Jav sat at his reserved booth at the Bake & Bagel, reading Neil Gaiman over his lunch. Geno came out from the back room and around the counter, his clothes and apron dusty with flour. He carried his own sandwich and a bottle of ice tea. “¿Puedo sentarme?”
“For a small fee,” Jav said, then gestured to the bench across.
“So,” Geno said. “Remember when I found your notebook and instead of returning it right away, I read it like a dick?”
“No, I don’t recall that at all,” Jav said. He picked up the napkin dispenser and pretended to throw it at Geno’s head. “Dick.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
Jav shrugged. “It’s weird in there.”
“You wrote about me.”
“Yeah, I wondered if you saw that. I hope you didn’t think I was making fun of you. I have a funny way of looking at the world. I see names or situations and my weird head starts telling a story. That’s all.”
“I get it,” Geno said. “I thought it was cool, actually.”
“Yeah?”
A bit of quiet passed while Geno ate. “Random question for your weird head,” he said. “Do you believe in an afterlife?”
“Kind of,” Jav said slowly. “I envision it as the ultimate cocktail party where you get to talk to everyone you ever wanted and get all the answers to your questions.”
“Like who killed JFK?”
“Did Atlantis exist? What were they pyramids really for? Area Fifty-One in Roswell, what was that all about?”
“I think after Q and A, you get to have a beer with your seventy-seventh great-grandfather.”
Jav pointed at him. “See now that would be cool. Learning the history of your name. Imagine if you were led into a presentation room with this gigantic family tree.”
“A guided tour of your genealogy.”
“The ultimate documentary. Narrated by David Attenborough.”
Geno crumpled up his napkin and dropped it on the empty plate. “Do you think everyone’s happy there?”
“In heaven?” Jav wrinkled his brow over the question. “Huh. Happy? I don’t know.”
“I sometimes have a problem with that aspect of it. The way people say, ‘He’s at peace now’ or, ‘She’s in a better place.’ Pissed me off at my mother’s funeral. Maybe it was a better place but who were they to say she was peaceful there?”
“So you’re thinking maybe there’s no physical suffering, but the departed feel sadness or regret on the other side.”
“I guess I’m wondering, do they miss us?”
With his finger, Jav made patterns in some spilled sugar on the table top. “I was talking about my cousin with Stef once and he said, ‘He must miss you like crazy.’ I believed it. I mean I could believe it. I could believe heaven or whatever was a place where sadness still existed.”
“See, I think about my mother,” Geno said. “Watching from the other side while I was getting raped. I have this vision of her beating on the wall. The barrier. Whatever separates this life and the afterlife. Bashing her fists against it and screaming to get through.”
Jav felt his eyes widen and his finger stopped moving. “Jesus.”
“I can’t accept she would be on the other side, floating in her state of eternal grace, just watching. She had to have been tearing the place apart. It’s what mothers do.”
Stunned, Jav rubbed his fingertips together, watching the sugar crystals fall like snow. “I was skiing once,” he said. “On line for the lift and up ahead was a mother and little boy, maybe six or seven. And he miscalculated getting on the chair and slid off before the bar was down. Just a few feet, he wasn’t hurt. But then the mother jumped off too.”
“Yikes.”
“The attendant shut down the line, got them back on their feet. Everyone was fine, they were off on the next chair. The attendant looked at me, shaking his head and he said, ‘The mothers always jump.’”
Geno laughed, nodding.
“He was like, ‘I’ve never seen one hesitate. No thought, they just go. The dads continue ahead and call back, I’ll meet you up there. The mothers jump.’”
“It’s what they do,” Geno said.
“Then I’d have to agree with you,” Jav said. “She must’ve been out of her mind. Whatever the afterlife is, she must’ve been tearing up the place.”
Geno chewed on his bottom lip as he drew a deep breath in and out. “Weird, because as much as I hate envisioning her like that, I need it. I need her to have been that way.”
Jav crossed his arms as the idea grew larger and more intense. “Wow, that’s a powerful fucking image, man. A mother on the other side, whaling on the boundary and can’t get to her children.”
“Since I’m sharing everything in my weird head, I’ll give you another image.”
“Trust me, dude,” Jav said, smiling. “I live in my weird head.”
“When my dad died, he flatlined on the operating table. Doctors told me they were able to bring him back, but only for a minute before he flatlined again. And I wonder what happened in that minute. Did he have the classic out-of-body experience and drift toward the light? You hear stories about it and people say they almost get to the other side when they hear voices telling them it’s not time yet. ‘Go back. Go back. It’s not your time.’ I wonder when my Dad’s heart stopped the first time, if someone told him to go back. He came back, but then…”
Jav hardly dared breathe. “Go on.”
“I think my mother called to him. Like she needed him with her. She couldn’t be on the other side alone. She was losing her mind, she wanted him to come to her. I think it must’ve been the longest minute of my father’s life.”
“His second life.”
“Yeah.”
A moment passed, both of them staring into space, alone with their thoughts. “You ever think of telling your story?” Jav asked.
“What, like write a book?”
“A book. An article. An art show. Producing something.”
“Maybe a radio story?”
“Sure,” Jav said, as an idea he’d been kicking around suddenly crashed into a new idea. A great idea.
“Uh-oh,” Geno said. “I think The Thing just showed up. You got that look going.”
“Yeah…”
“Better write it down.”
“No,” Jav said. “No, this isn’t a story. This is a phone call.”