“Julia! It’s me, Mike! And there’s stuff here that’ll go bad. C’mon, let me in.”
“It will survive until you get into your truck and I watch you drive away,” I say and I push the money under the door. “I’m going to the window now to watch you leave.”
“Nutcase,” I hear him mutter, and I think I’d be well advised to order my groceries from somewhere else in the future.
“Tell Junior he can’t get to me,” I shriek. “I won’t let him. He had his shot at killing me and it won’t come around again. Fuck you, Mike and tell Junior fuck him too!”
I hear the front door slam and I run to the window but despite what I have said, I can’t see the truck at all.
I go back to the front door and I listen but I can’t hear anything but just to be safe, I don’t open the door until halfway through the next day. My fresh produce has wilted and my frozen pizzas have spoiled but I don’t care. I throw it out and place a new order with another company.
More fast-forwarding. More TV. More groceries from the new place and finally, another bath, hair wash, and fresh clothes. I have run out of couture, and I’m wearing generic navy blue yoga sweatpants that have seen better days and a pink t-shirt that I should have thrown in the trash.
I am asleep on the sofa and nothing out of the ordinary is happening but I suddenly slow the Rewind down.
“I have a bad feeling,” I say to Cedar.
I watch closely. I am fast asleep, with a fleece throw pulled up to my chin, and my feet are sticking out from under the blanket. I watch the front door open. “But how?” I ask Cedar. “I got the locks changed.”
“It’s not that hard to get in to a place,” Cedar says quietly “and anyone could climb up those stairs while you had the TV on, and you wouldn’t have heard.”
My front door swings open. The room is brightly lit, with the streetlights shining in. I am amazed I could sleep at all with so much light.
Two men slide inside my apartment. They approach the sofa, one on each side of the coffee table. One man stands at my head and the other is at my feet. They look at each other, exchange a nod and swoop. The one man covers my mouth while the other sits on my legs, grabs my arms and holds me down. I watch myself wake and register the terrible danger. I am unable to move, pinned down and wide-eyed like a terrified cat and I am making mewling sounds.
Of course it is Junior who has his hand over my mouth. “Nice to see you, Julia,” he says softly.
The man pinning my arms down with his knees, reaches for a bag, digs out a roll of duct tape and tears off a large strip. Junior grabs me by my hair, lifts up my head and removes his hand and the man slaps the duct tape onto my mouth, pressing down for good measure. He gets up and flips me over as easily as if he is flipping sofa cushions, looking for spare change. He ties my hands tightly behind my back and he binds my ankles.
He props me up into a sitting position and Junior sits down in front of me on the coffee table, and he stares at me for a while without saying anything.
“Such a bitch,” he says and he almost sounds affectionate and he runs a finger up my cheek. “Such a god-almighty bitch. How powerful are you now, bitch?”
The other man doesn’t say anything. I don’t recognize him. He is tall and burly, with a massive barrel chest.
I can’t move and my heart is going to explode. Thud, thud, thud, it’s like the pounding hooves at the Kentucky Derby and I struggle to hear what Junior is saying.
“I’m going to kill you, bitch,” he says. “And I’m going to take my time doing it. I’m not here. I’m with my buddies in Vegas. We’re playing poker in a private room as we speak, so in case you’re thinking there’ll be any kind of justice for you, dream on. But the whole world will know that you got what was coming to you. Or maybe they won’t know. I don’t care. I’ll know.”
And then he punches me, and he breaks my nose and I hear it crack and my eyes fill with tears and blood pours down my face. It’s hard to breathe, with the duct tape covering my mouth, and I am suffocating. My face feels as if it has been stung by a hundred bees.
“Not so pretty now,” he says. “I’m going to break every bone in your body, Julia, every fucking bone, and I’m going to smash your face in so hard that no one will be sure it’s even you.”
He gets up and pulls the coffee table to one side. He nods at the man who grabs me and throws me on the floor. I’m on my back and Junior sits on top of me. He is wearing black gloves and he pulls them tighter on his hands and he smiles at me. He takes aim and punches my right cheekbone and I hear a terrible crunch and the pain is worse than I could have imagined. I wish I could pass out but I am a long way from that.
And then he proceeds to do exactly what he said he would do. He breaks every bone in my body. I am powerless to do anything except watch, while he slowly works me over. He takes his time. He even stops to drink a bottle of water that he pulls out of the bag.
The other man just stands there, watching. He doesn’t say or do anything.
“I’m getting tired,” Junior jokes at one point, and he stands up, his chest heaving. “I’m getting a good workout! Won’t need to go to the gym today!” He kicks my ribs and brings his foot down hard on my stomach.
“I can’t watch any more,” I say to Cedar. “I can’t.”
The Rewind jumps forward and I am a tangled, bloody heap, curled up on my side. My face is a mashed pulp of blood and bone, and my body is broken.
“Time to go,” Junior says. “We don’t want anyone to see us.”
He and the man are wearing toques and although it is still dark outside, they put on wraparound sunglasses that make them unrecognizable.
“Those fucking stairs are noisy,” the man says. It is the first thing I have heard him say and his voice is whiny and high-pitched.
“Yeah. Well, nothing we can do about that except be quick. Come on.”
Junior grabs the bag and they walk out, closing the door behind them.
“But who will find me?” I ask Cedar in a small voice. “No one will find me.”
The Rewind speeds up and the morning light pours into the room. And no one comes. Why would they? Who would come? I have no one. I am going to die in that room, die by my own hand because I have no friends and no one cares about me. There will be no rescue in sight and the only person I can blame is myself.
But then the Rewind slows down. There is someone at the door. Mike, the grocery man. I had thought Junior had sent him to kill me but now, there he is, at my door.
“She hasn’t ordered groceries in too long,” he sounds worried. “And last time I was here, she sounded scared, like she thought someone was trying to kill her. Like she thought that guy who tried to strangle her was back. I just want to check, make sure she’s alright, okay?”
He bangs his fist on the door and I see that he is there with Carlos and Marcello. I pray that Carlos will open the door.
“Come on,” Mike begs him. “Open it. And if she’s inside and yells at us, so what? Come on.”
Marcello grabs the keys from his grandfather and opens the door and even from where they are standing, they can see me on the floor, a bloodied mess with my hands and feet still bound.
“Holy Christ,” Mike says and he rushes in and puts a finger to my neck. “She’s alive but I don’t know … call 911.”
Marcello is already talking into a phone. Carlos just stands there, unable to speak or move.
“Julia?” Mike speaks softly to me. “We’re here, okay? Stay very still, help is coming.”
“What are the odds,” I say to Cedar, “that Mike would come? Maybe two percent?”
“Believe it or not,” Cedar replies, “there is such a thing as Divine Intervention.”
We watch the paramedics arrive and load me up and take me down the stairs on a stretcher, which in itself, is no easy feat. We watch them put me in an a
mbulance and we watch Carlos and Mike and Marcello stand on the sidewalk after I am taken away.
Then the Rewind fades to black and that’s it. Gingerly, I sit up.
“Did I die? Is that why I’m here? I died?” I touch my face with my fingers and run my hands along my arms, down my legs, over my torso. “He hurt me so badly. He broke me with such deliberation.” I am relieved to feel myself in one piece, smooth, uncut, unbruised, unbroken.
“I can’t tell you any more,” Cedar says. “Not at this point anyway. How does all of this make you feel?”
Ordinarily, a question like that would have resulted in me shouting profanities at him but I am numb, shocked. “He hated me so much,” I say. “He hated me so much.”
“He did,” Cedar agrees.
There doesn’t seem like there is anything left to say and I get up.
“See you tomorrow,” I say and he nods.
Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness.
“Go and suck an egg,” I tell the sign and I go and try to find the others, and if I can’t, I hope that one of them will come and get me.
29. EARTH IS AN OPTION
“WE WANT TO GO BACK to Earth,” Isabelle says and we look at her.
Tracey sighs. “Oh, what love does to your brain. Izzy, we is here, baby, because we is dead. Get with the program, girl, okay? I know you and Eno-licious here are in the raptures of true romance but we don’t get to go back.”
“And you, baby, is wrong,” Eno drawls. His long legs are stretched out in front of him and he is chewing on a toothpick.
I had found them all in the cafeteria, even Grace was there. “What do you mean?” Grace asks, leaning forward.
I have an image of Grace dropping back down to Earth, walking up the garden path, knocking on the front door and saying, “Hey honey, I’m home.” I can’t see Hope and Richard being too delighted to see her.
“You don’t go back as you,” Eno says. “You can go back as someone like you.”
“Reincarnation?”
“Nope. It’s still you but you’re in a new body, with a new name. It’s you, but you’re a different person.”
“And you know this how?” Agnes asks.
Eno shrugs. “I was a detective in the real world. So I did some detecting here.”
“We want to go back and get married,” Isabelle says. “And have babies and be happy.”
“Oh, sweetie,” Grace says and she reaches over and pats Isabelle on the hand. “You poor thing. We all struggle with being here, we do. But we know we can’t have what we want, that’s just the reality.”
“I’ve called a meeting of the Board of Regulators,” Eno says. “They’ll tell us what’s real and what’s not.”
“And who are the Board of Regulators when they’re home?” Tracey asks, her eyes narrowed.
Eno shrugs. “I know Cedar’s one of them. I asked him to set up the meeting.”
“I don’t want to go back,” Tracey says. “I don’t want to stay here, making cookies forever, but I don’t want to go back.”
“Me neither,” Jaimie says and we look at him in surprise.
“I would have thought you’d leap at the chance,” I say. “A pretty boy like you, you’d have the world at your feet.”
“I was supposed to die when I did,” Jaimie says. “And now I’m supposed to be here and when it’s time, I’ll go to the next place. It is what it is.”
“It is what it is for you, bro,” Eno says high-fiving him. “But me and Izzy, we want our shot at it. We want babies and diapers and cash flow problems and all that shit. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy with it is what it is until I met Izzy. Then I saw what my life could and should have been and I need to do it. We both need to do it.”
“I don’t want to go back either,” Agnes says. “I am worried about Auntie Miriam and I want her to be safe but I want to go on and find Josh. I know he’s somewhere. My Earth life was only good because of him. I wouldn’t want it without Josh.”
“Love is all you need,” Tracey is bitter. “What’s wrong with me? I don’t love my husband and my kids, is that what you’re all saying?”
“No one is saying that, Tracey,” I tell her. “I want to go back too,” I add, “and I don’t have anybody.”
“Then why?”
“Because it was my life and I want it back. Junior had no right to take it. I’d like to find my niece. I’d like to listen to music and dance and walk on real grass with bare feet, and get a dog and feel the hot sunshine on my face and swim in lakes and learn to rollerblade and take walks in the snow in winter and smell the leaves in fall. I want it back. I’d do it better, I would.”
I don’t mention that I’d also track down Junior, that fucker, and kill the shit out of him. Never mind dogs and sunshine, I want to go back to kill Junior, pure and simple. Wait, I correct myself. First, I’d make him suffer and then I’d kill him.
“All that live in the moment crap,” Tracey is scornful.
“Hey, you have your opinions, I have mine,” I say. “Eno, when does this Board meet?”
“Don’t know. We’re waiting for the call so we can plead our case. I’ve got my whole speech ready,” he says and he looks earnest and is about to launch into his speech when Jaimie holds up a hand.
“Spare us,” Jaimie says. “I can imagine. Grace, would you go back?”
She shakes her head. “No. For a moment, I thought it might be a good idea but no, going back is not for me. I’d like to get my husband to stop being a drug addict so my kids are safe but other than that, there’s nothing I’d want to do on Earth. I suffered too much there. Everything hurt me. No, I wouldn’t go back. Samia, would you?”
“I don’t know,” Samia replies softly. “I thought I would want to, but now that there’s some kind of option, I don’t know. I feel like I should want to go back but it wouldn’t feel right for me. I agree with Jaimie. It was my time to go, as much as it hurt my parents. But I am very happy for both of you,” she says to Isabelle and Eno. “It will be wonderful for you.”
“If they say yes. I’m so afraid they will say no,” Isabelle says, and Eno strokes her back.
“Don’t worry, baby,” he said. “Here or there, they’ll never tear us apart.”
“Isn’t that a song?” Tracey asks. “Don’t you have any original lyrics, Eno?”
“Be your bitter self, Mamacita,” Eno says without rancour. “Isabelle and me choose happiness.”
“Yeah? Well good for you. I’m going to bake more cookies for you to stuff into your fat face.” Tracey gets up and leaves and Samia follows her.
“If you go back, do you get to say goodbye to us or do you just vanish?” I ask. “How will we know?”
“I don’t know that either,” Eno admits. “I guess we will see what we will see.”
We sit there in silence, each lost in our own thoughts until a voice interrupts us.
“Greetings campers!” It is Beatrice, sounding uncharacteristically chirpy. “Eno and Isabelle, follow me, please.”
Isabelle looks terrified and even Eno looked nervous. They stand up and Isabelle looks like she’s about to faint.
“Julia,” she looks at me pleadingly. “Please come with us. You know how to do this stuff, make presentations to directors. We need you. You know why we want to do this and you’ll know how to say it best.”
“Yeah, Julia,” Eno says. “Making sense to a bunch of higher ups isn’t what I do best. And you know what this means to us. Izzy’s right, you’ll say it better than we can.”
I look at Beatrice. I admit I am curious about the process and I’d love to find out what happens. But more than that, I want this for Isabelle and Eno.
“Can I come?” I ask Beatrice and she nods. “If it makes these little chickies feel better, then sure.”
“See you later, amigos,” Eno says and he, Is
abelle and I follow Beatrice. She leads us to a side door we hadn’t noticed was there.
“Exciting,” I hear Agnes says idly. “I’m getting more tea.”
30. FLYING COWS AND BOARD OF REGULATORS
THE BOARD OF REGULATORS conduct their meetings in an underground bunker. Eno, Isabelle, and I follow Beatrice to an elevator with stainless steel doors and Beatrice pushes the only button with a downward-facing arrow. “You sure we’re not going to Hell just because we asked to go back?” Eno jokes, but he is holding Isabelle tightly and they are both trembling.
“Relax,” Beatrice says and she lights a cigarette.
The elevator arrives and we step in. There are two rows of blue-lit arrows, one row pointing up, the other pointing down. Beatrice presses the third downward-facing arrow and it flashes a neon green. The walls in the elevator are mirrored and our apprehension is evident in all of our reflections.
“What’s on the top floors?” Eno asks.
“None of your beeswax,” Beatrice says, exhaling a cloud of smoke.
“Yo, is that like real live elevator music?” Eno chatters.
“It’s supposed to calm you down,” Beatrice says pointedly.
“There are no floors being shown,” Eno says studying the elevator panel. “How will the arrow know when we will get there?”
“Because it will stop,” Beatrice says. “You claustrophobic, Eno?”
“I don’t care for being stuck in a box, I will admit to that. And why, in a place of such whiteness, is this elevator so dark? What’s with this mood lighting?”
He’s got a point. The elevator is as dark as an after-hours booze can. I focus on the bright green button and fold my arms across my chest.
“Eno,” Beatrice says, “have mercy and shut the fuck up. You are hurting my ears. And here’s a tip, Cedar’s on the Board, no cussing.”
“Got it,” Eno says and he falls silent and the elevator’s seventies’ jazz hums quietly and we stand there, descending forever but seemingly going nowhere. Isabelle’s eyes are wide and she’s clinging to Eno like a barnacle.
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