I make it to a bus shelter and drop down onto one of the incredibly uncomfortable seats to wait for something. Not a bus. I’d rather be dragged behind a burning pickup truck into a barbed wire lake than ride the bus.
Wait. I remember now. I’m dying. I’m waiting to die.
I lean back against the plastic wall of the bus shelter.
There’s an old man sitting a few seats away.
“L.A. sure is pretty at night,” he says.
It takes me a while to process the words, but I get there.
“Yes it is.”
He says, “Don’t you think it’s time to let go? To come home?”
I stare at him but can’t see anything until passing headlights illuminate his face.
Oh.
“Hello, Mr. Muninn.”
“Hello, James.”
“It’s been a while.”
“It’s been busy in Heaven.”
“That’s what people tell me.”
Who’s Mr. Muninn? That’s a complicated question and I’m not good with complicated at this precise moment. You’ll just have to trust me when I say that Mr. Muninn is the grand marshal of the big parade. To be a little clearer, he’s God. Yes, that God. The one in all the books. Not a bad guy either. We’re friends. More or less. Less a lot of the time. I never pictured him waiting for a bus.
“You don’t have to do this,” he says.
“What’s that?”
“What you’re doing. Dragging your battered body all over creation. Just sit back and relax for a while. I’ll take care of the rest.”
I look at a bright red neon sign across the street.
CHECKS CASHED.
I point at the sign.
“Isn’t that nice of them?”
Mr. Muninn swivels his eyes toward the sign, then back at me.
“You’re babbling,” he says.
“It’s my birthday. I get to babble.”
“It’s not your birthday.”
“I know why you’re here.”
“Why?”
“You want me to go to Heaven with you.”