Doomed

^{DECEMBER 21, 1:16 P.M. HAST} The Purpose of My Awful Life—Revealed!

Gentle Tweeter,

There’s a Heaven.

There is a God, and not just Warren Beatty.

Paradise exists, Gentle Tweeter, but that fact provides little solace to those of us assigned to spend our eternity elsewhere. My upstate Festus has become a sparkling, itsy-bitsy angel, while pudgy me is enduring fiery, sulfurous lakes of crap and The English Patient. I’m happy for him. Tickled pink. Really, I am, but such inequitable social moments weren’t covered in my not-slight schooling on etiquette. Fortunately, this difficult exchange is truncated by the insistent ringing of the salon’s telephone. Babette answers it with a curt “Yes?”

Eyeing Festus and me, she listens to the caller. After a moment, she snaps, “No, I do not want to take a consumer product survey.” She says, “Emily, how did you get this number?”

My mom’s telephone rings, and she retrieves it. My father’s rings.

My eternal gratitude to you, HadesBrainiacLeonard and PattersonNumber54 and CanuckAIDSemily. Your timing is spot-on.

“Chewing gum preferences?” asks my mom, incredulous. “Leonard, baby, is that you?”

My dad says, “No, I never buy the lambskin ones.”

In the ensuing telemarketing chaos, young Festus spirits me from the yacht’s salon. We escape down passageways and through hatches. In our giggling flight, we dissolve through bulkheads and Somali maids, tasting paint and semi-digested plantain curry, until we arrive in my long-sealed childhood stateroom. There, we find the drapes drawn, the lights out, the air-conditioning chilling my Steiff bears and Judy Blume paperbacks to archival temperatures. Every stray hair and pot of strawberry-scented lip gloss has been preserved as carefully as a diorama in the Smithsonian or the Museum of Natural History. Dead as we both are, my sturdy squire and I, we are, nonetheless, two unattached persons seeking refuge in a locked room with a bed.

Too steeped in romantic possibility is my ghost heart to ignore this turn of events. I recline on the bed’s satin coverlet in what I hope is a not-unappealing pose. Into my ghost mind, unbidden, unwelcome, comes the image of my cigarette-smoking, wigless, panty-free nana stretched the length of my identical bed in the Rhinelander penthouse. To vanquish this image, I pat my postalive hand on the bed beside me and say, “So… you’re an angel; that’s cool.” If my Festus is unaware of my history of mauling fragile man parts, I’m not eager to educate him. Neither am I certain whether he knows my soul was damned to Hades. Finally I venture, “So, Heaven’s great. Don’t you think?”

Festus smiles at me with the same condescending sad-eyed expression my mom uses when she addresses the United Nations General Assembly. A flood of pitying tears, barely contained.

Undeterred, I say, “Yeah, Heaven is tons better than I figured it would be….”

Festus silently continues to regard me, his lips trembling with compassion.

Defensive now, provocatively I ask, “Hey, when the combine machinery tore you to shreds, did it hurt? I mean, did it rip off your hands first? How did that work?”

At this, Festus settles his angelic self on the bed beside me. “Do not be ashamed, Miss Madison,” he says. “For I know you’ve been discarded by creation to spend forever in the scalding anus of Hades.” His placid face says this without a hint of malice. “I know that you suffer constant starvation with nothing to slake your hunger and thirst save a mighty banquet of fresh urine and excrement….”

Ye gods. Gentle Tweeter, I am speechless. I haven’t a clue where Festus gets his information, but Hell is not that bad. I do not eat caca-doodie or drink pee. Don’t you believe a word of this.

Charles Darwin I am not!

“I know also,” he says, casting a look of ultimate pity upon me, “I know that you’re forced to copulate endlessly with leprous demons and subsequently bring forth their filthy progeny in circumstances of utter degradation.”

Hey, CanuckAIDSemily, back me up, here. Nobody is forced to get down with demons, right? As a virgo intacta, I have solid proof to the contrary, but there’s no way to submit such evidence for Festus’s inspection. Meaning: If I even try to show him my maidenhead, the gesture is going to look somewhat slutty.

“I know you exist despised by all worthy beings.” Festus blinks his blue cow eyes at me. “That every sentient creature considers you beneath respect. That in your present state you are more vile than—”

“Shut up!” I interrupt, lying rigid on the bed’s coverlet. My chest is heaving. My temper seething. I’d rather spend infinity snacking on putrid poo than be talked down to by some self-righteous angel. Possible boyfriend or not, I’m leaving. I stand. I straighten my glasses. I smooth my skort. “If you’ll excuse me,” I say. “I’m sure I’m supposed to be fornicating with some diseased corrupt gargoyle or something right now.”

“Wait,” Festus entreats.

I wait. There it is, my greatest weakness: hope.

“God cast you down unto the Pit not because you are vile, but because God knows you are strong,” says Festus. “God knows you are brilliant and courageous and that you are not weak and would not be debased by the torments which destroy weaker souls….” Festus rises and hovers, fluttering in the air near my face. “Since the beginning of time God has intended for you to be His emissary into perdition.”

God, Festus explains, knows that I’m pure-hearted.

God recognizes that I’m exceptional. He believes me to be sweet and smart and kind. God does not think I’m fat. He wants me to be his supersecret double agent.

Like nothing so much as a celestial version of Darwin’s annoying little finches, Festus jets and darts in his golden fairy excitement, finally taking up a perch on my shoulder. Standing parrot-style beside my ear, he says, “God beseeches you to prevent a grave impending catastrophe.”