“What’s more, do you know that there are two people working full time running errands for the people stranded in their apartments without anyone to help. I’m not exaggerating. They’re called auxiliaries! Think what that must cost.
“Or if there’s an emergency? They’ll send the doctor into the building rather than carry someone down so many steps. If my hemorrhaging had started when I was up here instead of at the Clinic, I might not be alive today. I was lucky, that’s all. Think of that—I could be dead just because nobody in this building cares enough to make the fucking elevators function! So I figure, it’s my responsibility now. Put up or shut up. Right?
“I’ve started a petition, and naturally everyone will sign it. That doesn’t take any effort. But what does is, I’ve started sounding out a couple of the people who might be helpful and they agree that the auxiliary system is a ridiculous waste, but they say that even so it would cost more to keep the elevator running. I told them that people would be willing to pay for tickets, if money’s the only problem. And they’d say yes, no doubt, absolutely. And then—fuck off, Miss Hanson, and thank you for your concern.
“There was one, the worst of them so far, a toadstool at the MODICUM office called R.M. Blake, who just kept saying what a wonderful sense of responsibility I have. Just like that: What a wonderful sense of responsibility you have, Miss Hanson. What big guts you have, Miss Hanson. I wanted to say to him, Yeah, the better to crush you with, Grandma. The old whitened sepulcher.
“It’s funny, isn’t it, the way we’ve switched round? The way it’s so symmetrical. It used to be I was religious and you were political, now it’s just the reverse. It’s like, did you see The Orphans the other night? It was sometime in the Nineteenth Century and there was this married couple, very cozy and very poor, except that each of them has one thing to be proud of. the man has a gold pocket watch, and the woman, poor darling, has her hair. So what happens? He pawns his watch to buy her a comb, and she sells her hair to get him a watch chain. A real ding-dong of a story.
“But if you think about it, that’s what we’ve done. Isn’t it? January?
“January, are you asleep?”
14. Lottie, at Bellevue (2026)
“They talk about the end of the world, the bombs and all, or if not the bombs then about the oceans dying, and the fish, but have you ever looked at the ocean? I used to worry, I did, but now I say to myself—so what. So what if the world ends? My sister though, she’s just the other way—if there’s an election she has to stay up and watch it. Or earthquakes. Anything. But what’s the use?
“The end of the world. Let me tell you about the end of the world. It happened fifty years ago. Maybe a hundred. And since then it’s been lovely. I mean it. Nobody tries to bother you. You can relax. You know what? I like the end of the world.”
15. Lottie, at the White Rose Bar (2024)
“Of course, there’s that. When people want something so badly, say a person with cancer, or the problems I have with my back, then you tell yourself you’ve been cleared. And you haven’t. But when it’s the real thing you can tell. Something happens to their faces. The puzzlement is gone, the aggression. Not a relaxing away like sleep, but suddenly. There’s someone else there, a spirit, touching them, soothing what’s been hurting them so. It might be a tumor, it might be mental anguish. But the spirit is very definite, though the higher ones can be harder to understand sometimes. There aren’t always words to explain what they experience on the higher planes. But those are the ones who can heal, not the lower spirits who’ve only left our plane a little while ago. They’re not as strong. They can’t help you as much because they’re still confused themselves.
“What you should do is go there yourself. She doesn’t mind if you’re skeptical. Everybody is, at first, especially men. Even now for me, sometimes I think—she’s cheating us, she’s making it all up, in her own head. There are no spirits, you die, and that’s it. My sister, who was the one who took me there in the first place—and she practically had to drag me—she can’t believe in it anymore. But then she’s never received any real benefit from it, whereas I—Thank you, I will.
“Okay. The first time was at a regular healing service I went to, about a year ago. This wasn’t the woman I was talking about though. The Universal Friends—they were at the Americana. There was a talk first, about the Ka, then right at the start of the service I felt a spirit lay his hands on my head. Like this. Very hard. And cold, like a washcloth when you’ve got a fever. I concentrated on the pain in my back, which was bad then, I tried to feel if there were some difference. Because I knew I’d been healed in some way. It wasn’t till after the meeting and out on Sixth Avenue that I realized what had happened. You know how you can look down a street late at night when things are quieter and see all the traffic lights changing together from red to green? Well, all my life I’ve been color-blind, but that night I could see the colors the way they really are. So bright, it was like—I can’t describe it. I stayed up all that night, walking around, even though it was winter. And the sun, when it came up? I was on top of the bridge, and God! But then gradually during the next week it left me. It was too large a gift. I wasn’t ready. But sometimes when I feel very clear, and not afraid, I think it’s come back. Just for a moment. Then it’s gone.
“The second time—thanks—the second time wasn’t so simple. It was at a message service. About five weeks ago. Or a month? It seems longer, but—Anyhow.
“The arrangement was, you could write down three questions and then the paper’s folded up, but before Reverend Ribera had even picked up mine he was there and—I don’t know how to describe it. He was shaking her about. Violently. Very violently. There was a kind of struggle whether he’d use her body and take control. Usually, you see, she likes to just talk with them, but Juan was so anxious and impatient, you see. You know what he was like when his mind was set on something. He kept calling my name in this terrible strangled voice. One minute I’d think, Yes, that’s Juan, he’s trying to reach me, and the next minute I’d think, No, it can’t be, Juan is dead. All this time, you see, I’d been trying to reach him—and now he was there and I wouldn’t accept it.
“Anyhow. At last he seemed to understand that he needed Reverend Ribera’s cooperation and he quieted down. He told about the life on the other side and how he couldn’t adjust to it. There were so many things he’d left unfinished here. At the last minute, he said, he’d wanted to change his mind but by then it was too late, he was out of control. I wanted so much to believe that was true and that he was really there, but I couldn’t.
“Then just before he left Reverend Ribera’s face changed, it became much younger, and she said some lines of poetry. In Spanish—everything had been in Spanish of course. I don’t remember the exact words, but what it said, basically, was that he couldn’t stand losing me. Even though this would be the last heartbreak that I’d ever cause him—el último dolor. Even though this would be the last poem he’d write to me.