Continuing, I explain that the embedded portion of the fractured wanger grows to become the resulting baby. In the event the wanger has broken into two or three portions, each of these evolves to become twins or triplets. All of this factual information comes from a very legitimate source, I assure Emily. If anyone at my Swiss boarding school knew anything about boys and their ridiculous genitals it would be those three Miss Coozy O'Cooznicks.
"Knowing the facts of life as I do," I tell Emily, "no, I certainly do not miss having a boyfriend……"
The two of us continue walking along in silence. My array of fetishes and power objects dangle and sway from my belt. They clang and knock against each other. On occasion I suggest a lovely birdbath be placed here or there. Or a sundial surrounded by a picturesque bedding scheme of red and white petunias. Eventually, to break an extended silence, I ask what she misses about being alive.
"My mother," Emily says. Good-night kisses, she says. Birthday cake. Flying kites.
I suggest tinkling wind chimes might improve the black smoke that swirls and billows around us.
Emily fails to write down my idea. "And summer vacation from school," she says, “ And I miss swing sets……"
Ahead of us, a figure comes walking down the path in the opposite direction. It's a boy, passing in and out of the drifting clouds of smoke. In turns, he's revealed and occluded. Apparent and hidden.
She misses parades, says Emily. Petting zoos. Fireworks.
The figure, a boy, approaches us holding some sort of pillow cradled to his chest. His eyes are rakish, his brow surly and moody, his lips twisted into a sensuously puckered sneer. The pillow he carries is colored bright orange, textured such that it appears simultaneously soft and vivid. The boy wears a hot-pink jumpsuit with a long number stitched across one side of his chest.
"I miss roller coasters," Emily says. 'And birds… real birds, I mean. Not just red-painted bats."
The boy, now blocking our path, he's Goran.
Looking up from her clipboard, Emily says, "Hello."
Nodding to her, he speaks to me. "I am sorry I choked you into dead," says Goran in his vampire accent, and he hands his orange pillow toward me. 'At present, you see now I am dead as well," Goran says, placing the pillow in my arms. He says, "I found this for you."
The pillow feels warm. It hums in short pulses. Bright orange, soft, it looks at me with flashing green eyes, fully alive and purring, nestled against my bloodstained sweater. It swats a paw, its tiny claws batting at the Caligula testicles.
No longer dead and stuffed in the plumbing of some luxury hotel, no longer a pillow, it's my little kitten. Alive. It's Tiger Stripe.
XXXIII
Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. I have my kitty. I have my boyfriend. I have my best friend. I have more dead than I ever did while alive. Except for my mom and dad.
No sooner had I made my peace with Goran than another crisis occurred.
No sooner had I accepted the warm, cuddly fuzz ball of my beloved kitty, Tiger Stripe, than my emotional equilibrium was again knocked askew. Goran, I assured him, did not kill me. Yes, in some sense, he accidentally killed the person identified as Madison Spencer; he forever destroyed that physical manifestation of me, but Goran did not kill… me. I continue to exist. Furthermore, his actions were precipitated by my own fallacious concept of French-kissing. What transpired in that hotel suite was a comedy of errors.
Graciously, I accepted Tiger Stripe, then introduced Goran to Emily. The trio of us continued to stroll until obligation required I resume my telemarketing duties. My beloved kitty curled and snoozing in my lap, happily purring away, my headset firmly in place, I began to field survey calls as the central computer connected me to households, to breathing people alive in time zones where the evening meal was set to commence.
In one such residence, someplace with a familiar Californian area code, a man s voice answered the telephone, "Hello?"
"Hello, sir," I said, following by rote the script which dictated my every statement and response. Petting the cat at rest in my lap, I say, "May I have a few minutes of your time for an important consumer study concerning buying habits in relation to several competing brands of adhesive tape…?"
If not adhesive tape, the topic would be something else just as mundane: aerosol furniture polish, dental floss, thumbtacks.
In the background, almost lost in the distance behind the man's voice, a woman's voice says, "Antonio? Are you ill?"
The woman's voice, like the telephone number, feels strangely familiar.
Still petting Tiger Stripe, I say, "This will only take a few moments……"
A beat of silence follows.
I say, "Hello?" I say, "Sir?"
Another beat of silence occurs, broken by a gasp, almost a sob, and the man's voice asks, "Maddy?"
Double-checking the telephone number, the ten-digit number which reads on my little computer screen, I recognize it.
Over my headset, the man says, "Oh, my baby… is that you?"
The woman's voice in the background says, "I'll grab the bedroom extension."
The telephone number is our unlisted line for the house in Brentwood. By sheer coincidence, the autodialer has connected me with my family. This man and woman are the former beatniks, former hippies, former Rastas, former anarchists — my former parents. A loud click sounds, someone lifting another receiver, and my mother's voice says, "Darling?" Not waiting for an answer, she begins to weep, begging, "Please, oh, my sweetness, please say something to us……"
At my elbow, brainiac Leonard sits at his workstation plotting chess moves against some alive adversary in New Delhi. On my opposite side, Patterson conspires with living football enthusiasts, keeping track of teams and quarterbacks, marking their statistics in the blank spaces of a fantasy spreadsheet. The business of Hell continues unabated, spread to either horizon. Elsewhere, the afterlife continues as usual, but within my headset, my mother's voice begs, "Please, Maddy… Please tell your daddy and me where we can come find you."
Sniffing, his voice choked and his breath exploding into the telephone receiver, my father sobs, "Please, baby, just don't hang up……" He sobs, "Oh, Maddy, we're so sorry we left you alone with that evil bastard."
"That…" my mother hisses, "that… assassin!"
My guess is that they're referring to Goran.
And yes, I've vanquished demons. I've deposed tyrants and taken command of their conquering armies. I'm thirteen years old, and I've shepherded thousands of dying people into the next life with relatively little upset. I never finished junior high school, but I'm overhauling the entire nature of Hell, on schedule and under budget. I deftly toss off words such as absentia and multivalent and convey, but I'm caught completely off guard by the sound of my parents' tears. For help lying, I finger the dried scrap of the Hitler mustache. For coldness, to quell the tears already building in my burning eyes, I consult the de Medicis crown. Over the telephone I tell my weeping mother and father to hush. It's true, I assure them: I am dead. In the icy voice of child killer Gilles de Rais, I tell my family I have passed out of fragile mortal life and now dwell in the eternal.
At this, their weeping subsides. In a hushed, hoarse whisper, my father asks, "Maddy?" In a voice weighted with awe, he asks, "Are you seated with the Buddha?"
In the lying voice of serial murderer Thug Behram, I tell my parents that everything they taught me about moral relativism, about recycling, about secular humanism and organic food and expanded Gaia consciousness — it's all turned out to be absolutely true.