What a Quiet Man Understands

The Ghost of Death By Me has been doing a great deal of talking, which I suppose is its own kind of occupation, and I have listened with the patience one extends to a man who has not yet learned that volume is not the same thing as substance.

He calls me a hypocrite for speaking, and then devotes considerable breath to speaking about me. I will not call that irony, because irony implies an awareness of the contradiction, and I do not believe The Ghost of Death By Me has arrived at that awareness.

He says he will finish the work in under a minute. I have no quarrel with ambition. What I notice is that a man who intends to end things quickly does not generally spend this much of the preceding week explaining how quickly he intends to end things. Quiet men finish. Loud men forecast.

Every person who paid their way into this house on Friday night is owed an honest return on that attention. I intend to provide one. The Ghost of Death By Me intends to provide a story about himself.

There is a difference between those two things. Friday will make it plain.