CHAPTER SEVEN
On the elevator headed down to the lobby I pull myself together. I can do this. The only way to get Deedy back into my life is to finish this assignment. I ignore the overwhelming sense of emptiness that I am feeling right now, and replace it with a new sense of responsibility. I have to watch over Joe. Make sure he safely returns back to himself and to his family and friends. That thought is suitably renewing, and I find myself getting downright excited.
When I get down to the lobby the elevator does not just stop. Instead, it halts, goes a bit, then squeals. The lights flicker before they go out completely, and the doors open just enough for me to see that I am in fact on the bottom floor. I have to pry the doors open the rest of the way. Pretty shoddy mechanics for paradise. I think before I see it sitting on the floor next to a potted plant. It seems to be a tool belt, complete with very unfamiliar objects hanging from it that I can only assume are tools. The funny thing about the belt is what is written across it. PATTERSON ELEVATOR REPAIRS, it says right across the front. Ha! I am laughing out loud at the prospect of me repairing anything. I mean, seriously, I once abandoned a 1994 Plymouth Duster on the side of the highway because the engine light came on. Well, that and that car never had an ounce of style. Oh, and there was the time when Bobby was away, working as a manager of a carnival, and I had to throw away a sink full of dishes because the dishwasher started to smoke and make the kitchen smell all like an electrical fire. Yes, I realize that I could have washed the dishes by hand, but that would be in direct conflict with my natural tendency to be lazy. Plus the aforementioned smoky smell in the kitchen. I ate out for the next five weeks until Bobby came home. Suffice it to say, there is no way in Heaven or Hell that I have the talent or inclination to fix this elevator. They might as well have left me a table of scalpels and a belt that says PATTERSON BRAIN SURGERY across the front of it. Hopefully, this is part of Deedy’s magic, otherwise Joe is never going to get up to the thirty-seventh floor in time to please Gabby.
I pull on the tool belt and think to myself here goes nothing’ as I manage to pry off the small plated cover directly under the buttons. Under my breath I start doing my best Scotty impression, a real homage to Star Trek. “Ay Cap’t, I don’t know why the turbo lift is fucking up. Maybe it’s because we are about twenty minutes into the episode, and that is always when it happens?”
My reverie gets interrupted by the arrival of a young looking, quite handsome man. Young, but rugged. His face is creased by a permanent frown. He is average height but has a stocky build, as though he has spent most of his living years sustained on take out, junk food, and the empty calories of a six-pack every night. He has deep, expressive brown eyes that are now looking at me with a question still beginning to form within them. I suddenly realize that he may have already asked his question, but I haven’t heard him because I was busy monologuing to myself in my imaginary spaceship.
“Sorry,” I say. “I don’t know if you just asked me something or not, and if you did…well, I’m going to need you to repeat it.” Then, very lamely I add, “You know, concentrating on the elevator and all.” I feel a blush rising in my face.
“That’s okay,” he says quickly. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your work. I’m just not exactly sure where I am supposed to be.” His voice is deep and silky smooth, like the announcer in a coffee commercial. “I have an interview at a place called Second Chance? I think it’s a temp agency. All I have is this post-it note.” He hands it to me with a look of desperation. I don’t even read it. I have seen about forty of those in my afterlife, including the one I found that brought me here the first time.
“Sure!” I say, getting up and brushing myself off as if I’ve been doing anything besides staring blankly at a bunch of wires and mumbling to myself in a bad Scottish accent. “You must be Joe Watkins.” I hold out a hand to shake his.
“Yes…yes, that’s me.” His surprise is evident. He clasps my hand too with equal surprise. There isn’t a lot of touching in Hell. And of course, what he doesn’t know is that there also is absolutely no touching in Deedy’s world until it’s time to make him see. That won’t happen until my job is done. So I had better get on it.
“No worries, Joe, step on in, and I’ll get you up there in plenty of time. My name is Louise, by the way.”
“Thanks, Louise,” he says, stepping in and looking around. “Are you sure this thing won’t trap us between floors during a raging battle with the Klingons?” He looks at me and smiles.
“Damn, you heard that,” I say with my own smile. “And you are already making fun of me. Which means you will fit in around here with no problem.”
“Sorry, didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I just couldn’t help myself. I was a Trekkie too.” He seems like a very warm guy. I get excited again about the prospect of seeing him through the next few weeks.
“In that case, prepare for take-off, Captain!” I say as I push the button with the number thirty-seven on it. I quickly cross my fingers and send a wish up to Gabby that this elevator is miraculously fixed as it does come to life and start to climb. Joe seems to notice that we are heading up and suddenly seems nervous.
I try to comfort him. “I know it’s up there. I freaked out the first time, but you will get used to it.” I laugh as I remember crawling on the floor as if the whole building was going to give way and I would fall to another death.
“No, I’ll be fine with the height. I’m just worried about the interview. I assume you know the folks I have to talk to up there? I mean, since you knew my name and all…”
“Sure, everyone around here knows Gabby,” I say, then pause, trying not to choke on my next words. “And of course, the boss.” Hold it together, Louise.
“Anything I need to know? I really need a job, as you know. And the only thing I have ever done as an adult, both living and dead is being a reporter. So there is not much that I bring to the table.” He gets kind of misty, like he is in mourning.
“Just be yourself, Joe. Believe me, you already have everything you need. You will be fine,” I say as the doors open up to the lobby of the agency. As soon as Joe steps out I start to lean on the close door button. I can’t breathe as I wait for the doors to begin to shut. I can hear Gabby’s voice offering Joe a cup of her wonderful coffee. I strain to hear Deedy’s voice boom through the corridor, but there is nothing but silence and the emptiness fills me once again. As the doors finally draw together and I am finally headed down, I sink to the floor of the elevator and start to sob again.
I pull myself together and realize I have nothing to do for the hour or so that it will take Joe to get grilled for the first time in Deedy’s office. So I sit on the curb and look around with my new eyes. Better said, I guess it would be my old eyes. Everything is back to orange, and it’s all drab and depressing again. I can no longer see the beautiful sky or any of the heavenly creatures that fill it. The tears are now falling silently, but they are still with me.
This would be the perfect time for a cigarette. My mind wanders back to that same old thought. This is about the millionth time I have longed for a smoke since dying. You can’t get smokes in Hell, and while you can in Heaven, and many do, I absolutely refuse to go back to smoking. I quit when I found out I was pregnant with my daughter, who I named after Linda but we called her Dinny. Of course, soon after that I was dying of cancer. And after that, I spent thirty some years in a place where you constantly feel like your lungs, along with the rest of you, could burst into flames at any moment. You can see how the whole romance with cigarettes can lose its luster. And while I am adamant that I will never be a smoker again, that doesn’t mean that occasionally I miss it. I miss the ritual, the slight pull when you remove the first cigarette in the pack, the feel of it between your fingers, the kiss between breath and fire by a single tether between your lips, the first delicious draw, the feeling inside your body as you fill it with smoke like the ambient light of a firefly in a jar, and finally the lovely fog that surrounds you as you ex
hale. I can practically see the smoke now. No, wait, I actually can see the smoke. I let my eyes follow the creamy air to its source.
Standing in front of me is the single most fabulous looking man, no…person, I have ever laid eyes on. He is tall, about six feet one inch, blond hair with gorgeous eyes the color of wheat. His skin is bronzed by a sun that no longer shines on any of us here. His T-shirt and blue jeans hang from his body as though he has been created wearing them. And while his outfit is modest and covers him completely, it gives enough hints as to the perfect body underneath that I find myself a bit breathless.
“I thought I was blind to everyone from Heaven,” I say, suddenly glad I’m sitting down, afraid my knees would buckle underneath me if I were standing.
“And so you are. Cigarette?” His voice is as beautiful as the mouth from which his words have just escaped. His accent is English. Posh and very sexy.
“You can’t be a Hellion. Not with those clothes, and smokes, and stuff,” I say, like a little know-it-all.
“If you insist, Ms. Louise Patterson,” he says with a cool smile that reveals stunningly white teeth, all perfect and straight.
“Not fair! How can you get to know my name if I can’t know yours?”
“Because of what I understand of you, Ms. Sweetness and Light, you tend to go more for the mysterious type.”
Now, I have to say for all the years I have been dead, in both Heaven and Hell, I have never been hit on. Not even once. And don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I’m unattractive. In fact, in life I was kind of hot in my own way. I was used to every kind of guy, from the tight ass banker to the scumbag who was about to mug the tight ass banker on the street, hitting on me. But in Hell, no one cares to hit on anyone because sex is not a possibility, and romance is even less of an option. And in Heaven, no one hits on anyone because, to be honest, as great as sex and dating and romance is, it has nothing compared to the bliss of Paradise.
That is why tall, dark, and mysterious just threw me. Threw me enough that I actually ask, “Did you just hit on me?” It is out of my mouth before my brain even knows it is about to leave.
He throws back his head and laughs uproariously. What am I, doing stand-up comedy here? Then he takes out a cigarette, puts it in the front pocket of my denim shirt, and walks away. He waves without looking back, as if he knows that I am staring at him walk away.
“Great. I’ve been back here for less than a day and this horrible place is already fucking with me. Welcome home, Louise!” I say, just as Joe walks through the door and onto the street.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Linda was kind of proud of the fact that she had never learned to type. Not even when everyone got computers and the internet and the average kid could type seventy words per minute before they could eat solid food. She had only worked for a few years before marrying Hank. Always as a hostess in a restaurant, or a “Can I get that in your size?” girl in a retail store. With all of that in mind, her first day as a legal secretary did not hold a lot of promise.
Until she actually walks into the offices of Davis, Morgan, and Lugner, the largest law firm in Hell as far as she could tell. Behind the desk at the entrance is the woman who has interviewed her yesterday. She smiles to herself as she remembers the so-called interview. It basically went like this:
Linda walks in and states that she is looking for a job.
This very crabby woman looks at her through teeny tiny slits of eyes and says, “Have you ever worked in a law office?”
Linda says, “No.”
“Do you have any secretarial skills?”
Linda says, “No.”
“Nothing? No typing, no dictation, no phone étiquette?”
Linda says, “No.”
“Would you consider yourself a people person?”
Linda stops and thinks about it. After ninety years of dealing with just a handful of folks, many of whom she was related to or thought of as family, she still ended up taking out the one that was supposed to be her favorite before shuffling off the mortal coil. So ultimately she gave the only answer she could. “No.”
“Okay, you start tomorrow. Nine am,” says Ms. Grumpy Pants, then goes back to doing whatever it was she was doing, which by Linda’s best guess is pretty much pretending Linda doesn’t exist. So she turns around, walks out the door, and leaves. Officially an employee!
Now, Linda is awake and ready for her new career. She notices that the closet once again has a single outfit hanging inside. Ah, she thinks to herself, the magical world of Hell. She notices that this particular piece of magic is a skin tight pencil skirt dress with a print that she is having difficulty looking at directly. This dress pulled over her aged body, with all its lumps and bumps really should come with a warning label that reads “May cause epileptic seizures.” Not to mention actually trying to move or walk in this skirt will be downright comical. Her thoughts land on an old memory of a character on the Carol Burnett show. Mrs. Wiggins, a ditzy secretary who inches along like a penguin walking with an egg between her legs. Unfortunately, I have neither the figure nor the comic timing of Carol. Linda thinks with a sigh.
Setting off on the somewhat short—today is a bit longer, due to the skirt—walk to her new office, Linda begins to wonder about the nature of her job. Why do we need a law office in Hell? To sue people? Can you sue someone for screwing you over in a place where virtually everyone has screwed someone over? And what do you sue for? A million dollars? Why the fuck would you even need a million dollars here? So you could buy the biggest house or the nicest car in the grandest shithole in the universe? She starts to actually laugh at the absurdity of that idea. Perhaps she will have the chance to ask Ms. Frowny Face during orientation or whatever. But Linda is also a bit doubtful. She has found pretty consistently since arriving here that no one is forthcoming with information, and certainly not up for friendly conversation either.
When she walks into Davis, Morgan, and Lugner her doubts are confirmed. No one greets her, welcomes her, or tells her what to do. So much for orientation. Linda thinks as she wanders through the office.
“Hello? I’m supposed to start working here today!” She yells to no in particular.
“Well then, I suggest you get started.” Ms. Sourpuss is back. She reaches over and grabs a pile of manila folders which she then drops in front of Linda. “Here. File.”
What was I thinking, of course was there’s an orientation, and apparently that was just it. She looks at the dour woman in front of her and says, “Where?”
The woman just turns and with a sigh of exasperation walks away, leaving Linda standing there holding a manila folder with no idea what to do with it. So she just opens up a drawer and tosses it in. Then she grabs another and tosses that one in. Then she walks across the room, opens up another random drawer and tosses a bunch more in.
At one point this very small, yet incredibly fat man walks in and straight through the office where he then just seems to disappear. She assumes by his gait and general demeanor that this must be Mr. Davis, Mr. Morgan, or Mr. Lugner. Linda remembers a joke. This woman gets called for jury duty and while the Judge is questioning her, she says, “I should not be on this jury.” The Judge of course asks her why, and she says, “Because I knew the second I laid eyes on his shifty face, his shiny suit, and his cheesy smile that he was guilty as sin!” The Judge says, “Ma’am. Sit down and prepare to hear testimony. That man you are referring to is the prosecutor.”
She laughs to herself as she continues to approach this exercise in futility.
Once she realizes that if she keeps up this pace all day she will be out of manila folders way before she’s out of work day, Linda gets the bright idea to take a break. She goes in search of a break room. This is a law office, they must have a break room, or a kitchen.
She walks down a hall and the smell hits her before the room even comes into her immediate sight. When it does she realizes she is looking at the most disgusting kitchen in the entire universe. She look
s around from one vile table to the next. Once she crosses the threshold her eyes begin to water from the stench. Linda is unaware of whether or not there are rats in the afterlife, but if there are even they would not hang out in this kitchen. This kitchen would probably make Gordon Ramsey burst into tears and run to his mother so that she could rock him to sleep.
There probably is no food or drink in this establishment with an expiration date before 1937, but even if there was, Linda was not going to eat or drink anything until this kitchen is presentable. And, she thinks to herself, this will make the day go by a lot faster.
So she takes a deep breath, decides breathing is totally unnecessary in the afterlife, and dives in. After about an hour, there is something kitchen shaped starting to emerge. After another hour and a half, things are actually starting to gleam. Which is pretty damn impressive considering the only cleaning product Linda could find was an ancient can of Comet that had fossilized and was now more brick like than cleaning powder. When she’s finally done, she stands back and admires her own handiwork. Miss Meany strides by and stops dead in her tracks.
“What do you think you are doing in here?” She glances around with an expression that makes it seem like Linda has made the kitchen worse.
“I spiffed up the kitchen!” Linda says brightly. For some reason “spiffing up the kitchen” seems a little more diplomatic than “shoveling out this enormous shithole.”
“Well, Ms. Spiffer, I think you just cleaned out your future at Davis, Morgan, and Lugner!” Then she turns on her heel and storms out.
Linda is dazed. Her future at Davis, Morgan, and Lugner? What could they fire her for? All she did was clean the kitchen. She walks back out to the office and sees that her pile of Manila folders have grown. Is that what she was so upset over? Linda shirking her important “tossing files around the room aimlessly” duties?
Remembering Hell Page 6