“I got the cricket part right,” he noted. “I was an awesome cricket.”
Thirsty. Was there beer in the fridge? He got out of bed to go see.
Padded down the dark hall, felt his way around the corner into the kitchen, and opened the fridge to—surprise! Light! The power was on!—discover a twelve-pack of cold, cheap beer.
He cracked one for himself and—hearing her sneak up behind him—one for Suzie.
“Yuck,” she said.
“Cheap beer is an acquired taste,” he told her. “Like expensive cheese.”
“I had an idea,” she said, hopping up to sit on the counter.
He waited. He sipped his beer.
“You think you’re ready to really try and do something perfect?”
“Actually, you’re the one who said—”
“Do you even know what it looks like? Perfection?”
Milo thought about it.
He said, “No.”
“Would you like to see?”
He sipped his beer. He scratched himself.
“Yes,” he said.
“Good. Come to work with me.”
“By work, you mean…?”
“Being Death. Picking up souls. Ending lives. Yes. One of the souls I’m picking up tomorrow is reaching Perfection. You want to see what that looks like? Come with.”
“Are you supposed to do that? Take people with you?”
She kissed him.
He started kissing her back, but she pulled away and headed down the hall.
“Six o’clock comes early,” she said. “Set your alarm.”
“Six?”
“Workdays are the same everywhere, Milo. As below, so above.”
He fell asleep watching a documentary about sweaters.
—
In the morning, she wrapped them both in her long hair, which became wings, which became a wind and dry leaves, flying. It was wild and fun and also scary. Flying with Death was like being in a sleeping bag with a sensuous woman and a tarantula.
The wind slowed and stopped, and his feet were back on the ground.
He was in someone’s living room, where the only light was a flickering TV.
The room was trashed. Pizza boxes. Dirty plates. Some magazines. Clothes that had been tossed aside. On the couch, like one more piece of trash, slouched a young man with dirty hair in a Hank 3 T-shirt.
His eyes were dull. His skin matched his eyes, except where angry sores broke the skin. His mouth hung half open, like a wound that wouldn’t heal. At first, Milo thought the mouth was full of popcorn: some white kernels, some black kernels. Then he realized these were the man’s teeth.
He heard Suzie next to him. She had a grip on his elbow.
“Um,” said Milo, “this is the super-enlightened perfect life? This guy is about to go through the Sun Door and join the Oversoul?”
“Don’t be dumb,” she said. “I’ve got some stops to make first.”
A slab of broken tile lay on a coffee table in front of the man, half-covered in something that might have been powder or crushed glass.
Suzie knelt in front of the man. He stirred.
“Chris,” she whispered.
The man coughed. His eyes began to close.
“Christopher.” A little louder.
“You let them see you?” asked Milo.
“Sometimes. If they’re having a hard time letting go. Now shhhhh.”
She reached up and laid a gentle hand on Christopher’s cheek, and his eyes opened wide. He glanced around, and when he first saw Suzie, he jerked. He acted as if he wanted very much to get off the couch and run away but couldn’t get his legs to work.
He said, “Sucks,” foaming at the mouth a little, and was dead.
“That’s it?” asked Milo.
“Yeah. He’ll be waking up by the river any second now. We’re outta here. Hang on.”
Dark and wind again.
They stood beside a young woman in rags who sat on a wooden stool, nursing an infant. All around them, torrents of quick, barefoot children poured, chasing and playing.
Suzie reached down over the woman’s shoulder and touched the baby on the forehead.
“Oh, shit,” said Milo. “Are you kidding?”
Suzie kissed the woman on top of her head and rested her own head there a second, eyes closed.
Wind and dark.
They stopped to take a fat man working at a computer.
They took a big black dog.
They took a lonely old woman in a bed in a half-dark room. The second she died, a cuckoo clock in the hall went bananas.
Wind rushing, leaves flying. They landed in Mumbai, in India, at the edge of a buzzing neighborhood, on a street clip-clopping with donkeys and carts.
A cow walked by. One of the city’s many sacred cows. It crossed the street, and traffic stopped. The cow might be someone’s grandmother.
“Come on,” said Suzie, tugging at Milo’s hand.
“We’re following the cow?”
“You want to see Perfection or not?”
He nodded.
The cow walked through a marketplace, where a Brahmin hung a garland of magnolias around her neck. Milo could have sworn the cow bowed to the priest a little.
They watched the cow do something very intelligent and surprising. She plodded around behind the bazaar tables, and when a shopkeeper was distracted by a possible deal, she stretched her neck, opened her mouth, and trotted away holding a butcher knife in her meaty, drooling lips.
They followed the cow out of the market district, through a district where houses gave way to shacks and pavement gave way to dirt, to a place where people were living in trash. It was one of Mumbai’s many dumps. The ground itself was made of compressed refuse. People lived in huts made from trash, between towering hills of garbage. It smelled like putrid milk and sewage, beset by roaring clouds of flies. Children followed the cow, dancing.
The cow stopped, poking its head through the door of a house made entirely of wholesale-cheese boxes. Milo and Suzie peered over the cow’s back. When his eyes adjusted, Milo gasped and withdrew.
“What’s wrong with them?” he asked.
“They’re starving,” said Suzie.
“Lots of people are starving. They don’t look like that.”
“They’ve been too sick to look for work or even to beg. If they don’t eat very soon, they’ll die.”
Suzie followed the cow into the hovel. Milo followed Suzie.
Inside, a man, a woman, an old woman, and four tiny children all expressed surprise that a cow had invited itself inside. But they didn’t have the strength for a greeting or a protest. Their flesh stretched like drum skins over sharp bones. Their heads resembled skulls. The old woman hinted that maybe the cow was an incarnation of death, come to bear them out of this miserable life.
“I doubt it,” said the man. “We’re not that lucky.”
The cow lowered her head, placed the knife on the floor, and said, “Please eat me.”
“Whoa!” Milo whispered.
Other exclamations followed. Expressions of surprise. Expressions of gratitude.
The cow was kind enough to accept the father’s thanks and to exchange bows.
Suzie reached out and stroked the cow’s forehead. It knelt down and quietly died.
The family prayed before they began cutting.
“Suzie,” said Milo, feeling shaky.
“Mmm?”
“What just happened?”
“You have just seen a soul achieve Perfection.”
“Because it sacrificed itself?”
“Not just that.”