No Fury Like That

by Lisa de Nikolits

  “Destination arrival has been achieved!” A woman’s automated voice exclaims triumphantly and the doors open. We tumble out, gulping like dying fish except for Beatrice who looks at us with annoyance. “Such drama queens,” she says, flicking ash on the floor.

  “Why we couldn’t just bounce here, I’ve got no idea,” Eno says to Beatrice. “Just sayin’, that’s all.”

  We follow Beatrice down a wide hallway carpeted with thick white shag. The walls are covered with enormous prints of flying cows—black and white comic book cows with pink angel wings, and the cows are sailing through blue skies with happy smiles on their tremulous bovine faces.

  Eno, Isabelle, and I exchange a glance but we don’t say anything.

  We arrive at a double-wide set of frosted glass doors with a split black and white cow handle, with pink wings. Beatrice grabs the cow’s butt and leads us inside.

  The room is enormous. Acres of polished marble flooring sparkles, and the glass boardroom table in the centre of the room is the size of a football field. Wicker chairs around the table look like they’ve been imported from a tropical island, with high, round peacock-fan backs and brightly-coloured floral cushions.

  Beatrice leads us to face the Regulators and she takes her seat at the table, next to Cedar.

  Shirley the Driver is there and there are three people that Eno and Isabelle have never seen, but I recognize two of them, an elderly woman with a tufted snow-white billy-goat beard and a large Jamaican woman with yellow dreadlocks. There’s an enormously obese young man wearing paint-splattered overalls and thick glasses. His spray-on tan makes him look like a large tangerine. No one is smiling and even Shirley the Driver looks stern under her helmet of Margaret Thatcher hair.

  Beatrice selects a red apple from the bowl of fruit and apart from a loud crunch as she takes a bite, there is silence.

  Shirley the Driver hits a round silver desk bell.

  Attention, please! May I have your attention, please? The announcement sounds loudly and repeats its message and Eno, Isabelle, and I jump, startled.

  Eno and Isabelle are both shaking. I can feel them because I am leaning into Isabelle, more for my own comfort than hers. They are holding hands tightly and are practically glued to one another.

  “Eno, you requested this meeting,” Cedar says sitting back in his chair, his hands clasped in front of him. “Let’s hear what you’ve got to say.”

  I look at Eno, wondering if he wants me to jump in but he shakes his head.

  “We want to go back,” Eno says earnestly. “We’ve heard we can, we’re not sure how but however it works, we’d like to apply. But we want to go back together.”

  “Impossible,” Beatrice says chewing her apple in her inimitable spewy way.

  “What Beatrice means,” Cedar says removing a piece of mashed apple from his arm, “is that, in case neither of you had noticed, you’re both dead.”

  “Yeah but we heard you can go back,” Eno insists.

  “That’s the only thing you’ve got to go on?” Cedar asks. “And you called a honking big meeting, on the basis of an urban legend?”

  “I did some digging,” Eno says and he looks down. “Well, it wasn’t digging exactly but I asked someone in the know and they said it can be done. They said we can go back, not as ourselves exactly but as replica souls. We will have the same mannerisms, be the same age as we are now, come from the same kinds of families, have the same histories. Basically, we would be us but in new bodies with no memory of any of this shit. And things will be different, like I’ll be a cop but I won’t be an addict and Isabelle will work in admin and we’ll meet each other and fall in love and have kids and live the life like we were supposed to.”

  “Let’s say this was even remotely possible,” Cedar says, “you’d both still have the same appetites, the same hungers, and the same problems. What do you say to that?”

  “Yeah but lots of people have addict tendencies but they don’t end up being addicts. I’m not excusing us by blaming bad luck but we were unlucky. Lots of people play sex games, and not all of them choke on their own vomit because they’ve been tied up and left by some loser. And me, well, I take responsibility. No one put that pipe in my mouth except me but I wouldn’t do it again. And I would take this knowledge back with me, I know I would. I’m asking for a second chance for us. We don’t want to stay here. We don’t want to go to Heaven and we don’t deserve Hell. Please, give us a second chance.”

  “Isabelle?” Cedar asks.

  “Look,” Isabelle sounds desperate. “I’m not even thirty. I got mixed up in something because I was lonely. I was so lonely and now, I love Eno. All I want is to be with him and have some babies and be a family together. That’s not a lot to ask in the bigger scheme of things. Life isn’t easy, I know that. I know we’ll have our own difficulties but I never got to experience life the way that I really wanted to, and all we’re asking is to be given that chance.”

  “And what if, and it’s still a huge if, you were to go back and you were asked to put your lives in danger to help a friend who needed you and, in so doing, you may not live a long life but end up back here?” The Jamaican woman asks the question and I bristle with anger. How can anyone answer that?

  I look at Isabelle and Eno who are silent. “What about the children?” Isabelle asks. “Would they die too?”

  “No. And you wouldn’t both die,” Cedar says. “Actually, neither of you might. But there is a chance that one of you may.”

  “I’ll take that chance,” Isabelle says looking at Eno and he puts his arm around her.

  “Me too,” he says. “Me too. Come on, people, please, let us go back.”

  “We need to confer,” Cedar says. “If you do get to go back, we won’t alert you, you’ll just be back. You’ll bounce and the rest is up to you. If you’re still here, you’ll know you’re here, and that the answer is no. If the answer is no, we won’t respond to your calls for a meeting again. This was your one shot at the title, get it?”

  “This is no time for jokes, man,” Eno looks angry. “This is life or death. Don’t joke. You don’t know what it means to us.”

  “I think we do,” Cedar says. “Now, out you go.”

  Shirley the Driver pumps the nipple on the desk bell and the silvery ping sounds and Eno, Isabelle, and I find ourselves back in the cafeteria.

  31. ISABELLE, ENO, AND OPTIONS

  “IT DIDN’T GO WELL?” Jaimie asks, sounding sympathetic.

  Eno and Isabelle look pale and I collect a round of hot chocolates for us. I feel weirdly hungover. When I get back, Jaimie is still asking Eno questions and Eno is shrugging. “If we bounce to Earth, the answer is yes, but if we stay here, it’s no.”

  “When will you know?”

  “Don’t know that either.”

  “What was it like?”

  Eno, Isabelle, and I look at each other. “Do you remember?” Eno asks and we shake our heads.

  “There was a bell?” Isabelle says. “I don’t remember anything else.”

  “Me neither,” Eno says. “Freaky deaky, man.”

  “I think there were flying cows and apples,” I say. “But I can’t even remember who was there. Cedar and Beatrice were but I can’t remember the others. If there even were others.”

  “You want to go bowling?” Jaimie offers. “It will help pass the time.”

  Eno and Isabelle shake their heads. “Thanks, bro, but no,” Eno says and he tips back in his chair, his hands behind his head, and exchanges a worried look with Isabelle.

  “I’d go skiing in Vail,” I say dreamily. “I’d learn to ride a bike again, and I’d scuba dive and eat in five-star restaurants and try all different kinds of foods and I’d travel and see the world and read the classics—”

  “And you’d grow old and wrinkly and get all kinds of weird splotches and blotches and your breasts
would sag down by your knees, and you’d grow three chins and your arms would be flabby with loose skin that’s got nowhere to go,” Jaimie says.

  “That’s why you don’t want to go back,” I am triumphant. “Narcissus doesn’t want to get old.”

  “So, shoot me,” Jaimie is complacent. “I like how I am. Only the beautiful die young.”

  “Not true,” Agnes comments. “Look at me.”

  “You’d be very presentable if you didn’t have a hardware store attached to your face. And the demon punk eyeliner has to go. And ditch the colours in your hair. Laser off the tats, hook you up with a personal trainer, dress you up in something nice, and you’d be a hottie, I’m telling you.”

  “Screw you, Mom,” Agnes says, and she gives him the finger. “This is me.”

  “That’s my point,” Jaimie retorts. “It doesn’t have to be. This is just one version of you. There are countless versions of who we can be and what we can look like.”

  “Tell me about it,” Grace agrees, sounding none too happy.

  “I’m fine with—” Agnes starts to say, but she is interrupted.

  “It’s working!” Isabelle screams at the top of her lungs and Eno grabs her hand.

  “Stay with me, baby, stay with me,” he yells and next thing, they are both gone.

  “Fuck me,” Jaimie says staring at the two empty seats. “They did it. They really did it.”

  “May they live long and prosper,” Agnes says giving the Vulcan salute.

  Grace has tears in her eyes. “I hope they are happy,” she says. “Well, I’m fading, see you tomorrow.”

  “How does she do that?” Jaimie asks as the last of Grace shimmers and disappears.

  “She’s never said,” Agnes tells him. “I gotta go—got an appointment with my personal trainer, Tracey. She’s training me in cookie eating.”

  “An admirable pursuit,” Jaimie says. “I’ll come with you. Julia?”

  I shake my head. “No. I’ll stay here a while. I’m hoping Beatrice will come and find me with her Scrabble set. I’m sending out mental invitations.”

  Jaimie shudders. “Why you want to hang out with that battle-axe is beyond me,” he says. “She scares the living daylights out of me. Reminds me of my algebra teacher. ‘Stop being such an airy fairy, Jaimie,’ eughh!

  “Airy fairy!” Agnes is delighted. “Come on, my little fairy, let’s go.”

  “You do know I’m straight,” I hear Jaimie say as they walk off.

  “That’s what all the girls say,” Agnes replies.

  I am left alone and I look at the empty seats where Eno and Isabelle had been only moments before.

  And I too, like Grace, wish them every happiness in the world. In fact, I wish them the world, the whole complicated, topsy-turvy, difficult as hell, loveable as cherry-pie world.

  “Wishing you could go back too?” Beatrice answers my thoughts as she arrives, Scrabble in hand. “Come on, let’s go somewhere more comfortable. But I want to take a pudding with me, give me a moment.”

  Oh lord, she’s going to eat. Well, it’s a small price to pay for her company that I do enjoy.

  “Hot fudge pudding with ice cream,” she says gleefully, returning with a soup bowl serving. “Sure you don’t want some?”

  “I’m sure. You know that Isabelle and Eno have gone back to Earth?”

  “Of course I know. Good luck to them. They gave a good argument and seemed earnest.”

  “Will they be okay?” I follow her out of the caf to our usual room and we get settled.

  “I can’t say.”

  “You can say but you won’t?”

  “No, I could, but I can’t.”

  I have no idea what she means and I let it go.

  “Do you want to go back to Earth?” she asks me again, holding out the bag of letters.

  I nod.

  “Why?”

  “I’d find my niece and make things right, whatever that takes. I’d walk on a beach and feel the sand between my toes. Go to a music festival and eat hot dogs. Do all the stuff I thought was stupid. Have a family, friends, get a dog. Learn to play a musical instrument, see the pyramids of Egypt.”

  “Well, you could do it, you know,” Beatrice drops this bombshell while putting quaint on a triple word score and she beams. “Look! I’m going to beat the pants off you today, girlie.”

  “Beatrice,” I ask, stupefied, “what do you mean, I could?”

  “You’re not dead,” she says selecting more letters and frowning. “Bloody ‘i’s and ‘g’s. I hate them both.”

  “I’m not dead? But then why am I here?”

  “Because you need to choose. You need to know that you won’t be as pretty as you are now. And they had to remove a lung, so there’s that. And the vision in one of your eyes is reduced and you’ll have to wear glasses.”

  “I see,” I reply slowly. “Will I reunite with my niece?” I admit that reunite is a fairly strong word because in reality, I only saw Emma once, shortly after her birth.

  “Yes, you will.”

  “What about money?”

  “You’ll be okay but you won’t be rolling in moola,” Beatrice says and her words fall like sledgehammers.

  “What will I do for a living?”

  “Once your life settles, you’ll find a job in a small marketing firm. You’ll handle the publicity for trade shows and conventions.”

  “That sounds terrible,” I say. “I don’t know, Beatrice. You’re not exactly selling it here.”

  “Play your turn,” she points at the board. “Life’s not easy for most people. You had it good, but you never realized it. Not that you’re alone in that regard.”

  “It wasn’t my fault,” I say, and I sound whiny. “I did what I could, to survive.”

  Beatrice snorts. “Yeah, right. Poor little princess. You had a well-to-do childhood, a nice home.”

  “My parents died when I was eight,” I object. “They left me and Jan all alone, at the mercy of the ice queen, Aunt Gwen. I worked hard for my degree, then I interned in an ad agency, and I worked like a dog to get to where I was. And my looks helped—I remember what it was like to be unattractive. It made things much harder and now you’re telling me that if I go back, I’ll be an ugly, scarred, old gimp.”

  “You will still have your skills,” Beatrice says studying her letters with a frown, “that’s true. And you’re right, none of the cool kids will hire you because you’re too old and you don’t look the part anymore.”

  “Can’t I get plastic surgery?” I ask.

  “You’ll get some out of necessity but you won’t look anything like you do now, like you did before. Junior really worked you over.”

  “Where is he now?” I can hardly get the words out.

  “He’s playing the links on St. Andrews golf course,” she says. “Ten points for me.”

  “The fucker,” I say.

  “Good thing you’re not playing with Cedar,” Beatrice comments. “Take your time, you don’t need to decide now.”

  “No, I’m ready, ‘frolic’ on a double word score.”

  “I meant about going back to Earth,” Beatrice says.

  “Oh. Yes. Can I see what I look like?”

  “You’ll have to ask Cedar.”

  “And my niece is happy?”

  “She is. But she’d happier with you in her life,” she adds.

  “Happy,” I mutter. “Happier, happiest. What’s the difference?” I am unsettled. None of my options are wonderful.

  “Such is life,” Beatrice says. “And the after-life. None of the options are wonderful,” she chortles.

  “I hate it when you read my mind,” I say.

  “I answer your invitations to come and play,” she reminds me. “You don’t mind then.”

  “You’re right.” I s
it back in my chair and sigh. “Things were much easier when I was young and beautiful and intoxicated by my own greatness and working eighteen hours a day. Life was so simple.”

  Beatrice doesn’t reply. I think she is getting bored by my whining and self-absorption. As if to confirm my thoughts, she finishes me off brusquely, leaving me with a thirty-point deduction and another game that I’ve lost.

  “I’ve got to run,” she says getting up. “Places to go, Viewings to organize. See you around. Try not to sweat it too much.”

  “Sure thing,” I say, and I hope I don’t sound too sarcastic.

  32. THINKING

  I WANDER DOWN THE HALLWAY after Beatrice has left, not sure what to do with myself. I decide that Purgatory isn’t so much an airport as a combined warehouse, hospital, and airport, with shiny white linoleum and glossy walls. Everything is white, white, white, and I want to scream. I need to escape but I am not in the mood for the suffocating blackness of the Rest Room and it feels like there’s nowhere for me to go.

  I suddenly remember the Rain Room and I try to get in touch with Samia and it works.

  “You called?” she smiles as she pops up next to me.

  “How come I can get in touch with people but I can’t find the rooms?” I grouch and she smiles again.

  “Patience,” she says. “You want to go to the Rain Room?”

  “I do. But I know it depresses you, so do you mind? If you’re not in the mood, maybe you can help me find it and I’ll go alone.”

  “I actually don’t mind at all,” Samia says. “I could do with some rain. I admit it. I envy Isabelle. I wish I could have a boyfriend like Eno but he’d never look at someone like me. Isabelle’s cool, I’m not. My parents tried to find me a boyfriend and they set me up with their friends’ son, but he was like the kiss of death. I’m too quiet and boring for someone fun like Eno.”

  “You are not,” I protest. “I agree that Isabelle and Eno are a good match but there’s a match for everybody.”

  “Maybe,” Samia says, but I think she is just agreeing with me to be polite. “Here we are, the fantastic Rain Room!”