“Look, I really think you should get back here—trust me, Jet’s going to need the help.”
“What makes you think I’m coming back?! You take too much for granted. I have my own place to go back to.”
“Wait, Faye—!” But the violet-haired gambling addict had already cut the video link between the Bebop and the Red Bird, much to my chagrin. I’d tried to make this conversation with Faye go better. I really did. But apparently, there had been more going on in her reaction than I’d originally thought: even though I had made sure to be as polite as possible, she still ended the conversation by storming off in a huff. That sort of implied that it was the message rather than the messenger that was setting her off. Either that, or it was something else entirely unrelated to what we were talking about.
Then again, perhaps it was best that things didn’t go well this time, either. After all, I still didn’t know when Faye was going to bump into Julia, but I’m pretty sure that the former saved the life of the latter when they did meet, or something like that. And right now, making sure that Julia got through the day alive was about the only thing I could think to do different—even if I still didn’t have a clue how I was going to do that.
I blew out a slow breath upwards into my hair as I found myself alone with my thoughts in the Bebop’s cockpit. “Why do women have to be so hard to understand?” I asked aloud, as if hearing it being said would get me any closer to an answer. It wasn’t just Faye. Julia was just as quixotic, albeit in a more subdued way, but I liked that about her. Of course, that didn’t explain why I let myself fall in love with my best friend’s girl (especially since I had seen firsthand what Vicious was capable of), but then again, if I’ve learned anything about love, it’s that it is not only blind, it’s also intensely, mind-numbingly stupid.
“When this is over, I’m leaving the syndicate.”
“They’ll kill you. You know how they work.”
“Let them say I’m dead. I’ll be waiting by the graveyard—by the graves, not in them.”
“Spike… I can’t come with you.”
“Yes, you can. We’ll leave here; we’ll get out of this. It’ll be like watching a dream.”
I don’t know how long I’d been lost in my thoughts—it could have been an hour or more—when I was distracted from my musings by a shuffling sound behind me, but I didn’t need my dream/vision thing to figure out who is was. “You feeling okay?” Not quite what I’d said last time; I was wondering if a deviation this small would be enough to change the conversation.
As it turned out, the answer was “no.” Jet simply limped up to the windows and stared out blankly. “Have you heard this story?”
“What story?” As if I didn’t know.
“A man injures his leg during a hunt. He's in the middle of the savanna--- no means to treat the wound. The leg rots and death approaches. Last minute, he's picked up by an airplane. He looks down and sees a land of pure white below him, glistening in the light. It's the summit of a snow-capped mountain. The mountain is Kilimanjaro. As he gazes down he can feel the life flowing out of him, and he thinks, ‘that's where I was headed.’”
An interesting summary of “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” to be sure, though my gut told me his decisions on which details to cut would have sent your average professor of literature into a fit. “Is there a point to this?”
“I hate stories like that.” Liar. Ernest Hemingway was a product of twentieth-century American culture, the same culture that bestowed jazz and blues upon the universe. No way Jet could possibly “hate” it; he loved that entire era of human history. No, if he hated anything about that short story, it was the implications it held. He continued, “Men only think about the past right before their death, as if they were searching frantically for proof that they were alive.” More poetic waxing; apparently, Jet was seriously concerned for me, which is kind of touching, now that I think about it.
My partner finally turned and looked me in the eye. “Turn back. When you and I first met, you told me something. You said that you had died once, that you had seen death. Why can't you just let it go? Forget the past.”
Time to try switching things up a bit. “My past is with the Red Dragons. If you forget about them, you’ll probably end up dead.”
“Okay, maybe that was a bad choice of words, but just because you keep your past in mind doesn’t mean you can’t move beyond it.”
“You’ve never met her.”
“Who?”
“Death.” Hey, if Jet wants to be poetically cryptic, why not return the favor. Besides, she was going to meet me in a graveyard, assuming everything went well with…. “She’s here.”
“Death?”
“Faye,” I said, gesturing absently towards where the Red Tail was rapidly approaching.
“Hmph. Close enough.”
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(Posted Sat, 05 Jan 2008 04:47)
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