I ask, "Helen Gurley Brown?"
"You know," Archer says, "denial, bargaining, anger, depression…"
He means Elisabeth Kiibler-Ross.
"See," Archer says, and he smiles. "You are smart… smarter than me."
The truth is, Archer tells me, you stay in Hell until you forgive yourself. "You fucked up. Game over," he says, "so just relax."
The good news is that I'm not some fictional character trapped in a printed book, like Jane Eyre or Oliver Twist; for me anything is now possible. I can become someone else, not out of pressure and desperation, but merely because a new life sounds fun or interesting or joyful.
Archer shrugs and says, "Little Maddy Spencer is dead… now maybe it's time for you to get on with the adventure of your existence." As he shrugs, the envelope slips from under his arm and drifts to the stony ground. The manila envelope. The brown paper is stamped Confidential in red block letters.
I ask, "What's that?"
Stooping to retrieve the fallen envelope, Archer says, "This?" He says, "Here's the results of the salvation test you took." A dark crescent of dirt shows beneath each of his fingernails. Scattered across his face, the galaxy of pimples glow different shades of red.
By "salvation test" Archer refers to that weird polygraph test, the lie-detector setup where the demon asked my opinion about abortion and same-sex marriage. Meaning: the determination of whether I should be in Heaven or Hell, possibly even my permission to return to life on earth. Reaching spontaneously, compulsively for the envelope, I say, "Give it." The diamond ring, the one Archer stole and gave to me, the stone flashes around one finger of my outstretched hand.
Holding the envelope outside of my cell bars, beyond my reach, Archer says, "You have to promise you'll stop sulking."
Stretching my arm toward the envelope, carefully avoiding contact with the smutty metal bars of my cell, I insist that I'm not sulking.
Dangling the test results near my fingertips, Archer says, "You have a fly on your face."
And I wave it away. I promise.
"Well," Archer says, "that's a good start." Using one hand, Archer unclips the oversize safety pin and withdraws it from his cheek. As he did before, he pokes the sharpened point into the keyhole of my cell door and begins to pick the ancient lock.
The moment the door swings open, I step out, snatching the test results from his hand. My promise still fresh on my lips, still echoing in my ears, I tear open the envelope.
And the winner is…
XXVIII
Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. Please consider amending the famous slogan currently synonymous with the entrance of Hell. Rather than "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here…" it seems far more applicable and useful to post, "Abandon all tact…" Or perhaps, "Abandon all common courtesy…”
If you asked my mom, she'd say, "Maddy, life isn't a popularity contest."
Well, in rebuttal, I'd tell her that neither is death.
Those of you who have yet to die, please take careful note.
According to Archer, dead people are constantly sending messages to the living — and not just by opening window curtains or dimming the lights. For example, anytime your stomach is rumbling, that's caused by someone in the afterlife who's attempting to communicate with you. Or when you feel a sudden craving to eat something sweet, that's another means the dead have of being in touch. Another common example is when you sneeze several times in rapid succession. Or when your scalp itches. Or when you jolt awake at night with a savage leg cramp.
Cold sores on your lips… a bouncing, restless leg… ingrown hairs… according to Archer, these are all methods that dead people use to gain your attention, perhaps in order to express their affection or to warn you about an impending hazard.
In all seriousness, Archer claims that if you, as a living, alive person, hear the song "You're the One That I Want" from the musical Grease three times in a single day— seemingly by accident, whether in an elevator, on a radio, a telephone hold button, or wherever — it indicates that you'll surely die before sunset. In contrast, the phantom odor of scorched toast merely means that a deceased loved one continues to watch over you and protect you from harm.
When stray wild hairs sprout from your ears or nostrils or eyebrows, it's the dead trying to make contact. Even before legions of dead people were telephoning the living during the dinner hour and conducting polls about consumer preferences regarding brands of nondairy creamer, before the dead were providing salacious Web site content for the Internet, the souls of the expired have always been in constant contact with the living world.
Archer explains all of this to me while we trudge across the Great Plains of Broken Glass, wading the River of Steaming-hot Vomit, trekking across the vast Valley of Used Disposable Diapers. Pausing a moment, atop a stinking hill, he points out a dark smudge along the horizon. A low ceiling of buzzards, vultures, carrion birds soar and hover above that distant, dark landscape. "The Swamp of Partial-birth Abortions," Archer says, nodding his blue Mohawk in the direction of the shadowy marshes. We catch our breath and move on, skirting said horrors, continuing our foray toward the headquarters of Hell.
It's Archer's assertion that I ought to abandon being likable. My entire life, he's willing to wager, my parents and teachers have taught me to be pleasant and friendly No doubt I was constantly rewarded for being upbeat and peppy…
Plodding along beneath the flaming orange sky, Archer says, "Sure, the meek might inherit the earth, but they don t get jack shit in Hell…
He says that since I spent my entire life being nice, maybe I should consider some alternative demeanor for my afterlife. Ironic as it seems, Archer says nobody nice gets to exercise the kind of freedom a convicted killer enjoys in prison. If a formerly nice girl wants to turn over a new leaf, maybe explore being a bully or a bitch, or being pushy or simply being assertive and not just smiling bright toothpaste smiles and listening politely, well, Hell's the place to take that risk.
How Archer found himself damned for all eternity is, one day, his old lady sent him to shoplift some bread and diapers. Not old lady meaning wife, but old lady referring to his mother; she needed the diapers for his baby sister, except they didn't have the funds to pay, so Archer stalked around a neighborhood grocery store until he thought nobody was watching.
As the two of us walk along, shuffling through the flaky, waxy dead skin of the Dandruff Desert, we approach a small group of doomed souls. They stand in a cluster roughly the size of a cocktail party in the VIP lounge of a top-tier nightclub in Barcelona, every person turned to face the center of the crowd. There, raised above the core of the group, a man's fist waves in the air. Muffled within the people, a man's voice shouts.
At the edge of the crowd, Archer ducks his head near mine and whispers, "Now's your chance to practice."
Seen through the listening figures, filtered between their standing forms, their filthy arms and ratty heads of hair, there's no mistaking the center of their attention: a man with narrow shoulders, his dark hair parted so that it falls across his pale forehead. He thrashes the fetid air with both hands, gesticulating wildly, punching and slashing while he shouts in German. Dancing atop his upper lip is a boxy brown mustache no wider than his flared nostrils. His audience listens with the slack expressions of the catatonic.
Archer asks me, What's the worst that can happen? He says I ought to learn how to throw my weight around. He says to elbow my way to the front of a crowd. Push people out of my path. Play the bully. He shrugs, creaking the black leather sleeves of his jacket, saying, "You choose… " At that, Archer places one hand flat against the small of my back and shoves me forward.