I nodded and she looked up, the slightest hint of celestial rage smoldering behind her thick lenses.
“Think about it like this. You’ve got a book that was written two thousand years ago by a bunch of men. It’s not exactly spot-on accurate about everything.” She exhaled with exasperation. “I mean, when they refer to me in the scripture, I’m always a male. Do I look like a guy to you?”
I had set her off. She was looking around at the rest of the lost souls, waving her silverware around with purpose.
“The authors put the flaming sword in my hands to guard Paradise, and then they go and shift it over to Michael when it comes time to fight off Lucifer. Now, imagine that for a minute. Michael, who’s been smoking tobacco since long before humans knew how. Michael, who can’t fly a mile as fast I can run one. Michael! He’s the one fighting off Lucifer. It’s a total joke. It’s a sign of the times, and it’s completely inaccurate, but it’s not as if we can just jump in and change it either. Barring a full-scale, global press conference, where I walk out in a robe and show off my wingspan to the people of earth, no one’s going to put any stock in it. And besides, that would be complete chaos.”
Jonas tossed in his two cents as he collected her empty plate. “Michael? In a battle? That guy’s a total schmuck.”
That was my first real memory of Uriel—cool and collected, but full of fire. As I rode the elevator up to the twelfth floor, I couldn’t help but laugh at how right she’d been. I doubted there was a more believable authority figure than her in all of the afterlife, except perhaps the big guy himself.
I also wondered who was responsible for the awful wallpaper pattern inside the elevator, the dingy red-and-gold floral print I’d seen creeping around countless other places. Something about it made me uneasy. I was tired of seeing it everywhere, and since I was almost out of here, it couldn’t hurt to take a shot at it now. I searched for an upturned edge with my fingers, imagining that if I peeled it away, I’d have my own little way to rage against the machine.
My dreams were vanquished by the sudden stop of the lift and the elevator door rapidly opening. The wallpaper remained in place, but I’d come out of the battle with a nasty paper cut. This place!
I was disheartened to see someone else sitting behind the desk. I had hoped for beautiful, blonde locks and icy cool eyes. Instead, I was met with a familiar, awful croak, from a frog-like woman bearing an uncanny resemblance to Janice, except for the oversized mole growing fierce and savage on her face, like a second head ready to snap at the thick-framed spectacles resting dangerously nearby. She looked up from her paperwork and scowled in a way I’d become accustomed to. Her nameplate, however, read Roz. She must have been related to Janice in some capacity.
“Aw-fice hours ah ovah, you’ll have ta come back tomorrow morning.” She dropped her head forward, her spectacles sliding down her nose and catching on the edge of her mole. I was convinced the mole had moved on its own, and my spine shivered.
“Oh,” I said directly to the mole. “I was just waiting to pick up Mia. We have a—”
“Sit ovah there. Don’t play with anything.” She pointed with her head, but I could have sworn it was the mole that indicated the couch she expected me to sit on. I fell backwards onto it, sitting obediently until her eyes returned to whatever paperwork she was so rooted in. My hand shot toward the potted plant leaning limply against the side of the couch, and I rubbed the grayed-out leaves between my fingers to calm myself as I stared into the open doorway behind the toad woman’s desk, hoping to catch a glimpse of Mia flitting past.
A leaf snapped in my fingers when she appeared in the doorframe with her back to me. Uriel stood in front of her, nearly as regal as her marble statue thirteen floors down. As Uriel collapsed into a chair behind her desk, she slid a manila folder across to Mia.
“Alright, so I’ve been filing paperwork all day, and that’s cool with me. But if he’s all knowing, all-seeing, and all-powerful, what’s the point of all this?” Mia asked. She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear as she bent to pick up the folder. I stared longer than I should have, convinced I caught her saltwater scent, and the Archangel spotted me. Uriel sighed, sending an impassive look in my direction and polishing her glasses with the corner of her shirt.
“Work. You’re here to work yourself out, do some penance, and pass on. Simple enough.” She pulled a golden pack of cigarettes from a desk drawer, bringing it to her lips and returning it to the desk one cigarette short. A click of her fingers saw the cherry ignite bright and clear. She was far better at Lucy’s trick than Michael. I was jealous that Uriel could see Mia’s reaction. I imagined Mia’s awestruck smile spreading from cheek to cheek, but her tone remained unfazed.
“Is he here? I mean, is this like the movies? Is he the person I least expect? Please tell me it’s not that awful receptionist out there.” Mia turned and caught a glimpse of me. My cheeks lit up like lanterns, a stupid nervous grin overtaking my half-interested smirk. I wanted to bury my face into the battered throw pillows beside me as she filed the manila folder away.
“Not quite. First, you’re getting your pronouns out of place.” Uriel took a few quick puffs on her cigarette, exhaling a series of smoke rings with a smile.
“God’s a woman?” Mia called back from the cabinet without even a hint of surprise. “That makes sense I guess.”
“Again, not quite. You’re tacking gender on where it doesn’t matter. There isn’t a clear-cut definition in this case. But I like to think she has more maternal qualities. Anyway, you’ve got the basics—all-seeing, all-powerful, all-knowing.” She paused to take a big drag, before continuing a routine that seemed rehearsed. “But at the end of the day, there are over seven billion people in existence, and that’s just right now. Can you imagine having a working memory of every individual to ever walk the face of the earth, no matter how long or how brief? That would give me a nervous breakdown, and I’m a fucking Archangel. I sliced the head off the serpent. We’re lucky the boss just gets panic attacks.” She scratched the tip of her pen in ink trails across a sheet of pale yellow paper, her cigarette pursed between her lips. She’d clearly given the same speech a dozen times before, but this was all new to Mia.
“God gets panic attacks too?” Her voice was soaked in relief. I understood; the thought was more comforting than it should have been, and Uriel flashed an understanding smile in her direction— maybe even through her to me.
“When she gets too deep into all of this office work, she gets overwhelmed, so she’s been away for a while.” Uriel stood, yellow paperwork in hand. “I like to think it’s akin to an extended maternity leave. Let’s call it postpartum depression after creating an entire fucking universe.”
“Does she do anything?” Mia’s question honestly didn’t seem that audacious. I’d been wondering the same thing. Uriel erupted in laughter as she shuffled the beautiful girl toward the doorway.
“Believe it or not, she watches a lot of Buffy reruns,” she said, locking the door behind them.
“God likes Buffy?” Mia smiled.
“Everyone likes Buffy,” Uriel said, dropping a yellow slip on the desk in front of the frumpish secretary. “God’s no different from any one of you. Existence is the most difficult thing anyone could possibly do, fumbling around, fucking things up when you think you’re doing the right thing. It’s why so many of you end up here. But anyway. Rosalyn! See that HR gets that in the morning so we can get Mia a set of keys for the office room. And get a clean-up crew in here first thing in the morning to scrape that atrocity off the wall.”
She pointed at the wall behind the desk, where that horrible wallpaper was sprouting from nowhere.
“You didn’t have to wait for me,” Mia told me over Roz’s throaty croak. I forgot the office, the wallpaper, and practically every word in my vocabulary. Her hair was pulled back in a lazy ponytail, but long strands had made their escape, rebelliously framing her face. Her icy blue irises were magnified by the stark white collar o
f her button-up shirt, and pale legs peeked out from under a dark skirt. I studied those legs for what must have been hours. Though peppered with the remnants of playground scars and what looked to be a cigarette burn, they were flawless. We have to stop meeting like this, I thought.
“No. It’s cool,” I said to Mia, that foolish grin overtaking my face again. Even in the afterlife I wasn’t anything close to cool. I turned to Uriel. “What’s the deal with the wallpaper, anyway?”
“You’re familiar with Lucifer?” Uriel’s voice rose, clear and commanding, interrupting Mia’s attempt at an answer.
“I mean, we’re not buddies or anything, but I’ve heard the story once or twice,” I said.
“Long story short, after the fall from grace, the battle for Heaven, and me slicing off his stupid head with a flaming sword, the guy got a little depressed.” She paused to place another cigarette between her lips, lighting it with her fingertips. “We’re not talking a little melancholy. The guy sits in his bathrobe and can’t even get off the couch. People think he’s responsible for all of these horrible atrocities on Earth, but really, that’s all you. He can’t work up the ability, or even the confidence, to muster a full-scale assault again, but deep down he’s still committed to undermining the celestial authority.”
“Good to know,” I said. “But what does that have to do with the shitty wallpaper?”
“That’s his big battle plan,” she deadpanned. “He doesn’t have an army of tormented souls, despicable creatures, or demons. He’s not toying with the politicians of the world, whispering in the ears of generals, or crashing Buddy Holly’s plane. He can’t cause a typhoon, a hurricane, a tornado, or even a sneezing fit. He’s not trying to enable homosexuality or abortion, and he’s absolutely not trying to corrupt humanity through the musical stylings of Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest.”
She took a quick puff and nodded toward the awful floral-print patch, which had started to branch out. “His big attempt at sticking it to the man is that awful, retro wallpaper. It pops up everywhere here. It’s unsightly, and it will give you a wicked paper-cut, but that’s about it. It doesn’t exist in the living world yet, but we’ve had it for a couple of centuries now.”
“It’s in the elevator too,” I said.
“SONOFABITCH!” She reached over Roz’s desk and grabbed a scraping tool. “I swear in the name of all that is holy, I will take a trip down there this weekend and cut his head off all over again!”
The words trailed off as she stepped into the elevator, her eyes wide with divine rage, her lips pursed cholericly. She must have willed the elevator doors closed behind her, because they came together with a hard clang.
“It sounds like the tackiest attempt at guerrilla warfare the world has ever seen,” Mia laughed. “So, do you want to take the stairs?”
I smelled the sea salt as she spoke, hinting at the impending freedom of getting out of the city for a couple of hours, time that would be spent with her alone. The words shot out of my mouth like a flurry of bullets, from the tip of my tongue straight through my teeth.
“Yeah, let’s get out of here before Roz thinks we’re flies and flicks her tongue in our direction.”
Mia pulled me through a side door and down a dozen flights of steps. Though there was no sign of the real Uriel in the lobby, the sword that had been ablaze and in the hand of the statue had disappeared. We shot each other curious looks as we walked past.
***
After the long walk to Mia’s apartment, I waited on the cracked stone stoop while she changed clothes. I fiddled with the spare change in my pocket, wondering if we’d make it in time, if the bus would show up on schedule, and if she’d even enjoy herself. I was overthinking again, a problem I’d carried over from my life before this place. It was almost unbelievable how in sync we were, and I worried that it was just because she was new—that I was a passing interest at best.
Her footsteps exploded like gunshots as she stepped onto the stoop, mercilessly silencing those thoughts.
“I’m a passing interest.”—BLAM!
“She’s just looking for a friend until she gets used to things.”—BLAM!
“She’ll ditch you in a . . .”—BLAM!
Clad in the same ripped jeans and Thin Lizzy T-shirt from the first night, a pair of sunglasses balanced atop her head, Mia also wore that same smile that lit me up and emptied my vocabulary. I dusted off my jeans as she looked off into traffic, her bottom lip clenched softly in her front teeth.
“Well?” She looked up at me. “Where to?”
I wanted to scream back, “The Atlantic! I’ll give you the ocean! We’ll spend all day in the waves, and we’ll avoid everything and everyone else. I’ve got rope. We can build a raft from driftwood and sail away to somewhere, anywhere better than here.” But neither of us would ever see the Atlantic again, so instead I pointed toward the bus stop. “We sit on the green line for about an hour. That’s all I can tell you, but I can promise you it’s worth it.”
She grabbed my hand and pulled me forward as she’d done at the office, cheekily suggesting that “this was not a very impressive attempt at a first date so far.” But that slight snark was followed with a giggle, and it filled me with a righteous sense of purpose. I followed her warmth, contentedly plopping next to her on the bench. The bus would be another half-hour’s wait, but I couldn’t complain. I wasn’t so sure I was In-Between anymore. Maybe Michael had tricked me. This might just be Paradise.
8
The city sat behind us, big and bold against the skyline, brimming with people. The outskirts reeked of desolation and disappointment. The sparse vegetation was as gray as everything else, as if these plants had also done something wrong back in the world of the living.
Putting a used-car dealership out here had been the ultimate joke. Row after row of passable vehicles covered flat asphalt for acres. They inspired hope, freedom, and exploration. If it weren’t for the inner workings of this place, it would be hard not to empty your wallet, leap into a convertible, and drive toward the horizon. But there was nothing worth exploring. It just went on forever—bleak and barren landscape, peppered with small groups of exiles and masochists who had shunned moving on. Eventually, the immense and uninviting ocean would appear, stripped of sound, color, and life. The junkyard next to the car dealership served as a reminder that this was never meant to be a place to chase your dreams.
I stood hand-in-hand with Mia as she stared at the scrap heap in awe. Beautiful old cars piled on top of each other, front-ends buried in the sand like ostrich heads. There were thousands. Some looked pristine, but not one of them was ever going to run properly again, though there were always mechanics who were desperate to try. Michael told me it was just another rite of passage; any gear-head stuck In-Between was sure to stumble upon this place eventually and become obsessed.
“Okay,” she smiled. “I know things are different here, and I know you’ve been here for a while, so that’s probably screwed up your thinking a little bit, but back in the real world, you try to avoid places that require tetanus shots on the first date.”
Towering steel light-poles hummed to life, the manic rush of light bathing her face in cinematic pallor.
“Just trust me, alright?” I said. “This is going to be worth it. Besides, you can’t get tetanus here. And what else is there to do in the city? You could go to a bar and drink, but it never tastes any good, and you won’t get drunk. You could sit at home and read, but everything’s going to have pages missing and words blacked out. I think the movie theater’s playing Ghostbusters for the seventeenth week in a row.”
“Hey! What’s wrong with Ghostbusters?”
“Nothing, except for the fact that the film reel cuts out during the best part,” I said, swinging our joined hands.
“The best part?”
“The scene in the mayor’s office. Where Dan Aykroyd calls the guy from Die Hard ‘dickless’ and blames him for shutting off a power grid? The mayor asks if it’s true,
and then Bill Murray deadpans ‘Yes, it’s true—”
“‘This man has no dick!’” Mia finished.
“Exactly.”
“I used to watch it with my dad when I’d stay home on sick days. He loved old movies.” Mia smiled, rubbing her thumb against mine.
Ghostbusters didn’t seem that old to me, but I guess neither did Nirvana’s Nevermind, or the show Friends. They’d cemented themselves firmly in my teenage years, whereas she was just a kid when they came out—a jarring realization, but it didn’t throw me off. That might even be one of the silver linings of this dreary, gray place: kindred spirits could come together regardless of where they had lived, or when.
“I rented it every weekend for like a year when I was a kid,” I said, wondering if people still rented video tapes. “Now come on, we’re almost there.”
I tugged her hand as we wove our way into the dump, through heaps of blown out automobiles—great big Cadillacs covered in rust, busted Mustangs bereft of get-up-and-go, beautiful Corvettes on cinder blocks with shattered windows. We laughed at the men in oil-stained coveralls running around with wrenches, crying out for carburetors and clean spark plugs, desperate to get whatever gem of a car they’d found up and running and out of the graveyard.
“Why are they even trying?” Mia asked as she watched a haggard, bearded man trying and failing to tighten a stripped lug nut on the wheel of an old Monaco.
“They can’t help it. Well, I guess they can, but once you’re here long enough, all that gray seeps into your soul. You start looking for those little windows of escape. Everyone wants to think they can change things, and make a little paradise out of this place. Michael says you have to get over those impulses before you can move on.”
“But don’t they learn to give them up?”
“Sure, some of them do. But some of them haven’t yet.” I pointed at the bearded man on his knees next to the Monaco, twisting fruitlessly at the same lug nut with a rust-stained wrench. “That one’s been here longer than I have. When I came here in my first year, he had his hair cropped close to his shoulders, and he was clean-shaven. Guy looks like he hasn’t seen anything sharp since then.”
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