“So, it’s like a free pass into Heaven?”
“That’s what I’ve gathered. But no one really knows. People tend to stay away from him; sin eater doesn’t exactly sound friendly, you know?”
She squeezed my arm, her eyes glued to the terrace as if she expected him to turn his head and spit venom in her direction. I couldn’t blame her. He’d stumbled into the Depot exactly twice before, his unkempt mop of silver hair like some crow’s nest. He’d reeked of cheap whiskey and, full of fire and vigor, extolled the virtue of his work, aspirating and arguing with random bowlers that this whole afterlife thing was a sham.
Jonas, being the rigid and orderly type, disagreed vehemently, and their debate devolved into angry cursing—a volley of booze-coated arrows, colliding with a flurry of German shells. I cleaned up the shards of at least a dozen shattered glasses after the “debate,” and Jonas insisted that I hang a sign informing the general public that those who take on the weight of others’ sins were not welcome within, though he was willing to make an exception should the Messiah stroll in for a pint.
“He’s pretty much shunned here. You see him around the city, but people are always wary of him. Everyone thinks it’s kind of unnatural, and they don’t seem to trust him. There’s a rumor that there’s more than one of him. People swear they talked to him, but they’re describing an entirely different person. Some people think he might just be a demon.”
“But he couldn’t be, right? I mean, he’s here, not in Hell.”
“Don’t know, really. There are angels here all the time. But people say he’ll still do it for you if you ask, it’s just that no one has the guts to. He’s obviously resigned to this place. Everyone else who passes the station can’t help but look at it, you know? It’s like the hand of God reaches down and turns your neck to face the damn train, to see how close you are to escape and salvation. But every time he walks by, he puts his hood up and walks on. Like he knows he’s not getting out.”
“That’s awful. To be knowingly stuck here forever? I can’t even imagine the weight of that.”
“This place is probably better than the other option. Besides, I think he’s kind of a hero. It’s hard to like what you don’t really understand, but he seems alright to me.”
“That’s pretty against the grain,” she said. “I can dig that. Besides, it’s fascinating.” She pulled me forward with her, walking under the terrace where the sin eater sat eating his tin of applesauce, the late-night silence of the city pierced only by the click of our heels and the shrill scrape of his spoon. A gust of wind caught us, and as we shivered together, I caught a long whiff of her hair. The sea salt scent brought with it a long-forgotten feeling of warmth, and visions of beaches and sunshine. It had been so long since I’d seen the ocean.
Other tortured souls would swear up and down that if you made it to the edge of the city, there was a vast expanse of sea, though, like everything else, it was dismal, dull, and colorless—a ghost of the Atlantic. It was hard to believe. Even if you took your day off to climb to the top of the tallest skyscraper, it was all city as far as the eye could see. It seemed like a farce to believe there was an ocean on the other side of the horizon, and who’d want to venture out to see an ocean as dead as the rest of this place?
I didn’t count the number of empty intersections we passed through, the steps to her apartment, or the times I looked up expecting to see stars here for the first time. I didn’t notice if there was anyone on the sidewalk while we stood on the stoop, how many windows were lit up in her building, or what song was playing on the radio of the car idling at the stoplight. I don’t remember if the smell of anything fresh wafted out from the bakery, or if there’d been anyone around to watch us. All that existed were her eyes.
“So,” she said, shifting her weight toward the door, “are you busy tomorrow?” Her teeth closed gently around her lower lip, a little half-giggle trailing out to let me know it was my turn to speak.
“No busier than I was today,” I said, the words coming out as if I were on autopilot, a giddy grin crawling across my face. “So, if you want to stop by the lanes, I can probably get away with trying to keep you entertained.” I sounded charming in my head, but the words came out unpolished and graceless.
Then I was enveloped in a hug that left me absolutely speechless, too dumb to talk, kiss, fuck, or function. For once, the In-Between didn’t seem so dismal. Not with her in it. I should’ve gone in for the kiss, and I knew it, but she was already up the stairs and through the front door.
“Thank you,” she said, turning back to me. Even in the dim light, her eyes shone brightly. “This whole transition is fucking weird to say the least. So really, thank you.” I smiled and nodded, long after she’d closed the door behind her.
On the walk home I was bulletproof—goddamned intrepid. For the first time since long before my death, my head hit the pillow with a smile stretching cheek to cheek.
6
I hoped my two-week extension would pass by excruciatingly slow, as time always had on early Christmas mornings when I was a child. I’d be up by four and wait what felt like hours to wake up my parents and open presents. That slow march of minutes was all I wanted now, so I could enjoy every one of them spent with Mia. That was wishful thinking, but I remained hopeful, even as the first week blurred by like a bullet train.
After walking her home that first night, I worried she’d make herself scarce, or worse, fall apart. It wasn’t uncommon for new people to completely lose it for a while, and not just the non-believers. Finding out there’s life after death is the kind of thing that can cause a person to blow a fuse or two. It was a lot to process without any welcome manual or rulebook. Michael said breakdowns happened to the people who wound up in the other two places too, but the epidemic was especially bad here.
There were plenty of suicides who tried again, thinking it was all a bad coma dream. Then there were the good Christian folk who weren’t nearly as sanctified as they believed themselves to be; you’d hear them loudly complaining on the corner that they’d seen followers of other religions and even non-believers on the train to Paradise. Some of them just couldn’t grasp the concept of penance, or the fact that this place wasn’t all that different from where they were before—everything was just a little grayer, and the people in charge had the occasional molting problem.
I couldn’t stomach the thought of Mia crying in her apartment. As I went about my work routine, I wondered how she’d gotten here. This whole afterlife wasn’t exactly the most above-the-board, well-run organization. Occasionally, we’d get an escapee from Hell wandering the streets, but they’d be snatched up and returned within hours. Mia’s paperwork may have gotten fudged along the way, some winged clerk stamping the wrong file or placing her folder in the wrong bin. I hadn’t known her long enough to really know her, but she didn’t seem like she was incomplete or unworthy of Paradise.
I was surprised to see her back in the Depot the next night. When I walked out of the backroom with a tray of freshly washed, forever-tarnished glasses, there she was in the café. She sat with her elbows on the peeling laminate tabletop, her chin resting on two tiny, pale fists.
“Excuse me, servant boy,” she cooed, batting her eyelashes. “Could you please bring me a beer? You might not believe it, but this whole death thing can make a person very thirsty.”
“Of course, Miss. You’re absolutely right,” I laughed. “Whatever this is, it does tend to leave you mighty thirsty. Oh, and I hope you’re not looking to get drunk, because that’s one of those nice little pleasures in life that we miss out on here.” I flattened my hands on her table with a smile. “I’m just going to need to see some identification. Can’t go serving minors in this place. Unless it’s wine. They’re okay with that for some reason, but you have to have a cracker with it.”
I gazed into the glassy oases of her irises, desperate to slake my thirst there rather than on whatever we had on tap.
“Ooh, can you cut me a li
ttle slack this time?” she said. “I left my ID in another life, and somehow I got here without a passport, so—” Her tiny hand covered the back of mine. Even if we’d both been alive, I’d have gotten her the beer at that point. Feminine wiles were hard to resist, and hers were finely honed with inescapable charm. I didn’t time my trip, but I was certain it was the fastest I’d ever returned to a table with a beer. I set it in front of her, presenting it like some great bastion of hope. She sipped on the beer and clearly found it unsatisfying, but that didn’t stop her.
“So, Owen. I don’t know about you, but my apartment is not exactly what you’d call amazing.”
“Is that so?” I responded in mock outrage. I slid into the booth across from her, ignoring my work duties.
“Regrettably, that does seem to be the case,” she said. “Not that my place before was great, mind you, but this place is a bit more like a dumpster that somebody’s just covered in wallpaper.” She sipped on her beer, calm and cool, not even scowling at the abysmal taste, her smile never quite fading as she looked at me.
“That unfortunately sounds about right,” I said, wishing for a drink of my own. “Mine’s this awful, hospital-white color. It’s like being in a psych ward.”
“Oh my god, I know. My walls are just awful and off-white, like old sheets that have been washed too many times, with too many dark colors,” she said, taking a big gulp. “And the floors are absolutely terrifying. I can’t walk barefoot on them, they’re like raw wood. I look ridiculous, but I have to wear at least three pairs of socks.”
I nodded, remembering the struggle in my own apartment. I could just imagine her sneaking around in bulging, mismatched socks, worried her delicate feet would become harbor to dozens of fresh splinters.
“Trust me, that’s for the best. Splinters here are a lot like paper cuts, only twice as annoying and three times as difficult to care for.” I felt like a sage, dispensing the great wisdoms of this place while she hung on every word.
“Okay, and hear me out on this one.” She lowered her voice and scrunched down close to the tabletop. I followed suit, bringing my face close to hers, our noses nearly touching. “So, the guy that lives next door, left-hand side. I’m pretty sure I know him. I saw him yesterday, going into his apartment as I was leaving, and he kind of looked away. But I remember him from back home. It was a cold and snowy night about two years ago. I was coming home from a bar that I’d snuck into, and his campaign limo stopped next to me. He was a politician.” She nibbled on her lower lip, and though I wanted to know everything, I could get lost in that simple gesture for the rest of the evening.
“He picks me up to give me a ride home. After he finds out I’m old enough to vote, that creep tried to peek up my skirt. Can you believe it? I could’ve been his granddaughter. I was so disgusted.”
“Honestly? That’s kind of how this place works. He’ll probably see you all the time. He’s probably going to feel guilty as hell about it, too.” She offered me the last sip from her glass and I accepted it, grateful to put my lips where hers had been moments before. “I’ve got my own thing like that. I had this fitness teacher in high school. I always got in trouble in his class; we just didn’t mesh, and I ended up ratting him out for supplying these growth hormones to the football team. It was this huge scandal. He got fired, couldn’t get a job as a coach anywhere.” I spun the glass on its rim, watching her watch me. “I never heard anything about him after I moved away for college. When I ended up here, I saw him everywhere. I’d see him every morning, jogging alongside my bus, giving me this awful glare through the one eye he’s got left.”
“Wow. You know, you’re pretty open with this stranger. I kind of like that.” She put her hand on the glass to stop the spinning, wiping with her napkin at the ring of condensation I’d spread.
“Well, you’re surprisingly well-adjusted to this whole being dead thing, and I kind of like you—that. I kind of like that.” My eyes widened for a moment, my cheeks flushing a bright red. Her bottom lip again between her teeth, another giggle escaped.
I could have continued our conversation forever, but Jonas looked over every two minutes or so, as if I was supposed to be working or something. Begrudgingly, I gave into his whims, my cheeks still burning from my conversational flub.
She left before my shift ended that night. Rather than slip out silently, she dropped a handful of dull, silver coins into the jukebox and picked “Escape” for each of her three selections. As the opening drum line erupted from the crackling sound system, she began to sashay toward the door, stopping to shoot a sly look over her shoulder as she shifted the door open.
“Stay,” I mouthed from behind the counter as I polished a pair shoes. She didn’t, but I was certain her lips formed a “next time,” in my direction.
Jonas tapped his toes to the song and informed me that I should be so lucky to spend the rest of eternity with a beautiful girl who had such fine taste in music. As he frog-shuffled off to the far lane, I replayed his words in my head. He was right.
***
My shift came and went the next night without so much as a hint of her saltwater scent. I considered stopping by her apartment on the way home, but the idea made me uncomfortable. I couldn’t justify by saying it was on the way. “Yeah, I was just in the neighborhood, twenty-three blocks across town from anywhere I need to be, and oh hey, where were you tonight?” That was a foolproof way to shoot myself in the foot. Mia would run away screaming, thinking I was some kind of kook.
Instead, I stumbled home and curled into bed, staring out the window into the starless sky. I wondered if she was doing the same thing on an awful, shabby mattress across town, imagining that guy who served her drinks and offered her free rounds of bowling. I sank a little, the fantastic high of meeting this incredible new person melting away into an uncomfortable, familiar malaise. I didn’t like it one bit, but at least sleep found me quickly.
The next day, Mia arrived at the Depot before me, occupying a corner booth in the café with a book in her hands. The cracked, white leather cover looked to be hundreds of years old, though Bright Lights, Big City has been scribbled on the front in red permanent marker. She glanced in my direction in a secretive, almost seductive manner, one corner of her mouth turning up in a shy smirk. I pretended not to notice. She returned the favor as I took up my post behind the counter.
“Go over there,” Jonas said from some secret place behind me, a little louder than I would have liked. Mia stifled her giggle into a quiet exhalation as she turned the page. I spun around, ready to strangle the life out of the little German.
“Jonas!” I hissed. “Be cool, man!”
“I am cool. The coolest. You have seen me dance,” he said, swinging a grimy rag. “But you should go over there. She has been waiting for you. She even asked where you were.” He pointed, and I turned just as her eyes darted back down to the ancient book.
“Really?”
“No, she did not ask.” He clapped my shoulder in consolation. My plaid shirt grew damp as an acrid secretion of cleaning solution and red jelly left the rag in his hand for a new home on my shoulder. “I was trying to make you confident. Look, she keeps looking at you. That is just as good as asking, nicht wahr?”
“Right. That’s true. What do I do?” Nerves crawled through my body like a million angry little fire ants. I rubbed my forearms in a futile attempt to relieve the itch in my veins. If I could just go for a swim, that would cool everything.
“Do you listen to me at all?” he sighed. We’d only spent my past two shifts talking about this. He brought his thumb and middle finger to his temples, rubbing as he muttered something indecipherable in German. “You have not been quiet about her since you came back from St. Peter’s. She is beautiful. She makes you do a little dance when you walk, though your dance is not as good as mine. You do not even notice it, do you? You stumble over your own feet like a clumsy little Hündchen. Just go. Sit down and talk to her and try not to think so much.” He neatly placed
his rag in a bucket underneath the counter and picked up a tray of dirty glasses.
“When I was your age, we did not think so much. When I saw meine Frau for the first time, I was not much younger than you. I walked up to her and I did not think. I asked her if she would like to walk with me through the park. It is that easy.”
The old man clearly had more confidence in my ability than I did.
“Also, I lied again. She did ask.” Though I’d heard his life story many times, with his mischievous smile he could’ve been some little Black Forest imp. As I stepped past him, he offered up encouragement by pushing the tray of glasses into the small of my back, simultaneously pushing a lump up into my throat. The lump perched there as I stumbled like a puppy toward Mia, ready to strike and unload all the words I wanted to say, the feelings I was certain I felt.
It was difficult not to sit across from her in the booth and deliver some long-winded Shakespearean monologue about how she lit up the whole city, how she brought color into the gray, how her glassy blue eyes reminded me of the marbles I’d played with as a child; how I wanted to know every little detail of her life, and why she ended up here, of all places, and if maybe, just maybe, she’d like to spend the rest of eternity getting to know me.
I mustered a nod toward her book and uttered a calm, “So, how is it?” I looked over my shoulder to give Jonas a confident smile, but he’d already disappeared into the kitchen.
“It’s not bad,” she said without looking up. “A bit more pretentious than I remember, but I think that’s part of the charm, honestly. I found it at the library last night. The first few pages are missing, and a couple of the best lines are completely blacked out. Honestly, I’m only half-reading it. I don’t know if you know, but there’s this handsome man who works here—and the younger guy is pretty cute too.”
In-Between Days Page 6