Story-time with Aaron: Part 4
Thursday April 15, 2010
The girl twenty meters away tosses her hair, and everyone looks in her direction. She doesn't know. She has just changed her thinking.
The girl's hair is rainbow blonde, unfakable. It smiles when she does, it shines in light.
She closes the twenty meters. She speaks.
"Hello. I've just changed my thinking," she says.
Pause.
"Your English is really quite good."
She is surprised.
"Didn't Aaron ask you, just now, about books and people?"
"This is Aaron?" she asks.
"Yes," says Aaron.
"He didn't say a word to me," she says, and Aaron shrugs. "But it's funny you should say that, about books and people."
Death stands nearby and waits to find out why it is funny.
The girl continues. "I've spent so much time in this library, reading fantastic stories about wonderful lives. And I guess it was just as Aaron walked by, just now, that I realized my life was not in a book. My life is out here! So I decided to come over and introduce myself."
"It was just as I walked by, that you had this thought?" asks Aaron.
"Yes. Just as you walked by," she answers, trying to continue."
"Please accept my apologies," Aaron says with finality.
"Anyway, I'm Lily. Lily Fern Schwartz. My parents were kind of hippies." She smiles. She is disclosing harmless details about herself, which can help build trust. "But not enough so to get rid of the old family name. It's kind of a funny name, isn't it?" She smiles.
"Nice to meet you, Lily," says Death, "I'm John." Death does not reciprocate with his usual disclosure about his name. He has fallen in love with Lily.
It takes females a good deal longer to fall in love than it does males. In Lily's case, it takes about two months. Death and Lily become a couple. They have unspectacular sex. It is the best sex they have ever had. Three months pass. They go on a weekend camping trip. Four months pass. They break up for no reason in particular, other than that it just doesn't seem to be going anywhere. They call it unbecoming a couple.
It is Sunday again. Everyone is at the improbable coffee shop that Lily's sister owns. Business is slow, as usual. Play a game of Scrabble. Aaron skims the paper.
"Trouble in the Middle East again. Twent people dead, four hundred injured," says Aaron.
"Are you sure it's today's paper? I think I read that a few days ago," says Death, studying his Scrabble tiles.
"They might as well just keep printing the same paper. It's today's," says Aaron. "Do you think they'll ever get everything sorted out over there?"
"My dad always says the only way the Middle East will see peace is if somebody nukes Jerusalem and god can sort it out in person," says Lily as she watches cars pass outside the window.
Four somebodies play Scrabble in the dull little coffee shop.
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