Señora Ana Marie Garcia Lopez starts talking so fast that I can’t understand what she’s saying. I don’t think Clint can either, but he says, “Don’t worry, darlin’.”
Valentina glances at me, then returns her attention to the ceiling. “What if she doesn’t come back?”
“That rarely happens,” the golfer answers.
“Rarely?” I turn to him. If it was possible, I’d be hyperventilating just about now. As it is, I make a strangling sound like I can’t breathe.
“You said you never seen anythin’ like that,” Tommy reminds him.
“I haven’t. I’ve heard about it.”
“Don’t appear like she’s comin’ back,” Jemma Jennie says.
What’s going to happen to me now? Can I still go to heaven?
“Jemma Jennie’s right,” the other cowgirl points out. “That woman in the blue slip ain’t comin’ back.”
She stole my path and didn’t even pay me! “Now what?”
The golfer turns to me. “Come with me, Marfa.”
It actually worked. I wasn’t sure it was even possible, but I climbed Brittany with two t’s like she was Jacob’s ladder and I’m here. On a sparkly pink path as gaudy as her “Don’t Mess with a Texas Girl” T-shirt and just as ridiculous. I got over glitter headbands and rhinestone hair bows when I was shipped off to boarding school at the age of nine.
Not that any of that matters. The path is moving toward a gol
den light and that’s all I really care about. I start to walk and peer through the darkness as I move. Brittany said there was no place to hide, and as far as I can tell, she’s right. If I look hard to my left and right, I can see people on other paths that appear like conveyor belts and they’re all leading to the same golden light.
Can they see me? I glance over my shoulder. Is anyone following me? Will I be discovered and tossed back into a life I can’t bear? All the gossip and whispers and gloating. Not again. I fought a chubby Texan for this. I earned it. I outsmarted everyone in the hospital. I deserve this. Now I just have to outwit anyone and anything else standing between me and my perfect life with the Most Holy Trinity.
My pink path converges with the others and I pass a man with a white beard wearing a white linen suit and straw fedora like he’s a field guard for Saint Peter. He isn’t following me, but I run toward the light just in case. I don’t know what I’m going to say to God once I’m standing before him, but I’m not all that concerned about it. My family has been granted private audiences with Popes Pius X, XII, and John Paul II.
I think he knows me.
The path becomes wider and more crowded, but we’re not getting closer to the golden light. How long is this going to take, for Christ’s sake? I shove my way past people in swimming suits, men and women in sarongs, and children in shorts and T-shirts. There’s a man in a business suit and another wearing a Speedo and one flip-flop. Most are barefoot like me. No one is talking. We’re moving, but heaven stays the same distance away.
I stop long enough to point to the golden light and ask a kid in a LeBron James jersey, “Is that heaven, do you suppose?”
He looks at me and says something that sounds like he’s speaking Thai. I move on and find a woman in shorts and a cheap bikini top. “Why aren’t we getting closer to heaven?”
She looks at me and her eyes are kind of fixed. “Where am I?”
I ask someone else and get a “What happened?” Others ask, “Why am I here?”
“Did I get washed away?”
“Where’s Cheryl?”
“Is this a Disney cruise?”
These people are of no use, and I keep pushing through until I finally get to a set of golden turnstiles. Turnstiles? Is this some sort of checkpoint where illegal entries are discovered? I watch a man in a burgundy uniform move forward, and the process appears easy enough: a person walks through and the machine spits out a ticket on the other side. No one seems to be stopped or denied.
“Excuse me,” I say, cutting between a girl in a gold sari and a man and woman in matching triple-XL “Phuket I’m Going to Bangkok” tank tops.
“Dan, she just shoved herself in front of me,” says the fatty behind me.
“Line’s in the back,” Dan tells me.
I don’t bother with a response as I watch the woman in the sari. She walks through without a problem, but the arms don’t rotate when it’s my turn. I’m reminded of the time Georgiana Aldridge and I decided to ride the Paris Metro like Parisiennes. Our cards didn’t work, so we hopped over the arms with a group of boys. I remember a flashing red light as we scattered. Très audacieux.