A Drink with Death

I was rotting in a dive bar on Christmas Eve when the goddess of death found me. Facing away from the door, I felt a wave of winter chill flush against the back of my neck when she came into the dimly lit tavern. The bartender blanched when he saw her, then wordlessly pointed a finger to himself to ask if she had come for him.

“No, Gary,” she said, her voice low and husky. “Not today.”

I did not look to see who had just entered The Rusty Pearl. She placed a hand on my shoulder and her skin was like ice. The cold soaked through my cardigan all the way down to my bones. “Finish your drink, Sarah,” she said, sliding onto the cracked leather stool beside me and folding her hands on the sticky bar top.

I choked as I recognized her. She was exactly as described, a grim reaper disguised as a beautiful woman with pale skin and long dark hair. She wore a cloak of gold-tipped raven feathers and looked as though she’d stepped out of a storybook. But in a world where gods walk among mortals, everyone in the bar knew who she was. And though her appearance was unmistakable, her signature scent, that which most comforts the one she seeks, left no doubt that she was there for me. So my time had finally come. I stared down into my half-finished drink, swallowing hard against the fear in my throat. Not everyone received a personal visit from the goddess of death when it was their time to go and I wondered what made me so special.

“I’ve been watching you for a while,” she said, leaning in towards me.

“Well, the cancer’s back for a third time,” I said with a bitter laugh. “I imagine you’ve been frustrated by Dr. Peterson’s excellent work in keeping me alive.”

“On the contrary,” she said, cocking an eyebrow, “I’ve been impressed by your commitment to thwart me.”

I scowled and took a sip of my drink. But only a small sip. She’d grant me time until my drink was gone, so I decided to drag it out. I glanced over at her and saw her running a finger through a ring of condensation left from the previous patron’s glass. I wondered what she thought of the dingy hovel where I chose to spend my holidays. It certainly wasn’t a glamorous end to my pitiful life.

“I have a proposition for you,” she said, folding her hands again. “An alternative to the inevitable, if you will.”

“Alright,” I said, swirling the ice and lime wedge in the bottom of my glass with the dregs of Gary’s heavy pour. The goddess of death didn’t strike me as someone who cut deals with mortals, but what did I know?

“I am in need of an assistant, someone to help me manage things.” She took a deep breath and sighed. “There’s just so much going on in the world these days. War, violence, disease. With the human population at an all-time high, I’m a little busier than I’d like.”

“Are you offering me a job?” I asked, staring into the voids of her eyes. The notion sounded ridiculous.

“In a way,” she said. “Consider it a promotion from being a–”

“Cancer-riddled, college dropout with no family?” I suggested.

“I was going to say human, but describe yourself how you like,” she said, shrugging.

“What makes you think I’d be a good assistant?” I asked. There was no possible way I was qualified for whatever it was she wanted me for.

“I have a good feeling about you,” she said earnestly. “Maybe it’s the slope of your handwriting, or the exact shade of your fingernails.” I looked down at my chipping nail polish. “Perhaps it’s the content of the book report you wrote in the fourth grade, or the constellation of freckles on your back.” All these details seemed irrelevant to my ability to perform as a goddess’s assistant.

“Alright. What’s the compensation?” With little tethering me to my current situation and the ever-growing tumors in my body, I suppose I had nothing to lose. I was alone in a greasy dive bar on Christmas Eve, after all.

“Immortality,” she said plainly. She took a beat to examine the look of surprise on my face and grinned. “I told you it was an upgrade from being human.”

“What exactly would I do as your assistant?” I asked. Her offer seemed too good to be true. There had to be a catch.

“We can discuss that later,” she said, waving a hand dismissively. She eyed my nearly-finished drink and I took the final sip. “Do we have a deal?”

“Fine,” I said in an exhaled sigh. Whatever the catch was, it couldn’t be that bad.

She held out a spindly hand to me and I shook it, her coldness once again penetrating me to the core. But as we sealed the accord, I felt so warm that her chill didn’t bother me anymore. The skin on my hand flushed to a hue of bronze, as if I’d spent the last few weeks basking in the summer sun. The pain in my body disappeared and my vision, hearing, and sense of smell swelled in strength.

Releasing her hand, I took off my glasses, no longer needing them. I could hear every hushed conversation around us. And I could smell the goddess so strongly now, the scents of coffee and wood smoke overwhelming the staleness of the bar.

Gary appeared again, startled to see how I’d apparently transformed. I wondered if I still had dishwater blonde hair and gray eyes, or if they’d changed like my skin tone. The goddess held up two fingers to Gary, indicating that we were to celebrate our deal. He hastily began preparing drinks for us, now averting his gaze from me.

“Do you recall the last date you went on?” the goddess asked casually, returning her finger to the ring of water on the bar top.

“Sure,” I replied, furrowing my eyebrows. “It was a few years ago. A girl named Amy. We never really hit it off, though.”

Gary slid a pair of drinks to us and removed my empty glass. The goddess nodded to him in thanks before he disappeared again. She delicately lifted the beverage to her lips and took a small sip. “I’m impressed,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Didn’t think this place served such good drinks. I ought to tip him a year or two.”

“What?”

“An extra year or two of life,” she clarified. “I scared him half to death just by coming in here. The least I could do is give him some more time with his grandson.”

“Oh,” I said, then sipped my own beverage. The drinks were good but they weren’t that good. “Do you get out much?” It felt like such a bizarre question to ask an all-knowing, all-seeing deity.

“Not like this,” she said, then laughed awkwardly. “I’m quite busy, you know.”

“Right.”

“What didn’t you like about Amy?” she asked, abruptly changing the topic back to my dating history.

“Oh I don’t know,” I said, swirling my drink around. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure why our connection never took off. “Why do you care?”

“Just curious,” she said, avoiding my gaze. She took another sip of her drink. “You do like women though, right?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Yes, of course.” I glanced at her face and I swear I saw the faintest sheen of pink on her bone white cheeks. “Wait, are you–”

“It’s nothing. Nevermind,” she stammered. She was flustered and the peach color in her face extended up to her ears.

“No, wait,” I pleaded, “tell me why you’re really here.”

She took a deep breath. “Your cancer was going to kill you soon,” she said, the words tumbling out of her mouth in a cascade of anxiety. “I’ve been extending your life for a while now, through all your previous bouts of cancer. But eventually there comes a time when a gift of a year or two isn’t enough. I can’t prolong life indefinitely like that. Eventually the only recourse is to, well, make you into something like myself.”

“But why me?” I asked incredulously. It didn’t make sense that I had received such intense attention from a literal goddess.

“You are under no obligation to work for me,” she continued, ignoring my question. “I do not need an assistant. I simply wanted to know if you were open to the idea of having me around in some capacity. Perhaps not as an employer, but as a friend. In any case, you’re welcome to keep your immortality with no strings attached.”

“There has to be a catch,” I said. “Come on, you must tell me why you chose me.”

“As I said, I’ve been watching you for a while. In this life as Sarah. In your previous life as Annabelle. And the life before that as Victoria. And all the other lives you’ve lived going back to the beginning. I just couldn’t watch you die again. I couldn’t do it.” Tears spilled down her hollow cheeks. The goddess of death was crying in a grungy bar on Christmas Eve. “And I hoped,” she said, wiping her face with her sleeve, “that maybe after all this time you’d be ready to talk to me again. And maybe even forgive me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, unable to stifle a laugh. “This has to be some kind of joke.”

“Heh,” she chuckled darkly. “And now you see why it’s taken millennia for me to feel brave enough to talk to you again.”

“Did we know each other?” I asked, still trying to wrap my head around the multiple lives bit. “Like before now?”

“You were once a god like me,” she said quietly. “But then we had a fight. You were done with me. And you gave up godhood to become a mortal, entering into the never ending cycle of death and rebirth. Perhaps you wanted to make me suffer by watching you die over and over again.” She drank deeply from her glass, frowning. “For what it’s worth, you succeeded.”

“Why don’t I remember any of this?” I asked.

“It’s the curse of humanity.” She shrugged. “You wanted to forget me and so you made sure that you would.”

I downed my drink. “Alright,” I said, deciding to take her word for it. “What was our fight about?” This conversation was bordering on insanity.

Her black eyes beaded with tears again. “I just want you back,” she begged. “Please.” She started hard at me for a long moment, chewing on her lip. Then, appearing to make up her mind about something said, “I miss you, Calendula.”

As she invoked the name Calendula, a wave of memories crashed over me. Suddenly I could recall not only every human life I’d lived, but the time I’d spent as a goddess by her side. I remembered the fight and the night I left. I remembered everything. I glanced at her hands nervously twisting around her glass. “You’re still wearing your ring,” I whispered.

“I never took it off,” she replied. She dug into her pocket, pulled out its match, and held it out to me. “It’s yours if you want it back. If you want me back.”

I gazed at my wife as we sat at the sticky bar of the Rusty Pearl on Christmas Eve, wondering why she’d chosen here and now to forge our reunion. We were just two immortals, sipping gin and tonics in a lonely little town by the sea. I came here by myself, believing that I was alone in this world, unknowing that she’d been watching over me all along. To be fair, she did trick me into accepting immortality again, but that, along with our relationship-ending fight, melted away like the ice in our drinks. I held out my left hand to her, inviting her to slip my ring back into its rightful place.

“I missed you, too, Asphodel.”