14. One Bad Turn Deserves Another

What went on inside the tower was no one’s business, and everyone’s business all at once. At least that’s how Carl viewed things, he doubted that was the opinion of his superiors who seemed interested in one thing only, getting shit done.

He looked over at his coworker Marvin, whose desk had been placed in the enviable spot of receiving a warm dose of light from the narrow window built into the structure. As usual Marvin was hunched over his ledger book, scribbling away.

“Do you ever think about it?” Carl asked him.

Marvin looked up and blinked. His Coke bottle glasses magnified his blue eyes. “Think about what?”

Carl looked around the cramped room, full of accountants writing in their books. “Do you ever think about what we do here? About how it affects them down there?” Carl looked at the floor.

Marvin blinked some more. “Why would I think about that?” His eyes darted downwards. “Those folks down there are alive. We’re dead. I think about being dead.” He returned his attention to his ledger book.

Carl didn’t know why he bothered sometimes.

“Reingold!” someone shouted. “Get back to work.” It was Kim, the floorwalker. A second later she was standing over Carl’s desk. “Don’t you have work to do?”

“Yes.” he mumbled. He did have work to do. The tiny screen on his desk was continually refreshing with new assignments.

“I should think so.” she said curtly, before walking away.

He sighed. This was the afterlife. No clouds and harps, instead he was stuck in this blasted tower dishing out karma. The screen beeped. It was time to get to work. Carl read the message.

In 1959 Agnes Franklin dented the fender of a car in a supermarket parking lot. She left without leaving a note.

Carl picked up his pen, his hand tingled, as it always did when he held it. He thought for a minute and then wrote, In 1968 Agnes Franklin will have someone steal all four of her car’s tires when she’s getting her hair done. He laughed as he put the period on the sentence.

“Reingold!” Kim bellowed. “There’s no reason to be laughing.”

“I was just taking a little creative liberty.” he answered.

She strolled over to his desk and looked at his ledger. “Yes, I see. Just don’t get too clever.”

The screen beeped again. In 1948 Johnny Ronson yanked Suzy Corwold’s pigtails.

“Little brat.” Carl mumbled.

“You’re not meant to be an avenging angel.” Kim told him. “Just keep the universe in balance.”

“One good turn deserves another. Isn’t this the Karma Department?”

“Yes.” she admitted.

“Then let me deal out a little karma.”

Carl picked up his pen. Johnny Ronson will have a flock of geese chase him for a mile in 1970.

“A flock of geese?” Kim asked.

“Geese are scary.”

“If you say so.” She strolled away with her hands behind her back.

“Can I take a break?” Carl asked after her.

She turned around and stared down her beak-like nose. “Yes, I suppose. But just for a few minutes, there is much to do.”

He stood up, his chair scraping loudly on the stone floor. He shuffled over to the open window and looked out. The tower sat in a lush green wooded area. A soft breeze blew on his face. The leaves in the trees rattled and shook. Oh, to be alive again. It was nothing more than a fantasy now.

He took a deep breath, savoring the moment. They didn’t get breaks in the tower unless they asked. They never left. Everyone inside was dead. There was no need for food, sleep, or trips to the restroom. There was no reason they couldn’t just keep working, dishing out karma and balancing the universe forever.

And that’s how some of them did it. There were twenty others on his floor, none except him ever left their desks. Marvin barely looked up, and he was one of the only ones who could see out the window.

“Back to work Reingold.” Kim said from the other side of the room.

Carl returned to his desk. The screen was filled with the doings of the living, blunders, misjudgments, and wrongs. He sighed as he picked up his pen. “This was not how I pictured heaven.”

“It’s not heaven.” Marvin muttered.

“No shit.” Carl read each transgression and wrote down an equalizing event. He was quickly caught up and went back to staring at the window, even though from his vantage point he couldn’t see out.

The screen beeped again. In 1974, while Kirby Bone was visiting his mother’s headstone, he took a rose from another grave and wore it in his lapel for the rest of the day.

Kirby Bone! Carl knew who that was. It had to be the same one with a name like that. They had worked together at the Internal Revenue Service. The bum. Carl could just picture him scoffing up a flower from someone else’s gravesite. Carl was buried in that cemetery, a few rows away from Kirby’s mother.

He had an idea. He looked for Kim, she was on the other side of the room. He glanced at Marvin who was hunched over his work. Carl picked up his pen and began to write. In 1975, when Kirby Bone was visiting his mother’s grave, Carl Reingold emerged from beneath his headstone, alive once more.

There was no such thing as time in the tower. Immediately upon writing the words Carl disappeared, returning to the world of the living as he had instructed the universe to do.

Kim came up beside Marvin’s desk. “Did Reingold just send himself back?”

Marvin nodded. “Of course. We all try it once.”

“And then you learn.” she said bitterly.

“Yes, we learn. There is no escaping karma.” Or this place, he said to himself.