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to be? A dreamer — or one who acts, who takes the bull by its horns?”
    “Don’t know... I will be what I will be.” 2
    “No human can become what he wills. Look at me: here I stand. Will you serve me? Will you bend to my will, and take command — right here by my side —o f a new reality?”
    “By your side?” I echo.
    “Yes,” he affirms. “By my side. Be mine, woman.”
    “Then,” I reason, “in death as in life, it’s a man’s world. And so, my newfound position would come not from me, not from within. Nothing would change, really.”
    “Power,” he emphasizes, as if this word alone were enough to tempt me.
    It nearly is.
    An unfamiliar resolve comes into my heart, and I realize: the moment is now. No need to torture myself. No more doubts. With great certainty, I know my answer. It is going to surprise him; hell, it surprises even me.
    And so, raising my face to him, I declare, “I am what I am. With all my faults, all my weaknesses... I am,” the words come easily now, they ring loud and clear, “Job’s wife.”
    And I know that with this I am doomed to be lost here, with boils on my feet, forever on my quest.
     

The Hollow
     
    S he closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally decided to walk through the door. By now her eyes could barely stay open, and yet she knew, without having to look closely, that it wasn’t a door really—only the opening for one. And over that threshold down there, she could somehow read the shape of the shadow. How it appeared suddenly, spilling out of nowhere, was quite beyond her, but she could tell, couldn’t she, that there was no floor. 
    This time, perhaps because of starting to fall asleep, her diary seemed heavier than usual. Getting up, she brushed her fingers over it and could feel the raised spine, and rough spots where the gold lettering spelling ‘ Love ’ had peeled off.
    If she were to take it with her, the book might slip. It might drop from her hands. It might then continue dropping, farther and farther away from view through the empty elevator shaft, releasing letter after letter into the air, filling its darkness with white feathery pages, rustling, whispering what she had written such a long time ago, what had been clamped—until now—between the front and back covers, as if it were a flower meant for drying.
    Her longing for him.
    She wiped her face, and now her sight cleared. With every step toward that door, she could see his eyes shining brighter and brighter across from her, as if David—yes, as if he were right there, hanging in midair, framed by the hollow. By what twist of imagination did this happen? How did this outline of his jaw suddenly appear, how did it open now, as if he was just about to call her name?
    In a moment, she thought, he would reach for her hand, smiling as if nothing bad could happen. And just like that last time, he would try to lead her over the scaffolding at the tenth floor of his newly erected skyscraper, with the blueprint rolled tightly under his arm. 
    She recalled: t hey had been married for ten years at the time of the accident. Since then, never once did she open her diary. Reluctant to decipher her own handwriting, which had looked different back then, more childish, she kept the book closed.
    Let it all be forgotten: their first date, their wedding, honeymoon, because these memories would be followed—how could they not?—by that which had to be blocked: the image of him holding out his hand to guide her over, and the sound of his foot, stumbling. 
    But this morning, for some reason, she found the book open. How could that have happened? With a sudden shiver, she turned a page. To her surprise, that didn’t bring back the sight of the void. This time the slanted sky, and the unstable earth below her—crisscrossed by metal poles and wooden planks—didn’t rise up into view. There were no stains, even though she expected them to start spreading at that spot, far down below, where his