Lamb: the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

year had passed, then two more, and we were celebrating the passage of Joshua’s seventeenth birthday in the fortress. Balthasar had the girls prepare a feast of Chinese delicacies and we drank wine late into the night. (And long after that, and even when we had returned to Israel, we always ate Chinese food on Joshua’s birthday. I’m told it became a tradition not only with those of us who knew Joshua, but with Jews everywhere.)
    “Do you ever think of home?” Joshua asked me the night of his birthday feast.
    “Sometimes,” I said.
    “What do you think of?”
    “Maggie,” I said. “Sometimes my brothers. Sometimes my mother and father, but always Maggie.”
    “Even with all your experiences since, you still think of Maggie?” Joshua had become less and less curious about the essence of lust. Initially I thought that his lack of interest had to do with the depth of his studies, but I then realized that his interest was fading along with the memory of Maggie.
    “Joshua, my memory of Maggie isn’t about what happened the night before we left. I didn’t go to see her thinking that we would make love. A kiss was more than I expected. I think of Maggie because I made a place in my heart for her to live, and it’s empty. It always will be. It always was. She loved you.”
    “I’m sorry, Biff. I don’t know how to heal that. I would if I could.”
    “I know, Josh. I know.” I didn’t want to talk about home anymore, but Josh deserved to get off his chest whatever it was that was bothering him, and if not to me, to whom? “Do you ever think of home?”
    “Yes. That’s why I asked. You know, the girls were cooking bacon today, and that made me think of home.”
    “Why? I don’t remember anyone ever cooking bacon at home.”
    “I know, but if we ate some bacon, no one at home would ever know.”
    I got up and walked over to the half-wall that divided our rooms. There was moonlight coming through the window and Joshua’s face had caught it and was glowing in that annoying way that it sometimes did.
    “Joshua, you’re the Son of God. You’re the Messiah. That implies—oh, I don’t know—that you’re a Jew! You can’t eat bacon.”
    “God doesn’t care if we eat bacon. I can just feel it.”
    “Really. He still feel the same way about fornication?”
    “Yep.”
    “Masturbation?”
    “Yep.”
    “Killing? Stealing? Bearing false witness? Coveting thy neighbor’s wife, et cetera? No change of heart on those?”
    “Nope.”
    “Just bacon. Interesting. You would have thought there’d be something about bacon in the prophecies of Isaiah.”
    “Yeah, makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
    “You’re going to need more than that to usher in the kingdom of God, Josh, no offense. We can’t go home with, ‘Hi, I’m the Messiah, God wanted you to have this bacon.’”
    “I know. We have much more to learn. But breakfasts will be more interesting.”
    “Go to sleep, Josh.”

    As time passed, I seldom saw Joshua except at mealtimes and before we went to sleep. Nearly all my time was taken up with my studies and helping the girls maintain the fortress, while nearly all of Joshua’s time was spent with Balthasar, which would eventually become a problem.
    “This is not good, Biff,” Joy said in Chinese. I’d learned to speak her language well enough that she seldom spoke Greek or Latin anymore. “Balthasar is getting too close with Joshua. He seldom sends for one of us to join him in his bed now.”
    “You’re not implying that Joshua and Balthasar are, uh, playing shepherd, are you? Because I know that’s not true. Joshua isn’t allowed.” Of course the angel had said he couldn’t know a woman, he hadn’t said anything about a creepy old African wizard.
    “Oh, I don’t care if they’re buggering their eyeballs out,” said Joy. “Balthasar mustn’t fall in love. Why do you think that there are eight of us?”
    “I thought it was a matter of budget,” I said.
    “You haven’t noticed that one of us will never spend two nights in a row with Balthasar, or that we don’t speak with him beyond what is required for our duties and lessons?”
    I had noticed, but it never occurred to me that there was something out of the ordinary. We hadn’t gotten to the chapter on wizard–concubine behavior in the book yet. “So?”
    “So I think he is falling in love with Joshua. That is not good.”
    “Well, I’m with you on that one. I wasn’t happy the last time someone fell in