outstretched hand.
Holding the envelope outside of my cell bars, beyond my reach, Archer says, 'You have to promise you'll stop sulking.'
Stretching my arm toward the envelope, carefully avoiding contact with the smutty metal bars of my cell, I insist that I'm not sulking.
Dangling the test results near my fingertips, Archer says, 'You have a fly on your face.'
And I wave it away. I promise.
'Well,' Archer says, 'that's a good start.' Using one hand,
Archer unclips the oversize safety pin and withdraws it from his cheek. As he did before, he pokes the sharpened point into the keyhole of my cell door and begins to pick the ancient lock.
The moment the door swings open, I step out, snatching the test results from his hand. My promise still fresh on my lips, still echoing in my ears, I tear open the envelope.
XXVIII.
If you asked my mom, she'd say, 'Maddy, life isn't a popularity contest.'
Well, in rebuttal, I'd tell her that neither is death.
Those of you who have yet to die, please take careful note.
According to Archer, dead people are constantly sending messages to the living—and not just by opening window curtains or dimming the lights. For example, anytime your stomach is rumbling, that's caused by someone in the afterlife who's attempting to communicate with you. Or when you feel a sudden craving to eat something sweet, that's another means the dead have of being in touch. Another common example is when you sneeze several times in rapid succession. Or when your scalp itches. Or when you jolt awake at night with a savage leg cramp.
Cold sores on your lips... a bouncing, restless leg... ingrown hairs... according to Archer, these are all methods that dead people use to gain your attention, perhaps in order to express their affection or to warn you about an impending hazard.
In all seriousness, Archer claims that if you, as a living, alive person, hear the song 'You're the One That I Want' from the musical
When stray wild hairs sprout from your ears or nostrils or eyebrows, it's the dead trying to make contact. Even before legions of dead people were telephoning the living during the dinner hour and conducting polls about consumer preferences regarding brands of nondairy creamer, before the dead were providing salacious Web site content for the Internet, the souls of the expired have always been in constant contact with the living world.
Archer explains all of this to me while we trudge across the Great Plains of Broken Glass, wading the River of Steaming-hot Vomit, trekking across the vast Valley of Used Disposable Diapers. Pausing a moment, atop a stinking hill, he points out a dark smudge along the horizon. A low ceiling of buzzards, vultures, carrion birds soar and hover above that distant, dark landscape. 'The Swamp of Partial-birth Abortions,' Archer says, nodding his blue Mohawk in the direction of the shadowy marshes. We catch our breath and move on, skirting said horrors, continuing our foray toward the headquarters of Hell.
It's Archer's assertion that I ought to abandon being likable. My entire life, he's willing to wager, my parents and teachers have taught me to be pleasant and friendly No doubt I was constantly rewarded for being upbeat and peppy...
Plodding along beneath the flaming orange sky, Archer says, 'Sure, the meek might inherit the earth, but they don t get jack shit in Hell...
He says that since I spent my entire life being nice, maybe I should consider some alternative demeanor for my afterlife. Ironic as it seems, Archer says nobody nice gets to exercise the kind of freedom a convicted killer enjoys in prison. If a formerly nice girl wants to turn over a new leaf, maybe explore being a bully or a bitch, or being pushy or simply being assertive and not just smiling bright toothpaste smiles and listening politely, well, Hell's the place to take that risk.
How Archer found himself damned for all eternity is, one day, his old lady sent him to shoplift some bread and diapers. Not old lady meaning wife, but old lady referring to his mother; she needed the diapers for his baby sister, except they didn't have the funds to pay, so Archer stalked around a neighborhood grocery store until he thought nobody was watching.
As the two of us walk along, shuffling through the flaky, waxy dead skin of the Dandruff Desert, we approach a small group of doomed souls. They stand in a cluster roughly the size of a cocktail party in the VIP lounge of a top- tier nightclub in Barcelona, every person turned to face the center of the crowd. There, raised above the core of the group, a man's fist waves in the air. Muffled within the people, a man's voice shouts.
At the edge of the crowd, Archer ducks his head near mine and whispers, 'Now's your chance to practice.'
Seen through the listening figures, filtered between their standing forms, their filthy arms and ratty heads of hair, there's no mistaking the center of their attention: a man with narrow shoulders, his dark hair parted so that it falls across his pale forehead. He thrashes the fetid air with both hands, gesticulating wildly, punching and slashing while he shouts in German. Dancing atop his upper lip is a boxy brown mustache no wider than his flared nostrils. His audience listens with the slack expressions of the catatonic.
Archer asks me, What's the worst that can happen? He says I ought to learn how to throw my weight around. He says to elbow my way to the front of a crowd. Push people out of my path. Play the bully. He shrugs, creaking the black leather sleeves of his jacket, saying, 'You choose... ' At that, Archer places one hand flat against the small of my back and shoves me forward.
I stumble, jostling the crowd, falling against their woolen coat sleeves, treading on the polished brown uppers of their shoes. Honestly, everyone present wears the type of sensible clothes best suited to Hell: loden coats of deep green and gray flannel, thick-soled shoes and boots of leather, tweed hats. The only ill-chosen fashion accessory present is an abundance of armbands worn around everyone's biceps, red armbands emblazoned with black swastikas.
Archer tosses a look at the speaker. Still whispering to me, he says, 'Little girl... if you can't be rude to Hitler...'
He urges me to go pick a fight. Stomp some Nazi ass.
I shake my head no. My face blushing. After a lifetime of being trained never to interrupt, I couldn't. I can't. The skin of my face flushes hot, feeling as deep red as Archer's pimples. As red as the swastika armbands.
'What?' Archer whispers, his mouth pulled into a sideways smirk, his skin bunched around the stainless-steel lance of the safety pin which skewers his cheek. He chides me, saying, 'What? Are you afraid Mister Herr Hitler might not
Within me, a tiny voice asks, What's the worst that can happen? I lived. I suffered. I died—the worst fate any mortal person can imagine. I'm dead, and yet something of me continues to survive. I'm eternal. For better or worse. It's obsequious little nicety-nice girls like me who allow assholes to run the world: Miss Harlot O'Harlots, billionaire phony tree huggers, hypocrite drug-snorting, weed-puffing peace activists who fund the mass-murdering drug cartels and perpetuate crushing poverty in dirt-poor banana republics. It's my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My cowardice enables atrocities. Under my own steam, I step away from Archer's pushing hand. I'm shouldering my way through woolen coat sleeves, elbowing between the swastikas, clawing and swimming a path toward the center of the crowd. With each step I'm actively stomping on strangers' feet, wedging myself, plunging deeper into the tightly packed mass of the damned, until I burst into the eye of the
