by Amber Benson
“And what do those people make of me and you getting on an out-of-service car?” I asked deliberately.
Jarvis pointed at the window across from us. If I’d expected to see my reflection, I was sadly mistaken. Instead, a tall Asian man in stained beige coveralls, a buzz cut revealing the topography of his bumpy skull, had taken my place. Beside me, a short Hispanic man in matching coveralls sat primly in his seat, hands clasped in his lap, a silly little smile playing on his lips.
“Interesting choice of disguise,” I said dryly.
“The tickets choose the costume,” Jarvis shot back, “but we’re only borrowing, not keeping.”
The car lurched forward and we took off down the track. As soon as we were out of sight of the station, Jarvis pointed to the window, and I saw that our reflections had returned to normal.
“Whew,” I said, though returning to my former state of mess wasn’t an improvement. I was gonna have to take a dip in a pool full of bleach if I wanted to remedy the most serious of my cleanliness issues.
“Jarvis?”
“Yes, Miss Calliope?”
“What do I ask God when I see him/her?”
I’d been wondering how best to approach this question ever since we’d left the Ender of Death hanging out on the first subway platform earlier that morning. But now that God had already sent help to fight down in Purgatory, then what was it I was really asking for? Dethroning the Devil seemed like a moot point now.
“Well, I suppose the first thing I would ask God, if I were in your position, would be for him/her to put a stop to the challenge,” Jarvis said thoughtfully. “Ask him/her to appoint someone to the Presidency of Death, Inc., so that neither you nor Daniel end up dead.”
“Will God make me Death, or will he/she choose Daniel instead?” I asked, the question tentative.
Jarvis shook his head. “I really don’t know. It could go either way.”
“But if I’m not Death, then what happens to Clio and my mom?” I said. “Will they still be immortal?”
Jarvis looked down at his hands uncertainly.
“No,” he said with an air of finality to his words. “Their immortality relies on your immortality.”
“And if I’m not Death, then I’ll be a full-fledged human being?”
“Not entirely, because your mother—”
“Is part Siren. I know,” I said glumly.
“It’s such a small percentage that I don’t think it would make much of a difference, though,” Jarvis said, sensing my melancholy. “It is where you and your sisters derive your magical abilities. Sirens are known as the Witches of the Sea—something your father detested. He always hated your mother’s family.”
“She told us she was an orphan,” I said, my body swaying with the movement of the car on the track. “Yup, today has been a very interesting day.”
“Don’t ever tell your mother I said that about her family,” Jarvis said suddenly, raising an eyebrow. “I’ll deny everything.”
I sighed. “I promise never to tell my mother what you said so she doesn’t kick your ass.”
“Thank you,” Jarvis said primly. “Honestly, I have to say that your mother does frighten me at times.”
“Me, too,” I said, grinning, glad we were both in agreement on that one.
My mother was a severe and strange woman.
“I think we’re here,” Jarvis said as the conductor eased on the brakes, the train gliding to a stop in front of an empty subway platform. It was the smoothest train arrival we’d had all morning.
Jarvis and I stood up as the doors slid open, and then we stepped out onto an empty platform. There were no other riders disembarking, nor were there any waiting to board in our place, but the lack of other passengers wasn’t really surprising, given that this subway station wasn’t even really a station—more like the waiting room in a snazzy uptown doctor’s office. Instead of benches, there were two canary yellow overstuffed leather couches against the back wall, each with its own matching white pine side table and egg yolk-colored, corded telephone. Running the length of the station floor was a rectangular pile carpet—in a shade best known as “eggshell”—which was so plump and clean that I found it had to believe it hadn’t just been laid down that morning, let alone that anyone had ever walked on it before us.
Instead of the standard turnstiles one found in a typical subway station, there were two potted rubber plants, their clay planters glazed pale yellow like icing on a lemon bundt cake, leading you toward the exit.
“This place is wild,” I said, pointing to the plants. “I like those way better than the stupid turnstiles back home.”
Jarvis snorted.
“Let’s go upstairs. I’m sure you’ll be intrigued by what you find up there.”
As we passed the couches, both of which looked unbelievably comfortable, I was tempted to sit down and take a nap, my sleepless night finally catching up with me. I slid my fingers along one of the arms, marveling at the buttery softness of the leather, but I quickly yanked my finger away when one of the phones beside me began to ring.
“Should I get it?” I asked, being closest to the squealing phone. I looked over at Jarvis, who shrugged, so I reached down and picked up the phone, cradling the Bakelite receiver to my ear.
“Calliope Reaper-Jones?” a woman’s voice barked at me through the phone line.
“Yes?” I said. “This is she. I mean, this is me.”
“I’m God’s secretary and he/she asked me to call you and tell you not to bother. He/she is too busy to see you.”
“Oh,” I said.
“He/she says thank you for coming and to have a nice day.”
The voice was nasal, clipped, and very efficient. So efficient, in fact, that I almost said “Thank you” and hung up the phone, but something, some voice in my brain, told me not to take “no” for an answer.
“Wait!” I said, sharpening my tone. “I want to see God. I’m not just gonna hang up and go away.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone. Finally, the clipped voice said, “Fine. Then come up to the office.”
The dial tone buzzed in my ear and I hung up the phone.
“What was that all about?” Jarvis asked, eyes wide with curiosity.
“That was, I think, God’s secretary. She told me to go home.”
Jarvis’s face fell.
“But I told her no and she said to come up.”
“That was very presumptuous of you . . . and very wise,” Jarvis said as he gave a sigh of relief.
I was cheered by the compliment. Jarvis had never called me wise before.
“Have you ever been here?” I asked him. He looked sheepish and shook his head.
“I’ve never been past this anteroom. You father always went alone to see God.”
“Good,” I said. “That means neither one of us knows what we’re doing.”
Jarvis cocked his head, my words confusing him.
“And why should I presume this is a ‘good’ thing, as you say?” he asked.
“Because it means that no matter what I choose to do,” I replied tartly, “neither of us will know when I’m messing up. That way I can do what I think is right, instead of worrying about what I know I’m doing wrong.”
Jarvis stared at me then he said something that made me wanna cry:
“Your father would be so proud of you, Calliope.”
“Yeah?” I said.
He nodded.
“Yeah.”
The Jarvis in front of me might not be in the package I was used to, but it was still Jarvis through and through.
“Thanks, Jarvis,” I said, giving him the biggest smile I could manage. “Now, let’s go find God—and not in a scary Jesus freak kind of way.”
beyond the potted rubber plants, we found a set of white-lacquered spiral stairs that disappeared into a cutout in the ceiling above us.
“After me,” I said to Jarvis, putting my foot on the first stair and hoisting myself up.
>
Jarvis, who for the first time in our relationship was bigger than me, had a hard time managing the rickety staircase. His large feet slid uneasily on the smooth white-lacquered stair surface, and more than once I heard him cursing under his breath as he gripped the handrail with both hands to keep from falling off.
We reached the ceiling without incident and I popped my head through the cutout. To my shock, I discovered that there was nothing but more stairway above us. I leaned back down to give Jarvis the bad news.
“Hey, Jarvis,” I said. “I don’t want to be a bummer, but there’s like nothing but stair ahead of us for a while.”
Jarvis groaned—and I finally understood what it was like to have to deal with me: the girl who groaned, whined, and pooh-poohed everything.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” I said, trying to be helpful, but I could see that Jarvis wasn’t buying it.
“Just keep going,” he said, resigned to his fate. “I’ll be right behind you.”
I popped my head back up through the cutout and began to climb again, my body quickly getting winded as we climbed higher and higher, the stairway spiraling away below us. I looked down, shocked to realize how far we’d already come.
“I feel like we’re in that song, ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ ” I called back down to Jarvis as I paused to catch my breath.
“Oh, the irony,” Jarvis said as he leaned against the stairwell, breathing heavily through his nose.
Pleased with my little bon mot, I continued climbing up the stairs, using my hands to pull me from one stair to the next.
“Stop being lazy and climb,” Jarvis said, poking me in the butt.
“Inappropriate,” I screeched, but I took the hint and sped up.
I wasn’t wearing a watch, and I’ve never been good at guessing ages or the time, but I know we had to have spent like at least five hours on that monstrosity of a stairwell.
Stairway to Heaven? I thought. Ha! More like Hellway to Heaven.
“Are we there yet?” Jarvis wheezed below me.
Just as I was ready to chuck the whole endeavor and go back down the way we’d come, the seemingly endless stairs suddenly gave way to another ceiling. This one was a lot more promising than the last because I thought I could see the end of the stairway above me.
“I think I see the exit,” I yelled back down to Jarvis, who managed a quiet “Yay” in between wheezes.
I closed my eyes, whispering a tiny prayer for this to be the end of our journey.
Please don’t make us climb any more stairs to find you, God. I promise to take your name in vain less often. Amen.
I popped my head through the opening in the ceiling and found that the stairway had led us into another waiting room. Although I didn’t think my hasty little prayer had anything to do with the improvement in our situation, I was giddy.
“We’re here,” I called back to Jarvis.
I climbed the last of the stairs, exhaustion overtaking my body as I stepped into the room, then I waited for Jarvis to follow me up. Now that we weren’t climbing stairs anymore, I could finally relax.
I saw that we were in another pale white waiting room, the mirror image of the one below, with the same two couches, two side tables, and two phones; one designer had obviously decorated both spaces, because the two rooms were almost identical in their blandness. The only difference between them was a white pine desk that sat on the far side of the room just beyond the carpet—and the large woman who worked behind it.
To my surprise, I realized that with her flaming red hair—pulled into a tight bun at the back of her neck—full peach lips, milky white skin, and arresting green eyes, the woman was beautiful. Pleasantly round, her large bosom rested just above her desk as she plucked away at an old Remington typewriter. Her pale cream sweater tied in well with her bleached environment, but the bright green scarf tied jauntily around her throat added a touch of flair to her ensemble—and showed that she had a very definite personality.
Hoping to get her attention, I walked over to one of the canary yellow couches and plopped down into its overstuffed embrace.
“I’m pooped,” I said as Jarvis joined me a moment later, the apples of his cheeks red from exertion.
I’d expected the woman to look up from her work, to acknowledge our arrival somehow, but she was fixated on what she was doing and ignored us. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Jarvis perking up like a flower that’d just been watered after a long drought. His eyes got bigger and he sat up straighter, or as straight as an overstuffed couch would allow, running his hands through his messy hair as he tried to smooth it back into place. I’d forgotten what a sucker he was for the larger ladies, and now, with this new body, he was more than a match for the girl behind the desk.
Continuing to pretend we weren’t there, she typed furiously, her focus on the click-clacking keys and the spooling ribbon as it set inky letters down on the white paper. After a few minutes, she finished the page, ripping it from the typewriter and setting it down on a neatly arranged stack of pages.
“I’m working on my book,” she said unexpectedly, looking over at us. Her voice was as clipped as I remembered it from the phone.
“What kind of book?” Jarvis asked, wrapping his arms around his legs and leaning forward to show he was interested.
The girl shrugged, slipping another piece of paper into the typewriter.
“It’s just a modern love story. About two people who live in different worlds and can’t be together, but they still love each other desperately.”
“Star-crossed lovers,” Jarvis added. “Like Romeo and Juliet.”
The girl nodded.
“But modern. ’Cause I’m a modern kind of girl.”
Jarvis nodded like he knew what she was talking about, but I knew he was full of shit. I didn’t have a clue what the girl was talking about, so I knew for a fact that he didn’t, either—but I wasn’t gonna be the one to call him out. He obviously dug the girl, clipped diction and all.
“I’m Calliope Reaper-Jones,” I said, hoping this would move the proceedings along, but the girl wasn’t having any of it.
“I know who you are and you’re just gonna have to wait like everyone else.”
“But I don’t think you realize what’s happening down in Purgatory—” I began.
“We know what’s happening in Purgatory,” she said, cutting me off. “God knows everything.”
“But time is of the essence,” I continued, gesticulating with my hands. “You see, we need to talk to God and—”
“Oh, he’s not talking to anyone,” the girl said, referring to Jarvis. “He’s not authorized.”
“That’s bullshit,” I said, but Jarvis grabbed my arm.
“It’s okay, Miss Calliope, relax.”
I took a deep breath.
“Fine.” I sat back in my seat, the plush cushions fluffing out around my head, and sighed angrily.
Ignoring us again, the girl went back to her typing—but now the clickety-clack just got on my nerves.
“Jarvis, bad stuff’s happening down in Purgatory and we’re just gonna sit here?” I moaned, frustrated.
“This is God, Miss Calliope,” he said. “I assume that God works in God’s time.”
“But that’s nuts,” I said.
Jarvis had no answer for me, which kind of sucked because he always had an answer for everything.
“Don’t you think we should demand to see God?” I asked.
Jarvis shook his head.
“I think we should just wait and see what happens—”
I stood up. I was sick of “waiting and seeing.” It hadn’t served me well in the past and it certainly wasn’t serving me well now.
“I’m sorry, Jarvis,” I said. Then I walked over to the girl and slammed my fists down on the desktop. She stopped typing and looked up at me. She didn’t seem particularly annoyed, but she didn’t seem pleased, either.
“What do you want?” she asked.
I rai
sed an eyebrow.
“I think you know what I want.”
“The bathroom,” she said, pointing at the stairway, “is back down the way you came.”
I reached down and grabbed her typewriter out from under her, marveling at how much heavier the thing was than it’d looked. I swung my body away so it was out of her reach and glared at her.
“You want your typewriter back, then you tell God I want to see him/her, and I mean right now.”
“Don’t get your panties in a bunch,” the girl said. “The door’s right there. Be my guest.”
I turned around to make sure she wasn’t pulling my leg—she wasn’t. A pale cream door with a white ceramic doorknob had magically appeared in the wall behind me.
“Careful with that,” she said, clucking at me like a hen as I hefted the Remington back onto her desk.
“Sorry to be such a bitch,” I said, “but please don’t let my bad behavior reflect poorly on my friend Jarvis over there. He thinks you’re cute.”
The girl raised her eyes to mine, studying me for a moment—probably trying to decide if I was bullshitting her or not—then pursed her full lips and flicked her gaze over to where Jarvis was sitting on the couch, his face bright red. I gave the former faun a wave, which he halfheartedly returned, then I walked over to the doorway, wrapped my hand around the knob, and opened the door to God’s office.
twenty-four
I stepped into God’s office, expecting to find, I don’t know what . . . a white office with a yellow couch and maybe an egg yolk-colored phone or two? But what I discovered was the opposite of that.
No, it was worse than the “opposite” of what I’d expected:
It was my room.
Not my tiny apartment in Battery Park City near the missing Twin Towers, the Financial District, and the Statue of Liberty, but my bedroom at Sea Verge, where I’d lived—minus time away at boarding school—for the first eighteen years of my life. I’d spent my first “alive in this world” night here as a newborn—although the room hadn’t been very different then than it was now: The carpet was still the same shade of dusty rose and the white wicker desk, dresser, and nightstand had been with me from the beginning, too. The double bed came later, after I’d graduated from the cradle. The comforter set and walls had changed colors and themes numerous times during my occupancy, but I’d gotten the deep rose bedding that was on the bed when I was sixteen—and it hadn’t been changed since.