The first person I meet in heaven glares and knocks me down. In life, he claims, I kissed his wife. In heaven, turns out all your questions are answered, even questions like: Who kissed my wife before she was my wife?
Sure, I kissed her, I say.
We were twelve, I say.
No tongue, I say.
There’d been a party, seven minutes in heaven in some negligent parent’s basement. But this was long ago, years before the girl I kissed became the woman this man married. Still, I kissed her.
Guy knocks me down again.
I’d imagined heaven peaceful: harps and clouds, feathered angel wings. Instead, heaven is a schoolyard, and everyone’s a bully. When every question’s answered, every whispered thing, all earthly slights revealed, I guess it’s hard to keep the afterlife from tilting toward vengeance.
Guy knocks me down a third time, and I ask if I can speak to his wife.
Turns out, guy’s wife’s alive, in good health, so we might have to wait a decade, maybe more.
When she shows up, guy says, your stories better match. No tongue.
No tongue, I say.
You’re a dead man, she says tongue, he says.
I remind him I’m a dead man either way, we both are, but the guy doesn’t crack a smile.
I barely remember the kiss, I say. But I remember no tongue.
I remember the kiss. And there was tongue. Like you just would not believe how much tongue there was. So much tongue, saliva ran down our faces as we lapped.
For seven minutes, I kissed her, and I loved her, but only for seven minutes. Then it was her turn to go into the closet with Jeremy, and what followed were the seven saddest minutes of my life.
Still, best kiss I ever had.
But because this is heaven, soon as I think it, guy knows it is true.
Guy knocks me down yet again.
It’s heaven, so nothing hurts, but I’m tired of standing only to get knocked down. Plus, I just got here. I’ve barely made it past the gates.
Which is when I notice the line behind the guy: The boy whose Optimus Prime I smuggled out of a sleepover in a pillowcase. The store owner who caught me pocketing condoms, then fell and scraped a knee after chasing me for three blocks. My grandmother, who, even from the end of the line, knows I skipped her funeral for a date with someone who, it turns out, was catfishing me. Ahead of her, the woman who was catfishing me.
The guy whose wife I kissed when we were twelve looks ready to wrestle. He pins me to the ground. And it’s then I see this guy for what he is—a jealous, petty man—because I, like him, am a jealous, petty man.
My face caves. Guy grinds what’s left of my visage into a street that’s paved with gold. And I’m sad thinking how it could be a decade of this, more, before the guy’s wife joins us and maybe he lets up a bit.
I’d prayed heaven would be a place of peace.
Still, Jeremy’s got to show up sometime.
And, oh, what I’ll do when my turn comes: Knock him down. Make him beg. Tear out the tongue that tore away my love.
Getting there will take a while, but that part will be good. That part will be righteous.
That part will be heaven.
