夏至 [14] / [17]
"Darling?"
she called him.
"Yeah?"
he answered, closing the book which he was digging into.
"What would we be doing now if we hadn't chosen this job?"
she asked quietly.
Alexander began to think.
"And what do you want to do if you don't have to earn money? Would you still be in this job?"
she asked again, without waiting for his reply.
"Let me think. I don't know,"
he felt she had asked this question before.
"What about you?"
he asked her.
"I had thought it an awesome job to arrest criminals. But I don't know about that now. As my faith in this job that I've chosen is shaken, I feel as if my life is being shaken along with it."
He stared at her. Unlike him, she tended to be satisfied with what she did, or so he believed.
"What would you want to do if you didn't need to be a cop?"
"I don't know either. Tell me your thoughts,"
she answered.
Alexander began to speak after deep consideration. It was happy to even just think about something you really wanted to do without any worry about money.
"Fine. If I had enough money, to the extent that I didn't need to earn anymore, I would write,"
he said.
"About what?"
"It can be poetry, a novel, essays of travel, yes that's it. I will travel until I get sick of it. That might inspire me, wouldn't you say?"
"Where would you want to travel to first?"
She asked him, and he reflected a bit before answering.
"Omaha Beach in France,"
he answered with a smile.
"That was where my grandfather landed in 1944. Imagine it: kids barely out of high school scrambling to make it ashore amidst German machine gun fire and artillery just to face what, more likely than not, would be their last moments alive. I don't know, it just seems like the kind of place where the spirits of the past speak to you. The kind of place with many stories yet to be told."
She smiled at him. He was in his element. She could see it in his face. The realm of narrative, of enlightenment, in the written word; these were where he thrived, even after all these years. She loved that about him.