Thirty Things To Do After You Die — Chapter 15

It was seven thirty on Monday morning. Throughout Christian’s life, this had been his least favourite time of the week. In childhood it signalled nothing but five days of school stretching out before him, with only fleeting respites of summer, Christmas and Easter holidays to break the cycle. Then came the island paradise of university, three years in which Monday morning became a reformed character, relaxed, chilled out, and more than happy to ease you into the week with lie-ins and gentle offerings of low-pressure lifestyle television — that pleasantly toxic Narnia of recipes, chat and mild-mannered phone-ins. Then the reversion to type, the descent into the harsh realities of work — the painful realisation that Bob Ross Monday had been a con, a mask to make the revelation of Chairman Mao Monday all the more horrific. Not only a return to those five days stretching out to the weekend, but longer days, sometimes much longer, and a mere four weeks of holiday a year. Does anyone really not know why they don’t like Mondays?

For Christian, that brief period of time before starting the school or work day had always been the worst part of Monday, or any week day. He hated that though this time was his own, it was always too brief to do anything with and only served to sharpen the reckoning of what he would spend the rest of the day doing.

But these days it was different. Christian’s sabbatical had triggered the miracle. Bob Ross Monday had been resurrected, turning seven thirty Monday morning from the dirtiest ditch water into fine wine. Now Christian sat on the sofa and watched the rest of the country hurry its way into its week. He enjoyed his coffee. He watched the report on the breakfast TV news about the earthquake in China. He watched the whole report, he took it in, he thought about it. He observed how Beatrice could only catch a headline or two, a random comment from an expert on some unknown topic between showering, dressing, breakfast, makeup, hair, shoe selection and whatever unplanned activities had thrown her off her stride and piled more pressure on getting out of the house by eight fifteen. Then when she left, he continued to sit and take it all in. He delighted in the gradual slowdown of intensity in the broadcast. Once they passed eight thirty they knew all the important people — the ones with jobs — were no longer watching. The next half hour was just filler; you could almost see them shifting into cruise control. The ‘lifestyle’ guest of the day was delivered to the sofa and the hosts slipped into a more matey vibe. And then Christian’s favourite part of all, nine a.m. The official transition. He delighted in picturing all those poor wretches at their desks, the yawny meetings, the sudden return of problems, deadlines and unwelcome pressure, the nagging of the bosses, the bosses having to nag, the whole stupid system. And all the while he could just sit on the sofa and watch the first ten minutes of Sesame Street. Today is brought to you by the letters E, A, S and Y. No one was telling him to do anything and he loved it.

After watching Kermit the Frog’s live report on the disaster scene following Humpty Dumpty’s fall, deciding that, from a journalistic point of view, it was in many ways superior to the Chinese earthquake report from earlier, and speculating that the irony of the sketch would surely be wasted on preschool viewers, he went to make another coffee. As he put the kettle on, the doorbell rang. Toast in hand, he sauntered to the door. For the second time in two days, he was surprised to see Nikki standing before him. Once again she looked a million dollars, and once again he didn’t.

Again she’d brought the coffee and again she was soon in his living room.

‘Look, it’s great to see you again,’ said Christian, ‘but aren’t you going to be late for work?’

‘Nope,’ she said, and grinned.

‘Oh, why so?’

‘I’ve decided to take some time off.’

‘Really? Sounded like that place couldn’t function without you.’

‘Well, they’re going to have to. I can’t remember when I last took a holiday. I deserve a break.’

‘So how much time are you taking off?’

‘Not sure. As much as I need. That’s the nice thing about being the boss.’

‘Yes, I expect so.’ Christian took a sip of coffee. ‘Hey, would you like to see the first page of the new direction? I put it together yesterday.’

‘Seriously, you’d let me see it?’

‘Of course.’ Christian went upstairs to print the page, taking a moment to change into jeans and T-shirt.

Nikki was on her feet when Christian returned with the copy.

‘There you go,’ he said. ‘It’s the introduction. Just rough, of course, but I think it works.’

Nikki scanned the page. She smiled, wide and full, then did a couple of small but enthusiastic jumps, and hugged Christian, taking him by surprise. Momentary guilt as he took lungfuls of her perfume. Warm, sophisticated and doubtless not available at the out of town discount chemist warehouse he’d visited with Bea recently.

‘Oh it’s wonderful, Christian.’

‘You really think so?’

‘Yes, it is, it really is,’ she said. Her eyes returned to the page. ‘I’m not sure about the title, but the rest is absolutely spot on.’

‘You don’t like it? I thought it was fun — you know, a parody of all those dreadful things to do before you’re forty books?’

‘Yes, I see what you mean, I was just thinking you could maybe change it to something like, oh I don’t know, Terry’s Field Guide To the Afterlife.’

‘Who’s Terry?’

‘Well … you know what … forget about it, go with whatever you feel. Always the best approach.’

‘Er, right.’

‘Look, can I have this?’

‘Um. Yes, I suppose so,’ said Christian.

‘Cool.’

‘You, er, you won’t show it to anyone, will you?’

‘You can trust me, Christian. For my eyes only.’

***

Nikki had raced home at a speed just above asking for trouble. She was now in the basement rumpus room. Like everything in Nikki’s house, it was on a grand scale. Almost 200 square metres of floor space housed a home cinema, pool table, collection of vintage pinball machines, selection of modern games consoles, and, in the centre of the room, a full-size snooker table, under which Nikki was now sitting. Six floor tiles were stacked next to her, as was the blanking panel, and the safe was wide open. For the last minute she’d been holding the large document wallet in her white-cotton-gloved hands, savouring the moment.

She undid the zip and took out the contents — a collection of vellum documents, all yellowed, fragile and ancient, each preserved in their own clear plastic protector. There were a dozen or so pages in all, mostly whole, though some were mere fragments. Apart from the title page, all were numbered and this indicated they had come from a work of at least 615 pages. There was nothing else to indicate how many more pages were in the original, though: there was no contents page and the few cross references were of the form book, chapter, section, verse. Apart from 615, the pages in Nikki’s possession were mostly from the start: in addition to the title page, she had all of pages one to four, and three from the next twenty, with her remaining pages coming from further into the work. She’d taken detailed digital scans of them long ago and must have read each one a hundred times, but this was a moment for the precious originals, not pixels on a screen or learned recollections.

She carefully took page one and placed it on the floor next to Christian’s crisp, freshly printed page one and began a line-by-line comparison. Her heart was racing. Apart from a few spelling differences, which was to be expected, the texts were identical. She’d already known this of course, when she’d first seen the new page, back at Christian’s, but she’d kept her excitement shackled until she could be sure.

Now she finally allowed herself the full acceptance of what she had before her. ‘Yes,’ she screamed, ‘yes, yes, yes.’

She tried to jump to her feet but forgot she was crouching under a slate-bed snooker table. In some part of her brain she knew it hurt, it had to, physics and biology demanded it, but her joy was such that it got shouted down, drowned out by the coup in her neurons. She hopped forward, out from under the table, and ran around the room, skipping like a little girl, leaping between strides, kicking out at the beanbags as she passed by. When she returned to the snooker table, she took the cue ball in her hand and sent it smashing into the perfectly set pack of reds. Civilisation was about to be turned upside down. At last it would happen.

You have been reading an extract from the novel Thirty Things To Do After You Die, by Colton Lazars. Available from existentially astute retailers everywhere.

Continue the story with chapter 16.