In-Between Days

by Nicholas Desjardins

  It was dim, dingy, and deteriorated everywhere you looked. The lanes were scuffed, the balls mostly cracked, the scorekeeping monitors covered in a permanent film that was some unholy mixture of dust and dried beer. The tables in the café area were uneven, none of the chairs matched, and the booths were all worn patch-work, half-stuffed and uninviting. Jonas stood behind the café counter, his white hair gleaming in the dim light, endlessly wiping at glasses that would never be clean or sit straight. I cleared my throat.

  “Owen,” he cried, “Was machst du hier?” Jonas’s head jerked with such force, I expected his crooked spectacles to fly off his sharp nose and crash onto the carpet in front of me.

  “They said I wasn’t ready to leave yet, J. The good news is, you aren’t getting new help any time soon.” I grinned at the old man. The wrinkles around the corner of his mouth deepened with his smile.

  “Ach, you have a very poor definition of good news,” he laughed, his accent thick in his throat. “And also of help. You make a terrible liar as well. You can tell me what really happened while you wash up the dishes.” He tossed an apron at me with surprising force for his age before hobbling through the swinging wooden doors behind the counter. I was happy to get a little more time with him. Our tearful goodbye the evening before had been nothing short of excruciating.

  Jonas told me on my second day that he’d been here longer than he cared to admit, that he had seen many souls do their time In-Between by working here at the bowling alley, and that he was certain he’d see many more before he hung up his apron for good. I could never understand why. His demeanor was always pleasant, especially for folks around here. He apologized to patrons for the cracks in the bowling balls, for the poor quality of the ingredients in the kitchen, and for how pin number nine on lane three never seemed to fall, even when hit head-on. He introduced himself to everyone perched on a stool or willing to bowl a game or two, ready to ask them how the afterlife was treating them that day. He may have been the only person I’d met in this place who took pride in his assigned role, as if he’d built the Depot from the ground up and resigned himself to a quiet, eternal existence in the In-Between.

  He was the first one to explain to me that aging was a thing of the past, something only the living experience. I was lucky, he said, to have died young enough to still do physical labor. It should have come across as insensitive, but the old man always had an air of empathy about him, and never ill intent. He told me he was just as lucky, because he died old enough not to have to worry about physical labor, and discovered the wisdom of delegation in his old age. Naturally, he told me this while I struggled to carry a freshly filled keg into the disheveled wreck of a kitchen. It was hard to believe that a man of his character could end up in a place like this. I understood my station every time I looked at my forearms, but he had to be some sort of accident. He’d taken the time to explain in detail what he’d done, the horrible tragedies he’d been a part of, and why he deserved this place. I never wanted to believe any of it; he was too kind. Despite his own objections, I believed him to be a good man.

  “And hey, before you come back here, play that ‘Piña Colada’ song, would you?” he called over the sound of running water.

  Alright. He had his faults.

  I shuffled across the scuffed hardwood floors toward the ancient jukebox in the corner. It was an art-deco antique with all the bells and whistles, shined chrome, and neon-tube lighting. It had been a gift to Jonas from St. Cecilia herself. He swore up and down that in the old days she visited all the time, but she’d since made herself scarce. From far away, it was pristine—the kind of piece you’d expect to see in a museum or some throwback film, maybe with Henry Winkler’s back and boot leaning against it.

  It seemed entirely out of place until you looked at the song list. Every selection was mislabeled. Certain songs had been attributed to the wrong artist, some were titled incorrectly, others entirely blank. I’d made a hobby of selecting the blank tracks and listing them on a clipboard in case I found a hidden gem, but the clipboard had a habit of disappearing for weeks at a time. Jonas was particularly fond of one of the mislabeled songs, and for over a decade my workday had begun with the frustrated pressing of K, 1, and 3. The first notes would filter out of the static-laden speakers, and like some clockwork doll, Jonas would tap his toes and start moving around like a much younger man.

  Today was no different. I tapped K-1-3 without even looking, reluctantly humming along to Rupert Holmes’ “Escape.” I knew every word, every soft guitar rift, every snare drum beat and cymbal splash. I hated every note of it. Sometimes I thought this place might really be hell.

  “Why didn’t you just name this place O’Malley’s?” I called back to Jonas.

  “I had not heard the song before I was gifted this place!” was his reply.

  I met him in the kitchen, huddled over the sink, scrubbing thoughtlessly at dishes that never came clean, in hazy dishwater that hardly passed for sanitary. His shabby penny loafers squeaked across the floor to the last notes of the song. For a man doing time, he was in the highest of spirits. I took my place beside him at the sink, dropping glasses and plates into the murk, scratching and scraping at them with a sponge that was well past its prime. Jonas freed his shriveled hands from the sink and found solace for them in a nearby dishtowel. One lanky, wrinkled finger pressed against the glass of his spectacles, nudging them higher up his nose and leaving a single, greasy smudge.

  He turned to me and extended a hand. I filled it with a cleaned plate, and he tsk-tsked as he struggled to dry and wipe away the water spots, though he knew it was futile. “No shortcuts even in death,” he always told me. Eventually, he accepted that the plate was as clean as it was ever going to be. He placed it on the rack with a sigh and motioned for another. This routine ran like clockwork for nearly half an hour, accompanied only by the audible fuzz and muffled songs emanating from the jukebox and Jonas’s disappointed exhalations. I stared into the sink the entire time. I couldn’t see my pruning hands in the cloudy water. I didn’t watch my supervisor, his tireless effort to clean the dishes, or his foot tapping along with the music.

  I didn’t see the glass, still slick from the grimy dishwater, slip from my hands and shatter against the tiles. I wouldn’t have noticed if not for Jonas’s rapid-fire German profanity. My hands leapt from the grime as I rushed to the corner and grabbed the broom, eager to sweep the shards up and away so that he wouldn’t hurt himself.

  “So then, are you going to work in silence all day, or are you going to tell me about her?” He fixed his eyes on me, his pupils strong and sharp, even behind the greasy fingerprints on his lenses. My fingers shot to my brow to wipe away the sweat and the “Lovesick Fool” apparently written there.

  “How does everyone keep figuring that out?” I crouched down to sweep the last of the pub glass’s remnants into the dust pan. Jonas just smiled.

  “Alte Füchse gehen schwer in die Falle.”

  “Damnit, you can’t go spouting off German proverbs. What the hell do you even mean?” I demanded from the floor.

  “Old foxes understand a trap, Owen. I am not easily fooled,” he chuckled. “I knew the moment you walked in. There was no disappointment on your face as you told me you are staying. Everyone is disappointed to be staying here. Even the angels look upon this place with Verachtung. They can come and go as they please, they just muddle through their workdays here. But you smile, the kind of smile that only a woman can give a man. I have felt that smile.”

  I stared, confounded by his intuition, by how everyone around me seemed to read me like a child’s paperback book.

  “Okay. Yes, J, there was a girl at St. Pete’s today.” I turned to dispose of the glass in a full bin I was certain I’d just emptied, but I could still feel his eyes, magnified by his spectacles and focusing hard on my back like those of a parent expecting an explanation. I almost heard what he said before he said it.

  “There are girls at St. Peter’s every day. Tr
y that again, but with more honesty this time.”

  I leaned the broom back against the wall, hanging the dustpan on the hook above it. Burrowing my hands into my pockets for comfort, I stared up at the ceiling for a moment before blurting out my day like a first grader at show-and-tell.

  “She was in my waiting room. Fresh off the train. She’s got these eyes. They’re bright, and bold, and blue—so blue. You can actually see the color!” I pushed my hair back as my emotions exploded. “You can fucking see them, Jonas, even through the gray. You get lost in them, you don’t want to come back, just like the ocean. She’s beautiful. And pale. She was wearing this awesome Thin Lizzy shirt and she smelled like the sea. She’s got this smile, and it’s the brightest thing I’ve ever seen.” I paused to catch my breath, the entire scene replaying in my mind. “And I think she’s coming here. Tonight.”

  He motioned me to come with him as he darted back into the café with a speed that always caught me off guard. I grabbed the tray of glasses and followed through the swinging door, depositing the tray on a shelf underneath the counter. He headed for the jukebox, adjusting a rack of bowling shoes on the way, and began pressing buttons and tapping through selections. Resting against the side of the machine, he turned back to me.

  “Does she have a name, this sea girl?”

  “Mia,” I sighed, liked some horrible teenager in a John Hughes movie.

  “That is a beautiful name.” He smiled. “Does she have Narben?” He motioned to my arms.

  I froze, nearly knocking another glass to the tile. Had there been scars? Surely I would have noticed a shocking streak of pink marring her pallid complexion.

  “I didn’t see any, no. I don’t think that’s why she’s here. I think it might have been something natural, or some sort of accident.”

  “Michael did not tell you?” He seemed surprised as he tapped the play button—his favorite tune, again—and I filled the soda fountain with a fresh bucket of ice.

  “No, of course not. I think that might be a breach of ethics.”

  “Good. He should not share those kinds of things. He cannot be trusted. He’s a schmuck.” He pointed directly at my chest, as if his ancient finger were an arrow delivering a message.

  “Michael’s not a schmuck!” I walked over to the taps to pull him a pint of something nameless and golden. “Besides, I don’t think you’re supposed to call an Archangel a schmuck. That might be why you’re still here, old timer.”

  “I am here by choice,” he said. “I have never once called Gabriel a schmuck. He follows the rules. He does not make us take numbers, he does not miss our scheduled appointments. He advises. He does not ask me to sneak cigarettes to him. He is a good man.”

  Jonas paused to sip from his glass, grimacing before the alcohol even touched his lips. He’d spent years adjusting to the poor quality, but no matter how many times you drank it, it never got any better. “Michael, though, he is a schmuck. Through and through.”

  ***

  The ancient door I’d walked through a thousand times swung wide open before either of us could say another word. I whipped my gaze from the old man to the dim, gray daylight filtering in. I knew it couldn’t be her. There was no way. Nobody got used to this place in twenty-four hours. Nobody went wandering off to some strange bowling alley to meet a guy they hardly knew—not in real life and certainly not here In-Between. And yet, my gut told me to keep my eyes on that door.

  I stood rubbing the same glass with the same rag, over and over, fixated on the crowd wandering in. A couple of regulars first: the guys from the bookstore down the street who’d formed a league, an angel looking to blow off some steam. The door creaked closed, and then that movement slowly reversed.

  As it inched open again, my heart began pounding a fevered cadence. I had forgotten what it was like to be that nervous, every cell in my body rushing manically back and forth, desperately trying to escape. My gut told me it was her, that vibrant new shred of humanity that I’d seen just hours before. Even Jonas twisted his stool around to get a good look.

  My gut was wrong; guts did not relay facts. It was the fucking bus driver, walking into the bowling alley in the most hideous leisure suit I’d ever seen. He didn’t even smile or wave at me for keeping his route on time. He didn’t order a drink or try to bowl a frame; he’d just stopped in to take a piss. This place never ceased to disappoint.

  5

  Three full days passed before I saw Mia again. Dozens of wayward souls crossed the Depot threshold each night, but not a single one was her. With every set of pins reracked or pair of shoes rented out, my decision began to weigh on me. What the hell was I doing? I’d delayed my escape, voluntarily shirking my seat on the one train out of town, the shuttle to Paradise, in hopes that a girl I’d made a slight connection with would decide she wanted to spend the first few days of her afterlife experience getting to know me. Why would she? What did I even have to offer her? A couple free pints of the worst beer she’d ever taste, or a gratis game or two in a lane where you never could knock down all ten pins. As I walked home that night, I was painfully aware that I’d spent the majority of our single interaction staring at her like a child ogling a movie theater screen. She was a fantasy picture show and nothing more.

  That fourth afternoon, the bowling alley was practically a ghost town. I could’ve sworn I saw a tumbleweed roll down one of the freshly slicked lanes, barely brushing a pin but somehow getting a strike. Jonas and I stood behind the register counter, attempting to pair shoes together.

  “Do you know the thing I miss the most? I mean more than anything, the one thing I hope they will have when I am finally able to leave this place?” Jonas pushed his thin-framed spectacles up his crooked nose.

  “Being able to actually get a good night’s rest?” I scratched at a stray piece of ugly, antiquated wallpaper that had popped up on the shoe rack.

  “Well, that would be nice too, yes. But no, more than anything I miss Gummibärchen,” he said.

  “You mean gummy bears? That’s what you miss more than anything else?”

  “Of course. There is nothing better than a small bag of them. I could even eat them for breakfast.” He looked gleeful as he tilted his head skyward, thinking back on his favorite sugary treat, before shoving two mismatched shoes of the same size into an empty slot.

  “J, I’m gonna be honest,” I smirked. “I like sweets and all but—” I never finished my thought. The front door creaked open, and for the first time I wasn’t focused on the agonizing squeal of the hinge.

  She swept through the door like an oncoming storm. Hurricane Mia, ready to rip up everything I knew right from the roots. She paused as her boot heels thudded down on the shitty old linoleum tiling. I could see her eyes from behind the counter—pupils widening as she took in this train wreck of a place, blue piercing through the gray. She lit up the Depot like I’d never seen, the whole place practically baptized in that pale blue luminescence, a little oasis in the middle of perdition.

  “That must be her, right?” Jonas asked, though he didn’t wait for me to answer. He grabbed his half-emptied beer glass from beside the register, an impish grin slipping across his weathered face. Without another word, he hopped up and shuffled into the backroom—a little Bavarian frogman in a button-up and scuffed loafers.

  I was more afraid now than when I sat in front of Michael. Then, all I’d had to do was stand up to one of the men overseeing this whole thing, an Archangel, and tell him I was not ready to leave the In-Between yet. Compared to this, that was a walk. I’d stepped to the plate, called my shot, and knocked it out of the park. Now, I had to convince this relative stranger that I was worth getting to know, or I’d delayed a trip to Paradise for no reason other than puppy love. As she strode over to the counter I waved, calling out “Welcome to the Depot!” Was my smile too big? Did I seem welcoming or overzealous? When did I lose the ability to function like a normal human being?

  She smiled back politely, which calmed me, but then she
made a beeline toward the jukebox. I was off to a great start. I wished Jonas had left his beer. I was going to need a drink or two after my inevitable crash and burn. At least it was only going to be two weeks.

  “Teenage Wasteland,” she said, resting her hand on the selection panel of the jukebox. The words came out flat and disappointed, lingering in the air like unwanted guests. She spun on her heel to face me as I nervously wiped at smudges on the cracked Formica counter. “You’re fucking kidding me, right? You know that’s not the name of the song.”

  I chuckled, but the squint she gave me was not one of understanding. Utter indignation simmered in her cheeks. I was convinced that the ice in her eyes might melt if I didn’t speak up, but at the same time I wanted to experience every side of her, anger included.

  “Be happy that you can actually put a silver coin in and get that one to play. I know that’s not the name, and you know that’s not the name, and that’s precisely why it’s listed that way in the damn thing,” I said, still trying to buff out the stubborn smudge. “They do that kind of shit on purpose. Part of the charm I guess. I don’t know. I guess Michael probably didn’t cover all the quirks yesterday.” The smudge grew bigger.

  “So, wait. Are you telling me that the people in charge of this place have nothing better to do than misname songs on a busted-up, bowling alley jukebox? I really misjudged this whole afterlife thing.” She swatted at the jukebox, knocking it awake. The machine chugged to life with a flicker of neon and speaker static. She was completely unfazed by the synthesizer, still exasperated at the mislabeling as the windmill guitar kicked into full swing.

  “Rumor has it, the jukeboxes in Hell only play Barry Manilow. Be grateful this one has a half-decent selection.” I was going for disarming. She didn’t even crack a smile. “But yeah, that’s the thing around here. It’s always the small stuff. Your shoes never stay tied, even when you double-knot ‘em, and they’ll always be scuffed, too. All those glasses,” I said, gesturing to the barware behind the café counter, “they’re all cracked, chipped, or smudged. I only wipe them down out of habit and because Jonas expects me to.”