Dear Betty:

By now, I thought I'd be with you--well, not with you, because, of course, I would have gone to hell, but on the same side of death as you, but, no. I'm a failure at this, too.

"I wouldn't exactly call it a failure," said the man I couldn't quite see. I didn't have my glasses--I didn't think I'd need them after I was dead. He moved toward me, but he didn't get up, and I could hear a purring sound. Even close up, his features were indistinct--just bright grey green eyes in mahogany skin. Wheelchair, I finally thought. African American man, the second thought marched through my brain. Am I dressed?

"We hope you don't mind the nightgown," the man said, now positioned at the side of my bed.

"No, it's very nice," I said, as if some strange person fished me from the river, spirited me away, and popped me into a Martha Stewart fantasy every day.

"We like to make our clients comfortable, but we didn't really have the kind of time we wanted to prepare for you," the man chuckled. "You're a little more unpredicable than we guessed."

"Sorry," I said, and then cursed inside. I had wanted to be dead, and in some ways, though I was having a more interesting time than I'd had since--well, since Charlie had disappeared--I still did. But it didn't take much for my hostess manners to come right back to me, as if I were helping Roy lure a new client into a crummy deal.