Damned

XVIII

The computerized autodialer in Hell makes it a top priority to call mostly numbers on the federal government's No Call List. I can practically smell the mercury-enhanced tuna casserole on the breath of people whose dinner I interrupt, even over the fiber-optic or whatever phone lines that connect earth and Hell, when they yell at me. Their dinner napkins still tucked into the collars of their T-shirts, flapping down their fronts, spotted with Hamburger Helper and Green Goddess salad dressing, these angry people in Detroit, Biloxi, and Allentown, they yell for me to, "Go to Hell…"

And yes, I might be a thoughtless, uncouth interloper into the savory ritual of their evening repast, but I'm way ahead of their hostile request.

This current day or month or century, I'm plugged into my workstation, getting shouted at, asking people their consumer preferences regarding ballpoint pens, when something new occurs. A telephone call comes through the system. An incoming call. Even as some meat loaf-eating moron shouts at me, a beep sound starts within my headset. Some kind of call-waiting sound. Whether this call's coming from earth or Hell, I can't begin to guess, and the caller identification is blocked. The instant the meat-loaf moron hangs up, I press Ctrl+Alt+Del to clear my line, and say, "Hello?"

A girl's voice says, "Is this Maddy? Are you Madison Spencer?"

I ask, Who's calling?

"I'm Emily," the girl says, "from British Columbia." The thirteen-year-old. The girl with the really bad case of AIDS. She's *69'd me. Over the telephone, she says, "Are you really and truly dead?"

As a doornail, I tell her.

This Emily girl says, "The caller ID says your area code is for Missoula, Montana… "

I tell her, Same deal.

She says, "If I called you back, collect, would you accept the charges?"

Sure, I tell her. I'll try.

And — click — she hangs up on her end.

Granted it's not entirely ethical to make personal calls from Hell, but everybody does it. To one side of me, the punk kid, Archer, sits with his leather-jacketed elbow almost touching my cardigan-sweatered elbow. Archer toys with the big safety pin which hangs from his cheek, while into his headset he's saying, "… No, seriously, you sound gnarly-hot." He says, 'After your skin-cancer thing metastasizes, you and me need to totally hook up… "

At my opposite elbow, the brainiac Leonard stares forward, his eyes unfocused, telling his headset, "Queen's rook to G-five…"

Even as I sit here, my head clamped in a headset, the earpiece covering one ear and the microphone looped around to hang in front of my mouth, at the same time, Babette hovers over me, circling and snipping at my hair with the cuticle scissors from her purse, shaping me the most way-perfect pageboy haircut with straight-across bangs. Even she doesn't care that I'm socializing on Hell's dime.

My line rings again, and a mechanical voice says, "You have a collect phone call from…"

And the Canadian AIDS girl adds, "Emily."

The computer says, "Will you accept the charges?"

And I say, Yes.

Over the phone, Emily says, "I only called because this constitutes a way-terrible emergency." She says, "My parents want me to see a new shrink. Do you think I should go?"

Shaking my head, I tell her, "No way."

Babette's hand grips the back of my neck, her white-painted fingernails digging in until I hold still.

“And don't let them feed you full of Xanax, either," I say into the phone. From my personal experience, nothing feels as awful as pouring your heart out to some talk therapist, then realizing this so-called professional is actually vastly stupid and you've just professed your most secret secrets to some goon who's wearing one brown sock and one blue sock. Or you see an Earth First! bumper sticker on the rear of his diesel Hummer H3T in the parking lot. Or you catch him picking his nose. Your precious confidant you expected would sort out your entire twisted psyche, who now harbors all your darkest confessions, he's just some jerk with a master's degree. To change the subject, I ask Emily how it was that she contracted AIDS.

"How else?" Emily says. "From my last therapist, of course."

I ask, Was he cute?

Emily shrugs audibly, saying, "Cute enough, for a sliding-scale therapist."

Toying with a strand of my hair, looping it around my finger, then pulling it to where my teeth can nibble the tips, I ask Emily what it's like to have AIDS.

Even over the phone, her eye roll is audible. "It's like being Canadian," she says. "You get used to it."

Trying to sound impressed, I say, "Wow." I say, "I guess people can get used to pretty much anything."

Just to make conversation, I ask if Emily has gotten her first period yet.

"Sure," Emily says, "but when your viral loads are this sky-high, menstruation is less like a big celebration of attaining womanhood, and more like a way-biologically hazardous toxic spill in your pants."

Without realizing it, I must still be biting my hair, because Babette slaps my hand away. She waves the little scissors in my face and gives me a stern look.

Over the phone, Emily says, "I figure that once I'm dead I can start dating." She says, "Is Corey Haim seeing anybody?"

I don't answer, not right away, not that instant, because a herd of new Hell inductees is crowding past my workstation. A regular flood of people has just arrived, still not entirely certain they're dead. Most of them wear leis made of silk flowers looped around their necks. The ones not wearing sunglasses have a stunned, worried look in their eyes. A mob that could easily be the entire population of some country, it's usually proof that something terrible has just befallen folks on earth.

Over the phone, I ask Emily if something awful just occurred. A major earthquake? A tidal wave? A nuclear bomb? Did a dam burst? Of the milling, stunned newcomers, most appear to be wearing vivid Hawaiian-print shirts, with cameras slung on cords hanging around their necks. These people all boast roasted-red sunburns, some with white stripes of zinc oxide smeared across the bridge of their nose.

In response, Emily says, "Some big cruise-ship disaster, like, a jillion tourists died of food poisoning from eating bad lobsters." She says, "Why do you ask?"

I say, "No reason."

Deep in this crowd, a familiar face floats. A boy's face, his eyes glowering beneath the overhang of a heavy brow. His hair, too thick to comb flat.

In my ear, Emily asks, "How did you die?"

"Marijuana," I tell her. Still watching the boy's face in the middle distance, I say, "I'm not altogether certain." I say, "I was so way stoned."

Around me, Archer flirts with dying cheerleaders. Leonard checkmates some alive dweeb. Patterson asks somebody on earth how the Raiders are ranked this season.

Emily says, "Nobody dies from marijuana." Pressing the subject, she says, "What's the last detail you remember about your life?"

I say, I don't know.

Beyond this new flood of the damned, the boy's face turns. His eyes meet mine. He of the moody, wrinkled forehead. He of the snarling Heathcliff lips.

Emily says, "But what killed you?"

I say, I don't know.

The boy in the distance, he turns and begins to walk away, dodging and weaving to escape through the crowd of poisoned tourists.

By reflex, I stand, my headset still tethering me to my workstation. And with a sharp shove against my shoulder, Babette sits me back down in my chair and continues to snip at my hair.

"But what do you remember?" Emily asks.

Goran, I tell her. I remember watching the television, lying on the carpet on my stomach, propped on my elbows, next to Goran. Arrayed on the carpet around us, I recall half-eaten room-service trays containing onion rings, cheeseburgers. My mom appeared on the television screen. She'd pinned the pink breast cancer ribbon to her gown, and — as the applause died down — she said, "Tonight is a very special night, in more ways than one. For it was on this night, eight years ago, that my precious daughter was born… "

Sprawled on the hotel carpet amid cold food and Goran, I remember seething.

It was my thirteenth birthday.

I remember the television cameras cutting to show my dad, seated in the audience, beaming with a proud smile to show off his new dental implants.

Even now, dead and in Hell, way-totally ready to get busted for accepting a collect call from Canada, I ask Emily, "In second or third grade…" I ask, "did you play the French-kissing Game?"

Emily says, "Is that how you died?"

No, I tell her, but that game is all I remember.

And, yes, I might be forgetful or in denial or five years older than my mother would like me to be, but as I stare across the landscape of Hawaiian shirts and fake-flower leis, some of those loud shirts and silk flowers still splashed with food-poisoning vomit, the face I see receding into the distance of Hell is that of my brother, Goran. In contrast to the garish tropical cruise apparel, Goran wears a pink jumpsuit, bright pink, with some sort of multidigit number stitched across one side of his chest.

On the phone, her voice still in my earpiece, Emily says, "What's the French-kissing Game?"

And then Goran, he of the kissable, lusciously full lips and bright pink jumpsuit, he's vanished in the crowd.