8: Explanations

The cof­fee shop pa­trons had not changed since the vis­it the day be­fore. The old man with the sad blue eyes re­mained in the booth by the win­dow and the wait­er be­hind the bar stood ready to serve them bev­er­ages as soon as they walked through the door. As they took their seats at the counter where Giuseppe had served them in the same smil­ing si­lence he had done the day be­fore, Brig­it’s thoughts were be­yond the per­fect­ly pre­pared cup of cof­fee sit­ting on the bar be­fore her.

“You seem pen­sive,” John com­ment­ed as he stirred his tea.

“I sup­pose I am,” she ad­mit­ted. “Could Demetrius Rudikov have killed me?” She heard John sigh gen­tly as he bal­anced his tea­spoon on the rim of the saucer un­der the teacup.

“Dar­ling, you’re al­ready dead,” he re­mind­ed. “No, he could not have killed you. How­ev­er, had he man­aged to maul you any more than he did, you would have been das­tard­ly ill for quite some time. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it’s not some­thing we can sim­ply shake off. When a dark spir­it man­ages to do some se­ri­ous harm, the ef­fects are more like a poi­sonous in­fec­tion. Even­tu­al­ly, it runs its course and we re­turn to nor­mal with on­ly the mem­ory of the event. The length of time one is out of com­mis­sion de­pends on the sever­ity of the in­jury,” John ex­plained as he picked up his tea and blew gen­tly across the sur­face. Brig­it knew it was out of habit that he did this. Af­ter all, he was just as dead as she was.

“Has any­one ev­er not sur­vived the in­jury?” Brig­it pressed fur­ther. John pursed his lips in thought. He wouldn’t lie to her. She had to have an­swers to her ques­tions if she was to evolve.

“There have been a few that have met their fi­nal demise with­out know­ing their true fates. The in­ci­dences are far and few be­tween, how­ev­er.”

“Where did their souls go?”

John shrugged as he sipped from his tea. He had on­ly heard the tales from the Reapers that had been present. The souls that had met their ends with­out pass­ing through a door had mere­ly dis­ap­peared on the winds of Lim­bo, car­ried away to that place where there was no be­gin­ning and no end for all eter­ni­ty. The shrug seemed to sat­is­fy Brig­it’s cu­rios­ity for the mo­ment.

“So, tell me about the as­sign­ments,” Brig­it said as she fi­nal­ly picked up her own cof­fee and blew across the sur­face. It was a habit as well, of course.

“Right now, ev­ery­thing is a bloody mess,” John said. Brig­it heard the note of frus­tra­tion in his voice. “Noth­ing is as or­ga­nized as it used to be and they keep adding up ev­ery­day. Es­pe­cial­ly with the wars that have been go­ing on. It’s sense­less, all this fight­ing, if you ask me; but, I’m not here to of­fer opin­ions – am I?”

It was rhetor­ical ques­tion, Brig­it knew. She kept her si­lence and wait­ed for the rest of the ex­pla­na­tion.

“Any­way,” he con­tin­ued, “it’s not as if we’re on a time sched­ule to ac­com­plish the work. We have all of eter­ni­ty. It’s al­ways been a mat­ter of kind con­sid­er­ation that we work in a time­ly man­ner. It is a prin­ci­ple I’ve al­ways sup­port­ed. It’s just that, right now, I’m so back logged…”

“The Sarah Mc­Dow­ell’s of the world hap­pen too of­ten,” Brig­it in­ter­rupt­ed.

“Ex­act­ly,”

“So, what is the plan to fix this?” Her mind was be­gin­ning to work, search­ing for the plan to clean up the mess. Be­ing adept at or­ga­ni­za­tion was one of her many fortes, af­ter all. It was what had made her such a suc­cess­ful as­sis­tant to her em­ploy­ers when she was alive.

“I think, log­ical­ly speak­ing, it would be wise to or­ga­nize the files cur­rent­ly wait­ing.”

“What about the ones com­ing in dai­ly? I as­sume they do come dai­ly…”

“They do. One of the prob­lems to that par­tic­ular is­sue is The Bai­ley,” John sighed.

“What is The Bai­ley?” Brig­it asked. She re­mem­bered John men­tion­ing the name be­fore.

“The Bai­ley is the ac­tu­al en­ti­ty that de­liv­ers the mor­tal to the mo­ment of their pass­ing, sep­arat­ing the soul from the body, if you will. He was present the day you died,” John ex­plained. “Right now, he is on the loose and bur­den­ing my work load even more. He is un­aware that the firm has re­struc­tured, and he is con­tin­uing on with his du­ties with­out in­struc­tion. I was try­ing to col­lar him the day we met be­cause I re­al­ly need for him to start re­port­ing in for dai­ly brief­in­gs. He’s part of the rea­son I didn’t cross you that day. I didn’t have your file. I didn’t know your fate. I on­ly knew your name be­cause I heard him chant­ing it like some kind of mantra un­til he com­plet­ed his task. I’d been chas­ing him for days at that point,” John ex­plained. The frus­tra­tion seemed to mount in his voice as he spoke. “If it weren’t for the Bai­ley, peo­ple would go on liv­ing for­ev­er. At the rate some peo­ple con­tin­ue to pro­duce off­spring, there would even­tu­al­ly be no room left on Earth if it weren’t for the Bai­ley. He en­sures the con­tin­uous cy­cles of life and death.”

Brig­it searched her mem­ory of the day she had died. She had re­mem­bered look­ing up to the top of the build­ing and see­ing the pale, bald man in black robes peer­ing down at her. She had thought that he was see­ing a sight so hor­ren­dous that his soul might be damned for­ev­er. She now re­al­ized that he was on­ly mak­ing sure he had com­plet­ed his unas­signed as­sign­ment. Brig­it shook the im­age from her head and re­fo­cused her at­ten­tion on John Black­wick.

"Be­yond that, what are our op­tions?”

“Well,” John be­gan, set­ting his teacup in its place on the saucer. “We have two op­tions. We can go and reap im­me­di­ate­ly the files that come in, or we can put them to the bot­tom of the pile and make them wait un­til we can get to them. Con­sid­er­ing the pace that they are de­liv­ered to my desk, we would be con­stant­ly be reap­ing the fresh souls. We’d nev­er get to the over due.”

“Who de­liv­ers the files?”

“Un­seen hands. All I know so far is that they are placed on my desk ev­ery morn­ing whether I’m present or not. I just look up and they’re there. I sus­pect it is the Bai­ley, but I’m not com­plete­ly sure.”

“How many reap­ings can we do in a day’s time?” Brig­it asked, won­der­ing how many she could fit in­to the hours that Mag­gie was awake. To­day had been a train­ing day, she knew. By her in­ter­nal clock, they had on­ly been out for a few hours. John sim­ply shrugged his shoul­ders in re­ply to her an­swer.

“There are too many facets to con­sid­er that makes it hard to cal­cu­late an av­er­age. Un­til six months ago, there were thou­sands of Reapers in the firm. Work loads were not mea­sured and we had no quo­tas to meet, no dead­lines. To­day, there are on­ly the two of us to do the work of thou­sands,” John point­ed out. Brig­it de­tect­ed the note of bit­ter­ness in his voice but de­cid­ed not to dig to the source of it. “Be­sides, I’m not a math­emati­cian. It would take me years to pro­vide you with even a de­cent es­ti­mate.”

“So, maybe,” Brig­it’s fin­gers be­gan to drum on the counter top as her mind be­gan to churn quick­ly. “Our first step is to or­ga­nize the files by pri­or­ity.”

“And the sec­ond step?” John asked as Giuseppe stepped up and whisked away the Grim Reaper’s emp­ty teacup.

“The sec­ond step would be to re­cruit some help.” John shook his head against the idea.

“We don’t have the time to in­ter­view for ev­ery po­si­tion,” he point­ed out.

“How did you come to the de­ci­sion to of­fer me a po­si­tion?”

“Three rea­sons, re­al­ly,” John sighed as Giuseppe re­turned the teacup with a fresh brew steam­ing from with­in. “First of all, I knew there was some­thing spe­cial about you when I met you. Once I read your file, I dis­cov­ered that you are an ac­com­plished as­sis­tant. You’re high­ly or­ga­nized, log­ical in thought and pro­cess. Third­ly, there was the fact that you had not ful­filled your oath to Mag­gie. You had not com­plet­ed your rea­son for liv­ing be­fore you died. The Bai­ley took you be­fore you had ful­filled your vow. I be­lieve in love, Brig­it, and I could tell that you were de­ter­mined to ful­fill your pur­pose even in death. I’d rather have you work­ing by my side than spend­ing my time in a stale­mate with you un­til Mag­gie’s time comes.”

Brig­it sti­fled a smile as she lis­tened to his ex­pla­na­tion. He was right. She was de­ter­mined to ful­fill her promise to Mag­gie. His ef­forts to pass her would have end­ed in a long run­ning stale­mate un­til Mag­gie was ready to go as well.

“I have an idea,” Brig­it fi­nal­ly said. “As we or­ga­nize the files, we should pe­ruse them as we would re­sumes. If we find the right can­di­dates, we can of­fer them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to join the firm,” she sug­gest­ed.

“That’s bloody bril­liant,” John said. He looked pleased by her sug­ges­tion. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of that my­self.”

“You’ve got a lot on your plate,” Brig­it of­fered as an ex­cuse.

“You’re right,” John agreed. “If you’re ready, let’s go back to the of­fice and see what head­way we can make on the files.”

“Sounds good. Can I take my cof­fee?”

Giuseppe the smil­ing wait­er moved from his place and im­me­di­ate­ly set to prepar­ing her a fresh bev­er­age in a pa­per cup. The sight of his ac­tions made her won­der mo­men­tar­ily whether pa­per cups could ac­tu­al­ly ex­ist in the spir­it world or if this, like ev­ery­thing else she had en­coun­tered so far, was just a twist on what she used to know as re­al­ity. There was so much she was still get­ting used to, still at­tempt­ing to take in as a form of the new re­al­ity she now faced. As she took some new facet of the spir­it world, there was some­thing of her mor­tal life she had to morph in­to fit­ting or to­tal­ly let go as no longer rel­evant. It had on­ly been two weeks since her pass­ing. She could on­ly imag­ine what her re­al­ity would be like as time con­tin­ued to pass.

Brig­it hoped that, one day, she would be as knowl­edge­able as John ap­peared to be. She hoped that she would gain his pa­tience but not his sense of hu­mor. From what she had ob­served of him, he seemed to lack a sense of hu­mor. She had loved to be able to laugh about things – es­pe­cial­ly with Mag­gie. Laugh­ter healed her soul. She couldn’t lose that, es­pe­cial­ly since she on­ly lived with­in her soul now.

Brig­it nod­ded her thanks to Giuseppe and slid from her seat at the counter to fol­low John. A silent smile was all she re­ceived aside from the cof­fee to-​go. The pa­per cup con­tain­ing the cof­fee was warm in the palm of her hand as she walked to the door. It was a feel­ing that caused her to think of Mag­gie mo­men­tar­ily and she smiled. Her sight set­tled briefly on the old man with the sad blue eyes as she passed to­ward the door. Some­where, Brig­it guessed, he had lost his rea­son to laugh and heal his soul.