Awake in Hell (14 page)

Then,
back to the same old
Deedy
. “However, darling girl,
your insistence that the universe — to include the
Hellverse
— revolves solely around you, is always an amusement for me.”

I
just look at him. “Whatever.” I say with a bit of disappointment. “I was
beginning to think that maybe you were my Hell equivalent to a guardian angel,
if there is such a thing?” I pose the last part as a question, just in case he’s
willing to answer it.

“Let’s
not speculate.” Of course, he’s not going to answer it.  “Let’s stick to
the facts. You told me about the poor dear in the salon and how she felt when
she left. But you forgot to mention how all of it made you feel, Louise.” He
sets his chin down on his desk, actually resting on his desk, and looks at me
expectantly.

“Well,
I felt as good as anyone who’s just been handed a termination slip can, I
guess,” I say with a smile, because I know that termination slip says that I was
fired due to “Recognizing Beauty.” I point at that on the slip and ask
Deedy
, “How could anyone feel really bad about getting
shown the door when it’s for something like that?”

Deedy
looks at me with feigned confusion
and shrugs his shoulders. One more time I find myself laughing in Hell.
Deedy
is laughing with me.

“Then
on the way over here I had another memory...” I started, and
Deedy
pushed himself up with keen interest. So, I continue
my story.

When
Linda got married, everyone knows how badly I behaved at the rehearsal
dinner.  But, before that, when all getting married meant to either of us
was an excuse to shop for pretty dresses, Linda and I were in our glory. We had
a blast going from store to store trying on all the clothes, drinking complimentary
champagne, standing on those pedestals with the mirrors around them feeling
like princess fairies, and basically avoiding any real conversation about the
great event that all of this was leading up to. We stopped into a small, local,
bridal boutique early on in the process.  A small shop owned by an elderly
woman everyone called, Miss
Shanie
. Miss
Shanie
was so excited that we were there that she
immediately began rushing around the store grabbing dresses for us both to try
on.  Beautiful wedding dresses for Linda and, well, interesting bridesmaid
dresses for me. Now, let me say this right off the bat. I had no intention of
buying my bridesmaid dress from
Ms
Shanie
. She was a sweet old lady to be sure, but the accent
on that has to be on the word old, especially when it came to her taste in
auxiliary wedding fashion. While her bridal gowns were traditional, yet
stunning, her bridesmaid dresses were awful. A few of them I swear were made of
the exact fabric of my grandmother’s throw pillows in her “fancy” living room
where no one was allowed to sit, — ever. You literally had to avert your eyes
and try not to take the entire thing in at once with most of them. Ever been to
Vegas? Walk into any casino and look down at the carpet. I heard once that
casinos notoriously pick out the ugliest carpet patterns so that you’ll avert
your gaze and keep your eyes at slot machine level to make you more likely to
stop and gamble. Bridesmaid dresses used to have the same basic end game. To be
so hideous that everyone at the wedding would look only at the bride, at all
times.

Linda
and I planned to look at a couple of wedding dresses for her and then leave
with a polite excuse and head to the outlets in the next town. But
Ms
Shanie
had different ideas.
She brought out a pink-
ish
nightmare on a hanger and
showed it to me with the same giddy enthusiasm that a young child has when
presenting a handful of crushed dandelions to his mother, claiming it’s a
bouquet of beautiful flowers. The dress was so horrific that Linda and I just looked
at each other and immediately fell out into peals of laughter. However, the
reaction that was apparent on
Ms
Shanie’s
face prompted me to straighten up and make a half-hearted excuse about too much
champagne, which of course, prompted
Ms
Shanie
to suggest that I try it on. So I took it from her,
holding it like a cobra about to strike at my face, and made my way to the
dressing room.

Now,
you know how sometimes when you see something that looks really bad on the
rack, but once it’s on you and you step back and really look at it, you realize
it’s not so bad? That didn’t happen to me. The dress fused to my body like a
bad science fiction movie monster. There was so much fabric I could never be
really sure that my arms were in the actual arm holes and there was some sort
of flower-slash-bow thing that was pinned to the chest, but was so big, it
covered part of my face. And, regardless of how many yards of unnecessary,
pepto-bismal
pink satin was killed to make this dress, it
still had a mermaid skirt. I couldn’t walk more than three inches a stride.
When I exited the dressing room, I was met by Linda laughing so hard I kept
waiting for her to pee herself.
Ms
Shanie
on the other hand regarded me with great concern and
kept circling me and making these “tsk
tsk
” noises
until finally she stopped and said one word — one word that destroyed me and
Linda for the rest of the day — “backwards.” We started rolling with
uncontrolled laughter. Even after I managed to get out of that wretched
straightjacket of a dress. We had somehow made it out of the store without
reducing Ms.
Shanie
to tears, we were clinging to
each other as we stumbled down the street trying to catch our breath from
laughing so hard.

“That
was a deeply traumatizing experience.” I say, when we were finally able to
speak.

“I
may never be able to scrub that image off of my brain.” Linda says in between
gasps. “Now, I know what everyone means by some things can’t be unseen!” she
says giggling once more. We continued to laugh and hold each other like children
as we walked down the street to the bus stop.

In
the next town, we came across the glitzy dress shop where all the private high
school girls bought their prom dresses and the like. Inside, we both spotted a
little lavender dress that promised to accentuate my assets in an amazing way.
As I stepped out of the dressing room, now being embraced by the softest silk
fitting my every curve, other customers actually stopped their shopping to gaze
admiringly my way. Linda looked at me with glazed eyes and said “You are going
to be the prettiest girl at my wedding!” with total enthusiasm and pride.

But,
that statement bothered me, for whatever reason. While normally, I seek out
those kinds of compliments, in this case I felt, and still feel, that there was
something severely wrong with the idea of a bride who does not believe that
she, herself, is not the prettiest girl at her own wedding. Which is why I
ended up doing the single, craziest thing I’d ever done, up to that point in my
life.  Unless you haven’t been paying any attention whatsoever to my tale
up to this point, that covers a shit load of crazy.

The
morning of Linda’s wedding, I woke up to a screaming brain, cursing me for a
night filled with brown liquor and toxic words directed at my best friend. With
that fateful (and regrettable) rehearsal dinner toast still playing a highlight
reel inside my head, I found myself in front of Ms.
Shanie
.
To her delight, I handed over a couple hundred dollars for the ugliest
bridesmaid dress in the universe, and then I actually wore it to Linda’s
wedding.

To
be sure, when Linda first caught sight of me in all my hideousness, the thought
crossed her mind that I was trying to mount a final protest. But once she realized
that it wasn’t anything like that, and that my intentions were actually kind of
noble, she grabbed on to me and held me close for a very long time. During that
embrace, we finally got an opportunity to thank each other for the years of
friendship, for every great experience, forgive each other for every
transgression and express our total devotion to each other, all without saying
a single word.

Deedy
sits back in his chair as I finish
my story and looks at me with gentle affection. Finally he says, “My Darling
Girl, I must say you, are always a pleasant surprise.”

“Speaking
of surprises!” I had almost forgotten my epiphany from the night before. I
excitedly begin to relay last night’s dream and its revelations.

“So,
Bobby is someone special?”
Deedy
says, while
scribbling as if he’s taking notes in my file. I have long suspected however,
that he just doodles.

“Uh
Huh,” I say, excited once more. “I can’t remember how long we were together or
whether it ended badly, but I do know that we were very much together and very
fond of one another. Actually, I cannot believe that I had forgotten him. Is it
weird that I did?” My words are just pouring out. I don’t really expect an
answer.
Deedy
looks at me with a kind of sadness and
replies, “No, down here all kinds of things are lost.”

Now,
it’s my turn to sit back in my chair and regard
Deedy
with anticipation. “And, I figured out who the little girl is!” I say. He
regards me with mild suspicion. “And, the little girl is?” he asks.

“Linda!”
I announce, then launch into my whole ‘inner child’ theory, complete with every
psychological term I’ve ever learned or read, to explain why she’s appearing to
me as a cute kid instead of as herself.

Deedy
looks almost preoccupied. He says,
almost to himself, “
Fy
merch
annwyl
,
eich
bod
mor
agos
.”

“You
are speaking Welsh again,” I say, bringing him back.

“Sorry,”
Deedy
says, seemingly shaking something off then
moving forward with his usual gusto. “You are very close now, Louise. Tell me,
how does that inner child you speak of feel about coming out to play?” he asks.

“Why?”
Now I’m suspicious.

Deedy
slides yet another sticky note
across the desk. Yay! Another temp job, and apparently, this one is going to be
fun!

***

I
jump up and grab it from the desk.  Looking down at it for my new gig. The
air around me constricts like hands wrapping around my throat. I suddenly feel
wobbly and sink back down in my chair before I fall over. I feel my blood, as
imaginary as it may be, sinking down to my feet. For the first time ever in
Hell, I feel chilled to the bone. I struggle to find the word ‘no’ inside of my
head, but it gets lost in the horror of the word in front of me. Instead I let
out a scream.

The
sound of my own scream clears the way for my mouth to start forming words.
“I...I...I...no,” is the best I can do.

“What
did you just say to me, Louise?”
Deedy
rises from his
chair and leans on his desk. There is no more concern for me. He is as stern as
he’s ever been. I look into his eyes and realize that they’ve suddenly become
hardened. I feel like I’m in the principal’s office getting in trouble. I
realize that I’ve never felt this way in
Deedy’s
office before.

“I
can’t do it
Deedy
. I can’t!” I’m not firm or
definitive. I’m pleading with him. My chest feels like it weighs a thousand
pounds and the tears have started again. Damn tears, this time hot with panic
and fear.

“Yes,
you can. And in fact, you will.”
Deedy
has calmed a
bit, seems nice again. Yet, he’s obviously done asking. He is officially
telling me what to do.

Well,
I can dig in my heels too, buddy! “Maybe, you think I can. But, I won’t!” I
say, with new tears streaming down my face.

Deedy
doesn’t dig his heels in, he just
sits back down behind his desk and states his case in a remarkable way.
“Louise, I have never faulted you for ripping out of here with a sense of
confidence. Well, let’s be honest, with a sense of over-confidence in each and
every job I’ve handed over to you. Nor, have I ever held it against you, when
you came back again and again feeling defeated or like a failure. In fact, I’ve
actually encouraged you to seek out the positives in every one of these
attempts, despite the futility of the job itself. Finally, my darling girl, I
do not and never would fault you for being afraid. Show trepidation, question
me as to why I send you somewhere, sit and wallow for a minute or two if you
must in your own fear of things that have not happened yet. But, then go,
Louise. Go where I ask you to, because if you deny me, as heartbreaking it
would be for both of us, it would signify the end of our relationship for now
and the end of your relationship with the agency, permanently. Do you
understand?”

I
am now openly sobbing. My fear is wrestling with my sense of duty to this
incredible man who has offered me so many chances, all of which I’ve come up
wanting. I nod my head at him. Of course, I will go, not because I think I
deserve this punishment, and it is a punishment to be sent to such a wretched
place. Even though it scares me shitless, I will go because
Deedy
is asking me to, and he is right.