33 West at Gender

I have never been a morning person. I hate mornings. Ever since I was little, I have hated mornings. If there was a way for me to chain mornings to my car and drag them down a country road, I would have done so a long time ago. Or I would have poisoned them, with antifreeze in their coffee, or arsenic in their peanut butter. Or castrated them with my teeth. What’s more, I hate the commute to Columbus. Forty-five miles up a stinking two-lane highway of hell scattered with the debris of broken glass, fenders, and blown-out truck tires that truckers call “alligators” with 50,000 other cars operated by 50,000 other half-asleep assholes in various states of a semi-violent morning psychosis. Add into that cocktail, a few dozen semi-trucks piloted by the almighty Lords and Kings of the Highway, as they see themselves on their memory-foam padded thrones. God’s gift to driving. Oh, that ungodly hour of six to seven AM is a pure mortifying hell that makes me a bitter boy. When I am not a homicidal Mad Max of the morning commute, I am a Christian. I am normal.

But one morning I was relieved of all that misery and hell like someone at a revival is relieved of their rheumatoid arthritis by some charismatic backwoods minister with slick hair and big teeth, when I fell desperately in love with Lucy Flynn, the sultry siren of the morning airwaves in Central Ohio. I have never seen her before, but I hear her voice on 102 FM The Fox every morning and have for well over a year now. I don’t know if she is single or not. Sometimes, she says something about a significant other, but sometimes she doesn’t, and it doesn’t really matter anyway because despite being as terribly in love with her as I am, it will not be my fortune to meet her. I have always been one to accept my fate. To take my medicine. To lie down with the dogs. So whether she is single or not is truly inconsequential to my harmless fantasies. What’s it matter what my mind conceives and keeps for itself?

I am a civil servant on government loans, whose life, like everyone else’s, has been predestined and split into shares by Google, Apple, Walmart, McDonald’s, the NFL, and beer. We have had our thoughts carved into our heads by commercials and advertisements, with the belief that all things are disposable and should be traded in after a short period of wear or use, to include people. It as though before me there is a crystal ball and I can see my future lit up in that glowing orb. Or as though in my meditations in traffic, I am in such a deep state of rumination that all is known to me, seen on my windshield, or the back bumper of utility truck.

And so this is my prognosticated future. Sad, but true. I will join some dating site and meet someone whose personality matches mine according to some sophisticated algorithm, verified by a university study, and based upon whether they want kids, or I want kids, or whether I am willing to date someone who smokes, or with a few extra pounds, and whether they want someone who makes only 35,000-50,000, instead of 50,000-75,000 and who has blue eyes and prefers dinner at home and backpacking in Europe to dinner out and a tropical vacation. And when those artificial stars do align, we will meet and call it love because the computer said so and because we both got nothing else going on. Both having been hurt by exes who drove us like rental cars, sticking to each other like burrs on wool socks.

And if something happens in a few years, if it gets the least bit rough, we can get our money back and move on like nothing ever happened, besides for those wasted years. But in the meantime, we will tell everyone we met in the park, though no one will believe us because no one meets in the park anymore. People avoid people in the park. They don’t make eye contact and they don’t say hello. Stranger danger, carved into the old psyche. Perverts go to parks, my mother told me.

Between now and then, in what I consider the free state of myself, Pete Sendler, I will be in love with Lucy Flynn and no one can stop me. And we are very happy in my reveries. Very safely in love, having never met, having no possibility to turn each other in to get our money back in X amount of years to see who else is out there in the dating cesspool. What corpse there is to be revived with a jolt of attention and flattery. What junker to be fixed with putty and grease. It’s not creepy at all. It is, in fact, real love. The simplest and purest form of love for it is personal and very true to my own heart and it has no conditions or expectations whatsoever. It is not dependent upon her doing anything. It simply exists and cannot be negated by anything. I could never have imagined falling in love with a voice. I used to be normal.

I had beers with some friends the other night and after the courage of three, or the stupidity, I told them I was in love with Lucy Flynn and they asked Lucy Who, without taking their eyes off a March basketball game, their fingers greasy and stained in the orange blood of hot sauce. I had to tell them both the same answers at two separate times because neither of them pay attention at the same time. I said she does morning radio and they said oh, cool. Have you banged her yet, they both asked me. No, I replied. Oh. Well, wait until you bang her to say you love her. It’s better that way. I hang my head in shame. Shame for being here. But they managed to keep interest to ask how long I had known her and when I told them I haven’t met her yet, they laughed at me in such a way that I felt like Carrie under the spotlight of an otherwise dark stage, stained in pig blood. Beer one and two had repeatedly told me, “They’re all going to laugh at you!” But beer three. Always beer three. It sunk my ship.

Maybe I am crazy, I thought driving home that night. They said it was too soon, but I didn’t listen. They said wait until my ex starts banging someone else, but I don’t know how to tell if she is or she isn’t. And it doesn’t matter to me anymore. She probably is. She could never be alone and she went from boyfriend to boyfriend, wasting no time at all. I was in that rotation. Like a relief pitcher who tossed a few scoreless innings before getting rocked late and yanked. There is nothing left of her inside of me besides shattered pieces of my old false life and the brick she broke it with which lays heavy in the bottom of my heart. It was Lucy’s voice that filled the hole made by that brick. I mean, I know it’s sounds crazy, as the old Penthouse stories always began, but every word of this is true.

I don’t even know what she looks like, I discourage myself with engrained pessimism. I have never even spoken to her. But there I sit in my car and zone out to her voice, and when they play a song, I imagine it is a song that she picked herself, and her blurry face that never comes into focus smiles, and she sits there with headphones on her red hair and rocks back and forth in her swivel office chair and flannel shirt and ripped jeans as she prepares notes for what she will say when she comes back on the air. I can practically see her lips encroaching the microphone and releasing those clever words deliberately to me. Like a thousand bottled messages floating on the air. Washing up in my soul. All that I digest between 6:30 and 7:15 on the road every morning, on my way to an equally boring and hellish mind-numbing nine-to-five paid prison.

102 The Fox takes online requests and I have requested the same song for six straight months. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” by the Hawaiian guy named Israel, whose last name I have no chance to pronounce. But they don’t ever play it. It doesn’t fit between Bob Seager and The Guess Who, I suppose. But I keep requesting it because maybe one day if they do, it will be like Lucy Flynn telling me she loves me, in a way. Or like a kiss in my mind. A gentle yet subtle show of definite affection. And there is nothing I need more than such sincerity in a time of such despair. My heart is like a vacant motel with a neon light bleeding in the night, begging for a paying guest.

This morning was the drive like usual. I was in my normal meditative state and Lucy was talking about an $11,000 smart toilet. She has a sidekick named Dan Dresden, and Dan pipes in now and then when prompted like Ed McMahon to Johnny Carson. He will read local news headlines daily around 7:00am. I sometimes wonder if he fancies himself as a Walter Cronkite. I imagine him to look something like George Clooney, but I don’t know. Maybe he looks more like Rosie O’Donnell. That is the magic of radio. Pictures the imagination paints.

“This is just in,” Lucy says. “There is a fatality accident near 33 West at Gender. So be careful if you’re out there. Slowdowns back through Carroll. Bumper to bumper traffic.” Her voice, even delivering such grave news, is like silk butterflies flying gently through the air and nesting in my eardrums. It breaks my meditation, but I don’t hear any sirens or see any squads coming. I don’t notice that traffic is slowed. I must have missed it. Or she accidentally said it was the wrong area. The details are often murky.

I get to my office and for the first morning in a long time, I don’t beep going through the metal detector. Maybe today will be a good day, after all. Maybe Lucy’s voice has so filled my heart with love that there is no more break left in it. No more broken shards of glass.

I settle in at my desk and do my morning work as usual. And finally, I have the will to take down my ex-girlfriend and I’s picture from the beach last year and tear it up because I know she was fake. I feel I suddenly have some great clarity that I can’t explain. And I wonder why I have been so upset by someone so puerile, who treats penises like cellphones, and boyfriends like used cars. I was happily no longer to be in her bullpen. I was tricked, I laugh to myself. Duped into buying a cheap and easy lemon that was bound to breakdown. And her lack of love for me, or the sudden death of it, invalidated anything I wrongfully thought I had for her, for love is a two-way street. Not an alleyway. And certainly, never a sewer.

I make the usual request for “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” again by email. I put in a full day and my phone doesn’t ring once and no one bothers me at all. Happily, I go home. Watch part of a basketball game. Eat dinner. Go to bed.

The next morning, I get up. Drive in again. Listen to Lucy. Walk into work. And again, I don’t beep through the detector. I just walk on through. But as I get to my desk, I notice that someone has taken my computer out of my cubicle, leaving a discolored spot where it used to be. And my supervisor is boxing up my things. Taking down all my pictures that are taped to my cabinets. My portrait of JFK. My various certifications. My mother holding me when I was three. Jesus on the cross. All my smart people quotes about humanity. And my calendar.

My God! As much as I complain to myself about this job, the fact that I am losing it is killing me. And the sinking and panicked feeling in the pit of my stomach grows so intense I cannot just stand there and watch him collect my things. So, I go to the bathroom and I puke. And after I puke I spit silver streams like spun spiderwebs to the toilet water that I cut with my spiderlike fingers.

All the bills I had to pay are in a giant stack in my head. The vacation I had planned to Maine for the summer, determined to finally get over my ex, who is probably on a new cellphone now in a used car lot peering through windows and asking how many miles and to see all the accident reports of various men. I wanted to meet someone in Maine, maybe. Walking up a beach late one night, or early one morning. A chance encounter, perhaps. The furthest thing from a dating site and a sophisticated algorithm. Someone real, for goddsakes! But my hope to someday be married, to put enough money back for an engagement ring and a house, everything, all hope, was suddenly aborted and in the trash pail of fate.

After collecting myself, I walk past my cubicle which looks so foreign bare. Then I notice a heart I had bought on the dark blue carpet. A little red glittery heart that I stuck to my computer monitor that reminded me of my internalized, but never outwardly expressed love for dear Lucy Flynn. Silly as a third grader, really, I was. I never grew up in some ways. But I could look at that heart while typing and it would make me smile and give me hope. I picked it up and put it in my pocket. Then I worried I would forget it because I often forget the things I put in my pockets and I later find them ruined in the drier.

I walk to my supervisor’s office to find out why I was being fired. To sign the necessary paperwork. To apologize and to thank him for everything. He was a good man. His door is open and he is on the phone so I walk in and sit down. He looks at me with no emotion then looks away. He sighs. When he hangs up, he acts as though I am not even in the room. Then a coworker of mine comes in carrying a card. He asks our boss to clarify how to spell my last name and says Pete didn’t have a wife. Just an ex-girlfriend of five years. No kids. Both his parents are dead. He has a brother in Phoenix and a sister in Toronto but, um, who do we send the card to?

My boss rubs his chin. “A damn sad thing,” he says looking out the window at an equally boring office building across the street. “A damn sad thing. Here one day. Gone the next.” He snaps his fingers once then goes on. “S-E-N-D-L-E-R. Sendler. And send it to his brother.”

My co-worker turns and leaves the office, but I am still here. And I realize as I look at my supervisor’s dark face and eyes that are filled with the grayness of a dreary day, that I am dead. And the thought returns, the memory of Lucy saying the day before that there had been a fatality accident at 33 West at Gender.

That brick my ex left in my heart suddenly weighs three tons and sinks to the bottom of my soul. And I wish I was only fired from my job. But I had been fired from life. Let go after 38 years in the blink-of-an-eye. 

I get up and scurry out of the office the way I remember a raccoon I accidently ran over once scurried from under the wheels of my car. And I run avoiding people, but no one sees me anyway. No one hears me wail, Oh, God! Oh, God! I accidently run into Cheryl from accounting, but she doesn’t notice because I run right through her. But how then, if I could run through Cheryl, could I drive my car to work? Open a door? Eat a meal. Or sit in a chair. I don’t know. There is no wiki for this. There is no handbook.

I run out of the office not knowing where to go or what to do. I stand outside on the curb by the bus stop and I watch the busses come and go for a minute. Then I stand in front of one and it goes right through me. I get back on the curb and hang my head as people pass through me so indifferently and impersonally it makes me depressed. Then another bus pulls up, but instead of having the usual number and destination above the windshield, it says, “Other World.” And the door opens and the smiling driver, the same gay-hearted Iraqi bus driver I remember from elementary school whose obituary I sadly read when I was a freshman in high school, says to me, “Hey! Ahright, get in, Pete.”

But I don’t get in. I run.

I get to the parking garage out of breath and get in my car and drive. And, of course, I turn it on to 102 The Fox and Lucy is talking about a chance to win a trip to Tahiti sponsored by some jewelry store in Newark. And she says the morning show is going to be at Scioto Downs Race Track that night raising money for St. Jude’s Children Hospital by raffling off donated prizes from area businesses. She says they are going to be hosting a singles speed-dating event in the future and she and Dan go back and forth about her participating and Dan jokes that Mrs. Dresden would not allow him to.

But despite my love for Lucy Flynn, I go home and cry. What more is there for me to do, but weep for my sad dead self and all my dashed dreams. But after a few hours, I rally myself and I get on my laptop and decide to take mine and Lucy’s relationship to the next level by sending her an email explaining to her what happened to me. I start by typing, I know it sounds crazy, but every word of this is true. But thinking that might be too soon, I just say hello and tell her I am a fan and that I am the one who requested “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” by that Hawaiian guy fifty-thousand times or so.

I decide not to leave my apartment. The outside world is suddenly frightening to me. Eventually, they will come for my things, I know. I had paid to the end of the month, so I should have some time. I stay up and listen to my favorite old songs on YouTube. Frampton, “Show Me the Way.” The Proclaimers, “Oh, Jean.” Lennon, “Oh Yoko!” “Hallelujah,” by Jeff Buckley. “Whole Wide World,” by Reckless Eric. Frank Sinatra, “Come Fly with Me,” and of course, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” about ten dozen times.

I was asleep at my desk when my computer pings. Lucy emailed me back late in the night, well past three. I guess the dead sleep inside of sleep because I was sound slept. I am of course happy to get the email and catch myself grinning like a dope in the reflection of the dark screen as I read it. And over the course of the next few weeks, Lucy and I trade several emails a day. She says it is a lot like Sleepless in Seattle and I say I wish it was. And she sends me a sad face and I say upon second thought, it is better than Sleepless in Seattle. If she only knew. Then she sends me a happy face and all is well again.

I gave her my playlist, but she said she couldn’t play those songs because the station manager only lets them play songs that some focus group said people who listen to their station wants to hear. But she says she likes them and we go back and forth talking about music. And she tells me about a play she is in at the Midland Theatre and I tell her I am going to go and she says she will see me there and I say no you won’t. And when she asks why, rather than tell her I am dead, of course, I tell her because I will sit in the backrow and that I have never been a front-row kind of guy. But soon I realize I am foolishly setting myself up for a broken heart because what could really come of this? And glumly I sit there and repeatedly run my hand right through the computer.

After I don’t email for a while, she emails me and says something very nice and I reply something nice to her and I forget about what lies ahead and I live in the euphoria of the moment. I couldn’t have imagined in a million years that such a thing would happen to me. Such an odd and impetuous thing when I had never a day in my life been either odd or impetuous. I couldn’t recall one single chance I ever took.

It goes on for another week until the day of the play. And that morning they come into the apartment. The landlord lets my brother and sister in and they box up all my stuff without really saying all too much to each other about me, or about each other. I know we aren’t a close family, but they act like minimum-wage movers and there is not even a glint of sentimentality in their eyes as they handle my things. While they discuss what they will do with my stuff, where they will sell it, and how they’ll split what money they will make, I manage to grab my car keys and leave.

Midland Theatre in Newark is a beautiful place. It is an old historic theatre in the middle of downtown. Despite the drabness of present day economic despair and the heroin epidemic, it still holds on to the enchantment of yesteryear. I had been there once to see an Elvis impersonator named Mike Albert back when I was amongst the living. I go to open the door, but then realize I don’t need to, so I walk through it and amuse myself by going back out and doing it again. I find an empty place closest to the front as possible. This will be the first time I will see her, I realize then in a sudden rush of anticipation. My seat is in the second row between two couples who saved the spot as a comfort zone from a stranger. One of them put her coat in my lap, but it doesn’t bother me. I can't feel it. My eyes are affixed to the stage and nowhere else. 

Sometimes when you see someone or something so beautiful, your breath gets taken from you and all the words fly out of your ears rather than your mouth. Your knees feel weak and all the air in you seems to turn to toxic gas, good toxic gas. My eyes surely must have looked like silver dollars and my mouth dropped as she appeared on stage. And her voice, her words, are matched and overmatched by her physical presence and the light in her eyes that seems to reflect that which burns so deeply in her soul. Awestruck is not nearly strong enough a word. Nothing is, so I will go no further to explain.

After the show I walk through crowds of people and go backstage where she is in a dressing room signing autographs and laughing with people. I feel at ease looking at her, not overly nervous. Very peaceful in her light. And if it had been time to go right there, I would have gone happily. But it isn’t time. God’s hand moved to keep me still.

The room clears out and I am standing against the wall, just to enjoy looking at her for a little while longer before I decide what next to do. But she looks up at me and smiles and asks if I want an autograph, or if I plan on just staring at her all night long. I don’t want an autograph. I think she knows that.

“You can see me?” I ask in shock.

“Um.”

“You can seem me,” I repeat.

She might have thought I was crazy then, but she gave me the benefit of the doubt, I suppose. I ask her to have a drink with me and she starts to make an excuse why she can’t, but when I tell her I am Pete Sendler, Sleepless-in-Seattle-Pete, she smiles and says she will be very delighted. I wait for her to get dressed outside her door and wish I had brought flowers as I wring my hands, my ghost hands, until she comes out in jeans and a sweater. She isn’t any less for being out of costume, she is even more gorgeous because she looks more like herself.

“At last, we meet,” she says.

“Alas?” I ask.

“Yes, finally.”

“Oh, I thought you said alas, which, you know, would mean unluckily.”

She laughs. Try not to be so nervous I tell myself.

“Well, perhaps, it is alas, being that I wish I had met you sooner.”

“Me as well,” I say a little sadly. My curious affliction forefront in my mind.

At the restaurant, I don’t explain it. I ask her to order for me. She looks puzzled, but smiles and agrees and we drink and eat and talk through smiles and laughter and nearly undaunted eye contact. Then I realize after about a half hour that people are looking at her like she is crazy. She is sitting in front of two drinks and two plates and talking as though she is with someone, but the seat across from her is clearly vacant to all but her and I. And so, I know I have no choice but to explain as she is telling me again how wonderful it is to finally meet me and how I superseded her expectations.

“Lucy, I am dead. I am a ghost.”

She nearly chokes on her drink, and her eyes get big and watery as she smiles uncomfortably. “You’re kidding me, right? That’s a good one.”

“No. I am dead. I died in the accident on 33 West and Gender. You reported it several weeks ago. I was in it. I went home to my apartment and emailed you. I had nothing to lose. I was shocked when you answered. And well – ”

“But I can see you. You’re joking! Is this some kind of gag? Did Dan put you up to this? He does things like this to me.”

I shake my head and I know then I need to show her, so I get up as the waiter passes and he walks right through me.

Her jaw drops instantly. “You’re seriously kidding me. You’re some kind of illusionist? Right?”

“No. I am dead, Lucy. A ghost. Somehow, I can pick up things, or sit in a chair, and even drive my car. But people, they go through me. I walk through doors.” I sit down as I explain. “I don’t know how or why only you can see me, but you can. I am somehow real to you, I guess.”

She reaches out her hand and touches my arm. I draw back a little when she touches it. Goosebumps ripple over me. Her hands are soft upon my skin. Delicate. “I can touch you! You’re right here! Everyone can see you!”

“No, they can’t. You just saw the waiter go through me. Somehow, to you, I am real. But to no one else.” And then I touch her arm and we hold hands. But to show her I am not tricking her, I hold out my leg and a busy waitress carrying a large tray of drinks walks right through it as Lucy expects her to trip and fall.

“This is insane. I’m losing my mind!”

“No, it’s me. I’m dead, Lucy. A ghost.”

“Does it hurt?”

“No. Not at all. And I have no memory of the accident.”

There is still a shocked look upon her face that shows no sign of fading as she gazes across the table at me absorbing what I have told her. “But you’re drinking your drink!” she argues. “The glass is nearly empty, surely everyone else must see it rise and tip back. Right?”

“Somehow, I don’t think that they do.”

Lucy looks around and people are looking back at her. She pulls something carefully out of her purse and puts it in her ear subtly. Then she turns back to the people looking at her and points and says, “Bluetooth.” They nod their heads slightly embarrassed for snooping and look away.

“Very clever,” I smile.

“I am no dumb bunny, Casper.”

“Oh.”

“Too soon?” she grins.

I laugh. “No. You can call me whatever you like.”

Lucy and I take a walk around the courthouse. It is warm, early Spring. To everyone looking she walks alone, but to us, it is a romantic stroll. We talk about everything in the world it seems over the next few hours. She invites me to stay with her for the night and so I stay. We both seem to have a fear that I might dissipate at any moment, being this such an unusual condition. We end up in bed and she quivers in my arms and her body is so warm as I cradle her. “I’ve never done it with a ghost before,” she says.

“Done what?” I joke.

She laughs.

“I’ve never done it as a ghost,” I say.

I have never experienced a more passionate and intense night. And I am happy in suddenly being so impetuous, for once. For being weird and not boring and scripted. But then I feel guilty, for what can I do for her? What could I possibly do to ever make her happy in a social context, or long-term? She could never have a wedding to remember where her father walks her down the aisle, or have children, or dinners with friends and me. There would never be photographs of us on the mantle, or family coming over to play cards, or for the holidays. There would never be anything normal.

And apart from that, how was I to know how long I was going to last? Surely, there were probably some dead people collectors, I thought. Other dead people who go around collecting the souls of those who refuse to go to the other world as I had refused to get on that bus. Somehow, I knew there was and they would come.

 

But I couldn’t help but to stay for the next few weeks and I am happy with her and she says she has never been so happy in all her life. But eventually after more thought, one day when she is gone at work, the limited prospects of our future creep drearily into my mind like a pestilence that wipes out any optimism and hope that I had for us. And despite being happier than I ever been in life, or death, I leave her the little red glittery heart from my pocket and a sappy but sweet Dear John that says in the sum of so many parts and syllables, I love you, but I am not for you. Nor are you for me. The last part was a complete lie. There was no one else who had ever been more for me. 

So I drive to the mall and for the first time I consider what my car must look like going down the road without an apparent driver. I noticed before that I get looks, but I guess I never really thought much of it.

I go to Elder-Beerman which has comfortable beds with quilts on them and I make myself at home. When the store closes, I sleep. I am not sure what to do next. I think about it lying there sometimes. But the next day, having some doubt, I borrow a laptop from an electronics’ store and send her an email apologizing for my abrupt Dear John and departure. She emails me back and asks me to please come back and it makes me cry because to be in love with someone truly means you sometimes must to do what is best for them, even when you don’t want to. And that often means, doing what is least best for you, or what feels to be the emotional equivalent of dismembering one of your own limbs, or extracting your heart with your bare hand and squeezing until it stops beating.

I never imagined I would be sleeping in a mall. Taking baths in the fountain and dressing myself directly off the rack at Old Navy without purchasing those things. I guess I don’t really have to dress myself. So I don’t for a while and I walk around wearing only my shoes until I learn that I am not the only ghost around. There are several others who say they sleep over in JC Penney’s because they have better mattresses and it is darker there at night. I get dressed from then on and don’t speak to them much, but in passing. I am depressed. I don’t feel that I belong here anymore.

Lucy doesn’t email me, though I check my email religiously every day. But after about a week, the computer pings and I get an email from her and she tells me to listen to the radio the next morning. That is it.

And so, I borrow a radio from the electronics store and go up and out onto the roof of the mall and listen while Lucy does her morning show. And her voice quivers a little as she talks about brake lights at 33 West at Gender, and she reads her interesting story of the day, something about an Indonesian man who was fired and who chained himself to his former employer’s office where he has been for several months. He wasn’t giving up on his job. His wife brought him food.

And then, she is live on air and says screw the focus groups and screw Blue Oyster Cult and The Cars. Screw the Eagles, too, and Van Halen, and Linda Ronstadt. For a while I could hear someone banging on the door in the background, but the person does not persist. Dan, I presume. Her loyal sidekick.

“This is a very special playlist,” she goes on. “It goes out to someone who passed in a car accident a few weeks ago, who is very special to me. Pete, if you are out there, wherever you are, I love you! I don’t know how the miracle of us happened, but it did. And I am blessed to have known you. I know why you left and although I wish you would come back, still, I know you will not because I guess you’re right. Love sometimes does let go. I will see you again. Don't forget about me!”

And I smile and my eyes sweat. And she plays Frampton, “Show me the Way,” then The Proclaimers, “Oh, Jean,” then Lennon, “Oh, Yoko,” then “Hallelujah” by Jeff Buckley and “Whole Wide World,” by Reckless Eric, and finally, after all this time, she says, after eight thousand requests, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” by the Hawaiian guy, Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwoʻole, whose name I can perfectly pronounce.

And standing there on the cinders of the mall roof beneath a brilliant blue morning sky, I smile thinking of how much I love mornings and how beautiful this world truly is, especially in one’s own heart when another heart matches your own. When you are not burrs and wool socks, or matched by some damn algorithm, or convenience, or need, but by fate. Across some buildings and a distant tree line, I can see the radio tower from where her voice comes. And having felt all there was as a human to feel, all of that which is beautiful and perfect about living, everything I had ever wanted, and real love, at last, I spread my arms and I become the wind.

Lucy sits in the speed-dating event. She apologized for her actions and The Fox didn’t fire her. She was too popular to be fired. She blamed her actions on dehydration and a new medication. She is reluctantly participating in the event and going from table to table and smiling and talking pleasantly enough to those who seek to know her, to possibly date her, and to give her their version of love.

But there is something missing in her eyes as she looks back at them, and though they are handsome, and perfectly fine in all respects, she doesn’t feel anything with them. But then she gets to the corner table and before her sits a mysterious bearded-man wearing dark sunglasses. And that bearded-man takes off his dark sunglasses and beard and she nearly faints.

“Pete! What?” She skips around the table and gives me a kiss and a hug. “How? Oh, no. They must think I am crazy.”

“No,” I smile. “They all can see me now.”

“How?”

“I got to Heaven Lucy, and well, God says to me that was a pretty selfless thing you done, to give your love up so that she could have more. And he said if I wanted to go back I could go back.”

“You’re kidding me!”

“No,” I smile. “Not at all. I am here, Lucy. I am back and no one even realizes I was ever gone at all.”

Her face is still in shock. Her eyes bulging. Mouth open. Then she gives me another excited hug and kiss and some woman at the next table smiles and says, “Well, I guess this speed-dating thing really works.”  

Lucy collects herself and after the event we walk out to her car. Neither of us have stopped smiling. She looks at me and asks, “So, Pete, what does God look like?”

And I smile and pause for a moment, trying to think of the words to describe Him. “Kind of like George Clooney, I guess.”