Purgatorium (13 page)

I step cautiously toward the big dead oak. As I get closer, I see a door inside. It’s an old door, at least a hundred years old, I imagine. There are carvings of angels in heaven on one side and in a great battle with demons in hell on the other. Michael walks over next to me.

“Careful how you play your cards when you have a queen already in your hand,” he says with a softly grimace tone.

Not understanding what he meant, I look over to him.

He continues, “There are two types of pain you must endure to survive here. One being physical, the other being mental. Inside that door lies the mental aspect portion. The things you will see and hear are something that can’t ever be trained on, only learned from. It tests the true part of your soul.”

Michael looks dead into my eyes as he puts on his serious face.

“Inside lies your pain that dominates your dreams every night, that darkness you never let in when you’re awake. Inside lies the reason you are here. Inside lies your past, present, and future. There are no seconds,
minutes
, or hours inside this door. Time stops and all that is left is you and yourself. Once you enter, you will know the reason why you are here.”

I step closer to the door. I do want to understand what is going on in this place, who I am, why I am being stalked by these strange men who call themselves angels, and why I keep remembering only fragments of my life. Still, who knows what lies inside? And can I really trust Michael?

I look at the doorknob, but suddenly overcome by fear, I step back.

“I know you aren’t going to do it. You know how I know? Because I have lived this Sunday a hundred times with you and not once have you ever been—”

Impelled by Michael’s taunting, I defiantly reach for the doorknob, my hand still trembling, and turn it. I step into the darkness.

“Well, that’s new,” I hear a surprised
Michael
say.

I open my eyes and see myself wearing a tuxedo in the mirror of an immaculate, black-tiled, spacious bathroom. I look at my face and can see that I appear much older than I did at the coffee shop. I want to sit down for a moment and gather my thoughts, but am unable to control my movement, as if watching myself from inside a shell once again.

My body feels numb, though it is moving. I look over at a single newspaper lying on the bench. The date reads: 1999. How did I get here? I can’t remember. Where was I just a second ago? I can’t remember that either. And why am I wearing a tux? The whole scene is uncannily familiar as if from a forgotten memory.

I now begin to recall that I have stolen this tuxedo from the adjacent locker room. I remember thinking that taking the suit was a just punishment for whichever absentminded soul had left the door unlocked, slightly ajar, leaving the expensive-looking clothing ripe for the picking.

Doesn’t look half bad, I think, looking in the mirror. Everything is black—the dress shirt, jacket, tie, socks, shoes. I could have done a lot worse buying one for myself. I see a Jack of hearts sticking out of my jacket breast pocket. Another new fashion trend, I think.

I had made certain to be careful as I walked out of the locker room and back into the bathroom. I had washed and wiped my face down with a damp towel. I was almost certain the previous owner of the tuxedo would not immediately recognize it on me. Still, I had kept a wary eye up while drying my face.

“Almost time,” I say out loud to myself, glancing down at my
watch,
my hand on the door handle ready to pull it open.

Suddenly, footsteps approach from outside. I quickly remove my hand from the door handle and step inside one of the bathroom stalls and up onto its toilet. As I peer over the edge of the stall, I see an older man, a full foot shorter than me, enter the bathroom. The man steps into the stall next to me. Carefully and quietly, I step onto the floor, open my cubicle door, tiptoe to the exit, pull it open slowly, and walk out into the hallway. I close the bathroom door gently behind me.

Whew!
I think, breathing out a long, relaxed sigh. I walk down the hallway and hear the sounds of slot machines, roulette tables, voices, people calling and bidding, cards being dealt, smells of cologne and perfume. I turn the corner into the gaming room with all its electric, exciting splendor.

I quickly rush over to the box to exchange my money for chips. I make my way through the different gaming stations and find myself staring at the roulette table. I sit down and, after a few minutes, am tripling what I put in. My hot streak is blowing up as a crowd swarms around my table, cheering me on.

“All of it on six,” I find myself speaking, almost automatically, as I eye my stack of blue chips and lean precariously over the roulette wheel. The crowd around me, who had been anticipating my next bet, hushes.

“The player bets his lot on the number six,” the dealer replies, holding the ball up for the room to see before spinning the wheel and dropping the ball into the groove.

I lean back. A waitress sidles in beside me and puts a tumbler of what looks like bourbon or scotch in front of me. I am distracted from the table by her beautiful face, luscious hair, and curvy, tight body. I see her glance down at my hand, spot my wedding ring, and look back up at my face. I feel myself put my left hand in my pocket to conceal the ring, and she smiles scandalously.

Remembering the game, I turn back to watch again as the ball rolls on the spinning table, slower and slower. Immediately to my right, a beautiful woman in a red dress that looks like it cost more than my salary gazes at me, smiling and biting her lip.

I look back at the table and watch as the dealer rakes his stack of chips across the table. I feel my breath shorten to almost a standstill. The ball, rolling more slowly now, begins to bounce, finally settling into place.

“Yes!” I yell, pumping my fist in the air.

“Number six it is!” the dealer shouts.

I breathe out deeply, looking around me and straightening my jacket. The crowd is cheering and clapping. The dealer begins counting my winnings. Hearing the celebration, I see people around the room turn to look and walk over closer to the table, trying to see what’s happening.

“9,000 to the tailored suited man to my right!” the dealer says.

I look at all the chips being stacked in front of me, amazed at what I just accomplished.

“You must be feeling good, sir,” the dealer says smugly, pushing the chips across the table toward me.

To the house, this is small potatoes. I need to get a lot more money, I think to myself.

“Indeed, I am,” I reply, smiling at the pretty woman on my right. She smiles back alluringly.

I see an arm reach in and drop a napkin. The stranger goes and puts the drink down on it in front of me. I turn around to see a cocktail waitress, who points to a woman at the bar, who had sent the drink. The woman walks over to me, parting the crowd.

“My name is Lisa. I see you’ve been on a winning streak, Jack.” She looks at the Jack of hearts sticking out of my breast pocket.

“I’m holding my own. But my name isn’t—” She puts her finger on my lips.

“How would you like to play a big boy’s game?”

“What do you have in mind?” I respond.

“Follow me.” She turns away, looking back at me to follow.

She walks across to a far corner of the room. I turn back to the roulette table and gather my chips into a velvet coin purse. I turn around and Lisa is waiting for me. I walk to her as she moves through a set of velvet curtains.

On the other side of the curtains are sliding wooden doors. She rolls each door to the side. Inside, there is a small white hallway with another set of sliding wooden doors at the far end. Lisa closes the doors that we have just walked through and leads the way.

As we walk in, I notice an array of avant-garde paintings hanging on the right side of the hallway, almost as if it were a small art museum. Walking down the pearl white narrow room I gaze upon each canvas. The paintings are of a single mask, cracked, with a white backdrop. Each mask resembles a face card from a deck of playing cards.

I think aloud, “The Jack, the Queen, the King, the Ace. Why do all the masks seem as if they were withering to pieces? What’s the artist trying to convey?”

I hear Lisa behind me say, “I like to think that we are like the face cards and the deck is our universe. We might be the highest in the suite, feeling as if we were eternal but by our cracks, our flaws, show that we are still vulnerable, still only human.”

I stop, gazing at the Jack mask. “I have never seen these paintings before. Who drew them?”

Lisa looks at the paintings. “Jacques Philippe Dawid. He was a 1600 BC undiscovered French artist that was very well-mastered in the art of oil painting. He lived in Bandouille, France where he worked in a monastery,” she says, gazing at the paintings with me. “Paintings of his costs around $50,000. He only got the chance to paint five of them before he died. The four here he named: Vernal, Estival, Autumnal, and Hibernate, after seasonal climates, due to him finishing each one in a season’s time. The man responsible for this little card game is a big fan of his work. A real big fan.”

When I get to the last painting I stop, feeling taken back by how much it stands out from the others. I look at it as if I have seen it somewhere else before.

She turns around and stares with me, saying, “His Mona Lisa. The last canvas he finished before he died. Set at around $100,000. He called it, ‘Matthew 124345.’
”

The painting deals with no mask nor anything relating to the theme seen before. I continue to gaze, almost as if it has me in a trance.

“The reason why it’s so expensive is not because it was his last but yet it was his awaking. You see, Jacques fell into a coma after a long drunken night of lustful violent acts. He was mentally unstable, which is why his paintings reflect so much broken creativity. His coma lasted four months. Once awoke, he was said to be a different man. He joined a monastery and spent the rest of his days creating this masterpiece. He called it, “The Mirroring of Oneself.”

The thoughts from the back of my head push forward as I think,
This painting was the very same one in the elevator of my apartment building
. I shake my head pushing back down the insane notion of my thoughts and memory.

“Are you going to keep staring at that painting all day or do you wanna go make enough money to take it home with ya?”

Hearing the word
money
turns me away from the original art piece.

A large dresser stands on the right. She opens the top drawer, reaches in, and takes out a white mask. She hands it to me. From the inside, the mask looks like a normal Guy Fawkes mask, but when I turn it over, I see that it bears the face of a Jack from a deck of cards. The very same look from the paintings.

“I told you he was a fan,” she says, looking at the mask. “Put it on La Hire.”

“Why am I wearing this?” I hear myself ask.

“They don’t like cheaters. So to make it fair, everyone has to hide their faces. No expressions, no way of players signaling to each other, or the dealer, what they might have. Ergo, no cheating,” she replies. “And I guess they think it looks cool.”

I feel afraid of being found out and yet I do love the rush taking over me. Lisa turns and knocks on the inner doors.

“Earlier you called me, La Hire? Who or what is a La Hire?” I say to her, confused.

She turns to me and laughs. “Funny and cute, I think you will fit right in.”

Soon after she says that, the doors slide open and in front of us stands a man. He walks towards me, wearing an Ace mask. I see an Ace card stick out of his breast pocket the same way my Jack card is sitting in mine. Suddenly, I understand as I look down at my card. I have stolen the suit of the man who is supposed to be here! I better get out now before they know I am not the real guy.

Ace extends his hand to me.

“Nice to finally meet you, Jack. I’m Ace. Heard so much about you.” I sit there and think to myself,
He doesn’t know what I sound or look like. What kind of secret club is this?

I turn away, thinking I am in over my head. I raise my hand to my mask, about to take it off and reveal myself, when I fall back into the misunderstood painting again.