Chapter 5

“It is not death, but dying,
which is terrible.”
- Henry Fielding

“He that dies pays all debts.”
- Stephano, “The Tempest”
William Shakespeare

One warm afternoon we spent naked, sitting on my bed, telling each other our life stories. We gently frigged each other, not so much to arouse the other, just some friendly touching. My hands were filled with her breasts as she told me about her parents (both dead now) and her sister (aforementioned Spokane problem) and the boys she dated and slept with.

Before, when she told me of the men she’d taken to her bed, I’d been filled with jealousy and anger. Now, because it was me and not them in her bed, I listened as she explained why she could never find the man she was looking for.

Her waning days on this mortal coil had forced Celeste to examine who she’d become, and why. Back in Baltimore, she’d discovered that she was a selfish, controlling bitch, and that she’d pushed away the only man that had ever cared about her the way she’d wanted. The only man who had taken her shit again and again and come back for more. That realization had changed her somehow, softened her, made her more free and accessible. And that’s when she’d jumped on a plane to spend her last days with me.

As the second of the three months drew to a close, Celeste started exhibiting changes. She would enter fugue states that would last up to an hour, and when she came out of them, she had no memory of ever having been gone. Entire hours vanished for her, and she had no memory of what’d had happened while she’d been away. Her vision started to deteriorate, and after examining a medical text on the matter, I concluded that she had less than three weeks to live.

When she was lucid, Celeste and I spent as much time together as possible, making love constantly. We were hungry now, trying to cram every last fuck in before the piper had to be paid. She was constantly wet for me, cornering me in the shower or the kitchen, begging me to make love to her, to make her feel alive.

The last two weeks were the worst. The fugue states came and went with such rapidity that it was almost as if Celeste were schizophrenic. One moment we would be making urgent, hungry love, our bodies slapping together wetly as we wallowed in our pleasure, and in the next I would be making love to a lump of dead flesh that was staring at the ceiling. And then she would be back, blinking her eyes and starting to fuck me again. It played hell with my emotions, and with hers too. She could see the pain and confusion in my eyes.

With one week to go, we stopped making love. I didn’t know that she was only six days away from death. It wasn’t like I’d marked the days on the calendar. Celeste and I made out her will, and then I managed to get her sister’s telephone number out of her, to inform her of Celeste’s death ... after the fact.