sex.

“End of sex?” she challenged, panting like a stormy Atlantic.

“X?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Oh...” I started my propositions, each encountering a vigorous negative. “Sleep? Cigarette? Heart-attack...?”

She laughed.

“This comes during.”

“Silence? Open the door for the dogs?”

She leaped off the bed and walked to the door, her back-side a dynamic work of art, and let the yapping dogs in. Then she returned, her front-side a dynamic work of art and froze, seeing me kneeling, the small box glittering in my hand.

Seventy-five years later, the dogs are, alas, other. The works of art, thankfully, unchanged.

*

sex, what else?

We walked into the forest, holding hands, my nine strays yapping all around and ensuring a life-free vacuum around. Even a dino wouldn’t have dared penetrate.

“Only nine?

“Soon twenty, I love strays.”

“More than you love me?”

We reached the clearing, lay the blanket, ate, then had sex, what else, while my strays looked discreetly away.

“No,” I answered, “though...”

We are up to ten, now. Kids. And fifteen strays.

“Soon twenty, I love kids.”

“More than you love me?”

“No,” she answered, “though...”

We are up to twenty, now. Strays. And fourteen kids.

But we keep trying, tirelessly.

*

sex, nothing else!

We have sex... not like bunnies, like crazy bunnies. The dogs do not mind, as long as immediately after the shower we all go trekking up the hills surrounding us.

We learned it the hard way, when after we did not go trekking, next day one shoe of each pair we owned was chewed to death. All of them, even those inside drawers. After a few iterations we got the hint, and actually we all enjoyed the exercise.

One night she did not feel like sex. Next day one shoe of each pair was chewed, ipsa historia repetit.

Blessed dogs!

...there, where I come from, LL was called Lamed-Lamed which was symbolic of death, this being the road of the cemetery; goes nicely with LL for Legacy-Less, yes, quite nicely...

“Tree!”
“Yes?!”
“How does it feel to be one hundred years old?”
“Old.”

There is a window on the side of the hospital wall. My room is on this side of the widow. On the other side is Tree, and we got acquainted just by chance. I was busy taking a picture of it as it was framed by the window’s wooden frame, looked nice middle of the night, mysterious, when I heard a voice.

“You also cannot sleep?”
“I can, but right now I cannot, too much pain.”
“I cannot, not at all, trees do not sleep, at most they brood.”
“So you are a tree?” For whatever insane reason I was not surprised.
“No, I am Tree.”
“And we talk to each other...”
“By telepathy. Some of us can. Some of you can when they meet the correct some of us.”

OK, made sense. I was not insane, the tree... sorry... Tree was not insane and how else could we talk to each other?

“You talk to other patients as well?”

Here I must be specific since the word ‘patient’ may mislead. This was not an asylum for the alienated but a normal hospital for orthopedic problems, where I’ve just woken up from an eventless knee surgery into a painful knee reality. And no pain killer seemed to help. And no, no, no... I wasn’t high on morphine, not yet.

“I have a very narrow human bandwidth, can talk to one human only at one time. I could try, after I disconnect from you.”
“Did you try?
“No, you are the first interesting human I encountered, so you are the first human. Point.”
“Tree, are you really one hundred years old?”
“No, you decided I was. For a strange reason humans always think trees are hundreds of years old. Why do you ask?”
“I guess I am looking for companionship. See, I am one hundred years old.”
“You are not.”
“Yes I am, based on the way I feel right now I am.”
“Aren’t you the one who said: ‘one is only as old as one thinks he is’?” This baffled me into silence.
“Yes, I am the one, and right now I think I am one hundred years old. Psychology. Hey, how do you know I wrote these words?”
“I am Tree, I am not Illiterate. A bird chirped it to me when it was two years old and was dying, it said ‘I think I am one hundred years old’ and mentioned your name. Part of the reason I talk to you. I do not understand psychology. After all it is also physiology but takes place in the brain, chemistry. So why should it differ from body age?”

He had a valid point there, but I did not feel like expanding on it. A crow sat on one of the high branches, cawed morbidly and flew away.

“Are there more like you?”
“Yes, of course, and everywhere they speak the local language. We do not always understand each other. Do you want to hear Tree from China?”
I smirked a “Yes,” and I was almost instantly invaded by a voice that reminded me of Bruce Lee... or was it Jackie Chan?
“Don’t understand a word he says.”
“Are you sure it is a ‘he’?”
“No, but we do not make any kind of issue around gender. Some are he’s, some are she’s and some are both’s. Even none’s.”
“Do you feel pain, Tree?”
“No, none at all.”
“Love?”
“No.”
“Do you fuck and other shit, Tree?”
“Why must humans always degrade their speech with f-words and s-words. Why cannot humans speak human? Do you want me to disconnect?”
This was a surprise reaction, kind of shook me.
“Probably because we are the one mistake in creation. Sorry, I apologize, please do not disconnect.”
“Of course we f-word and other s-word, sometimes a thousand times a day. Do you know what Crow cawed?” Tree continued, unperturbed.
“No, what?”
“She said...” aha, a she... “ that I am Idealist and I should be cut down to logs and either be burnt or turned into planks.”
“Why, are you too polite?”
“No, I am insufficiently... wait, what was the word she used?... xenophobic. Disregarding the species gap and therefore endangering all species non-human. Do you know what it means, Human? She says it is the only way to survive in this world. Is she correct?”

I did not expect a tree, be it even Tree, to plant such a philosophical question in my mind, not with me tired and nauseated and hurting the way I did at the moment.

“Tree... rain-check? Do you know what it means? If I do not take a couple pain-killers now, I die.”
“Rain-check it is.”

I did not wake up or other nonsense, I did not dream it all. Tomorrow night I intend to further develop our discussion, but after either a morphine shot or a nine millimeter one, something should help. Insufficiently xenophobic, huh?... interesting.

Felix was a nut. Felix was as well my friend. We befriended each other during high school, I at the top of the class and he at the bottom, and we became inseparable. Many years later still inseparable. He a billionaire due to one lucky transaction with crypto-money and I working at life’s treadmill.

Felix was a miser, and this no doubt helped keep him in the billionaires category. He drove a second hand Dacia, lived in a 2 rooms apartment in a nondescript suburb, ate at fast food restaurants and somehow kept in shape and he also vowed to never marry, thus not facing the need to share his billions with another person. When he visited me, which happened at least once a week, he brought me always 100 grams roasted peanuts that he himself was chewing almost entirely, in addition to chewing my entire fridge contents. I did not mind, I loved him dearly for old times’ sake. When I asked him once why always 100 grams peanuts he honestly told me that he purchased at a bargain price one ton of them, that he carefully weighed and separated to 100 grams lots and thus had bargain presents to give away to anyone he needed to give a present for visit, birthday, wedding, whatever. For weddings he always made a concession and gave three bags of peanuts (“special occasion... I have to make sacrifices...”).

During the rare restaurant visits he always went Dutch and was tipping his part at exactly 10%, correct to the cent and paid with a check... “if they lose it it’s pure profit for me...” he kept saying, and he was serious about it.

And Felix hated the Eurovision Song Contest with a passion. Lately we started watching it together, he providing the 100 gram peanuts and I providing the sandwiches, the cakes, the soft drinks, the hard drinks and my girlfriend as the one who was in love with the contest and could reply spicily to his horrible remarks. He hated her as well but as I was in love with her he had to accept her presence. “What about a girlfriend?” she asked him one day. “Still looking for one that is different from you,” he answered unblinking. “AND will pay her share in anything she consumes,” he added immediately, in case we missed this point. It was all going just fine among the three of us.

Then one day Felix, my Felix, arrived at my place all flushed and perspiring and panting and almost crashed my door down before we let him in. “They wrote a song about me,” he blurted, “Eurovision wrote a song about me in the past, before I started watching it. I love Eurovision.” Then he fainted.

I waited patiently for him to recover... “Maybe he will not?...” wondered my girlfriend, a glint of hope in her eyes. But he certainly did, and then we heard the entire piece of news from him.

He was driving his beloved Dacia with radio at full volume (the Dacia soundproofing being quite rudimentary) when all of a sudden he heard the word Eurovision, and the next words discerned were of a Mexican singer Conchita Wuarez and the song name was Rise Like a Felix (at which point Felix lost entirely his composure and started foaming at the mouth)... “... you hear, a song about me or my namesake or my arousal?...” (he meant arisal). We tried to calm him, softly, tried to point out that to the best of our knowledge the singer was Austrian and called Wurst, that Felix was actually Fenix, spelled Phoenix, and probably the noise in the car caused him to mishear it making the n into l, showed him even my CD with the song on it... irrelevant what we tried he got more and more agitated and finally looked at me as if I was the missing link between primates and humans, called me a variety of relevant and irrelevant names and rose defiantly from the chair.

“Aha, I see, someone put in place a conspiracy and you play along with it... fake news... AI re-imaging... intentional typos introduced in prints and on-line...” He picked up the leftovers of the 100 grams peanuts and walked to the door. “I will prove, I will prove everyone wrong, you too, the truth will come to light...” He picked a peanut that fell to the floor, stuffed it in his mouth and left.

Felix was not great with social media. But Felix was lucky, the way he had been with the crypto-money and the group he created on Facebook carried in its name the fly-attracting bait word – conspiracy. The following of the site started as a few thousands and grew inside a couple weeks to hundreds of thousands, all claiming and clamoring justice and truth and transparency and repairs for Wuarez and Felix, and Felix himself started traveling the world to promote his battle for truth. He wasn’t short of money, however Felix being Felix – he flew to many airports but only those being served by low-cost travel companies, he organized locally meetings attended by thousands of followers offering everyone free food (one biscuit and three olives per person) and one drink (a rented gigantic barrel of water, everyone had to bring their own cup from home) and organized tombolas where the winner’s prize was the right to sing the disputed song using the Rise Like a Felix words. Joke? Inside two months his following grew to over one million, the Eurovision management had to print full page disclaimers on main newspapers, and a few obscure presidents from a few obscure countries invited him as guest of honor (he got even a few medals pinned to his chest).

We stopped following the day a few claims to fatherhood (proven false) were thrown at him, feeling that he had gone too far and too out of control. After all – the real world is anything but nice and forgiving, even to naïve souls such as Felix’s.

When we opened the door at the third knock – we were surprised to see Felix there, the 100 grams peanuts tiny bag in his hand and his eyes red and swollen as if from malaria. “I’ve just had malaria,” he explained and sat himself stiffly in the chair offered. I took the peanuts from his hand before he changed his mind. “What happened, Felix?” asked my girlfriend, and he started sobbing. Then he chewed a few peanuts following which he exploded:

“I’ve met Conchita,” he whispered.

OK, this was it, I got it. Felix was many things, he also was many things not, but one thing which I’ve known him as being was homophobe; not extremely but sufficiently so. He was also many other things phobe but in this specific case... “Conchita is Thomas and Felix is Fenix and my dream shattered,” he added and cried some more until he finished the entire bag of peanuts. “Do you have some more peanuts?” he asked and I was about to get up when my girlfriend pinched me so hard that I screamed. “Thanks for commiserating with me,” he said and when he saw that no peanuts were coming he got up and left.

We are back to our old selves, all of us. Felix still a billionaire and a bit more, we still intend to watch Eurovision Song Contests together, but one thing is now clear. Felix will not make any future nasty remarks on the subject. I kind of guess he is planning some kind of revenge in the shape of a winning future Felix song by bribing a large part of voters involved, but if he weighs the bribes in peanuts... I guess it is never going to happen.

By the way, me and my girlfriend married meanwhile and Felix went out of his way and brought us four bags of peanuts, forcing us to promise him that our first born will be named Felix. We promised him, knowing already the first born was on the way and it was a girl, turning our promise caduc. Hopefully he will not sue, asking for the return of the fourth bag of peanuts bag. Just for playing it safe – we ate it.

“I think I’m a witch,” she said. OK, she thought she was a witch. I thought she was plain crazy, which just caused me to fall even deeper in love with her. “Look, this is some stuff witches do, and why would I be doing this if I was not a witch?” Crazy, did I say it already?

I looked at the items she had there on display, on the ground behind the house with her one-eyed dog watching silently, watchfully, dangerously. I mean – we did not live together or anything that would have reduced the dog’s watchfulness, but still, I’ve slept there often enough and fed him her cookies often enough (she was a terrible cook) for that beast to stop eyeing me that balefully.

The items lay lined up on the ground in some kind of a messy order, probably that’s the way witches organize things, ha-ha, and it was kind of spooky. Good, so she had these zany tattoos up her ankles, and these other zany tattoos around her nipples, and some other zany tattoo – just a single one – there where... well, no business of yours, but this was kind of extreme even for this extremely green-eyed extremely zany-minded female. I wasn’t great on witchery items, though I watched my share of movies, and I gazed at the collection with pure intellectual interest.

“So this is a pentagram, built of dry sticks,” she nodded, “and I wonder if I should look at it upright or inverted, huh?”

“You decide,” she poked me in the ribs with a bony fist that hurt more than a knife’s apex.

“And it could symbolize anything from the perfect-ratio of mathematics through the tetragrammaton of human existence and on to the religious five wounds of Christ, and more. Like an American stars spangled banner capitalism symbol or a Chinese yellow on red flag communism symbol. How do I do for the time being?”

She made a face that could have frozen the Niagara Falls mid of the summer, but her stuck out tongue signaled me to go on further.

“And this is clearly a triangle with a variety of lines that might represent a combination of a variety of other triangles symbolizing the four elements, though it could be as well a drawing from my ninth grade geometry book, a subject at which I sucked. Or maybe children protection?” The tongue sneaked out again, allowing me access to further interpretations. “But this one has me puzzled,” I pointed to a third sticks’n’strings creation, which looked like a triangular, ahm, harp? “Dreams catcher? King David’s harp? Mosquitoes net?”

It wasn’t the tongue, this time, it was the bony fist attacking my ribs that told me I was off the safety of the paved road, so I turned my attention to the last item on display: a knotty long branch, about half an inch thick and three feet long, and at one end of it a cluster of thin branches, clearly broken by hand and fanning out from the hemp-rope knot that tied them to the thick branch, way of a... “Is it a broom? For cleaning the yard from dry leaves?” I asked.

“It is a broom. A transportation system. Very eco-friendly. I hope never to have to use it, though, I get vertigo even when I climb a chair,” she added, smiling dreamily.

“And if you do and you wear a skirt, don’t forget to wear underwear,” I exploded in hysterical laughter, hugging her until I heard some bones crack. “Sorry,” I said, wiping my tears. “If you are a witch then I hope that you are hungry as much as I am.”

“And If I am a witch or not – I hope you love me as much as I love you. Yes, I am hungry.”

Witch or no witch, she was hungrier than I was. We drove over to a fast food that specialized in human food rather than snakes and bats and things, with the dog riding in the back. It would never leave her side, even in the van, even in the bedroom. I wondered what would happen once she hopped on that broomstick... I did snicker aloud, probably, since she asked me between munches what it was that I found so comical about the situation, and instead of answering I reverted to simply mixing her munching with mine by bending over the table and kissing here deeply, full mouth to full mouth. She did not mind, she never minded my loving her any which way.

Back in the van I dropped a couple hamburgers and a bag of fries in front of the waiting beast who growled my way “...he loves you deeply...” she said, though I wasn’t so sure, and then drove back to her place. The sex was wild, the night was old, I kissed her left nipple and skipped over the never closing single eye of the growling monster, on to the van and back home. Next day I had to get up early for a presentation and I certainly was not ready for it.

I believe I did not mention that I lived in the worst part of the town, about five miles north from her. Not that her neighborhood was much better, but it was better than mine and she had a monster to watch over her. I was neither surprised nor shocked to see a couple of characters carrying the TV set out of my place, with a third one carrying my old style stereo system and a fourth sitting and waiting in a car outside. My insurance was good enough, given some previous incidents, but I felt suddenly pissed- off and suicidal and enraged at this invasion of privacy, not to mention the fact that I followed for the last three months an intensive training in krav maga. This meant, in that euphoric state of mind, that I was invincible.

So I tackled logically the two guys busy carrying the TV, kicking one in the groin and hitting the other in the throat and I was about to deal with the guy carrying the stereo when the sky caved in and I dropped into an absolute, painless darkness. Yeah, the driver... was my last coherent thought.

When I woke up I was dizzy, gagged and tied to some steel piping, and four blokes, probably the robbers, were seated at a table playing cards. Through a dirty window I could see my van outside. One of them saw me opening my eyes, came toward me and slapped me hard, twice.

“One for each of my balls,” he grunted. “You’re lucky I don’t slaughter you, it’s because we want to make more money from you.” He pulled off the gag from my mouth, fished in his pocket and pulled out my phone. “Code!” he ordered. I didn’t answer and he slapped me again. “Code,” he said again and when I didn’t answer his palm made contact with my cheek again. “I can do it until your teeth start showing through your cheek,” and he raised his palm. I gave him the code, after all I had no secrets on my phone, no bank numbers, no bank codes, and anyway my accounts were fairly depleted. “Who shall I call?”

“Call for what?” I asked.

“Ransom, you idiot,” he snarled, at which I started laughing as if I had lost my mind. He waited until I recovered from my hiccupping and asked: “Laughing at what?”

“Who do you think will pay millions for me? I’m a nobody, you idiot,” and he did not mind sharing the invective with me.

“Listen, either you die or you find someone to pay one hundred grand for you. Then we call them and make arrangements. I need a number.”

It took some haggling and some slapping until we finished bargaining the sum down to ten grand, which I kind of hoped she would be willing to pay for me. After all, I did not want to die yet and those guys looked too primitive to hesitate much before sticking a knife into me. “OK, I will talk to her, push the buttons for me. I don’t know where we are so you cannot fear me disclosing anything.” To which he agreed.

“Hi, love,” I said into the phone. “A bunch of idiots kidnapped me and they ask ten grand for my release. Can you help me out?”

There was no emotion in her voice, no question mark, no panic. I was not sure actually that it was her voice.

“Let me talk to them.” Short. Alien. I almost shivered.

I handed the phone back to the character interrogating me and I heard him make some arrangements for a meeting a few hours later on. Then he returned to the table and carried on playing cards. Well, as long as I was getting out alive, all was OK. The insurance will probably exclude me from their program but at least they will first pay something. And anyway I wanted a new TV set, though the stereo system carried sentimental value. But, hey, life carries sentimental value too.

I must have dozed when it happened. Swish, another swish, a few low growls, quiet. Suddenly my hands and feet were free and when I opened my eyes I saw an undefined heap of human limbs kind of interwoven with each other and a one eyed beast holding firmly a foot in its giant mouth.

She came close to me, caressed gently the wounded cheek and thumbed backwards towards the heap.

“Do you want a trophy?” she asked, kissing the wound to alleviate the pain. It kind of worked. If what she was hinting at was what I thought she was hinting at... I hesitated between sighing happily and throwing up.

“Leave’em be. Call the police.”

She looked disappointed and the dog looked even more disappointed when she signaled him to let go of the foot and come toward us. At this stage I was still in my dazed, denial phase, so I did not comment, did not ask.

“Listen,” she said, “let’s take your van to my place. I think I caught a cold. Love,” this time meaning the dog, “pick it up and bring it to the van.”

The monster obediently picked up the broom... the broom?... and trotted towards the van. I didn’t ask any question. I did, though, pull up the hem of her skirt to ascertain she wore underwear – she did. Was there any question that would have been questionable under the circumstances? Probably not. And she probably loved me too. Hey, probably loved me, period.

We were leaning against a tree, of course it was an apple tree, it was Eden after all. I was busy weaving stories for her ears only... as said, Eden and we were the only humans there, and she was busy pouring me tea of various fruit tastes into cups of coconut shell – glass and paper hadn’t been invented yet.

“Wait a minute, tea in Eden?” asks Snake.

Yes, sure, I know the bible forgets to mention it but there are tens of varieties of tea in Eden, and as she loves most of them it reflects also on our relationship. It’s a later called Platonic relationship, we both being naked but as innocent as a newly born day. But she being the beautiful part of our pairing, my stories were mostly centered on her. Those soft mounds of snow-white flesh (sorry wokers, these are facts), and those sunset-red cherries topping those mounds, and the velvety exquisitely shaped symmetrically divided roundness of her back once she lies down on her belly with those barely visible bumps from waist to neck...

“...later called vertebrae,” contributes Snake.

...and the gossamer gently hugging the mysterious valley at the top of her thighs... I continue unperturbed.

“... shaved away by future generations...” Snake pours on its venom.

Shaved? What is shaved?

At that moment precisely she rolls on and off and around and underneath and above and inside and etcetera me, opening the green gates of an eternal forest to envelope me like dandelion fluff and chimes directly into my brain...

“Say, Jadam...” Jadam being my name, hers being Jeve, “...who are you talking to? Where are my stories, keep telling me my stories. Some more tea?”

I tell her about Snake and its stupid comments, and she jokes that maybe we should set Dog on Snake, and I remind her that this is Eden and no violence or religion or political system persecution is allowed here and get on with my stories right after she pours some more tea down my throat straight from the divinity of her mouth’s cavern. I am probably this world’s Scheherazade and she this world’s sultan Shahryar, fleets a thought in my mind, and I have no idea what it means, probably a hallucination induced by the tea made of coca leaves. I rush to the spring to wash my face and mouth and return to find Jeve munching an apple.

“Mmm, delicious,” she mmms, “Snake dropped it from the top of the tree claiming this will help me define gravitation’s formulae, whatever it means, and you know what? I love it. Here, let me prepare some tea for you from it,” and she spits some chewed apple flesh into a new coconut shell, runs to the spring... oh, the music of her running naked flesh... to mix it with water and hand it over to me. “Taste it, you’ve never tasted anything like it.”

I taste it. I’ve never yet tasted anything like it. Coca leaves? They are nothing compared to apple tea.

“Or cider,” I hear Snake hissing happily, and suddenly I am hit by... what?... lightning is it called? Thunder? Steam locomotive, whatever it may have meant?

Jeve, one plus one equals two, I find myself saying. And the sunset-red cherries topping your snow-white mounds are called nipples and I could eat of them as much as I want without getting indigestion. And the gossamer at the top of your thighs...

Someone, somewhere, may have gotten all of a sudden upset with me. With us. With the world. I heard a big-bang, Jeve hurriedly placed her palms in front of the gossamer, Snake crawled away from us sticking a black forked tongue ahead of it, Dog chased his tail a few times then lay down to snore...

“Jadam, what happened?” asked a bewildered Jeve, squeezing into me, her palms tightly pressing the top of her thighs, her hard... nipples?... boring into my ribs.

I knew what happened. One flash, one infinitely small moment and everything became as clear as the blue sky slowly invaded by the rising ball of fire in the east.

The sun does not rotate around Earth, Earth rotates around the sun, I told her. Then I let her sink slowly in the grass at the roots of the giant apple tree, pulled her palms away from the body part they were protecting and forced her to close them tightly around my back, then laid my head on... oh, I know what they are called, breasts.

Jeve, I love you the way of man loving a woman. Jeve, now I am going to make love to you. Jeve, now you are going to mother... “Mother? What is mother?” ...humanity. Jeve, love me the way of woman loving man.

“And... will you keep telling me stories to the day we die? Hey... what is die?”

I will keep telling you stories to the day we die. Apple tree – I believe I owe you my thanks.

We made love. I kept loving her to the day we died. She kept loving me to the day we died. I kept telling her stories to the day we died.

This is not a tragic or fantastic story the way the title may imply, this is actually a romantic and true story. And being based on real facts the way they happened to me in my coming life, the one after the present life, I carry an extra tender feeling for it. Like for a freshly budded flower, or a puppy wagging its tail, or a baby’s toothless smile. So, please bear with me and please do not ask how, I wish I could tell you.

*

I had just arrived at whatever is called the gate from here to there, not really a gate but rather a fuzzy threshold, and was starting to lift my foot to cross it when I saw her. Seated, dressed in some kind of Victorian garb which I would have a problem to describe, a ribbons enriched hat to her head and a tiny umbrella in her left hand, and in her right hand a placard carrying the words: Sir, love me, please love me, I am a zombie, I am a virgin, I am not contagious. The clumsy sentence ending in a modern looking smiley, I doubt they would have used it in the period she seemed to originate from. And she was beautiful, oh, God, was she beautiful, the way of a Gina (Lollobrigida) DNA mixed with a Liz (Taylor) DNA mixed with a Lynda (Carter) DNA mixed with a Farrah (Fawcett) DNA would have resulted in, yeah, wet dreams all of them and she ten times more so.

I lowered slowly my foot this side of the threshold, this side being just an expression, and approached her. Cautiously, of course, after all she was telling everybody about her zombiness.

“Hi,” I said, keeping a safe distance from her.

“Hi,” she answered, raising her eyelashes and revealing a pair of eyes that even a Da Vinci could not have emulated. “Are you here to dare?” she asked, the placard steady in her hand, her voice lightly hesitating. I approached some more.

“Are you really a zombie?” I continued, and I hated myself for my clumsiness, I was usually much more eloquent with my sentences. “Do you know what a zombie is? Are all zombies as beautiful as you?” I went on, rumbling the way of a teenager who just learned to talk.

“I don’t know, I never encountered another one. It’s a word I have learned as of late. Before it was ‘demon’. You think I am beautiful enough to rob you of your heart and of your reticence?”

Was she beautiful? Did rain fall down and trees grow upwards?

“Say, how long are you sitting here with this placard in your hand? You are dressed like two hundred years ago and the smiley is barely one decennium old,” I added, my embarrassment changing into curiosity.

“Two hundred twenty one years,” she answered and I did not jump, uncertain as I was that I would not fall away through the clouds or whatever was or was not underneath us, but I did gasp audibly. “But I adapt to passing time, see, I added a modern smiley to my plea. Did you see my smiley?” And as I probably forgot to pull back up my lower maxilla, she added, “Did you read my plea?”

I pulled it finally up, my maxilla, picked gently the placard from her resisting fingers and ran a thumb over it.

“Two hundred plus years and not a speck of dust on it.”

She smiled. Bang bang hit the spark jumping off her teeth and blinding my eyes.

“There is no dust up here. Can we... maybe... sit down together somewhere and talk a little?” The tremor in her voice was kind of frightening and I hesitated between running back to the threshold and jumping over it and giving in to my curiosity.

“Where could we sit down to talk?”

“There is a bistro, just around the corner,” ...I didn’t see any corner... “I could guide you there if you... let me hold your hand?!”

“Huh, a bistro?” idiot me was back in play.

I did not let her hold my hand. I just pushed the other end of the placard toward her, and she smiled indulgently taking hold of it, stood up and started walking wherever. And we got there. A bistro. Fully automated, as could be expected, empty, as could be expected, she picked a glass of juice... “...cherries, I loved cherries...” and I a glass of beer... “...lager, I loved lager...” and we sat at one of the round tables in one of the corners. It did not escape my attention the way we both expressed our preferences past tense. I would have preferred a rectangular table, you know, better protection, but I started relaxing. Strange to say it, was I tense at any time?

She sipped, once. I sipped, once. The most natural of encounters, as if I wasn’t living (living?) the most extraordinary of events in my life. As if I did not know the way it will soon shatter. Well, soon was not now. “Tell me,” I asked. She told me.

She was born into a well to be German family, her father a rich merchant and her mother a housewife that bore him eleven children, of which only six lived to be older than ten. And she was the only girl among these six. Her parents, mainly her father, were quite liberal and with her being the surviving blossom of the family they spoiled her rotten. “Though I was not, at any time, a spoiled brat. Quite the contrary”. She developed an incredible thirst for knowledge, and contrary to many of her friends who followed mainly dance and fashion lessons, she received the best of all-round tutoring that money could have bought at the time. “One of my mathematics tutors was Gauss.”

I jackknifed and almost spilled her drink. My hand moved swiftly to stabilize the cup and met there her hand for a split second. I pulled it hastily back, the fire almost insupportable. She smiled. “And one of my music tutors was Beethoven. Though he found that my parents wasted their money there, I was never going to be anything musical, in his view.” She laughed shortly. This time I did not jackknife. There was also Hegel a short time for philosophy tutoring, then she learned how to handle a sword, to speak Russian and French and English fluently, to paint... “we did not have TV, we had a lot of time on our hands for whoever wanted to use it efficiently...” ...and to ride. Here she took a long breath, before continuing. “I was an excellent rider, I had a great steed, and then one day while galloping in the forest, a snake spooked my horse, it reared, I fell...”

She paused. I did not interrupt her moment of recollection, of pain, of rage... of fear. “I was paralyzed from the neck down. A vegetable. A flower yet a dead flower. A prisoner in the most terrible of prisons – my own body. And then, thankfully, eight horrible years later I was invaded by that which is presently called pneumocoque and freed from my prison. To arrive here. Not having known romance. Not having known love. Not having known physical love. Virgin.”

She lifted her eyes, keenly watching me. “There are only a few humans that are being allowed to choose to go over the threshold or not, I know it by now. I was one of them. I decided to wait on this side until I would have found that which I lost when I met my fate, on Earth. Romance. Love. Physical love. Then I will be ready to step over the threshold. I am still waiting. Maybe you are the one.”

I was lost. In thoughts, in the absurdity of the situation, in incomprehension. “So why this absurd placard?” I asked, pointing to the piece of cardboard leaning against the table.

“This is not the first text I painted, ha-ha, painted. I tried a variety of other texts – sad, funny, poetic, desperate, even mathematical. None seemed to impress the selected few that were allowed that moment of hesitation before the threshold, they all seemed to read it, got frightened for whatever reason, then moved on over the threshold. I don’t even know what they see when they look at me, maybe they see what they want to see, or maybe what they do not want. I have no idea what the rules of this place are if there are any.”

“How many did stop to look?”

“I did not count, maybe one hundred?”

“One hundred in two hundred years. This is nothing, what do you do the rest of the time?”

“Time has no meaning here, it is what I want it to be – slow, fast, still... I don’t feel time passing. Stay with me, if you wish, and you will start seeing things my way. Or maybe not. This is a mix of dream and nightmare, but I accepted it long ago. One thing is certain – I know what I want. And I hope to find it, in the end. Romance. Love. Physical love. I died without knowing, I hope that whoever manages this place...” ...another divine smile... “will let me be around until it happens.”

She sipped her cherry drink, I sipped my beer, I accepted her recount since what was there to not accept? I knew I was not dreaming, this was one certain certainty.

“And am I the first to look, stop and come over?”

“You are the second one. The first was a woman, but once she understood I was not interested she returned to the threshold and moved on. To wherever. Will you stay?”

The question I was asking myself since the beginning of the strange encounter and an answer which was getting more and more obvious for me. I carried human fears with me, of course – was it a test, was she maybe a zombie for real, will I blink and then wake up in hell...? Sure, I did not believe in hell, but neither in zombies nor in afterlife and yet here I was. The one one-hundred percent atheist and pragmatic and scientific minded and logical creature in the world, at least in my mind, at close encounters with a two hundred years old beauty in some afterlife scenario that I did not even doubt its veridity. Question marks a million but answers only one. “Yes. I will stay.”

She stood up, moved to my side of the table, kissed my cheek and took hold of my hand. I did not resist. After all - what the hell? “Do you want to see Eden?” and she started pulling towards the bistro’s door. OK, why not Eden, why should it be any less logical than a bistro in afterlife? She took me to Eden.

I cannot say days passed, there were no days there. There were periods of wakefulness, periods of sleep, periods of various wonders that she shared with me as if she owned the place, which certainly she did not. Other humans we did not see but a variety of animals, vegetation and constructions (yes, it feel strange to mention constructions – by whom? for what?). The strangest of all seems to have been the fact that whatever she said “Let’s see” or “Let’s go to” seemed to exist. Or materialize straight from her wish? I tried once to tell her “Let’s go bowling” but no bowling materialized. Maybe someone ‘up there’ or ‘up here’ or ‘up/down anywhere’ felt they owned this young lady a life that was stolen from her and now they were compensating for it? The logical me said I was bullshitting, the pragmatic me said these are facts, accept them. I accepted.

She surprised me one day (day? a manner of speaking) when she asked me: “Would you like me to wear something else?” and, after a moment “or would you like me to wear nothing at all?” I didn’t know a woman could blush that deeply, and I didn’t know I could blush that deeply.

We were in no way intimate... yet, I may add, though my human and animal drives were slowly pushing/pulling me in that direction, and she was aware of it. I started romancing her for real: wrote her poems, stories, she was laughing at the funny ones and crying at the sad ones, I was offering her bouquets of flowers gleaned from the wide fields surrounding us on our long walks, I even built her a throne of green branches, placed a green leaves crown on her head and asked permission to sit at her feet. Which she refused – “I prefer you to build me a double bed of green branches and for you to lie there at my side. And...” “And?” I asked, guessing the answer. “And teach me the making of love.”

If I was to estimate the time passed, I would have placed it at one year. But it could well have been ten years or a single day, I had no means to measure. I did not want to measure. I found myself admitting to myself: I am in love with this woman. And after endlessly walking side by side, hand in hand, head on shoulder, hugging each other’s waist, never yet kissing even once, I found myself turning her to face me, our bare toes touching, our chests touching, our noses almost touching, and without words taking control of her mouth as if this was my source of breathable air. And after she responded in kind I found it was the time to tell her: “Zombie my zombie, I love you.”

“I love you,” she answered, glowing like a thousand suns and thousand thousand thousands of stars.

“Is this what you hoped love would be like?” I asked.

“No,” she answered, “it is way beyond what I hoped. Will you now build that green branches bed for me? For us?”

I could have taken the easy way out and propose to her to pick up one from a furniture shop which I am sure would have materialized ‘just beyond the corner’, but I was too much in love. I wished to buy a lot of tools instead – saw, hammer, nails, ax, strings, ribbons... and of course the right tools shop materialized just beyond the corner, and while I was busy sawing, hammering, nailing – she was busy chasing butterflies, chasing squirrels, chasing wolf whelps... “It is ready,” I said, breathing hard, sweating, hurting.

“Shall we wash in the spring first?”

It was the first time we were naked together. She washed me carefully, chastely, dried me with lumps of dry grass, I did the same.

“Shall we go to the bed now?”

She led the way, climbed on the bed and kneeled on it, asking me to do the same in front of her.

“Is this when I lose my virginity?” she asked.

“This is when you become the mother of our child,” I answered.

“Will you make love to me the way you love me?”

“I will make love to you the way you love me,” I answered, emphasizing the second ‘you’.

What followed was not human. Was not describable. It didn’t exist in life or in this after life. She took control of our bodies in ways she had no way of knowing, I responded in ways I had no knowledge of having known ever in my life with anyone, there was rage there, there was tenderness there, there was hell there. There was heaven there. We never woke up since we never fell asleep, my head between her tiny breasts, her hand running errands up and down my spine.

“Do we have to dress?” she finally asked.

“Adam and Eve never dressed in the garden,” I answered.

“Do we stay in the garden?”

“I do not know. I only know that you are carrying my child now, wherever we are.”

We stood up, holding hands and moved towards the threshold. Then, no hesitation, we stepped over it. Still holding hands.

*

Told you, this was going to be a romantic, true story. Told you, please do not ask, I wish I could tell you. I wish I knew.