“I’m going to be taking on more responsibility around here. As I understand I’ll still be your mentor until you’re gone.”
“I don’t want to go back.” Louisa pauses and asks, “Can I stay with you?”
“Oh, Louisa. I’m not interested in you that way.”
“That’s not what I mean. Geez. Like yourself much?” She crosses her arms over her chest and she looks like the girl I first met. “No, I mean I think I’m happier here.”
She’s definitely happier than when I first met her. But she has to try again, right?
“Things won’t be the same for you when you go back to be in a new body and have a new life. It will all be different.” I’m acting like I know firsthand when I don’t.
And Louisa is gone. Seems like I would have the power to make her stay and finish our conversation, but if I do, I haven’t figured out how to make it happen. I open the drawer and start looking through binders. I need to find something that will explain to me what my powers are now. I find something titled Entitlements. I pull it from the drawer, assuming it is a good place to start. When I look up Doris is standing in front of me. “For fuck’s sake, Doris. Can you put on a bell on or something?”
“How was Louisa?” she asks.
“She’s okay. She wants to stay here, though. She thinks she’s happier here than she will be back among the living.” I say the words absentmindedly, assuming there is no point in telling her.
Doris sits in the chair across the desk and says, “She can be a mentor if she wants. Mentoring isn’t always punishment-based. You can make some of those decisions now.”
“Really?” Something like that had not occurred to me. That I can make some choices on who stays and who goes forward. I guess I had not realized anyone would even want to stay behind. I don’t know why I hadn’t. All of us have chosen to be dead. “There’s something I need to know for sure before you go.”
“What is that?” she asks.
“You said you found a loophole to preserve memories. Are there loopholes for everything?”
“Look in the drawer.”
I start digging through binders. The drawer seems bottomless. “What am I looking for?”
“You’re looking for a binder titled Exceptions. It is important that you use exceptions sparingly. If you use them too often it will throw off the Death Shadow balance.”
I find the binder and put it on the desk.
“I have decided to leave soon. I’m going to spend some time saying goodbye to a few friends I made here. And then I’m leaving.”
Doris has friends? I took her for one of those lone wolf types who didn’t have any friends because her go-to defense mechanism of cold bitch naturally kept people away.
“Okay. Please let me know before you go. I’ll try to figure out what questions I have.” I don’t even know where to start with questions. I don’t know what I’m doing. Not that Doris is concerned. I can’t tell if it is because she is confident in me or because she is just ready to get out of here. I guess it really doesn’t matter.
“Remember, if you exercise your rights, and it is a right, exceptions will put you in a morally questionable position,” Doris says.
“Highly questionable?” I was no stranger to morally questionable circumstances. In high school I made out with my best friend’s boyfriend on the regular. As far as I know she never found out. I didn’t feel guilty. I didn’t even feel guilty about not feeling guilty. And that was barely scratching the surface of my morally questionable past. I once secured a promotion by vaguely promising sex to my boss. I didn’t deliver on that vague promise. I wasn’t an actual whore. Just kind of slutty by church standards.
“To reap the benefits of exceptions for yourself you will be bumping other people back in line. It will take them longer to get their vapid body.” Doris says these words as if she’s explaining how to make pancakes. “But you cannot take someone’s spaces unless they monetize them.”
“Monetize them?”
“While souls are waiting for their vapid body selection, they can spend places in line on things like clothing and books. Creature comforts. They have to make the decision to sacrifice spaces before you are privy to them. But if you do it too many times to the same person, they will go to Oblivion.
“Have you done that? Sent someone to Oblivion accidentally?” I’m not judging her, really. Okay maybe a little. I’m just interested more than anything.
“Only one,” she says with an emphasis on only. “And at the time I didn’t know that would happen.”
“Did you take people’s spots to secure your memories?” I ask.
“Yes.” She places the photograph of Dylan on the desk. This seems to have become part of our normal routine. It’s as if she wants me to admire him, admire who she will be.
“I think I will get some of those really cute Buddy Holly glasses. This is a perfect face for glasses.”
She is done talking to me about the things I need to know. I guess it’s more important for her to talk about her new looks. I can’t begrudge her the excitement of a hot, young body.
Chapter 25
The three of us are squeezed behind the small metal desk. Not solid metal. Nothing is solid here. But it looks like metal. Ernesto sits in the chair with Greg and me on either side, bent in a way that would’ve hurt my bad knee in life.
Either I’ll lose all of my memories soon or I’ll be pulled into Oblivion. The end result is the same. What is left of me will be gone. But I continue to write in the notebook. Even if it’s futile, I have something to say that I need get out before it disappears.
“You boys have quite a bit in common.” Ernesto does not elaborate. He just keeps reading the screen. And for some reason neither of us bother asking what he means.
“Have you found anything that can make this stop?” I ask.
“Not yet.” Ernesto taps his finger to his chin and says, “You two boys were born in the same hospital. You were both born in Little Rock, Arkansas.”
“That’s cool,” Greg says with zero enthusiasm.
“I guess we have more in common than our taste in women,” I say. Greg looks at me with a sneer. For some reason he is still handsome even when he makes a terrible face. I would look like I was having a stroke if I made a face like that.
“Okay wait. Here’s something.” Ernesto pauses for what feels like a very long time while we wait. He stares at the screen intently. I can see what he’s reading but it doesn’t make any sense to me. Until I see one word, a name. Ernesto points at the screen and asks, “What exactly have your dealings been with Doris?”
“After Edgar was gone, she was my caseworker,” I say.
“I don’t know who Doris is,” Greg says.
“Well, she knows who you are. And I’d say she doesn’t care for either of you.” Ernesto looks at me and then turns to Greg and then looks back to the screen.
“Why would Doris be singling us out?” I ask.
“I have no idea. Seriously, who the fuck is Doris?” Greg crosses his arms and squints his eyes.
“She’s a caseworker, she’s in charge of the mentors,” Ernesto says. “She’s a ball-buster. No one who crosses her comes out better for it.”
“I don’t know what I could’ve done to offend her.”
“I’d say you’ve done more than offend her. She’s downright wrathful.” Ernesto continues to stare at the screen.
The words I see include “penalty,” “grief watch challenged,” and “distraction.”
Pacing feels like the most natural physical response. I replay as much of my interactions with Doris as possible as I shuffle. I did everything she instructed me to do. I don’t understand what has happened.