Damned

XX

My dad would tell you, "When you're shooting on location, be ready for rain." Meaning: You never know what fate will throw your way. One minute, I'm luring some Canadian AIDS girl to come join me in Hell, and the next minute I'm staring down my beloved Goran, now wearing a hot-pink jumpsuit with what looks like a Social Security number embroidered on his chest. My telephone headset still clamped around my smart new pageboy haircut, I jump to my feet and begin swimming, stroking my arms through a veritable ocean of chubby, newly deceased holiday cruisers, all of them bespeckled with their own noxious lobster vomitus. Within moments, my hands tangle in camera straps and sunglasses bun-gee cords and artificial floral leis. Drowning and slimy in the coconut-smelling miasma of budget suntan lotions, I'm calling out, screaming, "Goran!" Gasping, I'm bobbing and flailing amid the tide of food-poisoned tourists, shouting, "Wait, Goran! Please wait!" Unfamiliar with walking in my new high heels, netted in the wires of my telephone setup, I stumble and begin to sink beneath the surface of the teeming mob.

Suddenly, an arm wraps around me from behind. An arm encased in the sleeve of a black-leather jacket. And Archer rescues me, towing me from the sluggish riptide of wandering bovine dead.

With Babette looking on, Leonard watching, I say, "My boyfriend… he was just here."

Patterson untangles the headset from me.

"Calm down," says Babette. She explains that we need to slip Tootsie Pops or Oh Henry! bars to the right demons. If Goran's only recently been damned, his files ought to be easy to find. Already she's leading me in the other direction, exiting the telephone marketing hall, her hand wrapped around mine. Babette's dragging me along corridors, up and down stone stairways, navigating hallways past doorways and skeletons, under archways with black fringes of sleeping bats hanging overhead, across lofty bridges and via dripping, dank tunnels, but always staying within the vast hive of the netherworld headquarters. Finally, arriving at a bloodstained counter, Babette elbows aside the souls already waiting in line. She digs an Abba-Zaba from her purse and dangles it toward some demon who sits at a desk, some sort of half-man, half-falcon monster with a lizard's tail, engrossed in doing a crossword puzzle. Addressing him, Babette says, "Hey, Akibel." She says, "What do you have on a new arrival named…" And Babette looks at me.

"Goran," I say. "Goran Spencer."

The falcon-lizard-monster-man looks up from the folded page of his newspaper; wetting the tip of his pencil against the wet point of his forked tongue, the demon says, "What's a six-letter word for power failure'?"

Babette looks at me. She brushes her fingernails to stroke my new bangs so they fall straight across my forehead, and says, "What's he look like, honey?"

Goran of the dreamy vampire eyes and jutting caveman brow Goran of the surly, fleshy lips and unruly hair, he of the sneering disdain and abandoned-orphan demeanor. My wordless, hostile, walking skeleton. My beloved. Words fail me. With a helpless sigh, I say, "He's… swarthy." Quickly, I say, "And brutish."

Babette adds, "He's Maddy's long-lost boyfriend."

Blushing, I protest, saying, "He's only kind of my boyfriend. I'm only thirteen."

The demon, Akibel, swivels in his desk chair. Turning to face a dusty computer screen, the demon keyboards Ctrl+Alt+F with the talons of his falcon claws. When a blinking green cursor appears on the screen, the demon keys in "Spencer, Goran." With a stab of his index talon, he hits Enter.

At that same instant, a finger taps me on the back of my shoulder. A human finger. And a frail voice says, "Are you little Maddy?" Standing behind me, a stooped old lady asks, "Would you happen to be Madison Spencer?"

The demon sits, his face propped in his hands, both his elbows leaned on his desk, watching his computer screen and waiting. Tapping a talon, impatiently, on the edge of his keyboard, the demon says, "I hate this fucking dial-up…" He says, "Talk about glacial." A beat later, the demonic Akibel picks up his crossword once more. Studying it, he says, "What's a four-letter word for 'cribbage props'?"

The old woman who tapped my shoulder, she continues to look at me, her eyes shining bright. Her hair fluffy and bunched into wads as white as tufts of cotton, her voice flickering she says, "The telephone people said you might be here." She smiles a mouthful of pearly, bright dentures and says, "I'm Trudy. Mrs. Albert Marenetti…?" her intonation lifting into a question.

The demon whacks a falcon claw against the side of his computer monitor, swearing under his breath.

And yes, I am wildly invested in tracking down my adored Goran, denizen of my most romantic dreams, but I am NOT totally oblivious to the emotional needs of others. Especially those recently dead after prolonged terminal illness. Throwing my arms around this stooped, stunted little shrub of an old lady, I squeal, "Mrs. Trudy! From Columbus, Ohio! Of course I remember you." Giving her powdery, wrinkled cheek a little peck, I say, "How's that little pancreatic cancer thing?" Realizing our present situation, both of us dead and doomed to the straits of Hell for all eternity, I add, "Not good, I guess."

With a twinkle in her sky-blue eyes, the old lady says, "You were so kind and generous, talking to me." Her old-lady fingers pinch both my cheeks. Cupping my face between her hands, gazing at me, she says, "So, just before my last trip into the hospice I burned down a church."

We both laugh. Uproariously. I introduce Mrs. Trudy to Babette. The demon, Akibel, hits his Enter key, again and again and again.

While we wait, I compliment Mrs. Trudy on her choice of footwear: black low-heeled mules. Otherwise, she wears an iron-gray tweed suit and a very smart Tyrolean hat of gray felt, with a red feather tucked into the band at a jaunty angle. Now, there's an ensemble which will stay fresh-looking despite aeons of hellish punishment.

Babette waves a Pearson Salted Nut Roll, baiting the demon to work faster. Badgering him, she calls, "Hey, step it up! We don't have forever!"

The people already here, already waiting, they give up a weak laugh.

"This here is Madison," Babette says, introducing me to everyone present. Throwing an arm around my shoulders and steering me to the counter, she adds, "Just in the past three weeks, Maddy, here, is responsible for a seven-percent increase in damnations!"

A murmur passes through the crowd.

In the next moment, an elderly man approaches our tiny group. Clasping his hat in both hands and wearing a striped silk bowtie, the old man says, "Would you happen to be Madison Spencer?"

Says Mrs. Trudy, "She is." Beaming, Mrs. Trudy slips her wrinkled hand around my hand and gives my fingers a bony squeeze.

Looking at this man, with his cloudy cataract eyes and pinched, trembling shoulders, I say, "Now, don't tell me…" I say, "Are you Mr. Halmott from Boise, Idaho?"

"In the flesh," the old man says, "or whatever I am, these days." So apparently pleased that he blushes.

Congestive heart failure, I recite. I shake his hand and say, "Welcome to Hell."

On the far side of the counter, at the demon's desk, a dot-matrix printer grinds to life. Sprocket wheels pull continuous-feed paper from a dusty box. The paper, yellowed and brittle. The printer carriage roars back and forth as each page advances, line by line, pulled along by its perforated tracks.

With Babette's arm draped across the back of my neck, her hand hangs near the side of my face. There, the cuff of her blouse has pulled back to reveal dark red lines on the inside of her wrist. Running from the sleeve to the base of her palm, gouged scars gape, raw as if they'd been recently cut.

And yes, I know suicide is a mortal sin, but Babette has always insisted she was damned for wearing white shoes after Labor Day.

With old Mr. Halmott and Mrs. Trudy smiling at me, I myself am staring point-blank — first, at Babette's suicide scars — then at her sheepish grin.

Removing her arm from my shoulders, sliding the sleeve to conceal her secret, Babette says, "Girl really, really, really interrupted…"

The demon tears the page from the printer and slaps it on the countertop.