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.
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.