We sink down on the big red pillows that are piled onto the soft grey carpet of the gazebo’s floor. Today, the misty clouds that swirl around the glass are comforting. Unlike the previous time we were there, I can hear the sound of the rain, and the sharp, tiny taps are soothing. Samia and I pull soft blankets over our knees and get comfortable.
We sit in silence for a while and I wonder if Samia has nodded off and I glance at her but she is wide awake, staring out into space.
“Beatrice says I can go back too,” I tell her and she turns to me. She doesn’t look too surprised and I continue.
“But I will be deformed, ugly, and poor,” I add. “I’ll have a beaten-up face and a bad job.”
“Lovely,” Samia says. “Lots to look forward to.”
I laugh. “Exactly.” I fall silent for a moment. “If you were me, what would you do?”
“Well, I wouldn’t go back as me, but I can’t say for you.”
“You know why I’d like to go back, Samia?”
She shakes her head.
“I’d like to kill the fucker who killed me,” I say. “I’d like to kill him very slowly and very painfully.”
“Don’t tell them that,” she advises me. “Not if you want to go back.”
“I bet they know,” I reply. “They know everything.”
“True.”
We sit in silence again, watching the rain blowing in gusts, as if it is coming off an ocean. The room grows darker and I welcome this cocoon, this shelter in the storm of my life. Well, my afterlife.
“It depends on how badly my face is damaged,” I say after a while. “Beatrice said I’ve lost a lot of vision in my left eye and I’ll have to wear glasses. Me, wearing glasses! Of course Junior ruined my beautiful Candice Bergen nose. What will my niece think of me? And will she come and live with me or what? I have a spare room, but it’s full of clothes and shoes and purses and makeup. Everything would be need to be cleaned out.” My thoughts change track. “And there I’d be, injured and ugly. And how will I feel being back in that apartment where I was brutally attacked and nearly died? ”
“You wouldn’t have to do everything at once,” Samia says. “You could take your time.”
“I still have money coming in from my severance,” I say, calculating. “I had only been off for three months and they gave me a year, with benefits too, so there is that, which will help. But no more online shopping, not that I’d want to. I have credit card debts up the yin yang.”
“You could have a yard sale,” Samia suggests. “Or sell stuff online. I bet you could make a lot of money.”
“I wouldn’t have a clue how to go about it. I was a shopper, not a seller.”
“Things change,” Samia says.
“They do, they do.” I slide down among the cushions. “I’m very tired, I’m going to close my eyes for a bit.”
“Yes, have a nap, that will help. If you wake up and I’m not here, don’t worry, okay?”
“I won’t worry. See you tomorrow at coffee?”
“For sure. I’m not leaving now though. Lie down and try to sleep.”
I am glad she is going to stay. I settle down and before I know it, I am drifting as peacefully as if I were in the Rest Room.
33. MY VIEWING
IT IS THE POWER OF THE MIND to be Unconquerable. Whatever that means. I knock on Cedar’s door and he welcomes me with his usual good cheer. “I need to see what I look like,” I say, without a preamble.
“Then you’ll need to ask Beatrice for a Viewing,” he replies with equanimity.
“She said to ask you. What is this, the government? You two are like civil servants, bouncing me back and forth.”
“Seeing the damage will help you determine whether you want to go back or not?”
“Yes. Wouldn’t it make a difference to you?”
He cocks his head. “Not really. I’d either want to go back or I wouldn’t.”
“I think I do want to go back. I’m simply doing due diligence on what the situation would be, for real.”
“One can never prepare,” Cedar advises, “even though we mistakenly think we can.”
“Indulge me,” I say, and I am angry and pleading at the same time.
“Just ask Beatrice,” he repeats.
“Here’s what I don’t understand,” I say. “You were the one who showed me everything. I lay on this very sofa and we watched me being fired and we watched me being attacked on the Rewind. Why do I need a Viewing now? Why can’t we do a Rewind like we did before?”
“One-on-one sessions using the Rewind are intended to guide you towards Realizations,” he replies. “The View can only be accessed once certain Realizations have been reached. There are different stages to the healing process and there are aspects of group therapy that are optimal at certain points. Viewings are also present tense, they happen in real Earth time, while Rewinds are exactly that, rewinds of past events. Also, it’s more helpful to do Viewings in groups, with supportive friends rather than being alone or one-on-one, like we do here. It may not seem like it, but there are systems in place to truly help and support you through all of this. We, the Helpers and the Board of Regulators, have been doing this for a while.”
He pauses. “You’re looking for revenge, aren’t you?”
Rather than tell a lie, I remain silent.
“And what good would that do?” he asks.
“It would make me feel better,” I say, through gritted teeth. “And don’t tell me it wouldn’t. I know myself better than you know me, and I’m telling you, it would. I would love nothing more than to have the f… the asswipe on his knees, begging for mercy.”
“Asswipe is close to swearing,” Cedar says. “And, know this. We can’t stop you from going back, even if your goal is revenge. It doesn’t sway us one way or another. Your going back is entirely your choice.”
“It wasn’t Isabelle’s and Eno’s choice, you decided.”
“Agree, but they were fully dead. You’re in a coma. It’s different.”
“If I go back, can I see Eno and Isabelle?”
“It’s possible. You could.”
“I would or I could or there’s what, a two percent chance or a ninety-two percent chance?”
“You’re very into specifics,” Cedar comments.
“Human nature,” I reply. “We’re big on that.”
“Some of you,” Cedar grins. “Do you think you’d be a good aunt to your niece?”
“I’d like to try. Look, Cedar, I’m going to find Beatrice and ask her for a Viewing and if she sends me back to you, I’ll…” I can’t think of anything threatening that I’d be able to action, and I fall silent, feeling foolish.
“You’ll what?” he smiles. “If you go back to Earth, you won’t be in any position to demand anything from anybody and I suggest you get used to that idea, starting now. Use me to practice on, I don’t mind.”
“Gee, thanks.” I get up. “See you tomorrow.”
“Perhaps,” he says enigmatically and he waves me out the door.
I glare at the nonsensical sign as I go by and I wander around the white maze trying to find the gang for coffee. But the room eludes me, no matter how hard I focus and I am about to give up when Samia appears.
“Come on,” she says. “Everyone’s there.”
“Bless you for rescuing me again,” I say. “And how are you today?”
“Fine, the usual.” She shrugs and opens a door.
Jaimie, Agnes, Tracey, and Grace are sitting in a circle, mugs in hand. “Got lost, did you?” Jaimie grins and I glare at him.
“Maybe I haven’t been here as long as you have.” I change the subject. “Will you guys come with me to see Beatrice after we’re done here? I need to ask for a Viewing and I don’t want to watch by myself.”
They agree and I sit restl
essly, bouncing my left leg up and down until the others are ready to leave. I even leave half of Samia’s perfect latte unfinished.
I follow Tracey’s lead, and wish that she would pick up the pace. She seems to be ambling and I wonder if she is doing it on purpose to annoy me, but I remind myself that she always moves slowly. After what feels like a decade, we arrive at Beatrice’s door.
“Sent you to me, did he?” Beatrice sounds unsurprised. “Okay, let’s take a look.” She puts on her glasses, peers at the screen, and mutters something I can’t make out. Then she punches in some numbers and peers at the screen again.
“How does this work anyway?” I ask. “What are you doing?”
“Configuring latitudes and time,” she says. “It’s more complicated than you might think. Then you add duration and you subtract the speed of light and multiply by probability.”
“Okey-dokey,” I say. “So is it ready?”
“It’s ready,” she replies and the printer coughs out a page. “You can go right now, if you like.”
I grab it and pause. “Beatrice,” I ask, “will you come with us?”
She looks surprised, as do the others. “Sure, why not.” She gets up and we file down to the Viewing Room.
I am surprised by how terrified I feel. I ease my way into the centre of the red banquette, with Samia on one side and Beatrice on the other.
WELCOME, JULIA! WE HOPE YOU WILL ENJOY YOUR VIEWING TODAY!
I take a deep breath and the View starts moving in from the black. It flies towards the Earth and floats through the gauzy outer curtain. It hovers over blue oceans and continues down to the ground of my home city. We get closer and closer, until it comes to a hospital, where it slides us in through the front door and we land on our feet, in a manner of speaking.
The View glides us down a hallway and we come to a stop in the intensive care unit.
We move towards a woman who I cannot recognize as myself. She is lying on her back, with one leg up in a sling and we close in so we are standing right next to her bed. Seeing myself from the View’s angle is much harder to take than the Rewind that had kept its distance. My arms and hands are bandaged and my head is secured by a sturdy neck brace. I can hardly make out my body for the tubes and wiring coming off me. Both my eyes are swollen shut, and the rest of my face is bandaged. My mouth is cut and bruised, and a line of stitches traces from my top lip to under my nose.
Bile fills my mouth and I choke it down. “I need a moment,” I say and Beatrice presses pause.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” Tracey sounds annoyed. “Teacher’s pet gets special treatment as usual.”
Beatrice shrugs. “Agnes and Grace weren’t Viewing themselves. And this is past present tense, not present live. That’s about a week after you were first brought in,” she says to me. “We are moving towards real Earth time.”
“I’m ready to move on,” I say, weakly.
“Now we’ll go further forward in time, to three weeks later.”
We stand next to the bed and watch as things change slightly but not by much, except that my face is no longer bandaged and the mess of broken bones, lacerated skin, and bruised flesh is out in the open.
“You had a lot of internal bleeding at this point,” Beatrice says. “They still weren’t sure you were even going to make it.”
“Was I in Purgatory yet?”
“You were.”
“I was playing with dresses and makeup while I was lying there like that?” A wave of self-disgust washes over me.
“You didn’t know,” Samia says and she squeezes my hand and I hold on tight.
Time moves forward and the swelling lessens on my eyes and my face loses its balloon-inflated appearance but it’s misshapen in a horrible way. My nose is flattened and squashed to one side, my left eyelid droops down and the scars crisscrossing my skin make me look like a monster.
“Please tell me it improves,” I whisper.
“It does,” Beatrice says, but her tone isn’t exactly reassuring. “Viewing, show present day.”
The View moves forward and I look down at the broken face of the woman that Junior has created. The bruising has largely disappeared and so have I. I, me, my face— it’s all gone.
My nose is still flattened. I am lined with red and purple scars, my mouth is twisted and ruined, my cheekbones are out of alignment and even my chin is a strange shape, as if a thumb has pushed into cookie dough. There is no symmetry to this face, no even lines, no lovely curves or pleasing angles. I am horrific. And I am all alone.
I study the woman for a long time and the others patiently sit with me. I turn to Beatrice. “I want to go back to Earth now,” I say. “I choose Earth.”
I look around at the others. “Goodbye gang, I’ll miss you. You mean a lot to me but there’s someone down there who needs me. Beatrice, send me back, NOW.” Then, just to be polite, I add, “Please.”
PART II: HERE
34. BACK AGAIN
I AM NOT SURPRISED to wake up in my hospital bed. I guess Beatrice realized I really meant what I said. I wish I had thanked Cedar for his help but, thinking back to his cryptic message at our last meeting, he knew what was going to happen.
It is strange how fiercely protective I feel about my poor battered body and I want to be fully present to help it heal. Help it heal, so I can get back to the real world and kill the fucker responsible.
It is still a shock, how badly I am hurt. Seeing the extent of the damage at my Viewing helped prepare me, but what I’m not prepared for is how much it hurts and how strange it feels to be behind that damaged and scarred face.
Even without looking or probing, my face and body feel different. I am misshapen, tight, swollen, and tender. I run my tongue along my lips. The stitches have been removed but the skin is rough and bumpy. My arms are no longer in casts and I flex my muscles and fingers and am relieved to find everything moving as it should. I explore my rib cage and gently prod my stomach and I’m amazed and relieved to find no pain. The internal damage has healed better than the visible wounds.
“Ah, you’re awake!” A nurse comes in and smiles widely as she nears the bed. “I am so glad to see you. How are you?” She pulls out a thermometer and takes my temperature, then scribbles something on a clipboard that is sitting at the foot of the bed.
I look at her and Beatrice was right. The vision in my left eye is blurry, as if an optometrist has inserted a weak lens while testing. Right now, I’d welcome glasses—so much for my famous vanity. “Okay, I guess,” I reply, and my voice is raspy and old.
She nods and smiles again. “Excellent. I’m going to get the doctor. He’ll be thrilled that you’re awake!”
I pat my fingertips along my squashed nose, my flattened cheekbones and my poor, droopy, damaged eye.
The doctor arrives and also greets me with a broad smile. “You will get reconstructive surgery to help you,” the doctor says after he has thoroughly examined me. “Of course, we have to be realistic about our expectations but things will improve. We’re going to take the cast off your leg today, you woke up just in time. And next week, we’ll start with physio and help you get back on your feet.”
“How much longer will I be here?”
“Four to six weeks. That will include the work our man will do on your nose and cheekbones. You’ll need the rhinoplasty to breathe better, it’s not simply a cosmetic procedure.”
He is right. I am snuffling like a French bulldog on a hot day. I am humiliated by the disgusting noise I am making, and I try to breathe through my mouth instead.
“The cops will be happy you’re awake too,” the doctor says. “Are you up to talking to them?”
I nod, a micro-movement that sends waves of pain pulsating through my skull.
“Good for you. Try to eat something. I’ll get a soft meal brought to you and, as I say, we’ll be removi
ng the leg cast later today.
He and the nurse leave and I notice that neither of them suggested getting me a mirror. They must have felt it was better for me not to see the extent of the damage.
I close my eyes and wonder how the others are doing. It was strange and unsettling when Eno and Isabelle vanished like that, and at least with them, there was some forewarning of their possible departure, whereas I just rushed out. Which was more my style, but I wish I had hugged Samia and thanked her for being my friend. I wish I had thanked Agnes for being my Introducer and for sticking by me, and Tracey for her salt-of-the-earth directness, and Grace and Jaimie and Cedar and Beatrice for the many ways in which they had helped me.
I am glad they haven’t been wiped from my memory because thinking about them brings me comfort. It’s as if they are with me, helping me. I am not alone. Maybe Purgatory knows I need them.
I doze off and when I wake, two policemen are standing next to my bed. “Sorry to disturb you,” the one says awkwardly, and he sounds genuinely apologetic. “We have a few questions if you don’t mind.”
Eno! Tall and skinny, with those big, slightly close-set dark eyes, that scruffy goatee and long sideburns, and the slightly greasy forelock pulled in a sideways across his forehead. Only this guy is much better dressed than his counterpart in Purgatory, with dark grey trousers, a white shirt with a grey tie, and a black stylish overcoat with a turned-up collar.
I want to smile and tell him that it is great to see him and that he’s really styling it, but then I remember that I can’t say anything, and I think about the ruin of a woman he is facing and my eyes fill with tears.
“It’s okay, Ma’am,” he says, but I interrupt him.
“You can call me Julia.”
“Julia. Thank you.” He hands me a box of tissues and I dab my eyes.
“I’m Detective Joe Moretto and this is my partner, Detective Dan Harms. Do you remember anything about the night you were attacked?”
“No. I was asleep on the sofa,” I say, hating my horrible dry raspy voice. “I was asleep and then I was being attacked and I was tied up. There were two men. They were dressed in black. It happened so fast.”
No Fury Like That Page 20
