Damned (18 page)

The girl seated near my feet said, "Stop pulling, and give her the
kiss."

Another girl said, "Yuck." Their voices sounded muffled and
foggy and miles away.

The third girl, seated near my feet, she unfolded my eyeglasses and
slipped them onto her own smug face. Batting her eyelashes and cocking her head
from side to side coquettishly, she said, "Look at me, everyone... I'm the
fat, ugly daughter of a stupid-ass movie star... My picture was on the cover of
People
stupid magazine...." And all three Miss Bimbo Von Bimbos, they
giggled.

If you'll permit me a moment of self-indulgent embarrassment, I did
look terrible. The skin of my cheeks had swollen slightly, becoming puffy,
similar to a soufflé d'apricot. My eyes, open only as slits, appeared as glazed
as the glassy surface of an overly caramelized crème brulee. Worse yet, my lips
were gaping, and my tongue pushed forward—green as a raw oyster—as if
attempting to escape. My face, from forehead to chin, varied in hue from
alabaster white to light blue. The put-aside copy of
Persuasion
lay on
the bedspread beside my blue hand.

As I hovered there, observing, as detached as my mother keyboarding to
spy on the maids and adjust the lighting via her notebook computer, I felt
neither
pain
nor anxiety. I felt nothing. Below me,
the three girls untied the cloth belt from my neck. One girl slid a hand behind
my head and tilted my face back slightly, and another drew a deep breath and
leaned over. Her lips covered my own blue lips.

And yes, I know what constitutes a near-death experience; however, I
was more concerned about my prescription eyewear. The girl seated at my feet,
still wearing my reading glasses, she said, "Blow. Hard."

The girl leaning over me... even as she blew air into my mouth, I
seemed to fall from the ceiling and land into my body. Even as the girl's lips
pressed my lips, I found myself, once more, occupying the body which lay upon
my bed. I coughed. My throat ached. The three girls laughed. My tiny bedroom,
my tattered copies of
Wuthering Heights
and
Northanger Abbey
and
Rebecca
sparkled and glowed. All of my body felt so electric, as thrumming
and vibrant as I'd felt naked in the snow at night. My every cell swelled so
full of newfound vitality.

One of the Hussey Vanderhusseys, the one who'd blown her breath into my
mouth, said, "That's called 'the kiss of life/" Her breath tasted
like the wintergreen of her chewing gum.

Another girl said, "It's the French-kissing Game."

The third said, "You want to go again?"

And raising my weak hands, lifting my cold, trembling fingers to touch
my throat where the terry-cloth belt still lay across the throbbing of my
brand-new heartbeat, I nodded my head, faintly but repeating, whispering,
"Yes." As if to Mr. Rochester himself, I whispered, "Ye
gods!" Whispering, "Edward, please. Oh, yes."

Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. People say the world is a small
place... well, in Hell this must be Old Home Week. Really, everyone seems to
know me and vice versa. It's like alumni week at my boarding school, when all
the old mossbacks would totter around campus all misty-eyed. Everywhere that
you look, it seems as if a familiar face is looking back.

My dad would tell you, "When you're shooting on location, be ready
for rain." Meaning: You never know what fate will throw your way. One
minute, I'm luring some Canadian AIDS girl to come join me in Hell, and the
next minute I'm staring down my beloved Goran, now wearing a hot-pink jumpsuit
with what looks like a Social Security number embroidered on his chest. My
telephone headset still clamped around my smart new pageboy haircut, I jump to
my feet and begin swimming, stroking my arms through a veritable ocean of
chubby, newly deceased holiday cruisers, all of them bespeckled with their own
noxious lobster vomitus. Within moments, my hands tangle in camera straps and
sunglasses bun-gee cords and artificial floral leis. Drowning and slimy in the
coconut-smelling miasma of budget suntan lotions, I'm calling out, screaming,
"Goran!" Gasping, I'm bobbing and flailing amid the tide of food-poisoned
tourists, shouting, "Wait, Goran! Please wait!" Unfamiliar with
walking in my new high heels, netted in the wires of my telephone setup, I
stumble and begin to sink beneath the surface of the teeming mob.

Suddenly, an arm wraps around me from behind. An arm encased in the
sleeve of a black-leather jacket. And Archer rescues me, towing me from the
sluggish riptide of wandering bovine dead.

With Babette looking on, Leonard watching, I say, "My boyfriend...
he was just here."

Patterson untangles the headset from me.

"Calm down," says Babette. She explains that we need to slip
Tootsie Pops or Oh Henry! bars to the right demons. If Goran's only recently
been damned, his files ought to be easy to find. Already she's leading me in the
other direction, exiting the telephone marketing hall, her hand wrapped around
mine. Babette's dragging me along corridors, up and down stone stairways,
navigating hallways past doorways and skeletons, under archways with black
fringes of sleeping bats hanging overhead, across lofty bridges and via
dripping, dank tunnels, but always staying within the vast hive of the
netherworld headquarters. Finally, arriving at a bloodstained counter, Babette
elbows aside the souls already waiting in line. She digs an Abba-Zaba from her
purse and dangles it toward some demon who sits at a desk, some sort of
half-man, half-falcon monster with a lizard's tail, engrossed in doing a
crossword puzzle. Addressing him, Babette says, "Hey, Akibel." She
says, "What do you have on a new arrival named..." And Babette looks
at me.

"Goran," I say. "Goran Spencer."

The falcon-lizard-monster-man looks up from the folded page of his
newspaper; wetting the tip of his pencil against the wet point of his forked
tongue, the demon says, "What's a six-letter word for power
failure'?"

Babette looks at me. She brushes her fingernails to stroke my new bangs
so they fall straight across my forehead, and says, "What's he look like,
honey?"

Goran of the dreamy vampire eyes and jutting caveman brow Goran of the
surly, fleshy lips and unruly hair, he of the sneering disdain and
abandoned-orphan demeanor. My wordless, hostile, walking skeleton. My beloved.
Words fail me. With a helpless sigh, I say, "He's... swarthy."
Quickly, I say, "And brutish."

Babette adds, "He's Maddy's long-lost boyfriend."

Blushing, I protest, saying, "He's only kind of my boyfriend. I'm
only thirteen."

The demon, Akibel, swivels in his desk chair. Turning to face a dusty
computer screen, the demon keyboards Ctrl+Alt+F with the talons of his falcon
claws. When a blinking green cursor appears on the screen, the demon keys in
"Spencer, Goran." With a stab of his index talon, he hits Enter.

At that same instant, a finger taps me on the back of my shoulder. A
human finger. And a frail voice says, "Are you little Maddy?"
Standing behind me, a stooped old lady asks, "Would you happen to be
Madison Spencer?"

The demon sits, his face propped in his hands, both his elbows leaned
on his desk, watching his computer screen and waiting. Tapping a talon,
impatiently, on the edge of his keyboard, the demon says, "I hate this
fucking dial-up..." He says, "Talk about glacial." A beat later,
the demonic Akibel picks up his crossword once more. Studying it, he says,
"What's a four-letter word for 'cribbage props'?"

The old woman who tapped my shoulder, she continues to look at me, her
eyes shining bright. Her hair fluffy and bunched into wads as white as tufts of
cotton, her voice flickering she says, "The telephone people said you
might be here." She smiles a mouthful of pearly, bright dentures and says,
"I'm Trudy. Mrs. Albert Marenetti... ?" her intonation lifting into a
question.

The demon whacks a falcon claw against the side of his computer
monitor, swearing under his breath.

And yes, I am wildly invested in tracking down my adored Goran, denizen
of my most romantic dreams, but I am NOT totally oblivious to the emotional
needs of others. Especially those recently dead after prolonged terminal
illness. Throwing my arms around this stooped, stunted little shrub of an old
lady, I squeal, "Mrs. Trudy! From Columbus, Ohio! Of course I remember
you." Giving her powdery, wrinkled cheek a little peck, I say, "How's
that little pancreatic cancer thing?" Realizing our present situation,
both of us dead and doomed to the straits of Hell for all eternity, I add,
"Not good, I guess."

With a twinkle in her sky-blue eyes, the old lady says, "You were
so kind and generous, talking to me." Her old-lady fingers pinch both my
cheeks. Cupping my face between her hands, gazing at me, she says, "So,
just before my last trip into the hospice I burned down a church."

We both laugh. Uproariously. I introduce Mrs. Trudy to Babette. The
demon, Akibel, hits his Enter key, again and again and again.

While we wait, I compliment Mrs. Trudy on her choice of footwear: black
low-heeled mules. Otherwise, she wears an iron-gray tweed suit and a very smart
Tyrolean hat of gray felt, with a red feather tucked into the band at a jaunty
angle. Now, there's an ensemble which will stay fresh-looking despite aeons of
hellish punishment.

Babette waves a Pearson Salted Nut Roll, baiting the demon to work
faster. Badgering him, she calls, "Hey, step it up! We don't have
forever!"

The people already here, already waiting, they give up a weak laugh.

"This here is Madison," Babette says, introducing me to
everyone present. Throwing an arm around my shoulders and steering me to the
counter, she adds, "Just in the past three weeks, Maddy, here, is
responsible for a seven-percent increase in damnations!"

A murmur passes through the crowd.

In the next moment, an elderly man approaches our tiny group. Clasping
his hat in both hands and wearing a striped silk bowtie, the old man says,
"Would you happen to be Madison Spencer?"

Says Mrs. Trudy, "She is." Beaming, Mrs. Trudy slips her
wrinkled hand around my hand and gives my fingers a bony squeeze.

Looking at this man, with his cloudy cataract eyes and pinched,
trembling shoulders, I say, "Now, don't tell me..." I say, "Are
you Mr. Halmott from Boise, Idaho?"

"In the flesh," the old man says, "or whatever I am,
these days." So apparently pleased that he blushes.

Congestive heart failure, I recite. I shake his hand and say,
"Welcome to Hell."

On the far side of the counter, at the demon's desk, a dot-matrix printer
grinds to life. Sprocket wheels pull continuous-feed paper from a dusty box.
The paper, yellowed and brittle. The printer carriage roars back and forth as
each page advances, line by line, pulled along by its perforated tracks.

With Babette's arm draped across the back of my neck, her hand hangs
near the side of my face. There, the cuff of her blouse has pulled back to
reveal dark red lines on the inside of her wrist. Running from the sleeve to
the base of her palm, gouged scars gape, raw as if they'd been recently cut.

And yes, I know suicide is a mortal sin, but Babette has always
insisted she was damned for wearing white shoes after Labor Day.

With old Mr. Halmott and Mrs. Trudy smiling at me, I myself am staring
point-blank—first, at Babette's suicide scars—then at her sheepish grin.

Removing her arm from my shoulders, sliding the sleeve to conceal her
secret, Babette says, "Girl really, really,
really
interrupted..."

The demon tears the page from the printer and slaps it on the
countertop.

Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. My last sighting of my beloved
Goran had been the night of the Academy Awards. If Hell is—as the ancient
Greeks claimed—the place of remorse and remembering, then I am slowly
accomplishing those tasks.

Lolling about amid the cold remains of our room-service meals, Goran
and I sprawled on the carpet in front of the suite's wide-screen television. I
torched a spliff of my parents' best hybrid skunkweed, took a toke, and handed
the stinking doobie to the object of my preteen adoration. For a Judy Blume
instant, our fingers touched. Barely our fingertips brushed, sprawled as we
were on the carpet, not dissimilar to God and Adam on the ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel, but a spark of life—or merely static electricity—snapped and
jumped between us.

Goran took the joint and puffed. He tapped the ash onto a dinner plate,
next to a half-eaten cheeseburger and an array of stale potato chips. We both
sat, silent, holding the smoke in our lungs. Romantic anarchists that we are,
we ignored the fact that this was a nonsmoking suite. On television, someone
accepted an Oscar for something. Somebody thanked someone. A commercial pitched
mascara.