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By Root 809 0

belief system, I think I’m more of a visionary than he was. After all, I once saw Jesus at a party. There was another thing I saw there, which I’ll tell you about eventually, once I get up my nerve to describe it. This thing I saw, it was probably the whole point of the party and of Jesus being in attendance and alerting me to it. But back to my walking around town. My point is, Oscar is here somewhere and that’s why I’m strolling hereabouts looking for him. You can’t have a body and a soul like that and just die and disappear. It’s much too wasteful, psychically. God won’t permit that. God’s no hambone: God believes in soul ecology. Something has to happen to you after you die, something mysterious and so far unexplained to us humans, and I’m determined to find out what it might be. I’m the woman to do it, I’m the woman for the job. I think maybe Oscar has taken up residence in some other guy, or he’s going to, and I have to find him there, though the search will be hard, because the guy will deny that he’s Oscar, of course. He’ll claim to be himself. I won’t know if it’s Oscar at first, because it’ll look like someone else, but it will be Oscar, the guy will have Oscar-essence. That can happen. I’ll strip him of whatever girlfriends he has and get him into my arms, as long as he isn’t dismayed by my having a baby. He won’t know what hit him once I go to work on him. I have enough goddess stuff in me to manage. Because he’ll be Oscar without knowing it. That’s why I go in search of him. Sometimes, when I don’t want to walk, I get into the Matador on evenings when the car agrees to start, and first I head down toward Ypsilanti. I drive past where Mrs. Maggaroulian once worked. She isn’t there anymore. She isn’t anywhere. Mrs. Maggaroulian has disappeared from our planet. She can’t tell me where Oscar is. I have to do the search by myself. Wait a minute. I have to take a breath. Just a minute. I need to breathe in.

There. I took a breath. Sometimes I get light-headed and I think I’m going to faint. Anyway, you can’t figure out love without figuring out death, too, but the effort it takes can knock the wind out of you. Love is the first cousin of death, they’re acquainted with each other, they go to the same family reunions. Mrs. Maggaroulian’s office is empty, her sign’s been removed, and another sign, THIS SPACE FOR LEASE, is up there instead. I wish she were still there, with her Laurel and Hardy clocks. I could use some help and advice from her. I could use a few e-mails from the future, a few pennies-per-serving tidbits from the prophet of Ypsilanti, where the three Christs once lived. We’re constantly getting bulletins from the future, in case you haven’t noticed, but mostly we ignore them because of the unsightly messengers, the slobby crackpots who get the information and have to pass it on with their bad breath and missing teeth. Harry Ginsberg, the professor who lives upstairs, is always going around saying, “Chloé, the unexpected is always upon us,” but what he really means is that the future wants us to know what is about to happen and it, the future, sends us people like Mrs. Maggaroulian to help us out. I suppose he really means that I am the unexpected and that I am always upon him, but maybe he wants to say that he expected his son Aaron to show up one day and what he got was me, instead. He lost a son but he gained a sort of daughter, which was myself. You can’t always get what you want but sometimes you get what you need — truer words than that have been spoken, but not much truer, and for sure not in my lifetime. Here’s what I think: every once or so often, the Mrs. Maggaroulians appear in your life to help manage your most exciting and troubled times and to help you get through them. Ever notice how drag queens and street people and madmen typically show up at your doorstep just when you’re about to take a new job or go on a long journey? They’re there, as a rule, to tell you how it’s all going to turn out. You’ve got to cock an ear in their direction, despite the bad oniony smells they give off. If you