13, Rue Therese - Elena Mauli Shapiro [72]
“You!” she says. “You don’t exist!”
I answer as softly as possible, “I beg to differ.”
“How did you get here?”
“Same way I always do.” As I say this, I raise the small object I am holding in my hand, the same one she currently has on her nightstand: a small rectangular cardboard box containing ribbon with her initials on it, to be cut up and sewn inside her clothes so that they do not get mixed up when she sends her laundry away to be cleaned.
[NB: ]
I notice a familiar object next to the little green box on her nightstand—the same box I am holding. I have seen these sewing scissors before. Surprised at seeing them sitting there looking so quotidian and innocent, I exclaim, “You still use them?”
[NB: ]
“Yes, why not? What do you mean?”
“That day… when your brother died—that day with the priest?”
“They weren’t sullied with the priest’s blood. They are perfectly fine scissors.”
She sits up laboriously in bed, propping her back up against the headboard with a pillow. “So you know about that day.” She sighs. “Of course, you were there.”
I am about to answer her in the affirmative when she laughs hysterically, as if someone has told her a joke as hurtful as it is funny. I am a bit flummoxed by this display. As she wipes the tears beading at the corners of her eyes, she hoots, “But of course you were not there! You aren’t even here! I am delirious with fever.”
“You are. You are burning up.”
She is suddenly serious—a very mercurial woman in her delirium. She stares at me with her shining eyes and says simply, “It was you my brother saw, the day before he died.”
I nod.
“I am going to die from this fever, then. You are the one who comes to fetch us when we die.”
“Oh no! I am no such thing. My name is Trevor Stratton. I am just an academic. I do research.”
“I am—your research?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“I am going to die tomorrow.”
She says this with some degree of distracted bemusement in her voice, as if she has discovered an incongruity in the fabric of life. I am in a fluster now, because condemning people to death is certainly not what I do. “I assure you that is not so. You will be fine. Look,” I say as I root around in my pocket and pull out a small photograph, “Xavier will take this of you and Pauline next week, on an outing in the public garden.”
[NB: 45]
She holds out her hand for the picture and I briefly wonder if some anomaly will result from her seeing it now, from looking at her future face. Am I not supposed to do that? Well, this entire situation violates space-time in plenty of ways already, so I decide it can’t do that much harm and I let her snatch the photo from me.
“Ha!” she exclaims. “The picture looks old.”
“It is.”
She is utterly fascinated by it, and scrutinizes it intently for a full minute. “Well, I will make sure to smile for such a momentous picture. You see I already have. We’re not too bad-looking, no? That’s a funny hat she will have on, though. Do you like my hat? It’s my favorite one.”
“The purple one?”
“So you know the color too. It seems you know everything. So tell me, Mr. Stratton, when will I die?”
“That information is not in the documentation.”
“Ah. When will my father die, then?”
I could answer, if I wanted to. I could tell her. But there is something wrong with that. I repeat as firmly as I can manage, “That information is not in the documentation.”
“You are very spooked by death, for a man who doesn’t exist.”
“It gets us all.”
A slight smile is playing on her dry pink lips, as if after all she finds me amusing. I am glad for it. After all, as anyone, I just want to be liked. For a sick woman, the words are coming out of her with ease—but of course we have all grown familiar with the strange and unexpected qualities of these fevers. She hands me the picture back, asking, “You know the man who will take