"I hate it when we argue," he said, trying to pull her close.
She shrugged off his embrace. "Where are the car keys?" she asked. "I'm going for a ride to cool down. I'll be back in about thirty minutes."
He handed her the keys. "Be careful," he said. "Try to remember we drive on the left here in Singapore!"
"This beastly country!" she said. "Not only is it hotter than Hades, but they can't even see fit to drive on the correct side of the road!"
"Please, Elmira!" he said. Let it go about my transfer here. Accept it!"
Now the force of the collision hurled her forward, out of the seat belt, over the steering wheel and through the windshield.
Suddenly she was on a grassy path lined with stately poplars. The sun's rays were not hot as they had been just seconds ago, but warm and comforting.
She saw a tall, handsome being a few paces ahead of her, and she thought, because of its wings, that it was either an angel or an apparition, or perhaps that putting her head through the windshield had made her crazy.
"Whatever you are," she called, "please wait-up! I have some questions to ask."
The being waited for her to catch up, and then slowed to walk alongside her. He said, "Just call me Gabe. Everyone up here does. Allow me to welcome you, Elmira."
She expected to be frightened by this, for she knew now that she was dead, but what she actually felt was curiosity. "I'm in heaven, right?" she asked.
"Yes, you are," said Gabe. "Not in HIGH HEAVEN, of course, but heaven nonetheless."
Elmira walked with him in silence, pondering these words in her heart.
Gabe waved to a short, pretty lady dressed in lace and a hoop skirt. "Hi there, Becky! Up from Purgatory, I see. Great to have you aboard!"
"Who was that?" Elmira asked.
"Becky Sharpe."
The name Becky Sharpe triggered a memory of how she nagged Greg for his disinterest in her love of literature.
"Why are you pouting?" Greg asked.
She looked up from her book. "You know darn well!" she said. "You know how starved I am in this God-forsaken place for intelligent conversation! Yet all you ever want to discuss is what's for dinner. I yearn to talk of philosophical things, of literary things, but oh, no! That bores you!"
"Singapore is not God-forsaken," he said, "I didn't ask to be transferred here for two years. I had no choice. Why can't you just accept that?"
"Oh how I wish our relationship were lovingly intellectual like Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning's!" she said.
"Oh, barf!" Greg said. "I'm a little tired of being expected to live in your books!"
Elmira looked up at Gabe. "Becky Sharpe?" she asked now. "What's she doing here? I thought she was just a figment of Thackeray's imagination."
"Well, figments are up here, too, you know......anyone who has ever lived, whether on earth, (or on Mars, for that matter,) or in a book, or a movie, or whatever. It's all a mind-thing, you see. Becky was in Purgatory for a long time, but Thackeray kept nagging God to call her up here."
"Nagging?"
Gabe nodded. "On earth it's called praying. Up here it's nagging. Thackeray looks on her as his daughter, you see. It's hard, I guess, not to feel responsible for your literary creations. It's almost like, once you've invented them, you consider yourself their god or something." "In spite of her excessive vanity, God wants her up here?"
"He wants everyone up here. That was the original idea. But sometimes there is just too much evil to allow it. Like Hitler, for instance. Pfft! Right to hell! Not even a thought for Purgatory!"
"God's a HE then?"
"The jury's still out on that one," Gabe said. "For me it's a HE-thing. For you it may not be. But so what?"
"What do you mean, so what? It's not a question of HE-thing or SHE-thing! It's an equality-thing! How like a man to say 'so what'!"
"I'm not a man. I'm an angel, remember? The French say there are three sexes, men, women, and clergymen. But actually, angels are the fourth."
"The French really say there are three sexes?"
"I don't know for sure if they really say it or not, but that guy over there said the French say it. In fact, that's one of the things he's remembered for. He's even in Bartlett's."
He pointed to a spry, well-dressed man in his seventies. "Yo! Sid!" he said, waving to him. Sid waved back, but kept walking.
"Sid who?" she asked.
"Sidney Smith, 1770-1845," Gabe said.
Elmira actually snorted. "Smith? Come on! That's an alias if I ever heard one! You just now made him up!"
"No, I didn't. Look it up. Otherwise, how could we have just encountered him?"
"Well, that's true. But what about me?" she continued. "Am I remembered for something I said or wrote or did? Am I remembered for anything special?"
Gabe was silent.
"The jury's still out on that one, right?" she asked.
"No," he said. "It's in. You're not."
"You mean the jury's in, and I'm not remembered?"
"You got it, kiddo! But what's the difference whether you're remembered for something special or not? You made it up here, didn't you? Isn't that what counts? You're never satisfied, are you Elmira? Have you ever been completely happy with anything?"
It wasn't the first time she had been told she was hard to please, but now it was the first she admitted it to herself. Something Greg had once said flashed in her mind.
"Why do you make me feel I never quite come up to what you expect, Elmira? I try to make you happy. I swear I do! But then, I doubt that you would ever be happy....not even in paradise!"
As she and Gabe walked farther along, the path began to incline. Elmira saw now that the greenery was becoming more dense and lush, and the sunlight shone even more brilliantly than before. She hadn't noticed it until now, but there were actually diamonds embedded in the ground around them.
"Oh, Gabe, it's so beautiful here!" she said.
Gabe smiled and took her hand. "We're getting close to the Holy of Holies," he said.
Elmira's soul stirred with reverence. "I wish Greg could see this!" she said. "How is he coping right now, the poor dear, with the accident and with my being killed and all?"
"Right now? Well, right now he's devastated," Gabe said, "but he'll manage. He'll marry again in a year or so -- a pretty little native girl who works in the office. She has admired him from afar ever since you two arrived in Singapore. She's nice enough, kind of sweet, but not as bright as you. Greg will sometimes actually yearn for the discussions you used to try to force on him. He'll even miss the arguments, for she will treat him like her Lord and Master. Boring!"
Elmira was pleased in spite of herself. "Will he eventually make it up here, too?"
"You bet!" Gabe said. "He's always been a good guy. She'll get here, too...the future new wife."
"Won't that make it kind of messy for the three of us?"
"There's no mess in heaven," Gabe said. "Everything is sweetness and light. There won't be any jealousy between you and his second wife, either, because there is no marriage in heaven. No sex, either, for that matter. Good thing, too, because that would be SOME mess! I mean, we would become over-populated, and then, of course, we would have to wrestle with the questions of birth control and abortion, and all kinds of controversial stuff. It would not be a heaven-thing at all! Not at all!"
"I see what you mean!" Elmira said. "But that's okay. For the first time in a long time, I'm really happy. Sex-and-marriage or not, I'm going to love spending eternity here!"
Gabe smiled. "Now you're talking, kiddo!"