Remembering Hell (6 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

On the elevator headed down to the
lobby I pull myself together. I can do this. The only way to get Deedy back
into my life is to finish this assignment. I ignore the overwhelming sense of
emptiness that I am feeling right now, and replace it with a new sense of
responsibility. I have to watch over Joe. Make sure he safely returns back to
himself and to his family and friends. That thought is suitably renewing, and I
find myself getting downright excited.

When I get down to the lobby the
elevator does not just stop. Instead, it halts, goes a bit, then squeals. The
lights flicker before they go out completely, and the doors open just enough
for me to see that I am in fact on the bottom floor. I have to pry the doors
open the rest of the way. Pretty shoddy mechanics for paradise. I think before
I see it sitting on the floor next to a potted plant. It seems to be a tool
belt, complete with very unfamiliar objects hanging from it that I can only
assume are tools. The funny thing about the belt is what is written across it.
PATTERSON ELEVATOR REPAIRS, it says right across the front. Ha! I am laughing
out loud at the prospect of me repairing anything. I mean, seriously, I once
abandoned a 1994 Plymouth Duster on the side of the highway because the engine
light came on. Well, that and that car never had an ounce of style. Oh, and
there was the time when Bobby was away, working as a manager of a carnival, and
I had to throw away a sink full of dishes because the dishwasher started to
smoke and make the kitchen smell all like an electrical fire. Yes, I realize
that I could have washed the dishes by hand, but that would be in direct conflict
with my natural tendency to be lazy. Plus the aforementioned smoky smell in the
kitchen. I ate out for the next five weeks until Bobby came home. Suffice it to
say, there is no way in Heaven or Hell that I have the talent or inclination to
fix this elevator. They might as well have left me a table of scalpels and a
belt that says PATTERSON BRAIN SURGERY across the front of it. Hopefully, this
is part of Deedy’s magic, otherwise Joe is never going to get up to the
thirty-seventh floor in time to please Gabby.

I pull on the tool belt and think
to myself here goes nothing’ as I manage to pry off the small plated cover
directly under the buttons. Under my breath I start doing my best Scotty
impression, a real homage to Star Trek. “Ay Cap’t, I don’t know why the turbo
lift is fucking up. Maybe it’s because we are about twenty minutes into the
episode, and that is always when it happens?”

My reverie gets interrupted by the
arrival of a young looking, quite handsome man. Young, but rugged. His face is
creased by a permanent frown. He is average height but has a stocky build, as
though he has spent most of his living years sustained on take out, junk food,
and the empty calories of a six-pack every night. He has deep, expressive brown
eyes that are now looking at me with a question still beginning to form within
them. I suddenly realize that he may have already asked his question, but I
haven’t heard him because I was busy monologuing to myself in my imaginary
spaceship.

“Sorry,” I say. “I don’t know if
you just asked me something or not, and if you did…well, I’m going to need you
to repeat it.” Then, very lamely I add, “You know, concentrating on the
elevator and all.” I feel a blush rising in my face.

“That’s okay,” he says quickly. “I
didn’t mean to interrupt your work. I’m just not exactly sure where I am
supposed to be.” His voice is deep and silky smooth, like the announcer in a
coffee commercial. “I have an interview at a place called Second Chance? I
think it’s a temp agency. All I have is this post-it note.” He hands it to me
with a look of desperation. I don’t even read it. I have seen about forty of
those in my afterlife, including the one I found that brought me here the first
time.

“Sure!” I say, getting up and
brushing myself off as if I’ve been doing anything besides staring blankly at a
bunch of wires and mumbling to myself in a bad Scottish accent. “You must be
Joe Watkins.” I hold out a hand to shake his.

“Yes…yes, that’s me.” His surprise
is evident. He clasps my hand too with equal surprise. There isn’t a lot of
touching in Hell. And of course, what he doesn’t know is that there also is
absolutely no touching in Deedy’s world until it’s time to make him see. That
won’t happen until my job is done. So I had better get on it.

“No worries, Joe, step on in, and
I’ll get you up there in plenty of time. My name is Louise, by the way.”

“Thanks, Louise,” he says, stepping
in and looking around. “Are you sure this thing won’t trap us between floors
during a raging battle with the Klingons?” He looks at me and smiles.

“Damn, you heard that,” I say with
my own smile. “And you are already making fun of me. Which means you will fit
in around here with no problem.”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I
just couldn’t help myself. I was a Trekkie too.” He seems like a very warm guy.
I get excited again about the prospect of seeing him through the next few
weeks.

“In that case, prepare for
take-off, Captain!” I say as I push the button with the number thirty-seven on
it. I quickly cross my fingers and send a wish up to Gabby that this elevator
is miraculously fixed as it does come to life and start to climb. Joe seems to
notice that we are heading up and suddenly seems nervous.

I try to comfort him. “I know it’s
up there. I freaked out the first time, but you will get used to it.” I laugh
as I remember crawling on the floor as if the whole building was going to give
way and I would fall to another death.

“No, I’ll be fine with the height.
I’m just worried about the interview. I assume you know the folks I have to
talk to up there? I mean, since you knew my name and all…”

“Sure, everyone around here knows
Gabby,” I say, then pause, trying not to choke on my next words. “And of
course, the boss.” Hold it together, Louise.

“Anything I need to know? I really
need a job, as you know. And the only thing I have ever done as an adult, both
living and dead is being a reporter. So there is not much that I bring to the
table.” He gets kind of misty, like he is in mourning.

“Just be yourself, Joe. Believe me,
you already have everything you need. You will be fine,” I say as the doors
open up to the lobby of the agency. As soon as Joe steps out I start to lean on
the close door button. I can’t breathe as I wait for the doors to begin to
shut. I can hear Gabby’s voice offering Joe a cup of her wonderful coffee. I
strain to hear Deedy’s voice boom through the corridor, but there is nothing
but silence and the emptiness fills me once again. As the doors finally draw
together and I am finally headed down, I sink to the floor of the elevator and
start to sob again.

I pull myself together and realize
I have nothing to do for the hour or so that it will take Joe to get grilled
for the first time in Deedy’s office. So I sit on the curb and look around with
my new eyes. Better said, I guess it would be my old eyes. Everything is back
to orange, and it’s all drab and depressing again. I can no longer see the
beautiful sky or any of the heavenly creatures that fill it. The tears are now
falling silently, but they are still with me.

This would be the perfect time for
a cigarette. My mind wanders back to that same old thought. This is about the
millionth time I have longed for a smoke since dying. You can’t get smokes in
Hell, and while you can in Heaven, and many do, I absolutely refuse to go back
to smoking. I quit when I found out I was pregnant with my daughter, who I
named after Linda but we called her Dinny. Of course, soon after that I was
dying of cancer. And after that, I spent thirty some years in a place where you
constantly feel like your lungs, along with the rest of you, could burst into
flames at any moment. You can see how the whole romance with cigarettes can
lose its luster. And while I am adamant that I will never be a smoker again,
that doesn’t mean that occasionally I miss it. I miss the ritual, the slight
pull when you remove the first cigarette in the pack, the feel of it between
your fingers, the kiss between breath and fire by a single tether between your
lips, the first delicious draw, the feeling inside your body as you fill it with
smoke like the ambient light of a firefly in a jar, and finally the lovely fog
that surrounds you as you exhale. I can practically see the smoke now. No,
wait, I actually can see the smoke. I let my eyes follow the creamy air to its
source.

Standing in front of me is the
single most fabulous looking man, no…person, I have ever laid eyes on. He is
tall, about six feet one inch, blond hair with gorgeous eyes the color of
wheat. His skin is bronzed by a sun that no longer shines on any of us here.
His T-shirt and blue jeans hang from his body as though he has been created
wearing them. And while his outfit is modest and covers him completely, it
gives enough hints as to the perfect body underneath that I find myself a bit
breathless.

“I thought I was blind to everyone
from Heaven,” I say, suddenly glad I’m sitting down, afraid my knees would
buckle underneath me if I were standing.

“And so you are. Cigarette?” His
voice is as beautiful as the mouth from which his words have just escaped. His
accent is English. Posh and very sexy.

“You can’t be a Hellion. Not with
those clothes, and smokes, and stuff,” I say, like a little know-it-all.

“If you insist, Ms. Louise
Patterson,” he says with a cool smile that reveals stunningly white teeth, all
perfect and straight.

“Not fair! How can you get to know
my name if I can’t know yours?”

“Because of what I understand of
you, Ms. Sweetness and Light, you tend to go more for the mysterious type.”

Now, I have to say for all the
years I have been dead, in both Heaven and Hell, I have never been hit on. Not
even once. And don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I’m unattractive. In fact, in
life I was kind of hot in my own way. I was used to every kind of guy, from the
tight ass banker to the scumbag who was about to mug the tight ass banker on
the street, hitting on me. But in Hell, no one cares to hit on anyone because
sex is not a possibility, and romance is even less of an option. And in Heaven,
no one hits on anyone because, to be honest, as great as sex and dating and
romance is, it has nothing compared to the bliss of Paradise.

That is why tall, dark, and
mysterious just threw me. Threw me enough that I actually ask, “Did you just
hit on me?” It is out of my mouth before my brain even knows it is about to
leave.

He throws back his head and laughs
uproariously. What am I, doing stand-up comedy here? Then he takes out a
cigarette, puts it in the front pocket of my denim shirt, and walks away. He
waves without looking back, as if he knows that I am staring at him walk away.

“Great. I’ve been back here for
less than a day and this horrible place is already fucking with me. Welcome
home, Louise!” I say, just as Joe walks through the door and onto the street.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Linda was kind of proud of the fact
that she had never learned to type. Not even when everyone got computers and
the internet and the average kid could type seventy words per minute before
they could eat solid food. She had only worked for a few years before marrying
Hank. Always as a hostess in a restaurant, or a “Can I get that in your size?”
girl in a retail store. With all of that in mind, her first day as a legal
secretary did not hold a lot of promise.

Until she actually walks into the
offices of Davis, Morgan, and Lugner, the largest law firm in Hell as far as
she could tell. Behind the desk at the entrance is the woman who has
interviewed her yesterday. She smiles to herself as she remembers the so-called
interview. It basically went like this:

Linda walks in and states that she
is looking for a job.

This very crabby woman looks at her
through teeny tiny slits of eyes and says, “Have you ever worked in a law
office?”

Linda says, “No.”

“Do you have any secretarial
skills?”

Linda says, “No.”

“Nothing? No typing, no dictation,
no phone étiquette?”

Linda says, “No.”

“Would you consider yourself a
people person?”

Linda stops and thinks about it.
After ninety years of dealing with just a handful of folks, many of whom she
was related to or thought of as family, she still ended up taking out the one
that was supposed to be her favorite before shuffling off the mortal coil. So
ultimately she gave the only answer she could. “No.”

“Okay, you start tomorrow. Nine
am,” says Ms. Grumpy Pants, then goes back to doing whatever it was she was
doing, which by Linda’s best guess is pretty much pretending Linda doesn’t
exist. So she turns around, walks out the door, and leaves. Officially an
employee!

Now, Linda is awake and ready for
her new career. She notices that the closet once again has a single outfit
hanging inside. Ah, she thinks to herself, the magical world of Hell. She
notices that this particular piece of magic is a skin tight pencil skirt dress
with a print that she is having difficulty looking at directly. This dress
pulled over her aged body, with all its lumps and bumps really should come with
a warning label that reads “May cause epileptic seizures.” Not to mention
actually trying to move or walk in this skirt will be downright comical. Her
thoughts land on an old memory of a character on the Carol Burnett show. Mrs.
Wiggins, a ditzy secretary who inches along like a penguin walking with an egg
between her legs. Unfortunately, I have neither the figure nor the comic timing
of Carol. Linda thinks with a sigh.

Setting off on the somewhat
short—today is a bit longer, due to the skirt—walk to her new office, Linda
begins to wonder about the nature of her job. Why do we need a law office in
Hell? To sue people? Can you sue someone for screwing you over in a place where
virtually everyone has screwed someone over? And what do you sue for? A million
dollars? Why the fuck would you even need a million dollars here? So you could
buy the biggest house or the nicest car in the grandest shithole in the
universe? She starts to actually laugh at the absurdity of that idea. Perhaps
she will have the chance to ask Ms. Frowny Face during orientation or whatever.
But Linda is also a bit doubtful. She has found pretty consistently since
arriving here that no one is forthcoming with information, and certainly not up
for friendly conversation either.

When she walks into Davis, Morgan,
and Lugner her doubts are confirmed. No one greets her, welcomes her, or tells
her what to do. So much for orientation. Linda thinks as she wanders through
the office.

“Hello? I’m supposed to start
working here today!” She yells to no in particular.

“Well then, I suggest you get
started.” Ms. Sourpuss is back. She reaches over and grabs a pile of manila
folders which she then drops in front of Linda. “Here. File.”

What was I thinking, of course was there’s
an orientation, and apparently that was just it. She looks at the dour woman in
front of her and says, “Where?”

The woman just turns and with a
sigh of exasperation walks away, leaving Linda standing there holding a manila
folder with no idea what to do with it. So she just opens up a drawer and
tosses it in. Then she grabs another and tosses that one in. Then she walks
across the room, opens up another random drawer and tosses a bunch more in.

At one point this very small, yet
incredibly fat man walks in and straight through the office where he then just
seems to disappear. She assumes by his gait and general demeanor that this must
be Mr. Davis, Mr. Morgan, or Mr. Lugner. Linda remembers a joke. This woman
gets called for jury duty and while the Judge is questioning her, she says, “I
should not be on this jury.” The Judge of course asks her why, and she says,
“Because I knew the second I laid eyes on his shifty face, his shiny suit, and
his cheesy smile that he was guilty as sin!” The Judge says, “Ma’am. Sit down
and prepare to hear testimony. That man you are referring to is the
prosecutor.”

She laughs to herself as she
continues to approach this exercise in futility.

Once she realizes that if she keeps
up this pace all day she will be out of manila folders way before she’s out of
work day, Linda gets the bright idea to take a break. She goes in search of a
break room. This is a law office, they must have a break room, or a kitchen.

She walks down a hall and the smell
hits her before the room even comes into her immediate sight. When it does she
realizes she is looking at the most disgusting kitchen in the entire universe.
She looks around from one vile table to the next. Once she crosses the
threshold her eyes begin to water from the stench. Linda is unaware of whether
or not there are rats in the afterlife, but if there are even they would not
hang out in this kitchen. This kitchen would probably make Gordon Ramsey burst
into tears and run to his mother so that she could rock him to sleep.

There probably is no food or drink
in this establishment with an expiration date before 1937, but even if there
was, Linda was not going to eat or drink anything until this kitchen is
presentable. And, she thinks to herself, this will make the day go by a lot
faster.

So she takes a deep breath, decides
breathing is totally unnecessary in the afterlife, and dives in. After about an
hour, there is something kitchen shaped starting to emerge. After another hour
and a half, things are actually starting to gleam. Which is pretty damn
impressive considering the only cleaning product Linda could find was an
ancient can of Comet that had fossilized and was now more brick like than
cleaning powder. When she’s finally done, she stands back and admires her own
handiwork. Miss Meany strides by and stops dead in her tracks.

“What do you think you are doing in
here?” She glances around with an expression that makes it seem like Linda has
made the kitchen worse.

“I spiffed up the kitchen!” Linda
says brightly. For some reason “spiffing up the kitchen” seems a little more
diplomatic than “shoveling out this enormous shithole.”

“Well, Ms. Spiffer, I think you
just cleaned out your future at Davis, Morgan, and Lugner!” Then she turns on
her heel and storms out.

Linda is dazed. Her future at
Davis, Morgan, and Lugner? What could they fire her for? All she did was clean
the kitchen. She walks back out to the office and sees that her pile of Manila
folders have grown. Is that what she was so upset over? Linda shirking her
important “tossing files around the room aimlessly” duties?

Suddenly the small fat man emerges
from his office and bellows, “Mrs. Miller, in my office immediately!”

Linda walks into his office like a
prisoner approaching the electric chair. Miss Meany is also in there and pipes
in as soon as Linda is safely enclosed behind the shut door. “Mr. Davis, I had
no idea what she was doing, or even where she had gone for three hours. I
assumed she was hiding in the bathroom or something like a normal person would
do on their first day.”

“A normal person would hide in the
bathroom for three hours?” Linda questions.

“Regardless,” Mr. Davis says
brusquely, “we can’t have people making our workplace nicer. Now that kitchen
is an amenity. Do you have any idea how vulnerable that makes us?” Apparently,
he’s talking to Linda.

“I’m sorry, I’m new,” Linda says,
suddenly feeling like she’s on a lost episode of The Twilight Zone.

“Well, I hope you’ll take this
experience as a learning experience. You will not be cleaning any kitchens at
your next job.” Mr. Davis seems pretty determined. He reaches in his desk and
pulls out a pink slip.

“Mr. Davis, if I can just explain
my actions.” Linda is desperate. She can’t lose her job on the first day.

“There is no explanation for such
heinous behavior.” Miss Meany chips in with her two cents.

“Excuse me? It’s not like I set
fire to the office. Although I’m not sure that wouldn’t have earned me a
promotion.” Linda has decided that she hates this woman.

“Obviously you just have not gotten
acclimated—” Meany is interrupted by the phone on Mr. Davis desk.

Mr. Davis answers, “Hello, Davis
here…oh hey…yes…yes…but you understand that she cleaned the kitchen…no, she
actually made the appliances shine…yes…Alright all right…I understand…goodbye.”
Mr. Davis hangs up.

“Who was that? And why were you
talking about me?” Linda says questioningly.

“What makes you think he was
discussing you?” Meany says.

“Because he said ‘she cleaned the
kitchen.’ If he had said ‘yes, she still has a giant oak crammed directly up
her ass’ I would have assumed he was talking about you.” Linda is getting more
acclimated by the minute.

Mr. Davis stands and grabs the pink
slip. He rips it in two and tosses it in the nearest trash can. “Mrs. Miller,
you may return to your filing.”

“I don’t understand! You were going
to fire her!” Miss Meany’s day just went south.

“And now I’m not,” Mr. Davis says.
Then he leans over and says much quieter, “Lugner’s orders.”

Miss Meany stiffens and looks over
at Linda. “So, get back to work. Those files aren’t going to file themselves.”
And she stalks out of the office.

Linda doesn’t know whether to feel
relieved or not. It’s a crappy job, but it is a job. Linda guesses that since
Mr. Lugner made the call, that means Mr. Davis may be a partner in name only.
Lugner seems to be the boss.

“Thank you, Mr. Davis,” she says
quietly and goes back to work. After a few more hours, it is as though nothing
happened. Linda is back to persona non grata.

Suddenly, as she is throwing
another folder in a drawer, she flashes on a needlepoint placard that hung in
her own mother’s house her entire childhood. That placard said, in tall,
graceful lettering, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” The idea
of eternity falls on Linda like an anvil. This is now her life, and her life is
now forever and ever. Infinite and unending, there is no spaghetti sauce that
she can make that would ever get her out of this one.

The only upside to having this
miserable job is that absolutely no one is paying attention to her. No one sees
her take the rest of the pile and throw it behind a filing cabinet. No one
notices when she finds a corner, sits down on the floor, and starts to sob.