E is for Explanations 10/21

[earthshoes]

Waking up was his first mistake, but then hindsight is always 20/20. Perhaps, to be fair, it wasn't so much the waking up as it was where he woke up. And who he woke up with.

To start with, whoever she was . . . she was not his wife . . .

To make matters worse, she didn't appear to be alive.

[Bandersnatchi]

Herschel knew she wasn't his wife because he wasn't married.
He escaped the bed and snatched the pack of cigarettes off the hotel room table.
He lit one and shook out the match. He placed it in the ashtray.
There were butts in the ashtray with lipstick on them.
Beside the ashtray was a half empty bottle of tequila.
Tequila! God help me..
Herschel never drank tequila. When he drank tequila bad things happened, things like this.
He sucked a lungful of smoke and sat back as he slowly exhaled.
Calmer now, he looked over the corpse from the safety of the chair.
Brunette, Nice face. Don't recognize her. Nice tits. Real ones.
She had a tatoo of barbed wire around her upper arm.
Not unusual I suppose. But there, on her neck..
Herschel stood bent over to get a closer look at her.
There was scar tissue across her lower neck, ugly scar tissue.
How the hell do you survive having your neck slashed open.
His hand rose reflexively to his own neck.
His fingertips played with the rough edges of a scab, Bits flaked off as he picked at it.
He looked at his bloody fingertips.
"How..?"

Then the woman moved.

[Etain Homme]

Herschel knew a dead body when he saw one, when he touched one, when he felt for a carotid pulse and did not find one and when said body had not drawn a breath for the last several minutes. He had been a paramedic for 12 years and generally speaking, at least not without a lot of effort on his part, dead people did not move around much. Even in the dim light he could see a little bit of color begin to creep into her face. The he realized that the light was dim. The clock said 7:13, the sun should be rising. The he looked again and realized that the little yellow dot indicating P.M. was lit. Damn, he had slept for over 18 hours. While he was coming to terms with that she turned on to her side, the covers falling off her hips, and he watched, in almost a hypnotic state as blood lividity in her cheeks fell apart and color faded into her skin. He reached for the tequila.

[sefton]

In a flicker, her eyes opened. Green. Unsurprised. "Oh, good. You're up," she said.

"But...you're--you're dead," stuttered Herschel.

"Um, you might want to check the mirror there."

Herchel rose, took the four steps to the left, and caught the clean slice across his throat. He kept staring, heard the rustle of sheets, felt her hands on his shoulders guiding him back to the edge of the bed.

"I got up an hour ago. I shook you, but you were dead," said the woman.

"Small world," choked Herschel, feeling the rasp in his voice.

"I don't know what's going on. I peeked outside a couple times. No one's out there. No one I saw, anyway. Kinda didn't want to knock on doors."

"What--how did--"

"I don't know. Who the hell are you?"

"I'm Herschel."

"And this is what you look like?"

"What--how do you mean?"

"I think my name is Fred. As in Fred. Not Frederique. And I think I've got three kids and a wife. Two boys. Maybe in Minnesota. But I'm not sure. What about you?"

"I'm..I'm Herschel."

She stared at him, eyes shooting across his, all around his face, trying to read. "Okay, too soon. You go."

"How did we get here?"

"I don't know. It wasn't me. I just sort of...showed up."

"And we're dead."

"Seem to be. Yeah."

"Oh," said Herschel. "Why?"

"Don't know yet. Hey, can I ask you something?" said Fred.

Hershel hadn't noticed. He'd been running his fingertips along the slit, like a necklace.

"Right this second, what are you feeling?"

"How do you mean?"

"Are you--are you concerned?"

Herschel dropped his hand away from his throat.

"Um...no. Not really."

Herschel glanced at the clock.

Still 7:13.

"The time--"

"Oh yeah, the clock," said Fred. "And the TV--turned it on three times. One channel. A Frasier rerun. Same joke three times. And there's no water."

Herschel's eyes flashed to Fred's chest.

"Do you think maybe...did we--"

Fred smiled, "Think so. I'm sore down there. But I feel--"

Herschel stood up again. "Maybe we should go outside," he said.

Fred also rose. She lifted her hands above her head, locked them and arched her back. She dropped her hands down to her hair as she walked to the mirror, then shook her fingers through her long, loose curls, nearly black under low, caramel lamplight, pushing her lips hard apart as she leaned forward to check her teeth.

"Sounds good. Maybe we take the tequila,"

[earthshoes]

Herschel didn't like being dead, but he did like tequila. So he was disappointed when the bottle turned out to be empty. But he was even more disapointed by what he found outside their room.

Halls. Endless halls that turned, turned again, ended and doubled back on themselves.

And elevators that went down and up, and down and up, only to return them to the same floor.


Fred seemed less concerned by it than Herschel, which didn't make a lot of sense as Fred was by her (his?) recollection, a guy with a wife and kids somewhere. Herschel would have liked to have remembered something about himself, but came up only with a hazy recollection of telling jokes and someone laughing. A lot of someones actually. And that he was a paramedic and he sensed that he was a good one. Beyond that, the only thing he was sure of was that he was not married--to either a woman or a man. He was also fairly certian he'd always been a man. A small comfort, but better than nothing.

After hesitating for a while longer, Fred decided to try a door or two. No answer. Then Herschel tried three our four more and was greeted only by the hollow echo of his own knuckles rapping.

After the fourth trip down and back up in the elevator, Fred suggested they return to their room and try the balcony door.

Which did open, but the view didn't improve things.

Not at all.

[sefton]

In the stalled-out darkening of 7:13, Herschel glanced down to what seemed to be an unlit clearing, some kind of greensward, as Fred leaned into him and panned across the skyline, rounding left to right.

"Huh," said Herschel.

"What?" said Fred."

"You're...cuddling."

"I guess I am. Do you care?"

"Um, I...I don't think so. What does that mean?"

"I'm a woman and we're dead. So...it's nice out, isn't it? Warm."

"Yeah," said Herschel, fixed on the distant offset crossword patterns of lit rooms in the dusk, as he felt the humid air gently settle on his arms and the back of his neck. "The buildings kinda look the same."

"They are the same," sighed Fred. "And the trees are kinda...jungley."

"What's that?"

"Wow. There's another one," whispered Fred, as the silhouette of a second big cat loped across the open field below.

"Panther?"

"Maybe. Maybe tigers."

"Not Minnesota." Herschel's eyes darted from lit square to lit square of the distant rooms. Each with a tiny aquamarine screen glowing. "Maybe we should--watch Frasier."

"Maybe," said Fred, dropping her head to Herschel's shoulder.

"Did you try room service?" asked Herschel.

"Um, no. Hey."

"What?"

"You're holding my hand."

Herschel looked down. Sure enough. "Yeah. Huh."

They walked back inside, leaving the door open for the air. Fred clicked on Frasier and concentrated as Herschel sat on the bed by the phone and dialled zero.

"Hello."

"Room service?"

"Yes, Mr. Rollins. How can I help you?"

Herschel Rollins. That doesn't sound...

"Could you--would it be--could you...send someone up to our room?"

"Is there a problem, Mr. Rollins?"

"No. No. We just need--if you could just send someone up for a few minutes. We need help with something."

"Very well. Someone will be there shortly. Is there anything else?"

"No. No, that's all, thank you."

"Nothing for Mrs. Rollins?"

"What--no. Um, no. Just--we'll be here waiting. Thanks."

"Very good, sir."

As Herschel clicked off, he drew open the nightstand drawer and turned on the bedside lamp. A Bible and two wedding rings. Herschel turned and stared at Fred's back.

"Someone's coming."

"Good."

"Is that good? Why did I do that?"

"I dunno. You're not wigging, are you?"

"Um, no," said Herschel, having no idea why not.

Fred turned and looked at him. "I think you should...watch Frasier with me."

"Okay. Hey, did you see these?" he asked, extending the rings in his open palm.

"No. Where were--"

"In the nightstand. Maybe they're ours," Herschel said, as he sidled over to Fred, curled an arm around her waist, dropped the rings in her hand, and began watching Niles stare balefully at Frasier's father's mutt.

Fred tousled Herschel's hair and kissed him gently on the cheek. "Impossible," she smiled. "Look--they don't match."

[Etain Homme]

And they didn’t. There was a knock at the door. As Herschel started toward the door he became aware of his nakedness, glanced around and saw no clothes strewn about the room. He looked over at Fred, who seemed to read his mind.

“Don’t ask me. Answer it, if you offend someone, at least we get a reaction.”

Herschel opened the door - it was the bellboy. No just any bellboy but the bellboy you see in every movie. Perfect cap and wire rimmed glasses. Shoes polished to a gleam, a ring of keys that would have opened every door in New York and that perfect Hi-I’m-here-to-help-you-smile.

“Hi, I’m here to help you!”

Herschel just pulled back the door and turned to Fred, who had pulled the sheet up over her. He should have been a little mad at her lack of support, but she waggled her eyebrows at him and all he could do was laugh. Then he turned back to the bellboy.

“Could you please answer some questions for us?”

“Sure, can you wait a sec, Sir?” The bellboy turned and shouted down the hall “Hey, I won the pool, the want answers before more booze!”

A pillow hit the boy in the face, followed by “Send for the booze, kid.”

“That’s my gal.” thought Herschel, and somehow that seemed right.

[sefton]

It only took a few minutes. And the bellboy was remarkably cheery, small, too young and energetic. Like the movies.

Fred tilted her head and backtracked. "So...Frazier was the key."

The bellboy beamed. "Yes. Well, no. Not for you. For Nadine Thompson," he said, nodding toward Herschel. "And for Bob too."

"And his name is Robert Aguirre," said Fred, "except he's really Herschel."

"Yes," smiled the bellboy. "Part of the mixup."

"So the Rollins--" blurted Herschel.

"Your fake names. Well, not yours--" said the bellboy, "you're not married. You and Nadine--Bob and Nadine, I mean."

"Okay, okay. Wait," said Fred, toying with a single curl between two fingers, wrapping and tugging, releasing, wrapping and tugging. "I was Fred O'Leary. From Minnesota. He was Herschel Wad--Wid"

"Witdorchic," Herschel offered.

"Herschel Witdorchic--thank you, honey," said Fred, then catching himself, pointing her finger at Herschel. "Right there. How come, how come, how can--"

"How come you love each other?" offered the bellboy.

"Yes," said Herschel.

"It's nice, isn't it?" said the bellboy, nodding rapidly at them both. "Isn't it?"

"Yes," said Herschel and Fred.

"Well," said the bellhop, "maybe you won't mind if I ask you a few things."

And they didn't.

"Bob and Nadine weren't married to each other. How do you two feel about that?"

"I don't care," said Herschel.

"Me neither," said Fred.

"And--and yet, you, Pastor O'Leary," smiled the bellhop, "ran quite a ministry. Very big in Hibbing."

"There are lions outside--we saw lions down there," said Fred.

"All things are in the garden," said the bellboy. "They saw you, too. That's Bob and Nadine."

"The lions?" blurted Herschel. "Are you saying--"

"All things are in the garden," smiled the bellboy.

"Are--are you--" whispered Fred.

"You're too kind. I'm only the bellhop," said the bellboy. "And this isn't really Singapore."

"So that isn't really the gar--" offered Herschel.

"Oh, nonono, it is," insisted the bellboy. "It's just not Singapore, really. Look, it'll make sense--we're sorry about the mixup. Sometimes the system, well--but look, there's no harm. Nadine and Bob are fine, and now we all know, so..."

"So, what now?" asked Herschel.

"Well, you're in love..." nodded the bellboy, eyes shining.

"Yes."

"And you're dead. Yes?"

"Yes."

"And you like the balcony."

"Yeah," said Fred, gazing into Herschel's eyes.

"Well, there's no hurry," said the bellboy. "Whenever you're ready."

"Ready for what?"

The bellboy stood up and walked to the door. "All things are in the garden. Jump when you like."

"What?" said Herschel, still calm, and still unsure why.

"Herschel. Fred," said the bellboy, as he opened the door, "only when you're ready."

They didn't follow him, though they didn't know why, staying seated on the bed as he disappeared, arms still around each other's waists, feeling the warm humid dusk of 7:13 all about the room, together.

[Etain Homme]

Herschel leaned his head against Fred’s shoulder and sighed “So, dead but not dead . . .”

She pulled him close “and new bodies but not new . . .”

Herschel pulled back and looked into her eyes. “I would have just figured I was going mad, until they mentioned the Microsoft Upgrade and decentralization. Who would have thought Heaven would be outsourcing?”

“Honey” Fred said, and then “Honey, hooooneyy” trying out the word in her mouth and seeming to like it “Honey, what about loving each other?

Herschel slid back a little, not letting go of her hands, and looked at her. The bellboy had explained that they could not put things back the way they were, but as sort of a refund for the trouble they had been given the one gift He valued most, Love. Was it real? Would it last? What would happen after the jump? Or could they stay? Fred just shrugged her shoulders as if she had heard his every thought.

She sighed again. “I was kinda hoping it was Singapore. That was one of the places on my list.”

He did not have to ask what list, he knew and it had been on his list too. Fred stood up and cast off the sheet. “Come to bed, Herschel”

“What would your congregation say?”

They fell into bed laughing, for a while, then other noises followed.

An hour or so later it was 7:13. There were Tarzan movie jungle sounds out past the balcony and a full bottle of tequila was on the night stand. He kissed the bead of sweat running down the side of her neck and took her hand. They were almost telepathic, but he spoke out of habit.

“Honey, I think it’s time to go.”

“But the happy little twit said we could stay until we were ready?”
Herschel just looked at her and she nodded. “You’re right, as great as this is, it is still standing still.

They got up and moved toward the balcony. Fred turned around and retrieved the bottle. “Just in case “Everything” is not in the garden.”

The approached the railing and Herschel asked “So, swan dive, cannon ball or what?”

Fred peered over the side. “Um, I suggest the stairs.”

Herschel saw that the stairs lead down into the brush and looked back at Fred. “Ah, smart and beautiful.” Then he offered her his hand. “Come on, Lady, there’s got to be an apple tree down there somewhere!” Nude, they began to descend the stair - “Loins and Tigers and Bears . . .” they each whispered to the other.