Lines used from "When I'm Sixty-Four" by The Beatles:
"Indicate precisely what you mean to say,
yours sincerely, wasting away."
***
High in the tower, Casper always knew that he liked letters better. Because here he was on the phone, while his sister Helena, her daughter and her daughter's wife were sitting around him. Watching. But even more so, he just wished he hadn't woken up that day to his sister screaming her legs and hair off. Because he had turned into a ghost– he was floating and translucent and that had to mean he was a ghost. Next to that of course, there was the woman that had promised him to marry him once he'd turned sixty-four. The problem was, he was still sixty-three, normally speaking he'd turn sixty-four tomorrow. But he had a feeling that was a wish he couldn't get fulfilled any longer.
"No, Casper. Sixty-four precisely. I don't have time for jokes or games. On your birthday tomorrow I'll promise to look if I have two rings for us. But not earlier, why would I? Car accidents happen, you know, and then it'd just be a waste."
He sure prayed he wouldn't end up in a car accident. Not because he'd die, but because he wouldn't die. He'd have to explain to the doctors why he was only slightly bruised. Too much of a hassle.
"But it doesn't really matter now, does it? I don't see why I can't be sixty-three."
The other end of the line sighed.
"And don't say because of the sixty-four pearls on your wedding dress, or how eight times eight are two loops looping into eternity. How that's eternity twice–"
Jasmina tried to interrupt him, but Casper raised his voice.
"...and that would mean a spare eternity for both of us, because you're 64 already. Somehow you think you already have your eternities and you can't share those with me."
"Well no, of course not," Jasmina said jaggedly. "How can you become eternal through someone else? It hardly makes any sense."
Casper held his see-through hand in front of his family sprawled out on the couch. They turned blurry and bland. He thought of what it would be like if Jasmina was here, throwing in her daisy-petaled smile. It made a lot more sense than Jasmina knew.
"It's the one condition I have, it's what I based my entire expectation of my wedding day on. And you promised already! What's the matter all of a sudden?"
His sister and her family sitting on the bench very closely watching him. Say it.
"Well..."
The other end of the phone deadly quiet. Then a bridge snapping loose over a river.
"What's wrong? Is something wrong? Something can't be wrong. Not now."
"My sweet Jasmina..."
The static on the phone line. There never was any static, it must be Jasmina breathing louder.
"You're not amusing me. I swear on my life you're not."
"I know I'm not. No, listen Jasmina– and this is serious, all right."
Heavy-battered weights on tongues on both sides of the phone.
"I've turned into a ghost. I'm really not sure I'll turn sixty-four tomorrow. I fact, I know I won't."
"You've turned into– you're a ghost," she repeated.
Casper fidgeted with the phone cord.
"As in, you will never age again," she said.
