Polite Fictions

They always put their hands up. Always.

They put them up there,in front of their face, palms out all twitchy and sweaty toothed -- trying to shield what can't be stopped. Those smooth rounds. Those tiny little packages wrapped in heavy gauge metal. Explosive and trajectory specific. Aint no use in putting those hands up at this range. Same as it is down there, it is up here.  We aint got no more parlor tricks up here than that flim-flam magician has down there. Aint no smoke and mirrors. This is the real deal.

And when it's on, they call me. I am haunted by that call. That call means one of the Steves has fucked up. In some shape, form or fashion, they fucked up. Big time. And I don't give a diddle-eyed-joe  to a damned-if-I-know what their crime was. Or wasn't. I have a job to do.

That's why they call me. I just don't give a shit.

If I did give a shit, I would have pitched a full blown shit fit over the fact that my saddle is thread-bare. The horn is cracked and the rigging is all but give out. Every time I mount up, I expect that sum-bitch to give when I put weight to stirrup. And then I go ass over tit and look like a fool in front of my mount. That prospect pisses me off more than the call does.

When they run. When they try and shake me, slip the hangman's noose, they always end up out here. the wasteland. Limbo, y'all call it.

It's that place that you live most your whole life. Wallowing in the status quo and reveling in the benign comfort that you hold so dear. If'n i had my way, I'd end your suffering for free. But, that shit aint up to me. I don't make the rules, I'm just the Piper that has to be paid.

We call them all "Steves". Fuck all if'n they don't hate that. But, fuck them anyway. Always the favorite. Always so perfect. Fucking angels. Never did care for them. Still -- I don't care for this part. When they cry -- when they beg and tell me their story, their tears are cauldron black and the wings shiver and twitch like the sound a dying rabbit makes. It's, every time, a king hell motherfucker.

So, there it is - this Steve that has fucked up six ways from Sunday. And here I am. Off my mount, and that smooth, silver bitch leveled and ready. This Steve knows that there's no getting 'round the end all of this. We all play our part. We all pay the fiddler to dance.

Only, this Steve says something. Right before it's wings go limp. Right before I plunge the razor-sharp Bowie into it's chest to take the "proof" - some say it's his trophy. And it's fucked up in a bullshit fashion because you have to go under the rib cage. Forget what you've seen in the movies, Nothing save for a hacksaw gets through bone. So, it's under and up time. 

I stow the "proof" in the old burlap wrap, and clean the spent chamber with some of the frayed rigging and reload.

The Steve's words - last words before the rabbits screamed - still in my ears. Said something about it knew that it had to go down like this. Said, it knew that this was the way it would end up. Said, it saw the Contract years ago. Said, every time you sign on as a Steve, you know how it's a g'wine to play out. Said, he had a sick sense of humor. Said something about the Platypus.

What is it about the platypus that's so gol-damn funny, I always wonder?

So there's this Steve. All lifeless -- or, afterlife-less, as the case may be, and its told me some shit about the way things work and I just don't care for it. So, I empty the chamber into the ground and reload with new rounds that I had made when I was last down South. I aint doin' this for the Morning Star though. Even though he'll laugh like a bastard when it's done. He's fucking twisted like that anyhow. Naw. This one is for me. It's because maybe deep-down, somewhere under the place where my heart used to be, is an acorn of something that stinks of care.

Turns out, I do give a shit.

And, we all pay the Fiddler to dance.

Even him. He pays too.

It may be me. In the end. But, then again. It may be Him and I just dont know what that'll mean to all y'all down there. That part aint written yet. If'n it goes bad, after, you can blame me. You can make a call. There are mor'n me out there doin' this kind of work. We're a dime-a-dozen. So if'n you're sore about how this plays.....

I'll be 'round. 

I'll be waitin'. 

And fuck all if'n I don't deserve to die as well. Everything I done -- I deserve to die mor'n you know. But, you better come correct. I deserve it.....

But I aint gonna just throw up my hands and cry those black tears.

That aint how I was made. 

Damn sure aint how I'll die. 

Golden

Sisyphus, I am sure, was the originator of what is currently known as golf. Being very unhappy with his retirement package, which consisted of naught but boulder-pushing and endless tedium, Sisyphus decided to shake it up a bit. He gave himself some challenges. He put scoring in place. He broadened his course and created obstacles. The gods declared he had to push the boulder up the hill - they did not say how he had to get there. The truly diabolical bit is that he turned around and sold it to the living so that we may share in his tedium. That Sisyphus is a rotter.

I must think more like Sisyphus if I am to survive retirement. Have you seen the posters touting retirement at your bank or in your financial planner's office? Happy people, walking nowhere. Happy couples, sitting on a porch, looking at nothing. It's as appealing as bed rest. It sounds good when you aren't the one doing it.

I am seventy years old, enjoying the first day of my golden years. I say this with irony. My wife, on the other hand, sees no irony. She has waited for this her whole life – or at least the last 50 years of it, she says. I think she's exaggerating because she was very busy and happy for most of those 50 years. Especially the noisy years. But yes, the last twenty or so have probably felt a bit like limbo for her. She has been waiting to live while I have been tricking a long, slow death. She refers to my retirement as heaven on earth, which is not at all the word I had in mind.

She has every surface of our home covered in travel magazines. They are opened to Alaskan cruises and Tuscan cooking classes. I would suggest the Peace Corp as a way to get out and see the world, but it is not her style. Besides, the people we went to help would probably end up having to take care of us. So not the Peace Corp, but something. Something with a purpose. Tango lessons on the lido deck with a bunch of old people, while delightful in theory, are surely on Dante's list.

I was treated to a fine retirement party by my company last night, on which no expense was spared. My wife looked astonishingly beautiful and for a moment I could imagine happiness in just being with her. This is what they want you to imagine. That you can be happy just being. It is part of the plan and is all thought up somewhere in marketing. They give you a splendid party so they can give your parking space to someone else without you making too much of a stink. They have a party in your honor and make you feel like a big deal.

They do that with sacrificial virgins, too. Oh goody. To the bonfire we go.

I would have whoever is in my parking space towed right now were it not for my lovely wife. My Persephone, my Eurydice, my Aphrodite. She deserves to live. I need to rescue her from this state of waiting, waiting, always waiting. I must remember not to look at her as we make our way toward our new life, for if I do I will succumb to the simple pleasure of knowing her and we will both be lost. People do that, you know. Wander forever, simply holding hands. You see it on those posters.

I need her to come with me because she reminds me to take my medication and she can read signs. Not signs from heaven, just regular signs. Also, neither of us can drive at night and it would be lonely if we didn't have each other.

Oh I will live this afterlife they call retirement, but I will make my own rules. I will make myself a new parking space. Perhaps I'll do it in Barcelona so my wife and I can take tango lessons on the side.

When we are ready, we will learn to play golf on the ocean's thin ice. But first, we will live.

Departure Gates

While checking the angle of her pillbox hat, she noticed a faux pas of graver consequence in the reflection she cast in the polished black marble and alabaster. A pair of her precious metal wings appeared somewhat askew. A twist of her silk-covered white fingers and there: the gold pin beamed brilliantly perpendicular to the rounded edge of her uniform jacket.

Smiling now, she raised her eyes and cast an authoritative yet pleasant look toward the souls snaked before her through the maze of strung crimson velvet.

"May I help the next in line?" she called.

He approached stiff legged, stopping only when he could rest his cold, callused palms on the counter.

"Hello, sir, and welcome to TGA! How may I help you?"

He was just a shade, maybe two, under six feet tall with a pronounced rounding of the shoulders that, because of a weak neck and a bellyful of overindulgence, gave him the quality of a broken bowling pin. He leaned in with a stare that focused precisely on nothing in particular which was well enough as there was little ahead for him to see.

"Where," he stammered. "Where the hell am I?"

"Not hell, sir. The TGA ticketing counter," she said. "I'm Sera, and I'm here to assist you on your journey. Your ticket, please. … It's right there."

His eyes followed Sera's pristinely gloved index finger to the outer breast pocket of his best black suit jacket that others would notice as freshly pressed but to him it's only quality was of a vague chemical warmth. The pocket held a crisp sheet of linen paper, folded in slightly uneven thirds.

He handed the paper to Sera, who shook it open with a single snap of her wrist.

When her eyes arrived at the bottom, she laid it down with a fluid outward turn of her left hand that end in a halting flourish, very much like a conductor calling for the harpist to cease by any means necessary, such as thrusting her body onto the strings or smothering them between the adjacent kettledrums.

"Very well, Mr. Mann," Sera said. She picked up an ink stamp and punched his ticket like a defense lawyer hits the elevator button when knows the jury is hung. Her fingers then began performing their own private concerto on the computer keyboard just to the right of her station.

Clickity-clickity-thump-clickity-thump-thump.

The rhythmic percussion roused him from catalepsy. He wrenched his semi-hinged head as best he could and saw thousands of people coiled behind him, each with the odd piece of luggage in tow and the same defeated hollowness in the eyes.

O'Hare, he thought.

Mmm, no.

Midway. Definitely Midway.

He could feel his chest rise and fall with each breath. The familiarity made his shoulders, such as they were, relax and release the tenuous hold they had on the leather strap slung over them. The bag it held fell to the floor but he hardly noticed as rather than the cringe-inducing thud one might have expected, it hit with the dullness of a half-cooked pancake.

"I must have been in that line so long I dozed off standing up," he said, shaking his wobbly head. "You should really consider installing some of those boarding pass kiosks so people can serve themselves."

"Self service is why you are in the line to begin with, Mr. Mann," she said with a chipperness that pinpricked his brain. "I have Seat 28Q reserved for you. It's a middle seat, Mr. Mann, but then that's all we every have on TGA."

"I … huh?"

"What's that, Mr. Mann?"

"Um, back up a bit. What … what did you mean about self service is why I'm here?"

Typing once again without a glance at her fingers, Sera's words rang with a harsh brightness of tone. "Self-absorption, self-aggrandizement, self-medicating, self-involved. The usual, Mr. Mann. Just the usual."

His jaw dropped a bit.

"Ooooh. And self-abuse," she continued after a quick glance down at the monitor. "Abnormal amount of that on your record, too. The modern and, well, Old Testament type. Hard to believe you found time to fit in all those other missteps giving the time you spent in your office men's room."

Mann shook his head, such as it was again, in hopes of resetting his hearing, but it everything instead grew clearer. "Self-abuse? Did you say self-abuse?"

"Yes, I did, Mr. Mann. Now, how much baggage do you have to check?"

He was about wag a finger in protest, but in his periphery he caught sight of a pile of trunks, large and small, brown and black and camouflage, mostly battered and stained. To get them all here, it must has taken an entire fleet of the Hummers Mr. Mann obsessed over back at his dealership off the smog-choked interstate.

"Is that … all mine?"

"Mmmm, I'd say so, Mr. Mann. I can see your name tags on them from here."

He stared at them. He blinked. He blinked harder and longer. He saw the tags, too.
"A. Mann," they read in simple print right below what appeared to be a corporate logo. He focused deeper to make out a dim gray oval with fog-like wisps of black and white spelling "TGA" and a smaller line of text below. He squinted until his face ached from the effort and the words unfortunately grasped.

In one heaving sigh, Mr Mann expelled plainly: "TGA. Trans Gression Airlines. …

"Hoooly shit."

A carillon of laughter peeled throughout the terminal silence.

"Oh, Mr. Mann," Sera sputtered, trying to regain her business-like demeanor. "Excuse me. Oh. But that one joke never gets old!"

Clickity-clickity-thump-clickity-thump-thump.

THUMP.

"And here's your boarding pass, Mr. Mann," said Sera, handling him a final slip. "Thank you and have an intolerably long flight."

Contrary to popular belief, lampshades are not one size fits all.  Also, hangover pills don't work.  These were but two of the lessons that Bobby "Boom Boom" Kalinski knew and he knew them because he had lived them.  It was research and he was committed.  Any jackass could shotgun a can of crappy beer, but Boom Boom could make that 12 ounce container of suds sing and spin and not spill a drop as it poured a steady stream down his throat.  Kind of.  He was like a poor man's Bellagio.  "Boom Boom", as he liked to point out, was a damn professional.

It was by chance, really, that Bobby Kalinski became Bobby "Boom Boom" Kalinski.  Opportunity had knocked and he had answered. Then, despite those that claim such things as impossible, opportunity had knocked again.  And again.  Bobby "Boom Boom" Kalinski was born.  For the record, Bobby "Knock Knock" Kalinski was shot down right out of the gate. 

"Who's there?" asked his mother as he came in through the kitchen door.  It was after ten.  On a Thursday.  He was fresh from schooling a bunch of losers at Beer Pong.  He was riding the high.

"It's Boom Boom, Ma," he said.

"Boom Boom who?"

This is why Knock Knock didn't take.

"It's Bobby, Ma," he replied. "It's just Bobby." He went to his room, slightly lower than he had arrived.

The thing about the day job was that it happened mostly during the day, and frankly, Bobby felt that it cramped his style.  However, his daytime coworkers were his nighttime customers and he had to make himself available.  Plus, he couldn't help but think that his being around made everyone work all the harder and the more money they made the more money he made.  Luckily, math came easy to Bobby.

"Hey, Boom Boom," they would say.

"Wazzzz up?" he might reply. Or perhaps a "yo" or even a "my man!"

Then they would talk about the money, which was easy enough.  He offered a service and they wanted it.  Prices were set but open to negotiation.

Some factors that Bobby "Boom Boom" Kalinski would consider worthy of barter included:

1. Beer

2. Video games/cheat codes

3. Women

The latter was only a theory, but he had scored lots of beer and one of his customers had helped him unlock Moon Knight on Marvel Team-Up, all of which had been worth knocking a few bucks off the total.  Bobby did not traffic in regrets.

Working for a software giant like Macrohard paid pretty well.  Granted, the guys that worked on the actual software made the real money.  They had cubicles and t-shirts covered in irony and the social skills of a houseplant.  Bobby had a mop, a bucket, keys to almost everything and most importantly: charisma.  He was covered in it like a layer of Brut.

Charisma, of course, was the reason he got the gigs.  Any jackass could mop a hallway, but only someone with his gift could get the party started.  Quickly. 

When opportunity first knocked it had been in the form of Jerry Linds.  Jerry Linds was throwing a party.  Jerry Linds had never thrown a party.  Jerry Linds didn't know who to turn to because the party was a surprise and only assholes ruin surprises.  So Jerry Linds turned to Bobby "Boom Boom" Kalinski - this is back when he just went by Bobby.

Bobby, it turns out, knew how to throw a damn party.  He had had cable TV since he was a kid.  All it took was beer, music, games, a theme and girls.  Unfortunately, girls were seldom included, but Bobby made it work.

Bobby threw Jerry Linds the best damn birthday party that Jerry Linds had ever had.  Two Tuesdays later Tyler Chang was turning 26.  It kind of snowballed from there. Bobby "Boom Boom" Kalinski was the life of the party - for a set price (negotiable), and it was good.  Some of the guys suggested that Bobby go by "The Life" rather than "Boom Boom" but Bobby didn't go for cereal.  He was more of a pastry man.  Besides, the life was in the now and Bobby "Boom Boom" Kalinski wasn't one to limit himself to such things as time and space continuums, respectively.  Also, "The Life" sounded like a Christian rapper and Bobby had his doubts about hip-hop or any sort of spoken word. "Boom Boom" was not a hypocrite.

On the way home he would turn down the radio and enjoy the moment where after meets now and he would listen as the booms rolled away like fading thunder.  Many nights he would sit at a stoplight and watch the girls on the corner as they sold their wares of lipstick and loneliness and he would wonder if they were really all that different. Other times he would stop at Winchell's, because if there was one thing that Ma loved it was donuts. and she would be waiting up for him.

Future Self Afterlife

I’ve never been able to explain that day at the pool.

I used to say, "It was some kind of worm hole."

I used to say, "Maybe it was some kind of wrinkle in time."

Now it is simply a memory of having gone down a slide at the pool and having ended up a better person because of it. Mostly due to ending up taking my final leap into the waiting arms of complete insanity.

My day at the pool had been planned for a week; giant beach towel, iced tea, a good book.

And then this:

"Anyone who doesn’t go down the slide is a pussy!" he kept yelling. He was an over-sized man wearing sunshine yellow swim trunks. He had apparently decided everyone at the pool should go down the slide at least once. Or they were a pussy. Asshole.

Yeah, I went down the slide. Mostly because my balls had not yet developed to the point of me being able to tell him to shut his fuckin’ pie hole, or being able to ignore him completely.

The moment I popped out at the end of the slide I realized I was just going to keep going through the bottom of the pool. I thought I was going to drown, but ended up standing, fully clothed and perfectly dry, at a glass window that was so big that I could not see where it ended or began. Before me was deep space. As in, I expected to turn around and find myself eye to eye with the cast of the original Star Trek.

Instead, I found myself being swooped up and then held by an invisible entity about 100 feet out and away from anything I could stand on. And no, I was not being held in some kind of cradled position that indicated I was getting ready to receive the light, nourishment or wisdom of Mother Earth, The Great One or Aunt Jamima.

Whatever that son of a bitch entity was, it was only holding onto one of my fingers and dangling me above a space so vast that I was positive my shaking would turn my finger to dust. I would be sucked into the middle of nowhere and have to think my way out of a square box that was simply a circle with no end.

And then I pissed myself and watched the urine float away in strangely beautiful droplets into space. I cried bitter tears and cursed the entity that was holding me because it was laughing and said,

"You’ve pissed yourself, and now you’re pissing all over space."

Fuck.

Behind me floated a small swing. It was made of a two by two foot weathered pine board with two ropes that were attached to (a star? the Milkyway? someone’s cruelest thought?).

"Here is your fear, my darling," the entity said. "Go."

The board snuggled itself up under my ass, the entity let go of my finger, I grasped the ropes on either side of me, and was left to gently swing above all the universe.

I was surrounded by silence so deep that even all of my internal organs seemed to sigh in the stillness. No wind. Not even a breeze to make a light sound in my ears.

Next thing I knew I was propelled as if out of a slingshot into a perfect circle around the earth at a speed so simultaneously fast and slow that either way was beyond my comprehension. My mind teetered on the verge of utter wildness.

The first time I passed the enormous window I could see people sitting at tables scattered throughout a formal restaurant. White table cloths were adorned with shining silver. People drank perfectly clear water from crystal goblets in-between smiling at or listening to one another.

The second time I passed the enormous window I could see some of the people had pulled their chairs to the window and were excitedly pointing as I approached.

I risked (what did I risk?) by letting go of one of the ropes to flip all of them the bird and spread my legs wide to grab my crotch and scream that they could all,

"Fuckin’ bite it, mother fuckers!"

Their hands flew to their mouths and they all looked to each other for an explanation.

"She cannot yet see us," one of them whispered. "How terribly sad."

The third time I went by, every person in the restaurant was now sitting or standing by the window. Their faces held blank expressions, and I could feel their hopefulness that they would not, once again, be exposed to a wild and gesticulating creature that dangled perilously from the swing with just one arm.

I continued to grip the ropes at my sides, but hung my head and cried at the sight of them with gratitude so intense that I thought I could feel my heart expanding to the maximum capacity my chest cavity would allow. I looked up and found the eyes of the man who had said,

"She cannot yet see us. How terribly sad."

The swing turned and sent me directly toward them. I was whisked into the waiting arms of those who I had so foully offended on my second time around. They lay me down in a garden of warm golden grasses and glowing sunflowers. They held me and let me weep until I could weep no more.

"I see you now. I see you," I said to the man.

He smiled, and they all came together to help me to my feet.

"I…I…I…," I said, as another heave of weeping escaped my lips.

"Rest easier with your heart from here on out, young one," a woman’s voice said. I turned and found her just behind my left shoulder where she had put her warm hand onto the back of my arm. She was me, and I her. We looked into one another’s eyes and made an agreement that I would rest easier with my heart so that I could indeed be on the path to becoming her some day.

They wiped my tears, dusted off my jeans, and helped me back onto the swing.

"Enjoy the ride, kid!" I heard one of them say with happy enthusiasm, as I swung back around the earth one more time. One more time to, finally, let my heart rest easy even though I knew how much I still could not see.

In the end, I got back to the top of the slide where I had just climbed the ladder and was preparing to make my way down just to get the bastard in the yellow swim trunks to shut his fuckin’ pie hole. I changed my mind and decided to go back down the ladder. I realized he was standing at the bottom of the ladder and challenging my change of mind.

"Give it a rest," I said. "I’m stronger than nine yards of garlic, and have half a mind to come down there and break my entire leg off in your ass."

He didn’t care, but I kept moving anyway. Down the ladder I went to collect my towel and leave the pool all together. A woman has to get busy, after all, if she’s going to become the future-self she’s just had the opportunity to meet.

Oh, and the part about this being my final leap into insanity? It was. In the sense that ending up being myself has been all about forgetting everything I once knew about the truth. That, my darlings, is sheer and wonderful insanity and, indeed, the 'Afterlife' that was gifted to me.

The sounds and smells of the city washed over her like a rain of emotional baggage. Large, heavy baggage, the type you buy for a field trip to Africa. It pelted her, like bricks thrown by angry orphans, until she had to close her eyes and turn away. The city was there, right there where she had left it. Feeling a jag of hysterical laughter bubbling closer and closer to the surface she realized she had left the city right where it was when she died.

Except if she died, she reasoned, she wouldn't be standing there, on 93rd street, back to Central Park, just staring.  People moved in and out of buildings, cabs, and each other's personal space with the usual ease.  Lisa stomped her foot and swore. 

"You realize," a voice near her fairly cooed, "you're dead, yes? Yes? If not, so sorry, sudden shock. Yes, so sorry."

"I'm dead," Lisa said, "no, I knew that. But if I'm dead then why am I here?" She turned and looked at the source of the silk voice. He stood easily nine feet tall, with his forty or fifty arms each leading her eyes in different directions. Lisa had never talked to a tree before, but then, she was new to the entire being dead oeuvre.

"This is Heaven, yes very much so. So sorry, is that a sudden shock as well? All these shocks, all sudden. Yes, so sorry."

"Stop. Apologizing," Lisa spat and stopped her foot just before she kicked the tree. "Just explain. This is Heaven? You're a tree? I'm dead? Heaven is the Upper West Side? That's fucked up."

"Yes, yes, no shock, not sudden, sorry, sorry, yes. Of course I am not a tree, look like tree to you, but not. And yes, New York, the world, Earth. Heaven. So sorry."

Lisa gave in and kicked the tree-not-tree. Then they talked.  She learned, according to the tree, that here she could wish for anything. Her desires would be fulfilled. Not instantly, of course, but in time, and always richly.  It was the secret, the tree-not-tree claimed, of fame itself.  The world, all the endless versions of it, was both Heaven and Purgatory.  Heaven for those selected who could realize their dreams of being movie stars and singers and world leaders. Purgatory to everyone else who moved through the world as if it were perfectly normal, until their sins were washed away or made worse and they were passed on from judgment.

"What you remember, Earth, so sorry biggest shock yes, was never old life, don't remember life, do you, no, of course not, start fresh. So sorry, yes.  Purgatory and now earned Heaven. So sorry, real life, no clues." The tree-not-tree, who eventually wanted to be called Kevin, found his rough bark scraped by the toe of Lisa's shoe once more.  A swift kick was the only response she gave him to that bit of news. Still, they talked and she learned all about her dreams coming true no matter what, her ease to fulfillment and eternal happiness.  The more she learned the more she thought. The more she thought the more she wanted an axe. Until.

"Wait, if all my dreams are easily realized then I will never struggle, right? That's the thing of it. Ease and comfort."

"Oh yes, ease and comfort forever. Never want, never extend reach."

Lisa's eyes tightened. "This is my reward? I can be as famous as I want, have everything I ever ask for, though I can't explain why..."

"Oh, no, no, so sorry, wrong, you can!" Kevin said, branches shaking, "Can tell, but then, so sorry yes, you know how it is, taken for lunatic. Can do, probably shouldn't."

"Huh," Lisa chewed her lip, "but here's... I mean I have to do nothing but want it, and I will have it? What about the reward of the just, the feeling of earning a treasure? No! This isn't Heaven, is it, you bark-faced bastard? Is it?!"

Kevin the tree-not-tree laughed, leaves falling off branches as he did. "So sorry. Big shock." His roots ripped free of the soil, cobblestones shattering. "Most do not work it out until much later. No, not Heaven. Not at all. So sorry. But still, anything you want."

"All sugar will, what was it, taste like ashes in my mouth? It will be worthless."

"Like your soul.  So sorry."

Lisa took in her situation, for real this time, and shook her head. If she couldn't change her fate, her location or her destiny she could at least do one thing.

Kevin, the tree-not-tree, screamed high into the daylight as Lisa walked away, pocketing her lighter and smiling.

It wasn't what he expected. Nothing ever is, he guessed, but this? This was not what he expected, no, not at all. He opened his eyes, surprised. What was this? He felt ... nothing. Was he even breathing? He put his hand to his chest, waiting for the rise and fall. Nothing.

Nothing. He focused above him and saw a flash of silver by the dim sliver of light above his shoulder. No, not silver -- more like the brushed, dull pewter of stainless steel. He flexed his fingers, relieved to feel the familiar sensation of muscle moving over cartilage. He was still alive. He tried to breathe again -- a deep, life-affirming breath. The breath of the living.

Nothing. He moved his hands softly underneath him. It was smooth -- silky, almost, like fine satin, with a bit of give beneath it, as though he were resting on a bed of quilt batting. Cotton balls, he thought.

He remembered very little from before. Even his name was a fuzzy memory -- he thought it began with a J, he thought wearily, but it could have been a B. He closed his eyes again. He remembered their faces. Their small faces twisted in horror, pleading for mercy, disbelieving that someone could be so cruel. That someone could relish their pain, and oh, how he did. He remembered that much. He did. He tried to twist his face into a smile at the memory, but found he felt no joy.

Nothing.

What was this? He raised his hands against the cold steel. It was curved, like how he'd always imagined the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel would feel like up close. He pushed. Gently at first, then harder.

Nothing.

Harder, still.

Nothing.

Harder.

Nothing.

He tried to breathe again.

Nothing.

He tried to scream.

Nothing.

Hell, he thought. I'd rather be in hell.

An answer.

Where do you think you are?

It didn't start with Mr. Clement, but it was his fault. It started five days prior, when Joseph's mother gave birth to his younger sister.

(They lowered her little body into the ground during what Lucia had always thought was the grandest season of the year. Only it wasn't a body in Lucia's mind; the second they closed the casket up and re-seated the splayed tumble of wild grasses and black-eyed susans atop it the little body became a tiny skeleton crafted of air-filled bones, just like a bird's. Just like the birds that she had read about last year, book after book inhaled, the scientific fact within them subsuming the fairy tales about flight within her.)

It had been two days.

(Before, the time when the baby girl's bones had floated into the ground was always called Autumn. After, Lucia couldn't see fit to refer to it as anything but The Fall.)

Lucia wondered.  A place inside her stayed aggravated with the wondering, all of it. But the biggest part of the wondering came wriggling up out of her before she could discipline it,  calling it back to herself sharply. It surfaced and by then it was too late, because Lucia called out Mr. Clement's name.

"When will Joseph be back, sir?

(two days, two days he had been gone, one day before the two he was staring dumbly at the dirt, holding his mother's hand, those hands that had clenched themselves into the shape of her breaking heart when they told her two days before even then that her tiny slip of a girlbaby, oh five days ago when a mother began both greeting and grieving that little new thing, but he had only been absent for the two days since the funeral)

 "Do you know when he's coming back to school?"

The classroom --already quiet-- went stone silent. That was it, then: They had all been wondering (well, almost all of them) too and their wondering had somehow taken up with her wondering, which was on its own substantial enough. All of it together had just become too heavy for Lucia to carry by herself, so she'd asked.

(that was it then; she had struck the trailhead and they had tumbled onto the newly-placed path just behind her, keeping up, questions of their own. timid at first, and then gathering and bunching in the closest approximation of an adult conversation that the twenty-three eleven-year-olds could knit together. Stacey Gibbons was the one that issued the question that had the distant ring of a deathnell behind it. Lucia had always liked him, she knew he would grow up to be somebody Important one day.)

"Where does a baby's soul go to, Mr. Clement?"

(Somebody said that because the baby had never heard the words of Jesus it might be a heathen and we all know where heathens go,
somebody said shut up Rooster that ain't funny,
somebody said that babies can hear from their momma's bellies, only it's like hearing it from deep underwater and everthing sounds like magic then,
somebody said well then I guess that little baby girl is in heaven bouncing on God's Knee right now because she's heard the words of Jesus while her momma sat there on the end of a pew every Wednesday and twice on Sundays, I saw her there in that church my own self.)

Truth be told, Lucia had never particularly liked the girl that had said the God's Knee thing until the very second the last word of that fine statement fell off her lips. Lucia's heart swelled in a way she'd never known before.

It swelled further with the gentle presentation of the assignment that Mr. Clement had then given them: An essay on what happens in the afterlife, or was there an afterlife at all?

("Afterlife" was a world that had never before existed for Lucia outside of religious texts, she hadn't yet thought to it hold inside herself and turn it over to suss out the texture of its curves.)

Her father was furious in his stoic German way. He was an athiest and though he'd never interfered with any sort of explorations of faith to date, he was not cheerleading his wife's efforts to Train Lucia Up In The Way She Should Go. It is not appropriate for a schoolteacher to engage in such subjects, he said, those whose lessons should be the responsibility of a family.

Her mother exhibited a first, too, openly and confidently petitioning her husband's blessing but not intending to squash the assignment if he wouldn't bestow it on her to give to Lucia.

Isn't it what you want, she asked pointedly in her Cuban-tinged English, for people to consider God intellectually? He could not stand firm against this clever turn from his beloved.

(Lucia flushed with excitement. She flew to the side of her bed, freshly-scrubbed face made solemn by the task ahead of her. She prayed openly to the God she had never second-guessed, the benevolent creator who had never once failed her, the same He who had sat alongside her then-infant self's cradle long after her parents had retired to their bed, new-baby exhausted.)

For five nights she asked God to give her dreams of Heaven, imploring him with frankness to show her every minute detail that he could possibly impose on her open and ready mind. It occurred to her on the sixth night that maybe what she needed to do was to stop asking God and just lie down, confident in the fact that she'd be ushered up to the gates the very minute her body let her mind loose enough to go do some wandering.

So Lucia didn't pray the sixth night, absolutely sure that God had heard her on those other five and was just waiting for her to shut up and ready herself for an experience the likes of which she'd never known. Then she woke up the seventh morning in tears, because in the one solid week since she'd been given the assignment she had slumbered thickly and without even the tiniest of murmurs about a dream, much less one about the Afterlife. God had denied her, and had done so without explanation.

She wept without wailing, not wanting to explain her sorrow.

(jesus, too, wept. on occasion.)

On that Wednesday morning Lucia wore a new face only she could see.

   

Mr. Clement,

  I'm going to have to take a zero on this paper. I'm very sorry to have failed at this assignment.

  My mother has always said to me that you can do anything you want to with the spaces between twenty-six letters. I won't waste them telling you a bunch of made-up stuff, though. The only place I know for sure that baby is is in her mother's heart.

Sincerely,
                    Lucia H.

"You know, I read somewhere that it’s good luck to have it rain during your funeral,” said the grandfather as he stood with the girl under the awning erected over the grandmother's grave. The flimsy tarp, sagging at the corners like the old man's ill-fitting suit, maintained a steady beat as Mother Nature and her band transitioned into one of those long and ultimately pretentious solos while the parched summer ground beneath the pair humored the players with quiet applause by soaking up the sound.

The girl, still too young to know much, yet old enough to know a few things, couldn’t quite imagine how such a forecast at such a time in one’s life - or death, as the case may be - could be anything other than a literal black cloud, but when the grandfather, who rarely spoke except during the commercial breaks that were shoved into reruns of his beloved Maverick (and usually only then to inquire about the whereabouts of his lunch), dropped that pearl, she felt inclined to believe, and so in the weeks following the grandmother’s death, the girl held vigil near her princess rotary in the event Simon Le Bon phoned to propose marriage. If something good was to come from a death, the girl thought, then what could be more lucky than being the bride of Duran Duran’s lead singer?

The girl was old enough to know a few things, yet still too young too know much.

When the girl had grown older (having long given up on that phone call, by the way...), and found herself, hesitantly and still so, pondering the possibility of believing in Something and/or Someone Else, she’d remember the grandfather’s fortune cookie thoughts ("He who dies Monday misses great reward of winning lottery tickets Tuesday," she'd chuckle."That will ultimately be my luck.") and wondered how many funerals she'd been to over the years where she thought of it while sharing her condolences. But long before those days arrived, the girl would stand on the same patch of rural ground to say goodbye to the grandfather.

And despite her requests, the band ignored the girl's repeated calls for an encore.

“It was his heart,” the aunts would pronounce. “It was simply too broken to go on.”

“Or maybe it was the cancer,” the girl whispered to her plate of tiny ham salad sandwiches and Archway cookies, and though none of the foodstuffs appeared willing to back her up, she knew she was right, and she relished the chance to lord over the baked goods. Surrounded by people who only seemed to call on God for his amazing abilities to damn things like the terrible driver ahead of them on the highway, the neighbor's barking dog, and (sometimes) each other, it made more sense to the girl to hold onto that than to listen to things like "He's in a better place," or "They're at peace now." The girl had seen the grandpa before the make up and the close shave and the folded hands, and if that was peace, she had thought, then she'd like to skip her turn if that was alright.

It would be years before the girl who had grown older would find herself embracing the idea of A Better Place ("What if my request for a better piece of cake is mistaken for the big curtain call?" she enjoyed asking, using her longstanding reign over confections to spark discussion) and having no Needs or Wants ("I will probably miss cake, though..."), but even then the girl who had grown older wondered, again (and sometimes still), what was so damn lucky about living - actually living - when it came to the end of life. What's so lucky, the woman would ask the Something and/or Someone Else, about laying awake nights wondering if the lives she had dreamed of and desired that were then taken away from her before she got to hold them would know her, truly know her, when she got to where they were? What's so lucky about having friends who must call in the brand new (or as some would say, ungodly) hours of the day not to say hello, but to deliver tragedy? What is so amazing about a power that seems so incomprehensible yet can also snap your mortal coil AND rain on your ultimate parade?

“And what if I haven’t been good enough while I’ve been here to deserve a spot there?” the girl who had grown older would ask, constantly in her head, sometimes out loud.

"What if I waited too long?"

"What if chose the answers I wanted to hear rather than the ones given to me?"

"What if I haven't done things right while I'm here?"

"What if there really isn't anything after this?"

And as was sometimes the case, the girl who had grown older, the one who liked to ask questions and married a man who could not sing, who liked to eat cake and look to the sky for the forecast, who was sometimes forced to acknowledge she didn't yet know as much as she thought, would hear a voice she could believe in.

"What if I had red-headed twins and the oven door fell on one of them?" the grandfather would ask the girl when it would all become too much, and the girl couldn't quite imagine how that could be anything other than a black cloud, but the memory of the moment would make her smile.

And she figured if she got there, on a rainy day or any other, she'd indeed be quite lucky.

Sometimes, I plunge deep beneath their feet. As they breathe in and out, I sneak underneath. I can do that; I am sneaky. Beneath their toes, I feel fully every bit of what covers them.

Their chests rise and fall, sometimes together but most of the time, in their own time. She moves one knee up so her feet can’t touch: it won’t last long. Soon enough, she’ll find her soles together. They’ll cuddle like they want to do, make that swish-swish-swish sound like they always do, which is the rhythm of her sleep and the way she dives down to dreaming. He’ll move in the night like Gulliver unpinned. More lurching and loud, but he’ll sigh sometimes like a kitten, like a lamb, all breath and no boom.

I will hover there, beneath their toes. I will lay there, untouched and unknown.

There isn’t much difference between my sneaking in to them and the rest of where I am. Everything I am is like this: just sweet sounds and fleshy warmth. Sometimes when I dive down, I wish I could tap tap tap a secret code on their feet to tell them what I know.
I don’t miss their breathing, but I like it; I don’t miss them, but I like them.

I don’t have hands to touch them. I don’t have words to speak. I just listen, which I can do, and so I listen when they sleep. I go deep under to where they go and I go with them. I lie beneath their feet in the middle of their nights and wait until the next day comes. Because it comes for them.

They will wake. They won’t want to, but they will. He will roll out like a log in shorts and she will pull the blanket to her nose and tuck one foot into the other: swish-swish-swish.

Soon, I will start to disappear like I do; I will crumble gently, fall into pieces and little bits, and I will go away.

It’s okay: they needed to let me go.

Before now, when I heard them breathing, it became the in and out of my own breathing. When she moved her knee up, I knew it as if it were my own knee. When he lumbered over, I felt it. Sometimes I think I miss that, but mostly, I don’t.

I don’t. I don’t miss it.