You don’t come from dust, no matter what they say. You come from water, and you go back to the water when you die, like a river rolling downhill.

Milo woke up by the water, as he’d done almost ten thousand times. Woke up on a railroad bridge over a dark, sleepy old stream full of stumps and catfish.

Death was there with him, sitting cross-legged, leaning against an old steel truss. She was always there when he awakened, watching him with those watery, sensitive eyes, wearing her long black hair like a cape.

She didn’t have to be there. She could snuff out his life and leave him to wake up on his own. But she never did. Not once. It was okay; the universe would get along without her for an hour. There were other Deaths on the job, dark and pale and sensitive just like her.

“Suzie,” he whispered. (She didn’t like to be called “Death.” Who would?)

“Shut up,” she said. “You know better than to talk right away. Give it a few minutes. Be still.” She chewed on her hair, hiding a smile.

It took a few minutes for your soul to get its shit together, moving from one world to the next. You had to let yourself come into focus, let the memories of all your lives gather. Even if you’d done it a bunch of times.

Milo was not surprised by the railroad bridge or the catfish stream. Things were the same everywhere; what they had on Earth, they had up here. You needed food and language and shelter and air and coffee “down there,” and you needed them “up here,” too.

Milo’s body was very much like his Earthly body, except young again. He wore a pair of jean shorts and nothing else. All as it should be, the way it always was.

After a minute, he cleared his throat and said, “Thanks for the shark.”

“You know I don’t decide how you’re going to get it,” she said. “The universe has its own boa.”

“You could have yanked me out of there, you know, before—I mean, it really fucking hurt.”

She looked angry for a second. Her eyes blazed (literally). Then they cleared.

“You’re messing with me,” she observed.

“I’m messing with you.”

Miles away, a train gave a honk and a wail.

The railroad bridge, Milo observed, was a rusty, forgotten thing, with weeds and wildflowers shooting up out of the cross ties. Abandoned obviously, but in the afterlife, that didn’t mean a train wouldn’t come cannonballing along, despite the rust and weeds. Things in the afterlife had a way of changing when you weren’t looking. Or when you were.

Milo climbed down into the tall grass by the river, looking out for snakes. He reached up to help Suzie down, and she let him help, which was nice.

He wished they could have more time together, getting him focused and settled. But he knew that wouldn’t happen. The others would be here soon.

He examined the woods and the water. He’d been awake for five or ten minutes now, which meant—

“Five,” he whispered. “Four, three, two—”

“Milo!” sang a voice behind him.

He turned to see two women picking their way along the riverbank, sidestepping rotten branches, surprising a—croak!—huge frog and—splash!—a snapping turtle.

Suzie heaved a theatrical sigh.

“I’m going to bug out for now,” she said.

“Suzie—”

“It’s been a long day. I mean, a whole ferryboat overturned in the Sea of Cortez this morning. A hundred and fifty lives all at once. Yeah, yeah, it’s my job, but…”

Milo started to say something, but she was gone in a burst of wind and dry leaves.

“Okay,” he said, and turned to face—

“Milo!” The first of the two women, a big old Earth mother with a giant Oklahoma smile, bustled up and threw her arms around him.

“Milo,” she warbled, squeezing. “Milo, Milo.”

“Mama,” said Milo, speaking into her armpit (she was not his mother).

The second woman, smoking a cigarette, looked like a cranky office manager who had retired to Florida. She was followed by a cat.

“Nan,” said Milo, shaking her hand.

“You’re late,” she said, as always.

They were not angels, and they were not gods. Milo knew a hundred things they were not but could not have said, for sure, what they were.

“You look fit,” said Nan. “Do anything useful this time around?” A second cat appeared from beneath her skirt and shot off through the grass, chasing something.

Mama said, “Shhhhh!” and waved her big hands in the air. “Talk is for later. Hush now, and let’s just get him home.”

She took his arm, and the three of them set off down the riverbank.

—

Through the woods, until the river emerged by a motorway, and they followed the road into a small town. Rode a bus for a while, still following the river. Crossed over a shining lake, with houses afloat on the water.

You were expected to be quiet and meditative in the hours after you died. You were supposed to think about what a good job you had done (or had not done). Your new home, when you got there, was a reflection of this. If you had been Gandhi, or someone similar, you’d probably get to live in a big house with a garden and a pond. If you cooked and ate cheerleaders, on the other hand, you might have to rent a shack beside the landfill.

They got off the bus and walked through a neighborhood of bridges and canals. The farther they walked, the less clean the sidewalks became. Milo, who hated litter, picked up a French fry box. No trash can in sight, he just carried it.

They stopped eventually at a warren of apartment buildings. French fry boxes and other trash populated the dead grass out front.

“Aw, man,” said Milo. “Really?”

Mama avoided his eye.

“Disappointed?” asked Nan, giving him a crooked look. Five or six more cats had accrued around her.

“I was a wise man!” Milo protested. “A spiritual master! I helped people. I was in tune with the planet—”

“You went fishing,” said Nan, “and gave advice. Everybody does that.”

Fuck it. Milo tossed his French fry box onto the grass, beside a discarded sock.

“You didn’t actually achieve much,” said Mama, laying her big hands on his shoulders. “You had nine thousand nine hundred ninety-four lives of experience behind you. Don’t tell me that was the best you could manage. Not my amazing, electric-souled Milo!”

“Don’t coddle him,” snapped Nan. “You always coddle him. God forbid he should actually do something.”

Milo itched to give them both the finger. Instead, he let them lead him into his building (Propane Estates 2271) and up three flights of stairs to his own door (Number 12). Painters had painted it shut, but Mama body-slammed it open.

It was like every other apartment in the universe. Furniture that didn’t match. Light fixtures from the 1970s.

“Get settled,” said Mama. “Take a nap. See what’s in the fridge. We’ll be back for you sometime soon.”

She looked at Nan then, as if some communication, something subtle, had passed between them.

“What am I missing?” Milo asked.

Neither of them would meet his eyes.

“We’ll talk later,” said Mama. “Rest.”

“ ’Kay,” said Milo.

Mama and Nan and a hundred cats walked out the door.

“Cat piss,” he said. This time he’d really gotten screwed. It could be hard to tell, down on Earth, if you were living a truly soulful life. Up here, the hindsight was clear. Too much beach, too much beer, not enough changing the world, blah-blah-blah.

Fine. Screw it. There was always next time.

He tried a light switch over by the door. No lights. He tried a switch in the kitchen. Nothing. The power wasn’t even turned on yet. Man…

He made his way down the hall, letting his eyes adjust in the half-light. The hall opened into a single bedroom. Over here, the shadow of a bed, an end table, a clock radio—

The air stirred.

Dust and dry leaves whirled up in a funny little tempest. The leaves formed a shape and slowed down, until only the shape remained.

Suzie coalesced beside the nightstand. Nearly cocooned in black hair, eyes softly (but literally) burning.

She wrapped long arms around him and gave his lips the lightest flicker of a kiss, the way a snake might kiss.

He drew her closer. The flickering kiss deepened.

“You should at least let them get out of the neighborhood,” Milo said. “They’re not blind, you know.”

“I think maybe they suspect,” said Suzie.

“Well, if they do find out—and they will—they won’t approve. You know they won’t.”

“Shhhhh,” Suzie hissed.

Then she coiled around him, forcing him to the floor.

Cheap carpet, he noted. There were going to be burn marks.

—

Eventually, the half-light from the windows became a deep purple dusk.

Morning, noon, twilight, and night didn’t always happen in order in the afterlife, the way they did for the living. Order was often an illusion. There were fewer illusions here.

They had worked their way up onto the bed. Both were nearly exhausted and damaged here and there.

Milo buried his face in her hair, breathing deep. She smelled like midnight.

“I missed you,” he said.

She propped herself up and looked down at him.

“Please,” she said. “You don’t even remember me when you’re down there screwing around with your Tanyas and Amys and Batangas and Li Wus and Marias—”

“I can’t help that. It’s what happens when you live a life. I still sort of miss you, somehow, in a something’s-missing kind of way.”

“Liar. But you’re sweet.” She bit him a little, on his neck, drawing blood.

“I brought something for you,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Do you remember this?” she asked, and from the depths of her hair she produced a copper circlet. Banged up, half-green with verdigris, it was a rough sculpture of a snake swallowing its own tail.

“An armband,” Milo said, taking it from her hand. Holding it, feeling its weight, he realized the armband was familiar.

“From my first life,” he said.

“And your first death,” she added. “Remember?”

He remembered.

He turned the armband over and over in his hands and let the memory rise up like a dream.