“Damnit,” I muttered. Two dozen angry glares radiated heat on the back of my neck. I took a seat in the corner, surrounded by empty chairs and away from the crowd. I saw the same faces I’d seen at previous appointments. The old Russian woman from the bus was sitting in the opposite corner, and I couldn’t help but wonder why we’d never spoken. I had the urge to apologize for that, to ask for her life story. I wanted to know why she was always so quiet, what she’d been doing here, how long she’d been here, why she felt it necessary to put the barrel of a gun to her throat and pull the trigger. Or if she’d even been the one to do it.
It didn’t matter now. Going over, sitting down, making friends—it was pointless. As soon as I made it through this queue of people, I was on my way out. I tucked the urge away and pulled a weathered paperback from my back pocket. I started thumbing through The Great Gatsby, trying to remember every word that had been blacked out in some poet-hack’s poor attempt at creativity, or maybe just as another one of those cruel jokes they liked to play here.
I ended up lost on West Egg at a grand party, occasionally interrupted by Janice’s hoarse voice croaking out “next” or “numbah twenny-three where arh you?!” I’d peek up from the jazz age to find that the crowd had changed, new faces replacing old ones. The cattle rustler from the lobby, in full chaps and with a thick mustache, was now in the old Russian woman’s seat. I had no idea if I’d ever see her again and felt a tiny bit wistful. Perhaps Michael had given her the same good news I was expecting. I wondered if we’d meet on the other side, and if she’d still carry the scars or if they’d be washed away in the transition. Would she still be wearing her grubby overcoat and that headscarf? Surely not. As far as I knew, we’d all be wearing white robes and plucking golden harps, but then again, the guys with the wings were plainclothes like us. Maybe the great Kingdom wasn’t so different from this place? I just hoped my shoes would stay tied, the books wouldn’t be half blacked out, and I’d never have to see a shade of gray again. I wasn’t asking for much.
For a moment, I was scared—truly, legitimately, shaking-in-my-boots scared down to my soul, the kind of fear that makes itself evident on your brow and palms. What if I hated it? This gray city had been home for twelve years, or at least as much of a home as a place like this could ever be, and suddenly I wasn’t sure if I could leave it behind for something entirely unknown. Sure, given the nature of my future destination, it had to be better than this, but I’d learned to live with every inconvenience this place was built on. I had even come to love my horrible little apartment, with its cracked bathroom mirror and window, the gas stove that never seemed to heat anything to the proper temperature, and the floorboards that creaked and moaned no matter how you stepped on them.
Anxiety creeped in through the cracks, and I plunged my hand into my pocket to find my lighter. I pulled the scratched-up chrome square from my pocket and clicked the lid open and shut, trying to soothe my nerves, a habit that I’d carried over from life. It seemed natural to be nervous, but I couldn’t comprehend why. This was what I wanted. It was what I’d been hoping on for twelve years, what I was promised when I got here. Something . . . well, something better. I flicked the lid back and forth, occasionally stopping to fidget with the flint wheel and watch the flame flicker to life. I dragged my hand across it, wondering if maybe the feeling would start to come back, but the flame was like a ghost, and I passed right through. I stared at it long enough to get lost. Nerves placated, mind made up, I returned the beat-up firebox to my front pocket and opened the paperback again.
By the time Janice squawked “eighty-fou-ah,” I’d closed the book for what I believed would be the last time, and settled in to prepare for whatever Michael could possibly ask me. Yes, I’d filled out all the paperwork. Yes, my one bag was packed. Yes, I’d snuck him a pack of smokes and I didn’t care if he smoked every single one down to the filter as we talked. Yes, I was certain that I was ready to move on. Yes, I thought I’d become a better person during the duration of my stay. I looked to the left to see if Janice was ready to call the next person.
I hadn’t noticed that the seat next to me was now occupied.
2
There are moments in your life that stand out above the rest, moments that mark the clear path the rest of your existence will take. When they boil down all the facts, anecdotes, half-truths and stories, these are the bullet points they give to schoolchildren—if you were somehow important enough to make it into the history books. The afterlife wasn’t so different, except no one was interested in reading history books here.
Big, bold, and bright. She was a bullet point.
She was sitting next to me—the blonde from the earlier sea of new arrivals, tapping her ticket against her thigh. She’d pulled the number ahead of mine. Normally, I’d have been frustrated at the luck, but I felt a quiet calm I couldn’t explain. From far away, in the infinite expanse of the lobby, she’d been absolutely eye-catching. But up close, she was incredible—the kind of exciting I hadn’t seen in twelve years.
“Excuse me.”
She looked at me and I could have died all over again. For so long, every single color had been on mute. Surrounded by a gray sky, every shade and hue in this place had been monochromatically muzzled. Bland grass. Bland buildings. Bland sunset. Without any real color, the days had become shallow. But her eyes. They were the kind of blue you needed to dive into, as deep as you could, where surfacing seemed like a sin. I sat awestruck, staring like some dumb, thirsty ape into pools of ice water.
“Excuse me.”
Sorry, out for a swim, be back never.
“Excuse me.”
She’d spoken at least twice, but I was so lost it could’ve been a dozen times. I was reticent to climb out of the water and back into that waiting room. The way her hair fell on her shoulders, the fit of her frayed blue jeans, everything about her was fine art. I’d seen nothing but half-assed watercolor bowls of fruit and a giant statue of St. Peter for as long as I could remember. She was the whole Louvre crammed into a tattered Thin Lizzy T-shirt and denim. I was determined to cobble together a response, a proper introduction, something that would make her forget that I was staring at her like a mental patient in desperate need of sedation.
“Y . . . yes?” My palms were sweating, a sensation I’d long forgotten and now found extremely uncomfortable.
“Do you happen to know how to get out of here?”
I had sympathy for her; being here for any great length of time could be soul-crushing. I felt the all-consuming urge to help her.
“They get lighter,” I muttered, like some lost puppy. That was the best I could do.
“What?” She tilted her head with a small smile of confusion, those pools beckoning me for another long swim.
“Oh. Sorry. Your eyes; they lighten up around the outside.” I wiped my wet palms against my gray jeans. “The blue, it’s a real deep blue at the center, but on the outside, it lightens up. It almost gets green. That’s not the best hello I’ve ever given, I’m very sorry.” The words leaked out in a steady stream and I did my best to cover up the crack.
“Um, thanks, I guess?” She smiled politely. “And hello.” She extended a hand and I shook it eagerly, completely disregarding my sweaty palm. She didn’t seem to mind, but I felt like a fool as our hands pulled away.
“Could you maybe tell me how to get the hell out of here?” Her question came out as a laugh, but there was a hint of a desperation in her tone. I was too busy looking at the ticket in her hands.
“You pulled eighty-five,” I said. I pointed at the scrap of paper she was still tapping against her thigh. Maybe I’d lost all of my people skills when I died, or left them floating during the swim. Either way, I didn’t imagine I was making a great first impression.
“What?” She looked down. “Oh. Yeah, I guess I did. Is that bad?”
“No, no, it’s just funny how this place works. I pulled eighty-six before you walked in,” I shrugged. She turned her body towar
d mine and grabbed my ticket for her own confirmation.
“You were sitting down before me, though! Shouldn’t you tell someone?” She seemed genuinely outraged, and I stifled a smile. I wondered how long that sort of intense emotion would stay with her. “Regardless, let’s get back to that original point. You look like you don’t want to be here either,” she said. “What if we walked out right now, in protest? What’s the worst they could do?”
“Yeah.” I rubbed at my scalp, trying not to blush at the thought of a daring escape with this beautiful girl. I nodded towards Janice. The secretary sat behind her desk, open-mouth chewing her gum. “You can probably tell by her demeanor that our protest won’t matter much. Besides, that’s just how things work around here.” I shrugged again, pulling my leg up into the chair and turning a little closer.
“Here?” She looked around the room, taking in what little sights there were. She seemed thoroughly unimpressed by the afterlife.
“Yeah, surely you know where you are. I mean, you know what’s happened, right?”
“Of course,” she laughed. “I went to Catholic school. I just really thought there’d be more fire.”
My thoughts were racing. Why on Earth would this girl assume she’d been cast into the pit? What could she have possibly done that would cause her to think she was in line for an eternity of torture, or whatever it was that happened down there? I chalked it up to naiveté. I thought I was going to Hell too when I was sitting in this waiting room the first time. I’m sure the old Russian woman assumed the same—when you have no real understanding of the afterlife, it’s easy to be afraid.
“You think this is Hell? I guess you’re in for good news. You’re not there, and barring a total freak-out or some serious rampage on your part, you never will be.” That wasn’t necessarily true. I’d been here long enough to know that sometimes, if you rubbed one of the higher-ups the wrong way, paperwork went missing, department names got smudged. Sure, you might have snagged the last seat on the bus, but if you were the one responsible for Raphael having to stand out in the rain and wait for a cab, it wasn’t unheard of for your file to get a big red “IRREPARABLE” stamped across it, and for you to wake up to official documentation on your impending move to the inferno. It wasn’t a perfect system, but I wasn’t about to drop all the little quirks and idiosyncrasies of this afterlife on her, not on day one.
“Well, then,” she said, surveying the room for the typical holy accoutrements, “if I can be completely honest, Heaven doesn’t quite live up to hype. Don’t get me wrong, I’m okay with not carrying around a harp everywhere I go, and white’s not really my best color but . . .” She gave me a smile that finally pulled my attention away from her eyes. It was big, and unlike mine, it was open-mouthed, teeth beaming at the prospect that she’d beaten the system. It straddled the fine line between charming and obnoxious, and I never wanted it to end.
“Hate to bring you down, but you’re not quite up in the clouds either.” Like a jackass, I pissed all over her parade.
“Oh!” She looked around the room, her hopes crashing hard against the atmosphere. It was impressive how quickly she bounced back. “So, is there an elevator somewhere? There’s a pretty famous song about a stairway. I’m going to be honest, this place doesn’t seem like it’s for me. You wanna catch a ride?”
I watched her take it all in—the dismal hues, the scowls and looks of disinterest, the bullet scar peeking out from the old Russian woman’s scarf as she re-entered the room from the hallway leading to Michael’s office. The girl noticed the gaudy, fifties art-deco wallpaper growing out of the corner. Her eyes fixed on the long, jagged scars crawling up my forearms from wrist to elbow. As she dropped my ticket back into my hand, she inched her slender fingers toward the scar tissue. Our eyes met one more time, and as her fingertips almost found the jagged pink peaks, I wanted to jump into one of those lagoons and never surface. Instead, I jerked my arms inward.
“What happ–”
“EIGHTY-FO-IVE!” Janice shrieked, more like a car horn than a being that might have come from up in the clouds. It was the only time I’d ever been grateful for that hideous croak; it saved me the embarrassment of explanation. The girl gave me a look somewhere between sympathy and curiosity as she rose to her feet and marched toward the door. She flashed her ticket at the slug-woman receptionist, offering me one last over-the-shoulder glance.
“Good luck!” I called to her. Though I thought I caught a glimpse of that smile from before, I don’t think she heard me over the receptionist’s hoarse cry of “Down the hall to the left. Michael’s office. DON’T GO TO THE RIGHT!”
Her hips swung as she entered the hall and contemplated the door to the right before settling on the left. As she disappeared, so did the vibrancy she’d brought with her. I was again in a colorless world, the muted ferns and grayed hardwood floors turning knots in my stomach. I had the urge to barrel past Janice, burst down the hallway and barge straight into Michael’s office. I’d throw him the pack of smokes and he’d be content to open his window and burn a few cigarettes while I marveled at the first color I’d seen in far too many years. Or he’d pull out the big red rubber stamp from his desk, my file from his cabinet, and impart a big, wet “IRREPARABLE” across my papers. I was supposed to get out today. I wasn’t willing to risk his finicky temper and high temperatures for the rest of eternity.
So I stayed in my seat. It was all inconsequential at this point. When she came out of the office, she’d know everything. She’d know how this place works, she’d know how long her projected sentence was, and she’d have a job. When I emerged from the office, I’d be on my way to the clouds—if there even were clouds—and we’d just be strangers again. I was never going to learn another thing about her. It would all be some ephemeral moment we forgot about over time.
That’s what I told myself, but at the same time, I wasn’t sure I could handle that. I felt tethered, certain that this was some kind of soulmate stuff, straight out of an old paperback. I had to know.
***
I waited in oblivion for what felt like days, as though time had decelerated in some final act of annoyance. I could almost hear the Metatron whispering in my ear, “Sorry, but we’ve slowed time down to a crawl so you can think about how breathtaking she was and how your chances of seeing her again, though not impossible, are effectively zero. Thank you. The Management.”
Time managed to catch back up the moment I heard the office door open. Before that awful croak could fill the air, I was up and on my feet. I practically met her at the door, taking her all in. I wanted—no, needed—to know everything: how many freckles dotted her pale face, where she got that ratty Thin Lizzy shirt, why she smelled like the sea. I wanted to jump right back into the arctic basins of her glassy eyes and freeze in time. When she finally got out of this place, they would drag me along with her, to thaw at Heaven’s gate. I could live with that decision. They’d have fresh towels up there.
“Oh . . . hey. I guess it’s your turn, right?” She seemed surprised to see me, which was fair, because I was a complete stranger who had spent an embarrassing amount of time staring into her eyes, and like a lunatic, I’d leapt to my feet to greet her. But she was smiling, and I was sure that had to count for something.
“Eighty-sex,” Janice croaked. I could feel each individual blood cell racing through every single vein, my skin on fire with anxiety. My time was running out, and I was about to be relegated to a passing memory of her first day in the In-Between. I made a desperate Hail Mary.
“There’s a bowling alley on Sullivan. Across from the train tracks. The Depot. If you want to talk later—”
“Eighty-sex!” Janice was both a dutiful receptionist and a horrible demon from Hell whose entire purpose was to ruin everything.
“You’ll be there?” The girl seemed genuinely interested, her tone warming with her question. My temperature rose as my grasp on language began to slip away, my tongue working itself into intricate and impressive kno
ts.
“Yeah–I–well–will. Yeah. Definitely, yeah.” I was doing this. My mind was made up. I could fight the system. Just a hierarchy of angels and the Almighty. Not a tall order at all.
“EIGHTY-SEX!” Janice cawed like a full murder of crows. A vein above her left eye bulged, knocking her awful frames off kilter. I hated her more than I thought possible. I wondered if that would go on my record, if Michael would bring it up when I sat down in front of him. Surely he’d just laugh it off.
“Alright, alright, I’m going. Keep the bees in the hive,” I snarled, looking at the ghastly excuse for a hairdo glued to her slug-like head.
She shot me a look that could’ve killed if I weren’t already dead, and I volleyed back a middle finger I’m sure she was used to seeing. Then it hit me, a sudden freight train of realization concerning my complete inability to function as a human being. I hadn’t even introduced myself.
“I’m Owen!” I called to her with a smile. It wasn’t information anyone else in the waiting room cared about, but I hoped it would matter to her. I didn’t get a chance or the opportunity to confirm. The door to the waiting room clicked shut, and with it the last hint of sea breeze left the room.
The cattle rustler waved. “I’m Steve!”
As I stumbled down the hallway to Michael’s office, my excitement and anger yielded to complete terror. Every floorboard creak sent concentrated lightning spiraling up my spine. I had never been this audacious in life, let alone the afterlife. Or at least, I hadn’t been for some time. I was about to march into the Archangel’s office and tell his high holiness that he could take his everlasting redemption and stuff it—for a little while at least. He’d ask me why and I’d make up something clever on the fly. If I simply said “Mike, you have to let me stay, there’s this girl,” he’d laugh his wings off. He’d sputter, coughing cigarette smoke, and tell me to grab my bags and get to the train. But if I could convince him I wasn’t ready, he’d be more inclined to let me stay and suffer a little longer. My hands quaked as I reached for the doorknob, rattling the tarnished brass ball as I twisted.
In-Between Days Page 2