Damned

  "But what do you remember?" Emily asks.

  Goran, I tell her. I remember watching the television, lying on the carpet on my stomach, propped on my elbows, next to Goran. Arrayed on the carpet around us, I recall half-eaten room-service trays containing onion rings, cheeseburgers. My mom appeared on the television screen. She'd pinned the pink breast cancer ribbon to her gown, and—as the applause died down—she said, "Tonight is a very special night, in more ways than one. For it was on this night, eight years ago, that my precious daughter was born... ."

  Sprawled on the hotel carpet amid cold food and Goran, I remember seething.

  It was my thirteenth birthday.

  I remember the television cameras cutting to show my dad, seated in the audience, beaming with a proud smile to show off his new dental implants.

  Even now, dead and in Hell, way-totally ready to get busted for accepting a collect call from Canada, I ask Emily, "In second or third grade..." I ask, "did you play the French-kissing Game?"

  Emily says, "Is that how you died?"

  No, I tell her, but that game is all I remember.

  And, yes, I might be forgetful or in denial or five years older than my mother would like me to be, but as I stare across the landscape of Hawaiian shirts and fake-flower leis, some of those loud shirts and silk flowers still splashed with food-poisoning vomit, the face I see receding into the distance of Hell is that of my brother, Goran. In contrast to the garish tropical cruise apparel, Goran wears a pink jumpsuit, bright pink, with some sort of multidigit number stitched across one side of his chest.

  On the phone, her voice still in my earpiece, Emily says, "What's the French-kissing Game?"

  And then Goran, he of the kissable, lusciously full lips and bright pink jumpsuit, he's vanished in the crowd.

  XIX.

  Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. Please don't get the impression that I've always boasted a brilliant intellect. On the contrary, I've made more than my share of mistakes, not the least of which was my misconceived idea of what constituted French-kissing.

  It was some Miss Whorey Von Whoreski girls at my school who taught me the French-kissing Game. At my boarding school in Switzerland, where I almost froze to death but only lost all the skin off" my hands instead, a bunch of these same snotty girls always spent time together, three of them, but they were all way-total Trollopy McTrollops and Slutty Vandersluts and Harley O'Harlots who spoke English and French in the same flat accent as the Global Positioning System of my dad's Jaguar. They walked on the outside edge of their feet, each step slightly crossing in front of the last, to prove they'd taken too many years of ballet. These three girls were always together, usually cutting themselves or helping one another vomit; within the insular sphere of the boarding school, they were infamous.

  I was in my room one day, reading Jane Austen, when these three knocked on the door and asked to enter.

  And no, I may display occasional antisocial tendencies brought about by years of witnessing my parents pander to the film-going public, but I'm not so rude that I would tell three classmates to beat it. No, I politely set aside Persuasion and invited these three Miss Tarty Tartnicks to enter, and bade them sit a moment on my austere-yet-comfortable single bed.

  Upon entering, the first of them asked, "Do you know the French-kissing Game?"

  The second asked, "Where's your bathrobe?"

  The third said, "Do you promise not to tell?"

  Of course I feigned curiosity. In all honesty I was not intrigued, but at their request I presented said bathrobe and watched as one of the Miss Slutty O'Slutskis withdrew the white terry-cloth belt from the robe's belt loops. Another of the Whorey Vanderwhores requested I lie back until I was prone on the bed, gazing up at the distant ceiling. The third Miss Harlot MacHarlot threaded the terry-cloth belt behind my neck and tied the two ends across my tender throat.

  More out of politeness and an innate courtesy than any actual interest, I asked if these preparations were part of the game. The French-kissing Game. We were, all of us present in my small room, wearing the same school uniform of dark skorts and long-sleeved cardigan sweaters, kiltie tassel loafers, and white ankle socks. We were all either eleven or twelve years of age. The particular day was, I believe, a Tuesday.

  "Just wait," said one Skanky Von Skankenberg.

  "It feels... si bon," said another Miss Vixey Vandervixen.

  The third said, "We won't hurt you; we promise."

  Mine has always been an open, vulnerable nature. Where the motives and agendas of others come into play, I am perhaps too trusting. To suspect three of my own schoolmates struck me as a tad unseemly, so I merely consigned myself to their instruction as these girls arrayed themselves around me on the bed. A girl sat at each of my shoulders. The third girl gently lifted the eyeglasses from my face, folded them shut, and held them as she seated herself on the bed near my feet. The two flanking me each took one end of the cloth belt which was knotted loosely about my neck. The third instructed them to pull.

  May this episode demonstrate the hazards inherent in being the offspring of former-hippie, former-Rasta, former-punk rock parents. Even as the belt constricted more snugly, restricting my breathing, collapsing not only my air supply but also the flow of blood to my precious brain, as all of this occurred I made no vehement protest. Even as shooting stars flooded my view of the ceiling, and I felt my face flushing deeper and deeper red, and the pulse of my heartbeat throbbed beneath my collarbones, I offered no resistance. After all, what was transpiring was nothing more than a game, being taught to me by members of my peer group in an enormously exclusive girls' boarding school located deep in the safe bosom of the Swiss Alps. Despite their current status as Miss Whorey Whorebergs and Miss Trampy Vandertramps, these girls would one day graduate to take positions as the chief editor of British Vogue or, failing that, first lady of Argentina. Etiquette and protocol and decorum were drummed into us daily. Such genteel young ladies would never attempt anything untoward.

  Under their assault, I imagined myself the innocent governess in Frankenstein, hung from the gallows, the noose tightening unjustly around my neck for the murder of my charge by the reanimated monster of a mad scientist. Suffocating, I imagined tightly laced whalebone corsets. A lingering death by consumption. Opium dens. I envisioned fainting and swooning and massive overdoses of laudanum. I became Scarlett O'Hara, feeling Rhett Butler's powerful hands as they tried to choke away my love for the dashing, chivalrous Ashley Wilkes, and in that moment, even as my own red, raw fingers clutched at the bedclothes, my voice hoarse with effort, I cried out as Katie Scarlett O'Hara, "Unhand me, you vile cad!"

  Even as the shooting stars filled my vision, stars and comets of every color, red and blue and gold, the ceiling of my room seemed to drift more and more near. Within moments, my heartbeat seemed to have ceased, and my nose was almost touching this, the bedroom ceiling which had only moments before soared so high above me. My awareness seemed to be hovering, floating, gazing down upon the occupants of the bed.

  A girl's voice said, "Hurry and give her the kiss." The voice, coming from somewhere behind me. Turning, I saw myself still laid out on my bed, the cloth belt still knotted tightly around my neck. My face looked pasty and pale white, and the two girls seated beside my shoulders still pulled at the ends of the cloth belt.

  The girl seated near my feet said, "Stop pulling, and give her the kiss."

  Another girl said, "Yuck." Their voices sounded muffled and foggy and miles away.

  The third girl, seated near my feet, she unfolded my eyeglasses and slipped them onto her own smug face. Batting her eyelashes and cocking her head from side to side coquettishly, she said, "Look at me, everyone... I'm the fat, ugly daughter of a stupid-ass movie star... My picture was on the cover of People stupid magazine...." And all three Miss Bimbo Von Bimbos, they giggled.

  If you'll permit me a moment of self-indulgent embarrassment, I did look terrible. The skin of my cheeks had swollen slightly, becoming puf
fy, similar to a soufflé d'apricot. My eyes, open only as slits, appeared as glazed as the glassy surface of an overly caramelized crème brulee. Worse yet, my lips were gaping, and my tongue pushed forward—green as a raw oyster—as if attempting to escape. My face, from forehead to chin, varied in hue from alabaster white to light blue. The put-aside copy of Persuasion lay on the bedspread beside my blue hand.

  As I hovered there, observing, as detached as my mother keyboarding to spy on the maids and adjust the lighting via her notebook computer, I felt neither pain nor anxiety. I felt nothing. Below me, the three girls untied the cloth belt from my neck. One girl slid a hand behind my head and tilted my face back slightly, and another drew a deep breath and leaned over. Her lips covered my own blue lips.

  And yes, I know what constitutes a near-death experience; however, I was more concerned about my prescription eyewear. The girl seated at my feet, still wearing my reading glasses, she said, "Blow. Hard."

  The girl leaning over me... even as she blew air into my mouth, I seemed to fall from the ceiling and land into my body. Even as the girl's lips pressed my lips, I found myself, once more, occupying the body which lay upon my bed. I coughed. My throat ached. The three girls laughed. My tiny bedroom, my tattered copies of Wuthering Heights and Northanger Abbey and Rebecca sparkled and glowed. All of my body felt so electric, as thrumming and vibrant as I'd felt naked in the snow at night. My every cell swelled so full of newfound vitality.

  One of the Hussey Vanderhusseys, the one who'd blown her breath into my mouth, said, "That's called 'the kiss of life/" Her breath tasted like the wintergreen of her chewing gum.

  Another girl said, "It's the French-kissing Game."

  The third said, "You want to go again?"

  And raising my weak hands, lifting my cold, trembling fingers to touch my throat where the terry-cloth belt still lay across the throbbing of my brand-new heartbeat, I nodded my head, faintly but repeating, whispering, "Yes." As if to Mr. Rochester himself, I whispered, "Ye gods!" Whispering, "Edward, please. Oh, yes."

  XX.

  Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. People say the world is a small place... well, in Hell this must be Old Home Week. Really, everyone seems to know me and vice versa. It's like alumni week at my boarding school, when all the old mossbacks would totter around campus all misty-eyed. Everywhere that you look, it seems as if a familiar face is looking back.

  My dad would tell you, "When you're shooting on location, be ready for rain." Meaning: You never know what fate will throw your way. One minute, I'm luring some Canadian AIDS girl to come join me in Hell, and the next minute I'm staring down my beloved Goran, now wearing a hot-pink jumpsuit with what looks like a Social Security number embroidered on his chest. My telephone headset still clamped around my smart new pageboy haircut, I jump to my feet and begin swimming, stroking my arms through a veritable ocean of chubby, newly deceased holiday cruisers, all of them bespeckled with their own noxious lobster vomitus. Within moments, my hands tangle in camera straps and sunglasses bun-gee cords and artificial floral leis. Drowning and slimy in the coconut-smelling miasma of budget suntan lotions, I'm calling out, screaming, "Goran!" Gasping, I'm bobbing and flailing amid the tide of food-poisoned tourists, shouting, "Wait, Goran! Please wait!" Unfamiliar with walking in my new high heels, netted in the wires of my telephone setup, I stumble and begin to sink beneath the surface of the teeming mob.

  Suddenly, an arm wraps around me from behind. An arm encased in the sleeve of a black-leather jacket. And Archer rescues me, towing me from the sluggish riptide of wandering bovine dead.

  With Babette looking on, Leonard watching, I say, "My boyfriend... he was just here."

  Patterson untangles the headset from me.

  "Calm down," says Babette. She explains that we need to slip Tootsie Pops or Oh Henry! bars to the right demons. If Goran's only recently been damned, his files ought to be easy to find. Already she's leading me in the other direction, exiting the telephone marketing hall, her hand wrapped around mine. Babette's dragging me along corridors, up and down stone stairways, navigating hallways past doorways and skeletons, under archways with black fringes of sleeping bats hanging overhead, across lofty bridges and via dripping, dank tunnels, but always staying within the vast hive of the netherworld headquarters. Finally, arriving at a bloodstained counter, Babette elbows aside the souls already waiting in line. She digs an Abba-Zaba from her purse and dangles it toward some demon who sits at a desk, some sort of half-man, half-falcon monster with a lizard's tail, engrossed in doing a crossword puzzle. Addressing him, Babette says, "Hey, Akibel." She says, "What do you have on a new arrival named..." And Babette looks at me.

  "Goran," I say. "Goran Spencer."

  The falcon-lizard-monster-man looks up from the folded page of his newspaper; wetting the tip of his pencil against the wet point of his forked tongue, the demon says, "What's a six-letter word for power failure'?"

  Babette looks at me. She brushes her fingernails to stroke my new bangs so they fall straight across my forehead, and says, "What's he look like, honey?"

  Goran of the dreamy vampire eyes and jutting caveman brow Goran of the surly, fleshy lips and unruly hair, he of the sneering disdain and abandoned-orphan demeanor. My wordless, hostile, walking skeleton. My beloved. Words fail me. With a helpless sigh, I say, "He's... swarthy." Quickly, I say, "And brutish."

  Babette adds, "He's Maddy's long-lost boyfriend."

  Blushing, I protest, saying, "He's only kind of my boyfriend. I'm only thirteen."

  The demon, Akibel, swivels in his desk chair. Turning to face a dusty computer screen, the demon keyboards Ctrl+Alt+F with the talons of his falcon claws. When a blinking green cursor appears on the screen, the demon keys in "Spencer, Goran." With a stab of his index talon, he hits Enter.

  At that same instant, a finger taps me on the back of my shoulder. A human finger. And a frail voice says, "Are you little Maddy?" Standing behind me, a stooped old lady asks, "Would you happen to be Madison Spencer?"

  The demon sits, his face propped in his hands, both his elbows leaned on his desk, watching his computer screen and waiting. Tapping a talon, impatiently, on the edge of his keyboard, the demon says, "I hate this fucking dial-up..." He says, "Talk about glacial." A beat later, the demonic Akibel picks up his crossword once more. Studying it, he says, "What's a four-letter word for 'cribbage props'?"

  The old woman who tapped my shoulder, she continues to look at me, her eyes shining bright. Her hair fluffy and bunched into wads as white as tufts of cotton, her voice flickering she says, "The telephone people said you might be here." She smiles a mouthful of pearly, bright dentures and says, "I'm Trudy. Mrs. Albert Marenetti... ?" her intonation lifting into a question.

  The demon whacks a falcon claw against the side of his computer monitor, swearing under his breath.

  And yes, I am wildly invested in tracking down my adored Goran, denizen of my most romantic dreams, but I am NOT totally oblivious to the emotional needs of others. Especially those recently dead after prolonged terminal illness. Throwing my arms around this stooped, stunted little shrub of an old lady, I squeal, "Mrs. Trudy! From Columbus, Ohio! Of course I remember you." Giving her powdery, wrinkled cheek a little peck, I say, "How's that little pancreatic cancer thing?" Realizing our present situation, both of us dead and doomed to the straits of Hell for all eternity, I add, "Not good, I guess."

  With a twinkle in her sky-blue eyes, the old lady says, "You were so kind and generous, talking to me." Her old-lady fingers pinch both my cheeks. Cupping my face between her hands, gazing at me, she says, "So, just before my last trip into the hospice I burned down a church."

  We both laugh. Uproariously. I introduce Mrs. Trudy to Babette. The demon, Akibel, hits his Enter key, again and again and again.

  While we wait, I compliment Mrs. Trudy on her choice of footwear: black low-heeled mules. Otherwise, she wears an iron-gray tweed suit and a very smart Tyrolean hat of gray felt, with a red feather tucked into
the band at a jaunty angle. Now, there's an ensemble which will stay fresh-looking despite aeons of hellish punishment.

  Babette waves a Pearson Salted Nut Roll, baiting the demon to work faster. Badgering him, she calls, "Hey, step it up! We don't have forever!"

  The people already here, already waiting, they give up a weak laugh.

  "This here is Madison," Babette says, introducing me to everyone present. Throwing an arm around my shoulders and steering me to the counter, she adds, "Just in the past three weeks, Maddy, here, is responsible for a seven-percent increase in damnations!"

  A murmur passes through the crowd.

  In the next moment, an elderly man approaches our tiny group. Clasping his hat in both hands and wearing a striped silk bowtie, the old man says, "Would you happen to be Madison Spencer?"

  Says Mrs. Trudy, "She is." Beaming, Mrs. Trudy slips her wrinkled hand around my hand and gives my fingers a bony squeeze.

  Looking at this man, with his cloudy cataract eyes and pinched, trembling shoulders, I say, "Now, don't tell me..." I say, "Are you Mr. Halmott from Boise, Idaho?"

  "In the flesh," the old man says, "or whatever I am, these days." So apparently pleased that he blushes.

  Congestive heart failure, I recite. I shake his hand and say, "Welcome to Hell."

  On the far side of the counter, at the demon's desk, a dot-matrix printer grinds to life. Sprocket wheels pull continuous-feed paper from a dusty box. The paper, yellowed and brittle. The printer carriage roars back and forth as each page advances, line by line, pulled along by its perforated tracks.

  With Babette's arm draped across the back of my neck, her hand hangs near the side of my face. There, the cuff of her blouse has pulled back to reveal dark red lines on the inside of her wrist. Running from the sleeve to the base of her palm, gouged scars gape, raw as if they'd been recently cut.

  And yes, I know suicide is a mortal sin, but Babette has always insisted she was damned for wearing white shoes after Labor Day.