Damned

  With old Mr. Halmott and Mrs. Trudy smiling at me, I myself am staring point-blank—first, at Babette's suicide scars—then at her sheepish grin.

  Removing her arm from my shoulders, sliding the sleeve to conceal her secret, Babette says, "Girl really, really, really interrupted..."

  The demon tears the page from the printer and slaps it on the countertop.

  XXI.

  Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. My last sighting of my beloved Goran had been the night of the Academy Awards. If Hell is—as the ancient Greeks claimed—the place of remorse and remembering, then I am slowly accomplishing those tasks.

  Lolling about amid the cold remains of our room-service meals, Goran and I sprawled on the carpet in front of the suite's wide-screen television. I torched a spliff of my parents' best hybrid skunkweed, took a toke, and handed the stinking doobie to the object of my preteen adoration. For a Judy Blume instant, our fingers touched. Barely our fingertips brushed, sprawled as we were on the carpet, not dissimilar to God and Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but a spark of life—or merely static electricity—snapped and jumped between us.

  Goran took the joint and puffed. He tapped the ash onto a dinner plate, next to a half-eaten cheeseburger and an array of stale potato chips. We both sat, silent, holding the smoke in our lungs. Romantic anarchists that we are, we ignored the fact that this was a nonsmoking suite. On television, someone accepted an Oscar for something. Somebody thanked someone. A commercial pitched mascara.

  Exhaling, I coughed. I coughed and coughed, a genuine fit, finally reaching for a glass of orange juice which sat on a tray with a cold plate of buffalo wings. The air in the suite smelled like every wrap party my parents had ever hosted on the final day of principal photography. Stinking of cannabis and French fries and scorched rolling paper. Cannabis and congealed chocolate fondue. On television, a European luxury sedan raced across desert salt flats, swerving between orange traffic cones, driven by a movie star, and I'm not certain whether this is another commercial or something sampled from a nominated movie. Next, a famous actress drinks a major brand of diet soda in what could be either an advertisement or a feature film. Even the fast cars seem to drag along in slow motion. My hand reaches out toward a plate of cold garlic toast, and Goran slips the smoldering roach between my fingers. I take another hit, and hand it back. I reach toward a plate heaped with steaming, buttery, mouthwatering prawns, but my fingertips touch only smooth glass. My fingernails scratch at this glass barrier.

  Goran laughs, blasting out great clouds of sour dope stench.

  My prawns, so enticing and delicious-looking, are merely a television commercial for a franchised seafood restaurant. Tasty and crunchy and completely beyond my reach. They're only a teasing mirage of savoriness on the high-definition screen.

  On television, gigantic hamburgers rotate slowly, their grilled meat so hot it still bubbles and spits with grease. Slices of cheese collapse, molding themselves over the contours of searing-hot beef patties. Molten rivers of fudge flow through a mountainous landscape of vanilla soft-serve ice cream under a cruel hail of chopped Spanish peanuts. Blizzards of powdered sugar bury frosted doughnuts. Pizza drips dollops of tomato sauce and trails gooey whitish strings of mozzarella.

  Goran takes the smoking roach from between my fingers. He takes another hit, chasing the smoke with a swig of chocolate milk shake.

  Once more mouthing the damp butt of the shared marijuana cigarette, I attempt to discern the flavor of my beloved's saliva. Tonguing the moist folds of paper, I taste chocolate-chip cookies purloined from the minibar. I taste the tang of artificial fruit, lemons, cherries, watermelon, stolen candies, forbidden to us because of their tooth-decaying qualities. At last, beneath it all, my taste buds locate something earthy, fecund, the spit of my primitive rebel man-boy, the foreign pong of my stolid Heathcliff. My rustic rude savage. I relish this, the appetizer to a banquet of Goran's moist tongue kisses. In the scorched ganja I taste the residue of his chocolate milk shake.

  On television, a basket of nachos, heavily laden with sliced olives and gory salsa, this vision dissolves to take the shape of a beautiful woman. The woman wears a red gown—in hindsight, more orange than red—a scrap of grosgrain ribbon pinned to her bodice. The ribbon as pink as diced tomatoes. The woman says, "The nominees for this year's best motion picture are..."

  The woman on screen is my mom.

  At this, I climb to my feet, towering above the hotel carpet, swaying high above the discarded food and Goran. I stumble into the suite's bathroom; there, I unroll an awful lot of toilet paper, miles of toilet paper, making two lumps of roughly equal size which I proceed to stuff into the front of my sweater. In the bathroom mirror, my eyes look red-rimmed and bloodshot. I stand sideways to the mirror and study my new busty profile. I pull the tissue from inside my sweater and flush it down the toilet—the tissue, not the sweater. I am so high. It seems as if I've been in this bathroom for years. Decades have passed. Aeons. I pull open a drawer next to the sink and retrieve the long strip of Hello Kitty condoms. I reemerge from the bathroom, presenting myself before Goran with the strip of condoms looped around the back of my neck like a feather boa.

  On television, the camera shows my dad sitting in the audience, midway down the main floor, right on the aisle, his favorite seat, so he can sneak out and drink martinis during the awards for boring foreign crap. Only scant moments have actually gone by. Everyone applauds. Still standing in the bathroom doorway I bow, deeply.

  Goran looks from the television to me. His eyes almost glow red, and Goran coughs. Crimson seafood sauce is smeared on his chin. Gooey dabs of tartar sauce trail down the front of his shirt. The air in the suite hangs misty, foggy with dope smoke.

  I knot the strip of condoms around my neck and pull the knot tight, saying, "You want to play a game?" I say, "You only need to blow into my mouth." I step forward, slinking toward my beloved, and say, "It's called the French-kissing Game."

  XXII.

  Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. Please don't take this as a criticism, but you really ought to upgrade your word-processing equipment. The readability of your dot-matrix printer especially way sucks, not to mention those perforated tracks that hang off the edges of every printed page.

  My mom would tell you, "Two lips and a tongue can promise you anything." Meaning: Get all your deals in writing. Meaning: Always preserve a paper trail.

  Across the top of the printed form, the faint dot-matrix words read: Hell Induction Report for Goran Metro Spencer. Age 14.

  Under "Site of Death" it says: Los Angeles River Detention Center for Violent Juvenile Offenders.

  That would explain his hot-pink getup, complete with the prison number sewn to his chest. While somewhat fashion-forward, still not an obvious choice for the moody, imperious Goran I know.

  Under "Cause of Death" the report says: Stabbed by fellow inmate during riot.

  Under "Reason for Damnation" it says: Manslaughter conviction for the strangulation of Madison Spencer.

  XXIII.

  Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. Unpleasant as death might seem, the upside is that you only suffer it once. Subsequent to that, the sting is gone. The memory might be enormously traumatic, but that's all it is: a memory. You won't be asked to perform an encore. Unless, just possibly, you're a Hindu.

  Probably I shouldn't even tell you this next part. I know how self-righteous alive people are.

  Face it, every time you scan the obituary pages in the newspaper and you see somebody younger than yourself who died—especially if the obit features a photograph of them smiling, sitting on some mown lawn beside a golden retriever, wearing shorts—admit it, you feel so damned superior. It could be you also feel a smidgen lucky, but mostly you feel all smug. Everybody alive feels so superior to the dead, even homosexuals and American Indians.

  Probably when you read this you'll just laugh and make fun of me, but I remember gasping for breath, choking there on the carpet o
f the hotel suite. The crown of my head was wedged against the bottom of the television screen, the remains of our room-service banquet arrayed on plates around me. Goran knelt astride my waist, leaning over me, his face looming above my face; his hands gripped the two ends of the Hello Kitty condoms which were knotted around my neck, and he was yanking the noose tight.

  The stink of our every exhaled breath hung heavy, clouding the suite with its skunkweed reek.

  Towering above me on television, so real she seemed to be standing there, rose the figure of my mother. She seemed to tower up to the distant ceiling of the suite. The full length of her, glowing, radiant in the stage lights. Luminescent in her perfect beauty. A glorious vision. An angel garbed in a designer gown. On the television, my mom stands, gracious and patient in silence, waiting for the applause of her adoring world to subside.

  In contrast, my arms and legs flail and thrash, scattering the nearby plates of jumbo prawns. My desperate convulsions upset the bowls of leftover buffalo wings. Spill ranch dressing. Strew old egg rolls.

  On television, the cameras cut to show my dad seated in the audience, beaming.

  As the applause fades to quiet, my serene, lovely mother, smiling and enigmatic, says, "Before presenting this year's Oscar for best feature film..." She says, "I'd like to wish my dear, sweet daughter, Madison, a happy eighth birthday..."

  As of today, the truth is—I'm thirteen. My pulse pounds in my ears, and the condoms cut into the tender skin of my neck. The stars and comets of red and gold and blue begin to fill my vision, obscuring Goran's grim face, obscuring my view of the room's ceiling and my radiant mother. In my school uniform of sweater and skort, I'm sweating. My kiltie tassel loafers, kicked off my feet.

  As my vision narrows to a smaller and smaller tunnel, edged by a growing margin of darkness, I can still hear my mother's voice say, "Happy birthday, my dearest baby girl. Your daddy and I love you very, very much." A beat later, muffled and far away, she adds, "Now, good night, and sleep well, my precious love...."

  In the hotel suite, I hear panting, gasping, someone drawing great inhales of breath, but it's not me. It's Goran panting with the effort to suffocate me, to strangle me in exactly the manner I'd dictated according to the rules of the French-kissing Game.

  By then I'm floating up, my face drifting closer to the painted plaster of the ceiling. My heartbeat, silent. My own breathing, stilled. From the highest point in the room, I turn and look back at Goran. I'm shouting, "Kiss me!" I'm screaming, "Give me the kiss of life!" But nothing makes a sound except for the rush of televised applause for my mother.

  Splayed there on the carpet, I'm reduced to the status of the cooling food which surrounds me: my life only partially consumed. Wasted. Soon to be consigned to the garbage. My swollen, livid face and blue lips, they're merely a conglomerate of rancid fats, so like the old onion rings and stale potato chips. My precious life, rendered nothing more than congealing and coagulating liquids. Desiccating proteins. A rich banquet only nibbled at. Barely tasted. Rejected and discarded and alone.

  Yes, I know I sound quite cold, insensitive to the pathetic sight of a thirteen-year-old Birthday Girl dead on the floor of a hotel suite, but any other attitude would overwhelm me with self-pity. Floating here, I want nothing more than to go back and to fix this hideous error. In this moment, I've lost both my parents. I've lost Goran. Worst of all, I've lost... myself. In all my romantic scheming, I've ruined everything.

  On television, my mom puckers her lips. She presses the fingers of her manicured hand to her lips, then blows me a kiss.

  Goran drops the ends of the condom strip and gazes down on my body, a stricken look on his face. He leaps to his feet, dashing into the bedroom, then reemerges wearing his coat. He doesn't take the room key. He doesn't intend to return. Nor does he call 911. My beloved, the object of my romantic affection, simply races from the hotel suite without so much as a single look back.

  XXIV.

  Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. Ask me the square root of pi. Ask me how many pecks are in a bushel. Ask me anything about the truncated, tragic life of Charlotte Bronte. I can tell you exactly when Joyce Kilmer died in the Second Battle of the Marne. I can tell you the combination of keys, Ctrl+Alt+S or Ctrl+Alt+Q, which will access the security cameras or manipulate the lighting and window treatments of my sealed bedrooms in Copenhagen or Oslo, those rooms my mother has air-conditioned down to meat locker... down to archival temperatures, where the electrostatic air filters prohibit a speck of dust to ever settle, where my clothes and shoes and stuffed animals wait in the darkness, locked away from sun fade and humidity, patient as the alabaster jars and gilded toys which accompanied any boy pharaoh into his eternal tomb. Ask me about the ecology in Fiji and the amusing personal habits of tony Hollywood gadabouts. Ask me to describe the political machinations embedded in the all-girls culture of a très-reserved Swiss boarding school. Just do NOT ask me how I'm feeling. Do not ask if I still miss my parents. Don't ask if I still cry from being so homesick. Of course the dead miss the living.

  Personally, I myself miss sipping Twinings English Breakfast Tea and reading Elinor Glyn novels on rainy days. I miss smelling the citrus tang of Bain de Soleil, cheating at backgammon against our Somali maids, and practicing the gavotte and the minuet.

  But on a larger scale, to be brutally honest, the dead miss everything.

  In my desperation to talk, for the comfort of a little chat therapy, I telephone Canadian Emily, and a woman answers the phone. When she asks my name I tell her that I'm Emily's friend from long distance and ask if Emily can please come talk, just for a minute. Please.

  At this, the woman begins to sniff, then sob. Over the telephone, she's drawing deep shuddering breaths, choked with guttering sobs. Keening. "Emily," she says, "my baby..." Her words dissolving into cries, she says, "My baby girl's gone back into the hospital..." The woman rallies, sniffing, asking if she can relay a message from me to Emily.

  And yes, despite all my considerable Swiss training in decorum, regardless of my hippie training in empathy, over the telephone I ask, "Is Emily about to die?"

  No, it's not fair, but what makes life feel like Hell is our expectation that it should last forever. Life is short. Dead is forever. You'll find out for yourself soon enough. It won't help the situation for you to get all upset.

  "Yes," the woman says, her voice hoarse, deep with emotion. "Emily is about to die." Her voice flat with resignation, she asks, "Would you like me to tell her something for you?"

  And I say, "Never mind."

  I say, "Don't let her forget to bring my ten Milky Way candy bars."

  XXV.

  Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. It's not true that your life flashes before your eyes when you die. At least, not all of it. Some of your life might flash. Other portions of your life it might take you years and years to recall. That, I think, is the function of Hell: It's a place of remembering. Beyond that, the purpose of Hell is not so much to forget the details of our lives as it is to forgive them.

  And, yes, while the dead do miss everything and everybody, they don't hang around the earth forever.

  This one time, my dad flew our Learjet to attend some stockholder meeting in Prague, except that same day, my mom needed to be in Nairobi to collect some harelip-and-cleft-palate orphan or a film-festival award or some dumb something, so she leased a jet to fly her and me, except the leasing time-share jet people... they sent the exact diametrically WRONG kind of jet from what my mother had ordered, thoughtlessly dispatching one with gold-plated bathroom fixtures and hand-painted frescoes on the ceilings, exactly the sort of jet which younger members of the Saudi royal family would hire to fly a harem of Miss Coozey Coozerbilt call girls to Kuwait, and it was too late to send a different jet, and my mom went nuts, she was just so way-aesthetically freaked out.

  Well, walking into the hotel suite after the Academy Awards and stepping into about a billion half-eaten plates of old club sandwiches, then finding me de
ad and strangulated by a strip of Hello Kitty condoms—let's just say my mom freaked out even worse.

  At that time my spirit was still hovering in the room, crossing my spiritual fingers that somebody might bother to call the paramedics, and they'd rush in and perform some resuscitation miracle. Needless to say Goran was long gone. He and I had hung the Do Not Disturb sign so the maid hadn't performed the turndown service. No chocolates rested on the bed pillows. All the lights were turned off, plunging the suite into total pitch-darkness. My parents enter, tiptoeing because they think Goran and I are fast asleep. It wasn't pretty.

  No, it's never a special treat to watch your mom just scream and scream your name, then fall to her knees in a mess of ketchupy onion rings and cold prawn cocktails, grabbing at your dead shoulders, shaking you and yelling for you to wake up. It was my dad who called 911, but that was really, really way too late. The EMTs who came did more to treat my mom's hysterics than to rescue me. Of course the police came; they took as many photographs of me dead as People magazine had taken of me as a newborn baby. The homicide detectives lifted about a million of Goran's fingerprints off the strip of condoms. My mom took about a million Xanax, one after another. During all of this, my dad stalked over to the closet where Goran's new clothes were stored, threw open the closet door, and ripped the Ralph Lauren sportswear from the hangers, rending, shredding without a word shirts and trousers, buttons popping and ricocheting around the suite.

  All that time, all night, I could merely watch, as detached and distant as my mother accessing security cameras on her laptop. Maybe I drew the hotel curtains closed, or turned on a light, but nobody seemed to notice. At best, a sentry. At worst, a voyeur.