20
Testing, Testing
On his first day back living in his old building, Charlie picked Sophie up at school and walked her to get ice cream. On their way home, cones in hand, they encountered a rat that was dying in the gutter, probably from poison. Charlie thought, “A dead rat, well, that would be disgusting and cliché, but an almost dead rat, that sir, is an opportunity!”
Charlie looked around. He didn’t see anyone else out walking on this particular stretch of street, at least none close enough to tell what he was doing. He didn’t notice the yellow Buick Roadmaster parked on the next block, someone sitting behind the wheel.
“Sophie, honey, you know the word that you’re never supposed to say, and that thing you’re never supposed to ever do?”
“Yep.” She nodded, plowing a nose-shaped furrow into her orange sherbet.
“Okay, I need you to do that. With this rat.”
“You said never, ever.”
“I know, honey, but this creature is suffering, so this would help it.”
“Audrey said that life is suffering.”
“You can’t listen to her, she’s a crazy woman. No, I need you to try it. Just point at the rat and say the word.”
“Okay,” Sophie said. “Hold this.” She handed Charlie her cone and crouched down.
She pointed to the rat, looked over her shoulder at Charlie, just to make sure, and he nodded.
“Kitty,” she said.
Lily was sitting at her call station, headset on, tablet before her, watching a French film about a man who goes insane when he shaves off his mustache, when her line rang. She could see on the terminal that it was one of the hard lines from the Golden Gate Bridge. She paused her movie, took a deep breath, and connected.
“Crisis hotline. This is Lily. What’s your name?”
“Hi Lily, this is Mike Sullivan.”
“Hi, Mike. How are you doing today.”
“Lily, this is Mike Sullivan. The Mike Sullivan who jumped . . .”
Lily stopped breathing for a second. No one who had actually jumped had called back before. She wasn’t sure she was trained for this. Sure, she would have ignored the training, but it would be nice to have it to fall back on.
“So, Mike, it says here you’re on the bridge, on one of the hard lines.”
“Yes. I’m just sort of connected. I don’t know how.”
“So, you’re not, like, standing there talking into the speaker box or anything?”
“No, nothing like that. I’m just sort of here. Not physically, but it feels like I’m talking to you.”
“You’re calling from the other side?” Lily said.
“What? Marin? No, right on the bridge.”
“It is you!” His doofuscocity had transcended even death.
“I’m here, Lily. On the bridge, like Concepción promised, like I thought it would be—well, not like I thought it would be, but I’m here. So it worked? Did Charlie get my body?”
“Yes, but that was a while ago. Do you not have the same perception of time?”
“It did seem to take a long time to figure out how to get through to you. I tried asking people on the bridge, even risked going to one of my old coworkers. Nothing. I don’t have whatever it is that Concepción and the others had to appear to me.”