J. M. Gardner Goes to Hell (part 2 of ??)

She's almost finished the last drop of the act of cheering someone up when The Proprietress returns.

"I heard what you said," she begins, startling the younger woman with a pat on the shoulder. "But I see a little bit of me in you. Nobody goes to bed hungry or goes home sad with you around, I bet."

"No ma'am," says Jade with a shake of the head, "they don't."

"Well, people like that get forgotten sometimes, if they're not careful. They can be neglected or trod upon, treated inconsiderately- but never unloved."

"Hey," Jade lifts her head, eager to change the subject, "Why does Angelica think I'm a man?"

"Why don't you ask her?" The Proprietress picks up the bowl in one arm, and is gone.

The words she wrote earlier have moved themselves to the corner of the table, though she didn't see them do anything suspicious. I wish I could make a fortune writing shitty novels under a pseudonym, she writes, but I only have enough energy for the real stuff. She stops, puts down the pen, the navyblue ink screeching to a halt.

She watches Angelica pour a thick crimson wine for someone who looks maybe like some ancient Greek genius, as if they don't all look the same. Who did she study in her favourite classes? Now it's all DEMs, Dead European Males. The next step after bearded old crazies. Maybe someday the only famous thinkers will be skinny bald girls, and then only African buddhists. Someday men and women from all walks of life will be things from a storybook written by ravens.

"With mother finally fucked, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window-"

Jade looks up, continuing the line "... and the last door closed at 4 A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply..." A pause as she trails off into thought. "Allen Ginsberg."

"He isn't here," says the first voice. "Mind if I sit down?"

When she looks up, it's into the face of a young girl wearing a slice of crystal from a chandelier around her neck on a string. She also has a pair of costume fairy wings strapped onto her back. "I know you. From my shamanic work."

But the girl only says, "While you are not safe I am not safe, and now you're really in the total animal soup of time!" as she sits down.

Hemingway gives the wing-wearing youngster a glare like she's disturbed his writing.

"That I am," says Jade. "And you are Crystalline."

"That I am," says Crystalline, "and Clarity, and Chime. I'm Laughter, Freedom, Teatime, Fantasy, Sparkling Snow and Sandcastle Summer." She plucks a sugar cube from a box on the table and sets it on her tongue. "I'm the dreams of the moon and the glint of light on a unicorn's horn. And you," the girl takes the chandelier piece from her neck and puts it in front of the lost writer's eyes, "look like this to Angelica."

There's a man in the pendant, twenty years old, he shares her hair and eye colour and... has a startlingly similar facial expression. Even with the differences in face structure, she can't shake the feeling that she's looking into a mirror.

"The fuck." An expression of surprise.

Crystalline is putting her necklace back on. "That's a part of you she sees, but you don't. And if you did see him, you still wouldn't know he's visible."

"Okay, cut the cryptic crap because I've been getting it from everybody in here." Jade's elbows are on the table, her chin on her knuckles. She grins conspiratorially at Crystalline and points one index finger at her. "Why am I in the underworld, why isn't Hell all that bad and why isn't Emma Goldman in Heaven?"

"You took a wrong turn. No biggie, everyone has, and especially in twenty years; it's usually life-threatening. You're here to evaluate it. It's not all that bad because it's what people make it, like everything." She leaves the last question unanswered and smiles. "Two out of three, like the ratio of sleep to waking."

"Alright, Clarity. One more question: do we pass the Bechdel test yet?"

"Hard to say," says the she-spirit. "I'm going to sit here and engage in idle pursuits while you write, now." She takes a Rubik's cube out of her pocket and begins to work on solving it.

And Jade begins to write. I guess in the writing world there are two ways to be selfless. The journalist's way is to omit oneself from the story in one way or another, something I find difficult and not very rewarding. The poet's way is to pour oneself into every corner of the tale. A novelist has to choose between the two, depending on the thing he or she writes in pursuit of- and there are as many pursuits as there are novels. The blue ink seems to cover the horizon like evening; the establishment and all it contains have faded away. She picks up the pen again, and writes on the sky: for complicated reasons there are more male poets than female, and more female journalists than males. Yet the journalist-novel is frequently a male job, and the poet-novel a female one.

The sky falls away and she is back at her table. There is no one, but the Rubik's cube is there, unsolved. It sits atop a torn scrap of lined loose-leaf. Crystalline has written a stern warning on it: the world is not a Rubik's cube, wounded one, but this is. You have friends waiting back home.

Angelica's well-formed hand snatches the colourful puzzle without warning.