Peter Liu - Watering Heaven

“You’re one of the few friends she had,” he said. “I’m so glad you called. She’d been having lots of problems lately.”

“Problems?”

“She used to cut herself all the time, but she stopped after college. I think she got back into it after breaking up with her ex… I don’t know if this is too much to impose, but would you mind speaking at the funeral?”

“I don’t know if I knew her that well.”

“It’s okay. I know it’ll mean a lot to her. She… she just…” And he broke into tears, sobbing uncontrollably. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“It’s okay… I’ll do it.”

“Thank you.”

We hung up.

I stood motionless, my eyes losing their focus.

It was about midnight when I headed home. I microwaved a burrito, set out the proper appliances, gripped my knife, sliced at the right angle. Took a bite and spat it out: it tasted awful. When I lay back in bed, my stomach churned, so I turned over to the side. I saw a gigantic spider crawling up the wall, with its spindly limbs and its oval-shaped body. It bobbed ever so slightly, freezing as I got closer.

I grabbed a roll of toilet paper, went to try to crush it. It instinctively leaped under my bed. I peered under but couldn’t spot it anywhere. Grabbed a flashlight and shined it below. The odd play in the reflections made my beam a more vermilion hue of yellow. I swung the lights back and forth but couldn’t see anything. I got back into bed, thinking about spiders and their eight eyes and whether multiple vision caused them ambiguities we could never comprehend.

III.

The grassy knoll and the required valet parking at the cemetery did little to clear my head. The cemetery smelled rotten: fertilizer, decomposition. It was like a barracks for corpses, a phalanx of gravestones strategically placed on the hills.

When her brother had said she only had a few friends, I thought he might be referring to a handful. As it was, it was him, myself, and her mother.

“Should we wait for others to arrive?” I asked.

“This is it,” Stan answered. “Everyone else was too busy to come.”

Stan was dark, as though his skin had been broiled, with wiry arms and disheveled hair. Her mother was Chinese, short, and brisk. She had a staunch upper frame and continuously bit her lip, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief.

The funeral workers helped with the labor of burying the casket. Stan and her mother didn’t have much to say, holding each other in mourning. A priest finally arrived, read a few verses, looked my way.

I cleared my throat, rubbed lint off my suit. “June was special; she was unique; she was… she was witty. I met her when she was fifteen and…” I rambled on, not sure what I was saying.

“Are you all right?” Stan asked. “You’re mumbling.”

“Sorry.”

I stared at the grave, mumbled on for a few minutes before concluding, “I think that’s about it.”

Her mother said, “Thank you.”

Afterwards, we headed for the parking lot.

“You wanna maybe grab lunch or something?” I asked Stan.

“I gotta get back to work. We’re in major crunch.”

“What do you do?” I asked.

“I’m a game tester for the eighth sequel to the Revolutionary War game. Let’s do lunch another time.”

He gave me his number, then trotted away with his mother while I went back to the grave.

I grimaced, staring at the dirt, the sundered blades of grass. Why’d you do it? I gazed up into the sky. Maybe you faked your death? Are you aboard some alien ship looking down on us? If there are higher beings, what are they like? I blinked several times, rubbing my hair. I know it’s late, but… but… I clenched my fists, wishing I hadn’t been such an ass at our dinner. You were trying to tell me something and I was just being stupid…

I was so exasperated with myself, I wanted to take a bat and swing it at my torso, rip out my intestines. Anything to get that gnawing hammer of remorse out of me.

I deserve it, I know .

I stared up at the sky again.

“C’mon UFOs, where are you? You guys have special powers, right? You need her for your experiments… Bring her back, please bring her back. If you — if you give her life again, you can use my body for all the experiments you want. Anything you wanna do, you can? Okay? Please, please. She doesn’t deserve this…”

“Who are you talking to?”

I turned and saw one of the workers.

I shook my head, said “Sorry,” and shuffled away quietly.

IV.

I didn’t feel like going into work so I headed home to get some sleep. To my irritation, I saw there were two spiders rather than one. Having seen enough death for a day, I decided to spare the pair. I got a paper towel, cupped one quickly in my palms.

“Don’t try to fight me,” I warned as I ran outside my apartment. I placed it far away among a set of trees. When I went back in, the second had vanished. I turned on the television and watched a news documentary about a massacre taking place in Africa. Went to bed to try to sleep, failed. Couldn’t get June out of my mind.

In the morning, I headed into work early. There was an email from Barry.

Come see me as soon as you get in.

Two hours later, he arrived.

“Did you want to talk about something?” I asked him.

“No no, forget it, it’s nothing,” he muttered.

I went back to my desk. Barry came by a few minutes later and asked, “Can we talk?”

“Sure, what’s up?” I asked.

“Um… I don’t know quite how to put this to you. But, where were you yesterday?”

“Remember I called and said I had to go to a funeral?”

“Oh yeah… Okay, sorry. Totally cool. Understood.”

I found a co-worker and asked if he’d heard anything.

“He was complaining that you’re always taking days off.”

“But I had to go to a funeral,” I protested.

“He didn’t know about it.”

I got a phone call from Helen, a manager over in the compatibility division. Despite the fact that she had three kids and was nearly double my age, she looked younger than me, energetic, sprightly, always wearing tight jeans as she heaved around old computers.

“I know how picky you are about food so I got us lunch reservations at Karmatica,” she said. “I’ve also invited Jerry and Tina.” Both VPs in the company.

I wondered what it was going to be about.

The restaurant was swank, a French Italian place with the lunch prix fixe menu set at $122.86. Cilantro-roasted shrimp, osetra caviar crowned with seared scallop and a lemongrass infusion, tartare or foie gras? It was a delectable heaven.

Helen said, “You know there’s been some organizational shifts happening. We were wondering how you’d feel about transferring over to compatibility. I’d love to have you on board and you’d be bringing your expertise to our team. I wanted Jerry and Tina to meet you too because they’re going to be overseeing the department.”

“Byron, we’re really excited about all the new developments we’re going to be introducing,” Tina said with her blazing red hair and her pristine Colgate smile. “SolTech is all about talent and creativity. We feel the company has been so bogged down in the amplification of existing technologies, it hasn’t really had the chance to get back to its roots: innovation. We want you to be part of this new team because we only want the best of the best.”

Four waiters brought four plates, simultaneously placing the dishes before us. Helen, Tina, and Jerry used their tiny knives to cut their scallops into tiny slivers and used their tiny forks to take tiny bites of caviar. I grabbed my own scallop with my fingers, shoved it into my mouth, and swallowed it whole. They stared at me, surprised. When the steak arrived, I ripped it apart with my bare hands, chewing savagely with my mouth wide open.