Twilight deepened around the sidewalk and the neighborhood.
“It’s worked okay so far,” said Suzie. “The two of us.”
“And I’m glad for you,” said Mama, “both of you.” She patted Suzie’s cheeks as if making a pie. “But I think it’s part of what’s keeping our Milo here from moving on. It may even move him straight into Nothingness. And I think I’m done talking about it for now.”
“Me, too,” said Nan.
“Fine,” said Suzie.
“Fine,” said Mama.
Mama and Nan vanished in a golden flash.
“Fine,” repeated Suzie, disappearing in a dash of wind and leaves.
Milo blinked his eyes. Clicked his heels. Tried to beam himself back to his crappy apartment.
No dice.
He shoved his hands deep in his pockets and walked, and pouted, and walked.
Death doesn’t pout.
It doesn’t chew its nails or get frustrated and throw fits.
Suzie reminded herself of these things, storming away from the sidewalk, glaring and grinding her teeth, hurling her cosmic self through space and time.
“Assholes,” she muttered.
It wasn’t the first time she’d been party to an argument over the Way Things Are Meant to Be.
—
She hadn’t been Death very long, the first time they butted heads.
It was yesterday, or it was a thousand years ago. There wasn’t really a difference. Time was a swamp inside a giant washing machine.
She came upon a blue whale lying on a beach, moaning softly to herself. The whale was a sister and a mother and a grandmother. A great-grandmother, actually. Whole worlds of life had passed through her, and now here she was, the victim of a trick in the tide, washed up on land, being crushed by her own weight.
Suzie let the whale see her. Tried to look friendly (“friendly,” she had learned, was important to humans and other mammals). She made herself look like a whale, somewhat, and stood looking into one vast dying eye.
Hi, said the whale (whales are telepathic).
Hi, said Suzie. And she left it at that. Being Death was kind of like being a therapist; it worked better if you let them do the talking, if there was going to be talking.
She told Suzie her name, which was AiiOOOOOnuuUU. The spirit inside the old grandmother was exactly what you’d expect of such a creature: huge and dreamy, crackling with plans and memories. She did not want to die yet, and certainly not like this.
Being trapped on land, for a whale, was the marine equivalent of accidentally locking yourself outside with no clothes on.
AiiOOOOOnuuUU lay there missing the sea. The picture in her head (and Suzie’s head) was like an endless blue heart. Living in the ocean was half-dreamlike, an act of worship without the complication of gods.
Suzie let AiiOOOOOnuuUU’s mind fill her senses. She leaned forward and rested against the whale, against a hundred seasons of memories and voyages and names she had known.
Suzie let the whale feel her own memories. Let her feel what it was like to fly, what it was like to be timeless.
Death took a million forms. Suzie shared some of her favorites.
Fire. Chocolate. Silence. Sleep.
Bicycles. Being melancholy.
One time, she had brought a dying girl a present—an Eiffel Tower snow globe. The girl had wanted to see Paris but never got to go. The girl held the snow globe and was transfixed and happy when Suzie touched her head and snuffed her out, and that was one of the few times Suzie was mortal enough to cry on the job. She gave this memory to the whale, who was puzzled by it, but grateful.
The whole idea of this communion was to get AiiOOOOOnuuUU to relax and become sort of peaceful and accepting and hypnotized before Suzie brought things to an end.
But it backfired.
The whale made a mournful, rattling sound and tried to heave herself backward, fighting to get to the water.
But Suzie already had her whale hands on AiiOOOOOnuuUU’s head. The great eye went dim and went dark and went out, and just at that moment Suzie changed her mind.
“No!” she bugled, in whale language. Her voice emerged fierce and wet.
And before she knew she was going to do it, she pulled AiiOOOOOnuuUU back from Between and breathed her into the dead, mountainous body.
The great lungs filled! The great eye moved in its orbit!
Frantic, Suzie looked around for a way to get AiiOOOOOnuuUU into the sea. Impossible! Aw, shit—the tide had gone out, leaving nothing but sand and rocks and clams for a hundred yards.
I’ll talk to the ocean himself, she thought (she knew this ocean: a tall, deep-looking fellow with pearls for eyes and a taste for Greek wedding music). She called his name, which took ten minutes and made it rain but failed to get his attention. In the meantime, she became aware of voices on the wind, calling to her through the rain, and turned to discover several dark forms standing in the sawgrass, just uphill.
Death had more than one shape and name, after all.
“You can’t do that,” they said (Death is telepathic, too, but likes the sound of its own voice).
Suzie, defiant, said, “I just did! I’m not taking her yet.” The whale was a great spirit. Couldn’t they see?
“She’s like the Eleanor Roosevelt of the ocean,” she added.
“Not anymore,” they all said. “Look.”
They pointed. And Suzie looked, and saw, and it was awful.
The whale, half alive and half dead, lay shaking and gagging on the beach. Her mighty eye now had a bad, zombie-like glow.
Shit, thought Suzie. They were right; she knew better. She hated that they were right. Even more, though, she hated what she had done to the whale.
“No matter how good your intentions are,” she muttered to herself, “you can’t put the lightning back in the bottle.”
“Huh?” said the other Deaths.
“Never mind,” said Suzie, and waved her hand and let the whale die again.
And she turned to face them, ready to give a little lecture about how maybe death wouldn’t be so awful so much of the time if only they’d take time to learn a thing or two about being alive, and they could roll their eyes all they wanted to, and— But they were gone.
She made her way up on top of the whale and sat there awhile in the wind and the rain, being melancholy and enjoying it, and wishing she had some chocolate.
—
That was a long time ago now. Felt like it, anyway.
Suzie flurried to a stop in Milo’s new apartment. The leaves and shadows slowed and vanished, leaving her feeling tired, groping for the light switch. Wondering if Milo was going to be mad when he got back, since she had basically left him out there on the sidewalk (that ridiculous, dumbass sidewalk!).
Well, the walk home would be good for him, mad or not. Milo needed to get his act together.
She decided to dye her hair.
A silly thing to do, if you’re a universal idea, like Death or Spring or Music or Peace. But Suzie had learned something interesting about people: They knew the wisdom of simply being busy sometimes.
Chop wood; carry water. Do the dishes. Sweep the garage. Milk the cows.
Dye your hair.
—
She was about halfway done when Milo arrived. Hands shoved way down in his pockets, frowning.