Elsewhere (2 page)
Liz and Thandi find themselves in a hallway with hundreds of doors exactly like the one they just closed.
“How do you think we’ll find it again?” Thandi asks.
“I doubt I’ll have to,” Liz answers. “I’ll probably wake up before that, don’t you think?”
“Well, just in case you don’t, our room number’s 130002,” Thandi says.
Liz points to a hand-painted sign at the end of the hallway.
ATTENTION
ALL PASSAGERS OF THE SS
NILE
!
THE DINING ROOM IS UP THREE FLIGHTS
ON THE LIDO DECK
“Hungry?” Thandi asks.
“Starved.” Liz is surprised by her own response. She cannot recall being hungry in a dream before.
The most remarkable thing about the ship’s dining room is the people: they are all old. A few are her parents’ age, but most are even older than them. Gray hair or no hair, brown spots, and sagging skin are the norm. It is by far the largest number of old people Liz has ever seen gathered in one place, even counting visits to her grandmother in Boca. Liz scans the dining room. “Are we in the wrong place?” she asks.
Thandi shrugs. “Beats me, but they’re coming this way.” Sure enough, three women are making a beeline for Thandi and Liz. They remind Liz of the witches in
Macbeth
, a play she just finished reading for tenth-grade honors English.
“Hello, darlings,” says a pygmy-like woman with a New York accent, “I’m Doris, and this is Myrna, and this is Florence.” Standing on her tiptoes, Doris reaches up to pat Liz’s molted head. “Good Lord, would you look how young she is?”
Liz smiles politely but takes a step back so as to discourage further patting.
“How old are you?” Doris the pygmy squints up at Liz. “Twelve?”
“I’m fifteen,” Liz corrects her. “Almost sixteen. I look older with hair.”
The one called Florence pipes up, “What happened to you girls?” She has the scratchy voice of a lifelong smoker.
“What do you mean ‘happened’?” Liz demands.
“I was shot in the head, ma’am,” Thandi volunteers.
“Speak up,” says Myrna who has a fuzzy white caterpillar of a mustache. “My hearing’s not so good.”
“I WAS SHOT IN THE HEAD.”
Liz turns to Thandi. “I thought you said you didn’t remember how you got the hole in your head.”
Thandi apologizes, “I
just
remembered.”
“Shot in the head!” Florence-scratchy-voice says. “Oy, that’s rough.”
“Aw, it’s nothing special. Happens pretty regularly where I’m from,” Thandi says.
“WHAT?” asks Myrna with the mustache. “Say it toward my left ear, that’s the good one.”
“I SAID, ‘IT’S NOTHING SPECIAL,’” Thandi yells.
“Maybe you should go to the healing center?” Florence suggests. “There’s one on the Portofino deck. Myrna’s already been twice.”
Thandi shakes her head. “I think it’s healing just fine on its own.”
Liz doesn’t understand this conversation at all. Her stomach growls loudly. “Excuse me,” she says.
Doris the pygmy waves her hand toward the buffet line. “You girls go get something to eat. Remember, you gotta get here early for the good stuff.”
For breakfast, Liz selects pancakes and tapioca pudding. Thandi has sushi, truffles, and baked beans. Liz eyes Thandi’s food selections curiously. “That’s certainly an interesting combination,” Liz says.
“At home, we never get half the things they have on that buffet,” says Thandi, “and I’m planning to try all of it before we get there.”
“Thandi,” Liz asks casually, “where do you think ‘there’ is?”
Thandi considers Liz’s question for a moment. “We’re on a boat,” Thandi says, “and boats have to be going somewhere.”
The girls secure a table near a bay window, slightly away from the other diners. Liz polishes off her pancakes in record time. She feels as if she hasn’t eaten in weeks.
Scraping the bottom of her pudding cup, Liz looks at Thandi. “So, I’ve never known anyone who was shot in the head before.”
“Can we talk about it after I’m done eating?” Thandi asks.
“Sorry,” Liz says, “just making conversation.”
Liz stares out the window. The fog has lifted, and the water is clearer than any water she has ever seen. It is strange, Liz thinks, how much the sky looks like the sea. A sea, she thinks, is rather like a soggy sky, and a sky rather like a wrung-out sea. Liz wonders where the ship is going and if she will wake up before it arrives and what her mother will say this dream probably means. Her mother is a child psychologist and knows about these things. Liz’s reverie is interrupted by a man’s voice.
“You mind?” he asks with an English accent. “You ladies seem to be the only people under eighty in this place.”
“Of course not. We’re all done here any…” Liz’s voice trails off as she sees the man for the first time. He is around thirty years old with sparkling blue eyes that match his spiky blue hair. Liz, like most people her age, would recognize those eyes anywhere. “You’re Curtis Jest, aren’t you?”
The man with the blue hair smiles. “Used to be, I suppose.” Curtis holds out his hand. “And who might you be?”
“I’m Liz, and this is Thandi, and I honestly can’t believe I’m meeting you. Machine’s about my favorite band in the whole world!” Liz gushes.
Curtis sprinkles salt on his french fries and smiles. “My, that is a compliment,” he says, “for the world is a very large place. I always preferred the Clash myself, Liz.”
“This is the coolest dream ever,” says Liz, feeling pleased that her subconscious has introduced Curtis Jest to the dream.
Curtis cocks his head. “Dream, you say?”
Thandi whispers to Curtis, “She doesn’t know yet. I only just figured it out myself.”
“Interesting,” Curtis says. He turns to Liz. “Where do you think you are, Lizzie?”
Liz clears her throat. Her parents call her Lizzie. All at once and for no apparent reason, she misses them desperately.
Curtis looks at her with concern. “Are you all right?”
“No, I…” Liz returns the conversation to solid ground. “When is the new album out?”
Curtis eats one french fry. And then another. “Never,” he says.
“The band broke up?” Liz has always read rumors of a possible Machine split, but they have never come to pass.
“That’s one way of saying it,” Curtis replies.
“What happened?” Liz asks.
“I quit.”
“But why? You guys were so great.” For her birthday, she has tickets to their concert in Boston. “I don’t understand.”
Curtis pushes up the left sleeve of his white pajama top, revealing his inner forearm. Deep tracklike scars, purplish bruises, and crusty wounds run from his inner elbow to his wrist. There is a quarter-inch hole near the crease separating Curtis’s biceps from his forearm. The hole is completely black. Liz thinks his arm looks dead. “Because I was a fool, Lizzie my lass,” Curtis says.
“Liz?” Thandi says.
Liz just stares dumbly at Curtis’s arm.
“Liz, are you okay?” Thandi asks.
“I’m…” Liz begins. She hates looking at the rotten arm, but she can’t stop looking at it either.
“Good Lord, would you put that arm away?” Thandi orders Curtis. “You’re making her sick. Honestly, Liz, it isn’t any worse than the hole in my head.”
“Hole in your head?” Curtis asks. “Could I see it?”
“Of course.” Flattered, Thandi forgets all about Liz and begins to raise her braids.
The thought of seeing the hole and the arm at the same time is too much for Liz. “Excuse me,” she says.
Liz runs outside onto the main deck of the ship. All around her, older people in various styles of white pajamas are playing shuffleboard. She leans over the ship’s railing and stares into the water. The water is too far away for her to see her reflection in it, but if she leans far enough over, she can sort of see her shadow—an indistinct, small darkness in the middle of an expanse of blue.
I am dreaming, she thinks, and any moment, my alarm clock will sound, and I will wake up.
Wake up, wake up, wake up, she wills herself. Liz pinches herself on the arm as hard as she can. “Ow,” she says. She slaps herself across the face. Nothing. And then she slaps herself again. Still nothing. She closes her eyes as tightly as she can and then snaps them open again, hoping to find herself back in her own bed on Carroll Drive in Medford, Massachusetts.
Liz starts to panic. Tears form in her eyes; she furiously brushes them away with her hand.
I am fifteen years old, a mature person with a learner’s permit, three months away from an actual driver’s license, she thinks. I am too old to be having nightmares.
She screws her eyes shut and screams, “MOM! MOM! I’M HAVING A NIGHTMARE!” Liz waits for her mother to wake her up.
Any moment.
Any moment, Liz’s mother should arrive at her bedside with a comforting glass of water.
Any moment.
Liz opens one eye. She is still on the ship’s main deck, where people have begun to stare.
“Young lady,” says an old man with horn-rimmed glasses and the air of a substitute teacher, “you are being disruptive.”
Liz sits down by the railing and buries her head in her hands. She takes a deep breath and tells herself to calm down. She decides that the best strategy will be to try to remember as many details of the dream as possible so she can tell her mother about it in the morning.
But how had the dream started? Liz racks her brain. It is odd to try to recall a dream while one is still having the dream. Oh yes! Liz remembers now.
The dream began at her house on Carroll Drive.
She was riding her bike to the Cambridgeside Galleria. She was supposed to meet her best friend, Zooey, who needed to buy a dress for the prom. (Liz herself had not been invited yet.) Liz could remember arriving at the intersection by the mall, across the street from the bicycle racks. Out of nowhere, a taxicab came speeding toward her.
She could remember the sensation of flying through the air, which seemed to last an eternity. She could remember feeling reckless, happy, and doomed, all at the same time. She could remember thinking, I am above gravity.
Liz sighs. Looking at it objectively, she supposes she died in the dream. Liz wonders what it means when you die in your dreams, and she resolves to ask her mom in the morning. All at once, she wonders if going to sleep again is the answer. Maybe if she can just manage to fall asleep, the next time she wakes up, everything will be back to normal. She feels grateful to Thandi for making her memorize their cabin number.
As Liz walks briskly back across the deck, she notices an SS
Nile
life preserver. Liz smiles at the ship’s name. The week before, she had been studying ancient Egypt in Mrs. Early’s world history class. While the lesson was entertaining enough (war, pestilence, plague, murder), Liz considered the whole pyramid thing a real waste of time and resources. In Liz’s opinion, a pyramid was really the same as a pine box or a Quaker oats container; by the time pharaoh got to enjoy his pyramid, he’d be dead anyway. Liz thought the Egyptians should have lived in the pyramids and been buried in their huts (or wherever it was that ancient Egyptian people had lived).
At the end of the unit, Mrs. Early read a poem about Egypt which began, “I met a traveler from an antique land.” For some reason, the line gave Liz chills, the pleasurable kind, and she kept repeating it to herself all day: “I met a traveler from an antique land; I met a traveler from an antique land.” Liz supposes Mrs. Early’s lesson is the reason she dreams of a ship called the SS
Nile
.
N ight after night, Liz goes to sleep, but she never wakes up in Medford; time passes, but she doesn't know how much. Despite a thorough search of the boat, neither she nor Thandi can unearth a single calendar, television, telephone, computer, or even radio. The only thing Liz knows for sure is that she is no longer bald a quarter inch of hair covers her entire head. How long, she wonders, does hair take to grow? How long does a dream have to last before it's just life?
Liz is lying in her bed, staring at the upper bunk, when she notices the sound of Thandi sobbing.
"Thandi," Liz asks, craning her neck upward, "are you all right?"
Thandi's crying intensifies. Finally, she is able to speak. "I m-m-miss my boyfriend."
Liz hands Thandi a tissue. Although the Nile lacks modern electronic devices, tissue abounds.
"What's his name?"
"Reginald Christopher Doral Monmount Harris the Third," Thandi says, "but I call him Slim even though he's anything but. You have a guy, Liz?"
Liz takes a moment to contemplate this question. Her romantic life has been sadly lacking to this point. When she was in second grade, Raphael Annuncio brought her a box of conversational hearts on Valentine's Day. Although it seemed a promising gesture, Raphael asked her to return the candy the next morning. It was too late: she had already eaten all but one of the hearts (U R 2
SWEET).
And then in eighth grade, she invented a boyfriend to make herself appear more worldly to the popular girls in school. Liz claimed she met Steve Detroit (that was what she called him!) when she was visiting her cousin at Andover. Steve Detroit may have been a fictional boy, but Liz made him a real bastard. He cheated on Liz, called her fat, made her do his homework, and even borrowed ten dollars without paying it back.
In the summer before ninth grade, Liz met a boy at camp. A counselor named Josh, who once sort of held her elbow at a bonfire, a move which Liz found inexplicably delightful and astonishing.
Upon returning home, Liz wrote him a passionate letter, but sadly he did not respond. Later, Liz would wonder if Josh had even realized he was holding her elbow. Maybe he had just thought the elbow was part of the armrest?
To date, her most serious relationship was with Edward, a cross-country runner. They were in the same math class. Liz had ended the relationship in January, before the start of the spring season.
She couldn't bear to attend even one more meet. Cross-country, in Liz's opinion, was quite possibly the most boring sport on earth. Liz wonders if Edward would care if she were dead.
"So, Liz," Thandi asks, "do you have a boyfriend, or not?"
"Not really," Liz admits.
"You're lucky. I don't think Slim misses me at all."
Liz doesn't answer. She doesn't know if she is lucky.
She gets out of bed and looks at herself in the mirror over the bureau. Except for her current haircut, she isn't terrible looking, and yet the boys in her class never seem particularly interested.
With a sigh, Liz examines the new hair that is growing on her head. She cranes her neck, trying to see what the back looks like. And that's when she sees it: a long row of stitches sewn in a Cshaped arc over her left ear. The wound is beginning to heal, and hair is beginning to grow over the stitches. But they are still there. Liz gingerly touches the stitches with her hand. The stitches feel like they should hurt, but they don't.
"Thandi, have you seen these before?"
"Yeah, they been there as long as you been here."
Liz marvels that she hadn't noticed them. "It's odd, isn't it," she asks, "that you should have a hole in the back of your head, and I should have these stitches over my ear, and yet we're both fine? I mean, these stitches don't hurt at all."
"You don't remember how you got them?"
Liz thinks for a moment. "In the dream," she begins and then stops. "I think I may have been in this sort of a . . . this sort of a bicycle accident."
Suddenly, Liz needs to sit down. She feels cold and breathless. "Thandi," Liz says, "I want to know how you got the hole in your head."
"It's like I told you. I was shot."
"Yes, but what happened? Specifically, I mean."
"Best I can recall, I was walking down my street with Slim. We live in D.C., by the way. This crazy bullet comes out of nowhere. Slim's yelling at me to duck, and then he's screaming, 'SHE'S
BLEEDING! OH LORD, SHE'S BLEEDING!' Next thing I know, you're waking me up on this very boat, asking me where you are." Thandi twirls one of her braids around her finger. "You know, Liz, at first I didn't remember everything, either, but then I started to remember more and more."
Liz nods. "Are you sure you aren't dreaming all of this?"
"I know that's your opinion of the matter, but I know I'm not dreaming. Dreaming feels like dreaming, and this doesn't feel like dreaming."
"But it doesn't seem possible, does it? You getting shot in the head, and me in a serious bicycle crash, and both of us walking around perfectly fine, as if nothing happened."
Thandi shakes her head, but chooses not to speak.
"Plus, why would Curtis Jest be here? Isn't meeting a famous rock star the sort of thing that only happens in a dream?" Liz asks.
"But, Liz, you know those marks on his arm?"
"Yes."
"I had this cousin in Baltimore called Shelly. Shelly had marks sort of like that. They're the sort of marks you get when you're using " Liz interrupts Thandi. "I don't want to know about that. Curtis Jest is nothing like your cousin Shelly from Baltimore. Nothing at all!"
"Fine, but don't get mad at me. You're the one bringing this stuff up."
"I'm sorry, Thandi," Liz apologizes. "I'm just trying to figure everything out."
Thandi lets out a long, plaintive sigh. "Girl, you are in denial," she says.
Before Liz has a chance to ask Thandi what she means, someone pushes a large beige envelope under the cabin door. Grateful for the distraction, Liz retrieves the envelope. It is addressed in deep blue ink:
Liz opens the door. She looks up and down the hallway, but no one is there.
Returning to the bottom bunk, Liz looks in the envelope. Inside, she finds a plain card with a vellum overlay and an odd hexagonal coin with a round hole in the center. The coin reminds Liz of the subway tokens back home. The coin is embossed with the words one eternim on the front and official currency of elsewhere on the back. The card appears to be an invitation, but the occasion isn't specified:
"Who ever heard of sending an invitation to something that's happening 'now'? You can't help but be late," Liz says as she shows the invitation to Thandi.
"Actually, Liz, you can't help but be on time. 'Now' being a relative term and all," Thandi says.
"Do you want to come?" Liz asks.
"It's probably best you go alone."
"Suit yourself." Liz is still annoyed with Thandi and is secretly glad to be by herself.
"Besides, I've already been," Thandi admits.
"When were you there without me?" Liz asks.
"Sometime," Thandi says vaguely. "Don't matter."
Liz shakes her head. As she sees it, she is already late and doesn't have time to further question Thandi.
On her way out the door, Liz turns to face Thandi. "Heroin," says Liz. "That's what those marks on Curtis's arm were from, right?"
Thandi nods. "I thought you didn't know."
"In the magazines, there were always rumors that Curtis Jest was a junkie," Liz says, "but you can't believe everything you read."
The Observation Deck is on the top floor of the ship. Although Liz and Thandi have explored the Nile extensively, they have never gone all the way to the top. (At least not together, Liz thinks.) Now Liz wonders whythey never went up. All at once, Liz needs to get there. She senses that when she reaches the Observation Deck, something definitive will happen.
Liz races up the many flights of stairs that separate her cabin from the Observation Deck. She finds herself chanting the line from the poem Mrs. Early read in class: "I met a traveler from an antique land; I met a traveler from an antique land; I met a traveler from an antique land." When Liz finally reaches the top, she is covered in sweat and out of breath.
The Observation Deck consists of a long row of binoculars, the kind that resemble stick-figure men without arms, or parking meters. Each pair of binoculars is coupled with an uncomfortablelooking metal stool. The people using the binoculars are consistently rapt, although their individual reactions differ wildly. Some laugh; some cry; some laugh and cry at the same time; some simply stare straight ahead, blank expressions on their faces.
The binoculars are labeled sequentially. Filled with equal parts fear and curiosity, Liz locates Binoculars #219 and sits on the metal stool. She removes the strange coin from her pocket and places it in the slot. She puts her eyes up to the binoculars just as the lenses click open. What can almost be described as a 3-D movie is playing.
The movie is set at a church. Liz recognizes it as the one she attended whenever her mother felt the intermittent need to "enhance Liz's spiritual life." In the back pews, Liz sees several kids from her high school dressed in black. As the camera moves forward through the church, Liz sees other, older people; people she only knows from long-forgotten holiday meals and dinner parties viewed from upstairs after her bedtime. Yes, these are her relatives and her parents' friends.
Finally, the camera stops at the front of the church. Liz's mother, father, and brother are sitting in the front row. Her mother wears no makeup and clutches her father by the hand. Her brother wears a navy blue suit that is already too short for him.
Dr. Frederick, her high school principal and a man Liz has never spoken to personally, stands at the pulpit. "A straight-A student," says Dr. Frederick in what Liz recognizes as the voice he uses for assemblies, "Elizabeth Marie Hall was a credit to her parents and her school." Liz laughs.
Although her grades ranged from decent to very good, she never made straight A's. Mainly, she made B's, except in math and science.
"But what can we learn from the death of a person so young, with so much potential?" Dr.
Frederick bangs on the lectern with his fist for emphasis. "What we can learn is the importance of traffic safety." At this point, Liz's father erupts in an explosion of breathless, hysterical sobs. In her whole life, Liz has never once seen him cry like that.
"In memory of Elizabeth Marie Hall," Dr. Frederick continues, "I challenge you all to look both ways before you cross the street, to wear a helmet when riding a bicycle, to fasten your seat belts, to only purchase automobiles that include passenger-side airbags ..." Dr. Frederick shows no signs of stopping. What a windbag, Liz thinks.
Liz pans the binoculars to the left. Beside the lectern, she notices a rectangular white lacquer box with tacky pink roses carved into its side. At this point, Liz has a fairly good idea what, or rather who, will be in the box. Still, she knows she must see for herself. Liz peers over the lid: a lifeless girl in a blond wig and a brown velvet dress lies in a bed of white satin. I've always hated that dress, Liz thinks. She sits back on her uncomfortable metal stool and sighs. She knows what she had, until now, only suspected: she is dead. She is dead and, for the moment anyway, she feels nothing.
Liz takes one last look in the binoculars, checking to make sure that the people who should be at her funeral are there. Edward the cross-country runner is there, manfully blowing his nose on his sleeve. Her English teacher is there, and so is Personal Fitness. She is pleasantly surprised to see World History. But what happened to Algebra II and Biology? Liz wonders. (Those were her favorite subjects.) And she can't seem to find her best friend anywhere. Hadn't it been Zooey's fault she was at the mall to begin with? Where the hell is Zooey? Disgusted, Liz leaves the binoculars before her time is up. She has seen enough.
I am dead, Liz thinks. And then she says it aloud to hear how it sounds: "I am dead. Dead."
It is a strange thing being dead, because her body doesn't feel dead at all. Her body feels the same as it always has.
As Liz walks down the long row of binoculars, she spots Curtis Jest. Using only one eye, he is looking in his binoculars with decidedly tepid interest. His other eye spots Liz immediately.
"Hello, Lizzie. How's the afterlife treating you?" Curtis asks.
Liz tries to shrug nonchalantly. Although she does not know exactly what "the afterlife" entails, she is fairly certain of one thing: she will never see her parents, her brother, or her friends again.
In a way, it feels more like she is still alive and the only guest at the collective funeral for everyone she has ever known. She chooses to respond with "It's boring," even though that answer doesn't come close to expressing what she feels.
"And the funeral, how was that?" asks Curtis.
"It was mainly an occasion for my high school principal to discuss traffic safety."
"Traffic safety, eh? Sounds divine." Curtis cocks his head, slightly puzzled.
"And they said I was a 'straight-A student,' " Liz adds, "which I'm not."
"Don't you watch the news? All young people become perfect students when they kick the bucket.
It's a rule."
Liz wonders if her death made the local news. Does anyone care if a fifteen-year-old girl gets hit by a car?
"The Great Jimi Hendrix said, 'Everyone loves you when you're dead: once you're dead, you're made for life.' Or something like that. But he's probably before your time."
"I know who he is," Liz says. "The guitar player."
"I beg your pardon, madam." Curtis mimes tipping his hat. "Care to have a look at my funeral, then?" Curtis asks.
Liz isn't sure she is up to looking at anyone else's funeral, but she doesn't want to seem impolite.
She looks through Curtis's binoculars. Curtis's funeral is far more elaborate than Liz's: the other members of Machine are there; a famous singer sings his most famous song with lyrics especially rewritten for the occasion; a celebrated underwear model sobs in the front row; and, bizarrely, a juggling bear stands on Curtis's coffin.
