GLASS SOUP Read online

  Some of them looked around guiltily, as if the other mourners could see into their heads and the weird vision they’d just had. But for the time being no one at the funeral thought or imagined that What I just saw he just saw too. People looked down or away in embarrassment, at the sky to clear their eyes of tears, or even at the coffin to reaffirm it was still there.

  But what was Glass Soup?

  The Dinosaur Prayer

  John Flannery knew what Glass Soup meant. The moment he saw Leni hold up her sign, he turned right around and hurried away. He looked like a man who urgently needed to find a toilet. His eyes were too wide; his hands kept opening and closing into fists. When he reached his car he had trouble fitting the key into the door lock. He eventually remembered that it could be opened remotely by simply pressing a button on the ignition key.

  The first thing he did after getting into the car and sitting down was to fart. Flannery had never farted before but this one was a real toupee lifter. It happened because he had nervously swallowed so much air walking from the cemetery to the car that his alarmed body had to get rid of it somehow. Startled, he turned in the seat and looked down at his ass like dogs sometimes do when they fart; as if what just happened had nothing to do with them. They’re just as surprised by the noise as you.

  The smells of fresh fart, new car, and expensive leather filled the space around him. Flannery sat staring straight ahead, knowing he should get moving, but stunned still by what had happened. The rules had just been broken by the other side. Some kind of immense new dynamic was at hand. If he had known that every single person at the cemetery saw what he had seen, he would have been genuinely frightened.

  As a human being, John Flannery had never farted and had never been afraid. Afraid of what? What was here that could frighten a being like him? He did not eat unless he needed to fool people into believing he was human. His heart did not beat unless it was necessary for that same reason. He breathed only because if someone were to notice he didn’t breathe, then there could be trouble. He was here to do a job and the body he wore was the required uniform. Until now he had been very good at this job. But in all of his many incarnations as a human being, nothing like this had ever happened. It shook him profoundly.

  The living have their world, the dead have theirs. The borders between the two are strictly defined and never crossed. Once that was sacrosanct and inviolable to all but Chaos. It recognizes no boundaries or laws and never has. Chaos does what it wants and that is why Flannery could flit back and forth between life and death with no hesitation. But then Isabelle Neukor and Vincent Ettrich made the crossing. Much more dangerously though, Leni Salomon had crossed too and then sent a clear message from one world to the other. To those who understood her message, it divulged a fundamental fact that mankind had sought to know for as long as it existed.

  Since Flannery was unaware that others had witnessed Leni showing her message, he didn’t know that what those people saw were the English words Glass Soup and nothing more. Leni had spoken to the living in the language of the dead. But it did not translate. As a result, the living saw two words they understood but which made no sense other than as a surreal image signifying nothing.

  That’s why there was no noticeable reaction in that crowd to the vision at the time it happened. The majority of them thought it was only creepy nonsense, as meaningless as Leni’s message. A dead woman held up a sign that read GLASS SOUP. So what? Were they supposed to turn to their husband or neighbor in the middle of this funeral and exclaim I just had a vision of dead Leni! She showed me a sign that made no sense. That would have been a big hit with the other mourners; it would have added a lot to the solemnity of the occasion. Even her best friends Isabelle and Flora remained silent about it, although both were immediately convinced that their visions meant something significant.

  In fact Isabelle was so caught up thinking about what she’d just seen that she didn’t realize for quite a while that her Vincent was no longer standing nearby. On discovering his absence though she wasn’t particularly surprised. It was just his way—Mr. Fidgety. Vincent could never stand in one place too long. He called himself KADD—the King of Attention Deficit Disorder. She assumed he was somewhere nearby.

  He wasn’t. Because like John Flannery, Vincent Ettrich also knew what Glass Soup meant. When Leni held up her handwritten sign, he read the two words on it and his eyes widened slightly. Ettrich felt neither panic nor joy. He did not feel like running off in all directions at once. In the language of the dead, Glass Soup described and explained the mosaic, and the mosaic was God. One of the first lessons a person learned after dying—what it was and what it meant.

  Walking away from the funeral, his mind was in the afterlife, looking slowly around at all that it held. Passing through the cemetery gates, Ettrich realized he knew how to do so much now; so much more than before.

  “Shit.”

  Both Simon Haden and Leni Salomon looked at Bob the Bear.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “It didn’t work.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How do you know?”

  The bear rubbed its head and said angrily, “Shit shit shit. It didn’t work, do you understand? It’s my job to know these things. It didn’t work.”

  Haden and Leni glanced at each other at the same moment with the same question in their eyes—how can it be sure?

  Haden looked away, muttering his own curses. It had been so difficult to reach Leni in the first place. Find Leni and her dreamworld in the limitless regions of death. And if you do that, then you must figure out how to enter that world and find her in it.

  But Haden had done all of that. What’s more, he did it alone. No help from Bob or any others. His search for Leni Salomon had been tedious, then frightening and grueling. Full of wrong turns and false hopes, eventually he had done it. He had no idea how long it took in lifetime—a thousand years or ten minutes? This was death and the clocks here were different. Haden was so proud of himself, prouder of this than anything he had ever done. Prouder even than the bravery he had displayed toward Mrs. Dugdale and later against Sunday Suits back in the school gymnasium.

  He would not forget the expression on Leni’s face when he walked up to her on the bench while she was feeding the dinosaur. He didn’t know that as a girl, Leni had dreamt of dinosaurs night after night after night. Maybe it was because of the contrast—she was a small child with a bad leg and dinosaurs were so very huge and powerful. Or maybe she just liked them. Even with a little girl’s tongue she could perfectly pronounce their polysyllabic names as if they were the players on her favorite team, or the words of a much loved children’s prayer.

  When Haden finally located her in death, adult Leni was sitting on a green park bench near the banks of the Danube River, about four miles away from where she had been buried. It had been one of her favorite places to sit when she was alive, so naturally she carried it with her into death.

  At her feet was a large brown wicker basket filled with cooked hamburgers. Sitting obsequiously on its hind legs nearby was a nine-foot-long Troodon, once known as the Stenonychosaurus. The smallish dinosaur took each burger it was offered with the most careful, delicate gesture and then put them into its mouth with a paw and claws that looked like they could have torn a hole in concrete if this monster got pissed off.

  “Hey there,” Haden said from a reasonable distance, not sure if he wanted to get any closer to this burger-vore, dream creature or not.

  Dead Leni turned to him and recognizing her onetime lover, smiled at Haden but not very warmly. “Hello Simon.” Her voice was flat. She appeared neither happy nor surprised to see him here.

  He crossed his arms and tried to find a comfortable standing position. But every time he looked at Leni’s friend the dinosaur, Haden went up on his toes, ready to run at its slightest suspicious twitch or flick.

  She reached into the basket, brought out another burger, and handed it to the creature. It gently hooke
d the meat with one huge claw and brought it to its mouth. “I’ll give you one of these hamburgers, Simon, if you can tell me what its name is.”

  Haden only smiled and shrugged. He didn’t know anything about it and didn’t want to know. “Donald?”

  “It’s called a Troodon. The name means ‘wounding tooth.’ This used to be my favorite dinosaur when I was a girl because it’s relatively small. My family once took a trip to London and I made them all go to the Victoria and Albert Museum just so I could see the bones of one they have there.

  “The greatest gift I ever received was Isabelle Neukor found a Troodon tooth for sale in an auction catalog somewhere and got it for me.”

  Haden tried to look interested but was not. He just wanted to make sure that fucking mega-lizard wasn’t going to eat him.

  “What are you doing here, Simon?”

  “I came to see you.”

  “Obviously, but why?”

  He didn’t know exactly what to say next. It was a precarious moment: he was strictly forbidden to tell her anything he had learned about death. That was taboo, off limits, no way. All of it had to come from her. He had to find out how much Leni knew and then he could proceed from there.

  “Will Mr. Jurassic Park mind if I sit down?” He pointed to the dinosaur which was now looking at him with cold-eyed interest. Haden tried to make his question come out sounding light and funny. It didn’t.

  “Troodons were carnivores. They only ate meat,” she said while reaching down for another burger. Haden thought it best to remain standing.

  They’d had their affair. It had been a good one too for the short while it lasted and that’s what made Leni angry, even now. She’d gone into it knowing full well that Simon was a Casanova and wouldn’t stick around long. Fair enough—she knew that but said yes anyway because an affair was exactly what she wanted at the time.

  The problem was Simon Haden possessed a quality few males do. It was an instinctive thing that most of the men who had it didn’t even know was there. Yet it was the most formidable part of their arsenal: they made you feel totally comfortable when you were together with them. On the street, in bed, having lunch, having sex, having a laugh, a walk or whatever—it didn’t matter. You breathed normally with them. You didn’t feel any need to put on airs or puff out your chest or pretend to be someone you weren’t. Yes, this fellow wanted to be in your pants, but he also wanted to be in your head and hang around together sharing the day. You felt that whenever you were with him. You were certain that you were exactly where he wanted to be at that moment. The things you said or did genuinely interested him.

  That’s why Leni so disliked Vincent Ettrich—because he possessed that same uncommon quality. Every time she was around Vincent, she remembered the fiasco with Simon and it rubbed her wounds. Because just when she’d gotten comfortable and content in the space she’d created with Haden, he walked out on her. Now here he was again, the first time she’d seen him since he left.

  “You didn’t answer me—why are you here?”

  He thought Here we are and we’re both dead and she’s feeding a dinosaur and I just crossed a universe to reach her but now I don’t know how to begin to say what I came for.

  “What was it like for you?”

  He looked at her, not understanding the context of her question. “Hmm? what do you mean?”

  “When you died, Simon. What was it like for you? I was murdered.” She said it quietly, not showing any of the rage, the confusion, or the helplessness that had constantly roiled inside her since the moment she understood she was dead. Right now she wanted to grab Haden and shake him, shouting It isn’t fair! It isn’t right! It has to be put right again. This isn’t possible. It can’t be possible. But Haden saw none of that because showing her emotions had never been Leni’s way, not before, not now.

  Her dinosaur made a kind of whinny like a horse. It wanted some more meat.

  Haden couldn’t stop himself—in a haze he walked over to her bench and sat down heavily on the corner farthest away from the beast. “You know you’re dead?”

  She pointed her little finger at the Troodon. “You can’t feed hamburgers to dinosaurs in the real world, Simon. Yes, I’ve known for quite a while.”

  “You figured it out that quickly?”

  She said nothing, but the hint of a sly smile floated somewhere near her lips.

  He saw it and couldn’t let the subject go. “Leni, you really figured it out that quickly?”

  “It took about half a day after I got here. When I saw the second Troodon I knew. When I was a little girl I dreamt of them all the time.” She couldn’t resist telling him the truth.

  “Damn!” Haden threw up a hand and blew through his lips in disgust. The sense of great pride and achievement he’d felt at having found Leni Salomon suddenly melted inside him now like an ice cube inside a microwave oven. How long had it taken him to realize that he was dead? Forever? Half of forever?

  “I don’t want you here, Simon. I want you to leave.” She closed her eyes and dropped her head. All he could think to do then was stare at the Troodon.

  When she opened her eyes a moment later and saw him, she appeared surprised. “You’re still here. Why are you still here?” Her voice was a demand.

  “Leni, we’ve got things to talk about—important things.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you, Simon. I want you to go away. Why haven’t you disappeared?”

  The creature looked unhappy at the stridency in her voice. Haden wondered if a dinosaur could be trained to attack, like a dog.

  “Why are you still here?”

  Testily he said, “Because I want to be here, Leni.”

  Her voice took on even more of an edge than his. “That’s not how it works here. This is my world, these are my dreams. If I don’t want something to be here, I say that and it disappears.” To prove her point she turned to the dinosaur and said, “Go away.” The creature literally evaporated. Without giving him a chance to digest that astonishing vision, she looked at Haden and said to him in exactly the same tone of voice, “Go away.”

  “Forget it, Leni. I’m real, not part of your dream.”

  “You can’t be real, Simon—you’re dead.”

  “Both of us are and that’s why I’m here, not because you dreamed me.”

  Each struggled to process their different information. But it was like trying to eat a whole loaf of bread as fast as you could. No matter how quickly you chewed, your cheeks stayed full, your throat grew dry, and your jaw got tired. But still there was so much more left to eat.

  Rational even in death, Leni wasn’t having it. She did not believe or accept what Haden had just told her—that he was not part of her dreamworld. Having learned to conjure here, that’s what she did now. She conjured the Simon Haden she remembered and been together with in life. The lover who treated her well for a while but also the bad guy he later became when he jumped ship.

  Leni’s conjured Haden materialized standing where the Troodon had been minutes before. This second Simon was dressed beautifully. His shirt was the thick lustrous white of milk fresh out of a bottle. His fingernails shone from a recent perfect manicure. He smiled and his teeth looked like old turnips and uprooted gravestones. They looked like they hadn’t been brushed or worked on by a dentist since the invention of the drill.

  “Damn!” the real Haden said for a second time. He knew what she had just done but seeing his face on another man didn’t bother him. Seeing a brown graveyard in “his” mouth did. “What happened to my teeth? They don’t look like that.” He wished he had a hand mirror right then so he could check them. Surely they weren’t so ugly.

  Haden #2 said nothing and only continued smiling, unfortunately. He slipped his hands into his pockets and tipped his head jauntily to the side in a Gene Kelly/Hollywood way that said I can wait all day—I know who I am.

  “You have terrible teeth, Simon. I kept telling you that.”

  “Yes, okay, but not that bad. Je
sus, Leni, do you really remember me that way?”

  She would not look at him; only at her imagined Haden. Her brain was working fast. In this place there could be two of anything if that’s what you wanted. She could have created five Simon Hadens in five different colors if that had been her wish. So two of them in front of her was okay. But what she couldn’t understand was #1 not disappearing when she told him to. It was as if one of her dreams had a mind of its own. That was disturbing. Until now, death had not been a hard place for Leni to figure out. This was the first time she had hit a speed bump here and banged her head hard on the roof. Was this a test?

  The real Haden walked over to #2 and examined him carefully. “What’s that cologne you’re wearing?”

  “Sandalwood,” #2 said in a voice slightly deeper than the original.

  “Sandalwood? I never used sandalwood cologne in my life.”

  Leni sat back on the bench, her elbows out to either side to support her. “I like sandalwood on a man, if you don’t mind. Is it all right with you if he wears cologne that I like?”

  The real Haden would have protested if he were somewhere else. To him, cologne was like a person’s signature; one of the ways of telling the world who you were. Wearing disgusting sandalwood cologne was like signing your name with the wrong hand.

  Number Two was a few inches shorter than him too, but Haden did not bring that discrepancy to Leni’s attention. He just kept looking at his clone that was not a clone but close enough so that most people would have had a tough time telling them apart. The real Haden had no such trouble. Those vile teeth, the nose-wilting cologne, the wrong height… He noticed more and more details that were wrong about this imposter and they made him mad. Leni’s imagined version of him was simply not him.