Lucas walked inside, placed his briefcase on the bar counter of the drinking space of the apartment beside the door and served himself a drink, with another placed on the counter before which the guest came to sit after leaving the floor to ceiling window framing the sky, the city and the ocean.
"You are shorter than I remember."
The hoarse answer came:
"Yes, I'm nearing my end."
This made Lucas raise his brows:
"I don't understand the correlation between height and death, but whatever you say. You are the old one."
"Indeed."
After the old man smiling answer, he asked:
"I thought I would need the five baptisms to prove myself worthy. Frankly, I didn't really want to meet you again."
Indeed, it was the old man from the desert, the one that had been the first person he had met after his close brush with death upon which he had left the army, making him in fact a deserter. But the dead couldn't be deserters, so…
