Episode Three: Thoughts and Thugs
I left Regina's desecrated home by the servant's entrance – at a run.
I ran into the day, heedless of where I was headed. Bolting like a rabbit. When, several moments later, I returned from wherever within myself I had retreated, I found myself nowhere near my office. Looking around, I am thankful that I had not run to my home. Somehow the thought of seeing – of having to deal with – my wife, would be a fate worse than whatever I thought waited for me at the end of the road Francis's death – his murder? I still wasn't sure – had put me on.
You don't think she would comfort you?
That word, comfort, stopped me in my tracks.
I don't want to be comforted.
No What do you want?
For all of this to go away.
Isn't that what the opium is for?
It was. And, as badly as I wanted it – as desperately – I knew that I did not. Could not.
It won't help.
It'll only make things worse.
They were right, the Voices. They were always right. And I hated them for it.
I'm standing in one of the lesser markets. People mill idly about, shopping, eating the Medieval equivalent of fast food. My stomach growls angrily.
What are you going to do?
My eyes drift to the south, to Santa Maria on her hill.
You were going to suggest that Regina go speak to a priest.
To get rid of her?
I shake my head. Finding myself standing beside a food stand, and, luck of luck, with a few coins in one of the many pockets lining the inside of my jacket, I get something to eat.
I don't want to get rid of her.
You want to help her.
You want to help yourself.
Yes. Maybe. Probably.
You might wonder at how I could eat after what I'd just seen. I didn't wonder this, but it is a good question. At least it wasn't meat. I'm walking home, now. Idly enjoying what I'd bought. Some sort of meatless sandwich, the bread made with almond flour. When we imagine the Medieval diet, we think of greasy fingers savagely tearing at unspiced, roasted meats, simple vegetables, tubers and roots, hard cheeses, and harder breads. And for good reason – beyond that this is how our entertainment media – books, television, movies – portray it. This is, indeed, how much of Christendom ate. Particularly north of the Mediterranean. But, much to the chagrin of the modern meat industry, a meat-heavy diet is not necessarily the only way we Westerners have ever lived – or could; maybe even should. Most especially in Italy.
Most of Italy is mountainous. Practically only the Po River Valley – especially in the 10th century and before – was capable of growing grains. Not only was there not enough flat ground – Italians were not the Inca with their terrace farms – but the soil was simply not suited to it. The ground was too hard and rocky to plow easily, and large beasts like oxen, horses, and donkeys were too expensive to employ on any mass scale.
If you read any history of the Middle Ages, you will no doubt encounter what I have in refreshing – that is to say fact checking – my memory: The 10th century is largely entirely passed over in favor of those centuries book-ending it. There are good reasons for this. This century in which my Natural Life occurred was not one of widespread literacy – even among the so-called literate classes. The Age between the Fall of Rome – dated at the latest some time in the 7th century and as early as the 5th – and the naissance of the High Middle Ages – in no way named for a widespread usage of cannabis, et al – starting in the 11th century, what we like to politically correct to the Early Middle Ages, wasn't known as the Dark Ages for nothing.
Historians have loved wars. And not only moderns.
What writings survive this Dark time – so named for what little light of knowing could be shed upon it – or that radiated from it – are of wars. Usually. Not exclusively. The conquests of Charlemagne and the Vikings, for instance. Wars seem to us, at the time and then again when we attempt to return to it, as important. Also, those warriors, those kings and nobles who perpetrate such crimes against humanity are the ones with the money and ego necessary to commission biographies – works of history. Poetry and mythology, art, as it were... not so much. Philosophy and theology, science, the same. Humans look for what interests you, and they find what they seek. Is it historians' fault that they find nothing of interest in this, my century? Are they to blame for being bored by what, when compared with later Ages like the Late Middle and the Renaissance, seems obvious barbarism? No. Perhaps you will hear these words and be interested where others have not.
Or perhaps there's nothing at all to find.
We both know there is always something to find if you look hard enough.
The literati of the Dark Ages were consumed, as Charlemagne bade them, with theology. Did you know that Ireland was effectively the most learned place in the Western world? You do now – not that I'm going to go into it – or that the largest library in the West was in a town in modern day Orleans, the name of which I can't be bothered to remember. Christian thinkers of this period – I am forced by the constraints of this discussion to ignore the Islamic world and their Classical Renaissance of the 9th century – considered the philosophy of the Classical and ancient world to be pagan, and thus wrong and even heretical, on its face. They had next to no ability to read Greek, and seeing that the literati of that Classic world wrote in Greek, they could not read what they had not burned with the Library of Alexandria et al. Likewise, even by Charlemagne's day, they had rare comprehension of Latin.
It is well-known – I believe; I should never assume what you Smart Phone-wielding barbarians have bothered to teach your children and learn for yourselves – that the Medieval congregation had no understanding of the Latin sermons they heard. It's easy to ignore science – that is knowing, know-ledge – in a language you don't either have access to or feel like learning. This is where and how the so-called vulgar or Latinized languages – those common tongues we use in the West today come from. But I stray far from my point.
The Medieval scholar was limited to the writings of the Patricians, as they are and were called, and they are a topic I'm not diving in to until I absolutely have to, perhaps with the barrel of a gun pressed against my temple. Or at least at the very last possible moment of bringing home your understanding. In other words, not in this episode. Let me start that over.
The Medieval scholar was limited to the writings of, namely, such authors as Augustine of Hippo, but especially the Latin translations of Boethius. They accepted Plato, pagan though he was, because those nominal Neo-Platonists who followed in his theoretical footsteps so obviously inspired early Christian thought. Authors such as Origen – whom the Early Christians despised – and Plotinus – whom the Early Christians adored; again, despite his pagan-ry. It is impossible to separate Plato's ideas of The One from early arguments for the existence of God. All right, well, nothing is impossible, strictly speaking – it stretches argumentative credulity to attempt to separate the two. Indeed, Dark Age writers were more interested in the mystical, intuitive experience of Plotinus than they were the rational, scientific discourse of Aristotle. Where, in fact, they had translations of Aristotle at all, they necessarily conflated him with Plato. And Augustine... there's just no time or reason to discuss Augustine. Read The City of God and Confessions; it will no doubt interest you how much of this modern world he predicted while debating the Roman, pagan, authors and dictators of his time. It won't be until Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century – some 300 years after my Natural Life, if you've forgotten we're still in the 900s Annos Domini – that logic and reason enter the discourse at all.
But I was talking about food, wasn't I?
My mind wanders now as it did then. Thinking, always thinking. What was it someone said? If you're always thinking, all you're thinking about is thoughts? Something like that. Drawing connections between disparate parts in an attempt to show a unified whole. Blindly groping an elephant and all that. Poor beast. Actually, I am neither the blind man nor the Elephant. You are blind. I just may be deaf.
How could I send Regina to a priest if I could not trust him to think logically? That was the point, and what I was asking myself. How could I hope for his superstition and ignorance to save her if I did not manipulate him myself? And did that not make me as much a monster as the Lamia Spirit?
To finish, as I finished my sandwich, the Italian diet was largely vegetarian. Even in Genoa, fish were not readily available. Fruits, vegetables, tubers and roots, nuts, and mushrooms, then, were their primary subsistence.
And to the modern historian, the popularization of the iron plow – by no means its invention or introduction – is the main contribution to history of the 10th century. As I argued with Francis and Giorgio and the tavernmaster in Act 1: More food means bigger armies means wars! means historians get interested again. For my part, if you are wondering whether I will claim a Butterfly Effect into the future, Listener, I will say only that I insisted, at whatever cost, that the farmers who worked the land I owned use iron plows – which were available long before I came to Italy. Especially along the Po – where my farms most certainly were. If my lands were more profitable than my neighbors' because of this and they adapted in competition and Christendom was, over the course of that century into the next, better tilled and better able to feed itself and its armies— Well, such is the ways of the Market. Invisible Hand or no.
If you think that an exorcism would absolve Regina, should you not go and speak on her behalf?
Do you believe it will?
I wasn't sure. Unless the Lamia is not lying – if Regina didn't actually invite her.
If she's even real.
I didn't like thinking this was possible any more than I liked thinking the thing that had spoken from her body had been real.
Is it a coincidence that your favorite childhood monster is what possessed Regina?
It had to be. ...Right?
You must have told her the stories.
Is that what the Spirit meant when she said you taught her?
That made a certain kind of sense. I knew the answer, so I didn't think the question – but why couldn't I remember?
She is perfect for the role.
That was doubtless; but then again, it wasn't.
Hera took Lamia's children, I argue with the Voices. That was part of her tragedy – her curse. Why was it not Lilith, though? Lilith was Adam's spurned wife. Regina is Christian. Why a Greek monster?
Lilith was also a screeching owl – not a serpent.
Then do I believe that a viper really killed Francis? Do I really believe that Lamia killed Francis?
The Voices did not seem to have – or feel like offering – an answer for that.
Would she know the story of Lilith?
Possibly. She's mentioned in the Bible. In Isaiah.
In the Hebrew.
Right.
And in the Latin vulgate of the fifth century, that passage—
The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; Lilith also shall rest there and find for herself a place of rest—
Lilith was changed to Lamia.
This stopped me dead.
I'd forgotten that.
Regina couldn't know that, could she?
You can't know what Regina knows. You've only known her for two years. Less. And you live in the Jewish colony. Who is to say you're the only mystic she talks to?
I'm not a mystic.
Maybe you mentioned Lilith – or Lamia. Maybe you mentioned them both and that they are conflated, if not the same character. Maybe she was interested. Maybe she went and spoke with a Jewish mystic. Maybe he—
Or she.
Yes. Some, especially wealthy, Jewish families educate their girls in Hebrew and Scripture. Some even are allowed to teach – with their husbands or a brother, usually. But that's better than what most – even wealthy – Christian women are allowed.
You're preaching.
Maybe the person or people Regina spoke with read for her the Talmud – or even the Alphabet of Sirach.
Which uses the Lilith character to criticize Adam – and even God – for badly dealing with women.
Yikes.
The more I considered all of this, the more conflicted – and confused – I became.
Regina was, it was obvious, in deeper shit than I realized. As was I. Which became evident that very next instant.
“Hey. Sorcerer.”
The voice, a none-too-friendly bark from an obviously gruff man's throat stops me. I look up, or should I say, out, - back and over my shoulder – to find that I have walked past without noticing the group of dockhands who are even now fanning themselves out behind me. The street I'm in is not wide, but neither is it populated by anyone but us. I heard it in the voice, but, watching them as I am, I don't need a PhD in behavioral psychology to know that these men mean to kill me today. Luckily for me, I had something better than any PhD:
I hear al'Shamshir's voice, echoing down the halls of memory. Never show fear. A wise killer knows to be wary of any creature that does not fear him.
I turn, slowly, as though I'm not sure they mean me. I even point, incredulous, at my chest, cocking my head in silent, confused pantomime.
“Yeah. You.”
There are six of them. Big, lumbering brutes. The kind of men who are really only good for two things – building shit, and breaking shit. I was nearly a head taller; but any of them could kill me with his hands alone if I weren't careful. The one speaking, the obvious leader – not that he was in any way distinct from them: they all wore the same uniform of tattered nondescript pants and tunic, had the same curly, dark, Italian hair and brown eyes – was in the center of the street. The others arranged themselves two to his right, three to his left. He is unarmed, chewing on a splinter of wood or a piece of straw or something. I don't get a good look at it before he flicks it nonchalantly away. The others are not so much.
I count a mallet, three wooden rods like might make for good ax-handles, and a seax. At least they didn't all bring their knives. In fact, why didn't they?
Maybe for men like them blunt force trauma is more fun. Who knows.
My hands are in the pockets of my jacket. I don't move them. I don't have one, but let them think I'm concealing a weapon.
None of them speak as I complete my turn, settling with my feet shoulder width apart, my posture as relaxed as though I didn't expect what I knew to.
“Fellas,” I say, tipping my wide-brim had to them. Then I chuckle.
“What's so funny?” the leader asks.
“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking about you guys earlier. Maybe an hour ago.”
“Thinking of us? What's that supposed to mean?”
I grin. I can feel the dangerous glint of my teeth, of my eyes. I hadn't realized it until right then, but it had been a long time since I'd been in a fight – and after today, I could really use one. Six against one wasn't exactly the odds I would have asked for... but you get what you get.
“Nothing. Figured it's about time I was jumped in the street. That's all.”
The leader and a couple of his goons laugh slowly at that. “That so?”
I don't respond.
“That's all you got to say? You don't think you owe me an apology or nothin? Not gonna beg us not to hurt you?”
I blink, as though this is the stupidest thing I've heard in days. It's not much of an exaggeration. “I, uh, hate to break this to you, big guy, but I don't even know who you are.”
“What?” he practically shrieks. His goons eye him warily. Did they think I was going to recognize him? Did he talk them into beating me on some grand design – like, did they think I deserved this? “We saw you walking with that Saracen pirate. The one brought the foreign bitch who killed your lady love's husband. Yeah, we know. We know you was involved. What did the Saracen piece o shit give you? Bet it was more o that magick shit you used to ensorcel my cousin! You don't need no money. Not if what you want is what Francis had.”
I looked at the leader for a long moment. Francis had mentioned a Saracen captain. Didn't call him a pirate, though. And foreign... *ahem* woman that killed my lady love... did they already know about Francis? That's not great. They know something I didn't. I was going to have to survive this if I wanted answers. And, as I look at him, I realize I do recognize him from somewhere.
“Your cousin? Are you the one.... Yeah, I remember you. You said you'd kill me if I hurt his reputation, right? How is ol Lupe? Still fuckin that goat?”
He growls, takes a step forward. “He didn't fuck no goat!”
I make a tisk-tisking kind of noise in the corner of my mouth. “I don't know, pal. I wouldn't tell a guy's wife he's cheatin on her with a goat if I hadn't seen him fuckin that goat with my own two eyes.”
The leader's eyes are bloodshot with growing rage. His goons are watching him, now. As much wary of him as they are itching for a fight. “He ain't a goatfucker!”
“It doesn't matter what you do in life, does it? You could be the most renowned bridge builder in the world. But you fuck one goat, and you're The Goatfucker for the rest of your life.”
One of the goons laughs – a choked chortle that has the leader wheeling on him.
“He didn't mean to fuck that goat!” Then to me: “You ensorceled him!”
“To what end?”
“You wanted to ruin his reputation. To steal his wife for yourself.”
I laugh. “Steal is not the word I'd use with her. Let's just say she gave it away gladly, huh? But I was only involved at all because she wanted to know why he wouldn't fuck her anymore. Turns out its cus he was fuckin that goat – that's why. She had next to no interest in me. Until, you know, she learned she was married to The Goatfucker. ”
He shouts, an unintelligible howl of rage – not unlike, actually, the furious call of a Bigfoot.
“If I remember right, you said you were going to kill me if I ruined his reputation. What happened with that, by the way? I forgot to check back in. How badly did people think of him before that bein a goatfucker didn't hurt his reputation?”
“I'm tired o listenin to you talk. Me n the boys, we think it's about time we showed you what we think o Saracen-lovin foreign fucks like you.”
“Is it nothing? I can't imagine the group of you spend your time together thinking.”
The leader wasn't exactly the most dramatic of villains, but his goons were getting bored and itching for the fight they'd come to start. When he looks at them and says, “Hurt him, boys” that was all they needed.
Of the men and women I'd tutored with in my youth, al'Shamshir – again, that means The Sword – taught me, perhaps, the most. Often I wondered whether he had, in fact, prepared me better to be a man than the Master had. Or maybe I was just being resentful – I wasn't exactly an A-plus student. I didn't properly introduce al'Shamshir last time, so I'll do it – quickly – now. I actually never knew where he was from. His name was Persian, and he at least talked about Zoroastrianism often, so I always assumed he was Persian. I think he preferred that people not think of him in the typical way – not as a man with a history, a place he came from, a religion, a creed. I think he liked to be thought of as a weapon, a sword, and that alone. He taught me much, least of all how to fight.
Now, a fight is more than just rage and blood lust. Rage and blood lust, al'Shamshir used to say, are all well and good – if you don't want to leave the battlefield. If you want to survive, particularly against apparently insurmountable odds, you have to use your brain. The first thing you have to do is see the situation; you have to be aware of the environment, the enemy. They were always the enemy to him. Not the opponent, not the competition, no matter what he was doing – whether it were a game of Chess, a sparring match with some Eastern martial arts master, a brawl in a tavern, or a fight for our lives with bandits. And there were many, many (many) examples of each of these in my time with him. When it's your victory or theirs, they are the enemy; and the enemy must be destroyed at all costs.
The alley was wide enough that the thugs could easily encircle me if I were not careful. If they had tried to encircle me, I may have died that day. As it was, they didn't heed the second step of a successful fight: never underestimate the enemy.
The thugs flew at me. But staggered. The second to move let the first get a few steps ahead, the third and fourth did the same; the fifth, watching this, didn't move at all. Perhaps he thought to spectate the fight, perhaps he thought he would just get in the way. Who knows. What I can say with fair confidence is that they thought I was no match for them. Tall and whip-thin though I was – am – this is an easy assumption – mistake – to make. In order from closest to furthest from me, they were: Rod One, Rod Two, Knife, Mallet, Rod Three. The leader only watched.
Rods One and Two flew at me in identical poses: rods held high over their heads in the right arm. Rod One was on my right, Rod Two was to my left. Knife was behind Two. Mallet was further back and to my Right. Rod Three was to my left.
I pull my hands from my pockets.
Of all the days not to carry a weapon is the last thing I remember thinking.
I had two steps, less, to disarm or be ready to disarm the next foe before the fifth figured out I wasn't going to go down easily. I wouldn't have time to dance around, dodging their attacks and praying one of them didn't get ahold of me. The third step – or rule, whatever – for winning a fight was my only choice of action: doing the last thing any of them would expect.
I step forward.
Rod One doesn't know how to react.
Resting my weight on the ball of my forward, left, foot, I turn and snap my right heel into the inside of his right knee, just as he shifts his weight onto it. There is a snap and a pop, then his wail of agony. But I'm not listening. My eyes, my attention, are moving past him to Rod Two. I step back on that right foot, retreating it behind me. Snatching the rod out of Rod One's hand – is he Unarmed One, now? - as he crumples to the ground, his knee dislocated, MCL savagely ruptured.
I engage Rod Two. I'm holding the rod in a two-handed grip, not at all unlike a sword – or a baseball bat – angling it out from my right hip like I mean to drive it in an upward strike against his downward slash. This is obviously what he expects. I know this because he closes the last step and heaves his rod down at my head with all his strength, as though to break through my guard – and my rod – and turn my skull into so much mush. Just as I expect.
Pivoting on the ball of my left, I again retreat back, tracing a quarter circle, with my right foot. Rod Two passes right in front of me, his rod swinging harmlessly through empty air. In the instant he clears my rod, I lift it, switching to a left-handed grip. I plant my foot, engage my hips, and smash the rod into the base of his exposed skull. The rod shatters in my grip. Home run or whatever.
One disarmed and down, one incapacitated – and likely dead. Three to go.
I turn to face Knife.
He is all ready to plunge his weapon into the center of my mass. I release the broken half-rod with my left hand, raising high my elbow. I pivot now on my right foot. Kicking back my left foot, I make myself skinny. Not all that difficult, minus the acrobatics. His knuckles brush my jacket as his lunge narrowly misses. Thank the gods sugar hasn't been discovered, right?
My left hand clamps over his wrist. 1/16 of a heartbeat later, I chop the rod into his elbow by the butt end. I smack it properly into his face – his lip and upper nose. Blood, and perhaps a tooth or two, spurt from the impact. The bone crunches audibly. Then I again chop the butt of my broken rod into his elbow. Again. Again. Again. Savagely, until the bones crunch and the knife falls from his hand.
He is screaming. His face is broken, his right arm – possibly forever – ruined. Unarmed One is whimpering and moaning on the ground.
Dropping the rod and kicking the knife where none of them will be able to quickly or easily reach it, I hook my right hand into Knife's – that is, Unarmed Three's – armpit. I look up to Mallet. He has, as I had hoped, hesitated. But now he is only a step away and apparently about as confident as his three unarmed friends that I can't dodge the two-handed chop he already has wound up behind his head. I wink at him – then shove Knife forward. The mallet comes crashing down for my head. Knife takes the swing in his head instead. Luckily for him, it's Mallet's elbows that collide with him. The mallet falls harmlessly to the street between us. Knife stumbles into Mallet, and the two of them tumble to the ground in a tangle of their limbs – and Rod One's.
I dart for the mallet.
Bending at the knees, I secure it with my right hand. I lock eyes with Rod Three. He stands between me and the leader, now, only recently deciding that maybe he should get in on the fight. He halts, his hesitant run skidding to a stop. I raise back to my full height.
“What are you doing? Kill him!” Roars the leader. Thor himself would have been proud of my throw. The mallet strikes Rod Three square in the chest. Thor doesn't need to know that I'd aimed for his face.
Now it was just me and the leader. “Goatfucker's cousin,” I say, breathing heavily, but not from the exertion.
He is transfixed. Frozen in place. His eyes bug. His mouth gapes. To him, I must have seemed no less than Thor, no less than Beowulf. I would not have made the claim. To me, I was just a man – just a very well-trained man.
If any of the thugs had been the enterprising sort, they could have gotten up and attacked me from behind. Especially Mallet. But they weren't getting paid for this. At least... if they were, not enough that they were the enterprising sorts. al'Shamshir was right: It takes an idiot or a madman to come back for a second punch. These thugs were, while idiots in their own rights, at least smart – or sane – enough to know when a fight was over. Rod Three never really seemed to have his heart in it in the first place.
I look down at them, making sure that the previous paragraph is holding true. They weren't getting up. Rod One was crying like Regina. I roll my eyes and walk around them.
The leader steps away from me, lifting his hands to his face like I'm going to be able to hit him from three paces away.
“Don't be stupid,” I say. My voice is husky with anger, with battle-fury. “I just want to talk.”
“T-talk? What do you want to t-talk about?”
“Why are you really here? Who sent you?”
Goatfucker's cousin stops retreating from me. “Wh—What?”
I'm standing with a foot on the knife. I look down at it. Then at him. “It wouldn't be so hard for me to pick this up. You've seen how good my arm is. Please – before I get impatient. I want answers.”
He stammers some sounds that don't sound like the beginnings of words. Looks at his friends. I follow his gaze. They still want nothing to do with me. At least they've stopped lying on top of one another. In fact, Mallet is helping Rod One to his feet and Knife is checking on Rod Two. I think he's breathing. So he's probably not dead – just concussed. He'll probably be fine. Probably. I'm not too worried about it. Rod Three probably has cracked ribs. Nothing that won't heal. I almost wish I could feel bad for Rod One and Knife. Their working lives might be over. But I can't. The Enemy – or me.
“Right. Uh. I don't know.”
“You're going to want to do better than that.” I lean like I'm going to reach for the knife. I can't kick it to my hand. Shame, that – it would have looked so cool.
“No! Really! I really don't. He was wearing a robe. His face was hidden – in a hood!”
This I had not expected, but maybe should have. Not a great move to hire assassins such as these and let them know your identity.
“Was there anything about him you remember? Anything you might identify him by? That I might identify him by?”
The leader thinks for a short while, his face screwing up with the effort. “Yeah,” he finally says. “His voice, it was... unnatural. Real deep. Scary, kinda. And – it wasn't that he was wearing a hood that I couldn't see his face. I mean, he was – wearing a hood. But that wasn't all. It was like there was nothin in there. Like it was just … head-shaped darkness.”
Now this I really had not anticipated. And I have no idea what to make of it. So I don't attempt to.
“All right,” I say at length. My head feels like it might explode. There are so many half-thought thoughts in it, so much going on with Regina, with Francis. And now it turns out this Saracen pirate or Persian or Hindi merchant or whatever – and this mystery woman— Had she really killed Francis? Or was whoever this person was that hired these men, had he – it? – told the leader to say this if they were defeated? Did that even make sense?
It makes perfect sense if he is the Master.
Or any other member of the Scholeio – the Ogdoad.
It makes too much sense for me to think about it. Would the Scholeio – the Ogdoad – the Master really kill Francis, ruin Regina, just to get at me?
Yes.
And if they had found me, why not just confront me themselves? Something is going on in Genoa, and I don't like it. I especially don't like to try to puzzle it out. There was too much day left to try to figure it all out here, at any rate.
“Take these men and find them treatment for their injuries,” I say to the leader at length. “And you stay the Hell away from me. You stay the Hell away from me, and you stay the Hell away from Regina. If I hear that you've bothered her – if I ever so much as catch a glimpse of you out of the corner of my eye – I'll kill you.”
I don't like making threats I don't mean to carry out.
But I did enjoy watching them scurry away.
It's always satisfying beating up a bully. Shouldn't be – but it is.
Now, I think, finally setting my bearing back to my office with intent to arrive there soon— What else can go wrong today?
If I only knew, maybe I wouldn't have thought that. Maybe that would have prevented Her from coming to my office.
Maybe.
But, knowing what I know, sometimes the inevitable is fated to be inevitable.
Comments
Post a Comment