He hid his head under a moldy pillow, but it didn’t help.
It didn’t help because it wasn’t the light and the noises and things that were keeping him awake. It was Suzie.
Don’t think about that! warned part of his brain.
Last time, in the desert, he had listened to this part of himself. Now he gave it a violent shove.
For eight thousand years, he had awakened by a river, and Suzie had been there, and everything was fine. Now everything was bullshit.
He could feel the shape of her, where she would be if she were lying there with him. He would have zipped out to buy some dry sheets, of course, and would spray some afterlife version of Lysol. They would have made love and talked.
Milo screamed into the pillow and got a mouthful of mildew.
—
They had fallen in love at a time like this. The day he died for the hundred-and-first time.
For his first hundred lives, they had been friends. They had long talks; they watched TV together. They traded books and argued about desserts.
“I’ll have some of yours,” she would say, not ordering her own dessert.
And Milo would say, “No, you won’t,” and he was serious. He was territorial about his food. He loved food and wanted everything on his plate. And he would make her order her own. Friends do things like that to each other.
Then everything changed.
One day, he was down on Earth leading one of his less admirable lives: a Scottish rascal named Andrew Milo McCleod, who made a living stealing other men’s sheep. The sheriff had caught him and tied his hands behind him and was getting ready to cut off his head.
Milo was looking around at the high hills and the mist, thinking about things. Maybe he could get his arms free and make a run. He thought about his chances of getting into Heaven and wished he’d bedded more women. He thought about Lord Donnel, who owned these hills and the sheep he’d stolen, and wished on him a pox that would make Swiss cheese of his private bits. That’s what he was thinking when a pale woman in a black dress appeared in front of him, saying, “Mind what you wish for, Milo.”
And he’d tossed his head, winked his eye, and said, “Well, then, lass, I wish you’d give us a kiss.”
She seemed amused. And she did kiss him. Kissed him good. It made him dizzy and made him wish to keep his head. He was going to suggest that she help him to his feet so he could make a run, at least. Get to the woods and— But she stepped aside to make room for the sheriff, who had sharpened his broadsword. He kept a string of human ears along his belt; that’s how nasty this sheriff was.
“I love you,” said the woman.
He loved her, too, Andy Milo McCleod did. Very much! Just as he loved the morning air and the low clouds and the sun that was hiding behind them and the sheep dotting the far hill and the sea and the rocks it crashed on, and how he’d love to kiss this girl again, whoever she was—
The sword whistled.
A sharp, electric jerk.
The world rolled, then stopped, and he lay facedown in the grass, trying to blink the clover out of his eyes. Then the sleep shades came down.
He found himself beside the pale girl, looking down at his disconnected head.
His soul memory floated together until he knew who the girl was.
“I am so, so, so, so sorry,” she said.
“That was a good kiss,” he answered. He wanted to kiss her again. It was all he cared about.
“Did that hurt?” she asked. “It looked like it hurt.”
“It hurt more than you’d think,” he admitted, rubbing his neck. “I think it has something to do with, you know, cutting through the spine. It’s hard to describe.”
She reached up and put her arms around his neck and pressed herself against him.
Had she said “I love you” before his head came off?
“Yes,” she said. “Oh, fuck it. I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time. In the afterlife, we have to be so careful, and I wanted everything to be just right.”
Milo looked around at the head and the blood and the sheriff over there having a pee.
“It’s perfect,” he said. He put his arms around her.
And there was a repeat of the kiss, and they both knew they’d have to get going.
“I know how to describe it,” he said. “When your head’s chopped off. It’s like hitting your funny bone super-hard, except it hurts like that all over your body for a second. Especially, you know, your neck.”
“Thank you, love.”
They kissed tenderly while the sheriff walked over and picked up the severed head by its long red locks and dumped it in an old barley sack.
—
After that morning in the Highlands, a lot of things had changed.
They had begun sneaking around, for one thing. They weren’t sure it was necessary, but they didn’t want to be split up, so hey.
That night, in the afterlife, Nan and Mama and Suzie had brought him to his house (a crappy old shack by the water-treatment plant), then gone off and left him. Then, beginning a long tradition, Suzie had come back in through the kitchen window, all dry leaves and cool wind. They held hands and walked to his rickety, crooked old bed and didn’t speak at all for the longest time.
It was, and was not, what he’d expected.
It was warm and perfect. They had always felt “at home” with each other. They felt even more at home now. Familiar, as if they’d been making love for centuries.
It was not wildly supernatural. Milo had expected that making love to Death would involve weird fires and shadows and whisperings in the dark—perhaps even pain—but there was very little of that. Only the soft red glow in her eyes. The occasional drawing of blood. The sudden flutter and leathery warmth of being wrapped in wings, once or twice. And once her eyes had widened until they seemed to drink him in, and he felt himself falling and his whole self being drowned out by something larger, like a single note in a symphony, and he screamed and screamed— Other than that, it was all surprisingly normal.
Afterward, they went out to dinner, and he let her share his dessert. A giant slice of peanut butter pie. Not because he wanted to but because being in love is different from being friends.
Which was why, centuries later, Milo got up off his moldy bed and left his damp, trashy trailer without getting a wink of real sleep and went to find her, whether the cosmic God-soul liked it or not.
What if she’s been sucked into the universal yin-yang? wondered a part of him. What if she no longer exists here, really?
He told that part of himself to stick a pickle in it and kept putting one foot in front of the other.
—
He stopped at a sundries store for canned food and a can opener and some bottled water. He made a knapsack out of a pillowcase, slung it over his shoulder, and headed for—what?
A red moon lurked in the trees.
Milo walked until he came to a railroad crossing. There, he put down his knapsack and waited.