“I thought so too,” Kelly said. He looked back at St. Ignatius. And he began to realize that when the war ended he would still have to fight to hang on, to survive. It was not just the insane generals like Blade and the chaos of war which made hanging on his greatest, most time-consuming enterprise. It was life. The hanging on never ended. At times, the effort required to hang on was less than on other occasions; but the degree of difficulty was the only thing that changed.
“Come on,” Lily said.
Numb, he followed her into the convent. The door closed behind them.
In the dark foyer, she pulled off her dancer's costume and moved up against him, kissed him, nibbled at his ear.
“Life is a fairy tale, Lily, grand in color but modest in design. It really, really is.”
“Ahhhh,” she said, “shut up and put it to me.”