Thursday, December 9th, 2004

Time	Event
1:35a	Why Sleep When I'll Only Dream - CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE Riding Above The City And Below The Sky The train rumbled above the ground. Emily's head had come to rest on his shoulder in a silent show of pacifism sometime just after the S9 had cleared them of Zoo Station as they passed over the large green space on Berlin's elevated train. "It's just like the El at home," Scott had said, "you can really see the city. Look down at Tiergarten Park." Emily had stared out the window for a few seconds and then had put her head on his shoulder, in her hands she held that Play-Doh that they had just bought in Zoo Station, there was no modeling clay to be found. "I mean, Emily, it's huge. Did you know that it stretches all the way past the Brandenburg Gate?" he said trying to break the silence. She hadn't said a word since they had left the Zoo. The transaction inside the station had consisted of a lot of head nods, head shakes, and pointing. It was as if he no longer speak her language, but he was trying to make a breakthrough in the translation. Emily wiped her eyes on his shirt. He took her silence as a positive at first but eventually he started to worry. "Are you alright?" "Scott," Emily asked as he looked down at her head resting on his shoulder, "why do you put up with me?" "What do you mean put up with you, Emily?" "I mean, don't you ever think that you'd be better off without me? All I do is weigh you down with my problems. You could have any girl you want, really. You know that right?" "And you could have any boy you want, Emily. That's why I was so possessive and that's why I broke up with you in the first place. I don't put up with you at all. If anything, I wonder why you put up with me. I'm nothing more than a cynical bastard old before his time. Truth be told, you energize me, you make me feel young. I don't put up with you at all. I learn from you, I bask in your talent, I love your creativity, I definitely don't 'put up with you.'" "Yeah, but you don't need me. You make it on your own. You're out there in the world with a job in advertising and what do I do? I'm just some underemployed perpetual college student. I'm 26 too you know and I still don't know what I want to do with my life." "You're going to be something Emily. You're going to be someone. You're a really talented artist - and I'm not just saying that because I want free sculptures for my apartment for years to come. I'm saying that because I believe in you." "You believe in me because I don't think you know me. Remember what I said about telling the truth? Well, I don't know if the person that you think you know is really me." "What do you mean by that?" Scott asked. "That picture you drew of The Little Insurgent," she said, "which by the way is amazing. I didn't even know you drew." "I used to, back in high school, before I ever met you," he said. "See, that's what I mean, I go away for a while and you're able to create something like that." "Emily, it's just lines on a piece of paper." "But they're your lines," Emily said, "they're lines you never created while I was around. And, that picture you drew, it doesn't really represent me, it doesn't represent my personality." "Yes it does, Emily. When I saw that statue, you were all that I could think about. Do you knew what drew me to that statue in the first place?" "What?" Emily asked, looking straight into his eyes with a glow. "One of the first things that I thought of when I saw it was that anti-war protest we went to earlier this year. How you were my 'little insurgent' and how nothing could stop you from fighting for what you believed in. And there I was, doing nothing much more than being there to support you. I still don't understand half of what you hold so dear. And that's what really worries me still. That you're looking for someone who understands and shares every viewpoint you agree with and a so gung-ho about. I realized a lot of things in Poland and one was that politics do matter. And I felt so much closer to you at the moment I had that realization than I ever had before." "That's what I mean too," Emily said, "you were able to discover yourself so much more when I wasn't around. Reading your e-mails from Warsaw, I saw that you were really experiencing life there. You'd never be able to do that with me around." "I wasn't miserable by any means in Warsaw, that's true. Everywhere I went, though, all I could think about was how much it would be better to be there with you and to hear your views on whatever it was I was looking at. Warsaw would have been better with you there. It's like I was viewing it through your eyes and I enjoyed it more," Scott said. "Scott, thank you for all the compliments, but I look at myself now and I would have held you back. You're idealizing me and I don't think I can live up to that." "Emily, don't you understand? You already do live up to that. I've built this impression of you over a number of years. It just took being away from you and having everything remind me of you to make me congeal it into one distinct thought." "But what if that Emily isn't around anymore?" Emily said breaking away from Scott's glance. "What do you mean?" "It's weird, you know," Emily said, "when I was in Paris, it felt like I was seeing it through your eyes. The cynicism and the toughness that you judge things with. And, I'm not saying that's bad, but I didn't enjoy it coming from myself." "It doesn't have to Emily. I realize now that all of the cynicism I had was just a shell. It came from not being able to trust people, thinking that people were always going to stab me in the back. And that's what I think that's where you're coming from right now. And, I think I've said this a lot already, you have every right to feel that. You did get stabbed in the back by both a stranger and someone who you considered your friend." Emily took her head off Scott's shoulders and looked down at the floor of the elevated train. Scott's eyes followed and he watched as she ran her left foot along the tiles. "Scott, it's not you," she said, "I'm just not enjoying life right now. You've been amazing." "Are you going to break up with me?" Scott asked, his gaze joining hers down at floor level. "No, that's not what I meant at all," Emily said, "I'm just worried that eventually you're going to realize that I'm not good enough for you. That I'm destructive, that I lie. Yeah, I lie a lot. Did you know that I buy Starbuck's every morning and pour it into a thermos to hide it? I bet you didn't until now. Aren't I a terrible person?" "You're not terrible at all Emily," Scott said, "you set such a high standard for yourself that you can't always live up to it. But, you do live up to it. You exceed it every day, at least in my eyes." "In your eyes, maybe," she said, "but not in my own. And not in the eyes of so many others. I saw how they look at me then, and I really see how they look at me now." The train pulled into Friedrichstrasse Station and Emily and Scott climbed the stairs down to street level. Scott looked around at all the construction being down in the area and all the closed roads that it caused. He looked at Emily and said, "you're a lot like Berlin." Now it seemed to be Emily's turn to give his metaphor a quizzical look. "You're under construction right now. Before you had two sides, one hidden behind a wall. Now those sides are coming together and there are some struggles to come to grips with the new city." Emily suddenly looked brighter. "I thought the same thing when I first came to Berlin. The first day that I was here, I visited the TV tower. I talked to this man and all he could say was how much he still hated the East Germans for having put up that tower. The East Germans don't even exist anymore and yet here he was not being able to reconcile two halfs of the same whole." "Exactly," Scott said back excited to see a brief glimpse of the old Emily shining through finally, "see a lot of people think the former East Berlin was ugly but there's a beauty to it that West Berlin can't match in some ways for all its outer aesthetic pleasure." Emily's face downturned again. "Scott," she said, "East Berlin is ugly. It's suddenly like you're able to find beauty in everything. From what I've heard, Warsaw is an absolutely horrible city. But, you enjoyed it so much. How am I supposed to take your opinion of me. I look at how the rest of the world looks at me, and they see the truth about East Berlin. You only see that it's now coming into its own again. But it's still a broken city. And I'm still a broken person." Scott began to get angry at how much Emily was beating herself up. He couldn't even understand why she was doing it because he had never seen anybody give her anything less than an admiring look, sometimes much to his jealousy, in the entire time that he had known her, even now. "What are you talking about, Emily? Everybody loves you. You walk into a room and people gravitate to you. You're like a beacon of light." "But don't you see Scott, I feel like that light has gone out. Do you know what I did this morning? I went to confessional." "You haven't been to church in years Emily." "I know, and that's something that I need to remedy because it was the first time I've felt at peace in such a long time to be in that sanctuary. But, the priest who gave me confession, I could hear it in his voice. He worried about me, he worried I would do something drastic. And he told me, 'you need to let love back into your heart.' But I don't know Scott, I don't know if I can." "Of course you can Emily, you're one of the most loving people I know. You just need to learn how to love yourself again." Before he even realized what was happening, Emily had her arms wrapped around his west, rubbing her forehead on his chest. She looked up at him again and said, "I want to Scott, really I do, but I don't know if I'll ever be able to again. Will you accept me if I can't?" "Of course, Emily," Scott said kissing the top of her forehead. She broke away from him and started to walk down the street. Even from the distance they were at, Scott could see the street vendors. As the sun would peek from behind the clouds, its light would glint off the various buttons and pins that they were selling. Emily turned around as Scott caught up. She lifted her arms up, holding the Play Doh in her left hand. She repeated her earlier claim, "Scott, I really think you're better off without me and for that matter so is Sandra. I mean, I went away and she found a great guy, a sex fiend, but so is she, so it's perfect. And, if I had been around that never would have happened. And my poor mother and all my friends. Their lives could be better too if they didn't have to worry about me. Maybe the world is just better off without Emily." Now Scott understood what she had meant on the train and it scared him. Emily was in the midst of a depression like he had never seen in anybody before. He had never in his life hear anybody allude to suicide in more than a joking manner. Something seemed ethereal about Emily's movements as he watched he hold her arms out and walk backwards. They seemed too fluid, too detached from her own brain. It was like Emily was already dead and yet the brain still functioned. But how could that be when she was still alive. Emily was still alive and he was going to make sure that she stayed that way. He obviously hadn't convinced her that her life was worth living on the train but he would now make it his mission to convince her that life was worth living in general. Chapter Word Count: 2161 Daily Word Count: 2161 Total Word Count: 83717 (Comment on this)
10:34a	Why Sleep When I'll Only Dream - CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO Inspiration Written In Four Different Languages Scott fumbled with the change slot on the pink phone between the two doors with the man and the woman on it. He looked back at the table through the small opening that camouflaged his true mission of taking Emily into this ice cream shop. Emily was still where they had sat down near the ice cream selections in the front. She sat at the table engaged in taking the green play-doh and molding it into various shapes trying to find ones that she liked. She did have a satisfied look on her face for brief moments before she would take her hand and flatten her creations. The phone was proving to be no help in throwing Scott's thinking a line about how to assist Emily. He couldn't think of who to call. His thinking went that if he called any authorities who could help Emily that it would just make her situation worse. She'd be stuck in some hospital in Berlin where the attendants didn't speak English. This would just send her further down the spiral to the state of confusion and self destruction that Emily sat in right now. He thought about calling Emily's mother back in the United States. Maybe she had seen her in this state before and could provide some assistance on how to break her out of it. This wasn't a number that he had used more than once or twice, however, so he'd have to ask Emily for it. And that too would further arose her suspicions. Scott was worried that anything he said or did that confirmed her thoughts that she was no longer rational would just add to the theory she had generated that everybody thought she was nothing more than a burden. It began to look more and more like he was on his own. He thanked his prior experiences in Europe that had proved to him that he could effect change using only his own skills. That's the key, he thought, restoring Emily's thoughts that she was an actor in her own life. She seemed to have given up the idea that she mattered. She seemed to have given up the idea that she could change the situation she was in. He went to the bathroom, the excuse that he had used to break away from the table, and went back to Emily. She looked up from the mess of green that she had made on one of the shop's napkins. "Don't you feel better creating something?" Scott asked her. "Actually I do," she said, "but nothing I create is any good. There's no inspiration." "Emily look around, there's inspiration everywhere..." "I don't see it," Emily interrupted. Seeing this attempted path at trying to help Emily was proving futile, he changed his tactic. He would show Emily that Berlin had a pulse like Warsaw had and if she found it she would feel better. He hung on to the hope that her face lit up talking about Berlin itself once and that it possibly could again if they just kept talking about it. "Remember how you said that I seemed to find beauty in ugly places?" Scott asked. Emily nodded. "Well do you want to know how I did it?" Emily nodded again. "I felt the pulse of the city. I tried to figure out what made it tick. Like in Warsaw it was the Polish desire for independence. Once you can see it all around, the city makes sense. And do you want to know why I originally thought of this method? Everywhere that I meant, I thought, what would Emily do?" "Emily wouldn't be able to do anything," she said back, crushing her little fist into the play-doh. "Don't you see, Emily? You can do anything that you want. I used to think that I couldn't do anything myself or for myself. And it took some really depressed times in Paris and Vienna and even Budapest before I realized that I was trying to enjoy the cities for what they had to offer on the surface. It wasn't until I looked beneath and saw what made each city special that I really appreciated them. Looking back, I realize that you're right. Warsaw is an awful place by itself. I mean, if nothing else it's false. The Old Town there isn't even old. But what's beautiful about it is that it was entirely rebuilt after World War II. Think about it. Think of all of those hands taking a city that was basically flattened to nothing and rebuilding it from scratch because they loved it, it was their city." "So what's so special about Berlin?" Emily asked as they deposited their empty paper ice cream bowls into the garbage bin and walked back into the street where Checkpoint Charlie stood. Scott noticed that the dough was missing from Emily's hands. She had thrown it out along with the melted milk that had once constituted her ice cream. "I don't know Emily, you tell me," Scott said, "I feel like I really haven't really done that much since I've gotten here." "See Scott, I'm holding you back!" Emily cried out. The tears started to fall from her eyes almost instantaneously. "No, Emily. Emily you're not. I haven't done anything in Berlin because I wanted to do all the things with you. Let's see Berlin. You and me, what do you say?" "Isn't that what we're doing right now?" she asked, tears still in her voice. They turned the corner from the ice cream shop and Scott didn't say a word. Nothing he said seemed to be helping at all. Telling his stories to Emily had just made her more upset, he would have to figure out how to get her to pull the beauty out of her own stories. "Think about Paris," he began. "Surely it couldn't have been all awful. Surely there was something there that grabbed your imagination." "Well there was something," Emily said. "What was this something?" Scott asked. "You're going to think that it's weird. I don't want to tell you," Emily said. "Well, don't tell me then, just tell it to yourself." A smile lighted across Emily's face for a few seconds before she blurted out, "the Sacre-Coeur." "What's the Sacre-Coeur?" Scott asked. "It's this huge church on the Montremarte in Paris. It's so white that it seems to be brighter than the sun. The hill it's on is the highest in Paris and it overlooks the entire city. While you're walking up that giant hill all you can see is the sun reflecting off it. It's like a beacon guiding you up that hill the entire way. A lot of people don't make it up the hill to actually get to see the cathedral close up." Emily reached in her bag and pulled out a cigarette. Scott reached into his pocket and pulled out his pack also. As Emily held the tube to her lips, Scott broke out his lighter and lit it for her. "And, I nearly didn't make it up that hill either," Emily said. "I kept wanting to turn around. It makes your legs burn and your feet hurt walking up that hill. I just bit down on my cigarette like this," she said chomping own on the cigarette she now had in her mouth, kicked my legs up as high as I could ans I beat that hill." "So it was worth it all, right?" Scott said. "It was entirely worth it. Inside is this beautiful altar. And the whole thing is lit with nothing but candles. Little flames everywhere but it's enough to see all the paintings by. And then if you climb to the top of the dome, you can see the whole neighborhood in Paris. This great little neighborhood with artist easels set up everywhere and cute little cafes..." Emily stopped cold. "But that's..." She began to bawl again. The tears seemed to come from deeper inside than Scott had ever seen them come from before. Emily's face actually seemed to be deflating with every new spasm that would force more tears to come. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a napkin. Handing it to her, he asked, "but that's what?" "That little neighborhood," Emily sobbed, "was where Greg tried to rape me. It's like the whole neighborhood, now that I think about it is unsafe and unclean. I've got all of these beautiful memories of the neighborhood looking down on it from Sacre-Coeur but when I was actually down amongst the houses, all the memories I can think of now are that alley and his leering face." "Don't think about those memories," Scott said abruptly to her trying to get her attention. Think about that shining church on the hill. Think about how good you felt." "I felt alive," Emily said, "looking down at Paris from up there. I don't feel alive anymore now. It's as if I left myself bleeding on the ground in that alley instead of Greg." "Emily," Scott said, his voice taking on a grave seriousness, "you're alive right now. You'll feel that feeling again, just like you did at the top of the Sacre-Couer. I looked at your face while you were talking about Paris and it was shining. It's the Emily that I know, it's the Emily that I love. Everybody goes through some tough times. You fight through them." Emily's sobs temporarily stopped and she seemed to get a little bit angry, "tough times? What I went through in Paris, that wasn't just tough times, it was world shattering." Scott knew she was right. All of his little experiences with language barriers and missed hostel curfews couldn't even come close to matching what Emily had gone through, even if they were all combined. But then he thought of his one truly traumatic experience of the entire trip. "Warsaw wasn't a bed of roses for me either. Did you know that I was almost beaten to a pulp by skinheads?" He looked down at his feet. "What happened?" Emily asked. "They were beating the Hell out of this oriental man. I guess he was Chinese, there's a lot of Chinese restaurants in Warsaw. There's a place called the Russian market where there's a whole row of them right besides the Polish restaurants. You'd love the Russian market, all sorts of electronics, and clothes and everything..." He looked for any expression of excitement in her face and saw none. "It was really late at night and I was walking through this, in hindsight, terrible neighborhood. Well, at first I didn't know what to do. This group was just kicking this poor guy in the stomach relentlessly. I thought they were going to kill him. There was something in them that said this wasn't intimidation, this was more." "What did you do?" Emily asked. "I screamed out in English, 'stop' and 'help.' I didn't think it would do anything because, in Poland not everyone speaks English. But, my screaming woke up some of the neighbors and one of them called the police. But one of them was inches away from my face and he had the same look aimed at me that he did at that poor Chinese guy sprawled out on the ground. If it hadn't been for the police sirens..." "Scott," Emily said, "don't you see? You were in danger and all, and I don't want to discount that fear. But what happened to me..." She looked down at her arms again and the tears began anew. "Let's look at what happened to you for a second," Scott said. "You were pushed down in an alley, right?" Emily nodded. "And you fought back. You got the upper hand and you made it so he's never going to look at another woman as prey again, right?" Emily didn't say a word. Scott put more emphasis on the word as he said again, "right?" A calm descended over Emily's face as she said, "but don't you understand? I got lucky that time. What if anything had been different about the situation. What if he had..." "But he didn't Emily, he didn't. You were able to defend yourself. You were able to affect change in the situation. You were that strong person. You are a strong person now." "I don't feel strong right now," Emily said, "I just feel like I want peace from all this turmoil in my mind. Fighting it is the furthest thing from my mind. Fighting is what got me into this mess in the first place." "Fighting by itself isn't inherently bad," Scott responded, "especially the personal struggle. Look around you right now, what do you see?" Emily looked in the direction of the small white house with a sign that said, "U.S. ARMY CHECKPOINT" in large black letters. Behind it stood sandbags that had been there to block small arms fire from the East German side should war ever had broken out. "I see Checkpoint Charlie," she said. "And what do you see behind it?" "It's a picture of an East German soldier. He's so young." "Think of what that man saw, had to live with on a daily basis. And think about that fact that he was the first line of protection to keep the order in East Germany as it was. He was the one whose job it was to keep those from the West out. Do you think he liked his job?" "I don't know," Emily said. "My guess is that he was like most other East Germans and he heard over the Voice of America or Radio Free Europe what was happening in the west. He probably wanted more than anything to get out of East Berlin. And, think about it. It was probably fifty times worse for him than it was for a lot of East Germans because he saw the west every day. He could see into the eyes of the American or German soldier who was manning this checkpoint which is now a tourist attraction but used to be so much more." "But he staying in East Germany, right?" Emily asked. "Probably. I don't know his personal story. For all we know, he could have been one of the hundreds who tried everything to go over the wall. One of the hundreds who were shot trying to escape to the West for a better way of life..." Scott paused, worried that he would upset Emily, who had always been such a staunch defender of how life had been in Eastern Europe. When Emily gave no reaction, Scott continued, "but not everyone tried to escape and not everyone wanted what the West had. I befriended this girl, Ivana, in Warsaw, she worked at a restaurant I really liked. She told me about how, even now, there are people who want to go back to the old ways because it meant you were cared for. But, I think a lot of people stayed in East Berlin - all of the former Soviet Bloc - because they wanted to change it from the inside. They faced tough times every day but they stood firm knowing that one day the sun would shine on them again in a new East Germany, some great combination of having things like in the West and being cared for, as well as possible like in the Bloc. The ideas aren't mutually exclusive." "Scott," Emily said, "you haven't been to the parts of Berlin that used to be under communist control. There's so much poverty, there's so much despair. It's like its two separate cities." "But, the people there," Scott said, "if they're anything like the people that I met in Warsaw, they live their lives. They work to make them better in any way they can. Even under communism, they lived their lives. They loved their children and their spouses and, some of them, even their jobs. They were alive in ways that had nothing to do with the government. In a way, they were more alive because they appreciated what they had." Emily still didn't say anything. "And just like them, you're alive too, Emily. As long as you're alive, there's hope for a better tomorrow. And your tomorrows will be better because I'm there for you. I don't know. Maybe you can show me that I'm wrong, let's go to that section you went to before. We're only feet away from the former East Berlin now. Look, there's the sign that says, 'YOU ARE LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR.'" Scott pointed to a sign on their right written in four languages with people crowding underneath it and taking pictures. Emily walked forward almost timidly as if there was the invisible wall that she couldn't cross. When she got to the other side of the sign, she looked back at Scott and he could see a little bit of the fire in her eyes. She seemed to want to prove him wrong. Scott took solace in the fact that it was there again. He just had to make sure that it wasn't extinguished. Chapter Word Count: 2788 Daily Word Count: 5949 Total Word Count: 86505 (Comment on this)
1:04p	Why Sleep When I'll Only Dream - CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE Two Halves Come Together To Make A Whole "Emily wake up, it was just a bad dream." She heard Scott's voice through the haze that she was feeling. She looked up into his face from his shoulder and realized that it was morning. "Where are we?" she asked. She looked at Scott and wondered if they were in Chicago at his apartment and the entirety of her experiences in the past seven weeks had been one long nightmare. "Emily, we're in Berlin at the hostel," he said softly. Emily picked her head up and looked to her left and right. She saw the Australians sleeping peacefully at the other side of the room and realized that she was in Scott's room. She remembered it was of her own free volition that she had gotten here. She remembered everything. And that in itself killed the feeling of calm that had built up inside of her. She wished the entire experience in Europe had been a dream. Those few moments where she didn't realize where she was each morning in Europe seemed to be her only salvation. As she woke up, she didn't remember who she was or where she was or what she had gone though. She felt normal, she felt like her old self. But as soon as she began to recall all the puzzle pieces that made up her life, it felt as though she was descending into darkness again. And, that was the sensation that was happening at this very moment. This ritual of her mind seemed to even be the case when she awoke from a nightmare. This time she imagined herself tied to a chair with a gag in her mouth. Her hands were tied behind the chair with a rope that she could not see. Everyone she knew was in the room against the opposite wall staring at her. They were pointing and asking questions to her like she was being interrogated. But she couldn't understand their voices, they were all muffled and distorted. When she couldn't speak, they all began to point at her, Sandra and Scott and nearly everyone that she came into contact with. Even the priest was there, his face as she had imagined it behind the grating. She wanted to answer them but she couldn't even if she had tried. The last thing she remembered was punching against the back of the chair trying to break free. Trying to find her voice again to answer them. Looking at Scott, still lying down beneath her, she realized that he was rubbing his chest. She knew what she had done. When in her dream, she had felt the hardness of the chair against her hands as she punched at it with two fists tied together at the wrists, she had actually been feeling Scott's chest not give way beneath her. She had committed violence again. She wanted to run again. She looked at Scott feeling her eyes widen. "Did I hurt you?" she asked. "Emily, no you didn't. I'm fine," he replied still in his quiet voice. He stood up and stretched his arms above his head. Then putting them down at his sides said, "so are you ready for another day on the town this morning?" Emily didn't know what she was ready for. She thought back to the day before and remembered how Scott had made her feel. While she felt safe with him and around him, although she wondered why the reverse was the case while he stood there rubbing his chest, he hadn't said anything to calm her. He had, however, convinced her that she wasn't a burden to him. "Can we go to church first?" "If you really want to," Scott said, "but you know you can't hide in there forever this morning. Eventually you have to come out and see the daylight again. What are you going to do, become a nun?" Emily had actually thought about this very option. She had thought about going back into the Champagne region of France that she had passed through on the way to Berlin and giving her life to the church. Knowing that Scott would just question her as to why, she left this thought to herself. They had ended up in the church where Emily had given confession in the morning before. Scott had been hesitant at first saying, "you know I don't believe in all of this," spreading his hands around. He had been raised Catholic too but Emily had never even heard him mention many things remotely spiritual in the entire time she knew him. She had realized that he was the region that she had stopped going to church when they had moved in together. At first she had tried to take him along as she went every Sunday morning, but he would always stay home and watch television instead. Eventually she just stopped going because with him she had found her own peace on Sunday morning. She was amazed that in the evening before Scott had actually gone up to the altar at the front of the church and lit a candle with her. She was even more amazed that he knew all the words to all the prayers. Although he didn't seem to say them with the same feelings as she did. That was the feeling that she was getting off of Scott the entire evening before. They had stopped at a little pin booth near Checkpoint Charlie on the way back to the train and he had seemingly admired all of the pins with hammers and sickles on them. He had pointed out all the ones to Emily that he probably thought she would like. But she could barely look at them anymore after seeing what living under that sign had caused. He hadn't convinced her of anything different in their time together in East Berlin. All she could see was still squalor to her. But there was something about how hard he tried to convince her that made her see how one could take some pleasure in their surroundings. She was just unable to see it herself and that just worried her more. "We don't have to go to church," Emily said, "if you don't want to." "If it will make you feel better," Scott replied, "I want to." The two of them went to the church downtown. Scott had stood in the back near the door as Emily lit candles in the front and crossed herself as she said another prayer for serenity. After they had gone to the church the night before, they had gone back to the hostel where the Australians were seemingly waiting for Scott. They greeted the two of them with a loud round of cheers when they had walked through the door together. Ian, the tall one, had clapped Scott on the shoulder and said, "that's a mate." Emily had gone along with the group and actually found herself enjoying the experience a little bit. But she still felt outside of what was occurring. And, she especially hated how they insulted Scott with his being oblivious to it. As they walked down the street, Emily said to Scott, "why do you hang out with those guys?" Scott looked at her and said, "I don't understand the question. They're a good group of blokes." "They insult you all the time," Emily said to Scott hoping that he wouldn't take too much offense, "I mean, even I get the gist of what a 'poofer' is. They're calling you gay." "I know that Emily," Scott said, "but it's just how they talk to each other, it's just their way of communication. If anything, I think it's a sign of affection. But, not in that way. Although, maybe..." Scott smiled at her. "But why would you associate with a group of people like that? I mean, none of my friends would ever say mean things about each other, at least to each other's faces, like that. Well, except for Sandra." She hated saying the name by this point. Everything bad in her life seemed to have happened because of Sandra. And now that she knew that Sandra had been lying about Scott to try to get her to hate him, it hurt even more when the name came up. "That's just how guys talk, Emily. Can we please not talk about Sandra?" "I'm sorry," Emily said, "it's just that as much of a bitch as she was to me, I worry about her. I worry about everybody. I want to be there for everybody. I wonder what she's doing in France right now? But you're right, I'm much happier without her." She wondered if Scott thought, "if this is Emily without Sandra around, I'm afraid to see what Emily was like with her around." The pause seemed just about right. Emily realized they were walking with no set location. She straightened her skirt and said to Scott, "where do you want to go today?" Scott responded, "my plane home leaves the morning after tomorrow. And I can't leave Berlin without seeing the wall, can I?" "Scott," Emily replied, "I've already seen the wall. I went to the East Side Gallery and you're not missing anything. One side of the wall is stark white except for gang tags and the other is murals. You don't even like murals." "There's another section of the wall still up though, Emily," Scott said to her, "this anti-violence group bought 200 meters of the wall, roped it off, and plan on building a museum next to it about the brutality of the SS, Gestapo, and Soviet regimes. They call it the 'Topography of Terror.' It's supposed to be the last 200 meters of the wall still standing as it originally did." A train ride back to the Mitte section of the former East Berlin later and she and Scott stood at the wall. "Look at this Scott," she said pointing to a line that went through a shopping center and over its parking spaces, "you can actually see where the wall once stood." Scott looked over and smiled at her. Over his shoulder, she could see the wall, cut off from tourists with a rope and warnings in many languages. Beyond that lay a huge construction area where the group was building their museum. Emily actually felt something stirring inside. She straddled one foot on one side of the small brick line and the other foot on the other. She felt rejuvenated standing on both sides of the former Berlin like a child might. She realized that the two halves of the city could be put back together again, with nothing more than a small reminder they had once been separated. Unlike all of the other reminders of Berlin, this one didn't seem like separation, but instead just a border. Two halves of one parking space that used to be in two separate countries, she thought. A smile crossed her face. Scott walked over and hugged her. "Let me go get a camera from one of those little stores we passed," he said. "This is a moment that you're going to want to remember." Maybe she could survive on her own after all. She hadn't felt as good as she had standing in that parking space during the day since she had spent that day alone in Paris before that horrible night fell. Chapter Word Count: 1869 Daily Word Count: 7818 Total Word Count: 88374 (Comment on this)
4:24p	Why Sleep When I'll Only Dream - CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR The Angel Goes Marching On Scott walked back from the small department store that served as a supermarket with a spring in his step. That Emily that he had saw practically dancing in the two parking spaces was exactly the Emily that he remembered and he felt like there was hope in him that she would recover yet. When he arrived back at the wall to see that she was crying again, he felt as though an arrow had been shot through his hopes. Emily was sitting on the two steps that led from the parking spaces to the overhang of the building. She held her face in her hands but when she looked up, he knew that the tears had started not long after he left. He set the little paper bag that contained the disposable camera and some modeling clay, he had found an art supply store along the way, down next to her. He had gotten a nagging suspicion that he had been gone for too long the entire time that he had been away and now he wondered if he had. "What's wrong?" he said to Emily, the disappointment showing in his voice. Although this disappointment wasn't for her, it was for himself. Emily seemed to barely be able to get out complete sentences. "There was..." she began. "this man..." "he was..." "wearing this uniform..." "A policeman?" Scott asked. "No, it was...a military uniform...but he...wasn't..." "Emily," Scott said gently again, "breathe in and slow down." He watched as Emily's chest heaved up and down with the deep breaths that she took. Had thought about dumping the contents of the paper bag out and having her use it as a cure for her hyperventilation. But he still worried that anything he did that might give away how worried he was would set her over the age. This latest transformation from content to distraught had happened so quickly, he hadn't even had time to think about how to react. He felt so helpless to fix her, so powerless to assist. Emily slowly began to fade in the shed of red that she had become. "No," she finally said, "he was a homeless veteran. He only had one leg, his pant leg was cuffed off and all that. He walked up to me and he held out his hands and started speaking in German. I asked him if he spoke English or French and he just screamed, 'nein!' at me. And he kept holding his hand out. It was so dirty. There were scars all over his hands and all over his face and I wanted to help, I really did. I tried to gesture that I didn't have any money. But he just wouldn't understand, or he just couldn't understand. He kept approaching closer and closer." Emily stood up now and began to act out the interaction. "So I backed up," she said stepping back again with her own feet. "But, he just kept approaching me. He was so close that I could smell his breath and see his yellow teeth. So I got scared you know..." "What happened?" "I wanted to push him away and run, but I was scared I would get violent again so I just froze." Emily stood so still that Scott was worried she was going to faint right on the stone steps she was standing on. "And he pushed me down Scott! He pushed me down and tried to take my bag. But I grabbed on tightly and he walked away muttering something in German. I would have reached for the mace in my bag, but I was too frozen at the time to even think about it." Scott wondered how something like that could have happened in front of all the tourists standing in front of both sides of the wall, taking pictures. His eyes wandered past Emily, sitting on the steps where she had been 'pushed down' at the crowds. They were behaving as if nothing unusual had happened. Scott wanted to walk up to them and ask them if they had seen anything and if they had, why hadn't they come over to help Emily? As Scott's gaze looked past her, Emily said, "you don't believe me do you?" Scott wasn't sure if he believe her or not. He worried that not believing her was the worst thing he could possibly do at that very moment and so he said, "of course I believe you." He walked up to Emily's new standing on the stairs and said, "but Emily, this is what I was talking about when I said you have to roll with what life throws you. Homeless people are just a way of life here and at home. And I think he was definitely the crazy one. You needed to stop worrying about him hurting you and protect yourself." He couldn't look her in the eyes as he said it, he instead stared down at his feet. She pointed a finger at him and exclaimed, "see you don't believe me! You were looking down when you said it! Whenever you're lying, you look down!" Scott felt as though his cover had been completely blown. He couldn't figure out how Emily knew this mannerism of his that he barely recognized in himself. He walked closer to her to try and remedy the situation. Looking right into her eyes, he said, "no Emily, I don't think you're crazy." He reached out his arms to hug her again. She seemed to recoil back and begin to back up again. "Come on Emily?" he asked, "don't you trust me." Emily screamed at him, "why did you say that?" Scott was taken aback at the sudden spike in the volume of Emily's voice. "Say what?" he asked still trying to remain calm even though he felt like he was losing control of the situation completely. "Do I trust you? Haven't you listened to a word I've been saying? I told you that I don't trust anybody right now! What makes you think that I can trust you! And 'do I trust you?' You know the last person who asks me that question was Greg and look what my yes answer got me. So, no I don't trust you." "Emily," Scott said, his voice becoming firmer as he began to get irritated with the accusations that he thought he had already answered multiple times, "I'm not Greg! This is me, Scott. This is me, someone who has never harmed a hair on your beautiful little head. This is me, the person who's done nothing but try to help you since I got to Berlin!" "No!" Emily shouted at him from what seemed like feet away even though he grasped that they were, in reality, less than a foot apart. "You're all the same. All of you. And I don't mean that line about all men being potential rapists either. I mean, all of you, everybody in my life, all you want to do is use me." Scott saw that Emily was still backing up and was in danger of falling over the set of two stairs that led down to the wall. He rushed up and grabbed her as she was about to fall backwards into the hard concrete below. "Let go of me! Who says that I don't want to fall?" she screamed at him. The tourists with the cameras began to look over at the scene. Scott held Emily with one arm and urged them to look away with the other. But their eyes remained glued to Emily's back as Scott dragged her back away from the ledge. "Let go of me!" she screamed, "and let me go." "Go where Emily?" Scott asked, "I'm not going to let you fall. I'm here to protect you." "Protect me? Why does everyone want to protect me?" Emily's voice quieted down. "You all have a really insane way of wanting to protect me. You and Sandra both. You're trying to protect me by playing me as some sort of pawn in whatever game you two are playing right now. One of you is lying and I'd really like to think it's her, but I don't even know anymore. Both of you were there for me when I really needed it but then you disappear as soon as you think I'm alright again. You just did that very thing!" "What do you expect us to do?" Scott asked, the grief that he felt inside about both what Emily had just tried to do and what Emily seemed about to do bubbled out into his voice. "Emily, I don't know what to say," he said, "I love you. All of the things I do for you comes out of wanting to see you happy and nothing more, I promise." He made sure to look her right in the eyes as he said it. "All I want is that you don't get hurt." "Why don't you want to see me get hurt?" Emily asked matching the glaze that he felt like he was giving her. "Are you doing all this just to keep me around so the next time you have unanswerable questions, I'm around to answer them for you?" "No, Emily." Scott let go, he didn't know what to say. "I just don't want to lose you from my life. I don't think anyone should lose you from their lives. You really are a special person, a shining light like that church you described on the hill. You're an example to the rest of us." "Some example I am when I can't even take care of myself. I read that part of your e-mail to Sandra too. I know how you really feel. You know that I'm crazy right now. You as much as said it to Sandra, 'I've seen the state she's in now. I'm going to try to help her recover. You let her get this way.'" Scott was taken aback that Emily was using those words that he had written in such kindness and such pathos towards her, albeit in anger against Sandra, and throwing them back in his face as if he had been trying to wound her. "Nothing to say, huh?" Emily asked. Scott looked for the words, but they were not there. It felt like anything he could say would go through the translation system in Emily's brain and come out as negative. He was in a no-win situation and all that he could do was hope to weather Emily's storm and that in the end, she came to a decision that wasn't going to rip his heart out. "Everyone knows that I'm crazy right now," Emily continued in his silence, "but you, you really take the cake. You trying to lie to me and tell me that I'm not. But I hear it in your voice Scott, the way you talk to me. You talk to me like I'm some sort of child. You act like I'm some sort of child. You bought me play-doh, for God's sakes," Emily covered her mouth for a second and crossed herself. "But, I'm not a child Scott! I'm a grown woman! I may have been a child when you met me, but something you said to me yesterday, I've been thinking about it. You're right, I need to solve my problems on my own." "Emily I never wanted to hurt you. Those things that I said is because I care about you. I just want to be your friend." "My friend?" The raise in her voice to note the question felt to Scott like a screech. "You want to be my friend? I don't fucking..." Emily covered her mouth as the curse word broke out. She straightened her skirt and continued slower and calmer. "You don't want to be my friend. If I were to say right now that we could only be friends, that we'd never get back together, you would walk right back to the hostel and you'd never speak to me again, am I right?" "Of course I wouldn't. I would still be standing here right where I am saying the exact same things." He tried not to look down and was successful in holding his head up. "No, Scott, I know you. I've had some time to think and you know, I don't think you want to be my lover or my friend, I think you want to be my leech?" Scott was stunned. No one had ever said anything to him like that, male or female. He didn't even know how to take it. If he took it in stride, Emily would think he was still conducting some sort of elaborate ruse and if he got angry, Emily was just going to get scared again and who knew what she might be capable of? "How can you say that?" the question shot out with Scott himself on the verge of tears, "after all that I've done for you over the years?" "You've used me over the years, Scott. It's just that simple. You stayed with me because I made you feel young. I made you feel vibrant. I made you feel alive. And now when the shoes on the other foot, you can't do the same for me." "But, Emily," Scott said, the tears now welling up in his eyes, "it's not for lack of trying. I've tried everything." Emily looked at him and must have seen that he was crying. Scott felt the attack pull back as though the words in the air had been heavy enough to do physical damage. "I know, Scott," Emily said crying again, "I know. But there's only so much that you can try before you have to give up. I love you Scott, I've always loved you. And since I know you love me too, I'm going to try to make this easy on you. You have to go back to Paris, right? My plane doesn't leave for another six days. Maybe what I need to do is try to see what else is out there. Maybe I just need to find my Warsaw." "What are you saying Emily," Scott asked with the tear welling in his eyes and heart. "I'm saying to let me go Scott," Emily said, crying herself. "Maybe not let me go forever, but just let me go now. Is that alright?" Scott shook his head as much to say no as that he was trying to get the words that Emily had made out of his ears. "Emily, come on the plane back to Chicago with me tomorrow. I'll pay for the change of ticket. We'll get you home and we'll get you help. You're not thinking rationally right now. I'm not saying you're crazy, just upset." "No Scott, I'm doing this for your own good. I'm not a good person to be around now. Live your life. Go out, have fun. The truth is, you make me feel young too. You really have spent the entirety of the time we've been together protecting me. And I really did appreciate it." There was a hanging silence as Scott waited for the "but..." "What I need right now, Scott is to not be sheltered. I'm 26 years old, not 20 anymore. I feel like everyone I know is out there experiencing life. Experiencing pain and loss, sure, but they're also experiencing joy. You said it yourself, I need to experience everything. Sandra's right about one thing, I do feel naive. How am I supposed to know if I can trust people if I've never had to worry about who to trust and who not to trust?" "I can give you space Emily," he cried. "No Scott," she said, "it's too late for you right now. I can't go back. I mean, look at us. We fell into the same patterns that we had before. Scott, we had a really good run. I mean, you're the love of my life and you probably always will be but I need to be alone right now. Maybe in a few months I'll give you a call. I'm really sorry." "Emily come here," Scott said. He held out his arms, hoping she would realize what she was doing and run into them. But, instead she walked down the stairs and to the east. Scott watched as she walked away. Something inside told him not to remember her this way. There was something unearthly about the way she walked. He knew that he had lost her forever and he worried that the world had too. He thought to himself, right then and there that some people just aren't meant for this world and that Emily might be one of them. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe she hadn't burned too brightly and faded too fast, right before his eyes. He hoped that the ghostly walk turned into the march that he knew so well. He pictured the little feet kicking up a cadence that he couldn't see in the distance saying, "no one better get in my way." And maybe he was getting in her way. The questions that he had fought so hard to purge from his mind all suddenly came flooding back. He would let this Emily go what choice did he have? It was better to remember the Little Insurgent Emily anyway. He thought about her combat boots pounding the pavement in Chicago as opposed to her hiking boots walking the other direction than he would be forced to walk as soon as he had the strength to get up. That version in his mind of Emily was how he'd always try to remember her, even if it did fly in the face of the real Emily that growing further and further away with every passing moment. All he could hope for was that her path led her to somewhere and not nowhere. Chapter Word Count: 2928 Daily Word Count: 10246 Total Word Count: 91302 (Comment on this)
9:04p	Why Sleep When I'll Only Dream - EPILOGUE ( epilogue: don't read ) Chapter Word Count: 2437 Daily Word Count: 12683 Total Word Count: 93739 (3 Comments | Comment on this)

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