The Water of Life

Artemis Grimm is an unusual name for a girl. She is not a girl, really. She is 34 years-old, but I will forever call anyone who is not my mother, grandmother, or a nun, a girl, with no offense intended. Woman seems too sterile and austere; lady seems uppity and highbrow; gal too dreadfully homespun; and female, well, rather scientifically nerdy. I wondered what they called her for short, but I was not privy to know in that Artemis and I had never had a real conversation which would have afforded me the opportunity to inquire into either nick or pet names, as they were. We hadn't said anything other than hello or goodbye or have a good weekend or holiday to one another, to which the other would invariably reply, "You too." It was as though words cost us that which we could not afford on our miniscule salaries, or else she was shy or not interested in me. I am not a diagnostic machine, by no means, so the condition of us remained for years, uncertain. 

She is a beautiful woman, girl, gal, lady, all of the above, whichever you prefer. She checks every box, as my father would say if he wasn't dead. He nonchalantly said that about everything: cars, jobs, athletes, people, politicians, dinner, colleges. My father encouraged me to be passive and romantic and my mother encouraged me to be blunt and assertive, but I hadn't successfully been either. It was almost as though I was lost somewhere between. Stuck, really, in neutral. It is safe to say that I had failed to live up to expectations. I was never married. I have no kids. I have a modest job of which everyone pityingly tells me I could do better for myself in such a sad way that all I can say is, "I know;" or maybe that the job market is tough; or that I like my work, but that only leads them to believing that I am somewhat insane based upon my measly salary and is, as my father would also say, another can of worms entirely. 

But Artemis is why I work here. Because she works here and she has for three years and I have for four. If she were to leave, undoubtedly, I would leave. I would pursue greater things and higher pay. But as we stand, here we are together in this crummy office with florescent tube lights in the civil service. I watch her as someone watches squirrels in a park or some incredible athlete perform a miraculous feat of agility or strength when she does hardly nothing at all. When she makes copies or gets a drink from the water cooler. And when she walks down the isle she does so with the grace of an Olympic ice skater in a routine for the ages and next to none. A ten everytime, except the time she stumbled because her heel went sideways on her, and even then, she was a solid 9.5. 

She never usually wore heels and for the life of me, I couldn't understand why that day she did. What was the occasion? But even in her clumsiness there was an undeniable grace. And the way she kept herself from falling was a miraculous achievement in itself. I almost wished she had fallen because I was ready to come to her aid and had she twisted an ankle or something, maybe I could have rendered myself useful and the unfortunate occurrence could have turned into a fortuitous event that bore fruit and would give life to our relationship which, as it stood, was merely affability in passing. But that was two years ago and she hasn't stumbled since, or worn heels. 

My preoccupation with her is innocent. It certainly has never been abnormal. I don't stare at her or make her feel squeamish at all. If you were to ask her of me, she wouldn't identify me as any sort of creeper. She might say I am rather like a mouse, or a moth. Something slight. Her desk is forty-five feet from mine so when she walks to the printer or the boss's office, I smile and nod and that is the extent of our affair besides that which toils in my mind, and those aforementioned "have a good weekends" she offers me on those dreadful Fridays when two whole days come between us. I would work a 7 day work week to see her. I would forgo vacation and time off, if I could. I'd cancel all the holidays. When she is sick or on a personal day, there is such a despairing gloom cast over the office that it feels much like a mortuary and when someone says, "I hope Artemis is feeling better," my heart races, though I say nothing at all, or little beyond a meek and appropriate, "Me too." But buried inside me is a raging love for her that is as vast as love can be. A garden that bears delectable fruits that wither on the vine, year after year. A Christmas never had. 

I've given thought to the fact that one day she might move on because her ambitions are greater than mine and I am undoubtedly not to her what she is to me. I don't pretend that she tolerates the bad lighting, the lack of a view or benefits, or lackluster pay and the dull menial work simply because she is secretly in love with me. I don't know why she is here or what serves her cause. Maybe the job is close to home or she is the type who never wants to switch jobs because she believes in loyalty and longevity. Or maybe she is in love with someone else who works here and we are an unwitting sort of love triangle. Our boss, Mr. McCormack, perhaps, who is the mysterious suave Irish-type who stinks of money and whiskey and who in another life could be James Bond or a bare-knuckle boxer. I don't know. 

I don't consider what I would do if she got herself a better job or was married. I have not seen a ring on her finger and she has never indicated to anyone I know of that she is in any sort of relationship, so I just go on waiting for the right moment to say something meaningful to her because I've long believed that timing is everything. And two people happily in love would not have been had they met at an unpropitious moment, or any time less favorable than that which they did, or had one aggressed impertinently whereupon their effort would have been more an affront and not accepted with the alacrity of due reciprocation. It is, to use a vague athletic metaphor, the difference between a home run and a strikeout. The swing doesn't change. Only the timing affects the result. 

This is all an excuse I realize for my inertia or cowardice, whichever it is. How many people have sat on their clammy hands for months or years and never said what they should have said long before, to not make themselves known, and to lose any chance there ever was because the other person never knew how they felt and was never beckoned to consider the possibility of a potential romance. To be swindled by an outspoken charlatan in the meantime who spews lovely words and lies all in the same spittle, and who hops like a fat frog from lily pad to lily pad. As my grandmother said with her platitudinous tongue, "You snooze you lose," and so I consider that too, and I am, therefore, a most conflicted man, besieged on all sides of reason. 

I wonder how many men have came and went in my three year slumber, done their tour of duty during my one-sided daydreamed affair with Artemis. I wonder how have they changed her. What have they ruined in, or taught her. What have they given, and what have they taken away. But I say confidently, not insecurely, gazing at her now as she files paperwork in her cabinet the way a child gazes at a giraffe at a zoo, that the Artemis of three years prior would have declined my advance, yet this Artemis before me, the one who doesn't bother to wear makeup most days and whose nails are as short as mine and who wears the same skirt every other Wednesday and often the same slacks two days in a row, is a far more comfortable creature, content in her ways, and less material and opportune than she once was. She bears the lifeless pallor of years of office work, yet it affects her attractiveness none, strangely. One might say she posseses an agreeable moon glow. We all change in time and those who we would have dated and loved at one time or other change with us. 

But today was a most fortuitous day. There was a blood drive in the lobby of our building and like an invading army the Red Cross set up their tables and chairs and signs and they were handing out red balloons and pencils to kids and snacks and pens and one by one we filed down from the monotony of the drab 12th floor for their bribes and to give away that which we all take for granted, for free, our most valuable resource. And elderly volunteers with purple hands and young bright-eyed phlebotomists waited in a sort of assembly line and those of us who chose to give filled out the appropriate forms and were told to sit here, then go there, and lay back and hold out our arm and relax. And the needle pinched like a bumblebee and the blood thief smiled and someone told a vampire joke and someone laughed and coughed and bags that looked like empty bladders filled with dark-red fluid and the needle slid out and a cotton ball and bandage covered the hole from which our life flowed. And I just so happened to be giving blood and Artemis was beside me giving blood. She looked at me and smiled and asked how I was and that was the crack in the door that took three years to open. 

"I am good. I'm happy." Those we're my exact words to her. And she smiled and said she was happy too, adding that it was payday Friday, to boot. And then I, somewhere in the brazen course of our ensuing conversation, asked her if she liked thirties music and she said she did and when I told her there was a big band concert on Saturday at a nearby theater, the Byham, her face lit up and I advanced like a General into battle, forcefully, yet tactfully. I asked if she would like to go with me and without hesitation or without breaking her smile she said she would and nervously asked what she should wear. It is the immediate thought of every female I've ever known. I said she could wear anything at all, but if she had a flapper dress somewhere in her closet that would be heavenly. I was wearing a black pinstriped suit that belonged to my grandfather. Then she asked if I wanted to meet her at the theater in time for the show or for dinner before, on her, and I said dinner would be fantastic, but I insisted that I pay because surely it was to be entirely my pleasure. 

She smiled and sighed. Our words flowed and interweaved and made love in the vapors of the air. They took the needle out of her arm too and our bladders of blood which were like fake tits or red water balloons were packed away in some white styrofoam cooler and carried off to somewhere else and the old woman escorted us to the recovery area which was simply a partitioned room near where we signed in. There were posters on the walls, PSAs, telling us how much they needed our blood and how much good we did by giving it. We were both type O positive by classification, we discussed. The same lady gave us both a juice and a cookie and told us to eat and drink and that we could go whenever we finished, so long as we weren't feeling lightheaded or weak and if we were to let a nurse know immediately. But rather than going directly back to the office, we sat there and talked and never ran out of conversation or enthusiasm for the words we traded, in listening and speaking equitably in perfect harmony. 

"I've never heard you talk so much," she admitted, grinning. "I thought you were married. I'm sure someone told me you were married."

"No. I've - never been married."

"Hmm," she sighed. "It seems I was given bad information. But - no matter."

"No matter," I agreed, making an internal hit list of who might that have been who told her I was married.  

"I've thought to talk to you before," she admitted. "To ask you to that, um, Christmas thing last year or the year before. I don't recall now. But, well, I - never did." She blew a hopeless raspberry into the air and smiled again. It was a hopeless yet hopeful sort of smile. A stark contradiction. "I guess it wasn't ever my thing to ask someone out, to be so forward, I've always just - been asked. And at times, I thought you might ask me to lunch or to dinner, or drinks, or anything, but you never did. Was there a reason?"

I explained to her about timing and about the moment and she looked at me and I knew she didn't believe in such and that she was all about "meant to be" and timing be damned. She looked at me like I was a weirdo televangelist or someone telling her about the blissful harmony of the occult. 

"All this time," she quipped wistfully. The words seemed to escape rather than being spoken and she sat there for a second deflated in the suddenness of her euphoria, seemingly taking inventory of the last three years and perhaps of those men who came and left her like a combat zone. The wars, the conflicts, the periods of peace and tranquility in between. It was nearly a presidential term. A college career. An Olympiad. But then she smiled again and reached over and grabbed my hand reassuringly. "The past is no prison. It is a university from which we graduate if we aren't still there. I'm very excited for our date Saturday night. Three years a harvest. And I will be in costume dear. I assure you."

We shared an elevator back up to the 12th floor to finish off our day. I was lightheaded, but it wasn't because of a sudden lack of blood. It was due to a dream being birthed into the sudden reality of my arms, a dream that I would have to nurture now that it was in the flesh and no longer in the process of conception. She smiled as the elevator climbed up it's cables and right before the floor chimed and the doors lunged open, she gave me a quick impulsive kiss and I realized as she hastily hurried to her desk as I was left with concrete feet in the elevator that rudely closed on me, that I had timed it all so perfectly it was as though it were meant to be and nothing, natural or unnatural, could dare stop it. 

The next night I was at the restaurant where we were to meet a good thirty minutes early and I waited at the bar in my pinstriped suit and wingtip shoes after telling the pretty hostess there would be two of us, sweetheart, as I teemed with a newfound giddiness and confidence foreign to me. I told her I'd wait at the bar where I drank Irish whiskey and I recalled how my father loved that particular brand and how he told me that whiskey was derived from two Irish words I couldn't remember that meant "the water of life." And it stuck in my head as I waited for her to come and I drank another and another and then she was a half hour late by the time I had my fourth and last drink of the evening.  

I hadn't received a text from her that day, though I had messaged her twice, but I figured it was nothing to be alarmed about because I hadn't asked anything of her - I just told her that I was looking forward to it and that I'd see her at 6 at the restaurant which was walking distance to the Byham. But time rudely passed and she didn't arrive so I texted and called her to no avail. The phone rang and went to voicemail. The messages were unread. So I decided not to go to the concert. What fun would I have without her? I gave my tickets to an old couple who were about to buy theirs at the ticket window. They thanked me profusely and as it began to rain, I quickly ducked into a cab and went home. I went to bed and sat my phone beside me where it lied still all night without a quiver. I fell asleep, a little drunk from the four whiskeys, and dreamed some terrible dream that was not worth recalling. 

The next day my phone buzzed. It was only my brother, though. I went back to sleep, depressed, until it buzzed again. It was Mr. McCormack who sent a group message to all employees that Ms. Artemis Grimm was in a traffic accident on the highway. She died early this morning. Her funeral would likely be Wednesday and we were all given Wednesday off to mourn and to go to the funeral if we wanted to, though Monday and Tuesday we were expected at work, as normal. The exact circumstances of the accident was unclear, he said. If anyone needs to speak to someone, he went on, the Employee Assistance Program is available 24-7. She will be missed, he concluded dryly. Everyone replied something about prayers to her family, with praying hands, brokenhearts, and angel emojis. That sort of usual thing. I didn't reply at all.  

Timing, I thought, had been truly in my favor, but fate was not. There are no words at times that suffice in such a tragedy, yet people still speak because that is what they do. Even though silence would be more appropriate and respectful, they say the same dumb things over and over because they don't know what else to do. Inaction is not an option. Their inner PR teams must express condolences in such a socially acceptable way because they think it matters. They think they matter. They think they can make it better. But they can't. They would be better served to express everything silently and inwardly. Solemnly and genuinely. Go to the funeral. Leave flowers. But don't offer social media prayers. 

All I could think about was my dad frying bologna and drinking swills of whiskey the day my mother left him for some other man who she brashly said was a better man than he. He was some damn literature professor at a university. He quoted Yates and Longfellow. My mother was an absolutist and could not recognize the error of her thinking, ever. She was a disloyal and cruel creature and hadn't a compassionate bone in her body and everything in the history of the world was about her. She was the sun and everyone else was a planet measured in importance by their distance to or from her. She did not believe that anything she thought was a subjective opinion. Her opinions were gospel to her. Brought down from Mount Sinai by her own Moses. After we ate our bologna sandwiches and dad started to slur his words at the bottom of that bottle, he said of the other man "he checks all the boxes for her" in a sad and resigned way like a bludgeoned boxer speaking graciously through missing teeth after a fight he lost badly. And I felt so damn bad for him that I cried. I didn't cry because my mother left us, or because I realized then that she was a whore who my father still defended. I cried because my dad was the best person I ever knew, a simple but loving man and his world was shattered by her betrayal. And I cried for the way he peacefully and pitifully accepted it as though it were his lot in life, and as though in some way he felt he deserved it. 

I could hear the bologna fry all that Sunday. And so I got a bottle of whiskey myself from the liquor store and drank as my father drank. I will not be returning to work, I texted Mr. McCormack, careful not to slur blurred words in the text. Please allow for my brother Clint to get my things and to collect my last paycheck. Sincerely, Curtis P. Crago. I couldn't go back. I couldn't see her empty seat or some new person in it. Or her desk as she left it. I couldn't see where the Red Cross was drinking our O Positive blood or stand in the elevator where she kissed me. It was over for me. I was a ruined man the way my father was a ruined man standing in his underwear in the kitchen of our shitty little house over bologna frying in a skillet, staring at it sizzling, holding that half-empty last bottle of whiskey and telling me what it meant, what it was. The water of life. The water of life, he repeated with a wry smile. I hadn't thought of that at all until I heard she died. I suppose one thing leads to another. The thought of one terrible thing ushers in another and another until all those terrible things make themselves at home and replace all the good things that were, but are no more.

I kept a .380 in my underwear drawer. A small gun that'll do the trick, as the guy at the store who sold it to me said. I suppose he didn't know then what he was saying just as the liquor guy didn't know he was selling me my last bottle. It was for prowlers the way the poison in the cupboard is for mice. The loudness of it will scare them off if it fails to kill them, rest assured, he promised. If you drink enough whiskey, nothing is impossible and everything is much better and worse than it truly is all at the same time. Everything is a hundred times more potent and exhausting and uplifting and depressing and passionate and heartbreaking. Life seems wonderful, even when it's horrible, and horrible when it's wonderful. 

I had never fired that gun in the 7 years I had owned it, so I wasn't for certain that it would actually work. I never thought I would shoot myself in the head, but I never thought I would lose the person I love before our first date. I was certain, drunk or sober, that death does not end it and that she was out there somewhere, floating on a cloud, or being ferried on a gondola boat over the River Styx, perhaps cursing her luck for the ill-timed accident. Maybe she was on a sort of cruise ship playing shuffleboard or checkers with her grandmother who was buried in that periwinkle-blue dress with the large white corsage pinned to her sunken chest. And so, my faith as it was, not worried in the least about the Catholic deceit that suicide is some damnable sin just as Bibles in English once was damnable, I cooly leveled the gun to my temple and pulled the trigger. But the safety was on and it did not depress, so I had to flick it off and repeat the process. Then bullseye. Whamo. I saw a carnival game and a little girl just shot the tin bell with a BB rifle and was given a four foot tall duck stuffed animal for a prize. She shot my brains out. 

What my brains must have looked like on the pillow, I don't dare to guess. Some Chinese delicacy stewed in duck sauce, perhaps. Maybe something like a raw meatloaf or ham salad in ketchup spilled on an ivory tablecloth. But I awoke as I expected to awake and I was in a small room and there was one door and light which crawled out beneath it, giving away the surprise of a lifetime. There was nothing at all in the room and no reason to stay there. It was dim and cold. I was wearing the black pinstriped suit. What presumably I was buried in. I suppose my brother an his wife found me and the suit was hanging there so they figured it is what I laid out to be buried in. Someone stuck a red carnation on my lapel, which looked very sharp. I was grateful for that. Grateful forever for the small and kind things that people do with no incentive other than to be kind.  

I got up off the table and left the room. And outside of the room there was a glorious garden, the likes of which I've never seen. Gardenias everywhere. Roses galore, wildflowers, and carnations, too. There were cobblestone streets and pub after pub full of people and music of all kinds. Good music. The kind where people play instruments passionately and in harmony with each other. And there was shop after shop full of everything you had ever wanted but never got. Everything. And bakeries and restaurants and pastry shops with anything a person could desire down to the very last morsel and nothing else between. I found her in one of those pubs, drinking alone, watching the live band with a sad and weary look upon her face which contradicted everything around her. And I sat next to her and exhaled and she looked over at me, seemingly expecting someone else, someone who had came before who she sent away. Another angel making an appropriate but unwelcomed pass. 

"Oh my Gosh!" she cried. "Curtis? Curtis Crago?! What the heck are you doing here?! This is - the afterlife. Wait, um, what..."

"Well, I waited three years to ask you out. I certainly wasn't going to miss our first date - for anything."

"But I'm dead..." 

"Then that makes two of us. But in truth I've never felt more alive."

"But - wait - I don't believe this. How did you die? I was in an accident. I, um. Well, there was this truck..."

I imitated the .380 with my index finger pressed to my temple. I pulled an imaginary middle finger trigger. Then I smiled and she gasped. She put her hand over her mouth. 

"You didn't!"

"I did!" I smiled. 

She looked as though she were going to cry. "Oh, Curtis. You didn't have to do that for me."

"I did it for us. So I could see you again. So I hope you haven't changed your mind about our date or else I'm going to look pretty dumb. I mean I'm sure they have some - lively entertainment here, but I came for you." I smiled at her and realized the pub band was one I knew well. It was Ted Lewis and his orchestra and Ted was periodically going around as he did and asking everyone, "Is everyone happy?" 

She looked at me with her big brown eyes and smiled. Fat tears amassed and fell. She wiped them away. "I like it here," she said. "I like it much better now. Let's get a table with an orange hurricane lamp and drink until we see two of us."

"Let's do it. Let's fall in love."

We got a table and Artemis quivered gently in my arms. 

"Before we go on, you're going to have to explain to me how you got that name. I've wondered for years. Suffering in the silence of my admiration."

She laughed. "My father taught Greek mythology, only I don't believe he felt it was mythology at all. I believed he believed it. My brother's name is Hermes. I think my father saw himself as Zeus. What about your father?" 

"His name was Guy Crago. A Vietnam War vet who could hardly spell his own name. He didn't see himself as anything at all."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. He was a good man. Every year he played Santa Claus for the kids in the mall. They paid him a little, but he didn't do it for the money. He did it for the kids. My brother and I loved him very much. He always made Christmas special. I am sure he is around here somewhere." I realized then what my father was saying about the water of life, and that it was not about whiskey at all. But that is for another time. 

We drank to my father, to Ted Lewis, and to Hermes. There was a chill in the air and I ran my hands over the gooseflesh of her arms until she warmed. She was wearing a gold sleeveless flapper dress with a million sequins and black tassels at her knees which matched her headband. It was the dress she was buried in, the dress she was going to wear on our date. I have never seen anyone so beautiful in any moment of life. Not on TV or in a magazine. Nowhere else. I couldn't imagine if she hadn't felt anything for me. Nor could I help but to stare and I knew she didn't mind. She often stared back. 

We made a night of it. We drank, we danced, and we took a room above a bistro that smelled like chocolate and croissants and we made love until it hurt and we were too exhausted to keep our eyes open. There were many things in Heaven that I didn't expect there would be, but there was nothing that I expected that wasn't. Liquor, love and love making. Coffee, chocolate, real music and beautiful women and children, all innocent and unharmed. Heaven was Christmastime, 1933, straight from a Sears-Roebuck catalogue with large shop windows and tinsel. A Norman Rockwell painting. A Bing Crosby song with no end. There were fat snowflakes out the window and the sloshing of tires down the cold cobblestone snowy street. The occasional duck horn of a passing car saying hello or goodbye. A hoot. A holler. Carolers caroling. Wind that was the breath of God. Besides pain, worry, jealousy, doubt and fear, there was only one other thing conspicuously missing. Uncertainty. You'll find no uncertainty in Heaven. I intend to write a book and there is a typewriter on a desk by the window waiting on me. I know what I'll call it. And I already know what I will say. 

"It matters what's in our heart," I whispered to Artemis as she slept in my arms. "It always has and forever will."