Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me.
I was on Park and he was headed uptown in a cab when he had the guy pull over. I must have looked pretty frustrated because he leaned out the window and said, “You look pretty frustrated. Where you headed?”
“JFK,” I replied, “I’ve got a flight in 40 minutes. Where are you headed?”
“The dark regions of the netherworld.”
“At this hour?” I said, surprised.
“Yeah, I know,” he said, “Traffic’s a bitch but we’ve got a staff meeting. Hop in.”
So that’s how I ended up in a cab to JFK with Death. In all, he was a good guy. He kept joking that he had already gone to JFK in 1963, and I laughed politely even though I found it in poor taste.
We sat in silence for a little bit, and then he offered me a Raisinet. I thanked him but replied that I was watching my fat intake. He nodded sagely and then suggested that I look into becoming an ethereal being, and I told him I would check it out.
“So,” I said, “Do you work for the devil or how does that go?”
Apparently not, as I gather. Death explained that the best way to describe him would be afterlife Fed Ex. He makes sure that the right people are going to Heaven and the right people are going to Hell at the right time. I asked him if he felt it was rewarding and he said it was a lot of paperwork, but when a guy gets to Hell on time it’s all worth it.
“Wow,” I said, “I have a pretty packed day, I can’t imagine having to help kill all those people every day.”
He nodded and said sometime it was tough, but he explained that usually around 5AM – 6AM he takes what he calls “Death time” just to go to the gym or do his own thing for a bit. Then he heads to the office by 7. He also said that for the last few centuries he’s been doing more death consulting because his doctors advised him to slow down. God and the Devil have really been having problems with capacity since death is a one-way thing, you know? He explained that they are constantly having to expand their operating base to accomodate what he called, “new business.”
He said it has its positives. A lot of people didn’t know it, but Death was responsible for ending all the big World Wars.
“We just couldn’t keep up with the influx of new business so I suggested we avoid these types of market spikes – like World Wars.”
I asked him how they made up for the eventual death slowdown that would come from that, and he said they just created the NRA and now it’s pretty steady. In fact, Death had a lunch meeting with Charlton Heston in about a week.
As we waited in the tunnel traffic, Death chuckled and said he found that the job was getting easier in the modern age although technology had its pitfalls. He recently said that while on a job in Houston his Palm crashed and he ended up lost in some hunk of junk rental Subaru in the middle of nowhere. There had been worse debacles, of course, like when a press release from his office went out with the wrong information. Mark Twain was a good sport about it though. On the whole, he found the work rewarding.
As the cab pulled up to the terminal, I thanked him for his kindness and hopped out. He waved off the $20 I offered him and said he had a great time.
As I turned to head into the terminal he called out, “See you soon.” And then his cab sped off.
I’m not sure why, but I suddenly was very nervous about the flight.