The Delphi Room (8 page)

Dear Velvet,

No, I was not a drag queen. (Pity, that. Who can deny that they are the best performers in the world?) Nor did I own a doll collection. (I am afraid of dolls. They have empty eyes.) I am not gay. (Does sexual orientation still exist in Hell? One would assume so, since it makes much of life Hell—why not continue the torment? And if phone sex is possible, then letter sex must be possible, too. Not that I am thinking we are going to have letter sex. Ignore that. Freudian slip. Someone should really have killed Freud sooner.) It is just that I have always admired the bias-cut dress. So I owned a few. My mother had a marvellous sense of style. And there is nothing quite like peach angora. Indeed, I do feel a real kinship with the film director Ed Wood. It’s like you already know everything about me. I find your understanding of me very touching.

My mirror has gone fuzzy and staticky, like a broken television set, or one whose power source is in doubt. It crackles, full of black and white electronic-type snow. But then a channel will come in quite suddenly, so to speak, as though a Great Plug has been adjusted and the show goes on. I believe . . . how do I say this . . . that the movie I have glimpsed is comprised of scenes from your life. I saw a little girl, a pale, lissome version of the beautiful woman—you—I first saw in my mirror. You were with your mother (?)—I was given only snatches—at any rate, the little girl was with a woman who looks like Mae West, a dark-haired Mae West. And then there was a man, a Greek-looking man, and he and Mae were together, and then he fled in an angry flurry . . . and the child saw everything. I am sorry. Help me understand what I see. More electronic blizzard obscured all images, and then I saw you—it could not have been a picture from all that long ago—with a young man: curly-haired, sensual, irregular features. Your paramour? There was a fight and he left. And then you were alone in a bathroom staring into the mirror. I caught a glimpse of a man in a yellow raincoat who looked like Gene Kelly—though there was something menacing about him. Static broke the scene again and when the picture returned you were on the bathroom floor, covered in glass and blood. You screamed in terror and then went silent as a shadow. You picked up a shard of glass and sliced at your wrist. More static. And then the young man walked into the bathroom and cradled your head. Am I watching your life, or are my eyes watching some devilish invention? If it be the truth—or even if not—I am compelled now to confess to you all of myself as it existed, with no embellishment, and to undo untruths, including minor ones.

I have lied to you. I am sorry. I promise I will not lie to you anymore. I admit I feel ridiculous to have lied, and I do not possess the requisite suave to gracefully—or satisfactorily—explain why. I am not sure that I know why. The truth seems rather bendable in here, or it did until I bent it and was wracked by terrible remorse. Fibbing (such a harmless-sounding word, isn’t it?) to you makes it feel as though the walls are closing in on me. I had never associated guilt with claustrophobia before. If there is further Judgment awaiting us, I hope this does not affect my case. I guess you think I am kind of pathetic, lying in Hell? But old habits die hard. And I have found that if you tell yourself something enough times, it becomes a reasonable approximation of the truth.

I am not a banker. I am a file clerk at a plastics company. But had I not been run over, I might have been a banker: in the moments before I died, I was on my way to apply for a job as a Customer Service Representative at a very large bank. Normally, I have a problem with touching money, but my doctor had given me some pills that seemed to help and I was excited about trying this new thing. You know, facing fears.

There was nothing drastically wrong with my job as a file clerk. It was mindless enough to let me think about whatever I wanted. Intellectual freedom is found in odd places. I have a talent for organizing and I think I improved on their system quite a bit. Really, the company would not have run so smoothly without me. I was the nuts and bolts of that operation. But nobody ever realized, much less said thank you. Credit never goes where credit is due, does it?

The thing that I liked about my job, other than the fact that it came with dental, was the sense of calm the act of filing brought me. I was very tense when I first started, of course, but once I had mastered—in fact, developed—the system, I was free to think about other things. I liked to recite poetry to myself as I filed, especially “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.” A flawless lyric. I love Marlowe. Literature is full of romantic figures, but to me he is unsurpassed. I used to have fantasies about dying in a tavern brawl. But if you are not leaving anything brilliant behind, what is the point? There is something very disconcerting about outliving your idol—turning thirty was depressing, to say the least. Once I was older than he was when he died—Marlowe having achieved immortality as a great writer—I felt like a dusty relic, and the years stretched out flat and endless while my capacity for greatness seemed to shrink to the point of invisibility. It certainly did not help that Rudolph Valentino—another idol of mine—died at thirty-one. I must say I found that my thirties in general were nothing to write home about.

I do not know if I would have been very good in a bank. To be honest, even if I had gotten an interview, I do not think I would have tried for it. Sometimes receiving the invitation is enough—actually attending the party is like one too many icing roses on an already sweet cake. It is very stressful to be on your feet talking to people all day, and as I mentioned, handling money is difficult for me. There are a lot of germs on the faces of those dead Prime Ministers, not to mention the Queen.

Anyway, as I walked along that day, on my way to submit my resumé, I was feeling bolder and happier than usual. It was a Friday, and I had called in sick. I always go to the same café at 8:43
a.m
. Punctuality is a virtue. Everyone there knows me, and they let me bring my own mug, since I prefer not to use drinking vessels belonging to others, even if they are single-use paper cups. Who knows, I may have landed an interview! But I guess that information will be forever kept from me.