The Game of Love and Death(89)

Of how my life should be …

“Did you miss me?” he asked, looking as old as she felt.

“No,” she said. “Not for a moment.”

It was a lie and they both knew it. But some small lies are games. Or, closer to the bone, echoes of games that no longer need to be played.

“Are you ready?” Love asked.

Death nodded and found her voice, which was rusty from disuse. “Eternally.”

She despised the sound, and so, although she was weak and unsteady, she transformed herself into the Helen guise one last time. She felt better right away, as though she’d come home to a place she never thought she would miss.

“That face.” Love’s laugh was surprised. “I’m glad to see it again.”

He shifted as well, and was once again young and glowing with irresistible light. The opponents faced each other. Death’s hunger unfolded like a map of space itself, infinite. It would not be long now. She readied her hand to knock. Then she hesitated.

Love read her mind, as he now could. He stood next to her, his arm around her, keeping her steady and warm as the music played on.

The only thing I want now

Is for you to walk beside me …

Death knocked. There was a pause and the sound of slippered feet scuffing a wooden floor. The door opened halfway. Flora, her face shaped by the passage of many years, stood there as if she’d been waiting for them.

She opened the door all the way. “I thought — I hoped — it would be you. Though I wouldn’t have minded if you’d come as the cat.”

Death couldn’t speak. As was her lot, she’d consumed lives over the years. But she had long been hungry for this soul above all others, and she hadn’t known what sort of greeting to expect. She would never admit it, but being welcomed by Flora meant more than she could have imagined in all of those years of waiting. To be welcomed was rare; to be welcomed by someone she loved … she did not have the words for how it felt.

“May we come in?” Love asked.

Flora stepped away to let them pass as the song neared its end.

The only thing I’ll ever want …

“Henry’s in here,” Death’s player said, gesturing toward the bedroom where her parents had once slept.

Is for you to walk beside me …

Walk beside me …

Walk beside me …

As the instruments played their last notes, Flora shuffled to the record player — a vintage thing, the sort most people had replaced with small digital devices that turned ones and zeroes into sound. It meant the song was the same every time it was played, something that struck Death as being simultaneously magical and dreadful. The old woman lifted the tone arm, careful not to scratch the vinyl. She’d become gentle in her old age, even when she knew it did not matter. It was a form of caring, of connection.

Love cleared his throat. “Shall I wait out here?”

He put his hand on the back of the davenport, the one that had been Flora’s grandmother’s. In the decades since, it had been reupholstered many times, now in a soft velvet the color of new fern leaves. But Death would have recognized it even if time had reduced it to a pile of sawdust. The wood of the curving, carved arms still sang of the tree’s soul. Something about it sang of Marion’s, as well.

Did she want him to see her at her most vulnerable? At her most despised? It would have been easy for her to keep him out of the room, to spare herself the shame. But there was no longer room for that in their relationship. Not when so much had been shared.

“Come with us,” Death said.

Love took Flora’s arm. Death followed them into the bedroom.



The setting sun was visible through the window, a dusky painting in reds and oranges and gold. These were the colors of fall, although it was an early spring evening, and this evoked a sense of a beginning and of an ending, which was as it should be.

Death didn’t need the light, but she’d always liked it. The fading rays reached Henry where he lay in bed, his eyes closed, his face slack with age and exhaustion. Time had changed him, but she would have known him anywhere. Not as well as her player, perhaps. But well enough to pick his face out of the billions she held in her mind.

Henry had kept his curls, and they’d kept up their relentless march on his forehead. Flora sat next to him, placing her hand on his brow, as if feeling for fever. She moved his hair back to where she knew he wanted it to be.

“They’re here,” Flora said, leaning close to his ear. “Both of them.”


Henry did not stir. He was too far gone to that land of waking dreams and memories. His hands twitched by his sides, his fingers moving as though he were playing his bass. His lips moved, and Death read the word they shaped.

Someday.

Someday had come. It had come in many versions. This was the final one.

“How will this work?” Flora asked. She reached for Henry’s hand. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d still rather you didn’t kiss him.”

Death turned toward Love. Could it be that Flora didn’t understand she was here for both of them? That she had postponed taking them for as long as she could? Death had won the Game. She always won. This time was different. Because of love, she’d waited. But that was all.

“Flora,” Love said. He walked to her side and put his hand on her cheek.