My latte rises in my throat and I think I am going to throw up.
“Try not to think about it,” Samia advises me and she comes over and rubs my back. “Focus on your breathing.”
But that only makes it worse. “What kind of air is it anyway?” I say and even I can hear the hysteria in my voice.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake Julia, grow a pair,” Fat Tracey tells me and the shock of her words helps jolt me out of my fear and I swallow hard.
I am about to reply when I notice a strange thing happening to Grace. She is slowly dimming and fading, going ghostly right before my eyes. I lean towards her. “What’s happening?” I ask and I reach out to touch her, but I pull my hand back as if she might infect me with her transparency.
“It’s something only Grace does,” Agnes explains to me. “Please don’t freak out, Julia. It’s perfectly normal for Grace. As you can tell, Julia freaks very easily,” she informs the others.
“I do not.” I am defensive. “This is all very weird. Cut me some slack, will you?” By this time, Grace has vaporized and I stare at the empty spot where she had sat.
“Hang onto your hat, Julia,” Agnes advises me. “We about to bounce, which means our time is up and we’ll scatter who knows where in the building.”
“But…” I start to say when I am interrupted by Samia.
“See you tomorrow,” she sings out, and next thing, we all bounce away from one another; bouncing is, I think, an accurate term.
I end up back in the Makeup Room and I wonder if we are responsible for projecting where we want to be, once we are expelled from whatever room deems we are out of time.
With nothing better to do, I give myself a mani/pedi. I lie back on the sofa, with my feet up on the armrest, watching the polish dry, and I think about the group.
I wonder how Isabelle, Fat Tracey, and Grace died. I suppose I’ll find out eventually. I don’t even know how Agnes died, except that it was drug-related. Short, square-bodied Agnes with her gothic glam and her love of old-fashioned rose perfumes.
I am curious as to how the others fill their time. I had meant to ask them. One can only play girly in the Makeup Room for so long.
I wish I could remember more about my life than my job. Clearly, my job had meant a lot to me, along with all the stuff I was given. So much stuff. I think about my swag. And yet, I remember always wanting more. More, more, and more. When I wasn’t gathering freebies and having them couriered home, I was ordering stuff online. You name it, I bought it. Dresses, shoes, watches, sunglasses, belts, purses, coats, and hats. I maxed out my credit cards. I was an unstoppable spender.
I held a beauty sale at work once and I sold the remnants of a season’s haul to my colleagues. It was only the shit I didn’t want of course, leftover crap like Avon, Mary Kay, Pantene, and Dove, but my staff descended on it like famished vultures and picked it clean.
I made nearly two thousand dollars. I told everyone the money would go to charity but I kept it. I figured that if it wasn’t for me, none of those people would have got any of that shit at such good prices. So it was win-win. But instead of paying some of my debts with it, I ordered a pair of Givenchy sweatpants with a matching hoodie, and then I had to throw in an extra thousand bucks to cover the bill. I wonder what happened to my belongings after I died? I hadn’t made a will, because who thinks about that when they’re going to die? Do I have any family? Are they sharing my estate? I can’t remember a thing. And my husband? Martin? Where does he figure in all of this? My little blond god. Where is he? I am getting a pretty good picture of an über-cluttered apartment with no one in it but me. I can’t see it so much as feel it. But I know Martin exists. He’s a big part of my life.
It’s frustrating, not being able to figure it out. I wonder how much time I have left in the Makeup Room and where I should go after that.
“You’re boring as fuck,” I say out loud to Purgatory, but nothing happens. I’m not struck by lightning, nor does entertainment arrive on the arm of a butler bearing a silver tray. Sigh.
8. THERAPY, TAKE TWO
THE NEXT DAY, or what I assume to be the next day, I find myself outside Cedar’s door. The sign says: If only you would be altogether silent! For you, that would be wisdom.
Of course, I pay it no heed.
I knock on Cedar’s door.
“Come on in, Julia!” he cries, and that voice, oh, how that voice annoys me.
I open the door.
“Fuck,” I say, “fuck, fuckity fuck. And a fucking good—”I don’t even get to finish before I am booted out.
“Oh shit,” I say. I hadn’t meant to do that. Now I will have to wait a whole extra day until I can broach my realization and get the heck out of Dodge.
I walk past the sign. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I say, and I stomp off to try to find Agnes and the others.
9. FAT TRACEY BAKES
AFTER CEDAR BOUNCES ME, I wander the halls, hoping to bump into one of the gang. I open endless doors and annoy the train men again and I am once more eagerly welcomed by the knitting women.
I find the Puzzle Room, the Weight Lifting Room, the Needlepoint Room (these women aren’t nearly as friendly as the knitters), the Beading and Jewellery-making Room, the Sewing Room, and the Painting Room. There is even a Play-Doh Room for adults. Apparently you don’t need special credits for these activities. Purgatory could easily be mistaken for an endless amateur arts and crafts festival.
I open another door and the heavenly smell of baked goods wafts my way. Caramel mixed with butter, vanilla, and butterscotch. I close my eyes and inhale deeply.
“Julia,” an unenthusiastic voice greets me and I open my eyes.
“Hi,” I reply and I wander in, in spite of Fat Tracey’s lackluster greeting. I’m delighted to see someone I know. “How are you? Baking?”
She grunts in reply and sifts flour into a large china bowl. “You probably think a fat chick like me shouldn’t be baking,” she says, and she spoons large chunks of butter into the flour.
“I didn’t think that,” I say. “But I do wonder why you let people call you Fat Tracey, and not just Tracey.”
“I don’t let them. I make them say it. Because they fucking think it, don’t they?” She looks at me calmly, and there is knowledge and spite in those eyes that frighten me a little. “I’d rather people were honest. I make them say what they are thinking, even if they don’t want to admit it.”
I want to argue with her, but I know that if I do it will be the end of whatever fragile friendship we are forging. So, I sit down on a high stool and watch her work.
“It’s like Williams Sonoma in here,” I say. There are dozens of pots, pans, and utensils hanging from the walls and in the cabinets, with state-of-the-art, stainless steel eye-level ovens and granite counters, but Fat Tracey is alone in this cavernous place.
“I don’t eat it,” she says abruptly. “I make it for the cafeteria.”
I look up. “What?”
“I don’t eat what I bake, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I wasn’t,” I say. “I was thinking that’s it’s very peaceful in here.”
Fat Tracey gives a snort and loads a tray of cookies into an oven. She sets a timer and starts to clean up and I jump when another timer unexpectedly sounds. Fat Tracey removes a load of fresh bread rolls and puts them on the counter and my mouth waters. She tips one onto a napkin and hands it to me.
“Don’t burn yourself,” she says. “They’re piping hot when they come out.”
I tear the bun into bits and watch the steam rise. I blow on a tiny piece and pop it into my mouth.
“Fucking amazing,” I say, and she smiles.
“The miracle of butter, flour, and salt,” she replies, and she leans her elbows on the counter and rests her chin in her hands.
“I died in my car,” she tells me. “My uncle kill
ed himself in a car. He gassed himself while the family was at the movies. He was only nineteen. I always wondered why he chose the car and not some other way, but then one day I knew. One day I pulled into my garage and I sat there and I knew. I mean, he could have done it in so many other ways. He knew about drugs and things; he took quite a lot of them and he could easily have done it with heroin or something. I never knew if he sat in the back or the front seat and I always wondered. I chose the front seat, the driver’s seat. I like to be in control.”
I am not sure what to say. I break off more of my bread and let her continue.
“I drove home one day from work and it came to me—the comfort that a car can bring. I pulled into my garage and sat there, facing the wall, the wall of my life, and I looked around at my car. My car was always tidy and clean. I spent a fortune getting it detailed. My kids knew I’d beat the living shit out of them if they so much as wiped a dirty hand on the seats. They knew better.”
She stops and traces a pattern in the spilled flour on the countertop. She draws a heart with kisses under it. “My car knew all my hopes and dreams. It took me everywhere, to places where I had high hopes that came to nothing. My husband bought me the car, brand new, out of the box, and I loved it. I could talk to myself in that car, or cry or laugh or anything I felt like. I could be away from the world in my car; no kids, no husband, no job to let me down.”
She stops and again, I don’t want to say anything that might cut the thread of her story, so I remain silent and she continues.
“I loved my job,” she says. “It meant everything to me. I was the accounting girl at a law firm and I thought I mattered to them. I had been there for ten years and then I heard they had planned a brainstorming weekend away, to figure out the company’s future, a weekend at a really swanky hotel in the city and they didn’t invite me. It wasn’t like they forgot. They just didn’t see a reason for me to be there. Meanwhile I had helped build the business for ten fucking years.
“They broke my heart. And the main guy there, he was like a father to me, but I didn’t mean anything to him.
“I phoned my husband and I cried and he said ‘their loss’ or some stupid shit like that. He never understood what it meant to me, being part of something important. My sister said I should resign immediately but then what? I’d have less than I did before. But there was no way for them to make it right, not even after I told them I was upset. Yes, I told them, and they looked at me like they had no idea why I was making such a big fuss over such a small thing.
“I told them that I would never have done that to them, excluded them like that. I got home, and parked in my garage and that’s when I knew that I would kill myself in my car.”
She stops talking.
“Did you gas yourself?” I ask. Tactless, yes, but I always need to know the details. She shakes her head.
“I pretended to go to work the next day. I drove back when I knew no one was home. I had a bunch of oxys. There was never a problem getting pills in our family. I crushed them up and mixed them into some ice cream. I took them and I sat in in my car and waited. It didn’t hurt.”
“Did you leave a note?”
She nods. “I said I couldn’t live in a world that didn’t want me. I wrote a letter to each of my boys, telling them I was sorry, and saying I hoped they’d grow up to be good men, men who stuck to their word and didn’t hurt people with disloyalty.”
“How old were they?”
“Eight and twelve.”
“They weren’t reason enough to live?”
She frowns and shakes her head. “No one else is ever reason enough to live. I don’t think so, anyway. I was worried about the damage I would do to the kids by killing myself, but I wrote them that they had a choice. They could carry my shit for the rest of their lives or they could accept that my decision was my decision, and make their own lives have meaning. I said I couldn’t have given their lives meaning anyway, that was up to them.”
“What about your husband?”
She shrugs. “I knew he’d get over it. He loved me more than he should have, but that wasn’t my fault. And I cared more about being appreciated at work than anything else, and maybe that was my fault.”
The cookie oven beeps and Fat Tracey opens the door and pulls out the tray.
I eat more of my bread roll and think about what she has said. “Do you think suicide is genetic?” I ask, thinking about her brother.
She dumps the cookies into a large container and I don’t think she heard me but then she replies. “No idea. Lots of death in our family. Death is one of us for sure.” She laughs. “Come with me to the cafeteria to drop these off?”
I jump off my stool and pick up the bread rolls she has tucked into a basket. We leave the kitchen, and walk down a hallway. We turn right and then left, and she opens the door to the cafeteria. “I wish I could do that,” I say. “Know what’s behind each door.”
She smiles. “You will, you’re still a newbie, it takes time.”
“Do you miss your boys?” I ask.
“Yeah. That’s why I want Viewing privileges from that bitch, Beatrice. She’s got no right to keep me from my boys. She’s got no right, but she’s got the power and man, does she ever use and abuse it.”
She takes me behind the main counter and I get to see how the cafeteria works behind the scenes. There are large vending machines behind the dispensing windows and she shows me how to stack the bread rolls and cookies. Then she dusts off her hands. “Let’s go and find the others,” she says.
10. BEATRICE, THE ADMINISTRATOR
“I GOT KICKED OUT OF CEDAR’S again,” I tell the others. I expect them to find this funny but they don’t. Of course they don’t. “I didn’t mean to,” I acknowledge. “It’s like I had Tourette’s or something.”
“Cedar’s alright,” Grace comments. “You should try to work with him.”
“Why? So I can have a so-called realization? That clearly worked well for you. Look, you’re all still here.” They have no answer for that.
“What are everybody’s plans for the day?” Samia asks, brightly.
“Rest Room, Reading Room, Rest Room, cafeteria,” Fat Tracey says and she sounds grumpy. “I don’t know why you bother to ask us, Samia. It’s not like I can say oh, I’m going to Bermuda to lie on a beach or fuck it, let’s go to the mall and spend money we don’t have.”
“You are in a mood,” Grace says.
Fat Tracey nods her head in my direction. “I was telling her my life story and I guess it got to me a bit.”
“Oh, I am sorry, dear,” Grace says and Fat Tracey’s eyes fill with tears.
“I shouldn’t have left my boys,” she says and she starts keening quietly. “Julia said so, and she was right.”
They all turn to look at me.
“I never said that!” I am indignant. “I asked her if they couldn’t have been reason enough to make her stay.”
“Well, obviously not,” Isabelle is scornful. “That’s a stupid thing to say, don’t you think?” I feel like she just slapped me across the face.
How dare she speak to me like that? But what am I supposed to do, these are the only people I have in my life right now, and so instead of asking her just who the fuck she thinks she is talking to me like that, I simply nod. “I see that now,” I say meekly and the others accept this apology of sorts.
“I want my fucking Viewing time,” Fat Tracey says.
“Let’s go and see Beatrice again,” Grace suggests, and I am glad she does because any kind of activity will help pass the day, or whatever our strange allotments of time are.
“Enjoy your lattes first,” Fat Tracey says. “No point in wasting them.”
We sit and drink in silence. I notice that Agnes has gnawed away the perfect manicure I gave her and I sigh.
“You okay?” Samia asks.
“Still trying to get my bearings on things,” I say, and she nods sympathetically.
“It takes a while.”
“I don’t suppose there’s a Massage Room here?” I am wistful. “I wouldn’t mind a four hour massage, that’s for sure.”
“No, dear, no Massage Room,” Grace tells me.
“No movie theatre either,” Isabelle says.
Then they all chime in: “No animals, sauna, hot tub, swimming pool, beach, no real grass or thunderstorms—”
“There is the Rain Room,” Grace interrupts the long list, and I gather this isn’t the first conversation they’ve had that went like this.
“Yeah, it’s super depressing,” Samia comments, and it is unlike her to say anything negative.
“Why?” I ask. “Rain can be soothing.”
She shakes her head. “I’ll take you one day and you’ll see. The whole place is grey and gloomy.”
“There are chapels,” Grace says “and there’s even a cathedral. It’s enormous, like St. Peter’s in Rome.”
“I don’t see the point in praying,” Isabelle says and the others fall silent.
“We’re not supposed to talk about religion,” Agnes explains to me.
“Why not? That doesn’t make any sense. Of all the places, you’d think religion would be first on the list here.” I am baffled. “Are there priests and nuns?” I think about Intrigua with her hajib and nun’s outfit.
Agnes shakes her head. “Only Helpers like Cedar.”
“I find that weird,” I say, and I finally get the group to laugh.
“Ah, yeah, Purgatory is weird,” Samia agrees. “That might be the point.”
“If you’re all finished, let’s go and see the bitch,” Fat Tracey says. “But I’m not going to do the talking, someone else will have to.”
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