Paulette Jones, nee Williams, sat on an empty bench facing the Willamette River together with a coffee fast going cold, her recent widowhood, and an overwhelming sense of the blatant callousness of the world. The sun was bright in the spring sky, a rarity in Portland, and the riverside promenade was bustling with giddy sun worshipers. Runners passed in front of her bench, women aired their tiny offspring in designer strollers, hipsters piloted refurbished cast-off bicycles. A knot of feral kids sprawled on the grass nearby, casting off pungent clouds of ganga. She ignored them all.

The blue sky weighed down upon her until it oppressed every fiber of her being. Rain, my god, is that too much to ask for? Paulette implored the Pacific Ocean to yield its familiar bounty of massive grey clouds, a maelstrom of rain that would wash all of these happy people away to whatever hell they belonged in. But the sky remained stubbornly and shiningly benign. Frustration, propelled by grief, rose to her throat.

“It’s not fucking fair!”

The sudden shout caused a spandex-clad woman to veer her course away from the crazy woman on the bench. The feral kids giggled and one shouted approval.

“You tell ‘em, Sister.”

Paulette sank back into herself and sipped the cold coffee gone bitter as her life. The shock of widowhood was fresh and raw. A mere thirty days past, she had been a blissfully happy woman, married to a happy man. All of that was shattered by a calm measured voice on the other end of a telephone: Mrs. Jones, I’m afraid there’s been an accident.

* * *

The witnesses said it was freakish; a slow-motion ballet of misfortune. A crosswalk, a speeding bicycle, Tyler trying to dodge the cyclist, his feet tangling, falling into oncoming traffic, the fatal blow to his beautiful head. Her husband lay dead on a downtown Portland street and the shards of her life lay with him.

The families appeared, hers and his, stricken with grief, well-meaning to a fault, and unavoidably present. They set about making what they referred to as the arrangements. Paulette thought it a horrible word devoid of meaning, a palliative that did nothing to defang her snarling loss. She learned that death was not willing to be arranged, like so many hellish black flowers.

She and Tyler had formed no plan for this, no contingency for the randomly fatal. That was another glaring injustice: They were good at planning life, their best plans laid in bed after they had laid themselves. Tangled in each other and the twisted sheets, theirs was a future where nothing was beyond reach. They mapped out how to save for a house, when they should have kids—in two years, after she got her promotion—and how to keep the old car running. Paulette stroked Tyler’s chest, feeling his voice through her fingertips as he described the holiday they would take on a Tuscan farm. There was no contingency for sudden death at thirty-one, with only five years of marriage gone by.

Her employer gave her a bereavement furlough, telling her to take as much time as she needed. Paulette heard another message lurking beneath his words: Stay away until it’s safe for the rest of us. Tyler’s death cloaked her in a shroud of grief complete with jagged wings that cut like razors. People sensed the blackness of her loss and the danger of her cutting shroud. It made them skittish and nervous, and they offered compassion from a safe distance.

The memorials were completed, and Tyler’s mortal remains burnt to ash. The large circle of mourning shrank to a perpetually on call cadre of parents and siblings. Whenever she could, Paulette donned her sharp-winged cloak and fled the confinement of familial sympathy. She sought anonymity in crowds, streetcars, or a lonely park bench on the river.

* * *

Sunlight gleamed on the wide mirror of the Willamette and Paulette hated the brightness of it. She wanted clouds and gloom, not springtime and renewal. But above all else she wanted answers. What exactly do I do now? Do I wear black for the rest of my life? Am I supposed to get drunk every night, have random sex with a series of anonymous men? Will that fill the gaping hole? The river flowed past, bright with sunshine, and did not answer.

There was a sudden soft rustle of cloth and her bench shifted under the weight of another. Paulette turned to protest this invasion of her angry privacy. She flared her sharp wings, ready to ward off any bag-lady, feral kid, or derelict looking for an easy handout. The person she saw was none of those things.

A strange man sat at the far end of their now shared bench. His torso was half-twisted to face her, hands folded over the lap of an impeccable Edwardian suit. The dark grey tweed of his suit coat fell to shadowed pools around his thighs. A waistcoat of the same tweed rose over his torso, ending in a vee that exposed a perfectly knotted black tie. The silver thread of a watch chain adorned the front of the vest. A matching bowler hat partially covered the stranger’s silver hair.

The face that looked out at her from beneath the hat was that of a sixty-year-old gentleman, expressionless and patient. Paulette tried to speak, but her protest died stillborn. It was not the cut of the suit, or the strange hat, or the sudden appearance that arrested her speech; it was those eyes. The eyes that pierced hers were ancient and predatory. His calm stare froze Paulette’s words in her half-opened mouth.

“Good afternoon, Paulette. May I call you Paulette?”

Paulette knew without asking that she had never in her life laid eyes on this man. She would remember those eyes, if nothing else. They held her in place, speechless, a butterfly pinned to a specimen board.

“I will take that as a yes, then. I thought we might have a few words in private if you have no objection.”

The tweed-suited man raised a hand beside his bowler hat, index and middle finger extended. The fingers executed a short, sharp twirl, just one, and the world was muted in a shimmering silence. It was as if the bench and its two occupants were encased in a bubble. Paulette caught the faintest tang of ozone, the smell of summer rain on hot asphalt. Everything and everyone outside the confines of the sphere appeared hazy and slow. Inside the invisible walls, every detail was etched painfully clear.

Fear pulsed through Paulette, urging her to act. Her hand slipped into the bag beside her, trembling fingers closing over a small steel cylinder.

“I would caution you against that.”

Paulette found her words as her hidden finger found the plastic trigger.

“Caution me against what?”

“That pepper spray you are fingering in your handbag. It will not have any effect on me, but I cannot say the same for you. The dome will contain it, you see. The results may unpleasant.”

“The dome?”

“Yes, the dome; that which surrounds us. Did I not say I wished a few words in private? A public bench in a public park requires some modification, don’t you agree?”

Paulette removed her hand from her purse and turned to face the strange man. Her mind fought to make sense of what was happening and failed, while her heart told her that what she was seeing was not of her world. As a grown woman, Paulette had entertained only the vaguest notion of a humanistic deity. Tyler’s death had snatched away the last tattered remnants of any religious faith she might have had. Now something otherworldly was invading the void of her disbelief. Her fear faded away, replaced by the resolve of someone with nothing left to lose.

When her voice came, it was angry and hard.

“Who are you? Or what are you? What the hell do you want with me and how do you know my name?”

The voice that answered Paulette was cordial, businesslike, and, while not unkind, it was certainly devoid of warmth.

“Who and what I am are the same, and the answer is not something you could comprehend. I do not mean that as an insult; it is simply so. I do not wish anything with you, as you say, or from you for that matter. Knowing your name is important because humans react very strongly to a stranger who knows their name. A bit of a shock, you know; saves time.”

The stranger’s words resounded in her ears. Her conscious mind rebelled at the obvious intent and shied away like a nervous colt. Another voice spoke from inside her; calm, strong, it pushed doubt aside. Whatever might happen, it couldn’t be worse than the solicitude of her mother and sister in an apartment dead and stripped of Tyler.

“You’re not human, are you?”

The handsome face under the bowler remained impassive.

“No, Paulette, I am not human. Nor, to answer your next three questions, am I an angel, a demon, or a space alien.”

Paulette nodded her head and waved a hand at the shimmering sphere surrounding them.

“And you’ve done this sort of thing before, taking people prisoner like this?”

The man before her, for she could still only think of him as a man, blew out a small sigh.

“Let me put it in a nutshell for you, shall I? You are not a prisoner. Following our brief conversation, you will be free to stay or go, as you wish. When I said you would be unable to comprehend what I am, I spoke the truth. I always speak the truth, by the way; I have no choice in the matter. If I chose to impart the long explanation to you, spring would pass to summer, and summer to autumn, and we two still sitting on this bench.”

The man paused, waiting for a response, but Paulette remained silent. Let’s see what you have to say, you suave bastard. He nodded his head, as if her thought had been spoken aloud.

“Very well then, I am here to offer you a choice, a choice that may answer some of your questions.”

“What, you’re going to offer me a ride on your spaceship?”

The chiseled face showed only the slightest exasperation.

“Humans are so entirely predictable. I have already informed you that I am not a space alien. Ipso facto, I do not have a spaceship. I am offering you a choice that may fill the gaping hole, may answer the question of whether you dress in mourning for the rest of your days. And don’t pretend shock when you hear your own words; it is a waste of time.”

Paulette felt an icy spasm of fear push away her anger. She fought it down and asked the obvious question.

“What is the choice?”

The man nodded once, as if settling into business at last.

“You are braver than most, I will grant you that. The choice that I offer you is this: If you wish to know, I will tell you the time and manner of your own death. You are free to accept or refuse this choice; a simple yes or no. The choice is, of course, irrevocable. It is also a decision not to be taken lightly. There can be all manner of consequences.”

Her brain tried to grasp the possibilities and failed. This was absurd, all of it. Reason said he was lying, but her heart spoke otherwise.

“How do I know you can do what you say, or that what you tell me will be true?”

“Your mind does not know and thus doubts, but your heart believes. Is that not enough? If you choose to know the hour of your death, it will come to pass exactly as I say it to you.”

“You say that there are consequences. If I choose yes, what will happen to me?”

“That I cannot say. More precisely, that is something I am not allowed to say. I will bend the rules, but only slightly. Knowledge without wisdom is a dangerous gift. One human may benefit by the knowledge while another is brought to ruin. Some who know when death will call may fall into madness. They become desperate to fill their allotted hours and thus poison the time that they have. I have seen others who lived far richer lives by knowing when they would end. More I cannot say.”

Paulette turned from the stranger and sought to look beyond, to the sun on the river, Mount Hood on the far horizon. She saw none of these; only the hazy shimmering walls of the sphere that defined a space far too small and intimate. There would be no escape except by her choice. It was as certain as knowing her own name. Sure, and what is my name now? I don’t even know that. Am I still Paulette Jones, or the Widow Jones, or do I go back to being a Williams? How can I make life and death choices when I can’t even choose a last name?

What do I do? Wouldn’t it be better to know, to just be done with it all? I’ll hear the judge pronounce my sentence: the defendant is hereby sentenced to six more years of life. Or worse, sixty more years of life; six lonely decades without my beautiful Tyler. The crazy Widow Jones, falling apart bit by bit as the years pass. Her heart was empty and cold, swept bare by death’s midnight wind. And then, in that coldest place, she felt the faintest touch of warmth.

Paulette heard Tyler’s voice, saw him standing in a shaft of sunlight that poured through the funky old window in their apartment. He was waving his arms and the swirl of his sunlit limbs sent dust motes dancing in the bright beam. He spoke again and she heard him, knew it was him. His words came as only Tyler could utter them, a flood of excited energy and urging.

Paulette, what are you doing? This is crazy! Don’t listen to this smooth bastard. Tell him to go to hell and then get the fuck out of there. Life is a mystery; didn’t we always say that? We loved the craziness of it, the not knowing. The unknown was the spice of our lives, and it will still be the spice of your life. Think about how madly in love we were when we first met. Then it just got deeper, wilder and more complex, and we always called that the most amazing mystery of all. Paulette, my beautiful wife, don’t do it. Say no. You don’t want to spoil the show!

And then he was gone. The sunlight through the window, Tyler waving his arms, Tyler’s loving voice; all of it gone in an instant, yet there remained an echo of his words.

The stranger still sat on the bench, unchanged and impassive. His face was that of a sphinx which could outwait the centuries. Paulette blinked in surprise, as if waked from a dream, but her doubts had vanished, and her fears with them. When she spoke, her voice did not waver.

“I don’t know who you are or what you are, and I don’t know whether I should scream at you or thank you. I may figure that out eventually, but by then I don’t suppose it will matter. I’ve made my choice. I don’t want to know anything more, not about my life and not about my death. I reject your offer.”

The stranger nodded his head, only once, and the faintest trace of a smile crossed his face and then vanished. His manicured hands moved to the knees of his creased tweed trousers as he leaned closer.

“I cannot say with certainty, for it is not in my power to do so, but I believe that you have made a wise decision.”

With those words, he rose from the bench and the shimmering barrier rose as well and dissipated into the budding branches above. The brightness of spring returned and with it the muted sounds of the city beyond the riverside park. The stranger turned away from her, hesitated, then turned back to face her. He was smiling now and his eyes, shadowed by the brim of his hat, were quick and bright.

“Paulette, with your permission, might I add one small comment?”

Paulette nodded her assent.

“Sure, why not.”

“I don’t believe that black is your best color.”

Without waiting for a reply, the stranger strode away from the bench and did not look back. Paulette watched his receding figure until the tweed suit and bowler hat dissolved into a nebula that wafted away on the warm spring breeze.

Paulette Jones looked out past the riverside promenade, past the parade of sun worshipers, past the sun gleaming on the rippled surface of the river. She leaned back on the bench, alone with a cold coffee and an overpowering sense of the mystery of the world.

# # #

Marco Etheridge lives and writes in Vienna, Austria. His short fiction has appeared in Literally Stories, Five on the Fifth, Inlandia Journal, Manzano Mountain Review, Every Day Fiction, and many more fine journals. Marco’s third novel, Breaking the Bundles, is available at fine online booksellers. https://www.marcoetheridgefiction.com

Photo: Drew Beamer