Pauline halted and looked back.
“Are we,” Berni said, “are we fairy godmothers?”
“More or less,” Pauline answered, smiling and starting to walk again.
Berni caught up with her. “You mean I am supposed to be someone’s fairy godmother? Magic wands? Wishes and Cinderella and all that?”
“You’re quite free to solve your assignment in any way that you see fit.”
If Berni’s collagen-padded face could have wrinkled into a frown, it would have done so. “I don’t like this,” she said. “I have my own life to lead. I don’t want to be some fat, gray-haired lady running around saying ‘Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo’ and changing pumpkins into coaches.”
Pauline blinked, not understanding Berni’s allusion at all. “Leading your own life is what I imagine got you here instead of into heaven.”
“What does that mean? I never hurt anyone in my life.”
“Nor did you help anyone. You lived completely for yourself. Not even as a child did you ever consider anyone else’s wishes. You married four men for their money, and when they complained you divorced them and took half of everything they owned.”
“But that’s how everyone lives in the twentieth century.”
“Not everyone. You cared much more for clothes than you did for any of your husbands.”
“The clothes gave me more pleasure,” Berni said. “And besides, they got what they wanted. They weren’t innocent in this. If they’d given me what I needed, I wouldn’t have divorced them.”
Pauline had no more to say. Having grown up in the eighteenth century, she didn’t know that Berni’s words were the product of years of expensive therapy. Berni only went to therapists who asked, “What do you want out of life?” “What do you need?” “What are your priorities?” Berni had always found someone to help her justify her belief that what she wanted was more important than what anyone else wanted.
With a little sigh, Pauline turned away and began walking again. “It looks like you may be here for a while,” she said softly.
Berni followed her, thinking that Pauline sounded just like her four husbands. They were selfish through and through, always complaining that Berni never cared anything about them, that she only wanted them for what they could do for her.
Pauline stopped, and Berni halted also. Around them the fog began to clear, and she could see that they were standing in a circular room, very bare, and set in the walls were arches. Above the arches were signs: “Romance.” “Fantasy.” “Clothes.” “Feasting.” “Indolence.” “Luxury.” “Parties.”
“Choose,” Pauline said.
“Choose what?” Berni asked, turning about and reading the signs.
/> “You must wait while an assignment is found for you, and you will wait in one of the halls.” Pauline could see that Berni still didn’t understand. “What would you most like to do now?”
“Go to a party,” Berni said without hesitation. Perhaps a loud, energetic party would get her mind off her own funeral and all the talk of ex-husbands.
Pauline turned toward the arch marked “Party,” and Berni followed her. Once through the arch there was another fog-filled arch to the right. Above it was a sign: “Elizabethan.”
Pauline stepped through the fog, and Berni saw a scene from Shakespeare. Men in capes, their legs in tight hose, were leading corseted women through the intricate moves of a sixteenth-century dance.
“Would you like to join them?” Pauline asked.
“This is not my idea of a party,” Berni answered, appalled.
Pauline led her back through the arch and across the hall to another arch.
All in all they looked into half a dozen parties before Berni saw one that appealed to her. They saw a Regency party with women in muslin dresses sipping tea from saucers and talking about the latest escapade of Lady Caroline Lamb. There was a square dance with cowboys, a Victorian party with parlor games, a thirteenth-century feast with some fine-looking young acrobats that tempted Berni, a Japanese tea ceremony, and an amazing Tahitian dance, but in the end she chose a party from the sixties. The blaring music of the Stones, the bright mini dresses, the Nehru jackets, the smell of marijuana burning, the writhing bodies of the long-haired people reminded her of her youth.
“Yes,” she whispered, and she stepped inside. In a moment she was wearing a micro-mini dress, her hair was long and straight, and there was a boy asking her to dance. She never looked back to see what had happened to Pauline.
Berni was huddled in a pile with other flower children, smoking grass and listening to Frank Zappa talk to Suzie Creamcheese when Pauline came for her. Berni looked up and knew she had to leave. Reluctantly, she left the party and followed Pauline out of the room.
Once they were through the golden archway the fog closed in over the room and hid all sights and sounds from them. Berni’s beads and tie-dyed shirt disappeared along with her headband. Her head cleared of the effects of the marijuana, and she was once again wearing the silk suit in which she’d been buried.
“I just got here,” Berni said sulkily. “I was just beginning to enjoy myself.”