I wanted to ask him how he knew that about me, when he apparently didn't know my name or what I'd studied in school, but I was afraid that if I asked, he'd answer, and I might not like the answer. Instead I said “Airplanes."
He held his arms out to his sides and moved them up and down a couple of times, like a slow-motion bird flapping. “Flight."
"Well.” I thought that over. “How about love?"
"What?"
"Love. I've never been in love."
"You have. The boy at the bagel shop."
"That wasn't love,” I said, but immediately doubted it. His tousled hair, the bliss, the wish to protect him—suddenly I missed him, very much. “Not the kind of love I mean,” I said more quietly.
"Ah. Well, I'm better with more concrete things, anyway."
I wanted to ask if he was some kind of genie, but I didn't. I knew better. I didn't know what he was, but he wasn't something out of an Arabian Night.
"I really wasted the first two,” I said slowly. “A game of Go, and a fortune telling. I could have gotten those without you, even.” He didn't respond, not even with a facial expression. “Do I only get three? I mean, isn't it usually three of whatever, in cases like this?"
"You get as many as you get."
"And the lotus?"
"Will be an end to this."
"The lotus eaters never changed,” I said. “They never . . . transformed.” I thought of the Death card. I wondered if Go was a metaphor for transformation, too, and decided that, of course, it could be, just as pigs could be devils or good luck, depending on which way you looked at them.
I looked at the man. His eyes were gray, and very lovely. I'd never noticed that before. “Am I wasting something?” I asked, my throat tight, suddenly afraid. I felt like one of those foolish people in the old stories who get three wishes and use them on stupid things like sausages and rowboats and sacks of gold.
"You can do something you've never done before,” he said. “Same as always. Same as you can do on any day of the week. Same as anyone can do. Maybe you haven't wasted anything. Maybe you've done just the right things, little things that changed your life in major ways, only you don't know, because you'll never see what would have been."
"I changed my life with a game of Go and a fortune-telling that told me nothing?"
He shrugged one of his all-encompassing shrugs.
I felt on the edge of revelation—it was like standing on a high ledge, looking down on a street, seeing it from a viewpoint I'd never imagined. “Everyone dies,” I said finally. “Death is one thing everyone does, that they've never done before."
"Death is always the last new thing,” he agreed.
"In this world,” I said, partly question, partly statement, partly plea.
"This is the world I'm concerned with. Anything else is outside my realm. I told you, I'm better with concrete things. Sometimes those things can stand in for abstractions.” He rolled his shoulders. I loved that shrug, I loved it suddenly and fiercely. “Abstractions give me a headache."
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, my face close to his. He looked at me, surprised by my sudden proximity, his hair rising like smoke in the breeze and waving. He didn't look any older than the first time I'd met him, or any sadder, or in any way different at all.
"You've been doing this for a long time,” I said.
"For as long as I can remember."
"You're not much of a spiritual guide. I don't understand anything."
"I just nudge people along the path, Carla. I can't control which flowers they stop to smell, whether they shade their eyes or look straight at the sun, what shapes they see in the clouds."
Perspective, I thought. I wondered if he had any perspective, if he saw anything in the clouds anymore, if he noticed the path at all. If anything in his life (if you could call it a life) ever changed anymore, if it ever had. I thought not. I decided that meeting me didn't count. Not yet.
I stood up and kicked over the camp stool, and for the first time he was really surprised—his face opening up, his eyes widening, his mouth gaping.
I sat down on the bench next to him, close enough for our legs to touch. He turned his head, looking at me, closer than we'd ever been. His breath smelled like fresh cherries. “Carla—” he said.
"I think we should change our names for each other,” I said.
I kissed him.
It took a moment, but then he kissed back, and I unzipped his jacket.
* * * *
[Back to Table of Contents]
White Rabbit Triptych
E.L. Chen
1. Alice
Sarah will spend most of her short life waiting for it to catch up to her.
Her premature birth is an indication of what is to come. By the age of twenty, Sarah will master the art of indifferent boredom. She'll be the first to arrive at parties. She'll bloat on water and breadsticks while chafing her elbows on restaurant tables. She'll impress potential employers with her apparent enthusiasm for job interviews and she'll know every magazine in her dentist's office cover to cover.
Thus Sarah will die as she lives.
* * * *
Sarah's death will fall on a Tuesday, a sunny afternoon that'll put all but Sarah in a good mood. The light flooding through the office windows will aggravate her already furious headache. She'll wheedle two extra-strength Tylenol from a co-worker but they won't help, as her editor's going to burst into her cubicle after lunch and shout, “Get it straight, Wong.” (He likes to address his employees by their last name as if he's running a Victorian orphans’ asylum.)
Sarah will wince, bringing her hands to her temples. Her editor will continue, “It's a good article, but you got your myths wrong. The person who kills Death becomes Death, not whoever beats him in a game of chess."
He'll rant about the young generation and popular culture until he notices Sarah holding her head in agony. Then he'll gruffly tell her to go home and sleep it off.
Sarah will gratefully sweep up her purse and splurge on cab fare home; her bus doesn't come along for another fifteen minutes. She'll stagger into her apartment, jerk the curtains closed and collapse on her futon.
As she falls asleep in the dark sanctuary of her bedroom, an aneurysm will claim her fourteen minutes ahead of schedule.
Sarah will open her eyes and climb off the futon, only to discover that her body still lies on the mattress. No amount of pushing and prodding will persuade her body to get up with her. When the absent pulse reveals that she's dead, Sarah will plop down beside her body in shock. She won't be able to believe that her existence has come down to two monosyllables:
Now what?
Where are the pearly gates? The lighted doorway? Sarah will review everything she knows about death and conclude that her editor is right; she should've paid more attention in school and less to movies. Perhaps then she would've been able to recognize the afterlife's rabbithole.
The sound of the front door opening will startle Sarah out of her confusion. She'll creep to the bedroom door and peek outside.
A tall, hooded figure in a long black coat will enter the apartment.
Sarah will watch as the intruder ignores her TV and stereo and heads straight for the bedroom. As he steps inside, she'll plaster herself against the wall, behind the door, wondering if he'll be able to see her now that she's dead.
The intruder will turn to Sarah instead of her prostate body. “Ssssarah,” he'll hiss. Terrified, Sarah will seize the closest heavy object—a lamp—and swing it with all her might.
The sound of cracking bone will echo within the room. Sarah will gasp as the intruder's coat drops to the floor, without his body in it. Her would-be attacker will have disappeared.
She'll toe the crumpled fabric and discover that it's a hooded cloak, not a trenchcoat.
It won't be the career she dreamed of, but she has nothing better to do. She'll collect the cloak from the carpet, brush off the dust, and slip it on. It'll be a perfect fit,
despite her small stature.
A rectangular object will bump against her hip. Sarah will search the folds of the cloak and draw out a leather-bound day planner. An earmarked page—Tuesday April the twenty-seventh—will reveal her illegible name among a list of others.
The next person on the list will be slated to die at five forty-three. Emma Linardi. As Sarah reads the name aloud, her apartment will shimmer like a wet rainbow trout and fade away, and she'll find herself in a hospital room.
A pale and withered elderly woman will lie in the hospital bed. Sarah will frown; according to the pulse monitor, Ms. Linardi's heartbeat is normal. Sarah will check the day planner again, and glance at her watch.
Five twenty-nine.
Sarah will pull up a chair, sighing, and pick up a copy of Cosmopolitan from a pile of magazines.
* * * *
2. The Rabbithole
Quentin Smith is at the top of his game.
Mr. Punctuality, his colleagues call him, good-naturedly to his face and mockingly behind his back. He arrives at work each morning at nine o'clock sharp. He makes all his deadlines and never works overtime. The executives have noticed his reliability and the department is abuzz with rumors. Smith merely shrugs when colleagues speculate that he's up for a promotion. “All in good time,” he says.
At home, dinners are never left cold and uneaten on the table. He pays bills and taxes on time and puts out the garbage on the right day. The twins know that when Daddy says he'll pick them up from daycare at six-thirty, he'll be there at six-thirty.
Friends are in awe of his healthy marriage and pester him for the secret of its success. Smith always laughs. “There is no secret,” he says. “Just good timing."
* * * *
May the eighth, a Saturday. Smith's personal Day of Judgment. The executives wake him with an early-morning phone call, explaining the urgency of a new RFP. The proposal's due in a week, but they feel he can handle it. They need him to come to the office in exactly one hour. Smith recognizes that this could make or break his career. His wife turns over in bed and sleepily wishes him luck.
Traffic is busy for a Saturday morning; Smith guesses that there must be a sports event downtown. He glances at his watch. Even if the highway is bumper-to-bumper, there should enough time to get to the office.
He approaches the last major intersection before the onramp. The car in the opposite left-turn lane is a shiny red pick-up, the very truck Smith used to dream about during his bachelor days. Of course he traded in the fantasy for a roomy SUV when he got married and had kids, but he can still dream.
Perhaps that's why he doesn't notice when the truck makes an ill-timed turn. Smith's SUV bites into a shiny red side panel and spits out a handful of broken glass.
As his face smacks into an airbag, Smith's eyes bulge in the direction of the pick-up's driver. Her face is twisted in a frustrated snarl. Traffic is already driving around the collision, as if it anticipates their heated dispute.
Smith switches off the ignition, unbuckles his well-strained seatbelt, and does something he hasn't done since the twins were born.
He shouts, “Fuck!"
He slams his fist into the dashboard.
"I can't be late!” he adds. His protest ripples through the still air.
Smith cannot be late. Thus time as he knows it peels back, like an onion, to reveal another layer.
* * * *
3. Wonderland
Ten minutes was all Donald needed to have a successful career and a happy future with the woman of his dreams.
Unfortunately he was doomed to be one step behind his life. The career died before he graduated from high school; he slept through his alarm clock the day of the SATs. The love of his life gave him one last chance and he accidentally stood her up.
He figured that she would've eventually dumped him because of his inability to hold down a job. His chronic lateness did not find favor with interviewers. Those who hired him anyway had to let him go for tardiness. After a decade of tenacious slacking, an exasperated relative pulled a few strings and found him a graveyard shift job at a factory. The night manager didn't care whether he came to work late as long as Donald filled his quota.
Thus Donald could lag behind all he wanted. It wasn't as if his life were going somewhere, anyway. And now that he saw little of the sun, he was at last free from the rules of time. Or so he thought.
All Donald wanted that weekend was a carton of milk and a pack of smokes. He'd come home from work in the morning and had decided to buy groceries before the Saturday afternoon rush. He changed his clothes and climbed back into the dilapidated hatchback without bothering to buckle his seatbelt. The grocery store was just around the corner, after all.
He pulled out into the main street, puzzled that traffic could have become so busy in so short at time. At a congested intersection, he noticed a young Asian woman standing on the sidewalk with a magazine tucked under the arm of her long black coat. She was alternately stealing glances at him and checking her watch, her brow furrowed. He wondered if she knew him.
He was so distracted that he nearly rear-ended the SUV in front of him as it collided into a red pick-up. The pick-up's driver looked pissed off, even though she was at fault, and Donald was thankful that it wasn't his hide that was going to be chewed up and spit out this morning.
The young Asian woman on the corner stared unabashedly at him now, annoyed, as if he were to blame for the accident.
"Women,” he grumbled.
As he drove around the collision, he realized that if he'd reached the intersection seconds earlier, he would've been the one picking his front bumper out of the pick-up's side. Or, more likely, the truck would've sent him spinning across two lanes of traffic. Considering his hatchback's age and condition and the concrete barriers at the side of the road—and that he wasn't wearing a seatbelt—he probably wouldn't have survived the crash.
He shivered. The air trembled around him, as if rent by a trumpet blast.
* * * *
The dead went first. At least that's how it appeared to Donald. He drove a block and discovered that traffic had come to a standstill. A long, single-file line of people was winding down the street, down toward the intersection from which he'd come, blocking cars in both directions.
Donald couldn't believe they were merely going to see the accident. Human curiosity overcame common sense; he switched off the ignition and joined the other drivers who had also abandoned their cars to watch the procession.
Startled gasps and shouts sounded around him as Donald's fellow drivers recognized deceased loved ones in the line-up. Donald looked at them, askance, wondering if he'd been denied the full experience of a mass hallucination.
Then he saw his father.
Donald tried to duck behind his car, but it was too late. His father had spotted him.
"This is your fault,” Donald Sr. said as he passed by. The bastard wore the same ill-fitting suit he'd been buried in. “Damn it, you can't even die on time."
Donald turned away. His father disappeared down the street. Donald went back to his car and sat inside, having no choice but to wait for the procession to finish.
To his astonishment, as soon as the parade of dead ended, the living followed. The bystanders eagerly melted into the line without any concern for their vehicles and belongings. They left their keys in the ignition and their purses and briefcases on the seat. It wasn't just the drivers; people streamed out of nearby coffee shops and dental offices and joined the line-up. Donald, confused, climbed out of his car and pushed rudely into the middle of the crowd.
"What the hell's going on?” he asked. “Why are you all lining up?"
"There's been a rupture in the space-time continuum. Linear time is no more,” a middle-aged man answered. Donald let him slip by without question. Obviously he'd seen one too many episodes of Star Trek.
"It's eternity,” the next person in line said, her eyes glowing as she clutched the crystal pendant at her neck. “We've t
ranscended time, and we're being elevated to the next astral plain."
"It's Judgment Day,” another said with a self-righteous glare. “The living and dead are to be tested before entering the Kingdom of Heaven. ‘There is no difference in the Lord's sight between one day and a thousand years.’”
Donald's fingers twitched; he had never needed a smoke as desperately as he did now.
A younger voice piped up:
"Time to follow the white rabbit down to Wonderland."
The kid was about twelve years old, but Donald paid attention as the lazy drawl reminded him of himself at that age.
"Rabbit?” he said.
The kid pointed to the front of the line. Donald squinted, making out a slim figure dressed in a long black coat. It was the young Asian woman who'd been staring at him earlier. “One of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The Grim Reaper herself,” the kid said. “Though I always thought she'd be more—I dunno—Caucasian."
Donald replayed the accident in his head, remembering the woman's annoyed look. So his father had been right; he'd been late for his death and consequently he'd screwed up the universe. Well, there was nothing he could do about it now. He eyed the long queue. It appeared endless, unfolding into the horizon, and there were still hordes of people joining it. He glanced at his watch. The hands had frozen, but he figured that he had enough time to run to the store as he'd intended. Wherever the line led to, he doubted that they sold cigarettes there.
* * * *
Ten minutes was all that was missing from the story of Donald's life. And his death.
He tossed a handful of change on the deserted grocery store's checkout counter and slipped the carton of cigarettes into his shirt pocket. He lit up in the parking lot, and then made his way back to the main street.
The line was gone.
Donald cast aside the cigarette butt and ran down the street between abandoned cars. He was alone. He reached the intersection where the accident had occurred, hoping that Death would still be there to let him into wherever everyone else had gone. Bits of glass crunched under his workboots as he skidded to a halt. The Asian woman in the black coat was nowhere to be seen.
Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 13 Page 7
