Small After Life

The afterlife seemed orderly enough. Michael woke feeling refreshed. He looked around the nondescript room. Mismatched chairs, an old-fashioned sideboard with a row of crystal decanters, half-full; no pictures on the walls.

Two men sat at a faded 1950s table on the other side of the room. A couple of stained, beige couches were haphazardly angled in-between. The threadbare, overstuffed chair beside Michael was empty. He looked towards the men across the room. Their clothes were tattered and dirty. They had the sinewy, taut muscles of heroin addiction.

“He’s waking up.” The man’s gravelly voice matched the blue tattoos blurred across his folded arms. Raising his voice slightly, he called out, “No point standing there like you’ve got somewhere else to be.”

The smaller, balding man sitting on the other side of the table nodded in agreement, with a short, guttural chuckle.

Michael stepped forward, wondering about protocol. What are you supposed to do after you die and wake up?

“So,” he began, his voice carefully measured. “This is it, then?”

Monty shrugged his shoulders without unlocking his arms. “Seems like it. Not too bad so far. What’d you think, John?” He looked across the table.

“I’ve stayed in worse.”

Michael forced a polite smile, suddenly worried his confidence might crack. He wasn’t sure what to make of the rundown rooming-house impression. Maybe this was some sort of purgatory escape room. Guys like Monty and John unsettled him. He’d worked hard for what he’d gained. It always bothered him to see men struggle with the bottle or the needle. It seemed obvious to him that some people just didn’t try hard enough, with so much opportunity around.

Michael backed up a step, closer to the wall again. Then he lowered himself into the chair. “I suppose we’re all here waiting…for something?”

Monty chuckled. “I guess. We’ve been here a while already.”

Michael suddenly felt he needed to fill the silence. “I didn’t expect it to be like this.”

“Neither did we,” John said, his eyes suddenly sharper. “But I’m not complaining. Things might turn out okay. Maybe it won’t be as bad as I expected. Mind you, I can’t speak for anyone else.”

Monty nodded, stretching out one of his long legs. “Had a rough life, but who didn’t? If you aren’t born a dealer, you just gotta play.”

Michael shifted in his seat. “And what did you do, exactly?”

 “Merchant Marine. Late ‘Nam into the 80s. Saw some things. Did some damage. Eventually, I got too old for it. Had trouble finding work after that.”

“And you?” Michael said, looking at John.

“I was an electrical engineer. Industrial accident bummed up my legs early on,” John answered. “But I kept going. Fuck the doctors. Treated myself until I couldn’t handle it anymore.”

Michael was unsettled by their flat calm.

He’d expected an individual reckoning or something more orderly and hopeful than this. A sorting out of the types, maybe.

He needed to get a grip, make something happen. But he felt rooted where he sat. The room felt like it was getting smaller.

“What’s your story?” Monty asked, leaning forward.

Michael hesitated. “I was a lawyer with a good firm. Seventy-eight. I think it must have been the heart trouble that caught me.”

“Any family?”

Michael nodded, lowering his eyes. “Divorced. Two sons and a daughter. Five grandkids.”

John’s eyes rose to Michael’s. “What’s her name?”

“My daughter? Lindsay. Why?”

Monty and John looked at each other.

“There was a song playing when we got here. It stopped a few minutes ago. Zombie, you know, by The Cranberries,” John said. “We knew your daughter. She was our landlady. Monty was on the first floor. I had a room on the fourth. Zombie was her favourite song.”

Michael blinked, “My daughter? Lindsay?”

Monty nodded. “Yeah. Good woman. Heart of gold. Not many people like her in a place like that. Rougher than hell.”

Michael’s daughter worked as a building manager. He thought it was all she could figure out after her divorce; he felt it was beneath her. He’d tried to encourage her to go back to school.

“She got a bunch of us to help run the office. Easy to talk to,” John said. “Damn smart. Acted like she was one of us, but a normie’s a normie.”

“Helped me write my will. Just in time. I wanted my daughter to have my guitar,” Monty said.

Michael’s throat tightened. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Lindsay always seemed so nervous around him. The boys, too. As they got older, it seemed easiest to pay for dinner with everyone at a restaurant a couple of times a year when he was in town. Order a couple of drinks, listen to the grandkids talk about the toys they wanted for Christmas.

Monty spoke again, “You did good. Raised her right.”

“I don’t know. I didn’t know. I mean, I don’t think I really knew her,” his voice broke.

Monty stood up. “How about I fix you a drink. Neat, okay, my man?” As he came around the couches, Monty stopped and put his hand on Michael’s shoulder. “All us dying on the same day — can’t make this shit up.”