He steps into the street. In the air is a hint of ripe peaches. And of coffee brewing. He looks up and down. No people. No cars. No birds, either. The sun is high but it feels mellow on his head. He walks toward the corner, and across the way is an urban park lush with live oaks whose broad limbs wear a dense cloak of Spanish moss.
And he is standing in front of Starbucks. And he steps in. And there is no one. But sitting on the center of the first table to the left of the door is a Venti that he knows — instinctively now — is a Toffee Nut Latte with extra foam. He knows it’s for him. He picks it up and it is sweetly warm in his hand, and he steps back outside, and he crosses the street and begins to follow a fieldstone path, and it is rising gently toward the center of the park, and he stops suddenly. He sets his McDonald’s to-go bag and his coffee down on a stone, and he steps off the path. There is no grass in Hell. Even at Satan’s hunting lodge it was fake. This appears to be real.
The broad, flat, dark green blades of Saint Augustine grass. He kneels down and puts his palms on the ground and it is soft and it yields and the smell of the soil and the real grass well up into him, and he stretches out forward and presses his chest and the side of his face into this living ground. He lies there for a long moment and then slowly rises, and he does not brush himself off but picks up his bag and his cup, and he continues along the curving path up the rise. And at the top is a chair. A familiar chair.
A low-slung Toshiyuki Kita recliner, the “Wink,” exactly the same as his reading chair after becoming the anchor of the Evening News from Hell, the first thing he bought strictly for himself in his Dakota apartment. He shared that apartment with someone. Someone who wasn’t crazy about this chair, but he was, and he bought it. It makes no difference who didn’t like it. He approaches the chair slowly, and he touches the twin yellow headrests, which always felt to him like his own two hands clasped comfortably behind his head, and he crouches down and eases onto the chair, settling into the broad sitting groove of its purple body. And he looks out at a wide azure pond in the center of the park, and beyond is a dense stand of water oak, and beyond the trees is a stacking of high-rise buildings, a cityscape of glass, with the sunlight reflecting there, but softly, and one skyscraper rises high above it all, its lean dusky brown facade a stacking of vertical piers going up to a gilded pyramid of open latticed girders that seem stuffed with the baby blue sky.
Hatcher eats his Big Mac. Pittsfield Kobe. He drinks his Starbucks latte. The caffeine rushes in him and he lets the foam evaporate on his lips. And when he finishes eating and drinking, he rubs the heels of his hands on the arms of the chair. And his thumb thinks to look for something, a little rub spot on the right arm. And he finds it. This is his chair. His. And he knows he is in Heaven.
And he has still seen no one else. He lifts his head a little. He looks off to the trees on the right. He looks off to the trees on the left. He looks at the pond, and he scans the far tree line. There is no one. And there is silence. Which is all right. He feels his body letting go. He lays his head back into the two soft hands of the chair. And he sleeps.
He wakes to stars. The night has come, and it is cool, and the air is full of the smell of Confederate jasmine. The tall buildings beyond the trees are dark, but the pyramid atop the skyscraper is lit brightly in gold. It floats in the sky before him like a fiery crown. Hatcher rises from his chair, and he walks back down the path, and there are bright lights all along this thoroughfare. He has always felt most comfortable in big cities. He steps in at Starbucks, and his evening latte is waiting on the table.
He goes back outside, and he stands in the center of the street, and he feels luxuriously slow inside. He sips his coffee. He takes his time. His coffee stays hot to the last drop, but not so hot that he can’t sip it as deeply as he wants, which he does, even at the very last, filling his mouth full and holding it warmly there and then letting it slide down. And all the while, he watches the bright golden crown floating above this Great Metropolis of Heaven.
And when he is finished with his coffee, he knows simply to open his hand, and he does, and the empty cup drifts off. And with a bit of a shock he realizes, as he stands there, that nothing hurts. There is not a single part of his body that isn’t feeling sweetly fine. And still he can’t take his eyes off the Great Skyscraper of Heaven. And suddenly the building below the pyramid, merely implied till now in the darkness, begins to come alive with light. The windows. The thousands of windows before him begin to flare into golden brightness. Quickly, in no discernible pattern, high and low and middle, left to right and right to left, the windows burst into light like the explosion of a Fourth of July rocket. It’s all for him, he feels. He begins to walk toward the building. And part of him is thinking: That’s where everyone is.
Hatcher passes through a street of restaurants and he sees all his favorite cuisines. Indian and Italian, Afghan and Vietnamese, even Eritrean. All the restaurants are brightly lit, all of them are empty of people, and each of them, he suspects, has his favorite dishes waiting in the center of a table. He passes through a street of clothing retailers. All lit. All empty. And then he enters a residential street of ornate, rusticated limestone urban mansions in Renaissance and Classical revivals, and he laughs at himself for thinking of these as architectural revivals. Everything’s a revival in Heaven. It’s a bland and esoteric little wisecrack he has made to himself but he laughs out loud. He can laugh now, even at bland and esoteric wisecracks. And his voice echoes in the street. He stops, struck once again by the silence. The houses are all dark. But they are suddenly less dark. Not from within but from without. They are beginning to lighten before his eyes. From the darkness, balustrades and friezes and Corinthian columns and Ionic columns and parapets and French doors are emerging. Softly, quickly, quietly, night is turning into day.
And he walks on, and soon, in the full light of morning, he is standing at a broad, maple-lined setback before the Great Skyscraper. Red maples. The building is vast above him, pulling his chest upward as he lifts his face to look. And then he walks beneath the maples. These are the trees of his time in Evanston, the trees that watched him holding… someone… in his arms. He can’t think who. He is under the maples. He is feeling peaceful. He approaches a high granite archway, and he pushes through the doors and crosses a marble lobby, his footsteps echoing all around him. And again, there are no people. He had the thought they might be here. Perhaps they still are, up above.
Hatcher enters an elevator. He has fifty-five floors to choose from. He starts with a middle one. He pushes 27 and the elevator fills with sound — the music of Brian Eno — the muted trickle of electronic sighs and cries and drippings. Music that once enchanted Hatcher. Music he played often. Music that drove someone crazy, he thinks, though he can’t think who. He can’t even think of some choices of who. He doesn’t feel the elevator moving, but the lights for the floors are flashing quickly upward. And then 27. The doors open. He steps onto plush carpeting. A broad window to the left looks out on the city. That interests him, but he’s more interested in this nagging thought that there are other souls quietly waiting somewhere. Or is it a hope? Thought, he thinks. Just a thought. He heads the other way and moves around a large desk in front of a wide reception wall that has no company name. Nothing.