“You know what it’s about,” he said.
She swam out just far enough to become featureless. Just a shadow. Just a voice.
“Yes,” she said. “I know.”
Silence.
Milo was good at silence. He let this one go a long, long time.
“If she’s been smooshed into the big cosmic soul,” he finally said, “then what’s the point?”
Mama swam closer. One great warm hand reached up out of the water and grasped his ankle.
“I can’t answer that for you,” she said. “I know you have to decide whether to sit here pouting like a child or go do something about it. Maybe you won’t get what you want. But is this it? You’re going to just quit?”
Milo started to say something.
“Look at yourself,” Mama said.
Milo did what she said. It took a while, but eventually his eyes adjusted in the starlight, and he saw his own reflection for the first time in a long time.
He was a skeleton, pretty much. Drawn flesh, hollow eyes. His desert garb hung on him like a shroud.
“Go back,” said Mama. “Go back and at least try.”
“Try what?” he croaked.
“Try what?” Now she was pissed. “Are you kidding me? What’s wrong with you, you selfish dumbass? Try and be perfect! Try something! What’s the coolest life you’ve ever lived? Maybe not cool, maybe that’s not the word, but—”
“Captain Gworkon,” said Milo.
“Really? Okay. Well, good choice, I guess. Captain Gworkon certainly wouldn’t have sat here in the afterlife, rotting away in front of his own reflection. He would have gone back and spent another lifetime—”
“Juggling,” said Milo.
Mama’s grip tightened on his ankle.
“Dammit, Milo, if—”
“I’m kidding. Fighting evil. He would have gone back and spent everything he had fighting evil.”
He stood up and started unwinding his robes. Behind him, Satan stood, too.
Why not? Being born was a way of getting lost, too, wasn’t it?
“Go,” said Mama. “Fight evil. Do it perfectly. Then come back and we’ll see.”
Bullshit, thought Milo.
But he forced himself. He was, after all, the veteran of half a million Monday mornings. It’s something a wise man or a wise woman knows how to do: shake off your self-pity and your obsession, and put one foot in front of the other and keep moving.
And you wade into the dark desert pool a little way and sort through the lives you see. And just when you’re about to make yourself dive in, there’s a dumb, sad honk! from the riverbank, and you look and there’s that animal, that gross, hateful animal that loves you and maybe thinks you’re a girl camel in disguise. And it has that look animals get when they don’t know if you’re coming back or not.
And you’ve had enough dogs and been enough dogs to know that it doesn’t help when you go back and say goodbye, but you do it, anyway. And the animal drools on you and pants and sweats, and its heart breaks, and there are hearts breaking all over the place like popcorn in this big stupid desert. And you’re bitter. And you feel sorry for yourself, and that’s what’s on your mind when you dive in and the water takes you down and makes you forget all, all except the singularity of You, the escape pod of your soul, moving on and starting over for the nine thousand nine hundred ninety-eighth time in a row.
She faded a little more each day.
She could see the sun through her hand quite clearly now. Like a bright red tattoo.
Shit, thought Suzie.
Sooner than she liked, she would vanish completely.
How did she feel about that? It depended on the moment. It depended, specifically, on her frustration level. Some days she was perfectly happy to get canceled out and not have to deal with anything anymore. Other days she had a gritty kind of hope. Milo would find her, or she would find him. The universe would decide she was right after all…that a little imbalance wasn’t such a bad thing after all.
She wandered.
She blew from place to place, leaves and wind. Sometimes she let the currents of the afterlife just take her. She materialized on shores and in restaurants. In parks and on boats and in kitchens and recycling centers.
The universe didn’t seem to think she was serious about quitting her job; it took her to the bedside of a dying Nigerian king, once.
“I told you,” she said. “I quit.”
The universe flexed its boa. It growled and creaked around her and around the Nigerian king.
“If you and the universe would take your quarrel elsewhere,” sighed the king, “I would be most grateful, as I am engaged in a difficult transformation.”
Wind and shadows. Suzie hit the road.
Was Milo even here? Or was he down there, on some planet, living one of his final lives?
Her instincts seemed to take her away from busy places, out onto the fringes. The places people went when they were tired, or running from something, or looking for something.
Once, she passed through a place where Milo had been. She could feel him there, like a troubled footprint in the sand. Gone now. Leaving behind a catastrophically unpleasant camel.
Dust and wind and faraway places.
Humans had a thing for these kind of places, she had learned. More than any other creature, they needed sometimes to simply flee. To reduce themselves to zero and make something new out of nothing.
She found herself thinking of someone she had known once. A friend she’d had. A human, besides Milo, who might have understood her a little. A man who had gotten her into the biggest fight of her life.
—
His name was Francesco. He lived in Italy.
Francesco had a rich family, and gorgeous surroundings, and was handsome and smart and fashionable. He spent his early years having a hell of a good time, drinking and singing and getting laid with his friends. Then one day it became necessary for them all to go off to war. Their families dressed them in armor and bought them horses and sent them off singing and laughing and flying colorful banners, and almost right away they were captured and tossed in a foreign prison.
This was kind of embarrassing, but the young friends tried to make the most of it, singing songs and telling stories, seeing who could kill the most rats or eat the most bugs, and eventually the war ended and they went home, still singing.
Francesco’s father exclaimed, “Bentornato, figlio!” and kissed him and put him to work in the family business, buying and selling fashionable clothes.
Maybe that’s what caused Francesco to get sick.
Something sure did. In fact, they thought he had died and draped a shroud over him. Suzie was about to kiss his forehead and send his soul off to the afterlife, when he suddenly sat up and said, “Gesù, non so cosa darei per una ciotola di zuppa,” which means, “Jesus, what I wouldn’t give for a bowl of soup.”