The Living End

PART I. THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM

Ellerbee had been having a bad time of it. He’d had financial reversals. Change would slip out of his pockets and slide down into the crevices of other people’s furniture. He dropped deposit bottles and lost money in pay phones and vending machines. He overtipped in dark taxicabs. He had many such financial reversals. He was stuck with Super Bowl tickets when he was suddenly called out of town and with theater and opera tickets when the ice was too slick to move his car out of his driveway. But all this was small potatoes. His portfolio was a disgrace. He had gotten into mutual funds at the wrong time and out at a worse. His house, appraised for tax purposes at many thousands of dollars below its replacement cost, burned down, and recently his once flourishing liquor store, one of the largest in Minneapolis, had drawn the attentions of burly, hopped-up and armed deprivators, ski-masked, head-stockinged. Two of his clerks had been shot, one killed, the other crippled and brain damaged, during the most recent visitation by these marauders, and Ellerbee, feeling a sense of responsibility, took it upon himself to support his clerks’ families. His wife reproached him for this, which led to bad feelings between them.

“Weren’t they insured?”

“I don’t know, May. I suppose they had some insurance but how much could it have been? One was just a kid out of college.”

“Whatshisname, the vegetable.”

“Harold, May.”

“What about whosis? He was no kid out of college.”

“George died protecting my store, May.”

“Some protection. The black bastards got away with over fourteen hundred bucks.” When the police called to tell him of the very first robbery, May had asked if the men had been black. It hurt Ellerbee that this should have been her first question. “Who’s going to protect you? The insurance companies red-lined that lousy neighborhood a year ago. We won’t get a penny.”

“I’m selling the store, May. I can’t afford to run it anymore.”

“Selling? Who’d buy it? Selling!”

“I’ll see what I can get for it,” Ellerbee said.

“Social Security pays them benefits,” May said, picking up their quarrel again the next day. “Social Security pays up to the time the kids are eighteen years old, and they give to the widow, too. Who do you think you are, anyway? We lose a house and have to move into one not half as good because it’s all we can afford, and you want to keep on paying the salaries not only of two people who no longer work for you, but to pay them out of a business that you mean to sell! Let Social Security handle it.”

Ellerbee, who had looked into it, answered May. “Harold started with me this year. Social Security pays according to what you’ve put into the system. Dorothy won’t get three hundred a month, May. And George’s girl is twenty. Evelyn won’t even get that much.”

“Idealist,” May said. “Martyr.”

“Leave off, will you, May? I’m responsible. I’m under an obligation.”

“Responsible, under an obligation!”

“Indirectly. God damn it, yes. Indirectly. They worked for me, didn’t they? It’s a combat zone down there. I should have had security guards around the clock.”

“Where are you going to get all this money? We’ve had financial reversals. You’re selling the store. Where’s this money coming from to support three families?”

“We’ll get it.”

“We’ll get it? There’s no we’ll about it, Mister. You’ll. The stocks are in joint tenancy. You can’t touch them, and I’m not signing a thing. Not a penny comes out of my mouth or off my back.”

“All right, May,” Ellerbee said. “I’ll get it.”

In fact ‘Ellerbee had a buyer in mind—a syndicate that specialized in buying up businesses in decaying neighborhoods—liquor and drugstores, small groceries—and then put in ex-convicts as personnel, Green Berets from Vietnam, off-duty policemen, experts in the martial arts. Once the word was out, no one ever attempted to rob these places. The syndicate hiked the price of each item at least 20 percent—and got it. Ellerbee was fascinated and appalled by their strong-arm tactics. Indeed, he more than a little suspected that it was the syndicate itself which had been robbing him—all three times his store had been held up he had not been in it—to inspire him to sell, perhaps.

“We read about your trouble in the paper,” Mr. Davis, the lawyer for the syndicate, had told him on the occasion of his first robbery. The thieves had gotten away with $300 and there was a four-line notice on the inside pages. “Terrible,” he said, “terrible. A fine old neighborhood like this one. And it’s the same all over America today. Everywhere it’s the same story. Even in Kansas, even in Utah. They shoot you with bullets, they take your property. Terrible. The people I represent have the know-how to run businesses like yours in the spoiled neighborhoods.” And then he had been offered a ridiculous price for his store and stock. Of course he turned it down. When he was robbed a second time, the lawyer didn’t even bother to come in person. “Terrible. Terrible,” he said. “Whoever said lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place was talking through his hat. I’m authorized to offer you ten thousand less than I did the last time.” Ellerbee hung up on him.

Now, after his clerks had been shot, it was Ellerbee who called the lawyer. “Awful,” the lawyer said. “Outrageous. A merchant shouldn’t have to sit still for such things in a democracy.”

They gave him even less than the insurance people had given him for his underappraised home. Ellerbee accepted, but decided it was time he at least hint to Davis that he knew what was going on. “I’m selling,” he said, “because I don’t want anyone else to die.”

“Wonderful,” Davis said, “wonderful. There should be more Americans like you.”

He deposited the money he got from the syndicate in a separate account so that his wife would have no claims on it and now, while he had no business to go to, he was able to spend more time in the hospital visiting Harold.

“How’s Hal today, Mrs. Register?” he asked when he came into the room where the mindless quadraplegic was being cared for. Dorothy Register was a red-haired young woman in her early twenties. Ellerbee felt so terrible about what had happened, so guilty, that he had difficulty talking to her. He knew it would be impossible to visit Harold if he was going to run into his wife when he did so. It was for this reason, too, that he sent the checks rather than drop them off at the apartment, much as he wanted to see Hal’s young son, Harold, Jr., in order to reassure the child that there was still a man around to take care of the boy and his young mother.

“Oh, Mr. Ellerbee,” the woman wept. Harold seemed to smile at them through his brain damage.

“Please, Mrs. Register,” said Ellerbee, “Harold shouldn’t see you like this.”

“Him? He doesn’t understand a thing. You don’t understand a thing, do you?” she said, turning on her husband sharply. When she made a move to poke at his eyes with a fork he didn’t even blink. “Oh, Mr. Ellerbee,” she said, turning away from her husband, “that’s not the man I married. It’s awful, but I don’t feel anything for him. The only reason I come is that the doctors say I cheer him up. Though I can’t see how. He smiles that way at his bedpan.”

“Please, Mrs. Register,” Ellerbee said softly. “You’ve got to be strong. There’s little Hal.”

“I know,” she moaned, “I know.” She wiped the tears from her eyes and sniffed and tossed her hair in a funny little way she had which Ellerbee found appealing. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’ve been very kind. I don’t know what I would have done, what we would have done. I can’t even thank you,” she said helplessly.

“Oh don’t think about it, there’s no need,” Ellerbee said quickly. “I’m not doing any more for you than I am for George Lesefario’s widow.” It was not a boast. Ellerbee had mentioned the older woman because he didn’t want Mrs. Register to feel compromised. “It’s company policy when these things happen,” he said gruffly.

Dorothy Register nodded. “I heard,” she said, “that you sold your store.”

He hastened to reassure her. “Oh now listen,” Ellerbee said, “you mustn’t give that a thought. The checks will continue. I’m getting another store. In a very lovely neighborhood. Near where we used to live before our house burned down.”

“Really?”

“Oh yes. I should be hearing about my loan any time now. I’ll probably be in the new place before the month is out. Well,” he said, “speaking of which, I’d better get going. There are some fixtures I’m supposed to look at at the Wine and Spirits Mart.” He waved to Harold.

“Mr. Ellerbee?”

“Mrs. Register?”

The tall redhead came close to him and put her hands on his shoulders. She made that funny little gesture with her hair again and Ellerbee almost died. She was about his own height and leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth. Her fingernails grazed the back of his neck. Tears came to Ellerbee’s eyes and he turned away from her gently. He hoped she hadn’t seen the small lump in his trousers. He said goodbye with his back to her.

The loan went through. The new store, as Ellerbee had said, was in one of the finest neighborhoods in the city. In a small shopping mall, it was flanked by a good bookstore and a fine French restaurant. The Ellerbees had often eaten there before their house burned to the ground. There was an art cinema, a florist, and elegant haberdashers and dress shops. The liquor store, called High Spirits, a name Ellerbee decided to keep after he bought the place, stocked with, in addition to the usual gins, Scotches, bourbons, vodkas, and blends, some really superior wines, and Ellerbee was forced to become something of an expert in oenology. He listened to his customers—doctors and lawyers, most of them—and in this way was able to pick up a good deal.

The business flourished—doing so well that after only his second month in the new location he no longer felt obliged to stay open on Sundays—though his promise to his clerks’ families, which he kept, prevented him from making the inroads into his extravagant debt that he would have liked. Mrs. Register began to come to the store to collect the weekly checks personally. “I thought I’d save you the stamp,” she said each time. Though he enjoyed seeing her—she looked rather like one of those splendid wives of the successful doctors who shopped there—he thought he should discourage this. He made it clear to her that he would be sending the checks.

Then she came and said that it was foolish, his continuing to pay her husband’s salary, that at least he ought to let her do something to earn it. She saw that the suggestion made him uncomfortable and clarified what she meant.

“Oh no,” she said, “all I meant was that you ought to hire me. I was a hostess once. For that matter I could wait on trade.”

“Well, I’ve plenty of help, Mrs. Register. Really. As I may have told you, I’ve kept on all the people who used to work for Anderson.” Anderson was the man from whom he’d bought High Spirits.

“It’s not as though you’d be hiring additional help. I’m costing you the money anyway.”

It would have been pleasant to have the woman around, but Ellerbee nervously held his ground. “At a time like this,” he said, “you ought to be with the boy.”

“You’re quite a guy,” she said. It was the last time they saw each other. A few months later, while he was examining his bank statements, he realized that she had not been cashing his checks. He called her at once.

“I can’t,” she said. “I’m young. I’m strong.” He remembered her fierce embrace in her husband’s hospital room. “There’s no reason for you to continue to send me those checks. I have a good job now. I can’t accept them any longer.” It was the last time they spoke.

And then he learned that George’s widow was ill. He heard about it indirectly. One of his best customers—a psychiatrist—was beeped on the emergency Medi-Call he carried in his jacket, and asked for change to use Ellerbee’s pay phone.

“That’s not necessary, Doc,” Ellerbee said, “use the phone behind my counter.”

“Very kind,” the psychiatrist said, and came around back of the counter. He dialed his service. “Doctor Potter. What have you got for me, Nancy? What? She did what? Just a minute, let me get a pencil.—Bill?” Ellerbee handed him a pencil. “Lesefario, right. I’ve got that. Give me the surgeon’s number. Right. Thanks, Nancy.”

“Excuse me, Doctor,” Ellerbee said. “I hadn’t meant to listen, but Lesefario, that’s an unusual name. I know an Evelyn Lesefario.”

“That’s the one,” said the medical man. “Oh,” he said, “you’re that Ellerbee. Well, she’s been very depressed. She just tried to kill herself by eating a mile of dental floss.”

“I hope she dies,” his wife said.

“May!” said Ellerbee, shocked.

“It’s what she wants, isn’t it? I hope she gets what she wants.”

“That’s harsh, May.”

“Yes? Harsh? You see how much good your checks did her? And another thing, how could she afford a high-priced man like Potter on what you were paying her?”

He went to visit the woman during her postoperative convalescence, and she introduced him to her sister, her twin she said, though the two women looked nothing alike and the twin seemed to be in her seventies, a good dozen years older than Mrs. Lesefario. “This is the Mr. Ellerbee that my husband died protecting his liquor store from the niggers.”

“Oh yes?” Mrs. Lesefario’s sister said. “Very pleased. I heard so much about you.”

“Look what she brought me,” Mrs. Lesefario said, pointing to a large brown paper sack.

“Evelyn, don’t. You’ll strain your stitches. I’ll show him.” She opened the sack and took out a five-pound bag of sugar.

“Five pounds of sugar,” the melancholic woman said.

“You don’t come empty-handed to a sick person,” her sister said.

“She got it at Kroger’s on special. Ninety-nine cents with the coupon,” the manic-depressive said gloomily. “She says if I don’t like it I can get peach halves.”

Ellerbee, who did not want to flaunt his own gift in front of her sister, quietly put the dressing gown, still wrapped, on her tray table. He stayed for another half hour, and rose to go.

“Wait,” Mrs. Lesefario said. “Nice try but not so fast.”

“I’m sorry?” Ellerbee said.

“The ribbon.”

“Ribbon?”

“On the fancy box. The ribbon, the string.”

“Oh, your stitches. Sorry. I’ll get it.”

“I’m a would-be suicide,” she said. “I tried it once, I could try it again. You don’t bring dangerous ribbon to a desperate, unhappy woman.”

In fact Mrs. Lesefario did die. Not of suicide, but of a low-grade infection she had picked up in the hospital and which festered along her stitches, undermining them, burning through them, opening her body like a package.

The Ellerbees were in the clear financially, but his wife’s reactions to Ellerbee’s efforts to provide for his clerks’ families had soured their relationship. She had discovered Ellerbee’s private account and accused him of dreadful things. He reminded her that it had been she who had insisted he would have to get the money for the women’s support himself—that their joint tenancy was not to be disturbed. She ignored his arguments and accused him further. Ellerbee loved May and did what he could to placate her.

“How about a trip to Phoenix?” he suggested that spring. “The store’s doing well and I have complete confidence in Kroll. What about it, May? You like Phoenix, and we haven’t seen the folks in almost a year.”

“Phoenix,” she scoffed, “the folks. The way you coddle them. Any other grown man would be ashamed.”

“They raised me, May.”

“They raised you. Terrific. They aren’t even your real parents. They only adopted you.”

“They’re the only parents I ever knew. They took me out of the Home when I was an infant.”

“Look, you want to go to Phoenix, go. Take money out of your secret accounts and go.”

“Please, May. There’s no secret account. When Mrs. Lesefario died I transferred everything back into joint. Come on, sweetheart, you’re awfully goddamn hard on me.”

“Well,” she said, drawing the word out. The tone was one she had used as a bride, and although Ellerbee had not often heard it since, it melted him. It was her signal of sudden conciliation, cute surrender, and he held out his arms and they embraced. They went off to the bedroom together.

“You know,” May said afterwards, “it would be good to run out to Phoenix for a bit. Are you sure the help can manage?”

“Oh, sure, May, absolutely. They’re a first-rate bunch.” He spoke more forcefully than he felt, not because he lacked confidence in his employees, but because he was still disturbed by an image he had had during climax. Momentarily, fleetingly, he had imagined Mrs. Register beneath him.

In the store he was giving last-minute instructions to Kroll, the man who would be his manager during their vacation in Phoenix.

“I think the Californias,” Ellerbee was saying. “Some of them beat several of even the more immodest French. Let’s do a promotion of a few of the better Californias. What do you think?”

“They’re a very competitive group of wines,” Kroll said. “I think I’m in basic agreement.”

Just then three men walked into the shop.

“Say,” one called from the doorway, “you got something like a Closed sign I could hang in the door here?” Ellerbee stared at him. “Well you don’t have to look at me as if I was nuts,” the man said. “Lots of merchants keep them around. In case they get a sudden toothache or something they can whip out to the dentist. All right, if you ain’t you ain’t.”

“I want,” the second man said, coming up to the counter where Ellerbee stood with his manager, “to see your register receipts.”

“What is this?” Kroll demanded.

“No, don’t,” Ellerbee said to Kroll. “Don’t resist.” He glanced toward the third man to see if he was the one holding the gun, but the man appeared merely to be browsing the bins of Scotch in the back. Evidently he hadn’t even heard the first man, and clearly he could not have heard the second. Conceivably he could have been a customer. “Where’s your gun?” Ellerbee asked the man at the counter.

“Oh gee,” the man said, “I almost forgot. You got so many things to think about during a stickup—the traffic flow, the timing, who stands where—you sometimes forget the basics. Here,” he said, “here’s my gun, in your kisser,” and he took an immense handgun from his pocket and pointed it at Ellerbee’s face.

Out of the corner of his eye Ellerbee saw Kroll’s hands fly up. It was so blatant a gesture Ellerbee thought his manager might be trying to attract the customer’s attention. If that was his idea it had worked, for the third man had turned away from the bins and was watching the activity at the counter. “Look,” Ellerbee said, “I don’t want anybody hurt.”

“What’s he say?” said the man at the door who was also holding a pistol now.

“He don’t want nobody hurt,” the man at the counter said.

“Sure,” said the man at the door, “it’s costing him a fortune paying all them salaries to the widows. He’s a good businessman all right.”

“A better one than you,” the man at the counter said to his confederate sharply. “He knows how to keep his mouth shut.”

Why, they’re white, Ellerbee thought. They’re white men! He felt oddly justified and wished May were there to see.

“The register receipts,” the man at the counter coaxed. Ellerbee’s cash register kept a running total on what had been taken in. “Just punch Total Tab,” the man instructed Kroll. “Let’s see what we got.” Kroll looked at Ellerbee and Ellerbee nodded. The man reached forward and tore off the tape. He whistled. “Nice little place you got here,” he said.

“What’d we get? What’d we get?” the man at the door shouted.

Ellerbee cleared his throat. “Do you want to lock the door?” he asked. “So no one else comes in?” He glanced toward the third man.

“What, and have you kick the alarm while we’re fucking around trying to figure which key opens the place?” said the man at the door. “You’re cute, you’re a cutie. What’d we get? Let’s see.” He joined the man at the counter. “Holy smoke! Jackpot City! We’re into four figures here.” In his excitement he did a foolish thing. He set his revolver down on top of the appetizer table. It lay on the tins of caviar and smoked oysters, the imported cheeses and roasted peanuts. The third man was no more than four feet from the gun, and though Ellerbee saw that the man had caught the robber’s mistake and that by taking one step toward the table he could have picked up the pistol and perhaps foiled the robbery, he made no move. Perhaps he’s one of them, Ellerbee thought, or maybe he just doesn’t want to get involved. Ellerbee couldn’t remember ever having seen him. (By now, of course, he recognized all his repeat customers.) He still didn’t know if he were a confederate or just an innocent bystander, but Ellerbee had had enough of violence and hoped that if he were a customer he wouldn’t try anything dumb. He felt no animus toward the man at all. Kroll’s face, however, was all scorn and loathing.

“Let’s get to work,” the man said who had first read the tape, and then to Kroll and Ellerbee, “Back up there. Go stand by the aperitifs.”

The third man fell silently into step beside Ellerbee.

“Listen,” Ellerbee explained as gently as he could, “you won’t find that much cash in the drawer. A lot of our business is Master Charge. We take personal checks.”

“Don’t worry,” the man said who had set his gun down (and who had taken it up again). “We know about the checks. We got a guy we can sell them to for—what is it, Ron, seventeen cents on the dollar?”

“Fourteen, and why don’t you shut your mouth, will you? You want to jeopardize these people? What do you make it?”

Ellerbee went along with his sentiments. He wished the bigmouth would just take the money and not say anything more.

“Oh, jeopardize,” the man said. “How jeopardized can you get? These people are way past jeopardized. About six hundred in cash, a fraction in checks. The rest is all credit card paper.”

“Take it,” Ron said.

“You won’t be able to do anything with the charge slips,” Kroll said.

“Oh yeah?” Ron’s cohort said. “This is modern times, fellow. We got a way we launder Master Charge, BankAmericard, all of it.”

Ron shook his head and Ellerbee glanced angrily at his manager.

The whole thing couldn’t have taken four minutes. Ron’s partner took a fifth of Chivas and a bottle of Lafitte ’47. He’s a doctor, Ellerbee thought.

“You got a bag?”

“A bag?” Ellerbee said.

“A bag, a paper bag, a doggy bag for the boodle.”

“Behind the counter,” Ellerbee said hopelessly.

The partner put the cash and the bottle of Chivas into one bag and handed it to Ron, and the wine, checks, and credit charges into a second bag which he held on to himself. They turned to go. They looked exactly like two satisfied customers. They were almost at the door when Ron’s partner nudged Ron. “Oh, yeah,” Ron said, and turned back to look at them. “My friend, Jay Ladlehaus, is right,” he said, “you know too much.”

Ellerbee heard two distinct shots before he fell.

When he came to, the third man was bending over him. “You’re not hurt,” Ellerbee said.

“Me? No.”

The pain was terrific, diffuse, but fiercer than anything he had ever felt. He saw himself covered with blood. “Where’s Kroll? The other man, my manager?”

“Kroll’s all right.”

“He is?”

“There, right beside you.”

He tried to look. They must have blasted Ellerbee’s throat away, half his spinal column. It was impossible for him to move his head. “I can’t see him,” he moaned.

“Kroll’s fine.” The man cradled Ellerbee’s shoulders and neck and shifted him slightly. “There. See?” Kroll’s eyes were shut. Oddly, both were blackened. He had fallen in such a way that he seemed to lie on both his arms, retracted behind him into the small of his back like a yogi. His mouth was open and his tongue floated in blood like meat in soup. A slight man, he seemed strangely bloated, and one shin, exposed to Ellerbee’s vision where the trouser leg was hiked up above his sock, was discolored as thundercloud.

The man gently set Ellerbee down again. “Call an ambulance,” Ellerbee wheezed through his broken throat.

“No, no. Kroll’s fine.”

“He’s not conscious.” It was as if his words were being mashed through the tines of a fork.

“He’ll be all right. Kroll’s fine.”

“Then for me. Call one for me.”

“It’s too late for you,” the man said.

“For Christ’s sake, will you!” Ellerbee gasped. “I can’t move. You could have grabbed that hoodlum’s gun when he set it down. All right, you were scared, but some of this is your fault. You didn’t lift a finger. At least call an ambulance.”

“But you’re dead,” he said gently. “Kroll will recover. You passed away when you said ‘move.’”

“Are you crazy? What are you talking about?”

“Do you feel pain?”

“What?”

“Pain. You don’t feel any, do you?” Ellerbee stared at him. “Do you?”

He didn’t. His pain was gone. “Who are you?” Ellerbee said.

“I’m an angel of death,” the angel of death said.

“You’re—”

“An angel of death.”

Somehow he had left his body. He could see it lying next to Kroll’s. “I’m dead? But if I’m dead—you mean there’s really an afterlife?”

“Oh boy,” the angel of death said.

They went to Heaven.

Ellerbee couldn’t have said how they got there or how long it took, though he had the impression that time had passed, and distance. It was rather like a journey in films—a series of quick cuts, of montage. He was probably dreaming, he thought.

“It’s what they all think,” the angel of death said, “that they’re dreaming. But that isn’t so.”

“I could have dreamed you said that,” Ellerbee said, “that you read my mind.”

“Yes.”

“I could be dreaming all of it, the holdup, everything.”

The angel of death looked at him.

“Hobgoblin…I could…” Ellerbee’s voice—if it was a voice—trailed off.

“Look,” the angel of death said, “I talk too much. I sound like a cabbie with an out-of-town fare. It’s an occupational hazard.”

“What?”

“What? Pride. The proprietary air. Showing off death like a booster. Thanatopography. ‘If you look to your left you’ll see where…Julius Caesar de dum de dum…Shakespeare da da da…And dead ahead our Father Adam heigh ho—’ The tall buildings and the four-star sights. All that Baedeker reality of plaque place and high history. The Fields of Homer and the Plains of Myth. Where whosis got locked in a star and all the Agriculture of the Periodic Table—the South Forty of the Universe, where Hydrogen first bloomed, where Lithium, Berylium, Zirconium, Niobium. Where Lead failed and Argon came a cropper. The furrows of gold, Bismuth’s orchards. … Still think you’re dreaming?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“The language.”

“Just so,” the angel of death said. “When you were alive you had a vocabulary of perhaps seventeen or eighteen hundred words. Who am I?”

“An eschatological angel,” Ellerbee said shyly.

“One hundred percent,” the angel of death said. “Why do we do that?”

“To heighten perception,” Ellerbee said, and shuddered.

The angel of death nodded and said nothing more.

When they were close enough to make out the outlines of Heaven, the angel left him and Ellerbee, not questioning this, went on alone. From this distance it looked to Ellerbee rather like a theme park, but what struck him most forcibly was that it did not seem—for Heaven—very large.

He traveled as he would on Earth, distance familiar again, volume, mass, and dimension restored, ordinary. (Quotidian, Ellerbee thought.) Indeed, now that he was convinced of his death, nothing seemed particularly strange. If anything, it was all a little familiar. He began to miss May. She would have learned of his death by this time. Difficult as the last year had been, they had loved each other. It had been a good marriage. He regretted again that they had been unable to have children. Children—they would be teenagers now—would have been a comfort to his widow. She still had her looks. Perhaps she would remarry. He did not want her to be lonely.

He continued toward Heaven and now, only blocks away, he was able to perceive it in detail. It looked more like a theme park than ever. It was enclosed behind a high milky fence, the uprights smooth and round as the poles in subway trains. Beyond the fence were golden streets, a mixed architecture of minaret-spiked mosques, great cathedrals, the rounded domes of classical synagogues, tall pagodas like holy vertebrae, white frame churches with their beautiful steeples, even what Ellerbee took to be a storefront church. There were many mansions. But where were the people?

Just as he was wondering about this he heard the sound of a gorgeous chorus. It was making a joyful noise. “Oh dem golden slippers,” the chorus sang, “Oh dem golden slippers.” It’s the Heavenly Choir, Ellerbee thought. They’ve actually got a Heavenly Choir. He went toward the fence and put his hands on the smooth posts and peered through into Heaven. He heard laughter and caught a glimpse of the running heels of children just disappearing around the corner of a golden street. They all wore shoes.

Ellerbee walked along the fence for about a mile and came to gates made out of pearl. The Pearly Gates, he thought. There are actually Pearly Gates. An old man in a long white beard sat behind them, a key attached to a sort of cinch that went about his waist.

“Saint Peter?” Ellerbee ventured. The old man turned his shining countenance upon him. “Saint Peter,” Ellerbee said again, “I’m Ellerbee.”

“I’m Saint Peter,” Saint Peter said.

“Gosh,” Ellerbee said, “I can’t get over it. It’s all true.”

“What is?”

“Everything. Heaven. The streets of gold, the Pearly Gates. You. Your key. The Heavenly Choir. The climate.”

A soft breeze came up from inside Heaven and Ellerbee sniffed something wonderful in the perfect air. He looked toward the venerable old man.

“Ambrosia,” the Saint said.

“There’s actually ambrosia,” Ellerbee said.

“You know,” Saint Peter said, “you never get tired of it, you never even get used to it. He does that to whet our appetite.”

“You eat in Heaven?”

“We eat manna.”

“There’s actually manna,” Ellerbee said. An angel floated by on a fleecy cloud playing a harp. Ellerbee shook his head. He had never heard anything so beautiful. “Heaven is everything they say it is,” he said.

“It’s paradise,” Saint Peter said.

Then Ellerbee saw an affecting sight. Nearby, husbands were reunited with wives, mothers with their small babes, daddies with their sons, brothers with sisters—all the intricate blood loyalties and enlisted loves. He understood all the relationships without being told—his heightened perception. What was most moving, however, were the old people, related or not, some just lifelong friends, people who had lived together or known one another much the greater part of their lives and then had lost each other. It was immensely touching to Ellerbee to see them gaze fondly into one another’s eyes and then to watch them reach out and touch the patient, ancient faces, wrinkled and even withered but, Ellerbee could tell, unchanged in the loving eyes of the adoring beholder. If there were tears they were tears of joy, tears that melded inextricably with tender laughter. There was rejoicing, there were Hosannas, there was dancing in the golden streets. “It’s wonderful,” Ellerbee muttered to himself. He didn’t know where to look first. He would be staring at the beautiful flowing raiments of the angels—There are actually raiments, he thought, there are actually angels—so fine, he imagined, to the touch that just the caress of the cloth must have produced exquisite sensations not matched by anything in life, when something else would strike him. The perfectly proportioned angels’ wings like discrete Gothic windows, the beautiful halos—There are actually halos—like golden quoits, or, in the distance, the lovely green pastures, delicious as fairway—all the perfectly banked turns of Heaven’s geography. He saw philosophers deep in conversation. He saw kings and heroes. It was astonishing to him, like going to an exclusive restaurant one has only read about in columns and spotting, even at first glance, the celebrities one has read about, relaxed, passing the time of day, out in the open, up- front and sharing their high-echelon lives.

“This is for keeps?” he asked Saint Peter. “I mean it goes on like this?”

“World without end,” Saint Peter said.

“Where’s…”

“That’s all right, say His name.”

“God?” Ellerbee whispered.

Saint Peter looked around. “I don’t see Him just…Oh, wait. There!” Ellerbee turned where the old Saint was pointing. He shaded his eyes. “There’s no need,” Saint Peter said.

“But the aura, the light.”

“Let it shine.”

He took his hand away fearfully and the light spilled into his eyes like soothing unguents. God was on His throne in the green pastures, Christ at His right hand. To Ellerbee it looked like a picture taken at a summit conference.

“He’s beautiful. I’ve never…It’s ecstasy.”

“And you’re seeing Him from a pretty good distance. You should talk to Him sometime.”

“People can talk to Him?”

“Certainly. He loves us.”

There were tears in Ellerbee’s eyes. He wished May no harm, but wanted her with him to see it all. “It’s wonderful.”

“We like it,” Saint Peter said.

“Oh, I do too,” Ellerbee said. “I’m going to be very happy here.”

“Go to Hell,” Saint Peter said beatifically.

Hell was the ultimate inner city. Its stinking sulfurous streets were unsafe. Everywhere Ellerbee looked he saw atrocities. Pointless, profitless muggings were commonplace; joyless rape that punished its victims and offered no relief to the perpetrator. Everything was contagious, cancer as common as a cold, plague the quotidian. There was stomachache, headache, toothache, earache. There was angina and indigestion and painful third-degree burning itch. Nerves like a hideous body hair grew long enough to trip over and lay raw and exposed as live wires or shoelaces that had come undone.

There was no handsomeness, no beauty, no one walked upright, no one had good posture. There was nothing to look at—although it was impossible to shut one’s eyes—except the tumbled kaleidoscope variations of warted deformity. This was one reason, Ellerbee supposed, that there was so little conversation in Hell. No one could stand to look at anyone else long enough. Occasionally two or three—lost souls? gargoyles? devils? demons?—of the damned, jumping about in the heat first on one foot then the other, would manage to stand with their backs to each other and perhaps get out a few words—a foul whining. But even this was rare and when it happened that a sufferer had the attention of a fellow sufferer he could howl out only a half- dozen or so words before breaking off in a piercing scream.

Ellerbee, constantly nauseated, eternally in pain, forever befouling himself, longed to find something to do, however tedious or make-work or awful. For a time he made paths through the smoldering cinders, but he had no tools and had to use his bare feet, moving the cinders to one side as a boy shuffles through fallen leaves hunting something lost. It was too painful. Then he thought he would make channels for the vomit and excrement and blood. It was too disgusting. He shouted for others to join him in work details—“Break up the fights, pile up the scabs”—and even ministered to the less aggravated wounds, using his hands to wipe away the gangrenous drool since there was no fabric in Hell, all clothing consumed within minutes of arrival, flesh alone inconsumable, glowing and burning with his bones slow as phosphor. Calling out, suggesting in screams which may have been incoherent, all manner of pointless, arbitrary arrangements—that they organize the damned, that they count them. Demanding that their howls be synchronous.

No one stopped him. No one seemed to be in charge. He saw, that is, no Devil, no Archfiend. There were demons with cloven feet and scaly tails, with horns and pitchforks—They actually have horns, Ellerbee thought, there are actually pitchforks—but these seemed to have no more authority than he had himself, and when they were piqued to wrath by their own torment the jabs they made at the human damned with their sharp arsenal were no more painful—and no less—than anything else down there.

Then Ellerbee felt he understood something terrible—that the abortive rapes and fights and muggings were simply a refinement of his own attempts to socialize. They did it to make contact, to be friendly.

He was free to wander the vast burning meadows of Hell and to scale its fiery hills—and for many years he did—but it was much the same all over. What he was actually looking for was its Source, Hell’s bright engine room, its storm-tossed bridge. It had no engine room, there was no bridge, its energy, all its dreadful combustion coming perhaps from the cumulative, collective agony of the inmates. Nothing could be done.

He was distracted, as he was sure they all were—“Been to Heaven?” he’d managed to gasp to an old man whose back was on fire and the man had nodded—by his memory of Paradise, his long-distance glimpse of God. It was unbearable to think of Heaven in his present condition, his memory of that spectacular place poisoned by the discrepancy between the exaltation of the angels and the plight of the damned. It was the old story of the disappointment of rising expectations. Still, without his bidding, thoughts of Paradise force-fed themselves almost constantly into his skull. They induced sadness, rage.

He remembered the impression he’d had of celebrity when he’d stood looking in at Heaven from beyond the Pearly Gates, and he thought to look out for the historic bad men, the celebrated damned, but either they were kept in a part of Hell he had not yet seen or their sufferings had made them unrecognizable. If there were great men in Hell he did not see them and, curiously, no one ever boasted of his terrible deeds or notoriety. Indeed, except for the outbursts of violence, most of the damned behaved, considering their state, in a respectable fashion, even an exemplary one. Perhaps, Ellerbee thought, it was because they had not yet abandoned hope. (There was actually a sign: “Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here.” Ellerbee had read it.)

For several years he waited for May, for as long, that is, as he could remember her. Constant pain and perpetual despair chipped away at most of the memories he had of his life. It was possible to recall who and what he had been, but that was as fruitless as any other enterprise in the dark region. Ultimately, like everything else, it worked against him—Hell’s fine print. It was best to forget. And that worked against him too.

He took the advice written above Hellgate. He abandoned hope, and with it memory, pity, pride, his projects, the sense he had of injustice—for a little while driving off, along with his sense of identity, even his broken recollection of glory. It was probably what they—whoever they were—wanted. Let them have it. Let them have the straight lines of their trade wind, trade route, through street, thrown stone vengeance. Let them have everything. Their pastels back and their blues and their greens, the recollection of gratified thirst, and the transient comfort of a sandwich and beer that had hit the spot, all the retrospective of good weather, a good night’s sleep, a good joke, a good tune, a good time, the entire mosaic of small satisfactions that made up a life. Let them have his image of his parents and friends, the fading portrait of May he couldn’t quite shake, the pleasure he’d had from work, from his body. Let them have all of it, his measly joy, his scrapbook past, his hope, too.

Which left only pure pain, the grand vocabulary they had given him to appreciate it, to discriminate and parse among the exquisite lesions and scored flesh and violated synapses, among the insulted nerves, joints, muscle and tissue, all the boiled kindling points of torment and the body’s grief. That was all he was now, staggering Hiroshima’d flesh—a vessel of nausea, a pail of pain.

He continued thus for several years, his amnesia willed—There’s Free Will, Ellerbee thought—shuffling Hell in his rote aphasia, his stripped self a sealed environment of indifference. There were years he did not think the name Ellerbee.

And even that did not assuage the panic of his burning theater’d, air raid warning’d, red alert afterlife. (And that was what they wanted, and he knew it, wanting as much as they did for him to persist in his tornado watch condition, fleeing with others through the crimped, cramped streets of mazy, refugee Hell, dragging his disaster-poster avatar like a wounded leg.) He existed like one plugged into superb equipment, interminably terminal—and changed his mind and tried it the other way again, taking back all he had surrendered, Hell’s Indian giver, and dredged up from where he had left them the imperfect memories of his former self. (May he saw as she had once been, his breastless, awkward, shapeless childhood sweetheart.) And when that didn’t work either—he gave it a few years—he went back to the other way, and then back again, shifting, quickly tiring of each tack as soon as he had taken it, changing fitfully, a man in bed in a hot, airless room rolling position, aggressively altering the surfaces of his pillow. If he hoped—which he came to do whenever he reverted to Ellerbee—it was to go mad, but there was no madness in Hell—the terrific vocabulary of the damned, their poet’s knack for rightly naming everything which was the fail-safe of Reason—and he could find peace nowhere.

He had been there sixty-two years, three generations, older now as a dead man than he had been as a living one. Sixty-two years of nightless days and dayless nights, of aggravated pain and cumulative grief, of escalated desperation, of not getting used to it, to any of it. Sixty-two years Hell’s greenhorn, sixty-two years eluding the muggers and evading the rapists, all the joyless joy riders out for a night on his town, steering clear of the wild, stampeding, horizontal avalanche of the damned. And then, spinning out of the path of a charging, burning, screaming inmate, he accidentally backed into the smoldering ruin of a second. Ellerbee leaped away as their bodies touched.

“Ellerbee?”

Who? Ellerbee thought wildly. Who?

“Ellerbee?” the voice repeated.

How? Ellerbee wondered. How can he know me? In this form, how I look…

Ellerbee peered closely into the tormented face. It was one of the men who had held him up, not the one who had shot him but his accomplice, his murderer’s accomplice. “Ladlehaus?” It was Ellerbee’s vocabulary which had recognized him, for his face had changed almost completely in the sixty-two years, just as Ellerbee’s had, just as it was Ladlehaus’s vocabulary which had recognized Ellerbee.

“It is Ellerbee, isn’t it?” the man said.

Ellerbee nodded and the man tried to smile, stretching his wounds, the scars which seamed his face, and breaking the knitting flesh, lined, caked as stool, braided as bowel.

“I died,” he said, “of natural causes.” Ellerbee stared at him. “Of leukemia, stroke, Hodgkin’s disease, arteriosclerosis. I was blind the last thirteen years of my life. But I was almost a hundred. I lived to a ripe old age. I was in a Home eighteen years. Still in Minneapolis.”

“I suppose,” Ellerbee said, “you recall how I died.”

“I do,” Ladlehaus said. “Ron dropped you with one shot. That reminds me,” he said. “You had a beautiful wife. May, right? I saw her photograph in the Minneapolis papers after the incident. There was tremendous coverage. There was a TV clip on the Six O’clock News. They interviewed her. She was—” Ellerbee started to run. “Hey,” the accomplice called after him. “Hey, wait.”

He ran through the steamy corridors of the Underworld, plunging into Hell’s white core, the brightest blazes, Temperature’s moving parts. The pain was excruciating, but he knew that it was probably the only way he would shake Ladlehaus so he kept running. And then, exhausted, he came out the other side into an area like shoreline, burning surf. He waded through the flames lapping about his ankles and then, humiliated by fatigue and pain, he did something he had never done before.

He lay down in the fire. He lay down in the slimy excrement and noxious puddles, in the loose evidence of their spilled terror. A few damned souls paused to stare at him, their bad breath dropping over him like an awful steam. Their scabbed faces leaned down toward him, their poisoned blood leaking on him from imperfectly sealed wounds, their baked, hideous visages like blooms in nightmare. It was terrible. He turned over, turned face down in the shallow river of pus and shit. Someone shook him. He didn’t move. A man straddled and penetrated him. He didn’t move. His attacker groaned. “I can’t,” he panted, “I can’t—I can’t see myself in his blisters.” That’s why they do it, Ellerbee thought. The man grunted and dismounted and spat upon him. His fiery spittle burned into an open sore on Ellerbee’s neck. He didn’t move. “He’s dead,” the man howled. “I think he’s dead. His blisters have gone out!”

He felt a pitchfork rake his back, then turn in the wound it had made as if the demon were trying to pry foreign matter from it.

“Did he die?” Ellerbee heard.

He had Free Will. He wouldn’t move.

“Is he dead?”

“How did he do it?”

Hundreds pressed in on him, their collective stench like the swamps of men dead in earthquake, trench warfare—though Ellerbee knew that for all his vocabulary there were no proper analogies in Hell, only the mildest approximations. If he didn’t move they would go away. He didn’t move.

A pitchfork caught him under the armpit and turned him over.

“He’s dead. I think so. I think he’s dead.”

“No. It can’t be.”

“I think.”

“How? How did he do it?”

“Pull his cock. See.”

“No. Make one of the women. If he isn’t dead maybe he’ll respond.”

An ancient harridan stooped down and rubbed him between her palms. It was the first time he had been touched there by a woman in sixty-two years. He had Free Will, he had Free Will. But beneath her hot hands his penis began to smoke.

“Oh God,” he screamed. “Leave me alone. Please,” he begged. They gazed down at him like teammates over a fallen player.

“Faker,” one hissed.

“Shirker,” said another scornfully.

“He’s not dead,” a third cried. “I told you.”

“There’s no death here.”

“World without end,” said another.

“Get up,” demanded someone else. “Run. Run through Hell. Flee your pain. Keep busy.”

They started to lift him. “Let go,” Ellerbee shouted. He rolled away from a demon poking at him with a pitchfork. He was on his hands and knees in Hell. Still on all fours he began to push himself up. He was on his knees.

“Looks like he’s praying,” said the one who had told him to run.

“No.”

“Looks like it. I think so.”

“How? What for?”

And he started to pray.

“Lord God of Ambush and Unconditional Surrender,” he prayed. “Power Play God of Judo Leverage. Grand Guignol, Martial Artist—”

The others shrieked, backed away from him, cordoning Ellerbee off like a disaster area. Ellerbee, caught up, ignoring them, not even hearing them, continued his prayer.

“Browbeater,” he prayed, “Bouncer Being, Boss of Bullies—this is Your servant, Ellerbee, sixty-two- year fetus in Eternity, tot, toddler, babe in Hell. Can You hear me? I know You exist because I saw You, avuncular in Your green pastures like an old man on a picnic. The angeled minarets I saw, the gold streets and marble temples and all the flashy summer palace architecture, all the gorgeous glory locked in Receivership, Your zoned Heaven in Holy Escrow. The miracle props—harps and Saints and popes at tea. All of it—Your manna, Your ambrosia, Your Heavenly Host in their summer whites. So can You hear me, pick out my voice from all the others in this din bin? Come on, come on, Old Terrorist, God the Father, God the Godfather! The conventional wisdom is we can talk to You, that You love us, that—”

“I can hear you.”

A great awed whine rose from the damned, moans, sharp cries. It was as if Ellerbee alone had not heard. He continued his prayer.

“I hear you,” God repeated.

Ellerbee stopped.

God spoke. His voice was pitchless, almost without timbre, almost bland. “What do you want, Ellerbee?”

Confused, Ellerbee forgot the point of his prayer. He looked at the others who were quiet now, perfectly still for once. Only the snap of localized fire could be heard. God was waiting. The damned watched Ellerbee fearfully. Hell burned beneath his knees. “An explanation,” Ellerbee said.

“For openers,” God roared, “I made the heavens and the earth! Were you there when I laid the foundations of the firmament? When I—”

Splinters of burning bone, incandescent as filament, glowed in the gouged places along Ellerbee’s legs and knees where divots of his flesh had flared and fallen away. “An explanation,” he cried out, “an explanation! None of this what-was-I-doing-when- You-pissed-the-oceans stuff, where I was when You colored the nigger and ignited Hell. I wasn’t around when You elected the affinities. I wasn’t there when You shaped shit and fashioned cancer. Were You there when I loved my neighbor as myself? When I never stole or bore false witness? I don’t say when I never killed but when I never even raised a hand or pointed a finger in anger? Where were You when I picked up checks and popped for drinks all round? When I shelled out for charity and voted Yes on the bond issues? So no Job job, no nature in tooth and claw, please. An explanation!”

“You stayed open on the Sabbath!” God thundered.

“I what?”

“You stayed open on the Sabbath. When you were just getting started in your new location.”

“You mean because I opened my store on Sundays? That’s why?”

“You took My name in vain.”

“I took…”

“That’s right, that’s right. You wanted an explanation, I’ll give you an explanation. You wanted I/ Thou, I’ll give you I/Thou. You took It in vain. When your wife was nagging you because you wanted to keep those widows on the payroll. She mocked you when you said you were under an obligation and you said, ‘Indirectly. G-d damn it, yes. Indirectly.’ ‘Come on, sweetheart,’ you said, ‘you’re awfully g-ddamn hard on me.’”

“That’s why I’m in Hell? That’s why?”

“And what about the time you coveted your neighbor’s wife? You had a big boner.”

“I coveted no one, I was never unfaithful, I practically chased that woman away.”

“You didn’t honor your father and mother.”

Ellerbee was stunned. “I did. I always honored my father and mother. I loved them very much. Just before I was killed we were planning a trip to Phoenix to see them.”

“Oh, them. They only adopted you. I’m talking about your natural parents.”

“I was in a Home. I was an infant!”

“Sure, sure,” God said.

“And that’s why? That’s why?”

“You went dancing. You wore zippers in your pants and drove automobiles. You smoked cigarettes and sold the demon rum.”

“These are Your reasons? This is Your explanation?”

“You thought Heaven looked like a theme park!”

Ellerbee shook his head. Could this be happening? This pettiness signaled across the universe? But anything could happen, everything could, and Ellerbee began again to pray. “Lord,” he prayed, “Heavenly Father, Dear God—maybe whatever is is right, and maybe whatever is is right isn’t, but I’ve been around now, walking up and down in it, and everything is true. There is nothing that is not true. The philosopher’s best idea and the conventional wisdom, too. So I am praying to You now in all humility, asking Your forgiveness and to grant one prayer.”

“What is it?” God asked.

Ellerbee heard a strange noise and looked around. The damned, too, were on their knees—all the lost souls, all the gargoyles, all the demons, kneeling in fire, capitulate through Hell like a great ring of the conquered.

“What is it?” He asked.

“To kill us, to end Hell, to close the camp.”

“Amen,” said Ellerbee and all the damned in a single voice.

“Ha!” God scoffed and lighted up Hell’s blazes like the surface of a star. Then God cursed and abused Ellerbee, and Ellerbee wouldn’t have had it any other way. He’d damned him, no surrogate in Saint’s clothing but the real McCoy Son of a Bitch God Whose memory Ellerbee would treasure and eternally repudiate forever, happily ever after, world without end.

But everything was true, even the conventional wisdom, perhaps especially the conventional wisdom—that which had made up Heaven like a shot in the dark and imagined into reality halos and Hell, gargoyles, gates of pearl, and the Pearl of Great Price, that had invented the horns of demons and cleft their feet and conceived angels riding clouds like cowboys on horseback, their harps at their sides like goofy guitars. Everything. Everything was. The self and what you did to protect it, learning the house odds, playing it safe—the honorable percentage baseball of existence.

Forever was a long time. Eternity was. He would seek out Ladlehaus, his murderer’s accomplice, let bygones be bygones. They would get close to each other, close as family, closer. There was much to discuss in their fine new vocabularies. They would speak of Minneapolis, swap tales of the Twin Cities. They would talk of Ron, of others in the syndicate. And Ladlehaus had seen May, had caught her in what Ellerbee hoped was her grief on the Six O’clock News. They would get close. And one day he would look for himself in Ladlehaus’s glowing blisters.