Damned

would never fess up to that, except maybe to Vanity Fair.

Even as our driver bears my mom and me hotel-ward, Goran remains on the tarmac, where my dad will try his best to explain the surreal wit inherent in decorating the interior of a space-age, multimillion-dollar aircraft to resemble the wattle yurt of a Stone Age caveman family. My dad will drone about the multivalent way in which our ersatz mud hut will resonate as smart and ironic with the well-educated literati, yet read as sincere and environmentally forward with the erstwhile younger fan base of my mother's films.

And, yes, I might be dreamy and preadolescent, but I know the meaning of multivalent. Kind of. I think. Pretty much.

On the notebook computer, I key Ctrl+Alt+J to spy on the interior of our jet. There, my dad is trying to tell Goran all about Marshall McLuhan while Goran simply glares at the security camera, scowling out of the computer screen directly at me.

Strictly by accident, mind you, one time—I swear, I'm no Miss Wanton McSlutski—but I toggled Ctrl+Alt+T and caught a gander of Goran taking a shower, naked. Not that I was peeking on purpose, but I did see that he already had some hair... down there. To understand my panting pursuit of Goran, he of the plush lips and frigid glare, you need to know my first baby picture appeared on the cover of People magazine. Personally, I've never served as a satisfactory mirror for my parents' success because luxuries were a given. From my birth, the world was already rendered deferential. At best I served as a souvenir—like drugs or grunge music—of my parents' long-gone younger selves. The adopted children were supposed to affirm my mom and dad's hard work and resulting rewards. You pluck some famished skeleton out of an Ethiopian dirt hole, hustle him aboard a Gulfstream, and serve him a selection of free-range Havarti baked in gluten-free, whole-grain tart shells, and it's way more likely that kid will bother to say thank-you. Here's some kid who had a life expectancy of around zero—the drooling vultures already circling overhead—and, no duh, he's going to get all excited about a dumb weekend house party with Babs Streisand in East Hampton.

But what do I know; I'm dead. I'm a dead brat. If I were way brilliant I'd be alive, like you. Nevertheless, if you ask me, most people have children just as their own enthusiasm about life begins to wane. A child allows us to revisit the excitement we once felt about, well... everything. A generation later, our grandkids bump up our enthusiasm yet again. Reproducing is a kind of booster shot to keep us loving life. For my parents, first having blase me, then adopting a string of brats, ending with bored, hostile Goran, it truly illustrates the Law of Diminishing Margin of Returns.

My dad would tell you, 'Every audience gets the performance it expects.' Meaning: If I'd been a more appreciative child, maybe they'd have seemed like better parents. On a larger scale, maybe if I'd shown more gratitude and appreciation for the precious miracle of my life, then maybe life itself would've seemed more wonderful.

Maybe that's why poor people give thanks BEFORE they eat their nasty tuna casserole dinner.

If the living are haunted by the dead, then the dead are haunted by their own mistakes. Maybe if I hadn't been so flip and glib, maybe my parents wouldn't have looked to get their emotional needs met by corralling together so many other destitute kids.

As the chauffeur arrives at the hotel, and the doorman steps forward to open the car door, I hit Ctrl+Alt+B to search my bedroom closet in Barcelona, and there's my missing pink blouse. In an instant message to the Somali maid, I tell her where to overnight the blouse in time for my tryst with Goran. I almost tell her, 'Thanks,' except I don't know the exact word in her language.

And yes, I know the word tryst. I know an awful lot of things, especially for a thirteen-year-old, dead fat girl. But maybe I don't know as much as I think.

At that, my mom rips open another envelope and says, 'And the winner is...'

XIV.

Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. I know what you're thinking... to you I'm just some spoiled, rich brat who's never had to work a day in her life. In my defense, I'm proud to say that I've obtained full- time employment. A genuine job. As of now I'm a regular working stiff—if you'll pardon the terrible pun. What follows might seem ragged, but please consider it an impressionistic slice o' death. A glimpse into a day in the death of me.

As far as I can tell, you have a choice between two types of careers in Hell. Your first option is you can work for one of those Web sites which everyone assumes are run in Russia or Burma, where naked men and women stare unflinchingly into the webcams, a dazed look in their glassy eyes, while they lick their fingers and insert greasy plastic model airplanes or plantain bananas halfway into their shaved woo-woos or hoo-hoos. Either that, or they fake-smile while sipping their own urine out of champagne flutes. You see, Hell is responsible for about 85 percent of the Internet's total smut content. The demons just tack up some old, soiled bed sheet to serve as a backdrop, they throw a foam-rubber mattress on the ground, and you're expected to flop around, putting junk inside yourself and responding to the real-time Web chat of alive perverts, worldwide.

Frankly, I've never been that desperate for attention. Do not mistake me for one of those troubled preteens who walk around, practically wearing a T-shirt which says: Ask Me About My Rape. Or, Ask Me About My Alcoholism.

The dirty little secret about Hell is that the demons are always running tabs on you. If you breathe their air, if you loiter, the powers that be are constantly dinging you for the cost. No, it's not fair, but the demons charge you for your upkeep. The meter is always running, and you're piling up years of additional torture, according to Babette, who it turns out used to manage people's paperwork until she had to take a stress-related disability leave of absence and return to her cage for a little nonclerical R&R. Babette says most people are condemned for only a few aeons, but they accrue additional time simply by occupying space in Hell. It's like being over the limit on your charge cards, or accidentally flying your jet into French airspace; the clock starts ticking the moment you've gone too far. The bean counters are keeping track, and someday you'll be socked with a massive bill.

Jewels and cash are worthless here. The currency is candy, and marshmallow peanuts are accepted as payment for all bribes and debts. Root Beer Barrels are as valuable as rubies. The hellish equivalent of pennies are popcorn balls... black licorice... wax lips... and these are cast aside in disdain.

Probably I shouldn't even tell you this—the job market is tight enough as it is—but if you have any aspirations to earn your daily Junior Mints, you need to find a career and get working.

Not that you'll ever actually die—not you—not after all the antioxidants you've choked down and all those laps around the reservoir. Ha!

But just in case you don't want to spend eternity giving yourself high colonics on some sleazy Web site, ogled by mil-lions of men with serious intimacy problems, the other type of work which most people do in Hell is— telemarketing. Yes, this means sitting at a desk, elbow-to-elbow with fellow doomed telemarketing associates who stretch to the horizon in either direction, all of you yakking on headsets.

My job is: The dark forces are constantly calculating when it's dinnertime anywhere on earth, and a computer autodials those phone numbers so I can interrupt everyone's meal. My goal isn't actually to sell you anything; I just ask if you have a few seconds to take part in a market research study identifying consumer trends in chewing gum. In mouthwash. In dryer fabric-softener sheets. I get to wear my headset telephone and work from a flowchart of possible responses. Best of all, I get to talk to real-live people—like yourself—who are still living and breathing and have no idea that I'm dead and phoning them from the Afterlife. Trust me, the vast majority of telemarketing people who ring you up, they're dead. As are pretty much all Internet porn models.

Okay, it's not as if I'm practicing brain surgery or tax law, but it beats sticking crayons inside my hoo-hoo on a Web site called 'Crazy Nympho Girly Pleasures Self Using School Supply [sic].'

The autodialer connects me to somebody alive, and I say, 'I'm conducting a market study to better serve the chewing gum consumers in your area...Do you have a moment to answer a few questions?' If the alive person hangs up, the computer connects me to a new phone number. If the living person answers my questions, the flowchart instructs me to ask more. Each person seated at the phone bank has a laminated sheet of questions, more questions than you could count. The point is to impose on the respondent, always entreating to ask just