63.

Fascinatingly enough, this time it’s really over. Tonight she means it. And there’s no tomorrow.

It’s like the 800th time an actor plays the tragic hero. He still has to believe it – that tonight he won’t die. Only he will die, and it’s getting 799 times harder to believe.

“I don’t love you anymore.”

“I know,” says London.

(He never sees her again.)

68.

London sleeps like a rock. Literally. He's incapable of sleep.

Half the problem is Phoenix mumbling revenge schematics in his unconsciousness; the other half is the spin-off ideas this gives London. Blend with a dozen Hail Marys, cold, and you've got yourself a nice little mixed metaphor, complete with the twist of irony.

He climbs to the ramparts, to see everything. Tonight it's a ship, swiftly moving east.

70.

One night, the maiden finds her sister drunk, throwing stones at an upper window of the monastery. “Havana,” she says gently, “please stop.”

Postergirl of bloodshot heartbreak, Havana stumbles forward. “It’s too late. He’s already coming down. To forgive me.”

The maiden pulls back her sister’s hair, sopping with whiskey and bile. “I thought it was the end?”

“Nah.” Havana smiles, weak and wasted. “That’s the only lie he tells.”

72.

The way most people have only one good joke, London tells only one lie.

From the monastery ramparts he sees everything – countryside for miles around; ocean to the west; the past, present, future. And Havana. Occasionally as a vision and more frequently to the east, attempting a self-stoning ritual with the ricochets from his bedroom window. I repent, she screams.

…And the last shall be –

The first step to self-sacrifice is forgetfulness.

92.

Havana kills another Red Rabbit, to give her metabolism something to do. Dedicates the ensuing batch of 80-proof truth serum as follows: “It’s over.”

London’s already shopping. Blonde, 34-28-34, corner pocket. “Sorry?”

“I said, ‘It’s over.’”

“Oh.” He indicates the obvious: “And, by Tuesday…?”

“We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it. Cross.”

“Freud.”

“Fuck.” She grins. Strokes his hand, docile. “You’ll live?”

“Sorry?” London’s inking a bar napkin with numbers, x’s, o’s.

“Don’t you have a nunnery to be getting to?” she spits.

“Monastery. They gave me the afternoon off.”

94.

After the Dallas incident, the novice is smoking like mad. “Lung cancer doesn’t happen overnight,” admonishes London, whose monastic wisdom comes in the after-school special packaging, for sure. “Try traffic.”

“Not funny,” says Santiago.

Lazy, the benediction reeks of 4/4 signature conducting. The Ghost hums, bubblegum requiem, between smoke rings.

“Tell me everything,” coos the stranger on the train.

The Ghost buys his rock-like sleep with a full confession. Strangers are easy, like priests, but not to be trusted.

Santiago always knows a guy, who died or something, who makes these things not funny.