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Back We Were Killers Once Save as PDF
Chapters (65)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Notice
  3. Dedication
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty–one
  25. Twenty–two
  26. Twenty–three
  27. Twenty–four
  28. Twenty–five
  29. Twenty–six
  30. Twenty–seven
  31. Twenty–eight
  32. Twenty–nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty–one
  35. Thirty–two
  36. Thirty–three
  37. Thirty–four
  38. Thirty–five
  39. Thirty–six
  40. Thirty–seven
  41. Thirty–eight
  42. Thirty–nine
  43. Forty
  44. Forty–one
  45. Forty–two
  46. Forty–three
  47. Forty–four
  48. Forty–five
  49. Forty–six
  50. Forty–seven
  51. Forty–eight
  52. Forty–nine
  53. Fifty
  54. Fifty–one
  55. Fifty–two
  56. Fifty–three
  57. Fifty–four
  58. Fifty–five
  59. Fifty–six
  60. Fifty–seven
  61. Author’s Note
  62. Acknowledgments
  63. Also by Becky Masterman
  64. About the Author
  65. Newsletter Sign-up

I handed back the glass. Carlo took his time sipping the Scotch. And sipping it again. Good God, he was in thinking mode at a time like this. The thinking seemed to calm him. When he finally put the glass down on the table next to his chair, his hand was steadier as he spoke in thoughts that only after a time blended into full sentences. “This? That inability to reach perfection. Or outright fuckups. Let’s call it. Call it sin. Woven into our fabric. Body and spirit. No escape. And then.” Carlo’s hand started to move in circles, the fingers slightly curved, as if he was pulling the words out of his mind and winding them into a ball only he could hold. “When we look back at the whole thing, the life, the terrible things we’ve done that often led inexplicably to good, we can see sin as a necessity, even a gift, for making life work in the direction it ought to, to change us as needed. The black hole in the center that keeps a galaxy spinning around it. It’s not change per se, but the openness to learning something difficult that’s key. Like Wittgenstein says, ‘I’m not sure why we’re here, but I’m pretty sure it is not to enjoy ourselves.’”

“I have a strong feeling that whatever it is you just said sucks,” I said. “Now stop having a roundtable discussion with dead philosophers and look at me, dammit.”

He stopped, and looked at me as if only now aware that he wasn’t alone. That sucked, too. I held my breath waiting for more. When it appeared he was finished, because all the words in the world don’t mean anything to me, I said, “I’m sorry. I don’t operate on pure logic. I don’t even understand half of what you’re saying. What does sin have to do with whether we can be together?”

“Now. Well, I guess we say we’re sorry to each other not only for what we did or didn’t do, but sorry for what we are. Then we go on despite it, because we can change what we say and do, but not what we are at our core. I just remembered something Victor Santangelo told me. ‘We fall in love with the person we want ourselves to be, and then they drag us there kicking and screaming.’” Going into abstract thought seemed to calm him again as he wondered, “Where are we dragging each other?”

“Hopefully some place where you stop quoting other people and speak for yourself, because sometimes it gets to be fuckin’ annoying,” I said without rancor.