I look around, lift myself up, and slide over. I’m scared a red light will flash this time, too, but it doesn’t, and when the fat woman walks through, I grab her ticket. A commotion breaks out, and Dan yells, “Catch her, Doreen!,” but she’s no match for me. I work with a personal trainer five days a week and can jog circles around her without breaking a sweat. I side-plank and boomerang, SoulCycle and weight-lift. I’m lean and toned and the perfect size two.
I jog through wispy clouds that are kind of bouncy beneath my feet, and I think about who will attend my funeral. Mother will make sure it’s beautiful, and everybody who’s anybody will be there. Even those who didn’t care for me will arrive in their latest Rolls or Maybach, looking très soignée, and pretend to cry. The easier question is who WON’T be at my funeral. The only name that comes to mind is Sarah Worthington. I went out of my way to help her navigate society, but she was pathetic. Her sense of style was an assault on fashion, and it wasn’t my fault that she had her eyes on Freddy Chambers and Freddy only had eyes for me.
The mist thins a bit around my bare feet and ankles, and I stop near hundreds of dark windows, each blinking with a different red number.
“Serving number two-seven-three-three at window twenty-one,” a tranquil voice announces from nowhere but is heard everywhere. The girl in the gold sari holds up her ticket and walks through the crowd to window twenty-one.
I smile like I did that time in Paris. I’m next and I got here because I’m quick and determined and brilliant. I make my way forward and look at the number on my ticket: 000,000,000. What? Why is my number different? Another window blinks and I fully expect nine 0s to be called.
“Serving number two-seven-three-four at window sixty-three.”
Fat Doreen sticks up her hand. “Here I am,” she says, and moves forward.
Wait. She entered the turnstile behind me. That should be my ticket. What in the hell is goin’ on?
7
Where are we goin’?” I ask the golfer as I follow him from the Limbo Lounge. He doesn’t bother to answer, and instead of walking to my room, he opens a door and we step into a place filled with sunshine. The door closes and a platinum-blonde woman stands within rows of different-colored tulips that stretch back as far as the eye can see. She has fuzzy edges like the golfer and is dressed in all white. Her eyes are turquoise like the ocean in a Sandals Resorts commercial, and she glows from the inside out like she just descended from heaven.
“Ma’am, are you an angel?” I ask.
“¡Dios me libre!” the golfer says as if in pain.
The woman smiles and lights up even more. “Oh, honey, your lips to God’s ears. I’m Ingrid, director of Southwest District Five, Area Thirty-One.”
“Where am I?”
“You are in my office. I decorated it myself.” She glances about and makes a sweeping gesture with her hands. “I created it from childhood memories. It’s my little slice of paradise.”
I’ve stood on my bedazzled path and I’ve seen God’s light. I spin around within the tulips and take in all the vibrant color. “It’s beautiful.” But it isn’t heaven, and I don’t think it’s hell.
As if reading my thoughts, she says, “My office is in neither heaven nor hell. For some of us, our path isn’t as straightforward as others, but if we are judged redeemable, we are placed in holy service and given a second chance. I hope to earn my place in paradise soon.”
The golfer gives a shout of laughter and swings his club in the air like he’s hit a long shot.
“I died in a fire that consumed Madame Tilly’s Dove Palace in 1890. I had not learned to control my jealous temper, and I took a kerosene lamp to Kitty Heaton’s bed while she and my regular gentleman, Nelson Butts, enjoyed a two-dollar carnal act. Five people perished, including myself after kerosene splashed on my petticoat. I went up like a torch.”
She’s still smiling, and I wonder if it’s required that a director or concierge explain how they died.
“I know this is confusing, but think of a celestial family tree with heaven at the top, various limbs of merited atonement for the transgressed in the middle, and hell at the roots. For those souls who deserve neither heaven nor hell, we are given a chance to earn a place in paradise through a branch of Holy Services. My office descends from the Progression of Redemption Corps, or PORC for short. Concierge and various jobs in Area Thirty-One are my responsibility and require that I manage the fallen and place them where they are best suited to serve.
“Do you understand?” she asks.
Not at all, but who cares! “I’m fallen?” I feel a little light-headed, like if I could, I’d faint. Sure, I’ve sinned, but fallen?
Her gaze lands on the golfer, then her smile and her voice flatten. “What happened, Raymundo?”
Raymundo?
“You know more than I do, Ingrid.”
“I know you got distracted again.”
“Don’t talk to me about gettin’ distracted.” He points the grip of his golf club to his chest. “I’m not the one who messed up JFK’s passin’.”
Her eyes turn a stormy blue. “That was not my fault.”
“And this ain’t my fault. I’m just the concierge, is all.” He lines up his club and takes a whack at a purple tulip. The flower sails straight down the field, then curves right. “Dang, hooked that one.”