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"No?" I said

"He called out to his fellowthe stars’ Welcome to Amsterdam Would you like to see a ustus and he at etarian" I’d ustus precisely once, on the first day we met

"This is not a probleet ne

"Of course," said our waiter "We have bottled all the stars this evening, htly brushed a seed from my bare shoulder "It hasn’t been so bad in "

The waiter disappeared We watched the confetti fall froround in the breeze, and tumble into the canal "Kind of hard to believe anyone could ever find that annoying," Augustus said after a while

"People always get used to beauty, though"

"I haven’t gotten used to you just yet," he answered, s to Amsterdam," he said

"Thank you for lettingthat dress which is like whoa," he said I shook renade But then again, he knehat he was doing, didn’t he? It was his choice, too "Hey, how’s that poem end?" he asked

"Huh?"

"The one you recited to ered in the chairls wreathed with seaweed red and brown / Till huustus pulled out a cigarette and tapped the filter against the table "Stupid hu"

The waiter arrived with two ian white asparagus with a lavender infusion"

"I’ve never had chane either," Gus said after he left "In case you ondering or whatever Also, I’ve never had white asparagus"

I was chewing ," I prous tasted like that all the tietarian, too" Some people in a lacquered wooden boat approached us on the canal below One of them, a woman with curly blond hair, lass toward us and shouted so

"We don’t speak Dutch," Gus shouted back

One of the others shouted a translation: "The beautiful couple is beautiful"

The food was so good that with each passing course, our conversation devolved further into fragon carrot risotto to becoas and nificent" I wish I’d been hungrier

After green garlic gnocchi with red mustard leaves, the waiter said, "Dessert next More stars first?" I shook ne was no exception to h tolerance for depressants and pain relievers; I felt warhts like this one didn’t co often, and I wanted to reustus smiled crookedly as he stared down the canal while I stared up it We had plenty to look at, so the silence didn’t feel aard really, but I wanted everything to be perfect It was perfect, I guess, but it felt like soination, which et that this dinner, like the trip itself, was a cancer perk I just wanted us to be talking and joking coether back ho

"It’s not my funeral suit," he said after a while "When I first found out I was sick--I hty-five percent chance of cure I know those are great odds, but I kept thinking it was a gao through hell for sixand then at the end, it still h I didn’t, not really I’d never been anything but teruity to ustus: My final chapter ritten upon diagnosis Gus, like ht," he said "So I went through this whole thing about wanting to be ready We bought a plot in Crown Hill, and I walked around with my dad one day and picked out a spot And I had ht before the surgery, I asked my parents if I could buy a suit, like a really nice suit, just in case I bit it Anyway, I’ve never had occasion to wear it Until tonight"

"So it’s your death suit"

"Correct Don’t you have a death outfit?"

"Yeah," I said "It’s a dress I bought for my fifteenth birthday party But I don’t wear it on dates"

His eyes lit up "We’re on a date?" he asked

I looked down, feeling bashful "Don’t push it"

We were both really full, but dessert--a succulently rich créood not to at least nibble, so we lingered for a while over dessert, trying to get hungry again The sun was a toddler insistently refusing to go to bed: It was past eight thirty and still light

Out of nowhere, Augustus asked, "Do you believe in an afterlife?"

"I think forever is an incorrect concept," I answered

He smirked "You’re an incorrect concept"

"I know That’s why I’ taken out of the rotation"

"That’s not funny," he said, looking at the street Two girls passed on a bike, one riding sidesaddle over the back wheel

"Co removed froh: afterlife?"

"No," I said, and then revised "Well, o so far as no You?"

"Yes," he said, his voice full of confidence "Yes, absolutely Not like a heaven where you ride unicorns, play harps, and live in awith a capital S Always have"

"Really?" I asked I was surprised I’d always associated belief in heaven with, frankly, a kind of intellectual disengagement But Gus wasn’t dumb

"Yeah," he said quietly "I believe in that line froht in her losing eyes’ That’s God, I think, the rising sun, and the light is too bright and her eyes are losing but they aren’t lost I don’t believe we return to haunt or co becomes of us"

"But you fear oblivion"