Damned

definition of erroneous, I only have to look around.

And if you can stomach knowing one more fact about the afterlife, here it is: Nobody grieves more at funerals than does the newly deceased. That's why I'm so pathetically grateful when I avert my gaze from this dismal tableau to see, parked at the curb, just idling at the edge of a graveyard lane, a black Lincoln Town Car. The shiny waxed-and-polished black of it reflects the army of mourners... the blue sky... the gravestones of Forest Lawn... really, it reflects everything except for me, because the dead don't have reflections. On earth, the dead don't cast a shadow or show up in photographs. Best of all, standing beside the car is a uniformed chauffeur, his hair hidden beneath a visored cap and half his face blocked behind mirrored sunglasses. In his black-driving-gloved hand he holds a white clipboard with, written across it in blocky handwriting, Madison Spencer. This driver wears a little chrome name tag on his lapel, his name engraved there, but it's not worth the bother to read, because I know from long habit that I'll forget it a millisecond from now and just start calling him George.

Having spent half my life tooling around in these car-service cars, I know the drill. I take a step, another step, a third step toward the car, and the driver wordlessly opens the rear door and steps aside for me to enter. He makes a slight bow and touches the edge of the clipboard to the edge of his visored hat in a little salute. Once the legs of my skort are safely ensconced in the seat, the driver swings the door closed with a thud, the solid sound of a quality-made American land yacht, so heavy and muffled that it ends any suggestion of the living, breathing world outside. The windows are so darkly tinted that I find myself in a cradling cocoon of black leather, the smell of leather polish, the cold feel of air-conditioning, and the soft gleam of murky glass windows and brass interior trim. The only sound comes from behind the old-school partition that separates the front and rear seats. Submerged under the overall smell of leather is another, fainter smell; it's as if someone has recently peeled and eaten a hard- boiled egg in this car, a tiny stink of sulfur or methane. And there's the smell of popcorn... popcorn and caramel... popcorn balls. The little window in the center of the partition is shut, but I can hear the driver take his seat and click his seat belt. The engine starts and the car moves forward in slow, languid motion. After a long moment the front of the car tilts upward. It's the same sensation one associates with the long climb up the first hill of a roller coaster or the impossibly steep ascent needed for a Gulfstream to achieve takeoff from the little alpine airport of Locarno, Switzerland.

The padded and upholstered leathery womb that is the backseat of a Town Car... anytime one finds oneself in such a place she ought to assume she's en route to Hades. In the magazine pocket sits the usual assortment of trade rags, including the Hollywood Reporter, Variety, and a copy of the Vanity Fair with my mom grinning on the cover and spouting her Gaia, Earth First! gibberish on the inside. She looks Photoshopped almost beyond recognition.

And yes, my parents have taught me well about the Power of Context and Marcel Duchamp, and how even a urinal becomes art when you hang it on the wall of a classy gallery. And pretty much anyone could pass as a movie star if you put their mug shot on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine. But that's how come I so, so, so appreciate crossing into the afterlife aboard a Lincoln Town Car as compared to a bus or a pole barge or some other cattle-car, steerage form of sweaty mass transit. So I again thank you, Satan.

The steep rising angle of the car's trajectory and the resulting g-forces settle me deeper into the leather upholstery. The little window in the driver's partition slides aside to reveal the chauffeur's sunglasses framed in the rearview mirror. Speaking to me via his reflection, the driver says, 'If you don't mind my asking... are you related to the movie producer Antonio Spencer?' Of his features, all I can see is his mouth, and his smile stretches to become a spooky leer.

I retrieve the copy of Vanity Fair and hold the cover photo of my mother beside my own face, saying, 'See any resemblance? Unlike my mom I have pores...' Already,

I'm falling asleep, drifting off. Sadly, I sense where this conversation is going.

The driver says, 'I do some screenwriting, myself.'

And yes, of course, I saw this reveal coming from the moment I first saw the car. Every driver is named George, and every driver in California has a screenplay ready to fob onto you, and since the age of four—when I came home from Halloween trick-or-treating, my pillowcase loaded with spec screenplays, I've been trained to manage this awkward situation. As my dad would say, 'We're not reading for new projects at this time...' Meaning: 'Go peddle your spec script to some other sucker for financing.' But despite a childhood of arduous training in how to gently and politely dash the hopes and dreams of moderately gifted, earnest young talents... maybe just because I'm exhausted... maybe because I realize that the eternal afterlife will seem even longer without the distraction of even low-quality reading material... I say, 'Sure.' I say, 'Get me a clean copy, and I'll give it a read.'

Even as I'm drifting off to sleep, my hands still gripping the Vanity Fair with my mom's face on the cover, I sense that the front of the car is no longer climbing into the sky. It's leveled off, and, as if we've crested a mountain, we're slowly beginning to tilt downward in a slow, perilous, straight-down plunge.

From the rearview mirror, still leering, the driver says, 'You might want to buckle up, Miss Spencer.'

That said, I release my magazine and it falls down, through the partition hole, and lies flattened against the inside of the windshield.

'Another thing is,' the driver says, 'when we get to our destination, you don't want to touch the cage bars. They're pretty dirty.'

The car plummeting, plunging, diving impossibly fast, in ever-accelerating free fall, I quickly and sleepily fasten my seat belt.

XXVII.

Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. By their nature, stories told in the second person can suggest prayers. 'Hallowed he thy name... the Lord is with thee...' With this in mind, please don't get the idea that I'm praying to you. It's nothing personal, but I'm simply not a satanist. Nor, despite my parents' best efforts, am I a secular humanist. In light of finding myself in the afterlife, neither am I any longer a confident atheist nor agnostic. At the moment, I'm not certain in what I believe. Far be it from me to pledge my faith to any belief system when, at this point, it would seem that I've been wrong about everything I've ever felt was real.

In truth, I'm no longer even certain who I, myself, am.

My dad would tell you, 'If you don't know what comes next, take a good long look at what came before.' Meaning: If you allow it, your past tends to dictate your future. Meaning: It's time I retrace my footsteps. With that in mind, I abandon my job at the telemarketing phone bank and set off on foot, carrying my new high heels, wearing my trusty, durable loafers. Clouds of black houseflies hover, buzzing, dense and heavy as black smoke. The Sea of Insects continues to boil in eternal rolling, gnashing chaos, its shimmering, iridescent surface stretching to the horizon. The prickly hillocks of discarded finger- and toenail parings continue to grow and slough in scratchy avalanches. The desert of broken glass crunches underfoot. The noxious Great Ocean of Wasted Sperm continues to spread, engulfing the hellish landscape around it.

And yes, I find myself a thirteen-year-old dead girl gaining a fuller knowledge of her own trust issues, but what I'd really rather be is an Eastern Bloc orphan abandoned and alone in my misery, ignored, with no possibility of rescue until I become indifferent to my own horrid circumstances and unhappiness. Or, as my mother would tell me, 'Blah, blah, blah... shut up, Madison.'

My point is, I've made my entire identity about being smart. Other girls, mostly Miss Slutty Vandersluts, they chose to be pretty; that's an easy enough decision when you're young. As my mom would say, 'Every garden looks beautiful in May.' Meaning: Everyone is somewhat attractive when she's young. Among young ladies, it's a default choice, to compete on the level of physical attractiveness. Other girls, those doomed by hooked noses or ravaged skin, settle on being wildly funny. Other girls turn athletic or anorexic or hypochondriac. Lots of girls choose the bitter, lonely, lifetime path of being Miss Snarky Von Snarkskis, armored within their sharp-tongued anger. Another life choice is to become the peppy and upbeat student body politician. Or possibly to invent myself as the perennial morose poetess, poring over my private verse, channeling the dreary weltschmerz of Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf. But, despite so many options, I chose to be smart—the intelligent fat girl who possessed the shining brain, the straight-A student who'd wear sensible, durable shoes and eschew volleyball and manicures and giggling.