6/11/1999 Ashbrook
A man and Death are talking on the top of a sky scraper, where an office manager was backed up a fire escape by angry people wielding menacing office supplies; where he locked and blocked the door from outside the little hut thing around the staircase. He walked around, and the roof was actually rather nice. There was thick grass, tall trees, foxes chasing chickens, sneaking up on them from behind the cover of the huge bushes of oleander and wisteria, stag horn sumac and morning glory all churned up together in great amoebae like blobs of blossom and bloom and trilled extensions. There were groups of people playing shuffle board, and a parrot vender. A blue ribbon snaked throughout the square cropping, with small notes attached on it every so here and there, which read "The River Thames, mile: one hundred and seventy eight," with different readings, in heavy ink from a calligrapher’s pen.
Death said, "So, Joe."
Joe said, "That’s Joe-Joe."
"No it isn’t."
Troupes of sleek arrogant androids backed up a waste management engineering truck, past them.
"It’s always been a dream of mine, to tell you the truth." Joe smiled, and patted death on the shoulder and walked on ahead of him. "It would really mean a lot to me." he said looking over his shoulder as he walked.
"Ok, Joe-Joe. Isn’t Joe-Joe something people name their dog. Do you want to be looked at like a clown?"
"Do you say this to everyone who comes in?"
Death pointed to a cheep name-tag with Ronald written on it. "I don’t see everyone who comes in. I just take your name, then you go to the desk that’s about fifty feet to your left. It’s like camp; that’s what I usually tell kids, and most of them just run up without saying anything. It’s the old people who start apologizing for everything they can remember from their life, and fall down crying. Sometimes the old person is crying on their face for some long, I can take two other calls and get back before they even knew I was gone. Most people can’t do that until the third year. But this is only my second. This is just a summer job thing. The clothes are cool though. Death scratched the back of his head and fidgeted with his broach pin.
Ronald had a long black cape and patchwork pants, with pattern patches of all quite dark colors. His shoes were thin green reed boots with wooden soles that clunked when he walked, the pants were held up by yellow and green (on a brown hew) suspenders, and he had a knit tan shirt on under a vest with lots of pockets and lots of small sewn on bottle holders and strange twisted metal shapes in rows, and of course the name tag.
"You look sort of familiar," Ronald (death) said.
"Oh, I’m just passing through."
"Sorry if I was rude," he said.
"You were a bit,"
"You never answered my question."
"Well it’s not the end of the world, I just thought it would break the ice or something. Non sequitur. So how often do you make mistakes?"
"Not so very often."
"Well I’m glad I got the chance to see one. I’ll probably do one of those life turn-a-round things. Tell people how ‘shocked’ I was."
"What do you mean?"
"I seriously doubt that any of those people would actually kill me. How did you suppose I would die?"
"I see your point. I mean it would be fairly improbable for you to die now. They told me you were dead already, I sort of assumed you were."
"Quite."
"But that’s ok. I’ve got heart attacks, aneurysms, strokes, toxin buildups, burst appendices," he looked down at the bottles on his vest.
"Can’t I just go back."
"Are you serious?"
"Oh, yes."
"Well, I guess so. It’s a first I’ll tell you that. Actually I don’t think it would go very well. Everyone would think I’d lost you. Now that I think about it you probably shouldn’t see anyone."
"Imagine if they saw you."
"Oh, people can’t see me."
"But I can see you."
"But your..."
"But I’m not, remember."
"Oh, yes, so you are. Yes, we were just talking about that, weren’t we."
"So if I could see you, why couldn’t they?"
"I just don’t see how it would be possible?"
"I don’t see how this is possible?"
"You don’t think something’s happened to me?" asked death, his face beginning to look a little worried.
"What could happen to you?"
"I might be stuck here."
"You make it sound so awful."
"What would I do?"
"Get a job, your young enough to go to school. Take out some loans. Get a degree or two. Start a career"
"It doesn’t sound very inviting."
"You could wing it."
"How far would I get doing that."
"Depends how good you are. There’s better luck these days. Anyway, we don’t even know if there’s anything wrong with you. You can’t get too worried before you know."
"Well I guess there’s only one way to find out."
"Right."
So they both walked over to the stairs and began to unfasten the door.