acute sense of anxiety.”
“From?”
“Never being famous.”
Again I felt as if someone hit me in the stomach. “For how long?”
“For eternity, I’m sorry to say.”
As you’d expect, I was stunned, but Joe managed to motivate me to walk with him to shake off the disappointment. So I walked in silence across the hill. I eventually realized he was giving me a subtle tour of my new home. It was beautiful and green with lovely trees and a blue sky with dancing clouds. The sun felt warm on my face and he was absolutely right. I didn’t miss anyone or anything. I had no regrets. I felt as if the burden of living life had been lifted from my entire being. I was elated and nearly felt light-footed when I walked. All was perfect, as if I were in heaven, except one thing that nagged at me like a tooth that was slowly aching.
“Are you sure I’ll never become a famous writer, posthumously?”
“It’s hard to say,” he quickly stated. “Some up here actually did.”
“I could be one of those writers.”
“You could.”
“I did write some damn good things.”
“You certainly did.”
“You agree they were good?”
Joe kept walking. “I haven’t read them myself, you know, but the word up here is that you had talent and you dedicated yourself to that talent with hard work. But remember, not all in the universe is explainable. Some things just stay a mystery. I mean, I can conjure for you some reasons everything is against your becoming famous after your death, but you probably are aware of them.
“One truth is this: if you had lived another twenty years, you might have written a masterpiece. You might have written it and then died and still achieved fame. Niccolò Machiavelli was a playwright and a writer and he died before his masterpiece, The Prince, was ever published—and look, he’s famous. His name is actually an adjective. Also, if you had lived longer, you might have met someone who’d have made sure your work was produced and published to more critical acclaim. But you, my dear, dead Tom Chillo, must accept the fact that fame slipped by because of your bad fortune.”
I was sullen. The beautiful landscape surrounding me was suddenly meaningless. “I’m sad.”
“You will be sad for eternity, I’m sorry to say. You will suffer the anxiety of a missed opportunity until the everexpanding universe stops expanding and just . . . ends.”
CHAPTER 3
Time in the Writers Afterlife is very different from time on Earth. It has no exact purpose; day and night seem to change as if by whim. The days and nights are splendid. The breeze is cool, and the sun shines with warmth without ever getting hot. In the evening the moon is white and magnificent and the stars gleam through wisps of clouds. After a short while I realized that each individual writer creates the exterior landscape he or she is in by imagining it. If you think night, it’s night. If you think of a city, there it is. The Afterlife is truly fueled by each writer’s imagination.
One quiet night Joe told me a little about himself. He had been a painter born in Florence in 1578, and had wanted to be famous like Michelangelo. He’d made his way to Rome where he found nothing but indifference to his work. He sold a few paintings but not nearly enough to pay for a roof over his head. After several years, he gave up, married a farmer’s daughter, and moved to a small farm north of Rome where he toiled until his death from plague when he was only forty-four.
“You wanted to be famous?”
“Like hundreds of painters and sculptors who entered Rome’s barred gates every year. I wanted to be Michelangelo. I burned with the need for fame. I dreamt of being the stuff of legend.”
“And it didn’t happen?”
“Did you ever hear of the great painter Gianni Palmintieri Guiliano?” he asked.
I shook my head.
And that was why Joe had been assigned me: he was a good painter but never famous on Earth, and we had also died at the same age. Whoever did the assigning, and that was never brought up, thought Joe and I would be a good match.
Joe told me he tried not to think about his life on Earth, so he tried not to talk about it. He told me that he too felt an overwhelming sadness, and that many of those who just missed out on being famous were eventually asked to be Afterlife tour guides. Each one was given an artist who had just missed being famous and had been the same age at the time of death. Tour guides eased their charges into their particular afterlives, just as Joe was doing for me. He told me that I’d probably be assigned an actor or perhaps a composer but certainly not a writer. That was how it worked. You guided someone you couldn’t compete with but had empathy for.
He also told me that in time I’d get used to existence in the Writers Afterlife. The good news was I’d never get a cold or flu. I’d never get even a pimple. I’d never have sexual desire or the need to be romantically in love.
“How about the urge to write?” I asked.
“Gone for all eternity,” he said smiling widely.
That notion bothered me for a moment, but then the slight twinge of sorrow passed. I had written my entire life. I didn’t have much memory of ever not being a writer. It was going to be weird not getting up and planning my day around writing something.
We walked a few more minutes or weeks; I had no notion how long our walk actually took when I saw a woman off in the distance. She stood on a hill, in the wind, and the sky above her was a dark and foreboding wilderness. Her long, dark hair flew wildly over her shoulder and she was wearing clothing that made her look like a poor woman from the mid-nineteenth century.
The closer we got to her, the more I could see. Now there was drizzling rain; the landscape around her looked like a moor. The kind of moor you’d find in the England of Wuthering Heights.
I stopped. “Emily Brontë?”
“Excellent. You know your writers,” Joe replied. “She’s one of the Eternals I wanted you to meet.”
“Can I meet her?” I asked.
“Go ahead. Go over to her,” he told me.
I walked ahead and suddenly I was in her world. I was on the hill, feeling the drizzle on my face. I felt the wind blowing and watched her standing there looking off into the distance. As I drew closer, I noticed an aura around her. She was radiant, a contrast to the gloomy landscape surrounding her. I edged up to her from the side and saw that even though she was alone, she didn’t look lonely. I felt that despite her large dark and sad eyes, she was exuding warmth and contentment. Her long-sleeved, light-blue dress covered her from her neck to her ankles.
She turned to me and said without smiling, “Thank you so much.”
“For what?”
“For reading me,” she answered.
“It
