Divine and Dateless (12 page)

I swallowed hard as I slowly nodded. Whoever this creditor guy was, I figured I had to get the meeting over with. Inés had told me he was the one responsible for helping me find a job and managing my credits, so I could earn my way back into the Penthouse.

“Thanks so much for everything, Inés,” I said, trying my best to smile.

“That’s what friends are for.”

She playfully punched my shoulder, and I resisted the urge to scream. She packed quite the punch. I had the feeling Inés didn’t know her own strength.

“Wait.” She held out a paper as the elevator dinged. “I need you to sign this.” She shoved the paper and a pencil into my hands.

I stared down at it, trying to read the words in the dim light. “Good deeds checklist?”

“How you think I earn credits so fast?” She waved a hand in the air. “Inés do for everyone, so God do for Inés.”

I scrunched my brow before initialing next to all of her good deeds: Baking me brownies, consoling me during a time of distress, loaning me a dress, hair follicle repair….

“You mean we get into Heaven faster if we’re good?” I guess that explained the cabbies screaming niceties.

“That’s right, so you remember to be as nice as you can wherever you go.” She took the paper from me and shoved it into her purse.

When the elevator door creaked open, I was totally not prepared for the guy who walked off. At first I thought the bundle he cradled was a baby, but then I saw bloody fingers poking out of the swaddling and realized he was carrying his arm!

“Don’t text and drive,” he mumbled before adding, “Have a nice day.”

I gave him a wide berth as he limped down the hall. I wasn’t certain if the leg he was dragging behind him was attached either.

Ewww.

“Wait a minute,” Inés said as I continued to gape at the texting zombie. She licked her finger and pushed down a lock of my frizz.

“Okay. Thanks.” I clutched my purse to my chest as I gingerly stepped inside the dark elevator, worried the squeaky boards might fall out from under me. Squinting my eyes at the barely visible numbers, I hit what I hoped was number ten and then sucked in a sharp breath as the elevator lurched.

I held my breath for the entire ascent, not that the musty smell was any worse than the odor outside, but because the cables above me squealed with such fervor, I feared my conveyance would snap at any minute.

And then what? I was already dead, so would I just look like a dead pancake, waddling around Purgatory on legs the size of bowling pins? I had to get the hell out of here. There were too many unknown variables, not to mention an alarming absence of beefcake. Well, unless I counted Grim, which I didn’t.

I struggled to force the sound of his deep southern drawl or the feel of his-rock hard erection rubbing between my legs out of my mind. No use pining over someone I couldn’t have, at least until I made it back into Heaven.

When the elevator finally opened, I stepped out and fumbled through my purse for Mr. Loveass’s business card before making my way down the darkened hall. Hopefully, I was headed in the right direction. It smelled even moldier here. I could barely make out the trace of light spilling from the doorway at the other end of the hall. I sent up a silent prayer to the Big Guy that it was my creditor’s office.

A rat scurried past me, so I hastened my step. As I approached the door, it appeared to be made out of textured glass, as it gave off a good amount of light. I was about to pull the handle when the door opened and a man stepped outside.

My jaw dropped when I looked up at his muscular silhouette. He had to be about as tall as Grim, but his shoulders were broader, his chest beefier.

When he looked down at me and revealed a dimpled, boyish smile, my heart unraveled right there in that moldy, rat infested hallway.

Well, hello, handsome!

“Allow me, miss,” he said in a Midwest, corn-fed, and cute-as-pie accent as he held open the door.

It was much brighter inside, and I spied several other people sitting in the reception room, but they didn’t interest me at the moment.

“Why, thank you, sir.” I batted my lashes and flashed a coy smile. Finally, things were looking up for me in Purgatory.

As I passed under the arch of a well-toned arm, I caught sight of a long wooden handle protruding from the top of Mr. Corn-fed’s head.

Momentarily caught off guard, I stumbled, nearly falling on the worn shag carpet before Mr. Tall, Dark, and Brain Damaged grabbed underneath my shoulder. My purse and business card fluttered to the floor, but that was the least of my worries. What the hell was lodged in his head?

Too afraid to look up at him, I mumbled thanks as I shook out of his grip and bent to pick up my purse. I reached for the business card next to it, but then quickly dropped it with a shriek. It was smeared with blood!

“Uh, sorry about that.” Corn-fed picked up the card and wiped it on his jeans.

I didn’t want to look. I really didn’t, but curiosity, or maybe stupidity, won over, and my gaze darted to the slender object stuck inside his skull. And then I couldn’t look away if I tried. Blood matted his dark blond hair and dripped down the side of his face, splattering his shoulder, before it trickled down his arm.

I raised my hand with a silent scream, pointing at that thing as blood continued to ooze from the deep puncture. Panic seized my brain of all sense of reason, and I blurted the first thing that came to mind. “You have a hammer in your head!”

He nodded. “I know, miss.”

I had no idea what morbid force of nature compelled me to reach up and touch the metallic piece of rust, but I did. As I moved the end of the hammer, I could hear the matter inside his skull squish around as if I was cutting into a raw sausage. More blood oozed out of the wound, pooling around the blade and dripping down his ear.

“Ewww!” I pulled back and stared at my bloody fingertips in horror. “I touched it! Why did I touch it?”

He reached up and adjusted the handle until the ebb of blood slowed to a trickle. “I don’t know, miss.”

I gaped at his head and then at my bloody fingers. Then I frantically shook my hand as if it was on fire. “Omigod! Omigod!”

“It’s just blood,” he said through a sigh.

The blood wasn’t shaking off. Damn. Inés’s dress was going to have to take one for the team. Hopefully, she wouldn’t notice the smear in the obnoxious floral print. “Shouldn’t you go to a doctor?” I made a face as I wiped my hand down the side of my dress.

“Plastic surgeons take too many credits,” he said matter-of-factly, as if dripping blood all over people was no big deal.

“So you’re just going to walk around with that thing stuck in your head?” I didn’t mean to sound like a hissing cat when I said it, but come on! This wasn’t a simple vain cosmetic procedure like removing a wart from your lip or enhancing triple-As to double-Ds. I didn’t care how many credits it took. I was pretty sure removing a hammer from one’s head fell under the umbrella of absolutely-fucking-necessary cosmetic procedures.

“I don’t have a lot of choice, miss.” He shrugged. “Have a nice day.”

What was it with people telling each other to have a nice day? The term was starting to grate on my nerves. I grimaced as the handle came within a breath of scraping the doorway when he turned and walked out without another glance.

Holy-freaking-moly! Just when I thought death couldn’t get any weirder. I shook my head as the door shut.

“Poor soul. He’s such a nice young man.” I spun on my heel to see an elderly woman scowling at me before she turned her attention back to crocheting a sweater.

I briefly scanned the other people in the room. Everyone was scowling at me as if it was my fault the guy walked around with a bloody hammer in his head.

Trying my best to ignore their heavy stares, I made my way to the plump woman at the reception desk. She looked to have died at the cusp of her golden years, and quite possibly sometime in the 1950s. Her silvery-blonde hair was piled on top of her head in a beehive. She wore a pale pink sweater with pearl buttons and a floral scarf around her neck. Those pink glasses, though, with the bejeweled points at each end, looked vintage thrift shop. Either she was channeling her favorite Grease character or she’d been stuck in Purgatory for sixty years.

If that was the case, I had no idea how she’d managed, especially considering just about every available bit of space covering the wall behind her desk was filled with a cuckoo clock. I could only imagine how obnoxious the it sounded at noon. If I’d been stuck in Purgatory that long, I would have smashed every bird’s head years ago.

“I’m here for my appointment,” I said, and then cringed as I looked at one of the clock dials. Noon was five minutes away.

“Well, isn’t that obvious, sweetheart?” she said with a smile, but there was no doubting the snarling wolf behind her sharp gaze. “Have a seat, and you will be called shortly.”

I found a spot in the corner. The unforgiving, hard plastic chairs looked like they’d been pilfered from a bus station. The shiny plastic squeaked as I shifted in my seat. Turning my chin up high, and pretending to be a lot more confident than I felt, I crossed one leg over the other and waited. I desperately wanted nothing more than to find a bathroom and wash my hands, but I didn’t want to risk any more glares from the others.

Inés’s warning about always being nice reverberated in my mind. I guessed the the hammer incident wasn’t my most altruistic moment, but sheesh! Though I supposed Inés didn’t mean for me to single out people who bled all over me when she’d told me to be nice. Okay, lesson learned. No more gawking at otherwise gorgeous studs who are in obvious need of plastic surgery. My shoulders slumped as I shook my head. My life would have been so much easier if Grim had left me in Heaven.

Three freaking hours. That’s how long I had been waiting in my creditor’s office for my noon appointment. My gaze kept flitting to one of the dusty clocks hanging on the faded paisley wallpaper behind the secretary’s head. That woman seemed oblivious to my suffering as she filed and painted her nails and ate nearly an entire bag of jumbo marshmallows while I sat uncomfortably in that hard, squeaky chair. I tried letting her know I was an unsatisfied customer. I sighed loudly at least ten times. I crossed and uncrossed my legs until the squeaks from the unforgiving plastic had gotten on my last nerve. I paced the floor, practically wearing a hole in the already worn carpet. But it did no good. Those stupid clocks had gone off every quarter hour while everyone else had already been seen.

I’d already chewed my nails to the quick, worrying Inés would get tired of waiting and leave me alone on the bottom rung of Purgatory. I’d read just about every magazine in the place, circa 1954-1976, and I now knew how to pamper my husband with the perfect pot roast, entertain guests with fantastic fondue, and feather my bangs like Farrah Fawcett.

Finally, I’d had enough, and I stormed up to the secretary, determined to get some service. She was already leering at me from beneath heavily painted eyelashes. The same leer everyone else in the office had given me after the hammer incident.

Geez, Louise! Can’t a dead girl get a break?

Before I could give Miss Marshmallow a piece of my mind, she looked beyond my shoulder and called my name.

I swept my arm to the empty chairs behind me. “Hello. I’m the only one here,” I said in my not-so-sweet voice, but since I’d skipped lunch, I was all out of sugar… and patience.

“Follow me,” she said dryly, not even bothering to make eye contact as she heaved herself out of her chair.

My stomach chose that moment to rumble loudly from either hunger or apprehension, and I didn’t know if I wanted to vomit or scarf down an entire cheesecake.

Mmm, cheesecake. I sure missed that triple-chocolate delight from my Penthouse party last night.

Damn. Was I determined to spend every waking minute in Purgatory pining for another night of perfection?

I followed the secretary to the back room, wondering if all of those marshmallows had made her butt so wide or maybe it had been flattened by a steam roller. But then I noticed the back of her head looked as if it had been smashed by an iron. Her wiry hair was fanned out and smushed like trampled grass, and the center of her head was bald with angry red welts.

Crud! She just may have been run over by a steam roller.

I understood why she’d made me wait. My outburst probably didn’t go over well with someone who’d suffered from head trauma drama.

I really needed to learn to keep my mouth shut.

Without uttering a word, she cracked open a door and nodded for me to go inside, then turned on her heel and waddled back to the front office, but not before giving me one last scowl.

A small, pale man with black, slicked-back hair and Coke-bottle glasses that made his eyes look buggy, popped up from behind an old, bulky, computer monitor. “Come in. Hurry up. I haven’t got all day.” He beckoned me forward with an impatient wave.

I hesitantly sat in front of his desk. Though I couldn’t put my finger on it, there was something not right with this situation. Then again, my whole day had pretty much been shit, so I had no idea why I was expecting the meeting with my creditor to be any different. I reminded myself this was the guy who’d given me false hope, and yet here he was scowling at me. I searched delicate features for any sign of remorse, but the more I looked at him, the more I realized this man wasn’t a man. He couldn’t have been older than sixteen. Oh, great. No wonder he’d screwed up my credits. He probably hadn’t even finished algebra.