No Fury Like That

by Lisa de Nikolits

  “I wondered when this was going to happen,” I hear Agnes sigh. “Stay where you are. I’m going to get a Soother. You need help. Don’t move.”

  As if I could. I lean against the wall, and the finery of my ill-chosen garments feels stiff and prickly against my skin. At least the wall is cool and solid and I tell myself that as long as there are cool, solid walls, everything will be fine. I slide down to the floor and rest my head on my knees.

  “Julia?” Agnes returns. “This is Intruiga. She’s a Soother.”

  I open my eyes slightly and see an angel wearing a white hijab. She’s also wearing an old-fashioned all-white nun’s habit.

  She takes my hand and strokes my arm lightly and the bones in my body melt. I hate arbitrary body contact but Intruiga’s touch renders me helpless. She smells of oranges and tangerines, lavender and vanilla.

  “You smell wonderful,” I say, and my voice sounds oddly throaty.

  “Cocoa bean base,” she murmurs.

  Her eyes are so dark they’re nearly black, and I wonder if she’s a witch of some kind.

  She blows lightly on my arm and small currents of cool air caress my skin and I am incredibly aroused, entirely embraced, and utterly loved. I couldn’t move even if I wanted to, but I don’t want to. All I want is to sit still forever, and have this woman blow softly on my skin.

  After too short a time, Intruiga stands up and she pulls me to my feet.

  “You’ll be fine,” she says with a small smile and she raises my wrist to my nose. She has transferred her fragrance to me.

  “Beautiful,” I whisper.

  “It will help you,” she tells me and she slowly lowers my hand, running her thumb down my skin as she does so.

  “Well,” I say, at a loss to express everything I am feeling, “thank you.”

  Intruiga turns and walks a few feet down the corridor, and then she vanishes. She doesn’t turn into a doorway, she simply evaporates.

  “Wow,” I say to Agnes. “That felt amazing. But where did she go?”

  “Too hard to explain but yeah, she’s good. Let’s move on.”

  I nod and gather up the skirts of my gown, distracted once more by those traitor feet. There’s a nail bar I go to every two weeks, mani/pedi, regular as clockwork. The mere thought of chipped nail polish is intolerable. God knows I have fired interns for arriving at work with less than perfect nails. A prospective copywriter showed up for an interview with an outdated French manicure and talon-length nails and I told her right there and then that if she did that sort of thing, how on earth could she expect to make it in the big leagues? She left weeping, the stupid girl, when she should have thanked me for giving her valuable advice. And, if she had admitted that her manicure was ridiculous, there might have been a chance for her but instead she melted into tears and that was when I really lost my patience. Who comes to an interview and cries? No one with any kind of backbone.

  I continue to follow Agnes down the endless hallway, past countless closed doors but there is something I have to know.

  “Wait,” I call out and she stops right where she is, with her back to me, and I can see her heave a great sigh.

  “Tell me where we are,” I say. “I won’t freak out. Just tell me what’s going on here.”

  Agnes turns to face me. “This is Purgatory and you are dead,” she says matter-of-factly. “We all are. Everyone here is in different stages of the process. I don’t know where you are on the scale of things or how fast you’ll move through. And don’t ask me what comes next, because I’ve got no idea. None of us knows. And none of us knows what we have to do to get out of here. I don’t have those answers.”

  “How did I die?”

  “I don’t know that, either. You’ll figure it out, or you won’t. There are people here who can help you with that, and I’ll introduce you to them.”

  “I’m really dead,” I say, and the Intruiga-infused calm leaves me. I am dizzy and I lean against the wall. I sink down onto my haunches.

  “I’m not dead,” I tell Agnes, and I close my eyes. “I can feel things physically, therefore, I am extremely undead.”

  She doesn’t reply. From the sounds of it, she sits down next to me. I hear her light a cigarette and the smoke wafts towards me.

  “Give me one,” I say, and I sit up and hold out my hand.

  She hands over the pack and I light up, inhaling deeply. The intoxicating head rush floods my brain and lungs, and I exhale slowly. Clarity returns, panic subsides.

  “Thank god for smoking,” I say, “I love it. I have since I was twelve.”

  “Me too,” Agnes says and it seems we have found common ground.

  “Fact,” I say, inhaling deeply, “if we were dead, we wouldn’t be smoking or enjoying it.”

  “I’m not going to argue with you,” Agnes says. “That’s not my job description. I’m here to intro you, that’s it, and then you have to deal with it.”

  “Do you get to leave here once you’ve done your job with me?”

  “Hell no. It’s not that easy. You’ll see. I got promoted because I made progress and I accepted the job for the perks. More privileges. But none of it means shit to me. I don’t care about anything.”

  “I see.” I take another drag. Agnes is beginning to bore me. “Why don’t we continue? I’ll try to stop interrupting you and let you do your job.”

  She stands up. “The next stop on our guided tour of Purgatorial Delights is the Rest Room.”

  “We still use the washrooms even though we’re dead?’

  “We do. But the washrooms are not the Rest Rooms. The Rest Rooms are where you go to rest, like really, rest.”

  We finish our cigarettes and grind the butts into white enamel sand buckets that hang from the walls. I wonder what Purgatory has to offer next.

  4. CANTEEN, REST ROOMS, ABLUTION BLOCKS

  AGNES OPENS A RANDOM DOOR and I follow her, but I can’t see a thing. It’s as dark as a black sky reserve that a boyfriend took me to so we could make out under a meteor shower. Only there are no meteors here, only dense blackness.

  “A black hole?” I joke in a whisper.

  “Shh.” She pulls me to one side. “You can’t talk in here. Follow me, okay?”

  I nod and she leads me to a second door, which is black and as thick as a bank vault. She touches a tiny glowing amber button and the door swings outwards without making a sound. We step inside the room and the door closes behind us, equally silently.

  I can see even less inside the dark room than I had in the preceding foyer. I hug my arms to my chest, overwhelmed by the cloth of darkness enfolding me. I’m about to turn and start pounding on the door to be let out, when my eyes start distinguishing tiny lights. I see orange fireflies, like cigarette cherries dotting the night.

  Agnes takes my hand, which I do not expect, and I jump with surprise, and nearly scream. She quickly guides my fingers to a switch near one of the lights. I flick the button and a warm nightlight, shaped like a Halloween pumpkin, emits a reassuring warmth. The colour isn’t exactly orange—it’s richer and softer, more like the saffron of a Buddhist monk’s robes, and I am soothed by its presence. I am about to ask Agnes about the lights and she must sense it, because she shakes her head, holds a finger to her lips and points to a curtain which she pulls around us, much like a hospital enclosure. The curtain slots into place with a magnetic grip and I can’t say how it happens, but an even more solid silence settles in the small space. My eyes adjust further and I see an oval-shaped king-sized bed. The sheets, comforter, and pillows are all black and I am reminded of a discussion I had with my annoying art director who was trying to explain the difference between rich black and a single colour black.

  “If you mix black with cyan and magenta and some yellow,” he said, showing me the swatches on his computer screen, “you get a rich black. Look at how much deeper it is�
�it’s got layers to it, like liquid velvet.”

  I saw exactly what he meant but I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of having been able to teach me anything, so I nodded and walked off as if he had been wasting my time.

  But this bed linen is a deep, rich black and I want to touch it, stroke it.

  I take a step closer to the bed and Agnes tugs me down with her. I lie back on what feels like velvet and immediately I am weightless, floating on a beautiful sea of buoyant warmth. My worries, my fears, and my anger are a distant memory. Agnes seems content too.

  I drift peacefully until the curtain soundlessly opens. Drat. Agnes flicks a switch and the pumpkin glows again, and we can see well enough to find our way out of the room. We walk through the dark foyer and out into the startlingly white hallway and I blink, trying to adjust to the snowy glare.

  “You can see why it’s called the Rest Room,” Agnes says. “You go there when you need a time-out. Don’t worry about making the beds; it’s done after you leave. You’re allowed to stay for four hours max, and then the curtains open like they did now, and you have to leave or you get bounced. I wish I could stay in there all the time.”

  “It was amazing,” I admit. “Why only four hours?”

  “Because they know we’d never leave if they didn’t give us rules. I don’t know why it’s four instead of two or eight or six. I guess they figured four is the perfect amount of time to keep us constantly in limbo. Haha, in limbo in Purgatory!” Her own joke cracks her up, but I am not amused. My fears, worries, and anger are back and it’s clear that the soothing effects of the Rest Room have no staying power.

  “Who are ‘they’?”

  “The Regulators.”

  I decide to let that slide for the moment.

  “Smoke break?” I ask, and she hands me the pack.

  We light up. “We get endless cigarettes?” I ask, and she shakes her head.

  “Privileges. You’ve got to earn them.”

  Rules. Regulators. Four-hour rest sessions. Privileges. It’s all so complicated. “What’s next?” I ask.

  “The Canteen,” she says. “But we all call it the caf.”

  We finish our cigarettes in silence and I take the time to look around. I notice skylights high up in the warehouse ceilings, skylights that show patches of that eerie, bold blue. The swell of a green hillside and more of the unchanging blue is visible through a window at the end of the hallway.

  “Does it ever rain?” I ask, and Agnes shakes her head.

  “It’s always like this. There is a Rain Room though.”

  “Of course there is,” I say, and I laugh although I don’t think anything is even remotely amusing. “Let me ask you this. None of the doors have any signs on them. How will I know which one is which one?”

  “It’s a bit tricky at first,” she admits. “They should have come up with a system. Eventually, you just know what’s where, but it does take a while.”

  Attention, please! May I have your attention, please? An airport announcer speaks loudly through the intercom and I jump.

  “What the fuck?” I look around.

  “No one knows,” Agnes says helpfully. “It just says that now and then. None of us knows who says it or why. Come on, the Canteen, which, if you ask me, should be called the Food Room, in keeping with all the other Rooms. But no, and that’s Purgatory for you.”

  Attention, please! May I have your attention, please? The disembodied voice echoes its command.

  Agnes ignores it and opens another unmarked door and we enter a sprawling, Ikea-style cafeteria. A seaside mural flanks one wall, with a palm tree on an airbrushed, eggshell-coloured beach, and two red Adirondack chairs face a burning sunset.

  On the other side of the room, windows showcase the rolling St. Paddy’s Day green hills with deep, sloping valleys carpeted in that relentless, verdant, springy clover.

  Something occurs to me and I walk over to the windows.

  “Where’s the sun?” I ask Agnes. “And where are the shadows? Look, there are clouds but they cast no shadows. That’s unnatural.”

  Agnes finds this hilarious. “That’s unnatural? Of all the bat shit crazy crap in here, that’s what you find unnatural?” She can’t stop laughing and I think of a thousand terrible things to say to her but I manage not to say any of them. I walk around, inspecting the cafeteria.

  Unsurprisingly, the tables are white, with white-framed foldout chairs with three white wooden slats for seats and a single slat to support one’s back.

  I test one and while it is not exactly a Herman Miller, it isn’t terrible either.

  My fury simmers down and I rejoin Agnes.

  “Where’s the menu?” I ask, and Agnes points to a Kleenex-sized box on the table, which I had mistaken for a stainless steel napkin dispenser. But it is a computer of sorts, with a continuously scrolling menu. I pull it towards me and study it.

  There are pasta dishes, with meatballs and vegetarian options. There are stews, chicken dishes, pizza, sandwiches, fruit, desserts, casseroles, muffins, cookies, sweet buns, yoghurt, cheese platters, fish dishes, ribs, burgers, hot dogs, French fries, and baked potatoes. Soups and salads. There are waffles and pancakes and crêpes, with all kinds of toppings. There are scrambled eggs, fried eggs, bacon, hash browns, the works. Ice cream, cakes, scones, and pastries. There are stir-fries and burritos and then there are dishes classified by nationality; Indian, Thai, Mexican, Japanese and Jamaican. The list is endless and I get tired of scrolling through the options.

  “There’s so much to choose from,” I say, but Agnes shakes her head.

  “Not really, not once you’ve done the loop a dozen times. Then it all starts to taste the same.”

  “How do you order? The menu isn’t organized numerically or alphabetically or by food groupings. I don’t get it.”

  “Another one of the joys of Purgatory is the inconsistency with things like that. Things can be so random, but you’ll get used to it.” She scoots around so she’s sitting next to me. “Here’s how you search for something.” She shows me on the screen. “Then you make a note of the number. For example, the code for macaroni and cheese is #3641. You punch it in here,” she points to the screen, “and when you hear a wind chime, you grab a tray from over there, go to the microwave number on the screen, and there it is. Very simple really. You put your dirty plates in that bin, and your trays on that console and that’s it. Most of us who have been here for a while don’t seem to get hungry. Eating is more of a habit than anything, or just something to do when you’re bored, but there are people who eat for comfort. If you come here often, you’ll see a lot of regulars.”

  “And it’s never dark in here and the view never changes?”

  “It’s never dark and the view never changes.” Agnes affirms and she sounds tired.

  “How long have you been here?” I ask. “I know you said something about it before, but I don’t remember.”

  “I don’t know. We don’t have clocks or watches or calendars or anything. It’s endless really.”

  I don’t know what to make of that, or what to say. By all rights, I should be panicking, after all, this is really fucked up, but I have moved from hysteria to numbness.

  “How many people are here?” I ask. The cafeteria is deserted and there is no sign of the crowd I saw when I first arrived.

  Agnes shrugs. “Hard to say. You’ll see more people as time goes on. It’s weird that way. It’s like people know to leave you alone until you get settled and then it gets busy and you wonder where everybody came from.”

  “And who are the Regulators?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. We never see them. They enforce things, but they never do anything in person. It’s like you suddenly just know the new rule is here.”

  “Is the food any good?” I ask.

  “Pretty good. We’ll get a test d
ish for you. What’s your favourite thing?”

  “I’m the furtherest thing from hungry,” I comment. “But fine, let’s test. I’ll have a platter of nigiri and a bottle of Moët & Chandon Don Pérignon White Gold champagne.”

  “Nice try,” Agnes says. “No drugs or alcohol in Purgatory. We’d all be off our faces all the time. But sushi, yes.”

  She punches in a number and, in short order, I have a large platter of saki nigiri in front of me. I want to find fault with it but it’s the best sushi I have ever eaten. For some reason, this infuriates me. I refuse to finish it and I push the plate aside. Agnes gets up and deposits it in the console she pointed out.

  My double-layer outfit is beginning to chafe under my arms and I yank at the ball gown to try to loosen it. I am about to tell Agnes that we need to return the Dior when the doors to the caf open and a group of women enters, identically dressed in white. “The bowling ladies,” Agnes explains. The group looks like they’ve stepped off the pages of a bowling catalogue with their pristine outfits, from the hats down to the shoes.

  “They’re regulars,” Agnes says. “There’s a Bowling Room for them and they pretty much live there unless they’re in here. I’ve never seen a bowling lady anywhere by herself. They always travel together. They died together, maybe that’s why. Their bus went off the side of a mountain when they were on a tour in Italy and none of them wants to move on. They’ve been here for longer than me, I know that much.”

  I watch the bowling ladies line up. They order crustless cucumber sandwiches, Petit Fours, Bavarian chocolate cake, scones and crumpets with whipped cream and jam, and several pots of tea.

  “They look happy,” I say, and Agnes shakes her head.

  “They’ve made their peace with it. That’s not happy. I don’t want to be here forever but I can’t seem to move on. I try to, but I’m stuck and I don’t know why. I hope I don’t end up like them, here forever, not happy but just doing it. It’s true, though, you can get comfortable.”