“I just want to go home.” Celso said in a small voice.
I’m sorry to say I did chuckle then. “You can’t go home. You’re dead.” Celso’s tapping stopped and he sagged in his chair as if his strings had been cut. “But you’re not alone,” I said. “Everybody here is as dead as you. That’s why we call it the Land of the Dead.” I put my scythe aside and carefully sat down. Even after all this time with my height extenders, I still had trouble judging how far it was to the chair. “Are you ready for your big journey?”
“No!” Celso practically jumped out of his chair with the intensity of his denial. But just as quickly he slumped back again. “What journey?” he asked helplessly.
“The four-year journey of the soul!” I tried to say enthusiastically. “It’s quite a trip. And I can’t lie to you, Celso: it can be very, very dangerous.” Celso looked ready to bolt again. “Unless… you take that money you were buried with and buy a better travel package from us!” I spread some brochures out on the table even though I knew it had to be pointless. “Wouldn’t you rather travel the Land of the Dead in your own sports car? Or try a luxury cruise? Or, if you’ve lived a very good life,” I said through gritted teeth, “you may even be eligible for a ticket on the Number Nine itself.”
A little voice in my mind started going ‘No-no-no-no!’ as Celso picked up the last brochure. “The Number Nine?” he asked hopefully.
I sighed a little. “That’s our top-of-the-line express train. It shoots straight to the Ninth Underworld—the Land of Eternal Rest—in four days instead of four years. But,” I added emphatically, “very few people qualify. Let’s take a look at your record.” I turned toward my computer and brought up Celso’s file. No surprises there. He wasn’t a bad man in the typical, living-person’s sense, but he had missed almost every opportunity for true virtue. I turned back to find Celso still engrossed in the Number Nine brochure.
“Well,” I said gently, “it looks like the train is a little out of your reach. But,” I said as I turned back to the computer, “I still have a few tricks up my sleeve.” I worked a few minutes with Celso not-breathing down my neck as I stretched every point in his favor to breaking point. “Ah-ha!” I exclaimed eventually and, maybe, triumphantly. “That’s the ticket! The Excelsior line!”
I collected my scythe and took Celso down to the street level. I made him wait outside while I had a demon fetch an Excelsior. Then I steeled myself and went out to Celso where he waited on the massive steps that led down to the street. I held out the walking stick to him and said, “Isn’t she a beauty?” Celso took it numbly while I went on. “That compass in the handle will sure come in handy, too.” He looked open jawed at the compass set into the knob of the stick. “Oh, you’re going to have a great trip, Mr. Flores. Wish I was going!” That last statement, at least, wasn’t perjury.
“Why don’t you?” Celso asked a little forlornly. “You could give me a lift.”
I couldn’t make ‘eye’ contact. “Oh, I can’t leave here until I pay off a little debt to the powers that be.”
“Community service, eh? Well,” he said almost brightly, “I guess there are some folks worse off than me.” With that he turned away and started, almost jauntily, down the steps.
“Oh, I’ll be leaving here soon enough,” I called out after him. Then, under my breath as I turned to go back inside, “No thanks to dead-end, no-commission, low-life cases like yours, menso.” I rode the elevator back to my floor and started trudging toward my office.
“Manny,” Eva called out to me, “Copal told me to tell you not to leave early today. He wants to talk to you about something.”
“Tell him not to worry,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Back in my office I took off my robe and kicked the high-lift things off my feet. “Especially not with clients like that!” I extracted my bottle of scotch from my now-empty premium-clients file cabinet and took a swig. “Where do they get these guys? They don’t qualify for anything good so I can’t sell anything good.” I took another long drink from the bottle. “Can’t work of my time and I’m stuck!” I cracked my hand on my so-called desk. “Stuck selling walking sticks to a bunch of burros for eternity!”
I shakily went to the window to peer through the blinds at the busy street far below. “I need better clients,” I said hoarsely. “I need a real saint. I need a lead on a rich, dead saint.” I sighed and leaned against the window, waiting for Copal to come in and chew me out again.
Day of the Dead Menu: Gazpacho, Botulism, Packing Foam
Needing and getting are two different things, particularly when everything seemed to be against me. The system was supposed to work in such a way that that I’d work off my time eventually. Client assignments were completely random. Statistically, one agent was just as likely as another to make premium sales. This was the system I had been working in and, up until now, it had been working great. I decided to go by the rules when I first began working for the DOD and I stuck to the rules even when the DOD stopped holding up its end. Eventually, though, I started breaking rules. And once I started, I broke a lot of them very quickly.
I came into the office late one morning. I had been getting into that habit lately. This morning, though, the place seemed deserted. Even Eva wasn’t at her desk; but I did see Copal’s door open a crack so I figured she must have been in there. When I got to my office I saw that the flag was up on my message tube. I was surprised, and a little hopeful, when I saw it wasn’t the standard work order.
To: All agents
From: Office Manager Don Copal
All right you boneheads, thank your lucky stars and get to your frigging cars! We have a mass poisoning on our hands! Too many dead to assign specific cases, so all clients are FIRST COME, FIRST SERVE! So let’s see some hustle out there!
I don’t think Copal knew what a period was.
I sighed and put the memo in my pocket. ‘Well, jefe,’ I thought, ‘if I do badly on this one at least I’ll know who’s to blame.’ I got my cloak and the things for my shoes and headed out. My scythe I always kept folded up next to where my heart used to be. Eva was back at her desk when I left my office.
“Buenos Días,” I said.
“Manny,” she said, a little puzzled. She hadn’t seen me come in, of course. “Why aren’t you at the poisoning?”
Deciding to have a little fun, I asked, “What poisoning?”
I imagined that Eva would have rolled her eyes if she had any. “Yeah! The code-three gazpacho poisoning that everybody’s at but you! Why do I send out memos if no one reads them?”
I had a little chuckle in me for that. I perched myself on the edge of her desk for the rest of our game. “Any messages for me?”
“Besides the one about the poisoning?” Eva asked slyly.
“Yeah!” I wondered if there really was one.
“I only have one other message for you, Manny: I’m not your secretary! I don’t take your messages! So get it through your thick skull and stop forwarding your phone to me!!”
It was so funny I fell off the desk.
“In my heart, though,” I said as I lay on the floor, “you’re still my secretary.”
She looked down at me. “Manny, what are you talking about? I was never your secretary, even when you were on top. I got one boss, same as you: Don Copal.” She mimed spitting the taste of his name out of her mouth. Quite a trick, really, when you’ve got no tongue or lips.