by Lorrie Moore
“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 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 apéritifs.”
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 big-mouth 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 yoga. 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 per cent,” 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 Hosannahs, 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 wa
lked upright, no one had good posture. There was nothing to look at—although it was impossible to shut one’s eyes—except the tumbled kaleidoscopic 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”—even ministering 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 Arch-fiend. 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.
