Author: jeffmccutcheon@gmail.com

This is my first attempt at fiction. It is the novelization of one of my early screenplays. I confess, it’s not great. But it did convince me I could write something someday if I could muster the discipline.

It is embarrassingly whimsical and romantic, but I’m posting it because it is, or at least, was, a part of me.

“The ancient Mayans said humans didn’t have souls, they said we are souls, what we have are bodies.”

Winnie loved this quote. Her fingers caressed the words on the sunlit page of her 1941 second edition of “Religions of the World.” She lay curled in her reading nook by the bay window overlooking the perennial garden. She lived on the third floor of a Tudor home built in roughly the same era as the book in her hand. What was once a grand house on the most well-to-do boulevard North of downtown, was now divided into five apartments in what was a charming, but decaying neighborhood. The bay window was original, and the diamond grilles and warped glass bathed her bare legs in intricate shadows. The nook was drafty in the winter, but gloriously warm in summer, and if it got too hot, she would unlatch both side windows and breathe in the lavender from the garden below.

She pulled off her black-rimmed glasses and got out her journal to scribble down this new insight on her page of quotes. She was nineteen years old – the age when quotes resonated with maximum profundity, when one possesses all the cognitive faculties of an adult yet none of the hard-won wisdom. Most importantly, her spirit was not yet conquered by the responsibilities of life. You could see this in her eyes – deep pools of pure, innocent emotion, not yet dimmed by necessity. She was still alive enough inside to cry from watching viral videos of rescued dogs.

She was just laying pen to paper when interrupted by a knock on the door: Two polite strikes, but of a pitch so low as to reveal the heft and weight of the hand – unmistakably male.

She hadn’t had human contact all day. It was two weeks into summer vacation and her roommates – all fellow students at Holy Trinity College, had gone to their respective homes, leaving Winnie to hold down the fort. They all hailed from large metropolitan areas – Chicago, Atlanta, and Houston – cities with enough gravity to pull a body back. Winnie was from Yazoo, Mississippi. Her father was pastor of the Yazoo City Church of God which boasted three hundred and fifty parishioners every Sunday morning, in a town of two hundred and fifty. It was a good childhood, all things considered, but after stretching her legs into adulthood for two semesters, the idea of returning felt like a step backwards.

She pulled a light knit sweater off the sofa and scooted her arms through in a symbolic attempt to retain some modicum of modesty and made her way down a flight of stairs. As she approached the door, she glanced at her reflection in the glass-covered art on the wall—it was a 36-inch mixed media piece consisting of a watercolor background reminiscent of a blue green ocean behind what looked like a scientific illustration of a sea turtle. It was her own work — one of two which she had only recently summoned the courage to display. She ran a hand through her hair and studied her complexion in the glass. She was seldom pleased with her appearance but always felt better in casual garb, or when she was caught unawares because it gave her the feeling that she had some excuse for not being perfect. It was the formal occasions she dreaded: the understood assumption that she was trying her hardest at being beautiful and not living up to the task. 

She peeked through the peephole and what followed was a cacophony of mixed reactions, as if every part of her body was in disagreement. Her pupils dilated but her eyes narrowed with skepticism. Her fists clenched but she rose to tiptoes – almost levitating. There was, of course, only one thing on Earth that could cause such a panoply of reactions: It was her nemesis.

Every superhero has a nemesis. And Winnie was fairly certain, like most 19-year-old girls, that she was a superhero of some sort, even if her powers were not yet revealed to her.

A nemesis is quite different from an ordinary enemy. For starters, you can have only one. And they must meet a number of criteria to earn their title. First: they must be a worthy opponent. The man on the other side of the door was worthy indeed. He was what her roommates liked to call the “alpha male” of 414 Blackstone Boulevard. His name was Rowan Collins. He was the twenty-one-year-old son of the landlord and handled the maintenance for the building. He carried what could only be his father’s toolbox, a beast of black metal with rusty corners.

 Winnie was not the type to be impressed with alpha males, the very notion reminded her of a pack of baboons. She was more interested in the betas; the boys she would see at 11 pm on the 4th floor of the library, with over-sized noses and imperfect complexions. Not only were they more attainable, but more interesting as well, a win-win in her book.

But even she had to confess, the term fit him. He was a good foot taller than her, had the shoulders of a lumberjack, the back of a rower, and the chest of a lifeguard. Indeed, all three were commonly on display in the spring, as he would often work bare-chested, digging some trench, erecting some fence, or some other sort of manual labor suited to a 1940s man in a black and white photograph.

Winnie met this ostentatious display of muscles with eye-rolling so severe, one wondered if she might lose her eyes in the back of her head. But to her roommates – fellow freshman girls of Holy Trinity College, it was delightfully scandalous. Not the act of a man going shirtless, which was routine, but the fact that they had collectively decided to enjoy it so much. It had become a regular Sunday activity after chapel: spend the morning in touch with the divine, and in the afternoon, gather around the windows to view the garden of carnal delights. Indeed, they seemed to relish in their objectification as though making up for eons of patriarchal rule and objectification of the female body by speaking about him in the most lavishly licentious terms possible. They each had a nickname for him. Kat called him “The Jaguar” because of his smooth gait and confident stride. Jess referred to him as the “The Pagan Beast” because he apparently hadn’t attended a single mandatory chapel all year. Miyuki, who perhaps had less imagination than her roommates, simply called him “The hottest man in the world.”

It should go without saying, these girls employed a good deal of hyperbole. He was not the hottest man in the world by any objective measure. But one could at least fashion an argument that he was the hottest man in Anderson Indiana, which was the girl’s world. It likely helped that the girls were at the age where they were primed to see beauty in the opposite sex, even if it wasn’t always there.

While they were adoring him from afar, the trio of senior girls on the first floor were more bold; they made a habit of sunbathing in his general vicinity every Sunday. Bikinis were not allowed on campus at Holy Trinity, but they were a good mile and a half away from their antiquated taskmasters. Winnie’s roommates looked upon this with disdain: as though feminine allure was currency – and they were flooding the market, devaluing the feminine dollar.

If Rowe was impressed by the sunbathing beauties, he did not show it. He carried on in the rarefied air as though he were above all this nonsense—exactly the position in which Winnie imagined herself. This brings us to the second quality of a nemesis. A nemesis must be connected to you in some way: that is to say, you must share a similarity or affinity for something that inextricably binds you together. Indeed, it should be quite easy to imagine another life in which you were best of friends. This makes it far more tragic than having a mere enemy who can be ignored.

So, while Winnie was utterly unimpressed with Rowe’s body (after all, his body was merely something he had), she had to admit, she found his mind intriguing. He was a math major already accepted to grad school for medical informatics at Brown next year, which is saying something, given Holy Trinity’s unheralded reputation amongst the east coast elite. In fact, as if to outdo her beta boys on the 4th floor at the library, Winnie had found him, late one night, on the fifth floor of the library. This was nothing more than an attic filled with old paper-bound journals which had all since been digitized. But it possessed a dormer where Winnie liked to sit and stare out the frost-covered window at the moonlit snow-covered campus, dotted with glowing yellow sidewalk lights. It was quite clear this attic was off-limits to students, so you might imagine her surprise when she found him, legs reclined, wearing a toboggan hat, in her seat – reading a large leather-bound book in his lap, taking a break every now and then to stare out her window, as if pondering a new theory of relativity, or studying humans from afar as E.O. Wilson might study ants. She studied him from between the stacks for a length of time that was more than “spying” but less than “stalking.” It was his wistful stare that captured her attention. Intelligence was not altogether uncommon, but thoughtfulness… the humility… the vulnerability of uncertainty required to actually ponder upon things – that was rare indeed. Vulnerability is not a trait commonly associated with alpha males, but Winnie knew better—it takes supreme confidence to make oneself vulnerable.

This brings us to the third and final quality of a nemesis. There is, between every superhero and their nemesis, a defining moment that creates an unbreachable rift: one that forever puts the two on different (and yet intersecting) paths. For Winnie, this happened one week into the second semester of her freshman year. The first semester of organic chemistry is done entirely on paper, the second semester entirely in the lab. This necessitates the assignment of lab partners. Winnie, through a happen-chance glance at the teacher’s notebook, while asking him for help with a problem, noticed that she and Rowe were assigned to the first bench. This was only natural; they sat next to each other and also shared the highest grade in the class. So, you might imagine her surprise, that on day one of the second semester, after a seen but unheard conversation in hushed tones between Rowe and the professor, he walked right past her to the last lab bench and sat next to positively banal but impossibly beautiful Allison Graham.

What exactly was it, Winnie mused, that made her so unbearable that he couldn’t be forced to sit in close proximity to her twice a week? He could not feign ignorance; he was among the very first people she met at Holy Trinity: He was the one that showed her the ancient Tudor home in which she stood. They also shared a class together. Indeed, she had the unmistakable feeling that they had “hit it off.”. She liked who she was around him – she felt witty and on her game whenever they engaged in friendly banter. There was that moment only a week into their relationship when he was whistling the Beatles Do You Want to Know a Secret, and as he drifted off, getting lost in his book, she picked up the melody with her pitch-perfect whistle of her own – triggering a sly smile between them in a crowded room. They would share knowing looks when someone postulated a theory that was embarrassingly incorrect. He had even caught her once when she missed a step heading back to the courtyard – his arm so cartoonishly strong and chest so rock hard that it drew attention to just how gentle he was as he righted her. The thought of how impossible the mismatch was of strength and tenderness commonly reoccurred to her as she lay in bed at night.

 A mere day before he had requested the switch, she had her longest conversation with him yet, sharing details of her childhood. They were studying the chemistry of neurons, and after class they sat in the courtyard and ate lunch together. She confided in him that she had an overactive sympathetic nervous system and how one day, in seventh grade, the first question a student asked after her oral report was “why was her face so red?”

To make her feel better, he relayed a story about leaving sweaty hand prints on the back of his middle school crush’s dress after slow dancing to “A Thousand Years” at Winter formal.

They laughed and flirted. They had checked off every box that two people check off before starting a relationship… and he chose to end the pursuit. So, it couldn’t have been because of what he didn’t know. It had to be what he did know. The sting hurt, and as so often is the case turned to anger. She resented his muscle-bound body and intellectual good looks, but most of all she hated the obsequious attention he got from every girl on campus. He became a “dumb jock” in her mind. Of course, he wasn’t dumb, but she told herself, if she could beat him on the final exam, at least, she could declare that he wasn’t up to her standards.

These were the thoughts bubbling to the surface as she clicked the lock and opened the door. There he was in all his glory, his height literally forcing him to look down his nose at her.

“Hey,” his voice was soft but deep.

“Hey,” she kept her tone flat – she knew full well that girls raised the pitch of their voice and added a hint of absurd feminine melody when addressing him. She was not going to give him that satisfaction.

“Sorry for botherin’ you,” he spoke. A wounded pain came over his face as if he really was sorry.

“That’s okay,” she said, already feeling herself warm to him, despite herself and somehow angry about it. 

“I’m putting in a new lamp post in the garden and I need to get to your electrical box.”

She paused, just long enough for him to think she was considering a refusal.

“All right.”

He stepped through the door. In the back of her mind, Winnie mused on how large men were, and how rare it was to have one in her apartment.

“How’s your summer?” he asked, putting a little uncharacteristic melody into his own deep voice.

She could have told him that it took about three days for blissful solitude to morph into unbearable loneliness, but this would involve sharing… breaking down her walls… opening doors she had decided to keep shut. So instead, she mumbled, “Okay.”

“You still workin’ on your project?” he nodded to her computer monitor displaying a video editor interface showing various interviews.

Since Winnie had decided to stay over the summer, she managed to convince her favorite professor, Dr. Zimmerman, the most liberal-minded, and the only woman in the theology department to allow a 3-credit independent study. It was a video project entitled, “What is God” and consisted of over a dozen interviews of people of all faiths and nationalities answering that very question. Currently, a fifty-year-old white woman in a headscarf was on screen.

Something about the fact that Rowe remembered her project annoyed her. She recalled the conversation when she shared the idea with him. It seemed a lifetime ago. At the time, she had planned to interview him. But now, she felt betrayed that he even knew about her project – it was too dear to her. It was her baby.

“You never asked to interview me,” he offered – clearly trying to lighten the mood.

She wasn’t going to let him break this ice. She just managed a faint smirk as though he were joking.

Rowe forced a smile but turned back to work. He opened the electrical box and studied it, but seemed unimpressed, walking back to the front door.

“I don’t want to turn your power off,” he said, “so you see this switch?”. He pointed to a light switch by the door.

“Yeah.”

“Don’t flip it up or I’ll die.”

Winnie nodded. “Flip this switch to kill you.”

He pushed some air through his nose and smirked. “I’m serious now.”

“Okay, I won’t touch it,” she mischievously pointed to the wrong switch.

“This one,” he said with a smirking grin – aware she was toying with him and seemingly enjoying it.

She found she was grinning back at him – but she caught herself – remembering she wasn’t supposed to be having fun. She hated that it was so easy with him. She liked who she was around him – that’s what made it even worse. He hadn’t rejected her bad side, he rejected her at her best.

He returned to the garden and began his work, installing a lamp post. She peered through the diamond grilles and warped glass, preparing to roll her eyes.

“Go ahead and take your shirt off Mr. Muscles, no one gives a hoot,” she said to herself. What is a body anyways? she mused. As if on cue, Rowe reached back with a single hand, grabbed the back of his T-shirt, and in one swift movement, pulled it over his head, baring his chest and tight torso before he picked up a post hole digger. She rolled her eyes. Just the cocky manner in which he removed his shirt annoyed her. Who did he think he was anyhow? So, you’re athletic, big deal, she thought as she studied him driving the tool into the ground. Just how and where did he acquire this body she wondered? Swimming seemed like a good bet; despite the bulk of his muscles, they were well suited to him in an altogether sleek package. He did fill those shorts out nicely. For a moment, she wondered how curious it’d be if he routinely took off not only his shirt but his shorts as well when he worked in the summer sun. Wouldn’t that be odd? If it were socially acceptable for men to work in the nude? She blinked hard, wondering how she went from such disdain to imagining him totally naked.

Winnie was a bit odd when it came to sex. As the one of the daughters of the Yazoo City Church of God, she was the poster child for purity – the quintessential good girl – taught from a young age that anything that feels good must be bad, and also taught that men were not to be trusted. She might, with a few more social science classes under her belt, come to see that sort of attitude as a vestigial holdover from eons of a patriarchal society that viewed girls as but vessels for men’s genes. But right now, she was merely in the fumbling in the dark; the scaffolding of her Puritan upbringing cracking and swaying under the weight of reality, but the safety net of maturity was not yet woven.

She was raised as a Baptist and was currently pursuing a double major in psychology, and theology, with a minor in art. To say religion was important to her was an understatement. But while she may have been the quintessence of purity when it came to moral propriety, she was something of a misfit outcast in the Christian community of Yazoo City. She earned this reputation in 2016, when, as a freshman at Covenant Christian Academy, she published an op-ed in the school’s newspaper, arguing Donald Trump represented the antithesis of Christian values and encouraged her fellow citizens to vote against him. For this sin, she might as well have been forced to wear a scarlet letter. In some ways, this made her stronger – strengthening her stubborn streak, but it also created issues with trust. The idea that those she thought she knew so well, were in fact, so different than she could imagine, left an indelible impression upon her 15-year-old psyche that she held to this day. 

Indeed, her issues of trust extended to herself. She was aware of the disconnect between her cognitive faculties and her more hedonistic impulses. She wanted her brain to rule over her body, not vice-versa. 

So while her eyes did linger on him working in the yard, she recoiled at the idea that a part of her found him attractive. This was, after all, her nemesis. She would not soon forget the disservice he had done, she longed to be rid of him, but now that he was here, she found it impossible to concentrate on her book.

Thankfully, it was no more than thirty minutes by the time he had returned to her door, shirt back on. His knock was firm but gentle.

She opened the door but let him speak first.

“All done.”

“You’re still alive.”

“Thanks to you… I guess I owe you my life now?”

Now she pushed some air through her nose and smirked – but again caught herself, putting up the wall. 

He hesitated as though he had planned to say something but was having second thoughts. It was odd to see him like this, a lack of confidence incongruent with his alpha male reputation. Finally, the words pushed their way through his doubts.

“Summerfest is tonight… I don’t know if you’re… I was thinking of heading down to see my buddy Greg’s band, if you’re interested?”

It bears mentioning at this moment that Winnie did not, in fact, beat him on the final exam. Granted it ought not to be expected for her to outscore him, considering that he was going to grad school for medical informatics and she was studying psych, theology, and art. She was taking organic chemistry for no other reason than to fulfill her one science credit since she tested out of regular chemistry. But she was never able to get the upper hand on him… until now. For this ephemeral moment, he wanted to be with her, and it only seemed that turnabout was fair play.

“I can’t,” she said. “I have to… read,” she let the words lie flat and false – there was – somewhere inside her, a desire to make it sting.

 It was a feeling that was altogether unsatisfying. In fact, it was downright uncomfortable. It didn’t feel like her and she regretted it almost immediately. In her mind’s eye, she knew, of course, this man wasn’t her nemesis. A part of her had always known that was an elaborate ruse generated as a defense mechanism. But 19-year-old girls know many conflicting truths. It is the age, incidentally, at which point one has the most neural connections in their brain. Neural connections grow and flower like a tree throughout childhood, reaching full bloom at 19, and then adulthood is spent pruning it into a manageable shape: rejecting bad ideas and embracing good ones. Commonly travelled footpaths through the garden of the mind become efficient roads and those less travelled are overgrown and lost forever. So, the idea she would be full of conflicting emotions, thoughts, and theories was not only understandable but also unavoidable, her pruning had just begun, and she was, for all purposes, lost in the woods. 

There was an interminable pause, every millisecond giving the words more weight until finally, he broke the silence.

“All right,” he nodded, absorbing this new information. “Maybe next time,” he added the words as a mere formality – smoothing over the barbs so they could both leave on cordial terms. 

She wanted to say, “Yeah” but it seemed incongruent. She managed a nod.

He turned to go, and she closed the door, leaning her back against it, unsure of what had just transpired.

“Are you fucking nuts?!”

Winnie sat on the sofa with her knees to her chest, staring at her three roommates on a video call on her laptop screen. Kat was in her parent’s kitchen, granite countertops and a double-wide, sub-zero refrigerator in the background. Jess sat on her screened porch in the humid Georgia night air. And Miyuki was barricaded in her bedroom wearing pajamas.

It was Jess that expressed such consternation. “You’re like on the edge of turning fantasy into reality.”

“Masturbation fantasy,” Kat added.

Winnie rolled her eyes and Miyuki expressed mock shock, but Jess readily agreed. “I would buy tickets just to put him outside my window here in Chicago. That’s what I miss the most. I am surrounded by my brother’s friends here, it’s like a video game convention.”

Miyuki chimed in. “What exactly did he say?”

“He said… ‘Summerfest is tomorrow night, my friend’s band is playing, do you want to go see them with me.’”

Jess added, “You’re sure it’s like “with me?” He didn’t just say, “you should try to see them?”

Winnie nearly laughed. “Can you not believe he’d ask me?”

“I can’t believe you said no!” Miyuki shrieked, still shell shocked.

The other two agreed. “I’m calling him now,” Kat said with an air of finality – making the motions of adding him to the video chat.”

“Stop!” Winnie laughed.

“I’m coming back early,” Jess finally decided. “If he’s asking you out, he must be really desperate,” she said with a mischievous grin.

“He leaves for grad school in the fall,” Miyuki added.

“You need to rectify this,” Kat put in. “Do you know where he lives? There’s still time.”

“If you see him, wear my yellow sundress. It’s in the closet, it’s never failed me.”

“I can’t wear that.”

“Don’t be so… prim,” Kat said. 

“Prim?” Winnie questioned.

Much to Winnie’s dismay, both Jess and Miyuki were nodding in agreement.

“You have his phone number, right?”

“Do you really think I’m prim?” Winnie asked pleadingly.

“Yes” All three girls said in unison. 

“You’re like a… librarian,” Jess said. 

“A hot librarian,” Miyuki added encouragingly.

“I would do you,” Kat put in.

Winnie’s mind was already back in Yazoo: to the night Ronald Downing, star baseball player of their high school and darling of her father, had driven her home after their end-of-season loss at sectionals. He drove right past their house, parked the car, and promptly tried to put his hand down her pants. She fought him off and he called her a “prude.” She hadn’t forgotten that. “Prim” was slightly better, but people seem to have a special vault in their mind where they keep labels applied to them. She could never remember the capital of Delaware (Dover? Really?) but the word “prude” along with fifth-grader Doug Nissle’s opinion that her eyes were too far apart were seared into her mind forever.

Winnie put her face in her hands for a moment, thinking perhaps her roommates were right.

“He made it very clear to me that he was not interested in me last semester,” she said. 

“What do you mean?” Kat pressed.

“He just did.”

“You’re imagining things,” Jess said.

“You know he’s kinda like our landlord,” Miyuki offered. “I mean he has the key to our apartment, so if he acted like he wasn’t into you, it’s probably because he doesn’t want to be sued for sexual harassment.”

“He can harass me any day,” Kat said.

“Fix this – make this right and report back to us,” Jess stated. “We’re giving you one week.”

“I can’t even imagine what it would be like to look at that man out the window and be able to say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s my boyfriend,’” Kat said.

“One week,” Jess reminded her.

Kat was now lost in thought. She finally stated as if completely serious, “If you see his cock, report back to us.”

“Photo evidence,” Jess added.

Miyuki said nothing but let out an audible, “Mmmmm,” closing her eyes and dropping her head back a little and moaned like she had just taken a bite of the most sumptuous Devil’s food cake.

“Oh my God, go away!” Winnie laughed.

 The girls were not usually this crude, but they knew how to get a rise out of Winnie, who was, by far, the least experienced with boys.

“I have to go for real,” Jess said.

“Okay, next Friday?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“Bye Winnie, bye Jess, bye Kat,” Miyuki offered while waving both hands.

The roommates said their goodbyes.

Winnie turned her phone off and the cacophony of company was gone. She longed to talk to Jess alone. She may have had a greater intellectual friendship with Miyuki, but Jess was her emotional confidant. She never felt satisfied with all three girls hanging up at the same time. If they were here in person, she’d be the one that stayed up late in the kitchen with Jess, but now she faced nothing but silence and loneliness. She stared at her empty apartment and sighed.

Winnie spent the remainder of the evening in the company of Netflix. For a few brief moments, she was not alone in her apartment, but she was in 19^th century England, navigating the social circles of the royal crown and seducing the charming lord of the manor. But as the clock struck midnight, she faced the inevitable dreaded end – the black screen. There was nothing lonelier than seeing herself on her sofa in the reflection of her television once it was turned off – a reminder that she had, in fact, not traveled to 19^th century England, and had never ventured out from underneath the ratty blanket tugged snug under her chin. 

The spectacle of voices and parties that filled her apartment dissolved into the hum of the refrigerator. She stared at her reflection – a half-eaten plate of food on the ottoman in front of her. An empty orange juice bottle on the end table, her shoes haphazardly thrown upon the hardwood floor.

She would happily clean her apartment if there was a chance someone else would see it, but that seemed unlikely. There was no reason to clean the house when she wasn’t having guests, no reason to shop for clothes when she wasn’t going out, and no reason to work out if no one was going to see her naked. Loneliness doesn’t happen all at once. It creeps up on you. This wasn’t how humans were supposed to live – each one of us divided by walls from everyone else. The Geneva Convention determined solitary confinement was cruel and unusual punishment, why was she doing it to herself? This wasn’t part of the plan. Not that her life had to have a plan, but she did feel it had a purpose.

When Winnie was seven years old, she collapsed on the playground. Within 12 hours, she was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. The most terrifying aspect of this diagnosis had nothing to do with a lack of insulin in her blood, it was the future of finger pricks. Like any seven-year-old girl, she had a fear of needles, and the idea that she’d have to face multiple lancet pricks every day was nearly too much to bear. But children put a great deal of trust in adults, and the adults in her life constantly reassured her that these fleeting moments of pain were for her own good – that they were necessary and prudent in the big picture – in the long-term plan for her health. It didn’t matter that, if at the time, she did not understand the first thing about islet cells, insulin, or glucose, she did trust her parents.

This notion, that everything is part of a larger plan, is a cornerstone of religious faith. It imbues the world with meaning. Trials and tribulations are more easily swallowed if we imagine they happen for a reason. She felt she was meant to suffer as a child, as it taught her empathy. God gave her particular gifts, and she was meant to live a life helping others. She knew this deep in her soul. What she didn’t know, and the question that weighed on her presently was whether there was someone meant for her – or was she doomed to a life of loneliness? She often thought she’d never marry, but her true fear was marrying the wrong man. For there are, at least, benefits of solitude that temper the pain of loneliness… but to spend a life with someone and still be lonely, all the while being robbed of the benefits of solitude, she couldn’t imagine.

Did so-called soul mates exist? 

She felt her mind stirring and her pulse quicken as she stared into the fairy lights that adorned her wall, these were the first two signs of an impending panic attack. Panic attacks had become a regular part of her life ever since middle school. As such, she had developed a well-tested and highly effective manner for dealing with them: she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and began to pray.

Prayer had been a part of life for as long as she could remember. She did not pray to receive particular things, nor for certain events to happen, but rather she asked God for wisdom and strength. She was, for all her life, naturally diffident and often lacked the requisite confidence to face even the most routine of activities like a job interview, a speech in front of the class, or an oral exam. This was of little consequence however because she believed in something bigger than herself. So, when it came to tackling life’s challenges, her strength was not the relevant variable, rather it was the strength of her belief. 

 So, she sat with eyes closed, breathing steady, looking inward so deep that it became looking outward. Whether or not she was actually communicating with God, there was no disputing there was a conversation going on in her head. 

It is surprising what one can accomplish when they believe they are in conversation with the creator of the Universe. Winnie was valedictorian of her school. Granted, this was Yazoo, Mississippi, but her grades and test scores would likely have gotten her into an Ivy League University. She chose Holy Trinity for a number of reasons, it was her parents’ college and was affiliated with her church, but there was a more subtle, if not deeper, reason: she did not feel responsible for her success – that was God’s doing, and she felt compelled to honor the one that deserved the credit.

Her prayer assuaged her panic – as it always did. Whether it provided any answers was a matter of debate, for the “answers” she received did not come to her in the form of language – they were merely feelings that enveloped her and ultimately moved the needle of her heart’s internal compass. But of course, her heart and brain were often at odds. 

So, when she stood up to lumber to the bathroom, her heart was calmed but her mind was still spinning. But at least it was a more thoughtful, focused, and controllable spin. 

There are three billion men on the planet, I know a couple hundred.

She began brushing her teeth. 

That puts the odds of actually meeting my so-called soulmate at about one in… ten million.

She inspected some impossibly small minutia on her face. 

And how many dates would it take to find that one? She couldn’t bear the “getting to know you” phase. She didn’t want to spend three dates to realize they don’t like the same movies and wouldn’t even know what funny was unless a laugh track told them. This is to say nothing of religion and politics. 

One in ten million… Slightly better than winning the lottery… but considerably worse than being hit by lightning.

She finally climbed into bed.

If you really wanted to meet your soulmate, you’d need a twist of fate… some sort of divine intervention…

She turned out the light, her face blank and mind in deep thought.

And closed her eyes.

The moonlight shone through the Tudor window, putting cool white criss cross diamonds on her quilt, spilling over onto the floor.

The faint hum of her refrigerator quietly resonated through the humid summer air.

The warm glow of fairy lights lit up her living room.

In the corner of her kitchen, a small goldfish stared out its bowl at her.

And she drifted off to sleep. 

1 am, 2 am, 3 am all passed without incident. But 4 am was different. This was when it happened. What exactly ‘it’ is, is a matter of some controversy, but one’s opinion on this matter will be entirely dependent upon the question “Do you believe in magic?”

Of course, everyone believes in some kind of magic: they may feel their spouse’s smile is “pure magic” or Grandma’s living room is magical at Christmas time. But most magic involves something that is not entirely understood. For most of us, this includes mobile phones, airplanes, and television. As Arthur C. Clarke famously stated: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” But we at least are confident that someone understands these things. The joy of actual magic is the feeling that no one understands it. Humans enjoy this feeling so much we pay good money to emulate it at magic shows. It delights our minds in a way nothing else can. 

Tragedy is often even more difficult to understand than delight, and the mysteries of the Universe are filled with both. One can understand the genetic errors present in a cell that led to cancer, but it doesn’t help you understand why it struck your father. Indeed, some events are so random that they almost yearn for meaning. Consider the following: for billions of years, the Earth has been constantly pelted with cosmic rays: fragments of atoms produced in the explosions of supernovas. This was a matter of almost no consequence until, in 1971, humans invented the microprocessor, an invention so minute and delicate that a single fragment of an atom from another solar system could flip a single bit on the circuit board, turn a one into a zero, and in a modern car without proper hardware redundancies, could cause a case of sudden acceleration, resulting in the death of a driver. It’s almost impossible to imagine something so small, insignificant, and random as a fragment of an atom from another galaxy, having such a profound effect on a human life. But many scientists are almost certain it has done exactly this. .

But even knowing how it happens still doesn’t explain why. Was there a reason that the particle fragment of an atom took the path it did? Why was the car on that particular road at that exact time of day?

When tornadoes strike homes, insurance companies, perhaps the world’s leading experts on probability, have decided to classify these events, for want of a better definition, as “Acts of God.” Adults have no more understanding as to why their house was destroyed by a tornado as seven-year-old Winnie understood why she had to get pricked with a needle every few hours. But the idea that it was part of a larger plan made both infinitely more palatable.

This particular “Act of God” struck Winnie’s electrical box. At 4:12 am, a spark of blue lightning emanated from behind the breakers. The “how” definition involved a wire overheating and melting the insulation, sending an arc of electricity to the ground wire, cracking like a lightning bolt, waking Winnie from her slumber to a house of complete darkness—no more fairy lights – no hum of the refrigerator. Her power was out and the electrical box smoking.

She rose from bed, bare feet on the hardwood floor. The unpleasant smell of burnt plastic in her nostrils.

She struggled to get her bearings. She wanted to go to sleep and deal with this in the morning, but once she fully regained consciousness, falling back to sleep with the smell of burnt plastic in the air didn’t seem prudent. She had read about electrical fires in walls before. So, fetching matches from the drawer, she lit the cinnamon candle on her end table and carried it to her refrigerator, retrieving a note held up by a magnet: 24-hour maintenance emergency: Rowan Collins.

She studied the name in the flickering light and weighed her options.

It was one thing to have him in her apartment in the light of day, but quite another in the still of the night with nothing but flickering candlelight dancing on the walls. The intimacy of this environment was overwhelming. Before she knew it, her fingers were dialing the number.

Rowe stood outside Winnie’s open door. The sun had not yet risen. He wore khaki shorts, and a white linen button-up shirt, the sleeves rolled to his elbows. 

Winnie stood just inside the door in a white tee and sweats.

“Hey,” he greeted – Rowe’s voice was soft – taking care not to wake the neighbors.

“Hey,” she replied.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Good, I guess,” she answered. She invited him in, and they approached the electrical box. “Here it is, it was kind of smoking when I called.”

He held a flashlight in one hand and opened the metal door with the other. The smell of burnt plastic was long gone. He breathed in the fragrance of cinnamon candle in Winnie’s hand and a hint of vanilla from her skin.

He furrowed a brow. “Looks like a breaker blew”.

“Is that an easy fix?”

“Yeah,” he replied as he studied it. “The hard part is finding out why it happened.” He bent down to gather his tools.  “I assume it’s related to the new lamp outside” 

They stood close to one another – closer than common decorum allowed, however, in the dark and the quiet, it seemed a natural choice.

“Did you have anything unusual plugged in?” he asked.

“Giant vibrator,” she replied. 

She mused about how unlike her it was to say that. The conversation with her roommates must be fresh in her mind, she decided. She was channeling Jess.

“There’s your problem,” he chuckled and started prying the old breaker out with a screwdriver.

She watched him for a moment and screwed up her courage. “Did you go to Summerfest?” 

“I didn’t make it,” he said, without a hint of bitterness – indeed it seemed he was apologizing for not going. 

She knew she was the one that needed to apologize. “I’m sorry, I don’t…” She started. 

He glanced up from the electrical box, attentive. 

She studied the floor. “I’m not like… good with crowds.” 

He nodded, waited for her to extrapolate, but she couldn’t find the words, so he bailed her out. “I know what you mean.”

“I’m a weirdo,” she rolled her eyes, “I prefer like, one on one time with people. like that’s what energizes me, and crowds exhaust me.”

He paused a beat, then nodded. “You’re an introvert.”

“Yeah.”

He nodded. 

She cringed a bit. “I go to parties with my roommates and I spend the whole night in the corner pretending to be interested in some painting.” 

He smiled as he grabbed the old wires with a set of needle-nose pliers. 

She caressed a bit of nothing on the wall for no reason. “I’m like a recluse.” 

“You’re not a recluse. You’re…” he searched in the toolbox for the wire strippers “…demure.” 

“That’s better than prim. My roommates called me prim today.” 

“Prim isn’t all bad,” he said, raising his eyebrows. 

“Better than prude maybe,” she shrugged. 

He’s gently amused. 

“Prim… Prude, how are they even different?” she said. 

“I think prim is more… it’s like a closer cousin to proper,” he said. 

“Proper’s not bad… better than priggish,” she shrugged again. 

“There’s a GRE word,” he grinned and then put-on airs, “the priggish pedant.” 

“Oh my God this is the nerdiest conversation I’ve ever been a part of.” She laughed.

“Wow, knowing you, that is a high bar.” 

She grinned, warming to him. “Do you want something to drink?” 

“No thank you, I’m okay.” 

She watched him work. “Shouldn’t you turn the main power off?” she asked. 

“Yeah… probably… I’ll be alright… as long as I don’t slip.”

He wielded a giant screwdriver to unscrew the old breaker clamp. 

“Is that how they do it in Texas?” She asked. Rowe had revealed he spent his childhood there on the day they met. 

He just smiled.

“So, were you like a genuine cowboy growin’ up?” she asked.  

“Not really…” he said, quite accurately, having left the suburbs of Houston as a teenager.  But this didn’t stop him from teasing her. “I mean, I’ve roped some steer in my day… slept by a few campfires… been in a few gunfights… but I ain’t no cowboy,” he added with a sudden drawl and gave her a sly look. She rolled her eyes. 

“You live alone right?” she asked. 

“I do.” 

“So, if your hand slips and you =die, I don’t know whom to call.” 

“Well, that’s depressing,” he sighed. 

“This is the first time I’ve ever lived alone, I’m not very good at it.” she offered. 

“What’s hard about it?” he asked. 

“I don’t know… just…” her voice trailed off. “Being alone.” 

“So, you don’t like people, but you don’t like being alone,” he said with a mischievous grin as he grabbed the new breaker from his toolbox. 

She dropped her head back and looked at the ceiling for a moment. “Oh my God, I sound like a psycho, don’t I?”

“Not a psycho… ‘weirdo’ was the term I think you used,” he teased. 

“I told you, I’m better one on one… but being alone is… How long have you lived alone?”

“For two years.”

“You don’t have a girlfriend?” 

“My first two years of school I did. She graduated.”

“You broke up.”

“We did.” 

“Am I prying?”

“No, no, I mean. It was good and bad. She had… sort of…”

“I am prying.” 

“An addictive personality.” 

She waited for him to extrapolate. 

He loosened the screws to connect the new wires to the breaker. “She was like a, punk rock,  goth type.” 

“At Holy Trinity!?” 

“Yeah… art major, weirdo, you would have liked her.” 

“Sounds like it,” she replied as she studied him. “So, what do you do for, like, social interaction now?”

“Well, there’s this girl I was sorta interested in, I asked her out today… but she, like, shot me down pretty hard,” he teased. He clamped the wires coming out of the new breaker. 

“Shut up.” 

“Said she had to read…. I don’t know…” he furrowed his brow, “truthfully she’s a little priggish.”

“She sounds awesome actually.” 

“But I get it, I mean who can compete with… books?” he said. 

“I told you I was a weirdo.” 

He shrugged. “That’s my type.”

“I was quite normal growing up, but somewhere along the way I lost faith in humanity and became a misanthrope.” She said. 

He shrugged, and played along “People suck” 

Winnie laughed. “They do.”

Rowe continued. “Think about it, you have criminals,” he said, counting one with his thumb, “they suck.”

“Suck,” Winnie agreed.

“Racists, sexists,” Rowe counted two and three with his fingers.

“Suck it big time,” Winnie agreed. 

“Professional wrestling fans,” he counted four.

“You realize all these categories are mostly men, don’t you?”

“Oh, women suck most of all,” he said with a mock furrowed brow before flashing her a little grin.

Before she knew it, she had hit his arm in a manner so flirtatious, she instantly felt like one of her roommates.

“Sorry,” she said. 

He looked at her questioningly. 

“I don’t know why I… hit you just now. I feel like I hit you too hard. I’m not good at…” 

“Boxing?” 

“Yeah.” 

He looked her over, pleased, when a work of art on the wall behind her caught his eye. It was a striking piece, consisting of a half finished scientific illustration of a butterfly superimposed over watercolor reminiscent of a sunset fading into thousands of stars. 

He froze, transfixed. Winnie followed his gaze to her art, and then back to his eyes – unsure what to think just yet. 

He said nothing but picked up the candle off the floor and stepped toward it to examine it in greater detail. 

The candlelight flicked over the paint, catching the texture of the paper. 

“This is yours?” He asked, not taking his eyes off it. 

“It is” 

“It’s breathtaking” he almost whispered. 

She watched him, on eggshells, almost convinced he was putting her on. When she finally relaxed, she managed a “Thank you” 

“What does it mean?” He asked rather pointedly. 

“Well, you tell me, the meaning of the art lies in the beholder” 

He backed up and surveyed it in its entirety. “It explores the duality of art and science” 

She eyed him – “Go on” 

“You’re a double major right? Art and Psychology? 

“And maybe theology,” she said. 

“Triple major”

“Maybe, one will be a minor” 

“So it’s the trinity of art, science, and spirituality. The neverending cosmic soul for the spirit,” He gestured to the stars, “the measured scientific illustration for the science” He gestured to the butterfly. “And the entire work is art, the medium for which you express yourself.”

She watched him, hanging on his every word. 

He noticed that he had her rapt attention and added:

“And you’re the butterfly, an unfinished symphony,” He gestured to the unfinished wings.  “ready to fly through the eternal cosmos.  A finite being among the infinite, if you could only stop studying yourself”

  Her lips curled with mirth, but did not otherwise validate his assessment. 

“I’ve always felt art and science were two sides of the same coin.” She said. “ My favorite quote is Einstein saying the greatest scientists are artists”  

He finally pulled his eyes from the painting and set the candle atop the electrical box and spoke: “I’ve heard it said that science deals with analysis, or the breaking of things down into their constituent parts, whereas art tends to deal with synthesis or the building of things up from unrelated parts. So, if people can learn to apply their art skills of creation to their science, we get all sorts of wonderful new breakthroughs.”

“That’s beautiful,” She said, looking him over as if with new eyes. 

“So what are you gonna do with three majors?” He asked, picking up his wire strippers again. 

“I want to be an art therapist. I thought I’d be an art major, but I think my parents were worried I’d end up drawing portraits on the sidewalk.”

“That’s not a bad gig.”

“Says the future doctor.”

“So, theology, psych, and art do you want to be an art therapist at a church?”

“That’s the plan… if that job existed in churches… which it doesn’t.” she said. 

“You can make it happen.”

“Or I can be unemployed.”

“You’d be good. You empathize well. That’s like your thing,” he said. 

“My thing?”

“Everyone has a thing, that’s yours.”

“You’re being kind, I wish I could empathize more.” She said. 

“Remember how you said you can’t watch American Idol because it makes you anxious for the performers. Empathy is your thing. It’s your superpower.”

She doesn’t reply but lets it soak in.

“What’s your superpower?” she asked. 

He thought for a moment as he pushed a wire through the back of the box. “I’m the all-knowing master of time and space.”

She snorted “Humility, that’s your thing.” 

“Yeah, that too,” he gave her a sly smile as he stripped the new wire. 

“So, you’re a science guy.” she said. 

“I guess. Medical informatics and genetics”

“So, will you, like, have a medical practice, or?”

“I’ll be on the research side, I think.”

“Who will fix my stuff?” she asked. 

“Someone with more skill than I.”

“And you’re headed to Brown?” she asked. 

“Yeah.” 

“I like Rhode Island.” she said. 

“I hope I like it.”

“How soon do you go?”

“I’ll leave in the fall, so two months I guess.”

Winnie swallowed hard.

He flipped the new breaker – the lights popped on.

“That was fast,” she said.

“I still don’t know why it happened though.”

He studied the breakers.. The sun was rising out the window.

He turned his attention to her. 

She folded her arms, suddenly feeling self-conscious in the light. 

He started putting away his tools.

“It was good to… see you… and chat,” she said. 

“Yeah,” he murmured. He closed his toolbox and stood – his eyes somewhat wistful.

“So, I guess… If I don’t see you,” she said, “I wish you well… on your future endeavors… being the all-knowing master of space and time.”

He didn’t know what to say. Finally, he managed, “I’ll miss you.”

Winnie was unusually sincere. “Yeah.”

He didn’t turn to go just yet but lowered his gaze and opened his mouth as if to say something, but then he thought better of it—rubbed his eyes, took a deep breath and turned to go. “All right, I’ll see you around then?”

She watched him – unable to find any words herself until he reached the door. 

Winnie could feel it stirring inside – that cocktail of mixed emotion that she felt looking through the door viewer, something deep, stirring and confusing all at once. But right now, she could feel them about to bubble over. Finally, she blurted out, “Why did you change lab partners?”

He turned to face her. 

“We were set to be lab partners and you changed. We may never see each other again,” she said. A flash of pain crossed her eyes. “I just need to know why,” her tone was involuntarily plaintive. “What was wrong with me?” 

He looked at her with great empathy – as if this very concern had been on his mind as well. Those damn soft eyes that could melt anyone.

“I did want to partner with you,” his words were quiet – as if to imbue them with gravity. “Nothing was wrong with you, everything is right, that’s the problem.”

“Don’t make up something to spare my feelings.” 

“Listen to me,” he stepped forward, earnest. “You can feel this right?” he gestured between his chest and hers. “Between us? It works. It’s always worked. It feels right. ”

She stood frozen. 

“We’re both at the top of the class,” he continued. “We like the same movies, we finish each other’s sentences, and yet you always say something that surprises me every time we talk.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

He furrowed his brow for a moment and studied the floor. “You remember when we met?”

Her eyes were locked on him, she nodded yes.

“I was showing you this apartment. We were standing right about there,” he nodded to a spot on the floor. “You had your hair up and you had that little blue dress on, and you kept doing that thing where you roll back on your heels and then almost to your tiptoes, when you talked like you were so excited, the words would just rock your body back and forth.”

She focused intently on his eyes.

He met her eyes. “I remember because you were telling me about your family, and how important they were to you and how much you missed them. And how your dad was pastor of this church where everyone was pretty tight and how you were leading this young life group here in town, how you wanted to take them on a mission trip to Africa, and I thought, you know, wow, this girl is the most beautiful human I’ve ever met… but she’ll never go for me, not in a million years. Because she’s a church girl, which I respect, but the fact is, I’m sorta on the other team.”

She was still frozen, in disbelief, she spoke in a half-whisper, “You worship the devil?”

Rowe grinned widely. “No, I’m a humanist.”

“A humanist?” her voice was almost breathless.

“Yeah.”

“Like a secular, “I don’t believe in God” kind of humanist?” she asked. 

He was a bit sheepish. “That’s the one.”

“So, an atheist.”

“Right.”

She sat down on a bench in the hall behind her, just the relief of knowing lifted some weight off her shoulders. “Here I was thinking you didn’t partner with me because you were my landlord…”

“Your landlord?”

“I thought you were afraid of a million-dollar lawsuit if we dated.” 

He was amused. “A million dollars?” he repeated. And then earnest, he added, “I’d take that risk.”

She chuckled to herself, amused… but ultimately disappointed.

“Oh… my…” she ran her hand through her hair. “At least I know why now… I felt like there was something wrong with me.”

Genuine concern in his eyes, he replied, “No… no… I just figured that that whole atheist thing would be a deal-breaker for you…” he studied her reaction, but he couldn’t read her.

“Is it a deal-breaker for you?” he asked, “I mean in the long term because if we both know we’d be more than a fling, I think we have a shot at being the real deal and why go down that path if it’s just gonna lead to pain.”

She didn’t reply right away, a serious question deserved a serious answer. She sighed, studied him. Why him? The irony she chose to ask God for guidance in answering this question was not lost on her. Christianity, or more broadly, spirituality, was her defining quality. It was the magnetic force that guided her internal compass. It was central to the nature of her being. It not only made her what she was…. It was her. She didn’t have a soul… she was a soul. Could she be friends with someone that denied this? Yes. Could she be attracted to this person? Obviously yes. Could she rip his clothes off? This much was certain. She blinked hard, why was she even asking herself this question? The question was whether they could be more than a fling, would it work in the long term. Could she settle down with someone who did not share her spiritual view of the world? Who did not even believe in God? She knew the answer – she knew the answer before she started introspecting, she was just dragging it out because she didn’t like what the answer was. Her mind and her heart seldom agreed.

“Yeah, I guess… I mean…” she reflected – looking within. “If I’m honest… It’s like the biggest deal-breaker there could be.”

He didn’t know what to say.

“That was nice though… what you said… about me.” She managed to share a glance with him, then studied the floor nervously. 

 “You don’t believe in God at all?” she asked. She met his eye. “I mean are you, like, agnostic? We can’t know, or are you like a real ‘atheist – there is no god, down with church?” 

He paused… sighed. “The latter.”

“Seriously?”

He nodded. “I’m actually working on a book with a friend of mine that helps save people from religion.”

Winnie was stunned. “You’re actively out there preaching against religion?”

“Yeah.”

She was flabbergasted. “Are you serious?”

“I am.”

“That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard,” she said, laughing. 

He was slightly amused, sheepish.

“So, it’s like your mission,” she continued, “to trick people into thinking God doesn’t exist?”

“Take the word “trick” out of there and…” he shrugged, “I don’t know if there’s any good way to say this, but I think religion is one of the world’s biggest problems.”

“Wow… this is… like… sitting down with the enemy here….”

“I bet I could save you,” he said. 

“You could save me?!”

“Yeah.”

“From what?!” she argued.

“Seriously, let’s talk about it over dinner.”

“You think you’re going to change the core of who I am over dinner?”

She had a point, but he wasn’t going to give up so easily. “Then you save me.”

She furrowed her brow. 

“I like you,” he admitted. He stated his case, “That doesn’t happen often. For all we know, we’re about to miss out on lifetime happiness just for some… philosophical belief… Something in our heads… that can never be proven either way.”

Why him? Winnie asked herself.

He saw her caution.

“You’re evangelical, right?”

“Technically, I’m Baptist.”

“Isn’t it like your duty to try and convert me… It’d be immoral not to.”

She smiled, picked up a coffee cup from the counter, and studied it mindlessly as she considered it. “We’d have to agree on a definition of God first.” 

“Okay, we’ll do that over breakfast.” 

“But I’m gonna say God is love, so we’ll have to define that too.” 

“That’ll be lunch. I’m buying. Breakfast, what is God, lunch, what is love.” 

“What’s the dinner’s topic?” 

“Dinner is ‘what is good…. How to love.” 

She nodded, yes, that was fitting. 

“And why atheism is bad.” she added. 

“Yes, or the damage Christianity is doing to this nation.” 

She rolled her eyes.

He checked his watch. “Three meals, three topics. I’m buying. It’s 6 am, sunrise, I’ll give you until sundown,” he set his alarm, “to try and save me from “Hell,” and you give me until sundown, to try and save you from the specious reasoning and possibly harmful superstition of religion. 

“Specious reasoning huh? I bet you’re an expert in that.”

He shrugged. “We’re at a Christian university which I think has a less than desirable relationship with the truth…. I don’t want you lying in bed at age forty with the creeping realization that this whole spiritual world isn’t all it’s made up to be and that the church you’re in is filled with selfish conservatives and that the guy you married has a backwards bible inspired view of the role of women in a marriage and doesn’t genuinely appreciate you for what you could be.”

Her eyes widened. “That is ironic because I lament the fact that you’re going to be lying in bed at age fifty, alone because no woman in her right mind would marry an atheist and be faced with the creeping realization that you are not a God… That your philosopher friends are cynical blowhards and that maybe, just maybe, there is something much, much larger than yourself and you’ve spent the majority of your life ignoring it.”

He grinned broadly. “This is gonna be good.” 

It disarmed her. 

“If we fail,” he said, “we walk away… If one of us succeeds, then who knows what’s in store, we’ll have our entire lives to figure it out.”

She considered it, put her face in her hands as she admitted to herself, she was going to do it, took her hands down, and shared a look with him – breaking into a resigned smile.

“You’re buying right?” she asked. 

He grinned.

Winnie lowered the sun visor in a feeble attempt to block the sunrise beaming through the windshield of Rowe’s car. She naturally assumed that a Tesla Model S was beyond his means as an apartment maintenance man, so she guessed that, like his toolbox, it was a hand-me-down from his father as well. On a different day, she might have railed inside about the life of privilege he led, and how his father probably had no love for the environment but was only virtue signaling, but deep inside, she knew she was not exactly a child of poverty. She had never known real want. And she knew nothing about his father except that he owned three small apartment buildings. She imagined him as a doctor, investing in real estate on the side: the kind of person for whom a 2013 Tesla was old news and something to pawn off on his son. But most of all, she wasn’t railing inside because she was enjoying the ride. The sunlight dancing on the posh leather seats was such a contrast to the old Corolla she shared with Jess, it felt like a flash-forward to a future she imagined for herself. 

They pulled into the parking lot of “The Toast”—Anderson’s classic diner, built in 1962, and he parked the car. 

“So, what’s an atheist do for fun?” she asked as she unbuckled her seatbelt. 

“Pretty much what you think… we kick dogs… rob old ladies,” he said, opening the car door. 

“Trip Nuns?” she gave him a sly smile over the roof of the car as she exited the vehicle.

They walked across the parking lot to the diner, silhouetted by the orange morning sky. 

“We do the same things Christians do,” Rowe shrugged, “there’s just less singing involved.” 

“Less to sing about I guess,” she teased. 

“We do need to work on our image. People think we’re angry, dull.” 

“Immoral,” she added. 

“Ugly,” he said. 

“Oh no, you’re very cute,” she raised her eyebrows. “That’s how the Devil appears, in the most seductive form possible.” 

Rowe flashed his crooked smile as he held the diner door open for her. Winnie mused about how much he embodied a young Marlon Brando. 

“That might be the nicest compliment I’ve ever gotten,” he said. 

“Accusing you of being Satan?” she asked. 

“He’s the bad guy, right?” he said.

She smirked, amused. 

They entered the diner, with a chrome bar, Formica tables, the strong smells of coffee and bacon, and awaited to be seated. 

“How are you today?” a waitress asked as she approached. 

“We’re doing well, how are you?” Rowe asked. 

He met her eyes when he spoke and seemed to mean his words. Winnie noted this. “You can always judge a man by how he treats the help,” her mother used to say. Not that her family had “help” but perhaps it was a phrase her grandmother had used. Winnie’s grandmother on her mother’s side was raised in a fairly well-to-do family and her grandfather was quite impoverished at the time of their meeting, making their relationship quite scandalous. 

The waitress led them to their table and quickly returned with two glasses of water. Rowe thanked her and they ordered their food. She got the southwestern scramble and an orange juice. He got the egg white vegetable omelet and water. The waitress left and Winnie turned to face him. 

“So. What is God?” he said. 

“You start.” 

“No, you’re the theology major, or minor rather. I don’t want to mansplain.” 

“If I go first, you’ll say I’m a know-it-all Karen.” 

“I won’t say that.”

“But I really do… know it all, so…” she gave him a sly smile. “You go. This whole thing was your idea.” 

“Okay. So, let’s start with the most common definitions. There are, what, 10,000 gods of antiquity?”

“Yeah.”

“Their size and relative import correlated with the size and import of the culture that worshipped them. So, we have like the Egyptian God Ra, this dude was big news. Zeus, from the Greeks, Vishnu, Hindu God. Odin the Norse God, then we have Baal and El in the middle east.”

“Please stop mansplaining,” she said with an eye roll. “I need to talk to the manager.” 

They shared a chuckle. 

“I would never call you a ‘Karen’ by the way, I think that’s a sexist term indicative of a society that can’t accept middle-aged women in positions of power.” 

She studied him with squinty eyes. “I can’t tell if you’re being earnest or just trying to impress me.”

“Is it harder to believe that a man would not be sexist than it is to… believe you’re in contact with the creator of the Universe?”
“Absolutely,” she said, furrowing her brow as if this was obvious. 

He smiled. 

“Anyhow,” she said, “I cut you off. You were doing quite well; I’m extremely impressed with your knowledge of Gods.” 

“Well, I haven’t even gotten to Chi Nu, the Chinese god of weaving.”

She rolled her eyes. 

“And then, of course, the Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Judaism, Christianity,” he said. 

“And Islam,” she added. 

“Yes,” he agreed. “So, I would suggest you’re already an atheist with these other nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine gods. Just not Yahweh.” 

“I don’t believe in the specifics of any of those gods. Including Yahweh. They are all but different lenses by which man glimpses the true god,” she stated, as if quoting. 

“I see,” he said. 

“You look skeptical.” 

“Well, it seems a little convenient to just explain away ten thousand mistakes.” he said. 

She studied him and sighed. “I had an angry atheist phase too you know,” she put on some airs, ribbing him. 

Rowe is completely unthreatened. “Oh yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Let me guess, bad breakup with the boyfriend in high school?” 

“No, not exactly.”

“Well?”

“It was when the AFRC rebels attacked our mission village and turned the church we built into a torture chamber rape house.”

Rowe could tell he had just been put in his place. He inhaled, managed a small nod, and waited her out. 

“It was the summer after my freshman year of high school, we were on a mission trip to Gambia, building a church in a Jarawa village when there was a coup. A government coup… The AFRC overthrew the sitting president. Our plane was like, a week away and before we knew it, teenage boys carrying AK-47s took the village.”

She studied a bit of nothing on the table. He listened intently. 

“I never actually saw anyone die… mostly due to the fact that I managed to divert my eyes… but I did… hear them…”

She lifted her head and gathered herself. “For some reason, they never touched me, my sister, and my dad. I think they were scared we were from the UN or something. Anyhow, we had just built a church. It was made from cinder blocks, so it was the only building in the village that didn’t burn… so they, like, made it their headquarters. So here was our church, built out of love and sweat… completed just in time for the rebels to use it for… the most despicable acts imaginable. Things went on in there that no human should be allowed to witness… and no God would allow this to happen…”

Her voice trailed off. He waited but then spoke softly – gently. “So, you lost your faith?”

“You could say that.” 

“What changed your mind?”

She inhaled, gathering herself again. “My dad sat me down one day once we were back home and asked why I was so angry, and through clever Socratic questioning, he finally got me to realize it was because I loved those villagers. I loved humanity. I loved justice. I couldn’t bear to see that taken away. Hate and anger wouldn’t exist if we didn’t care about anything. In order for good to exist, there has to be an alternative… Otherwise, life is meaningless. There’s good and evil in almost every situation. The fact that I survived and wasn’t completely screwed up in the head meant something to me. The fact that I’m more sensitive to the plight of the third world means something to me now… I was wondering where God was and all the while, He was inside me.”

Rowe considered the words and nodded in agreement, respectfully.

A small child, two booths away, ran a hot wheels car along the top of their booth and made eye contact with Winnie. 

“It’s good that…” he chose his words carefully. “I’m glad that you were able to use that wisdom to better yourself, and the world.”

She smiled and studied him. 

The waitress came and set their breakfast down. Rowe exchanged pleasantries with her. 

“So,” Winnie said, changing subjects. “How did it all happen?” 

“What?” 

“How does a nice, upstanding young man such as yourself get lost on the path of the wicked?”

He grinned and took a sip of coffee.

 “Didn’t you go to Sunday School?” she asked, taking a bite of the Western scramble. 

“I was raised in the church. How do you think I ended up at Holy Trinity?” 

“Let me guess. Strict Texas fundamentalist.” 

“No,” he smiled. 

“Strict Catholic?” 

“Colder…”

“Snake handlers?” 

 “I grew up in the most normal suburban church you can imagine.”

“Protestant?” she asked. 

“It was like, non-denominational. Just like a community church,” he reflected. “Very open-minded, very friendly.” 

“Sounds dreadful, how did you ever escape?” she said. 

“I had my first inklings of doubt really early on…. I remember in Sunday School, I was looking at this map of world religions and realized that if I was born in a different part of the world, to different parents, I would believe in a different religion. Suddenly, everything that was being pitched to me as so certain was just so arbitrary.”

Winnie nodded. “Yes… but then you grew up and came to realize that all religions are different lenses through which we see the same God.”

“Yeah, that’s a theory… but we could also say the common denominator of these religions is that they fulfil similar psychological needs… and provide simple explanations to common questions.” 

She didn’t reply, nor did she get defensive. She just thought about it. 

“Then came ninth-grade biology. That was the nail in the coffin. I just think science provides better answers. It was like, every day, we have all these clear-headed explanations for how things really happened. It was like the entire world fell into place and made sense…”

“So, you were an atheist in high school?” she said, studying him. 

“I was an agnostic. It wasn’t until mid-college where I was surrounded by other positive atheist role models that it somehow seemed okay.”

“Holy Trinity turned you into an atheist!” 

“Well, it is a college… there’s a thriving academic underground.” 

“Your goth girlfriend?” 

He nodded. “She was a prominent member.” 

Winnie seemed skeptical and put-on airs. “You can always count on college pseudo-intellectual rebellion to stamp out any sign of God.”

“Yeah… that’s education for you,” he said, underplaying the irony. 

She smirked and buttered her toast. 

“I could almost respect you if you were still an agnostic.” She said “I think it takes a leap of faith to say God exists, but an even greater one to say he doesn’t. You always say I can’t prove my position, but you can’t prove yours either. At the end of the day, we have to choose our reality. Why not choose the one that makes you happy?”

He thinks this one over as he eats and then speaks.

“I can’t prove Santa Claus doesn’t exist… but I have good enough reason to think he doesn’t. I mean, thinking Santa Claus is real would probably make me feel good too, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t trick myself. And if I did trick myself, every Christmas, I’d have to explain why rich people got huge lavish gifts and some poor people got none… I’d have to shrug and say, ‘Santa Claus works in strange and mysterious ways.’ But if I focused on the actual truth… I could be donating toys to the less fortunate.”

She didn’t respond, but he could tell he may have hit a nerve. 

“I upset you.” 

“You did just take everything I base my life upon and compare it to Santa Claus.”

He nodded, but he could feel the tone of the conversation change. The flirtation left her voice and there was a hint of anger under her words. The fire between them had started with a spark and was now at the stage where it must be protected from the wind by a strong hand, but fed air by blowing on it. Too much, or too little air and the flames could easily snuff out. He inhaled a deep breath, his mind racing, until he stood up and stepped toward her, and knelt beside her. 

“I’m sorry I disrespected your beliefs.” He said looking earnestly into her eyes. 

Her eyes widened. “What are you doing!?”

“I’m apologizing.” 

“Why are you kneeling!?” she said in hushed tones, looking about the diner to see if they were causing a scene, which, in fact, they were. 

“I’m very tall, it’s hard to apologize when you’re looking down on someone.”

“You don’t have to do this,” she said, restraining laughter. 

“I just want to say you were kind enough to agree to this debate and sometimes disagreeing can sound disrespectful. I don’t want it to, that’s not my intent. I wouldn’t even be trying to change your mind if I didn’t respect you, your intellect, and the person you are.”

She studied this man in front her, her mouth agape. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing or hearing. Just then, she was distracted by a mobile phone flash from a group of girls a few tables away who had clearly mistaken this moment for a marriage proposal. 

“He’s not proposing,” she said, eyes still wide. 

“I’m apologizing,” he said, looking over his shoulder. This elicited a chaos of “awwws” from the girls, who were no doubt influenced by Rowe’s physical attractiveness. 

“Get up!” Winnie begged through laughter. 

He stood. “Hasn’t anyone ever apologized to you before?” he said. 

“Apparently not,” she eyed him as he sat back down. “But you don’t have to do that, I’m not as fragile as you may think.” 

“Good to know because I’m winning this debate pretty handily,” he said, raising his eyebrows. 

“Did you forgive him?” the waitress asked as she returned to refill their waters. 

Winnie furrowed her brow. “I’m thinking about it.” 

Rowe thanked the waitress for the water. She winked at him and wished him luck. 

“So… where were we?” she said. 

“You were upset with my depiction of your belief.”

“All I’m saying is that you have to properly define God if you’re going to state that it doesn’t exist. Anyone can say the old white man isn’t up there.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “But that’s no easy task. There are as many definitions of God as there are people. I probably have five or six myself.”

“Do you believe in one of them?” 

He smiled, sheepish – then nodded his head “no.” 

“Does it bother you that most people do?” 

“In America.” 

“Most people in the world, even those that don’t go to church, the numbers for actual atheism are very low, around 10%. Do you just think the other 90% are just wrong?”

“I think they’re wrong about a lot of things, and have been throughout history, I mean this nation was founded on the extermination of one race and the enslavement of another… Astrology is far more popular than astronomy.” 

“I know, people suck” Winnie rolled her eyes. 

He changed gears: “Tell me what God means to you. Give me the Winnie Stafford view of God, what you hold dear?” 

She absently caressed the saltshaker. “I think the definition of God evolves over one’s lifetime.… I think the phrase God is love is compelling, but I can actually pinpoint down to the very day that I had my first religious experience, when the idea of God became personal.”

He nodded, respectfully – listened, pondered. 

“But I need to be outside to show you.” she said.  

“I’m ready to learn” 

After breakfast at The Toast, they drove a short distance to Lakeside Park, a popular destination for couples who rented paddle boats to take out on the lake. It also was home to a single baseball diamond, a playground, and the path that ran through the woods to its sister park, Woodland Hills park, a mile away. Winnie liked this path because it was made of wood chips which meant there were no bicycles zooming by and she often walked it alone between classes. The morning sun was higher now but still below the trees, sending beams of light across their path. They walked, carrying coffees. 

Rowe lifted his cup to read the quote printed on the side. It read, “If you can’t change your mind, how do you know you have one?” He smiled and showed it to her. 

“It’s a sign,” she said, raising her eyebrows.

“But for which one of us?” 

“It’s your cup!” 

“What’s yours say?” he asked. 

She observed her own and triumphantly read aloud, “I have nothing to declare except my genius – Oscar Wilde.” 

“Wait a second, I think they got our drinks mixed up,” he acted shocked. 

She gave him a sly smile. 

“I suppose you don’t believe in signs,” she said. 

“You would be correct; I suppose you do?” 

“I don’t imagine God is sending down lightning bolts or anything if that’s what you’re asking… But I do think reality lends itself to subjectivity.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she looked around at the majestic woods around them. “What we see is…. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder… the black and white framework is out there, but we are the ones that give the world its color. And we can choose whatever colors give it meaning.”

“And you think my box is missing a few crayons.”

“Or you’re just not using them. My dad used to have a sermon about a father and son working on the roof. The son slips and starts rolling off and the dad looks up to God and says, ‘Lord if you save my son, I’ll dedicate my life to you. Then all of a sudden, at the last second, his son’s belt gets caught on a nail on the gutter and he’s saved. The dad looks back up to God and says, ‘Forget it, the nail got ‘em.’” 

Rowe chuckled. 

“It’s one event,” she continued, “but two ways of looking at it… 

“So, I’m like the dad? Blind to the signs of God around me?” he said. 

“You’re a fast learner,” she remarked. 

The path opened to a grassy knoll with a playground in the middle. There were rubber chips underneath a large wooden jungle gym next to an old-fashioned swing set and some horses on springs for the younger children. There were two families present and the children were shrieking with joy as they chased one another around the structures in figure-eight-like paths. 

Rowe leaned against the monkey bars, Winnie grabbed a bar and hung. 

“So… We’re outside, you were about to define God.” 

“Yes.” 

“Start at the beginning… In fact, start at the beginning of your belief. I told you how I became an atheist; how did you get wrapped up in this Christian stuff?” 

“I’m a PK.” 

“PK?”

“Preacher’s kid.”

“Ah… Was that good or bad?” 

“It was good. I loved church growing up. I mean, you have to admit, no matter what you think of the theology, church can be a seriously positive influence on people’s lives.” 

Rowe nodded. “It builds community.”

“Right,” Winnie agreed as she swung to the next ring. “It makes people care.”

“It feels good.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, there’s a reason religion is so successful,” Rowe shrugged. “It’s because they’ve built it upon something entirely true, the idea that love is the answer. That love conquers all. I don’t disagree with that. I just don’t see anything supernatural about it.”

She dropped down and studied him. 

He continued. “I believe love is God. You say God is love. What’s the difference?”

She thought it over and for just a moment, it looked like she could get on board. Rowe saw her wavering and asked, “So have I convinced you? Are you ready to see the light?”

She rolled her eyes and spun away, walking to the horses on springs. “You know they also say the devil has a silver tongue.”

He just smiled, but he’s gonna get an answer. “What’s the difference between saying God is love, and saying love is God?” 

“It is different.” 

“But how?!”

She screwed up her face, unable to find the words. “It’s like I have some antennae that’s picking up waves you can’t feel.”

 “Tell me about this definitive religious experience.”

She stepped over the horse on a spring and made her way to a bench. He followed and sat next to her. 

“Okay… okay. It was in art, freshman year,” she replied. She reached down and picked a few blades of grass, handing him one and keeping the other for herself. “Mr. Brokaw, who was my favorite teacher, and the reason I’m studying art, used to give us random objects. Like shoes or pencils or blades of grass and have us study them.”

Rowe looked at the blade of grass in his hand.

She continued. “The only rule was that you could not look away for ten minutes. So of course, you get bored in the first minute. The second minute is like slow, agonizing torture, you just become certain there’s nothing more to see,” her voice grew wistful, “but if you make it past the third minute, you start to notice things.”

Rowe studied the blade of grass in his hand. It’s beautiful – a work of natural art glowing in the sun.

“Like the waxy coating on the outside,” she continued. “The perfectly vertical veins, the smell, and the way it’s rougher on one side than it is on the other. And you start to wonder things, like is a single blade of grass a plant or a leaf? If photosynthesis makes sugar, what makes it green? Why do we not eat grass and cows do? What happens in the winter when it dies? And before you know it,” she snapped her fingers, “your ten minutes are up, and you feel like you haven’t even started to look at it. He said this is how you learn to appreciate things, whether it be blades of grass, pencils, or people. Suddenly, in that one instant, it seemed like the world got so much bigger and I got so much smaller. I was no longer the center of the universe; it was clear that I was but a small part of something much larger. It was like this state of euphoria. It’s like I suddenly realized that God was all around me,” she gestured to the trees around them. “I just had to look closer… It’s all here in front of us. Not just in nature, but in us.”

Rowe looked around the park. 

It’s a beautiful summer day. A gentle breeze rustled the leaves and sent shadows and light flickering over them and on the wood chips. The canopy above them was sparkling with peeks of sun oscillating with shadow. 

A blue Jay landed on a branch in a nearby tree. A chipmunk ventured out onto the path to grab a cheerio that had fallen out of a toddler’s Tupperware snack container. His eyes darted wildly back and forth before he grabbed it and scampered off.

“It’s not just the physical world either,” Winnie continued. “Think, the idea that humans come out here to be together. Humans don’t have to be together to survive, but we choose that. There’s something that binds us that we’re beholden to. Something greater than each of us alone. Think about the feelings you have inside you right now. Think about the fact that right now, someone is concerned about you, and you’re concerned about someone else… You know? Isn’t that amazing?”

Rowe watched a young towheaded boy chase what looked like his older brother. They were rimmed in sunlight. They circled around the jungle gym until at last one of them ran into his mother’s arms. She picked him up and handed him off to the father, who promptly put him on his shoulders. Beyond them, a group of four older children played basketball – the sound of the ball bouncing arrived a half-second after the sight. Their voices were faint and distant. 

He was quiet – thoughtful. He studied the ground for a bit and then her. She was radiant. He began to smile and even chuckle as if nervousness was squeezing laughter out of him. 

“What?” Winnie asked.

He shrugged. “Nothing…” and then, earnestly added, “you’re an interesting person.” 

“I am,” Winnie agreed in jest. 

“If everything you just said is God,” he said, “then we already agree.”

“So, I win? I won you over already?”

“No, I won you over,” he said. 

“What?” 

He shrugged. “You didn’t mention anything supernatural.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re not looking closely enough… God is in the details.”

“I thought the Devil was in the details?” 

“Oh please.” 

“Look,” he insisted, “you’re the one not looking closely enough. He reached down and picked up a blade of grass. “There are astounding wonders here, but the answers are more astounding. This waxy coating, or the cuticle, as they say, it’s made from acids that repel water. This makes it waterproof, but also gas permeable so it can regulate the transpiration and Co2 exchange.”

“Again, all more evidence of God, but I was using the grass as an allegory,” she sighed and snatched the grass from his hand and got up. “I’m talking about the magic and nuance of humans.”

“The magic and nuance of humans is exactly what humanism is all about… all of these things, love, understanding, friendship. These are what’s so beautiful about humanity. These are the things worthy of a life philosophy.” 

“But where does it come from? Why do beauty and love exist?”

“You want the explanation.” 

“Of course, I do!” 

“But since you don’t know, you assume it’s God.” 

She didn’t have an immediate comeback for this. He continued. 

“Just like ancient tribes didn’t know why it rained, so they did rain dances. Just like the pioneers didn’t know about mental illness, so they assumed it was demonic possession.”

“I don’t believe in demonic possession,” she said, eyes widening to show a hint of exasperation. 

He continued, unflappable. “But as science sheds light on the unknown, the shadows of myth and superstition get pushed away…”

“Myth and superstition are part of religion, not spirituality.”

“But you call yourself a Christian, Jesus used to cast out demons all the time.” 

She collected her thoughts. 

“Jesus was seen through the eyes of a more primitive people…” she said. “The authors of the Bible aren’t dictating the word of God; they’re telling stories to illustrate points. Perhaps the demons could be representative of vices that grab hold of people. Just the same way the Devil tempts Jesus in the desert is metaphorical for the temptation for the evil that we can all feel in times of crisis.” 

He sighed and leaned back against the bench. “That seems… like an unduly charitable reading.” 

“You could use some charity in your life.” she said.

“Okay, so Jonah wasn’t swallowed by a whale, Jesus didn’t feed the five thousand with two loaves of bread and five fish?” he said. 

“Five loaves and two fish, you mean?” 

“Right” 

She shrugged. “It’s allegorical. It illustrates how the gospel can feed or nourish souls.”

“How about the one about how men ought to be able to sell their wives for ten goats?”

“Are you making that one up?”

“See, I know the Bible better than you,” he said. 

“Well, what do you want me to admit? That some of the Bible is crap? I admit that… It’s a product of its time.”

“What about Jesus coming back from the dead?” he asked. 

This gave her some pause. But finally, she spoke. 

“At some point, it’s not important what actually happened… the message remains the same either way.”

“I don’t know… If you’re gonna tell me a man rose from the dead, that’s gonna change the nature of what is true in this world… not just a little bit.” 

“Look at it as a story. Even if his physical body never did come back to life, or whatever, there’s no denying his spirit has risen after his death, in the hearts and minds and lives of his followers. It’s spread around the globe and become the most powerful force the world has ever seen.” she said. 

Rowe turned his attention to the leaves blowing in the wind above them while he gathered his thoughts and then finally spoke. “So if all these stories in the Bible are just metaphorical representations of deeper truths… fish and loaves are spiritual nourishment, getting swallowed by a whale is adversity… demons or even the Devil are evil… Isn’t it possible that God is just the metaphorical representation, or personification of the ‘goodness’ that lives inside of each of us? A mother’s love, the laughter of a child, the fact that someone is concerned about you, and you’re concerned about someone else…”

She smiled – amused, as if to say, ‘Well done,’ but then flatly said, “Nope.” 

They both shared a laugh. 

“You just don’t get it yet,” she said. 

“You’re right, if you were my wife, I wouldn’t take less than twelve goats.” 

“Thanks… You oughta write Valentine cards. You have a real knack for it.” 

He grinned. She took a sip of her coffee and he noticed the printed quote on the side. It wasn’t from Oscar Wilde at all. It read, “You are under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago.” – Alan Watts.”

“Hey!” he pointed to the quote. 

She gave him a sly smile. 

A mile off the trail, at the top of the hill, in front of the forest, east of the ravine, was a stacked stone fence in a state of disrepair. Three feet high in the spots where it was still intact, it guarded a square plot of land fifty feet across filled with old tombstones. 

This was Morrison Hill, named after the pastor of a pioneer church that used to stand just outside the woods, now long since gone. The river which gave life to this area in the 1700s dried up after the Franklin Dam was built in the early 1900s. Consequently, it was too far off the beaten path for frequent visitors. The headstones stood at odd angles in overgrown grass – their faces worn nearly smooth by years of wind and rain.

“Well this is unexpected,” Winnie said, having no knowledge this cemetery existed. 

Rowe just smiled and led her in. He’d been here before.

Winnie scanned the tombstones,

A dark stone, some type of slate, read, 

JOHN WILLIMUS 1690-1731

A beige limestone read, 

SARAH RYCART 1681-1700 AND HER SON CHRISTOPHER 1700-1700

A double tombstone made from a white marble that had long since lost its sheen read, 

JONATHAN AND ELEANOR MORRISON 1670-1722, 1677-1725

There was a poem underneath Jonathan and Eleanor’s names. Winnie knelt on Eleanor’s side to read it, voicing the last stanza out loud. “And so it fills my heart with glee to be with you for an eternity,” she read. She exaggerated an “aww” look and shot a glance at Rowe.

He nodded, as though he was familiar with it.

Winnie scanned the tombstones, one by one. “I can’t believe all these people, every single one, had so many hopes and dreams, think of their laughter, and tears, and loves… they raised kids…. got jobs, had affairs, and some days, they’d probably just go for walks in the forest… and now all of them gone.”

The feeling she described was that of sonder, which is likely not found in the Oxford dictionary. To discern its meaning, one would have to leaf through the pages of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, as it is a novel word – perhaps borne out of the oppressive anonymity that an interconnected world of 7.6 billion produces. It is the realization that those random people we pass on the street and glimpse for but a nanosecond live lives as full and complex as our own –their hopes and dreams and emotions are every bit as strong as ours and that we are constantly surrounded by stories of epic proportions in any direction we look. 

It applies, of course, both to people we see on the subway and to school teachers from 1710 – of whom we only know their name, date of birth, and death from an old tombstone. 

Rowe nodded, it was a feeling he was familiar with; he had been to this cemetery many times and had the exact same thought. 

“It’s odd to think of lives so rich now disappeared,” he said. “And there’s really almost nothing they could have done to be remembered. I mean we’ll remember George Washington for a while longer, but who was the eighth president?”

“You mean Martin Van Buren?” she said with a playfully smug look. 

He smirked. 

“I forgot who I was talking to.”

“You did go to school, didn’t you? In America?” she teased. 

He grinned. “My point is that no matter what we do in life, we will be forgotten. Except by nerdy girls from Yazoo Mississippi… Really all of humanity could be forgotten.”

He grew wistful. “Humans have been around like 50, maybe 100 thousand years. We’ve been on Earth one one thousandth of the time of dinosaurs. They ruled the planet for 100 million years. That’s 1000 times longer than humans have existed, and nothing is left of them but a few inches in the geological record.”

She thought it over.

Rowe sat down, stretched out his legs, and laid down directly atop Jonathan’s grave. 

Winnie just looked at him, unsure what he was doing – not objecting, but not understanding. 

“Try it,” he almost whispered. Winnie was uncertain. “They enjoy the company,” he said in an encouraging tone. 

She looked left then right – they were utterly alone, save a few bees buzzing around a nearby flowering bush, and a rabbit sitting still at the gate of the stone fence, eyeing them, as if wondering who had disturbed her favorite spot to eat. 

She relented and laid down on Eleanor’s grave. 

There they laid in silence – the breeze rustling leaves above them, the fragrance of lilac and linden trees accented the sharp grassy smells of the earth.

“Is this something you did with your goth girlfriend,” she whispered as if not to disturb the dead. 

“No… not exactly”

She waited him out. 

“Not in the… day time,” he smiled sheepishly. 

“You did this at night? Okay, that’s pretty weird… are you gonna turn me into a vampire or something?” 

“No promises.” 

“You’re not trying to turn me into her are you?”
“No,” he said, trying to sound encouraging, as if that was nonsense. 

“I don’t think I could do the whole… goth thing” she said. 

He smiled and studied the leaves above them, then grew wistful, reflective. “I don’t really even like goth, I mean I liked that she was different, she had a singular look, and a unique way of thinking, but physically she was like the opposite of what I’m into.” 

“What’s the opposite of goth? Angels with halos?” 

 “In, like, purely sexual terms, I have like a ‘good girl’ fetish.” he admitted. 

She snuck a glance at him – squinting into the sun with one eye open. “So like… what’s that mean? Like Sandra Dee before her black leather jacket?”

He sighed, raised his eyebrows, and nodded, staring wistfully into space as if she described it perfectly. 

They lay in silence for a moment until Winnie said, “So you have a thing for “prim” girls is what you’re saying?” she eyed him with mirth, but he refused to give her the satisfaction by returning the look. “I don’t think you’re gonna like my skull and crossbones tat on my back…” she teased. 

“Oh yeah?” 

“Yes, on like a spider web background… my mother had a fit… I mean my old lady… as I like to call her.”

He pushed some air out through his nose. 

She studied him for a moment and then stared back up to the sky. 

“So is this like a ritual where you sacrifice good girls?” 

“Close your eyes.” 

“Okay, but if I hear chanting, I”m outta here.” 

“Trust me.” 

“Okay.”

“Are your eyes closed?” he asked – his own eyes now closed. 

“They are.” 

He waited. He was clearly in no hurry. 

They laid in silence for a while, side by side, next to Jonathan and Eleanor’s tombstones – a relic of people long gone. Winnie thought about how they were just two humans, in a city of fifty-four thousand, in a state of seven million, a country of 328 million, a world of 7.6 billion, revolving around a hundred million stars, in one of a billion galaxies. 

She imagined a future in which two young would-be lovers might stumble upon her tombstone, worn and weathered in a city of the future. Would they be overcome with sonder and try to imagine her life for 10 seconds, and then move on? 

She soon became cognizant of the breeze in the leaves. It was the second time she noticed this today and that made her happy. In the distance, two squirrels chased each other. By the time he spoke, it nearly startled her. 

“Imagine you’ve lived your entire life, You’re ninety-five, and now, here you are at the end, in a box… and all you can think of is wanting another chance… just one last chance to go back and fix all the things you did wrong. All the mistakes you made, all the leaps you never took. If you could just rewind your life and play it back again, everything would be different. And then, boom, all of a sudden, here you are… back at age nineteen again. You have your youth and your entire life in front of you. only this time, you’re gonna do it right” 

Winnie did not respond–with words at least. Her mind was set running. She did, indeed, feel young. She seldom had a sense of proprioception, but somehow at this moment, she was aware of every part of her body and how it didn’t ache. ‘Youth is wasted on the young,’ her mother used to say. “You don’t know what you have until you lose it,” somehow, Rowe’s words made her appreciate her health and her vigor. 

At length, she spoke. “You know, when I think of Jonathan and Eleanor, I feel happy… It’s not them in these graves, it’s their bodies. I mean I know they’re together, forever. Doesn’t it make you sad to think that’s all a lie? That they aren’t together? That they are really underneath us right now?” 

“I don’t think they’re underneath us,” he said. “I agree it’s only their bodies.” 

“But where are they?”

“They are no longer… they don’t exist,” he said. 

“That’s so sad to me I can’t even think about it.” 

“We didn’t exist before we were born, it didn’t bother us then, there was nothing sad about it all.” 

  Winnie thought about it. 

Rowe waited and finally spoke again. “Eternity doesn’t make any sense to me. I mean think how long it is. A million years is nothing, ten million years and you’re just getting started. Like eternity in heaven is a movie that lasts ten billion years and your life on Earth is a single frame at the beginning…. not even a single frame, a single pixel of a frame is your entire life on Earth and the movie is 100 trillion years long.

She thought about it. Not bothering to object. 

“I think viewing life as all we have,” he continued, “makes… helps us appreciate it more. It’s not like we have another life. This is it. Just like we can’t get any day back. Every day only happens once and then it’s gone forever. None of us know how much time we have left. So why waste it on things like anger or jealousy? Here we are healthy and safe. There’s no war in our homeland, there is no mass starvation, we aren’t senile, we can still walk and talk, we don’t live in a broken state where we fear for our lives, ready made food is available at our fingertips. Hundreds of institutions want to educate us, and we still spend days fretting over nothing, inventing things to feel bad about. We don’t have to, we won’t want to once we realize we’ll never get these days back.” 

She considered his words and rolled over on her side to face him – planting her elbow in the grass and supporting her head. “I think the idea that it can last forever helps me enjoy it. The idea that there’s a god makes it better, not worse. I feel like it all means something. Like it’s not… written in sand. I mean a world with no God, no souls, no afterlife, no purpose, what do humans have left?”

“We have each other.” 

It was just a whisper from his lips. He rolled to face her. “And that’s all we need. We could spend a thousand lifetimes studying humans and end up with more questions than answers. Life’s not about the destination, it’s not even about the journey, it’s about who we take the journey with.”

She thought about his words. Rowe was exceedingly skilled at eliciting conflicting emotions in Winnie. She needed a Dictionary of Obscure Joys to go along with the one of sorrows, and perhaps a third book that described the feeling of experiencing a sampling of each in concert. 

Currently, she could not decide if she felt impossibly small and insignificant – 2 humans amongst billions – her entire life not even warranting a footnote in the history of the world. Or if this notion that all we have is each other made her feel impossibly large and important: one half of a relationship that for this entire day had become the entire world. 

  Before today, Winnie would have suggested science had a way of trivializing humans: Treating our species as infinitesimal motes of dust in a vast universe. But for every astronomer comparing us to a supernova, there is a physicist comparing us to an atom. Her opinion as to how science viewed humans might have changed had she taken physics instead of chemistry to fulfill her science credit. 

From the physicist’s point of view, even single-celled organisms are impossible giants. Each composed of trillions of atoms. Every cell is a bustling city of organelles and cytoplasm with mind-boggling size and complexity. This was the pinnacle of life for over a billion years.  It was not until they managed to combine that the tree of life exploded and created humans. In the eyes of the physicist, we are giants of unfathomable size: made up of trillions of cells, each made of trillions of atoms. 

Thus, to this day, there is some debate among scientists as to whether humans are “large” or “small”. That is to say, is the difference between the smallest known thing in the universe, (a quark) and a human, greater than the difference between a human and largest known thing in the universe (a galaxy) .

As it happens, both the physicist and astronomer can claim a victory of sorts, for we are almost perfectly in the middle. There are roughly 18 orders of magnitude in size between us and a quark, and roughly 19 between our bodies and a galaxy. So the overwhelming awe we feel when looking at the Milky Way would be quite similar to the feeling a quark would get looking at us. From the quark’s point of view, we are the size of galaxies filled with stars too numerous to count – indeed, too numerous to comprehend. 

So it may not have been only her newfound recognition of sonder that made her see Rowe in a new light at this moment. She may have been – like an astronaut traversing the galaxy at light speed – finally seeing the world through a physicists eyes and appreciating how “large” humans are. Like her exercise in studying blades of grass, she had begun to notice things about him. Just little things, like how the hair on his legs was blonde, or the way he always gave her his full attention. He had magnetic eye contact, but it wasn’t oppressive. He knew when to break it, and when he did, he glanced downwards, into the grass – not to the left or right as if he was preoccupied. She liked that about him. She liked that when he spoke something that really meant something to him, his eyes showed it. He had a good look of concern. 

These revelations were not limited to the present moment. She found if she closed her eyes, she could summon a whirlwind of memories she had already made: 

She recalled him holding the door open for the lady coming into The Toast as they left. The way his shirt was translucent in the sun when he walked in front of the lake this morning and how his muscular torso was silhouetted against the water. 

Her thoughts were not even limited to what she knew about him but encompassed all she could guess. She could see him as a child, with hope and dreams – striving to win at backyard football. She could imagine his fears and insecurities. She could instantly see him in those private embarrassing moments he didn’t share – checking his breath or smelling his armpits before putting his shirt on. 

It occurred to her that even though their lives had been completely and different: born hundreds of miles apart, and guided by seemingly antithetical philosophies, they both led them to this exact same point: lying side by side, in Anderson Indiana, in a long forgotten graveyard from the pioneer days. 

In short, he had become more than the man out the window. He was fully human. 

He was a galaxy.

And she was one as well.

And now their galaxies were colliding – their stars intermingling. They shared the star of the 5th floor dormer window in the library – of joking with each other at the fuse box before sunrise, of reading quotes on coffee cups… of studying blades of grass and lying next to one another on a summer day. 

All of these thoughts ran through her head as she studied the stubble on his cheek and chin, leading her eyes to his lips. 

She had to remind herself that she had promised not to touch him today. She knew full well of his powers of seduction and that the idea of them together would be a bad idea.
This is an atheist. She told herself, and yet her fingers reached out – not to him, but to one of the many blades of grass between them. It was colonial bentgrass, with soft, fine blades and it reminded her of her yard in Yazoo County.  Her fingers traced a single blade and finally picked it, caressing it between her thumb and forefinger. 

Rowe studied her as if the act piqued his interest and he, too, reached out, absently caressing the tops of the blades until he found his choice and picked it as well. 

Her eyes acted as though they studied the grass in her hand, but they were looking past the grass in her hand, poring over his body. The first two buttons of his linen shirt were undone revealing a hint of his chest. The bottom button was undone as well, revealing just a sliver of his taut stomach disappearing into his shorts. 

Somewhere in the back of her mind she mused at how wildly impractical it was to lay on the grass in a white linen shirt, but he didn’t seem to care. She wished she could be more like him in that regard. If she thought about anything long enough, she could always come up with a reason not to do it. She longed for his effortless “don’t give a damn” confidence and wondered if it was a byproduct of his world view.

“Do you think I’m timid?” she asked – her eyes glancing down to the grass between them, suddenly unable to meet his. 

He studied her, as she studied the grass. She wasn’t wearing her glasses – they were sitting on the tombstone above her. She supported her head at an angle – her elbow on the ground. She set the blade of grass in her hand down and with her free hand, tucked the strands of hair falling into her eyes behind her ear. 

“Yeah” he said in a whisper. “That can be a good thing. My mom’s timid… shy really” he continued. “It’s in my blood, my brother’s really shy” 

“Glenn?” She asked, almost embarrassed that she remembered because he only told her once, not long after they met, and she didn’t want to reveal that he meant enough to her at the time that she’d remember such a small detail. 

“Yeah,” 

“The genius?” She asked. This was why it made an impression on her. Rowe had insisted his older brother was smarter than he. 

“Yeah… but he’s.. I think he’s on the autism spectrum… like maybe asperger’s.” 

She didn’t say anything, just let him speak. 

“He’s four years older. So I was a freshman in high school when we dropped him off at Northwestern. We got him all set up in the honors dorm and he came back out to the van to say goodbye. And right when we were about to leave I could tell he was getting a bit agitated. I remember my dad closed the van door, and I think he thought he was alone outside the car but I hadn’t gotten in the back yet. And I see him clench his fists and his jaw, it’s like a nervous tick he has and I heard him say under his breath,” 

Rowe opened his mouth to reveal his brother’s words, but a sudden wave of emotion caught his words in his throat. He smirked it off and swallowed hard, embarrassed. He studied the grass for a moment as he gathered himself. 

“He just whispered … ‘there’s no turning back now’ 

Rowe’s eyes were obviously misty. He blinked hard, fighting it off and clenched his own jaw. 

“It was just the fact that I wasn’t supposed to hear it… it was just by chance that I was still outside the van. He should have someone to share those feelings with. He’s the smartest guy I know, but he’s never had the emotional intelligence. Even though I was the younger brother, I always felt like I had to protect him. When we drove away I stared out the back of the van window at him walking away, every step so tentative and unsure. He just looked so alone and before I knew I realized I had tears streaming down my cheeks.” 

Winnie’s demure lack of eye contact just moments ago had evaporated. Her eyes were glued to his. He wasn’t crying, but his eyes were wet and glossy and she found it almost impossible not to reach out and caress his cheek in anticipation of catching a tear. 

I promised myself I wouldn’t touch him. She told herself – but if she leaned forward any closer her lips would be pressed against his. 

She caught herself – as if on the edge of a precipice and began to lean back.
“He’s lucky to have you as a brother” she said, rolling on to her back and looking back up at the sky, then crossing her arms as if to prevent them from reaching out to him. She stroked her own arms as if somehow cold on this warm humid day. Fidgeting nervously until she glanced at her arms and declare “I forgot my sunscreen this morning” 

She could talk herself out of anything if she thought long enough about it. 

They sat up. It was as if time had once again restarted. The intimacy gone, the world came rushing back in their ears – breeze in the leaves, a chattering squirrel and a woodpecker in the distance. Her eyes met his for an ephemeral moment as if to say goodby to the Rowe she lay side by side with and hello to the one with whom she was out for a walk.

The path was shady and cooler than the cemetery, and they both walked in silence for a moment. Something had transpired between them. They could both feel it. 

Finally, at length, she ventured back into the debate that had captured their attention throughout the day. 

“You say you think love is God, but you never said where love comes from. Why do people even want to be around each other?”

He thought it over for a moment, raising his eyebrows, preparing his answer and then replied: “The sociability of humans is a direct result of the benefit of reciprocal altruism,”

“Wow.” She said with a grin, happy to be on jousting terms again.  “You can take the special outta just about anything. You honestly think we’re hanging out because of,” she put on airs, “the mutual benefit of reciprocal altruism?”

“Yeah, well, with you and I, it’s slightly different because the possibility of sex is thrown into the equation.”

“I’m not sure what equation you’re talking about. Delusional horny man plus wishful thinking equals impossible dream?”

Rowe managed a chuckle. 

She walked in front of him, then spun on her heels to talk to him.

“Evolution can explain why you’re so horny, but it doesn’t explain love.”

“No, that’s not true, any species that benefits from having two parents will pair bond. It drastically increases the survivability of the offspring.”

“Oh, that’s so sexy… I hope that’s how my husband proposes.”

“We’re pair-bonding right now,” he said, raising his eyebrows hopefully.

“Oh, we are, huh?”

“Increasing familiarity, extending trust, it all piques oxytocin production in the brain.”

She smirked, studied him skeptically, and fell back in beside him. “Have you ever been in love?”

He was unsure how to answer that. 

“Finally, a question that trips you up,” she said. 

“Love is…” his voice trailed off.

“Patient, kind,” Winnie offered. 

“Hard to define,” he said with less panache. 

“Like God,” she added. 

“Exactly,” he said, nodding as if they agreed. “I have been in love… although I didn’t know it at the time. I mean, you grow up thinking that the whole “I love you” phrase is somethin’ so sacred and if you say it too early, you’re tricking yourself. I think that fear was… I don’t think it served me well.”

“How so?” she asked. 

“I was pretty serious with Alexis.” 

“Goth girl?” 

“Yeah… I didn’t realize it was love until I looked back on it in retrospect. It’s not like there’s a line we cross when we can say ‘now I’m in love’”

“Do you miss her?”

“I don’t want to get back together; it was really unhealthy at the end,” he shrugged. “But sure, I do miss her at times.”

“Where is she?” 

“She’s living with a man in New York, with a child on the way.” 

Winnie didn’t know what to say for a moment, but then added, “Do you want kids?”

“Mm-hmm,” he smiled, this was something he liked to think about. “I would want four kids if my wife shared that sentiment… and if I wasn’t concerned about overpopulation. It’d be a pain when they were in diapers, but it’d pay off when they were grown, and all came back for Christmas.”

“I’d like that,” Winnie said. 

“Looking back on it all. I think I have a clearer idea of what love is,” he grew wistful. “When I first came to college, I used to imagine different… or I found myself looking for potential mates with an eye toward what that person can give me, you know? in terms of compatibility or intellectual stimulation, emotional connection, sexual compatibility, but when I look back, I think that’s selfish and it sets you up for failure because no one other person will fulfill all your needs. Love isn’t just being loved; it’s doing the loving. It’s not about what you get, it’s about what you can give.”

She studied him, inwardly pleased. He met her eyes but his attention was immediately drawn to a deer over her shoulder. 

Winnie followed his gaze. It was a doe, standing 30 yards away, poking its head up between two trees and then venturing out into a small clearing. It was followed by two fawns, and deeper in the woods, a majestic buck. They were beautiful creatures. 

“Isn’t it strange how they always look so perfect? It’s not like they can take showers,” she remarked. She immediately felt self-conscious, as if she ruined the majesty of the moment but Rowe picked up right where she left off. 

“And they don’t even have hands to comb their hair,” he said. 

“I know!” Winnie said – encouraged he was sharing the observation. 

“Especially animals with long hair” he continued. “Like wolves or foxes, they always look perfect.” 

“They get up every morning and look in the mirror and they’re like sweet, perfect hair day,” she said as they shared a laugh. 

The continued walking until they came to a fork in the path. At every juncture on the trail, there were signs with labels such as “Racoon’s Ridge,” “Turkey Trail,” and “The Bunny Hop” – all names of various trails in different directions. They followed the sign labeled “The Catbird Seat” which was the name of the observation deck. It was a mile off the trail and led back to a tributary that cut a ravine as it fed the river. The deck was built thirty feet over a fifteen-foot waterfall, which didn’t quite roar, but did produce more than a gurgle. The churning water down below produced an earthy aroma. 

They shared the deck with a family on the other side, a young couple with two small girls, who were overly curious and constantly demanding the attention of the mother who kept pulling them back from climbing the railing. 

Rowe and Winnie sat on a bench built into the deck, glad to have a rest as they had walked uphill for the last mile. 

After soaking in the view for a moment, she turned to face him, crossing her legs, on the park bench. 

“Okay. Let’s try something. Close your eyes.”

He happily obliged. 

“Now… for the next ten minutes, I want you to imagine that there IS a God.”

“Okay.” 

“Imagine… you have a vision of God.”

“I’d see a doctor.”

“Okay, imagine that scientists have just uncovered the God particle.”

“If scientists can uncover it then it’s not supernatural.”

“I don’t know why you keep saying God has to be supernatural.”

He didn’t have an answer for that. 

Winnie didn’t wait for an answer, she was anxious to start her experiment “Okay. Imagine Carl Sagan just published an article claiming he was wrong about all this atheism crap.”

“That would convince me… because he’s dead.” Rowe said. 

She grinned. “Okay, that’s right… how about…” 

“Richard Dawkins,” he said. 

“Yes. Imagine Richard Dawkins wrote a new book called…” she thought, then continued. The Invisible Light… no… The Unlikeliest…”

“Sounds appropriate.” 

“No, A Deeper Truth, and How I Finally Found It. In which he said all this time, he was looking for evidence with his eyes, when really he should have been feeling with his heart.”

“Okay.”

“And you realize that all you have to do is look inside your own heart and suddenly you can start picking up these radio waves of truth that I’ve been talking about. And they’ve been all around you all your life, you’ve just been ignoring them. And suddenly you feel the awe of knowing we were all created for a purpose… That there is a force infinitely more powerful than yourself,” she continued, “and that if you listen carefully… you can hear it, in your head and in your heart. Maybe not in actual words, but your intuition. In the majesty of a leaf, in the beauty of a relationship, in the kindness of a stranger.”

He drew in another breath, holding it in his lungs. He tried to recount his day, in particular, the blade of grass in the park, but every thought quickly found its way back to Winnie: her mirthful laugh, the bounce in her step as she spun in front of him. 

She watched him closely, unaware of his exact thoughts, just pleased to see him engaging in earnest. 

“Okay, open your eyes,” she said. “How do you feel?” 

He looked out into the ravine. The sunlight streamed through the leaves. 

“It feels really good.”

“Yeah?” Winnie was encouraged. 

“Yeah… I feel… magical… safe… alive… weird….” he genuinely soaked it in. “I feel kinda like this is all, like the entire world, is just a fun virtual reality game and that there’s a great big safety net underneath us.”

“That’s a new one. But I can see that – it’s because there’s something greater than your physical self,” she said. 

Rowe thought about it and grinned. “And hey, I get to live forever!” 

“Don’t make fun.” 

“I’m not,” he shrugged, earnest. “I’m really not. It feels great. I can see why it’s so popular. I mean, my problems seem pretty small compared to forever… I mean, the idea of life after death. I’m not gonna lie, it’s somewhat appealing. And the idea that my future wife and I will be like… two souls… intertwined for eternity.”

She watched him intently. 

“But if I give God credit for all the good things,” he said, “don’t I have to give him blame for all pain? Like, why did he let those rebels take over the church you built in Gambia?”

“We have free will.” 

“What about the tsunami that wiped out 100,000? He really botched that up.” 

“Well… maybe there’s a reason we don’t know about.”

He didn’t buy it. 

“A lot of modern theologians,” Winnie said, “suggest a more deistic view of the universe. That he set the whole thing into motion, but now takes a hands-off approach.”

“If he takes a hands-off approach then why do people pray?” 

“I suppose you think prayer is garbage?” 

“It’s the worst thing in the world,” he said with a sly grin. 

She rolled her eyes. 

“I can’t think of a more effective way of making people feel like they’re helping others when they’re doing nothing. I go insane whenever I see politicians praying for gun violence to end. Don’t pray about it, do something about it. It’s like it prevents them from actually doing something. It assuages their guilt and they never have to get-up off the sofa.” 

“Just because some people misuse it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value. Prayer can lead to action if you realize that God works through people. I pray all the time. It calms me, makes me stronger, gives me clarity to focus. And that makes me more able to change the world.” 

 “See you’re not… I feel like you’re not describing actual prayer… in fact, I feel like you’re not even, or everything you’ve described today isn’t Christianity.”

“Yeah,” she replied and began to think about it, biting her lip briefly “You may be right, but this debate isn’t about Christianity, it’s not about religion, it’s about God.” 

He nodded and thought about it. “Fair enough.” 

She looked out into the ravine and thought it over. 

“I do call myself a Christian, but I don’t identify with evangelicals and how they’re so… anti academia or science… and call everything they don’t like fake news” 

He nodded. 

“I apologize if I was arguing against a straw man. I do see the difference between religion and God… I mean I get it that you don’t agree with all Christians, I mean you could just as easily try to link me to Stalin because he is an atheist and I’d cry foul about that, so I don’t want to do the same to you.” 

“Don’t kneel,” she said with a mirthful teasing look in her eye. 

He flashed his crooked grin and said, “Let’s go get lunch.”