The Dead Love Longer (2 page)

More years passed, years that weren't all bad with a dream Lee as company.
The clock on the wall
spasmed
, the fat hour hand heading for some distant dawn while the minute hand reached toward the night before.
I thought of all the dead people who had gone before me and wondered if I would see them. That thought sent a chill through my cold, amorphous flesh.

You see, there was someone I had betrayed once. Someone who had loved me back before I knew such a thing was more than just a word in a Beatles song. I didn't understand at the time, but I enjoyed the hell out of the fringe benefits—someone to make me coffee in the morning, nurse me when I caught the flu, bed me without my having to make a fool of myself in a sleazy dive. We didn't have a care in the world, and I wouldn't have hurt Diana for a million bucks and a British Bentley. Then I inflicted the most horrible punishment imaginable.

I married her.

Pork-Chop Face groaned across the room. I thought she was having a seizure, but it turned out she was trying to sing "Amazing Grace." I always liked that melody, despite no one ever knowing the second verse. To hear her crippled caterwauling, though, was about as far from a religious experience as you could get.

I slipped back into my reverie. The popular afterlife image was of "going toward the light" where all your loved ones waited around to welcome you. I didn't have any loved ones, unless dogs were getting into heaven the way Mark Twain believed they should. My parents were still alive, and I'd never met my grandparents, so I didn't have any feelings for them one way or the other. They were nothing but faded
Polaroids
to me. There was only one person close to me who was dead, and Diana would probably not be petitioning St. Pete on my behalf.

After all, she blamed me for putting her here.

Said as much in the note she scrawled, just before she taped the garden hose to her car muffler and ran the business end through the driver's-side window.

As I waited, I had a thought that grew into a hope that graduated into a full-fledged burning desire. Lee was an angel, no doubt about it. And if I could get to heaven, then, some day, some way, I'd find her again. I didn't understand this death business, but I was a detective, wasn't I? I'd figure it out.

So when my name was called, I stood up, feeling airy with determination, balls loose in my pants, chin up just a smidge. I went down the
hall,
passing Buick-brains on his way back out. His lower lip protruded in a pout that would make any adolescent girl proud.

"What's the problem?" I asked.

"They're sending me to
Detroit
."

"Hey, I thought you loved cars. That sounds like heaven."

"Yeah.
But my mission is to bring back the
Edsel
."

I slapped him on the back, causing something to rattle inside him. "Sorry, pal. I feel your pain."

I went into the door he had exited. Filing cabinets lined the walls, the drawers overflowing with forms, fliers, and receipts. Stacks of paper teetered on the desk like flimsy monuments. Apparently computers hadn't made it to the netherworld. A female voice crawled out from behind the mess. "Take a seat, Mr. Steele."

I sat in a wooden chair that made the waiting room bench seem like a throne by comparison. Through a gap in the mountain range of paperwork, I saw a wrinkled woman with a flowered hat and librarian glasses. "Uh...hello," I ventured.

She was reading from a folder that I assumed was my
dossier
. Her mouth twisted in an expression of clerical torment. "Why do I always get these cases?" she said, rolling her eyes.

"Punishment for a fun-filled past life, maybe?"
I couldn't resist a little stab at sarcasm. That was my defense mechanism, the way I dealt with uncertainty. Dying changes some things, but not others.

She didn't look at me as she thumbed through the documents.
"Some good...a lot of bad...but then, a few really,
really
good deeds.
You know what you are?"

"A megalomaniac?"
I answered. I'd picked up the word from some paperback I'd read while casing an adulterer's love nest. I didn't know what the word meant, but it sounded impressive.

She took off her glasses and stared hard at me. Her eyes were like oil drops. "You're a
tweener
.
A tough call.
A half-baked excuse for a soul that could never figure out what its deal was."

"And...
that's
a bad thing?"

She flapped some papers, and in that moment, I knew she had made it to heaven. Exasperation was her favorite mode, and she had been rewarded with an eternity of it. "Well, I can work with it. But it depends on what you want."

She was making it sound like I had a choice, here, now, dead. So much for living right on the mortal coil. I briefly regretted the sinful opportunities that I had let pass
unsavored
. Not that there were many. "Why does it depend on me?"

She put her glasses back on so she could glare at me over them. "Do you want to go to heaven or go to hell?"

"Heaven, of course."

"That's what they all say, but think about it a little. Hell is easy, and your friends will be there. You'll get a decoder sheet to Led Zeppelin's backwards recordings. There are lots of cats, and plenty of
Hollywood
agents around to pick up your lunch tab.  But getting to heaven takes sacrifice.
And a hell of a lot of faith."

Now, sacrifices I could make, but faith was one of my weak points. Back in the land of the living that I had so recently departed, half the world was getting ready to celebrate the birth of their savior, though I'd bet most of them would go into shock if they opened the door to find Jesus Christ standing there. I'd never taken the dude's birthday personally myself, but I did go in for candy canes and eggnog
a little. And I had a weak spot for "Silent Night."

Getting to heaven was probably a long shot, but I'm the kind of guy who likes challenges.
A self-motivator.
Before my death, I wouldn't have given two seconds of reflection toward religion and virgin births and God and schmoozing my way toward an eternity of further servitude.
But dying changes things.
Some day you'll find that out for yourself.

I folded my hands in my lap, like an undertaker who is feigning solemnity for the sake of business. "Well, I guess you can
sermonize
me the Gospel and I'll believe it, if that's what it takes."

She slammed her fist down on the desk, causing the paper stacks to tremble precariously, threatening an avalanche. "It's not about God or the Devil, Mister Steele, or even good or evil. It's about
faith
, a belief in right and wrong and justice and hope and love.
Love
, as in caring about something bigger than your own sorry ass. And, based on what I see, I don't think you've got the equipment for it."

I thought of Lee, I thought of her face, and how I ached to touch it one more time. Then I thought of Diana.

If Diana was in heaven, I could finally clear the decks with her. While alive, I had stared down the barrel of a .38 Colt Python, I had left the road airborne doing ninety, I had fallen three stories and bounced off the railing of a metal fire escape, and apparently capped it all off by taking four bullets from an unknown murderer. Yet nothing had ever frightened me as much as those words that sometimes came from Diana's luscious lips: "We need to talk."

I somehow avoided talking for three whole years, through two affairs and countless bottles of Scotch. I may have talked to her when she was in her coffin, but the lid was closed, so she probably hadn't heard me. Carbon monoxide poisoning does ugly things even to a beautiful face.

"A moral dilemma?" the clerk said, lifting one corner of her mouth.
"Unfinished business?"

Maybe she was a mind reader. I didn't know what
sort of job qualifications were
needed to get you hired as one of the afterlife's gatekeepers.
If she already knew everything, then why the torture?
Then I realized it was just like with the God thing. God understood, but which of us are strong enough to own up to our failures?

Hell offered booze, casual sex, an obligation-free Sunday, and, best of all,
rock'n'roll
cranked up to eleven. Who wanted to hang around someplace hearing fruity harp music all the time? But heaven offered second chances. I could make amends to Diana, or at least tell her how sorry I was. And Lee would eventually arrive, and we'd have forever to fulfill that "Love you forever" promise.

"Can I ask you something?" I said.

The clerk's face was as cold as that of the clock on the wall, another whose hands spun in different directions.

"Sure," she said. "I'm here to serve, like a Hooters waitress but with
saggier
boobs."

"What's
your
religious belief?" I figured she was wiser in these matters than one freshly dead.

"Jewish, of course."

"And how does that work in with heaven? It's not like you guys believe the Savior has arrived or anything."

She waved her hands at the paperwork piled around her, at the Labrador
retriever calendar on the wall whose days went unnumbered, at the empty can of generic cola on her desk. "The answer's in here somewhere. Jews believe in living right on Earth for the sake of righteousness, not for eventual reward. And it doesn't change in
this
world."

I wondered if maybe it was all a karmic wheel, an endless reincarnation, going through the same stupid motions again and again. Yet that couldn't be right.
Because she had offered me a choice.
I don't know upon whose authority she was acting, but she obviously had no ulterior motives, or she would have shuttled me toward whatever corridor was most convenient to her. Her sincerity was as pure as my stupidity.

I pointed to my file opened before her. "Umm, I assume the thing with Diana's in there."

She snapped the file closed, creating a breeze that rushed through the holes in my chest. "It's all in here. You can lie to yourself until you're blue in the face, but we have it down in black and white. We know the truth."

I'd always thought of the truth as a flexible thing, something tapped when convenient and avoided when it carried consequences. In other words, I expected honesty from other people but was always amazed when people expected it from me. But up here (or down here, because I still couldn't shake that Protestant idea of the afterlife as a "place" in physical relation to Earth), the truth was apparently universal.

 
Bummer.

"So what do I do about her?"

"She was only your wife. The woman you promised to cherish and love until death did you part. And you sure as fuck kept
that
promise,
didn't you?"

I blinked. Truth be told, I was batting my eyes because, just maybe, a couple of tears were collecting. Sometimes if you act like a gnat flew between your eyelids, you can get away with squeezing off a few without anyone noticing. "Mistakes were made," I said.

"Passive voice," she said, as if she were a former grammar teacher. "That way, it's not your fault. It's the fault of the big old uncaring Cosmos, and all of it was out of your control. God dealt you a bad hand. Fate took its whoop-ass stick to your life while you stood by helpless. You couldn't lift a finger to stop it."

"That's right," I said, blinking faster.

She almost grinned. "But you can lift a finger now."

The door to the room slammed open, the same door I had walked through minutes or hours before. Except the corridor had changed; it was no longer drab, with gray industrial carpet and the occasional vapid nature print on the wall. Instead, tendrils of flame curled forth like the tongues of a hundred snakes, whispering, sibilant,
seductive
. In the midst of those flames I saw Diana's face, as beautiful and lusty as it had ever been, but the lust had taken an ugly turn. She was Eve after the first apple's bite, wicked and knowing, bloated with the Devil's spunk and utterly unapologetic. Her amorphous eyes fixed on me in that familiar glare, the one of simultaneous accusation and self-loathing.

"Mistakes were made,"
came
her voice in a rush of volcanic wind. "Mistakes were made."

I swallowed what felt like a fistful of ground glass. Volleys of agony sluiced through my chest as if someone had poured battery acid in my bullet holes. My eyes were dry as shriveled grapes. You'd think the dead don't feel pain, but we do. It's a different kind of hurt, and it runs graveyard cold and soul deep and there are no aspirins for it.

"Diana?" I said, as her face coalesced into the flames. Figures undulated in the red-and-yellow chaos, performing a hateful war dance. Occasionally an arm or knee would pop out, changing to black bones and ash, a puff of gray smoke marking the transformation. Diana's laughter flickered and crackled.

I turned toward the clerk, expecting an answer, or maybe some help. The room was empty except for the clock on the wall. Now its hands drooped like Dali's mustache, the clock face soft and sagging. Four dirty impressions the size of quarters marked the floor where the desk had been.