Afterlife - Douglas Clegg [34]
The office was decorated in muted beiges and browns, and always smelled of herb tea. It was the most relaxing place that Julie knew—a genuine refuge when she needed to work out problems.
“I feel like I’m bad because I want to find things out.”
“Why do you think that’s bad?”
“He’s dead. He was killed. My mind can’t wrap around that and still wonder if he loved me.”
“Did you love him?”
Julie nodded. “I want him back so bad. I really do.”
After she’d wiped the tears from her eyes, Julie said, “But I never really knew him. I thought I did. But I just don’t think I did at all. There were those things that went unspoken. Those things I just ignored.”
“You think he was unfaithful?”
Julie nodded. “But he’s dead now. So it shouldn’t matter.”
“He may not have been. He may have been. Why do you need to know now?”
“I don’t know.”
“You do know. You just can’t say it yet.”
“No, I really don’t know.”
“Marriage is based on trust, and what that means, really, is the opposite. You have to put blinders on to get through it sometimes,” Eleanor said.
“My mother used to tell me that all men cheat.”
“Your mother would only know that for certain if she’d slept with every married man on the planet, Julie. Are you really concerned that he was cheating on you, now that he’s dead? Or is there something else?”
“You knew him. There was always something… unspoken…his first wife…” Julie began, fumbling for words.
“Amanda had problems that had nothing to do with Hut,” Eleanor said. “Her violence didn’t come out of her marriage to Hut, Julie. She had a long history from childhood, and what was going on with her at the point they divorced had everything to do with Hut wanting to protect his son. You are going through the grief process. Stage by stage. It seems like you’re right on schedule. Didn’t you read the Kubler-Ross I gave you? Allow yourself some time. Understand that sometimes ideas float around after a violent death takes place, ideas in the head of the surviving family members, not all of which are meaningful. But they may just be ways that we all work out the shock. I would guess you’re experiencing dreams.”
Julie nodded.
“Some good, some bad, some terrible.”
Julie closed her eyes. Trying not to remember the dream where the man on the shiny metal table in the morgue opened his eyes. “A dream here or there.”
“All right,” Eleanor said, leaning forward slightly, chin in hand, her God look in full glow.
“Just little things. Memories.”
“Any of them that make you angry?”
The white-blue skin of the dead man who could not be Hut.
Eyes opening.
Just milky-white eyes.
Looking up at her.
Down there.
His tongue thrusting between her legs.
“Sometimes.”
“Does Hut hurt you in the dreams?”
“No. No, nothing like that.” Julie could feel that she was blushing.
“Oh,” Eleanor said, reading her. “Sexual dreams. What gives birth, also takes life. Tell me about them.”
Julie nodded. “Really filthy ones. Like in porn movies.” She quickly added, “Nothing like our sex life. Which was good. It was fine. But this is like, I don’t know, cartoon sex. Ridiculous sex. Multiple…organs. Sex with women, sex with men, sex with…well, it’s all disturbing to me. I’ve never had dreams like this in my life.”
“You told me once, a while ago, that you didn’t think you were much of a sexual person.”
“I’m not. I’m just not. I never was. My sister is. She got the horny genes. Me, I just like it now and then if I really care for someone.” Her voice trailed off a bit, as if sorrow had returned with this thought.
“Sex and death are often intertwined in our consciousness,” Eleanor said. “Erotic dreams after the death of someone close to us…well, it’s not that strange. The French call the climax petite mort. Little death.”
“I’m not even sure I could call these dreams erotic. There’s this sort of cartoony surreal element to them,” Julie said. “Sometimes…” The milky-white eyes. The shiny maggoty-white skin.
“Sometimes?”
“Sometimes…it’s just surreal.”
“Your mind is going to work out all kinds