“How is this even possible?” she said as she turned to me.
I looked away, ashamed at Connor’s approach. Maybe I missed the memo declaring Tough Love for all walk-in cases. I brought my eyes back to hers. “I don’t know. But I’m afraid it’s true, Irene. Death comes to all of us.”
“Then why am I here?” she demanded, her voice rising with anger. “Why aren’t I in heaven or hell or whatever there is out there? Why am I sitting in the back of a Village cafй talking to two strangers about the fact that I’mdead while one of them obnoxiously throws thingsinto me? Shouldn’t that be all she wrote, gentlemen? I mean, I’ve reached the proverbial end of the line, haven’t I?What am I still doing here? ”
“I wish there was an easy explanation I could give you,” Connor said, the frustration melting from his face. “There’s…just…a lot we don’t know yet.”
“Why don’t you tell me what youdo know?” she asked with open bitterness.
Connor was trying to keep his own hostility from kicking back in and I hoped he remembered just how traumatic these events were for Irene. But there was still sarcasm in his voice when he spoke. “Well, Ican say for certain that you are definitely deceased.”
“Connor,” I pleaded, hoping to soften him. “Come on.”
Why was he being like this? Too many years on the job? Maybe as with all service-oriented jobs, it was easy to lose sight of the fact that we dealt with other humans, touching their lives. Day in and day out, it took an extreme amount of effort to remember how to treat people.
“I apologize,” Connor said, backing down, “but like I said, you’re definitely passed on. I’m not sure how you died, but the kid and I can look into that. Don’t worry if you can’t remember anything right now. It’ll probably come back to you. As far as why you’re still here, well…usually when a spirit lingers, there’s something binding them to the material plane. Unfinished business of some sort. Nothing mundane, mind you. Nothing like ‘I forgot to turn the stove off.’ More of a vengeance thingie…or perhaps you have an important message to pass on to a loved one. It must be something that your soul found very disquieting when it was forced from your body so unexpectedly.”
“Do youhave any loved ones?” I had to ask, even if it sounded like I was suddenly playingThe Dating Game. But Irene was too caught up in what Connor was saying.
“And if I figure out why I’m here, then what?” she asked as she flickered in and out with increasing nervousness. One moment she was there, the next she looked like she was being energized by the transporter beam onStar Trek. “Where do I go from here?”
“That’s where it gets a bit sticky,” Connor said. “We’re not quite sure. Clearly the soul is meant to go somewhere, but we earthbound aren’t privy to that. We get stuck with the burden of determining just how these supernatural occurrences happen in the first place and what sort of impact it has on the living. Obviously there’s no known way to explore what lies on the other side without, you know, dying. It could be the soul gets recycled, reincarnated, and you’ll find yourself as a furry lemming headed off the cliffs of Dover in the next life. Conversely, youmay go to a heaven of some sort, but whose version of heaven? Is there a pantheon or are we talking monotheistic? In the end, though, there’s no simple way to give you a solid answer.”
“Can’t you research it?” she asked. “Or do something? This is my life here!”
I shook my head.
“There’s way too much paperwork to even set that in motion,” I said. “Our secretly sanctioned agency wouldn’t even know what forms to fill out to investigate what happens in the afterlife. We’re not budgeted for it, either.”
Irene had gone from angered to shocked. “So you’re telling me there’s too much bureaucracy, red tape, and too little funding to give me a definitive answer on my fate?”
“In a sense,” Connor said. “That’s merely the very tip of an enormous investigative iceberg, Irene. Let me see if I can explain this a bit further, because at this point, you really don’t have a lot of avenues. You’re dealing with an autonomous agency that deals in the paranormal, but we’re still under all the constraints of an office. Half our investigative results contradict what they’re finding in at least two of the other divisions! On any given case, we’ve got monotheistic proof, polytheistic proof, and no proof whatsoever-all at the same time! It’s mind-boggling, even to me. I can’t even address some of the seemingly simple questions.”
“Such as?” Irene asked.
“Well,” Connor said as he pointed to Irene, “here’s a good one. I can’t tell you why your hand can pass through most solid objects, yet somehow you’re material enough to sit on that sofa without falling through it.”
Irene looked nervously at the sofa below her. “What exactlyis your function here, Mr. Christos?”
Connor smiled. “I see dead people…for a living.”
“Meaning what?” Irene asked with persistence.
“Look around the room, Irene,” Connor said. “Most of the people in this room are trained specialists in some bizarre field or another. Most of them can’t even see you sitting here with us. Not everyone does what I do. Not everyone can see what I see. Hell, the kid didn’t even notice you were dead until I pointed it out to him.”
“Well, I noticed you,” I added. “But I didn’t notice that you were…recently deceased…”
Connor continued, “People like you, Irene, are one of my purposes for being here. I need to figure out why you’re still with us.”
“Maybe we all become like this?” she offered. “Maybe this is as good as it gets. What if all we have to look forward to is hanging around after death, being ignored by the living and occasionally spotted by some crackpot on the street!”
“Well, then, you’re in luck,” I said cheerfully, “because we’re just those types of crackpots!”
Connor ignored us, shook his head again, and continued.
“That’s extremely doubtful,” he said. “And I’ll tell you why. Manhattan is a city of over eight million residents, not to mention tourists and commuters. The amount of death that occurs daily in an energy center like this is astounding, but the documented occurrences of souls walking around are negligible in comparison. If what you’re proposing were the case-if all spirits hung around after dying-I wouldn’t be able to go two feet in any direction without tripping over someone’s soul. It’s just not the case.”
There was a moment’s silence as Irene thought it over. I watched her, looking for signs of comprehension, but only noticed the cute crinkle of her nose. She looked to Connor and quietly asked, “Why doyou think I’m here?”
“Honestly, I haven’t a clue, Irene. But I need you to think. Think hard. Are there any words, any thoughts that spring randomly to mind? Anything at all? I want to see if you’re capable of free-associating any information that might be useful to us. Names…faces…an address, perhaps?”
Her brow furrowed with the effort of recollection, her nose scrunching up again.
After several moments of trying, she said, “Nothing.”
“Damn,” Connor said.
“Well, now what?” I asked.
“Wait a minute!” Irene said with a sudden burst of excitement. “That word.Now.”
“I think we’d need something a lot more specific there, Irene,” he said.
“Quiet,” she said, waving him away. “It triggered something, I’m not sure what. I have an image of that word floating in my head. I’ve seen it somewhere recently. I think it was on one of the movie posters out in the cafй.”
I leaned across the table wanting to reach out to her, but refraining. God only knows what part of her I’d accidentally put my hand through this time.