"What about luck? You're always saying you need some luck on a case. How do you explain that?"
"Luck is just. .. circumstance and timing. A chain of events that can turn out well or badly. Besides, how'd we get off on this theosophical debate? I thought you wanted to go to bed."
"I do," Gail answered, "but humor me. I'm curious to know where you stand on all this."
"I stand deeply, madly, head-over-heels, insanely crazy about you. That's where I stand," Frank declared emphatically. She tried pulling Gail up, but the doc wouldn't budge.
"No really. I want to know."
"Know what?" Frank weaseled.
"You really don't believe there's any sort of force or power in the universe, do you?"
"No. I don't."
"You can't even admit it's a possibility?"
"I suppose it could be. Just seems that if there is something somebody would have proved it or seen it by now."
"What would God look like to you?"
"God? He's a guy in a white bathrobe with a long beard who sits around with his feet up reading Playboys all day. Every now and then he looks down and laughs at all the tiny people scurrying around beneath him, blowing each other up in his name. He gets a good chuckle out of that then goes back to his Playboy. Tells a curvaceous angel to bring him another beer and a fresh cigar."
Gail smirked. "It sounds like your god's Hugh Hefner."
"Not my god," Frank countered. "That's the dude you all believe in."
"And you have no dude?" Gail persisted.
" 'Fraid not. There's just what I touch and feel today. And right now I'm feeling you and I'd like to go fall asleep with my arms around you."
"You really don't believe in anything?"
"Just you," Frank said. She tried to kiss the top of Gail's head, but the doc reared back.
"I find that so sad. That you don't believe in something."
"I believe in hard work and trying to make a difference while we're here."
"But then what? What happens when you die?"
"Then I'm dead. End of story. Cleared case."
"What about your soul?"
"Haven't you noticed?" Frank joked. "Ain't got no soul. That's why I can't dance."
"Tell me you believe you have a soul."
"I believe I have a soul," Frank dutifully repeated.
Gail studied her lover.
"You don't, do you?"
"Nope. I'm just blood and guts and when my heart stops pumping"—Frank spread her hands—"Game over."
"That's the saddest thing I've ever heard," Gail said.
"Aw, Gay, don't get all melodramatic on me."
"I'm not. I mean I know people don't believe in God, but it just seems .. . lonely. So disconnected from everything else around you. So unrelated."
"We're all the same species, with the same problems," Frank offered. "We all have that in common."
"That's human." Gail waved her off. "Human concerns are so insignificant in light of the bigger picture."
"And what's the bigger picture? The World According to Gail," Frank disparaged.
"Look at the stars," the doc retorted. "They've seen centuries come and go. They've witnessed billions of us coming and going, yet they persist. How can you look at a star and not believe in God? Or oak trees. The ones on your street were there when Cortez came through. He and his men are all dead now but the trees are still there. You can touch them and touch a tree Cortez might have sat under while he charted his course. Where do those stars, those trees, where do they come from? Who made them?"
"UAW?" Frank guessed. "Should I go look for the union label?"
"You're serious, aren't you?"
"About the label?"
Gail kept studying Frank.
"I don't see you hopping out of bed on Sundays to get to church."
"You don't have to go to a church to believe. And when I need a church I head out of this god-forsaken city and into the mountains. That's where my church is. Where I can see what God's made. Not what people have made."
"All right. You win. Can we drop this?" Frank cajoled, her hand out to the doc. Gail took it, but not happily.
"If it'll make you feel better, I'll believe in something. Tell me what you want me to believe in and I will."
Gail squawked, "I can't make you believe! That's got to come from inside you. It has nothing to do with me."
"So how do kids learn to be good Methodists or Jews? Don't they get taught? Don't they go to Sunday school or temple or whatever? You want me to be a tree-hugger, show me how. I'm a quick learner."
"That's different, Frank. They're children. You're a grown adult. I can't foist a belief on you. You should have your own values, your own beliefs."
Frank followed Gail inside, countering, "I do and you don't like them."
"Working hard and making a difference isn't a faith, it's an ethic. There's a big difference."
"Does that make me any less of a person?"
"No," Gail admitted. "I just... I don't know. I know you claim to be an agnostic, but I always thought underneath it all, bottom line, that you'd have something to cling to greater than yourself."
"So why's that so sad?"
"It seems lonely. And it makes it impossible to share what I believe in."
Locking the patio door, Frank answered, "Not at all. I love it when you talk about the trees and stars. And that grove in Berkeley that you used to hike to when you were a kid. You light up when you talk about that stuff. You're beautiful. Just because I don't believe in it doesn't mean I can't respect that you do."
"It's just such a comfort to have faith in something greater than myself and my fellow stumbling, bumbling human beings. It's a wonderful sense of tranquility to believe I belong in the world; that I'm part of a design, even though I don't know what that design is. I don't know how to express it. You'd have to feel it yourself and that's the part that makes me sad. That we can't share that tranquility. It's not an option for you."
Frank kissed the top of Gail's head.
"I'm tranquil when I'm with you. That's all I have right now and it'll have to do."
"But I'm only human, Frank. I'll fail you."
"And God hasn't?"
"No," Gail said, twisting out of Frank's arms. "Never. Things might happen that you don't like but they happen for a reason. Fate, God, Karma, call it what you like, everything happens for a reason."
"Ah. The Divine Plan."
"Exactly. Just because you don't know what it is doesn't mean there isn't a reason."
"There was a reason you got cancer," Frank argued.
"Yes! I believe that every time we're faced with a choice we can make a good one, a bad one, or a mediocre one. How you choose affects the results. If we keep making poor choices, ones that concentrate on our lower, more base instincts, then we keep getting the same poor situations until we learn to respond to diem with love and move beyond them. So for me the breast cancer was God's way of shaking me and getting me to take a look at how I was living my life.
"I worked from six in the morning until eight at night. I ate shitty food, got no exercise and slept horribly. All I had was work and the cats. Then when I had to face the very real possibility that I might die, I realized how much I was missing. How much time I've wasted in my life, how much love I've missed. It was so wonderful to be around my mom and sisters and to just appreciate how much they loved me. And how much I loved them. I'd never realized it, never really felt the depth of my passion for them until I was so close to losing them. And you know what? I might not die today or tomorrow, hell, I might live another fifty years, but the point is, I am going to die. Someday. Yet I've lived like I had all the time in the world to waste. The cancer showed me I don't have that time to waste. It was a gift in that it opened my eyes to all the goodness that I can have in my life."