Fantastic Metropolis

She fell silent.

“Are you sure?”

“Oh yes. Oh yes, I’m sure.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Washington.”

---

The others fared no better. She was cried to, cursed at, and begged, and when she was through she collapsed to the floor, the receiver resting loosely in her slackened fingers, and her chest burned with futility. She tried to cry, but she couldn’t manage even that. She was exhausted. The light was growing dim; the setting sun cast its red glow into her apartment.

She looked toward the closet, where the Heaven sat safely tucked into the shoebox. She was afraid to go to it.

Somewhere between the sun’s immersion in the sea and the moon’s rise to its zenith, where it hung like a cold stone, she drifted into sleep. When she awoke, the stars gazed in through her window, and the sea was painted over with the pale white color of bones. Someone was knocking at her door.

Sally pulled herself to her feet, grimacing at the aches in her joints, and padded to the door. She glanced at the digital clock next to the couch. 11:47.

“Who is it?”

“My name is Lucas.”

“What do you want?”

“I’m here about the Heaven. Please. It’s important.”

Sally thought for a moment. She did not have a gun. She could not defend herself. She should just turn him away and go to bed.

But she found that she did not have the strength to turn anyone else away. Over the phone she had denied Heaven to more people than she cared to count, dangling it over their ruined lives like a taunt, pulling it away just as they began to hope again. She felt poisoned. She couldn’t do it anymore.

She unlatched the door and held it open. Lucas was an average man in every sense of the word: a little under six feet; light brown hair, brushed off to one side; an open, pleasant face. He wore a light brown sports jacket and tan slacks. He looked to be somewhere in his forties, and he wore his age comfortably, like a favorite hat. He held out his hand, and she took it.

“Thank you,” he said. “I was afraid you’d turn me away. I know it’s an odd time to come calling.”

“How did you know where I live?”

“I looked in the phone book.”

“Oh.”

“May I see it?”

She went to the closet and withdrew the shoebox. It felt hot in her hands. She gave it to him, and he removed the lid. The light leaped out and bathed his face in a warm, white glow. It seemed to work a kind of magic on him: it filled in the lines on his face, softened his eyes, darkened a gray streak in his hair.

He looked at her. “Oh, thank you,” he said. “Thank you.”

“That’s all right. Take it.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have any money . . .”

“I don’t want a reward. I just want to be rid of it.”

Lucas removed the Heaven from the shoebox and crooked it under his left arm. He let the shoebox drop to the floor. He smiled at her.

Sally was surprised as something seemed to break inside her, and tears collected in her eyes. “I just wanted to help people,” she said. “I wanted to make them happy. Instead I only made things worse.”

“I know,” he said. “But at least you tried.” He paused, and then said, “So why did you give it to me?”

She raised a hand helplessly, let it drop. “I don’t want to be an arbiter anymore. I just want you to be happy. I should have given it to the first person that called, and been done with it.” She closed her eyes. “I tried so hard.”

“Maybe,” he said. He hugged it to his chest. “Anyway, I’m glad you gave it to me. I think I can iron out the wrinkles.”

“I hope so.”

“Good-bye, Sally. You’re a good woman.”

He went to the window and slid it open. A cool blast of ocean wind charged into the apartment and scampered about, upsetting papers, riffling through the leaves of paperback books. It seemed to come out of a great hole in the sky, and carried intimations of strange and wonderful places. Lucas kicked away the screen, and it turned end over end in the darkness, falling to the ground hundreds of feet below. He climbed onto the ledge and leaped off, and the flapping end of his jacket transcended the boundary of itself and became instead two great wings, and he was flying, higher into the distance, a globe of light clutched tightly in his hands, and as he went more deeply into the night, and as she watched him from her window, the light grew smaller and smaller until it merged completely with the spinning lights of space, one more pinpoint brilliance in a drifting sea of stars.

---

This story first appeared in F&SF in January 1995.