the irony.

      "Want me to cut straight to the chase, or would you like me to pepper
you up with some meaningless chitchat?"

      "I have a feeling you'll cut to the chase either way."

      "Are you sure you don't want the chitchat? There are all sorts of
things we could talk about. The weather, for instance. It's just that what
I'm here to tell you may be a bit hard to swallow."

      "It's freezing outside. It's February, Ripco, and it's freezing. The
sun's so hot, though, that it seems like summer in here. There's your
weather," said Czech. "It's cold outside, it's hot inside, and I'd like to
get at least a half day in at work, so let's move this conversation along."

      "Then the chase it is. I've been unloading myself. I've been talking
this through with someone, sort of, and the conclusion we, well, I, came to
is that you might as well know."

      "Know what?"

      "You're going to die, Czech." Czech stared in response. "You're going
to die. You've died before, and you're going to die again. Soon."

      "I don't believe you," said Czech. He forced a quick laugh, and
waited for Ripco to laugh as well. Czech tried this two more times, each
yielding nothing but Ripco's serious glare.

      "I'm not telling jokes. And whether or not you believe me is really
unimportant," said Ripco. "You don't have to believe the truth to be a part
of it. That's the neat thing about truth. That's what I like best about
it."

      "What do you mean, die?"

      "I mean, Czech, that you're going to die. The same way humans die.
Physically. Again."

      "Again?" Czech went dizzy considering the implications of Ripco's
statement. He thought back to the dreams he had been having ever since he
and Necessarily started sleeping together. "Ripco, the last time we sat and
talked, you tried your damnedest to convince me that I should quit
questioning my immortality. Now you're telling me I'm going to die? That
the whole spiel was a crock? Make up your mind. What are you trying to
pull?"

      "Believe me, this all makes sense to me. You're just going to have to
trust me again. It's a cycle, see. Are there really that many holes in your
memory? Doesn't any of this ring a bell in the slightest?" Czech closed his
eyes in concentration and rubbed furiously at his hair.

      "There've been the dreams." He described the falling to Ripco, the
landing, the dying, and his first-memory theory.

      "See? It's starting already. Czech, you're an immortal, yes, there's
nothing false about that. But you've died before. A bunch of times. And
each time you've been reborn. Your life span is always about three hundred
years, and then you recycle. That's partially why your memory is worse than
mine is. It's also why you're such a God damned optimist. This is how it
works for us." Ripco leaned forward to explain. "We're immortal. Nothing
can kill us." He took out a knife from his pouch and stabbed himself in the
chest. "See? Nothing."

      "Yeah, I know that one," said Czech. "Go on."

      "We can walk around the earth and do whatever we please without fear
of dying. Except for one thing. If we fall in love and get a woman
pregnant, we die. A stupid technicality if you ask me. A nonsensical
technicality if you ask me. It's almost got me believing in a creator of
some sort. But a creator who stuck us with that condition would have to be
a human one, because only humans are sentimental enough to come up with one
that God damned sappy. Kinda paradoxical."

      "And this has happened to me before?" Czech yanked the knife out of
Ripco's chest and placed it on the end table. "Get rid of that, I can't
take you seriously when you've got a knife sticking out of your chest."
Ripco grabbed it and plunged it back into a slit in his skin that was
already starting to heal.

      "Many times. That's why I'm sticking around now. It's bound to happen
again. I've got to be here to raise you. Can't leave that to the mortals.
Eventually, you grow old enough that your childhood memories get a little
fuzzy, and all the lives blend into one another. That's when we always
split up. Maybe you're starting to see why I hate love so much, eh? Look at
all the trouble it causes."

      "You said we. So this happens to you?"

      "I don't fall in love," said Ripco. "I stopped doing that a long time
ago. You know me. I think personal relationships are bunk. I think you're
ridiculous for falling into them so often. But hey, you're always young.
You never get to the point where the hope wears off. You're just a kid.
Tragic, eh? It's nuts."

      "Has it ever happened to you?"

      "I'm sure it has. My memory is better than yours, but I still forget
most of our past. I'm sure it's happened a few times. And yeah, I still
conceive a kid once in a while, but never out of love. For some reason, it
has to be out of love. How sickening."

      Czech's dizzy sensation started growing, and he got up to walk to his
bed. He set himself down on the mattress and covered his eyes with his
hands.

      "Ripco, this is not good news. Why didn't you tell me earlier? Why
didn't you tell me a long time ago?"

      "Oh, I've told you before. You never write things down. You forget.
Czech, I've seen this happen before. I've been alive for at least two
thousand years now. I've given up on this. It's a cycle. It's silly for me
to try to stop it from happening. I've given up frantically telling you
every time we run into each other. It never does any good. You can't beat a
cycle. It'll happen whether I tell you or not. The only reason I'm
bothering now is because for some stupid reason I've got myself believing
that you'll listen this time and drop this girl. Beverly's been instilling
hope in me, Czech. I hate to admit it, but she is. And right now I'm hoping
that you'll listen to me and stay away from the woman."

      Czech thought about Necessarily, and the talk they had only a day
earlier. "Great, Ripco. I just committed hara-kiri to prove to Nessy that
I'm immortal. Just think what dying will do to my credibility. She'll never
believe another thing I say after that." Czech let out an ironic guffaw.

      "See? You're keeping your sense of humor about the whole thing.
That's good."

      "I just can't get over the timing," said Czech. "Why did I have to
tell her I was immortal?"

      "Hey, timing's your problem, not mine. So you told her? And she
believed?"

      "Well, I showed her, actually. I impaled myself on that sword on the
wall."

      "Brave man, Czech. I thought you weren't big on blind faith. Impaling
yourself on a slab of steel, if you'll excuse me for saying so, is a pretty
definite leap of faith. See? You've got it after all."

      Czech hadn't thought about it like that before, but in a sense Ripco
was right. In some sick, twisted way, impaling himself on a sword was a
sign of progress. He had finally grown to accept his immortality. And now,
he was sitting down listening to a prophecy of his death. Only a very
playful creator could have imposed such wicked timing, he thought.

      "So why are you telling me now, Ripco? Why couldn't you just let it
happen again? Why the hell did you have to tell me?" Czech reached once
more for the knife that was sticking out of Ripco's chest and yanked at it.
He twirled it in his hands before poising it at his own chest.

      "Because, Czech, this time I want it to stick. I want you to
understand the danger of connecting with a human being. I'm trying to teach
you a lesson. I tell ya I've been unloading all of this on my sleeping
benefactor. For some reason I think I'm doing you some good." Ripco tossed
his candy wrapper on the floor as he finished off another bar of chocolate.

      "You son of a bitch. You shouldn't have told me. You're so filled
with hope that you come here and destroy what's left of this life? It makes
no sense. I don't think I can handle confronting death. It would have been
nicer if it caught me by surprise." Czech flung his hands into the air,
accidentally lopping off his thumb in the process with Ripco's dagger.
Ripco grabbed the knife from Czech. Czech carelessly grabbed for the loose
digit, knocking it under the sofa.

      "Shit," he said. "Ripco, grab an end." The two immortals lifted the
sofa, slid it a few feet across the room, and put it down. Czech got on his
hands and knees and palmed for the thumb in the thick carpeting. He found
it, scooped it up, and put it in his back pocket. They put the couch back,
sat down, and continued.

      "Quit thinking about it like it's a final death, Czech. Sure, you
die, but you pop right back up once Necessarily has the baby. The baby is
you. Just get her to understand that. Maybe she won't take it so bad after
all. If she loves you so much, would she really mind being your mom instead
of your wife? Didn't Freud say that all love was maternal in a sense
anyway? And hey, if it makes it any easier on you, just don't believe
anything I'm saying. Like I said, that's what's neat about truth. It could
care less if you believe in it or not, it's still going to keep right on
happening. I've watched you do this about twenty times now. You just keep
on doing it. You meet people, you talk to them, you fall in love, have a
kid, and die. Then I catch the kid to let him know who he is, he grows up
to be a few hundred years old, gets annoyed with me, finds some stupid game
to keep us apart, and does the same thing again. Put yourself in my shoes
for a minute. I'm not the bad guy here, just another party experiencing the
inevitable."

      "I just don't know how to react. I don't know what to do. I can't get
Necessarily pregnant, that's all there is to it. I've got to stop having
sex." Czech held his fresh new thumb towards the window and admired it in
the light.

      "It's not about sex, Czech. It's about falling in love. You love the
girl. Fate will find a way to make her pregnant. You'll be reborn again.
Hey, look on the bright side. At least you get to know life with a mother."
Ripco dramatically stabbed himself once more, reinserting the blade into
his torn chest. "You know this means I have to wash this robe, now. I'm
going to smell pine fresh."

      "But who's determining what's love or not? There must be some third
party here, Ripco. Love's too subjective. I'm not exhibiting any signs
exclusive to love. There's no bright red heart-shaped light turning on over
my head." Czech picked at the coagulating thumb-blood on the carpet with
his newly formed thumb.

      "Here you go again with the questions. You're right, it sounds like
some third party is involved. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't. That
doesn't matter, it's not going to change anything. Quit picking at that, or
it won't heal right."

      "So when does it happen?" Czech was resenting Ripco's casual manner
of handling this, but understood that it was all old news to him.

      "I don't know. It's different every time. Sometimes you die just as
the kid's coming out, and sometimes you die once your conceived. It's
random like that. Last time you died skydiving. Your parachute didn't open.
That's where your dream comes from. The naked Chinese lady, she was your
old neighbor, I think. Don't ask me how she got in there. That one's all
you."

      "Great," said Czech. Tears started welling up in his eyes as he
thought about the life he had planned with Necessarily. "This ruins
everything."

      "Hey, watch it," said Ripco. "Immortals don't cry. I'm going to get
uncomfortable here in a second."

      "Fuck you, Ripco. I'm in love, and I'm going to be outlived. For
years I've been timid in relationships because I would be the one
outliving. Now circumstances are reversed entirely. I've got to start
thinking about her feelings. I'm an immortal with a terminal disease. And
you're my fucking support group."

      "I wish you were detached enough to appreciate the irony in all
this," said Ripco. He smiled and began sucking his lips against his gums to
hold back laughter. "It's really very funny," he said.

      "Get out, Ripco," said Czech. "Just please get out and leave me alone
for a while."

      "Hey, I'm always one to keep my end of a bargain. I tell ya what, big
guy. The next time you see me you'll be a little kid and probably won't
remember any of this conversation. Do me a favor, though. Tell Nessy to
name you Czech. It makes it easy on the both of us." Ripco stood up and
left the apartment, leaving Czech on his bed. He walked outside, crossed
the street, and stood whistling at the bus stop. "I'm getting a lot of
strange looks today," he said aloud, noticing the odd way that people were
watching him around the bench. "As if I've got toilet paper stuck to the
bottom of my shoe." He looked down at his feet, but his eyes stopped at his
chest and the steady stream of blood that dripped from the embedded knife.
"Oh," said Ripco. "Is this a dagger I see before me?" he said, raising one
arm to the sky and mimicked an English accent. "Out, damned spot!" He
yanked out the blade, gave a triumphant bow, and crept onto the bus amidst
much confusion.


VIII


Derrick's back ached from shoveling. Daniel had stopped helping him clear
the driveway two years ago, claiming that his back was no longer up to par.
Simon would help occasionally, but today he was glued to the television
goldfish, just as he had been for the week. The snow was falling about as
fast as Derrick could shovel it. This is futile, he thought, but he seldom
had the nerve to question one of Beverly's orders. He liked her well
enough. She was far less of a nag than her daughter-in-law, and despite
today's charge there was usually some method to her madness. So he grunted,
put his back into it, and cleared another line of snow.

      "Nobody in this house even drives," he whispered to himself. Across
the street couples were walking along frozen Lake Michigan. One man was
rollerblading in a shiny blue thermal suit. Dogs leapt through the snow on
the lawn at the house next door. Derrick shoveled on.

      In the distance he saw a black speck rolling through the white
towards the cottage, still no bigger than his thumb. He felt a sinking
feeling in his stomach as he realized it was Ripco, and made himself look
extremely occupied with the shoveling in attempt to avoid conversation.

      "Hello, Derrick," said Ripco, finally appearing on the lawn.
"Wonderful day for shoveling. Doesn't it seem a bit useless, though?" He
lifted his hand in the air and waved at the heavy snowfall around them.

      "Yes," he replied. "It does. But Beverly asked me to come out and
shovel the driveway, so here I am."

      "But nobody here even."

      "Yes, I know. I know, Mr. Ripco. There isn't a chance you'd like to
grab a shovel and help, is there?"

      "No, there isn't. Thanks for the offer, though. Fret not, Derrick. I
just spent the last hour trekking through the snow to deliver a message
that I'm sure will prove as futile as your shoveling. Sometimes we just do
futile things to get them done, you know? They're not all that bad."

      "Thank you for your words of encouragement." He pumped the shovel a
few more times, nudging Ripco out of his way as he pushed forward. "You
have blood on your robe," he said. "Are you alright?"

      Ripco had forgotten about the drying blood that had caked on his
brown robe. "Oh, don't worry about this."

      "Don't worry about it? Are you joking? It looks pretty bad." Daniel
took the robe between his fingers and examined the serious amount of blood.
Ripco flinched. "My God, Ripco, what happened to you? Are you cut?"

      "No, I'm not cut," he said, trying to think up an excuse. "It's
somebody else's blood."

      "Whose?"

      "An activist's," he replied.

      "An activist?"

      "For fur. I was walking here from the bus stop when a lady approached
me from behind. She grabbed my shoulder, turned me around, and howled `Fur
is Murder' before drenching me with a bucket full of blood. Damned
activists." Ripco smiled.

      "Ripco, your robe isn't made out of fur."

      "Look, activists are unpredictable, okay? I never said she was a
particularly good activist, did I? Get off it, Derrick, I'm fine." He
marched through the half-cleared driveway towards the large front door.

      "Beverly needs to talk to you, by the way. She should be around the
house somewhere." Ripco shook the snow off of his boots and robe, opened
the door, and walked inside.

      "Ripco, your robe is all covered in blood," said Daniel as Ripco
walked into the kitchen.

      "Activists," he replied.

      "Activists?"

      "Long story. Where's Beverly?"

      "She's upstairs in her room. I'll page her on the intercom and let
her know you're home. She's been wanting to talk to you, you know."

      Simon walked into the kitchen. "Daniel, could you make me a sandwich?
Holy shit, Ripco, what happened to your robe?"

      "Activists," whispered Daniel. "He doesn't want to talk about it." He
walked to the wall and thumbed the intercom. "Beverly, Ripco's here. Do you
want to come down there or should we send him up?"

      "Send him up," said the intercom. Ripco walked up a flight of stairs
and winded through the hallways to Beverly's room. He pulled his hood back,
quieted his nervous stomach, ran his fingers through his hair, and pushed
through the door.

      "Hello Bever."

      "Oh my Lord what happened to your robe?"

      "Activists," shouted both Simon and Daniel through the intercom.

      "Turn that thing off," she hollered. "Give us some privacy, for God's
sake." The speaker popped, and they were alone. "Activists, Ripco?"

      "It's a long story. I told it to Derrick and I don't feel like
telling it again. Can we get past the robe? I'll run it through the wash
and you'll never have to look at these stains again."

      "Well I guess," she said. Beverly was sitting upright in her bed,
half of her fragile body hidden by the blanket. From what he could see,
Ripco could tell she was in her bedclothes. "I'm a little upset that I
didn't get a chance to talk to you yesterday. I wanted to talk about the
candy wrapper I found."

      "I was sick," he said. "I needed to sleep through the day. I'm
sorry."

      "I understand," said Beverly. "Look, Ripco, I enjoy having you stay
here. I really do. I want you to know that."

      "Thanks, Beverly. I enjoy staying here."

      "The other night, when you ran your fingers through my hair, I liked
that, Ripco. It was sweet."

      Ripco's stomach sank to his toes. "I thought you were asleep. I
thought you were sleeping. I."

      "You thought I was asleep. Yes, I heard you. Ripco, you have a very
definite presence. I could feel you in the room the second you walked
through the door. How could I sleep through that? You're pushing stools
around, talking in piercing whispers, crinkling candy bars."

      "I thought you were asleep," he repeated, unsure of what he could
say. Ripco was having a hard time discerning whether or not he was in
trouble, and was afraid of digging himself any deeper a hole than he was
already in.

      "I was pretending to be asleep. I thought the whole thing was very
cute. I was afraid that if I woke up you'd stop talking to me, and I really
liked listening to what you had to say. My poor little Ripco, champion of
the cynics."

      "I thought you were."

      "You're not in trouble, Ripco. I just felt it would be silly for me
to keep pretending to be asleep. I want you to know that you can talk to
me. That's part of the reason I let you stay here. You have something heavy
on your soul, Ripco. It's in your eyes. You can talk to me when you need
to, I'll be your friend."

      The word friend snapped Ripco out of his trance and he started
backing up out of Beverly's room.

      "Look, I've been a lot of trouble," he said. "I'll stop waking you up
in the middle of the night. Sorry for the inconvenience."

      "No, Ripco, it's okay. I don't mind it so much. You tell good
stories, too. An immortal, eh? You've got quite a fantastic mind. Come
here." She gestured with her hand, and Ripco carefully walked closer. She
grabbed his shoulder and pulled him closer, wrapping her other arm around
his neck until both of her hands touched. "You need to learn to let
yourself be happy once in a while. The only thing stopping you is
yourself."

      Ripco nodded his head down, resting it cautiously on her shoulder. He
looked at her neck, at all of the wrinkles and age spots. Her skin was so
thin, when the light shone on it he could see right through it, the winding
maze of tangled veins that carried the blood to and from her thumping
heart. His right hand instinctively stroked her back, touching her
bathrobe, feeling for the first time how fragile her body really was.
Before he knew it, his left arm was winding its way around as well, and as
an accidental tear dropped from his eye, the first in a thousand years, his
hands met behind her.


IX


Abel slept with his eyes open. It had come to the point where he no longer
knew if he was sleeping or awake at any given moment. Awake, he thought, is
what I am now. Unless I'm dreaming, that is, in which case I'm asleep. I
could be dreaming. Awake, asleep. Neither matters.

      If he had known that he was being watched, perhaps he would have
given some sign to show he was awake. But he didn't know, so he hung still
this morning, and contemplated his simple surroundings for the thousandth
time. There were the small green rocks. They were pleasant. They were
constant. There was the treasure chest. It opened and closed. That was
constant, too. There used to be more, he thought. There used to be
something else. Things used to move, or he used to move, he wasn't sure
anymore, it had been so long. Move?

      Yes, he thought, there was the change. That was something. A change
is definitely something. There was the time when things stopped moving, the
time when things stood still. He used to do something to make things move.
What did he do? Abel concentrated. His left fin wiggled slightly. That's
familiar, he thought. I had forgotten about that. He concentrated on the
fin again, bringing nerves to life that had been neglected for so long. His
small orange body rolled slightly to the right, and he viewed his
surroundings anew. The rocks. The chest. Open. Close. More.

      The treasure chest, he thought. It used to grow. He used to do
something that made it grow. Swim. That was it. That was the thing he did
before the change. He pictured swimming. He saw himself swimming around the
bowl, in and out of the chest. He concentrated again.

      No. Abel was content. He did not want to swim. He remembered eating,
too. He did not want to eat. He wanted to float in the water, feel each
tiny ripple against his scales, take in each tiny bit of air through his
gills. He wanted to float in the water and feel content.

      I'm awake, he thought. He wanted to dream. There was dreaming once,
before the change. There was sleeping and waking, there was eating and
swimming, but now there was only floating and feeling content. It was
enough? It was enough.

      The chest opened and closed, Abel's mouth open and closed, the water
flowed and flowed, and Abel was content.

      Content. There is only content, thought Abel. There was content
before the change, but there was also an absence of content. There was
swimming, and there was floating still. Abel concentrated on his fins again
and after much straining began to swim towards the chest as it opened and
closed with the current. He slipped into the chest and was blinded by its
golden interior. It was enormous inside, a giant goldfish paradise. Inside
were thousands of bright green rocks, thousands of flashing treasure
chests, hundreds of other goldfish, everything moving, flashing, and
shining bright. Abel's fins began to ease into familiar patterns, and he
soared through the water as it pressed against his face. He loved the
feeling of the water, of him moving through the water. He loved feeling it
swish around him, brush past his fins, his gills.

      Slowly the cavern began to shrink, its edges darkening, then
disappearing. He swung around in the water to see the mouth of the treasure
chest begin to close. He swam towards it, but the closer he got the less
light it let in. A rush of panic swept over him, and suddenly he was
falling through the air. His gills gasped for oxygen as his stomach twisted
and turned, the air burning as it ripped against his scales.

      When he landed, he realized he was asleep, and that he was dreaming.
There was a flash of something, and he floated on his back towards the top
of the bowl.


X


Herpes is forever. The immortal repeated this phrase to himself as he woke
up to find that his particular case had come out of remission for what must
have been the zillion and first time since he contracted it early in the
sixteenth century. He slid out of bed, letting the muscles in his legs to
compensate for his newly trim three hundred-pound frame. When he rose, he
performed a few compulsory stretches and eventually made his way to the
bathroom. He tugged the chain, a light hummed, and so began another day.
"Another day," he said aloud. "Another day closer to death." He looked at
himself in the mirror and studied the wrinkles in his face, each one so
familiar. "Is this what mortality is like? Worrying that each day might be
your last? Some day maybe they'll cut me open and count the rings. If they
hurry up, I can help them count." After applying his salve, he crept back
into the bedroom and into bed, where Necessarily continued to sleep. He
slid under the blanket and pressed his stomach up against her hot back,
reaching around her neck with his arm. He slowly explored her naked chest,
moving his hand carefully down to her rounded stomach, which was six months
plump with child.

      The unborn child amazed Czech. According to Ripco, the child was
Czech himself, yet the two coexisted. "If I'm in there," he whispered to
her stomach, "then how am I out here? And if I'm out here, then who's
swimming around in there?" He could hear Ripco's voice in the back of his
head admonishing his ridiculous questions. Things just are, he resolved,
because they are.

      Necessarily opened her eyes and rolled over on her back. She took
Czech's hand and moved it in circles over her stomach. "We are going to be
good parents. In about three months, you and I are going to be great
parents." Three months, thought Czech. He hadn't told Necessarily of
Ripco's prophecy. He couldn't bring himself to bursting her fantasy of the
future. There was also the chance that Ripco was lying about the whole
thing, that he was trying to ruin Czech's happiness in yet another way. But
something deep in Czech's mind dismissed that hope. He kissed Necessarily
on the cheek, threw on some clothes, and took the bus to work without
stopping for breakfast.

      On the bus, Czech picked up a small tract, a cheaply printed comic
book entitled "How ya doin'?" The drawing on the cover of a robed man with
a scythe had attracted his attention. "This looks a lot like my friend," he
said to the man on his left. "Minus the scythe and all." After receiving a
polite nod, Czech returned to the comic and flipped through it
absent-mindedly. It was a simple tale of temptation and immorality,
completely devoid of plot or substance, that ended formulaically with a
non-Christian suffering eternally in Hell. Czech huffed at the story and
tossed the book aside. The man on his left, whose lap it landed on, put his
hand on Czech's shoulder.

      "Do you know where you're going when you die?" he asked,
demonstrating a condescending kindness that made Czech's stomach reel.

      "Curled up in the fetal position in my wife's uterus," Czech said,
"and that's the truth." The man smiled, stood up, and took another seat
towards the back of the bus next to a younger, less immortal man. Czech
shook his head and picked up a newspaper that someone had left on a seat.
He had lost much of his boyish charm since Necessarily had become pregnant.
Though he would never admit it, and seldom let the feelings surface, he was
quite arrogant concerning his immortality. Now, faced with mortality in the
shape of a six-month-old fetus, he was becoming quite irritable. These
negative feelings seemed to act cumulatively on him as he woke up in the
morning. He began each day compassionately, sleeping calmly next to wife
and child. As he moved away from them, however, his love turned slowly into
angst. Czech turned his attention towards the newspaper. On the front page
was a large photo of a goldfish laying on its side at the top of a glass
fishbowl. Two wires floated on top of the water, one was attached to the
fish's head, and the other dangled free. "FISH THAT WENT TO HEAVEN GOES TO
HEAVEN" said the headline.

      "Yeah, did you hear about that?" said a twenty-year old boy sitting
across from Czech. "The fish bit it. Isn't it ironic?"

      "What's the big deal?" asked Czech. "It was just a fish."

      "No man," he said, "this was the fish. The one they sent to heaven.
You don't know about the fish?" Czech shook his head. "Man. This was the
fish." The boy related the experiment to Czech, letting his voice rise with
growing enthusiasm, as if the experiment was his idea in the first place.
Czech, on the other hand, not seeing the point of the whole thing, had a
hard time believing that it wasn't.

      "And this has caught the public interest?" he asked, after listening
to the boy's account.

      "Well yeah. The fish was happy. Not much else on TV is." He pulled
out a pocket watch, which was attached to his belt loop via a very large
chain, leaving the watch vulnerable to theft by way of divine intervention
alone. "I guess it's a shame that it died, then. But it had to go sometime,
didn't it? One thing I learned lately is that everything's time will come."

      "Oh sure, of natural causes, sure. But man, fuck that shit. It's
death reached more people than the fucking Challenger explosion. The world
was watching, and suddenly one of the wires pops out of its head and
electrocutes the fucking thing. It was nasty. First it just starts swimming
around real fast, like freaking out and shit. Then it slows down, and man,
it starts like bending in half or something. Then it's fins fucking fry
off. I'm watching this on TV last night and I'm like holy shit man. It was
fucking insane. My friend was taping the fish that night and he got it all,
man. He put it on his computer and he's sending it all over the fucking
Internet. Fucking tragic." Czech, barely moved by the boy's emotional
outburst, reached across the aisle to pat him on the shoulder.

      "I'm sorry you had to watch that. I guess it's a little more serious
than I thought."

      "Well what freaks me out is the whole heaven thing. I mean, ok, put
yourself in the fish's shoes for a second. You're all floating in the
water, being all happy and shit, when boom, all of a sudden ZOT happens and
you're frying. And bam, you're dead. It's like the scientists made this
fish a promise, you know? They said `Hey little fish, we're gonna stick
these wires in your head, and you're going to be happy forever.' Man, I
hope there really is a heaven for goldfish, otherwise that fish got a raw
deal. Motherfucker and all."

      "And nobody's sure that the fish was happy in the first place, are
they? The same wire that electrocuted him was stuck directly into his
brain, wasn't it?"

      "Shit old man, the fish was happy. It's science and shit. You don't
get it." The boy flipped open his watch, checked the time, and shoved it
back into his large pocket. Czech nodded, stood up, and got off the bus,
feeling a little more irritated than when he had got on.

      "Did you hear about the fish?" asked the receptionist as he walked
into the office.

      "Yes, Jennifer, I heard about the fish. Morning." Czech walked
through a door to a larger room, which contained a few rows of modest
cubicles. When he got to his desk, a photocopy of the front page article
had already been placed there, stapled to the ever-present photocopy of
that day's horoscope, which was dutifully distributed daily by Sally, a
woman who worked in the accounting department. He crumpled the article into
a ball, tossed it in his garbage can, and pondered the horoscope for a
minute. He had no clue what month he had been `born' in initially, but ever
since he became interested in Necessarily he had been pretending to be a
Pisces, mostly to give them something to go on in the way of conversation.
"Keep an eye out for old friends," said his pseudo-horoscope. "Today will
be your lucky day." He crumpled it up and tossed it away with the article.
"Hear about the fish?" asked Nick, the thirty-five year old single guy
whose cubicle was directly behind Czech's.

      "Heard about the fish," hollered Czech over the makeshift wall.
"Heard about the fish."

      "Whaddya think?" asked Nick, walking around the partition.

      "I don't know, Nick. I didn't even know there was a fish until today.
I'm not to broken up about its passing."

      "Don't ya watch TV?"

      "I don't really get much of a chance to, no."

      "Well it was crazy," continued Nick. "You should have seen it. The
fish was just floating there, bobbing with the current, and the next thing
ya know he's floating in a whole new kind of current. Zap."

      "Yes," said Czech, "I heard about it." Nick was the office wit, or at
least prided himself in being so. Nobody really found him particularly
funny, but he considered himself responsible for anything humorous in the
office. Any attempt by anyone else to make a joke was taken as an affront
to his position. When Sally had begun distributing photocopied Dilbert
strips, he spoke to her, and from that day she limited herself to
horoscopes and front-page articles. Czech started flipping through some
papers on his desk in an effort to look busy, hoping that Nick would take a
hint and leave him alone. Normally he could stand talking to the guy. He
was always nice to Czech, and despite his penchant for long conversations
at all the wrong times, he had a bit more common sense than everyone else
in the office. As if by the stroke of luck that his horoscope had
predicted, the phone on Nick's desk rang and he shot over to answer it,
leaving Czech by himself. Czech's phone rang as well, and he answered it
solely by reflex, an act he performed countless times per day.

      "We're having a great time here at Quickie Communications, and we
hope you are too," he droned. "This is Czech, how can I help you today?"

      "She's dead," said the voice on the other end. "She's pushing up
daisies."

      "Yes," said Czech, "I know about the fish. We all do here. Thanks for
your concern." He slammed the telephone down on the receiver, and seconds
later it rang again.

      "We're having a great time here at Quickie Communications."

      "Not the fish, you idiot," interrupted Ripco. "Beverly. Beverly's
dead.

      "What, is the fish dead too? This is going to be a bad day for
Simon." Czech gawked at the mouthpiece. It had been over a year since he
talked to Ripco last. He figured he had left Evanston for good. The hair on
Czech's back stood on end.

      "Ripco?" he said.

      "Hi Czech."

      "Ripco, my God, where are you?"

      "I'm calling from the payphone at Woolworth's by your apartment. I
walked all the way over here from the lake. I figured I'd wake you up, it
would be a nice surprise, we'd chat, have a drink, laugh it up. I thought
maybe I'd find you alone, maybe there was hope for you yet. Oh well. I'm an
old hand at disappointment by now. She's pregnant, I see. What did I tell
you? It's a cycle."

      "Hey, you said it yourself, it was fate. There was no way around it.
I stopped sleeping with her for a week after you left, but that only got
her upset. And I can't stand to see that woman upset. There's your fate.
Are you angry?"

      "Nah, I was just hoping you'd spit into the wind for a change."

      "Well," said Czech.

      "Well," said Ripco.

      "So how are you doing? Is everything ok?"

      "Beverly's dead."

      "Yeah, I'm sorry about that. People die every day, Ripco, and I've
never seen you get upset."

      "Wow, you're turning into me, big boy."

      "Not so big anymore. You've been staying at her house this whole
time? I thought you would have left the state at least."

      "Yeah, I stayed on. I've been helping her out, she was sick for the
last few months. Her two servants were too cold. They didn't treat her
right."

      "You sound different," said Czech. "Must have been an interesting
year."

      "That's one way to put it," said Ripco. The two immortals hung on the
line for a few moments, Ripco's breathing getting heavier and heavier.

      "You cared for the woman, eh?" asked Czech.

      "Yes," said Ripco.

      "Good job, Ripco. Was it so hard?"

      "She's dead."

      "Yeah, she's dead. In a lot of ways she's dead as a doornail. Then
again, in a lot of ways she's not." Czech heard Ripco sniffle a few times,
then clear his throat. When he spoke again, his voice was more animated.

      "So, speaking of dead as a doornail," he said, "I guess you could
kick the bucket any day now, eh?"

      "Any hour," said Czech.

      "Any minute."

      "Any second," he finished. "Yeah, that's been on my mind a lot. I'm
kind of nervous, to be honest. I'm just worried about how it's going to
happen. I hope it doesn't hurt."

      "When Beverly died," Ripco said, "I'm pretty sure she experienced a
minimal amount of pain. She had been sick for a while, though. She just
seemed to drift slowly into death. It was hard to tell when she was there."

      "I hope it's quick for me. She was lucky."

      "Look, Czech, I really don't want to keep you. I just felt like I had
to talk to you again before you kicked it, you know? I'm sorry that we left
on bad terms. I wanted to take this chance to say goodbye."

      "Thanks," said Czech. "I'm glad you called. I'm sorry about Beverly."
The two men listened to each others' breathing for a minute longer.
"Goodbye, Ripco. I'll see you again soon, eh?"

      "Sooner than you know it, big boy. Good luck. Bye."

      Czech slid the receiver back into place and leaned forward on his
desk. In Ripco's long absence, he had been able to consider his own
mortality with a certain lack of true belief, to contemplate it, but never
seriously. Now it was all real again. Talking to Ripco brought it all back
into the present. He was suddenly paranoid again. When was he going to die?
The suspense was almost killing him. He couldn't handle the waiting, the
expecting, the surprise of it all. Being mortal was more difficult than he
had ever expected. Maybe he'd get hit by a car on the way to lunch. Maybe a
meteor would drop from the sky and smack him in the forehead. Maybe he'd
fall into a randomly placed pit of tar. Or maybe an electric wire attached
to his brain would slip loose and electrocute him in his fishbowl. No, his
cubicle. Close enough.


XI


The rain was falling in fat drops, and they smacked loudly against Simon's
head as he stood outside the PittsBurger. He was crying, but his tears were
lost in the multitude of raindrops that the wind flung at his face. His
lips quivered, and he let out short howls at regular intervals as he
traversed the long line of cars that had assembled this August morning.
"Margaret," he hollered, "Margaret are you there?" The only answer was from
the man in the car immediately to his right, a gentleman in a floppy brown
hat and a Winnie the Pooh sweatshirt.

      "Hey, I was right in the middle of an order there." Simon ignored the
man and continued into the microphone.

      "Margaret?"

      The man in the hat beeped his horn. "Hey," he said, "get out of the
way. I was right in the middle of an order." Simon turned to face him, and
the red in his eyes made it clear to the motorist that he had been crying
for some time. "Can't you go inside and talk to her?" His voice eased up.
"I was just in the middle of an order, see."

      "Simon?" said a stern voice over the intercom. "Simon, this is Mr.
Kallas, Margaret's boss. She can't come to the intercom right now, Simon,
she's busy working. You're going to have to go home."

      "You're going to have to go home, Simon," said the man in the hat.
"You're going to catch cold out here."

      "Mr. Kallas, I have to talk to Margaret. It's important." Thunder
began roaring in the sky and Simon began screaming to compensate.
"Margaret!"

      "She's not getting on the microphone, Simon," said Mr. Kallas.

      "She's not getting on the microphone," repeated the man in the car.
"Hey, can't you just go inside and talk to her? What, are you an
ex-boyfriend or something? Why don't you tell her what you have to tell her
to her face? Trust me, she'll handle that much better than this." He smiled
apologetically to the car behind him, and fidgeted with his turn signals.

      "Simon," said Mr. Kallas, "you have to go away. We'll call the
police."

      "I need to speak to Margaret," he said. "I need to tell her something
important."

      Suddenly, any patience that the man in the hat had disappeared with a
marvelous stroke of lightning. He flung his hat from his head, opened his
door, and stood out in the rain with Simon.

      "Look, young man. My car here has been out of commission for over a
month. I finally get enough money to get it out of the shop, and I decided
to celebrate by doing one of my favorite things in the world, driving to
the PittsBurger for a Mornin' Muffin and a Coffee. And here I am. I drove
up to the microphone, started to place my order, and then came you. Just go
in and talk to the girl, will you? Tell her you're sorry for whatever the
hell it is you did and everything will be ok. I just want my freakin'
Mornin' Muffin." He stomped his feet, got back in his car, and slammed the
door. A small, ironic smile formed on Simon's face and he trudged slowly
away from the car, into the rain.

      "Simon, I'm calling the police," said Mr. Kallas over the microphone.

      "Simon went away," said the man in the car. "He doesn't look happy,
I'll tell ya that much. He looks downright upset. Gotta feel for the kid,
eh?" He took his hat off the passenger seat and readjusted it on his head.

      "Gotta feel for the kid."

      "Sure," said Mr. Kallas. "Can I take your order?"

      "Cripes, the girl already took down half of it."

      Simon pulled a crumpled up newspaper article out of his pocket and
reread its headline before it disintegrated in the rain. He hadn't seen the
fish die live on television. While the fish was frying in homes across the
world, Simon was balled up in a corner mourning his grandmother's death.
Beverly's death was far from sudden. She had been bedridden for four
months, relying on Ripco for most of her care. Ripco relieved Daniel and
Derrick of caring for Beverly and told them to concentrate more on the
house. He didn't feel they demonstrated enough tenderness when they brought
up her food, or tucked her in for bed. He wanted to handle it on his own.
Her last words were to Simon, though, delivered through a tired set of
lungs and barely forming on her wrinkled lips. "Ripco was wrong about a lot
of things," she said. "Once you dig through the crap, there's gold
underneath."

      Those words echoed in Simon's mind as he put a few miles between
himself and the PittsBurger. He didn't understand their relevance to
Beverly's death. Beverly was a mother to him. His real mother, Dawn, was
currently on a plane with Robert, having cut their vacation short. He
wished that their arrival brought him an ounce of comfort, but he dreaded
it. Simon was indifferent towards his Father, but was absolutely terrified
of his Mother. Since he met Ripco, he could no longer tolerate thoughts of
her babying him. She repulsed him now, in too many ways.

      He found love through Beverly, and she now lay dead. He loved
Margaret's delicate inflections, but encountered only indifference. He
found hope in a fish, and it was now nothing more than toilet fodder,
winding its way through some pipes under the city.

      Simon eventually got tired of walking. He looked around, but
recognized nothing. There was a stone bench along the curb, and he
stretched out on it, his entire body being blanketed with rain. The sun,
obscured by heavy clouds, eventually made its way west, and the sky grew
dark. Simon continued to lie on the bench, staring up, waiting for the
clouds to part so he could see a star. The first star he saw, he imagined
was Beverly, smiling down on him from Heaven. Soon a second star came into
view. The fish, he thought. It didn't receive a raw deal after all. He gave
a small, weak wave to the two of them, his body shaking from the cold and
the rain. His teeth began chattering, and his feet went numb. Right before
Simon fell asleep, a third star appeared. It winked at him, the universe
shook, and Simon went to a different place all together.


XII


Necessarily found giving readings difficult this far into the pregnancy.
She caught herself faking many of her predictions, something which she used
to fall into only on her bad days. They were all bad days, now. Today, when
she told Mr. Namco that his four-month-old boy would be football material,
even she could hear the uncertainty in her voice.

      "Football material?" he asked. "Are you sure? My other three boys are
all skinny as rails, like me." Mr. Namco wore blue jeans two sizes too
small and a black leather jacket, zipped closed. The tight jeans, combined
with his naturally slim frame, made his legs look as thin as twigs. He took
two desperate drags on his cigarette before carefully ashing in the bowl on
Necessarily's desk.

      "No," she lied, "I'm positive. He'll definitely be the one to break
the mold."

      "Finally, a boy that looks more like his mother." Mr. Namco laughed
at himself, and Necessarily felt obliged to do likewise. She had seen Mr.
Namco's wife before, and he wasn't too far off. The baby inside her uterus
had been kicking furiously since the morning, and she put her hands to her
stomach in an attempt to quiet it down.

      "I guess he knows your wife, too," she said.

      "Do you know if it's going to be a boy or a girl?" asked Mr. Namco.

      "I'm not sure."

      "Can't you just look into the future and figure it out? Come on,
you're a psychic, right?"

      Necessarily laughed at Mr. Namco once more. "I've tried, Mr. Namco,
believe me, I've tried. It never works like that, though. I hardly ever get
visions about myself, and even when I do I'm afraid to act on them. It just
seems like it would jinx the power, you know what I mean?"

      "I guess," he said. "Well, a football star, eh?" He fidgeted with his
cigarette, brought it to his lips, and sucked on it. "There's a first for
everything I guess. You know, I meant to thank you for the advice you gave
me last week. I did like you said, told that guy to shove it. Two days
later I find a mechanic who can do the work for two-hundred dollars
cheaper."

      "Well, see? I told you, Mr. Namco. But as much as I'd like to credit
my abilities with that one, I'm afraid it had a bit more to do with some
real life experience. My ex-husband owned an auto shop. I handled the books
for him for a while."

      "Your ex-husband?" he asked. "You're married now, aren't you?"

      "Yes," she looked down at her swelling stomach, "Of course."

      "Yeah, I figured as much. I've seen the two of you going places
together. He's the big guy, right?"

      "Getting smaller, but yes, that's him." Czech looked almost slim,
nowadays. She never realized what an Adonis she had fallen in love with.
She never chased after him for his looks, but she wasn't complaining now.
Necessarily reached for Mr. Namco's hand and concentrated on its lines. She
saw nothing in them. Palm reading was a technical affair. There wasn't much
room for personal intuition, it was pretty much a cut and dry science, but
even so she couldn't achieve the level of concentration she needed to give
Mr. Namco any news. He reached for his cigarette with his free hand and
inadvertently puffed smoke in Necessarily's eyes. She squinted, tears
welled up in the corners of her eyes, and she released Mr. Namco's hand.

      "You okay?" he asked. "You got something in your eye?"

      "I'm sorry, Mr. Namco." She waved the smoke out of her eyes and
waited until the stinging stopped. "I just can't concentrate today. I don't
know what it is, my mind just feels like it's encased in Jell-O."

      "I know how you feel," he said. "Don't worry about it." He
extinguished his cigarette in the ashtray and slid a check for fifty
dollars across the table.

      "This one's on me. I can't take your money, I wouldn't feel right."

      "Hey, you saved me more than this on a busted starter. Take the
money." He unzipped his coat, revealing a T-shirt with the phrase `My Other
Shirt Is a Harley' printed on it. "I'll see you next week, eh?"

      "Actually, Mr. Namco, you'd better give a call before you come in.
I'm thinking of taking a week or two off, maybe longer."

      "You got it, Necessarily. I'll catch you later. Don't overexert
yourself. Take a rest." He left the office, and seconds later Necessarily
heard the trademark roaring of his motorcycle careening down Davis. She
flipped open her log book, saw she had a two hour break before her next
client, so she went back to Czech's apartment to rest. She made an icepack
from the freezer, placed it on her forehead, and gently lowered herself to
the mattress on the floor. She reached over to the alarm clock on her right
and set it to wake her up in an hour and a half. The second she put her
head on the pillow, the world around her melted into a fuzzy daze. It had
rained the day before, but today a gentle breeze rocked her to sleep as it
whistled past the open window.

      "Wake up," said Mr. Namco. He was dressed in full football gear, the
heavy equipment dwarfing his body. He pressed a soggy cigarette butt
through the face mask and choked down a few drags. "Get your ass off the
floor, Nessy."

      "Huh?" Necessarily stood up next to Mr. Namco and looked around. They
were back in her studio.

      "You passed out in the middle of my reading, Nessy. Get with the
program." The next time Mr. Namco lifted his hands to his lips, he was
holding five cigarettes. He sucked on each of them simultaneously and let a
large gust of smoke float past Necessarily's nose. She coughed, and looked
instinctively down at her stomach, which was flat.

      "My baby!" she screamed. "Where is it?"

      "I dunno, I didn't see it leave," said Mr. Namco, who was now
juggling hundreds of cigarettes past his lips. "Why don't you forget the
stupid baby and gimme my reading?"

      "Screw your reading," she screamed. "Where's my baby?" The glass in
the window overlooking the street shattered, and Mr. Namco's body was
yanked into the sky by some invisible hand. Ripco flew in, his brown robe
flapping in the wind. He flung his hood off, tore off his robe, and stood
before Necessarily completely nude. His body was dark, wiry, as if each
muscle was impossibly tangled around the next. Hair grew in small patches
across his wrinkled skin. The body was considerably more wasted than
Czech's. Ripco ran both of his hands through his thick black hair, then
hunched low to cover himself. His eyes looked frightened, terrified, like
some deep, dark, dirty secret had just been exposed.

      "Ripco, where's my baby?" she hollered.

      "Even eternity must come to an end," he said.

      "Ripco, where's my baby?"

      "He's been, he's be, be, be, be, beeeee.."

      "Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep beep beep beep," howled Necessarily's
alarm clock. She shot up in bed, her forehead sweating. Her eyes darted to
her stomach.

      "I'm still pregnant," she said aloud. "I'm still pregnant." She took
a few deep breaths to calm herself down. "Some rest," she said. "I feel
much better now." She pulled herself into a standing position from the
mattress. She went back into her studio, feeling completely drained from
her strange dream, and called all remaining appointments to cancel and
reschedule. Necessarily plopped down in her favorite reading chair and
rubbed her temples. It felt like more than a dream to her. It felt like a
vision, only stronger, as if the absence of power she had been experiencing
over the past couple weeks had resolved itself with one powerful burst of
energy. Ripco's vulnerability was so real in the dream. His small, twisted
body, so pitiful. And her child, she thought, was gone. Was that a
prophecy? Would she miscarry? She shook her head violently to silence the
questioning. She wished Czech was there. She had been with him through his
nightmares, and wanted nothing more than to curl up in bed with him and
tell him about hers.

      She satisfied that urge by curling up in Czech's recliner by the
window, and spent a few minutes watching the busses. She played little
psychic games with all the people on the street, guessing where they were
headed, what they were doing, if they were in love, or married. Slowly she
calmed herself down. Necessarily leaned her head back in the chair, felt an
explosion in her stomach, and began to have a child.


XIII


When he died, there was no falling from a great distance. There was no bone
shattering collision with the Earth. It was like nothing he ever expected,
and even though he had lived and dreamed for so many years, it was like
nothing he could ever dream up. When he thought about dying, he would
create vivid death fantasies. There was the one in which he was gallantly
blasted to smithereens by oncoming traffic as he dove to protect an old
lady from being hit. There was the western fantasy, of course, where he
uttered the location of his buried treasure with his dying breath, after
having taken an unlucky bullet in a duel. He even had a space fantasy,
where he, the dashing, cavalier space hero, was tortured to death by a
rogue band of evil robot overlords from another planet.

      His favorite, however, was one he kept exclusively to himself. He
buried it so far in the back of his brain that it was a rare moment when he
even acknowledged its existence. It was there, however, and whether he knew
it or not, it forever steered him towards his destiny. It was a fantasy of
love, the fantasy of complete and utter devotion. It was a fantasy of
complete submission to his deepest, darkest fears, one he had seen played
out so many times, but was never lucky enough to play a part. But when he
hung up the phone with his immortal friend Czech Biter, and shed his last
tear over the death of a woman that he had truly loved, Ripco quietly
lifted away from himself and ascended towards his rebirth. And he did not
go fighting.

Epilogue

Herpes is forever. Czech Biter repeated this phrase to himself as he woke
up to find that his particular case had come out of remission for what must
have been the fifteenth time since he contracted it early in the
twenty-first century. He rolled slowly out of bed, searching for the bunk
bed ladder with his young legs, and he quietly crept down to the floor. His
twin brother, Rip, rolled restlessly under the covers, emitting short
grunting noises. Czech tiptoed to the bathroom, flipped the light switch,
and squinted as the fluorescent light filled the room. Another Saturday, he
thought. Czech smiled. It couldn't have arrived soon enough.

      He pulled a new bottle of medicine from its box and squeezed some of
its contents onto his finger. Czech clumsily applied the salve, replaced
the cap, and walked back into his bedroom. He and Rip were fraternal twins,
but resembled each other in a few minor ways. They both had the same pale
brown skin, they both had deep set wrinkles under their eyes. Czech's hair
was thick and blonde, however, while Ripco's was straight and black. Ripco
was also a little heavier than Czech, whose Herculean frame had been
responsible for the sores he had just finished tending to. They lived with
their widowed mother, Necessarily, in a small house near the lake in
Evanston, Illinois.

      Czech grabbed a book off the bookshelf, clamored back up the ladder,
and flicked on a lamp near his pillow. Rip groaned below him.

      "Turn off the light, Czech."

      "It's noon, Ripco. I should be able to read at noon." He flung open
the shade on the window next to him, letting a flood of natural light into
the room.

      "Don't you understand the benefits of a twelve hour nap? What's so
enticing about being awake this morning? It's not as if we have school. At
least that keeps us busy. No, today is Saturday, the most boring day of
all."

      "There's learning on Saturday, Rip. You just have to know where to
look."

      Czech replied. He the book open to page two-hundred and twenty-seven,
pulled out his bookmark, and started reading.

      "Don't tell me you're at that crap again. I don't believe you.
Reading that shit is futile, it's not going to get you anywhere. You don't
even understand microbiology."

      "Thanks for your support," Czech shouted down. "I'm trying to
understand it, and eventually I will. Why do you have to be such a
pessimist?"

      "You're not going to find a damned cure for herpes. I'm sorry, Czech,
but you're not. Scientists have been working their whole lives on that, and
nobody's turned up anything yet."

      Czech turned Ripco off in his head and leaned back into his pillow,
pulling the book closer to his face. He was only eighteen, but figured an
early start couldn't hurt him. Sure, he wasn't going to live forever, but
he might live long enough to make some sort of contribution to the field.
Ripco made it sound like Czech was after a cure today. Nah. Today was just
one Saturday. It was a warm one, too. The sun toasted his face, and it
wasn't long before the words on the page began slipping away. His eyelids
began drooping, and an afternoon nap became increasingly tempting. Czech's
head sunk in his large soft pillow, and the book slipped from his fingers
and rested on his chest. He woke up startled, minutes later, from the sound
of Ripco howling in the bed below him.

      "Rip?"

      "Son of a bitch, Czech, did you leave the window open last night?"

      "Yeah, Ma turned the air conditioning off. What's wrong?"

      "I just got stung by a mother fucking bee. Third time this fucking
week." Ripco grabbed his brown bathrobe, slid into it, and hopped to the
bathroom on his stinger-less foot. "Where's the calamine lotion?"

      "It's in the cabinet, behind the aspirin," Czech hollered back.

      "I don't see it."

      Czech looked at his book, flipped through a couple of pages, then
dropped it on the pillow. "Ok, just a second, I'll show you where it is."
What the Hell, he thought. He had time.