Elsewhere

  "The point is the journey," Betty says. "Don't you want to get out of the car?"

  "Not really, no," Liz replies.

  "Let's at least go in the gift shop and stretch our legs a bit," Betty pleads. "Maybe you'd like to get a souvenir?"

  Liz looks doubtfully at the hut with the thatched roof near the water's edge. Given its location and construction, the shop looks like it could blow away at any moment. An incongruously sturdy metal sign hangs over the porch:

  WISH YOU WERE HERE

  Knickknacks, Bric-a-brac, Bibelots,

  Trinkets, Gewgaws, Novelties, Whimsies, Whatnots, and other Sundries for the Discriminating Buyer "So, what do you say?" Betty smiles at Liz.

  "And who would I be buying a souvenir for exactly?" Liz asks.

  "For yourself."

  "You buy souvenirs to take back to other people," Liz snorts. "I don't know anyone else and I'm not going back."

  "Not always, not yet," Betty replies. "Come on, I'll buy you whatever you want."

  "I don't want anything," Liz says as she follows Betty into the tacky gift shop. No one is inside. A soup can sits by the cash register with a note: "Out to lunch. Leave payment in can. Cut yourself a good deal, just between us."

  To satisfy Betty, Liz selects a book of six Elsewhere postcards and a plastic snow globe. The snow globe has a miniature SS Nile submerged in sickly blue water, wish you were here is written in red across the base of the dome.

  "Do you want an Elsewhere beach towel?" Betty asks as Liz sets her two items on the counter.

  "No, thank you," Liz replies.

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes," Liz says tightly.

  "Maybe a T-shirt, then?"

  "No," Liz yells. "I don't want a goddamn T-shirt! Or a beach towel! Or anything else! All I want is to go home!"

  "All right, doll," Betty says with a sigh. "I'll meet you outside. I just have to add everything up."

  Liz storms out of the store, carrying her new snow globe. She waits for Betty in the car.

  Liz shakes the snow globe. The tiny SS Nile thrashes wildly in its plastic dome. Liz shakes the snow globe even harder. Slimy, stale blue water leaks onto Liz's hand. There's a small gap where the two seams of the dome were fused together. Liz opens the car door and throws the snow globe onto the pavement. Instead of shattering or cracking, it bounces across the parking lot like a rubber ball, stopping at the feet of a small girl in a pink polka-dotted bikini.

  "You dropped this," the girl calls out to Liz.

  "Yes," Liz agrees.

  "Don't you want it?" The girl picks up the snow globe from the ground.

  Liz shakes her head.

  "Can I have it?" the girl asks.

  "Knock yourself out," Liz replies.

  "The sky don't fall here, not much," the girl says. She flips the globe over so that all the snow collects in the dome. She places her pinky over the leak.

  "What do you mean?" Liz asks.

  "Like this." The girl flips the snow globe over.

  "You mean snow," Liz says. "You mean it doesn't snow here."

  "Not much, not much, not much," she sings. The girl walks over to Liz. "You're big."

  Liz shrugs.

  "How many are you?" the girl asks.

  "Fifteen."

  "I'm four," the girl answers.

  Liz looks at the child. "Are you a real little girl or a fake little girl?"

  The girl opens her eyes as wide as they'll go. "What do you mean?"

  "Are you really four, or are you just pretend four?" Liz asks.

  "What do you mean?" The girl raises her voice.

  "Were you always four or did you used to be big?"

  "I don't know. I'm four. Four!" the girl cries. "You're mean." The girl drops the snow globe at Liz's feet and runs away.

  Liz picks it up and gives it another shake. She drains it of all the remaining blue liquid until the only thing left is a cluster of fake snow crystals.

  Betty emerges from the gift shop, carrying a small paper bag.

  "I bought this for you," Betty says to Liz. She tosses Liz the paper bag. Inside is a T-shirt with the slogan my grandmother went to elsewhere and all she got me was this stinky t-shirt.

  For the first time that day, Liz smiles. "It does stink," Liz agrees. She puts the T-shirt on over her pajamas.

  "I thought you'd like it," Betty says. "I said to myself, there aren't going to be too many opportunities where that T-shirt actually makes sense as a gift." Betty laughs.

  For the first time, Liz really looks at Betty. She has dark brown hair and light laugh lines around the eyes. Betty is pretty, Liz thinks. Betty looks like Mom. Betty looks like me. Betty has a sense of humor . . . Suddenly Liz realizes that her grandmother may have better things to do than worry about a surly teenager. She wants to apologize for today and for everything else. She wants to say she knows that none of this situation is Betty's fault. "Betty," she says softly.

  "Yes, doll, what is it?"

  "I. . . I'm . . ." Liz begins. "My snow globe has a leak."

  That night, Liz writes out all six of the Elsewhere postcards. She writes one to her parents, one to Zooey, one to Edward, one to Lucy, one to Alvy. The last one she writes is to her biology teacher, who had skipped her funeral.

  Dear Dr. Fujiyama,

  By now, you have probably heard that I'm dead. This means I won't be attending this year's regional science fair, which is a great disappointment to me as I'm sure it also is for you. At the time I died, I felt I was starting to make real progress with those earthworms.

  I really enjoyed your class and continue to follow along from the place where I'm now living I now find myself. Dissecting the pig looked pretty interesting, and I thought I might try it. Unfortunately, there aren't any dead pigs here for me to dissect.

  It isn't bad here. The weather is nice most of the time. I live with my grandmother Betty now who is old, but looks young. (Long story.)

  I was disappointed not to see you at the funeral as you were my favorite teacher even including middle and elementary school. Not to give you a hard time or anything, Dr. F :) Yours,

  Elizabeth Marie Hall, 5th Period Biology

  Liz puts postage on all six postcards. She places them in the mail, knowing full well that they will never arrive at their intended destination. Lacking a return address, at least the postcards won't come back to her either. Liz thinks it might be nice to write a postcard to someone who would actually have a chance of receiving it.

  ************************************

  Back at the ODs, Liz is starting to be frustrated with viewing her life in five-minute chunks. As soon as she gets involved in watching one story, the binoculars click closed. She feels like she is always missing something. For example, the prom is coming up. Zooey recently decided she would go with John after all. And, as long as Zooey is going, Liz would really prefer to see the whole thing, uninterrupted. Maybe if she had forty-eight eternims instead of twentyfour, she could keep up better? She decides to ask Betty for more eternims.

  "Betty, I could use a couple more eternims each day."

  "How many did you have in mind?" Betty asks.

  "I was thinking, maybe forty-eight a day."

  "That's starting to be a lot, doll."

  "I'll pay you back eventually," Liz promises.

  "It's not the eternims. I just worry about you spending so much time at the Observation Decks."

  "You're not my mother, you know."

  "I know, Liz, but I still worry."

  "God, I hate this!" Liz storms out of the room and throws herself on her bed. As she lies there, she decides to skip the ODs for three days in order to save up the eternims for the prom. This is a great sacrifice. Lacking friends or any other diversions, she spends the time in her room at Betty's house, worrying that she is falling behind with everyone back home. The three days seem endless, but she saves enough money to see the whole prom.

  Liz also convinces Esther to let her stay after closing. Esthe
r doesn't exactly agree, but she makes a point of showing Liz where the light switches are.

  On prom night Liz watches Zooey eat strawberries dipped in chocolate, make photo key chains, and slow-dance to a schmaltzy ballad. Not long after, she sees Zooey lose her virginity in a fancy room at the same hotel where the dance was held. Out of respect for Zooey, Liz only watches for thirty seconds and covers her right eye with her hand. Liz pays special attention to Zooey's prom dress. The dress, the one Liz was meant to have helped her choose, is balled up in a corner of the room.

  Liz leaves before her time runs out, two whole hours before the OD is even set to close. She doesn't want to face Betty at home, but she has nowhere else to go. Liz decides to sit in the park near Betty's house.

  After a while, a white, fluffy bichon frise sits next to Liz on the bench. "Hello," the dog seems to say.

  By way of greeting, Liz pats the dog on the head. It is the way it was with Lucy somehow, and Liz is even more homesick than she was before.

  The dog cocks its head. "You seem a little blue."

  "Maybe a little."

  "What's bothering you?" the dog asks.

  Liz thinks about the dog's question before she answers. "I'm lonely. Also, I hate it here."

  The dog nods. "Would you mind scratching under my collar on the back of my neck? I can't reach there with my paws."

  Liz obliges.

  "Thank you. That feels much better." The dog snorts with pleasure. "So, you said you were lonely and you hate it here?"

  Liz nods again.

  "My advice to you is to stop being lonely and to stop hating it here. That always works for me,"

  says the dog. "Oh, and be happy! It's easier to be happy than to be sad. Being sad takes a lot of work. It's exhausting."

  A woman calls the dog from across the park: "ARNOLD!"

  "Gotta go! That's my two-legger calling me!" The dog hops off the bench. "See you around!"

  "See you," says Liz, but the dog is already gone.

  Lucky Cab

  Following the prom, Liz gives up watching Zooey or anyone else from school. Now she watches only her immediate family.

  One night just as the OD is about to close, Liz asks Esther, "How do the binoculars even work?"

  Esther makes a face. "You should know that by now. You put in your coin and then "

  Liz interrupts. "I meant, how do they really work? I spend pretty much every waking hour here and I don't know a thing about them."

  "Like any binoculars, I suppose. A series of convex lenses in two cylindrical tubes combine to form one image "

  Liz interrupts again. "Yes, I know that part. I learned all that in, like, fifth grade."

  "Seems like you know everything, Liz, so I don't see why you're bothering me."

  Liz ignores Esther. "But Earth is so far, and these binoculars don't even seem particularly powerful. How could you possibly see all the way back to Earth?"

  "Maybe that's the thing. Maybe Earth's not far at all."

  Liz snorts. "That's a pretty thought, Esther."

  "It is, isn't it?" Esther smiles. "I think of it like a tree, because every tree is really two trees. There's the tree with the branches that everyone sees, and then there's the upside-down root tree, growing the opposite way. So Earth is the branches, growing up to the sky, and Elsewhere is the roots, growing down in opposing but perfect symmetry. The branches don't think much about the roots, and maybe the roots don't think much about the branches, but all the time, they're connected by the trunk, you know? Even though it seems far from the roots to the branches, it isn't. You're always connected, you just don't think about "

  "Esther!" Liz interrupts a third time. "But how do the binoculars work? How do they know what I want to see?"

  "It's a secret," Esther replies. "I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you."

  "That isn't at all funny." Liz starts to walk away.

  "All right, Lizzie, I'll tell you. Come really close, and I'll whisper it in your ear."

  Liz obeys.

  "Ask me again," Esther says, "and say please."

  "Esther, how do the binoculars work, please?"

  Esther leans in toward Liz's ear and whispers, "It's" she pauses "magic." Esther laughs.

  "I don't know why I even bother talking to you."

  "You don't have any friends and you're profoundly lonely."

  "Thanks." Liz storms out of the OD.

  "See you tomorrow, Liz," Esther calls cheerily.

  August 12, the day that would have been Liz's sixteenth birthday on Earth, arrives. Like every other day, Liz spends this one at the ODs.

  "Lizzie would have been sixteen today," her mother says to her father.

  "I know," he says.

  "Do you think they'll ever find the man who did it?"

  "I don't know," he answers. "I hope so," he adds.

  "It was a cab!" Liz yells at the binoculars. "AN OLD YELLOW TAXICAB WITH A FOURLEAFCLOVER

  AIR FRESHENER HANGING FROM THE REARVIEW MIRROR!"

  "They can't hear you," a grandmotherly type tells Liz.

  "I know that," Liz snaps. "Shush!"

  "Why didn't he stop?" Liz's mother asks her father.

  "I don't know. At least he called 911 from the pay phone, not that it mattered anyway."

  "He still should have stopped." Liz's mother starts to cry. "I mean, you hit a fifteen-year-old kid, you stop, right? That's what a decent person does, right?"

  "I don't know, Olivia. I used to think so," Liz's father says.

  "And I refuse to believe no one saw anything! I mean someone must have seen; someone must know; someone must "

  Liz's time runs out, and the lenses click shut. She doesn't move. She just stares into the closed lenses and lets her mind go black.

  Liz is furious to learn that she was the victim of a hit-and-run. Whoever hit me should pay, she thinks. Whoever hit me should go to prison for a very long time, she thinks. At that moment, Liz resolves to find the cabbie and then to somehow find a way to tell her parents. She pops an eternim in the slot and begins to scour the Greater Boston area for old yellow taxicabs with fourleafclover air fresheners hanging from their rearview mirrors.

  Liz systematically searches for the lucky cab (her name for it) by watching the parking lots and the dispatchers of all the cab companies that service the area near the Cambridgeside Galleria.

  Although there are only four cab companies that drive this area, it still takes her an entire week and over five hundred eternims to locate the lucky cab. Liz raises the additional eternims by asking Betty for clothes money. Betty is happy to oblige her and doesn't ask too many questions.

  She just crosses her fingers and hopes Liz is coming out of her funk.

  The cabbie's license says his name is Amadou Bonamy. He drives cab number 512 for the Three Aces Cab Company. She recognizes the cab immediately. It has the fourleaf-clover air freshener and it is older than Alvy, maybe older than Liz, too. Looking at the car, Liz is surprised that it even withstood the impact of her body.

  The day after Liz locates the cab, she watches its driver. Amadou Bonamy is tall with black curly hair. His skin is the color of a coconut shell. His wife is pregnant. He takes classes at Boston University at night. He always helps people with their luggage when he drives them to the airport.

  He never purposely takes the long route, even when the people he's driving are from out of town.

  He doesn't speed much, Liz notes. He seems to obey traffic laws religiously, Liz further notes.

  Despite his car's dilapidated condition, he takes good care of it, vacuuming the seats each day.

  He tells dumb jokes to his passengers. He listens to National Public Radio. He buys bread at the same place Liz's mother buys bread. He has a son at the same school as Liz's brother. He Liz pushes the binoculars away. She realizes she doesn't want to know this much about Amadou Bonamy. Amadou Bonamy is a murderer. He is my murderer, she thinks. He needs to pay. Like her mother had said, it isn't right to hit people wit
h dirty old cabs, and then leave them to die in the street. Liz's pulse races. She needs to find a way to tell her parents about Amadou Bonamy. She stands up and walks out of the Observation Deck, feeling flush with purpose and more alive than she has felt in some time.

  On her way out of the building, Liz passes Esther.

  "Glad to see you leaving while it's still daylight out for once," Esther says.

  "Yeah." Liz stops. "Esther," she says, "you wouldn't know how to make Contact with the living, would you?"

  "Contact?" says Esther. "Why in the world do you want to know about that? Contact's for damned fools. Nothing good's ever come out of talking to the living. Nothing but hurt and bother. And goodness knows, we've all got enough of that already."

  Liz sighs. Given Esther's response, Liz knows she can't ask just anyone about Contact. Not Betty, who is worried enough about Liz already. Or Thandi, who is probably angry at her for not returning her calls. Or Aldous Ghent, who would never in a million years help Liz make Contact.

  Only one person might help her, and that was Curtis Jest. Unfortunately, Liz hadn't seen him since the day of their funerals back on the Nile.

  Early on, several news stories had run on Elsewhere about Curtis's death. Because Curtis was a rock star and celebrity, people were interested in his arrival. The funny thing was, most of the people on Elsewhere hadn't even heard his music. Curtis was popular among people of Liz's generation, and there were relatively few people from Liz's generation on Elsewhere. So interest declined quickly. By Liz's birthday, Curtis Jest had faded into total obscurity.

  Liz decides to brave calling Thandi, who now works at a television station as an announcer. She reads the names of upcoming arrivals to Elsewhere so that people know to go to the Elsewhere pier to greet them. Liz thinks Thandi might have news of Curtis Jest's whereabouts.

  "Why do you want to talk to him?" Thandi asks. Her voice is hostile.

  "He happens to be a very interesting person," Liz says.

  "They say he became a fisherman," Thandi says. "You'll probably find him down at the docks."

  A fisherman? she thinks. Fishing seems so ordinary. It doesn't make any sense. "Why would Curtis Jest be a fisherman?" Liz asks.