Tracklist:
This Is Heaven To Me – Madeleine Peyroux
Down By The River – Neil Young
Ohio – The Black Keys
18
Our perception of time changes depending upon our mental state, because that’s where we get our perception of time. A recent study by scientists at Ruzu Sokkusu University in Tokyo discovered that it was indeed true that “minutes felt like hours” when subjects were forced to watch episodes of The Nanny. In contrast, “hours felt like minutes” during a surprise visit by the university’s cheerleading squad, or when the girls were allowed to give the test subjects a full body massage (data may have been skewed because test observers also participated).
Dean awoke to a world of brilliant white, buried to his neck in a pile of warm ivory powder. Clouds of white dust filled the air, as if a giant St. Michael were banging giant chalkboard erasers behind a giant school. Dean wriggled back and forth and slowly pulled his arms free of the soft material. Unlike snow, the powder had a sticky, warm consistency and seemed to fall through Dean’s fingers in slow motion, but this could have been due to his near-concussion.
“Am I dead?” he said. “Helloooo out there ... Jehovah? Yahweh? Krishna? Michael Bolton?”
The snow bank a few feet to his right trembled in a tiny avalanche and Dean heard a moan. He twisted and kicked himself free of his own mountain of powder and dug toward the sound. His fingers touched warm skin, then an arm. Dean pulled hard and Emerson burst to the surface, coughing and completely plastered in white dust.
“As I expected,” said Dean, wiping the powder from her face. “You’re as beautiful in death as in life. How about me? Did I cross the pearly gates a few pounds lighter?”
Emerson glanced left and right suspiciously. “We are not in heaven. Where is the ice cream and rivers of chocolate?”
“I think you’re confusing the land where all good people go after they die with the Land of Dairy Queen, where all fat people go to die.”
Emerson giggled. She pushed Dean back against the powder and traced a finger across his cheek. She leaned forward and her white-dusted face was dangerously close to his.
“Did you really mean it?”
“Yes, of course. There’s no chocolate at all.”
“No. On the bridge, when you said you loved me.”
“Ah, yes. I do remember, although it was literally a lifetime ago. I guess it’s true. It’s very hard for me to say things like that, but ever since you climbed from that ambulance compartment––”
Emerson straddled his waist. “Yes?”
“We can’t do this,” said Dean, twisting his hips in an attempt to escape.
“But we are husband and wife!”
“Like the Duke said, our marriage was fake. As fake as a bottle of Tang in a Beijing train station.”
“That doesn’t matter now. You just said we’re in heaven, and I agree. When two lovers die together, their souls are bound forever.”
“Still, I don’t feel good about it. You’re only eighteen, or were back on Earth, and I’m thirty-six. Even in heaven I could be your dad, if my parents had let me drink beer at that age.”
Emerson laughed. “I’m not eighteen. I said that just to make myself look better. In Kamchatka, a girl who is twenty four and not married is called an old cleaning woman. If we see her on the street we say, ‘Hello, old cleaning woman! Which house are you cleaning today?’ ”
“So you’re twenty-four?” Dean chewed on his lower lip. “I could still be your father, if my parents had left the twelve-year-old me in front of a sorority house with two bottles of Thunderbird taped to my vest and a sign that said ‘Get It Here.’ ”
“Do you like me, Mr. Dean Cook?”
“Yes, of course.”
Emerson’s breath was hot on his face. “Do you LIKE like me?”
Dean kissed her open mouth for a long, time-stopping moment, a mouth that tasted of strawberries and white dust.
“No,” he whispered at last. “I LOVE love you.”
[LEGAL NOTICE: Children and adults with a heart condition or pacemaker should avoid this section, take a walk in the park (I hear the swings are fantastic), catch up on the cricket match from yesterday, or recalculate the interest payments on that 100K debt you took out to attend graduate school in fashion design. Pregnant ladies are fine, as they’ve obviously ... Never mind, it’s over already. Good. Wait, false alarm. Go back to the cricket.]
Afterwards, the pair snuggled together, Emerson’s head on Dean’s chest, both naked and covered in the strange, sticky powder.
“You were wonderful,” murmured Emerson.
“Thanks,” said Dean. “Was it ... heavenly?”
Emerson giggled. “Yes! Like an angel.”
“Sorry about the crying. That doesn’t usually happen.”
“You are American man who is sensitive. The television said you would cry during sex.”
“That bastard! Well, I never liked television anyway. All these years and not one birthday card from him.”
She rubbed Dean’s belly. “Do you know when I started to like you?”
“Two minutes ago?”
“Silly! The day your book fell from the sky. I lay on the pavement with all the Duke’s relatives standing around, and your face stared at me from the back of the book. In my heart I knew you would help me escape.”
“It was taken a long time ago,” said Dean. “I was fifty pounds lighter.”
“True, but your face was honest and your eyes clear.”
“If I remember correctly, that photo was taken right after I received a letter from Publisher’s Clearing House,” said Dean. “I really thought that would be the year ...”
“Thank you for not giving me to Duke Nichego. You could have made it to your speech in time.”
“I may be all kinds of awful, but I’m not that kind of awful. I’ve been wondering, why did the Duke call you Angelika?”
“Because that’s my name.”
“Not Emerson?”
“When we first met, I didn’t want you to know my real name. I thought you would help me escape Nichego, and we would never see each other again. It wouldn’t matter if you knew my name.”
“Which is?”
“Angelika Ivanova.”
Dean laughed. “Next you’ll be telling me there aren’t any Kamchatkan people in the mountains of West Virginia.”
“That, too, was a lie. I could not ask for help without someplace to go. Without that, you might have given me to the American security forces, who would have tortured and sold me to Duke Nichego.”
“You didn’t have much of a plan, did you?”
She kissed him. “No, but I had you.”
“Quite right. So should I call you Angelika or Emerson? Perhaps your legal name––Destiny Klara Schicklgruber?”
Emerson smiled. “ ‘Dear wife’ is good enough for me.”