Gabriel's Inferno

He unlocked the door and held it open.

“Gabriel?” She paused once she entered the hallway, turning to look up at him.

“Yes?”

“I need to tell you something.”

“Proceed.” He sounded grim.

“Paulina cal ed last night, while you were — unavailable. And I answered the phone.”

He removed his glasses and began rubbing his eyes. “Shit. What did she say?”

“She called me a slut and told me to roll you over and hand you the phone. I said you were indisposed.”

“Did she say why she was calling?”

“No.”

“Did you tell her who you are? Your name?”

Julia shook her head.

“Thank God,” he muttered.

She frowned. She’d expected him to apologize for Paulina. But he didn’t. In fact, he seemed entirely unfazed by her behavior, as if he were more concerned about Julia upsetting her than the other way round.

She must be his mistress.

Julia fixed him with a stony gaze, as her body began to vibrate with anger. “You begged me to come after you — to look for you in Hell. That’s exactly where I found you. And you can stay there forever, for all I care.”

He stepped back, replacing his glasses, his eyes narrowing into slits.

“What are you talking about?”

“Nothing. I’m done, Professor Emerson.” She turned on her heel and walked to the elevator.

Confused, he watched her walk away, his thoughts hazy and unfocused.

After a moment he jogged after her. “Why did you write that ridiculous note?”

She felt as if he’d stabbed a dagger into her heart. She straightened her shoulders and tried to steady her voice. “What note?”

“You know damned well what note! The note you left in my fridge.”

Julia shrugged dramatically.

He grabbed her elbow and spun her around. “Is this a game to you?”

“Of course not! Let me go.” She pulled her arm away from him and began punching the down button for the elevator, willing it to come to her rescue. She was humiliated and angry, feeling silly and oh so small. She couldn’t get away from him fast enough, even if she ran down the stairs.

He moved a step closer. “Why did you sign the note the way you did?”

“Why do you care?”

He heard the elevator approaching and knew that he had mere seconds to get answers to his questions. He closed his eyes, her previous words thundering in his ears. She looked for him in Hell. He’d begged the brown-eyed angel to come looking for him. Of course, she hadn’t. Hallucinations don’t respond to begging.

What if Beatrice wasn’t a hallucination? What if… He felt something like fear begin to creep across his skin. Once again, the impossible floated before his eyes. If he concentrated, he could see her in his memory, but her face was blurry.

The ringing of a bell signaled the arrival of the elevator.

His eyes snapped open.

She stepped through the open door and shook her head at him, at his confusion, and at the intoxication that still swam in his eyes. Everything hinged on this. She could tell him or she could keep secret what happened between them just as she always had. Just as she had for six fucking years.

As the door slowly began to close, she saw a wave of realization wash over him.

“Beatrice?” he whispered.

“Yes,” she said, moving so she could maintain eye contact with him until the last possible second. “I’m Beatrice. You were my first kiss. I fell asleep in your arms in your precious orchard.”

Gabriel sprang forward to stop the elevator door from closing. “Beatrice! Wait!”

He was too late. The door closed at the sound of her name. He pressed the button furiously, hoping to reopen the doors.

“I’m not Beatrice anymore.” As the elevator began its slow but unstop-pable descent, Julia burst into tears.

Gabriel pressed his forehead and palms against the cold steel of the elevator door.

What have I done?

Chapter 15

Old Mr. Krangel looked out his peephole into the hallway and saw nothing out of the ordinary. He’d heard voices, a man and a woman arguing, but couldn’t see anyone. He’d even heard a name — Beatrice. But he was unaware of any tenant called Beatrice on the floor. And now the hall appeared to be empty.

He’d already ventured out once that morning; he’d had to return his anonymous neighbor’s Saturday paper, which had been delivered to his door by mistake. The Krangels didn’t take the Saturday paper, but Mrs. Krangel suffered from dementia and had picked it up and hid it in the apartment the day before.

Slightly annoyed at having his Sunday morning thus interrupted by a kemfn in the hallway, Mr. Krangel opened his door and stuck his aged head out. Not fifty feet away, he saw a man leaning against the closed elevator door. His shoulders were shaking.

Mr. Krangel was immediately embarrassed by the pathetic sight before him but was momentarily mesmerized.

He didn’t recognize the man, and he wasn’t about to introduce himself.

Surely a grown man who would waltz about the thirtieth floor of an apartment building barefoot and casually dressed and…doing whatever it was he was doing, was not the kind of person he wished to know. Men from his generation never cried. Of course, they never took their socks off in hallways, either. Unless they were — odd. Or lived in California.

Mr. Krangel retreated quickly, closed and locked his door, and called the concierge downstairs to report a barefoot crying man out in the hallway who had just had a screaming kemfn with a woman called Beatrice.

It took five tiresome minutes to explain to the concierge what a kemfn was. Mr. Krangel vocally lamented this fact, choosing to place the blame on the Toronto District School Board and their narrow, waspish curriculum.

* * *

It was late October, and the weather in Toronto was already cool.

Julia was without something warm under her coat as she slowly and miserably walked home, because she’d left Professor Emerson’s fouled sweater behind. She hugged her arms tightly across her chest, wiping away angry and resigned tears.

People passed her on the street and gave her sympathetic glances.

Canadians could be like that — quietly sympathetic but politely distant.

Julia was grateful for their sympathy and even more grateful that no one stopped to ask why she was crying. For her story was both too long and too utterly fucked up to tell.

Julia never asked herself why bad things happen to good people, for she already knew the answer: bad things happen to everyone. Not that this was an excuse or a justification for wronging another human being. Still, all humans had this shared experience — that of suffering. No human being left this world without shedding a tear, or feeling pain, or wading into the sea of sorrow. Why should her life be any different? Why should she expect special, favored treatment? Even Mother Teresa suffered, and she was a saint.