27: Brigit’s Side

The door to 666 ½ Bleeck­er Street had nev­er ap­peared so bleak, Brig­it mused as she stood on the side­walk star­ing at it. Be­hind that door, she thought, is a mess I cre­at­ed. Sea­mus was un­doubt­ed­ly still un­con­scious from the suf­fer­ing of his wounds. By now, Brig­it was sure, Be­lin­da would have run out of names to record and was pos­si­bly med­dling in things she should not. Be­yond that, John Black­wick would have re­turned from his trip and dis­cov­ered the mess that had ac­cu­mu­lat­ed with Brig­it’s ab­sence.

She had not been back to the of­fice since leav­ing Be­lin­da two days be­fore. Brig­it had orig­inal­ly thought, af­ter leav­ing Ed­mund J. Pol­ly at the Bleeck­er Street Café, that she would head straight back and re­sume the break neck pace of Reap­ings so that she could ap­pear busy when John did make his re­turn. How­ev­er, af­ter leav­ing the café, Brig­it had turned north and made her way to the ceme­tery where her mor­tal body had been put for eter­nal rest.

It had been qui­et there. As she had walked amongst the grave stones and mon­uments, she lis­tened hard for any sound that would in­di­cate she was not alone. Yet, she had heard noth­ing dur­ing her pas­sage. She had found it some­what strange that a ceme­tery should be so com­plete­ly void of wait­ing spir­its. Dur­ing her life, she had al­ways thought a ceme­tery would be filled to the brim with souls wait­ing to meet their judg­ments, and as a re­sult, Brig­it had main­tained a qui­et rev­er­ence for the acreages that had been sep­arat­ed from the rest of the land­scape by iron bars and stone walls.

A small stone mark­er had been set at the head of her grave. It was sim­ple, bear­ing her name and dates as most grave stones did. Be­low the dates, Brig­it found the wish: May You Know Eter­nal Peace.

Brig­it bit her lip as she read the words. Mag­gie had picked those words, she was sure. De­spite Brig­it’s calm de­meanor dur­ing life, Mag­gie had been aware of the tur­moil that could oc­ca­sion­al­ly come to Brig­it’s mind. Her part­ner of ten years mi­nus one day had al­ways been in tune enough to know when the ghosts and demons of Brig­it’s mem­ories would rise up to haunt her. Brig­it had al­ways thought she had let them go, blocked them from her con­scious thought so that the ghosts and demons had no hand in defin­ing her; but ev­ery once in awhile, she could feel their spec­tral fin­ger­tips on her skin. Ap­par­ent­ly, Brig­it mused as she stood by her grave and read the wish once more, Mag­gie could feel it too.

She had re­mained be­side her grave longer than she had in­tend­ed. Her thoughts on her own life be­fore the ac­ci­dent and af­ter the ac­ci­dent had wrapped around her, hold­ing her there to view them like pho­tographs. She had to re­mem­ber them. She had to hon­or them – no mat­ter how painful or sad they had been. Some­how, Brig­it knew that in do­ing this, it would free her to con­tin­ue on with her present ex­is­tence. It would free her to fur­ther open her mind to all this side of liv­ing would show her.

Her last stop be­fore mak­ing her way back to 666 ½ Bleeck­er Street had been to see Mag­gie. It was ear­ly enough in the morn­ing that Mag­gie would still be asleep. Brig­it had stood over her lover, watch­ing her sleep peace­ful­ly. She wished for a sec­ond that she could lie down be­side Mag­gie, wrap her in her arms and hold on­to her un­til the end of Mag­gie’s days; but there was work to be done and Brig­it knew she could no longer put it off. It was the bar­gain she had agreed to for Mag­gie’s sake. As she ex­it­ed the bed­room, she heard Mag­gie’s sleepy voice call to her.

“I love you, Bree,” Mag­gie sighed. Brig­it stopped in the door way and looked back at her sleep­ing lover.

“I love you too, Mags. For­ev­er, I love you.”

The of­fice was qui­et when Brig­it en­tered. From where she stood af­ter clos­ing the door, she could tell that John Black­wick was present in his of­fice. From the sound of shuf­fling pa­pers in Be­lin­da’s of­fice, Brig­it as­sumed the girl was still hard at work on her orig­inal task. Guess­ing that it was best to get the ex­plain­ing over with, Brig­it squared her shoul­ders and be­gan her ap­proach to­ward The Grim Reaper’s of­fice. She and Be­lin­da had on­ly a sec­ond to ex­change a glance as she passed the young wom­an’s of­fice. A sur­prised, yet re­lieved, look em­anat­ed from Be­lin­da’s blue eyes. Brig­it, how­ev­er, had no time to in­ter­pret any mes­sage that may have been sent her way.

John was sit­ting at his desk en­grossed in a stock of port­fo­lios be­fore him. Brig­it stood just in­side the door, watch­ing her men­tor. He was usu­al­ly a blank slate when it came to ex­pres­sion. It was usu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble for Brig­it to de­ter­mine her men­tor’s thoughts or mood. To­day was no ex­cep­tion.

“Have a seat, Brig­it,” John in­struct­ed with­out look­ing up at her. Brig­it obeyed by en­ter­ing the room and fill­ing the chair across from the head Grim Reaper. She was not sur­prised that he had known it was her. “You have some ex­plain­ing to do,” he point­ed out qui­et­ly.

“Yes, I do,” Brig­it con­firmed. “Where would you like me to start?”

John Black­wick looked across the mas­sive ma­hogany desk that sep­arat­ed them. He was ex­pect­ing to see some hu­mor on the wom­an’s face. In­stead, he found a se­ri­ous­ness to match his own. It was as if Brig­it had de­vel­oped some sense of un­der­stand­ing to the grav­ity of the sit­ua­tion and re­al­ized there was no hu­mor to be found in it. As John looked deep in­to her dark eyes, he saw the se­ri­ous­ness plant­ed deep with­in her and he won­dered if per­haps she had lost her sense of hu­mor all to­geth­er. Quick­ly, John pushed past that thought and leaned back in his chair. She had asked him where she should be­gin.

“Start with the as­sign­ment,” he in­struct­ed, mak­ing him­self com­fort­able. Al­though he was sure Brig­it would not be prone to con­fab­ulat­ing the sto­ry as Sea­mus Flan­nery had, John knew he need­ed to pro­vide his full at­ten­tion in or­der to see it all. The sin of omis­sion was just as bad as the sin of con­fab­ula­tion in his book.

Brig­it nod­ded solemn­ly and be­gan the tale. She ex­plained the meet­ing of Sea­mus Flan­nery on Pier 13 in San Fran­cis­co and her ob­ser­vance of the oth­er Reaper’s tak­ing of the gold lock­et from the spir­it he had crossed over. John ac­knowl­edged the slight tinge of an­noy­ance with the idea that a Reaper would be so bold as to take sou­venirs and he made a men­tal note to have a dis­cus­sion with Sea­mus re­gard­ing it. Brig­it con­tin­ued on with the sto­ry of the next as­sign­ment and the de­tails of it, John ob­served, were not as glo­ri­ous as the first ver­sion he had heard. He had al­ready guessed that Sea­mus’ ar­ro­gant na­ture had tak­en over the sce­nario and that his hot-​head­ed de­ter­mi­na­tion to over-​achieve was what had land­ed the Irish­man in­to the re­sult­ing state of non-​com­mis­sion. John was most in­ter­est­ed in Brig­it’s sense of re­spon­si­bil­ity of the scene and whether she would own up to that re­spon­si­bil­ity in the end.

Brig­it ex­plained the facts on­ly. John could see from her ex­pres­sion that she was be­ing hon­est. There was some­thing, how­ev­er, that she was omit­ting. John saw her pause in her tale, as if de­cid­ing whether to ad­mit this one de­tail. When he saw her push it aside in her mind, he re­al­ized that she had deemed it a per­son­al is­sue not worth his con­sid­er­ation and there­fore, not im­por­tant to the tale. She end­ed it all in ex­plain­ing that she could think of noth­ing else to do but to re­turn to the main of­fice with the man­gled Sea­mus Flan­nery and to leave him to suf­fer through his in­fec­tion as he would.

“I made him as com­fort­able as I could,” Brig­it of­fered qui­et­ly.

John pursed his lips as his as­sis­tant fell in­to a wait­ing si­lence. She was pre­pared, he thought, to re­ceive what­ev­er dis­ci­pline he would hand her. He wasn’t ready to do that just yet, tough. There were oth­er things to be con­sid­ered.

“Where did you find Miss Yaris?” John asked.

“She was one of the as­sign­ments I had scooped up. I apol­ogize for not con­sult­ing you be­fore bring­ing her on, but, I saw po­ten­tial in her. I was sur­prised that we missed her when we were go­ing through the files the first time.”

“She was a good find, Brig­it. I’m not up­set with her pres­ence. She’s been quite ef­fi­cient in her work. Where have you been since bring­ing her here, though? And why didn’t you send for me when you re­turned?” The ques­tions had been present since the mo­ment Brig­it had set foot in his of­fice, but John knew he had to hear her side be­fore scold­ing her for her lack of fore­thought.

“I was un­sure of how to reach you. It’s a weak ex­cuse, I know,” Brig­it replied, “but I have learned a cou­ple of things these last two days that will en­sure it won’t hap­pen again.” John met her lev­el gaze.

“What makes you sure your em­ploy­ment will con­tin­ue?”

The ques­tion sound­ed cru­el as he ut­tered it. John wished al­most im­me­di­ate­ly that he could take it back. Brig­it, how­ev­er, did not flinch with the ici­ness of the ques­tion. It was as if she had been ex­pect­ing it all along.

“I have hope,” she replied.

John looked away form the dark wom­an as he pon­dered his next ac­tion. There were many things to con­sid­er be­fore he could make a just de­ci­sion. Fi­nal­ly, he re­turned his at­ten­tion to her and found that hers had nev­er left him. The somber air around Brig­it was be­gin­ning to un­set­tle him.

“Go home, Brig­it,” he fi­nal­ly said. “I’ll de­liv­er my de­ci­sion in three days.”

“I don’t un­der­stand,” Brig­it ad­mit­ted. John could hear the con­fu­sion in her voice. She had ex­pect­ed a se­vere and im­me­di­ate sen­tence.

“You’re sus­pend­ed un­til I can de­cide what to do. I think it’s the fairest thing to do at this point. Go home. I’ll come to you once I’ve made up my mind,” he said qui­et­ly.

Fi­nal­ly, Brig­it stood and ex­it­ed his of­fice as qui­et­ly as she had en­tered it. He heard a short ex­change be­tween the two wom­en be­fore the main door to 666 ½ Bleeck­er Street was opened and Brig­it was gone.

John re­mained re­laxed in his chair for qui­et some time af­ter she had left. While she had mis­man­aged the as­sign­ment and failed to ask for help, Brig­it had made some re­cov­ery of bal­ance by in­creas­ing her work load and the dis­cov­ery of Be­lin­da Yaris. Brig­it had ad­mit­ted her mis­takes. She had tak­en re­spon­si­bil­ity fear­less­ly. John knew he couldn’t dis­count those facts. Yet, there was one thing she had omit­ted and John found that to be an irk­some thought. What­ev­er it was – per­son­al or not – John want­ed and need­ed to know what it was be­fore he could al­low her to car­ry on. He had told her three days. There was time to de­ter­mine his sen­tence in a cool man­ner. He had time to find jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for what his heart de­mand­ed of him in re­gard to Brig­it Mal­one.