The Bertie Mansion

XXIII

Rob entered the crowded waiting room. He observed the seats placed in rows and took a number from a stand by the front desk, sitting down next to a ghost who introduced herself as Anna. Everyone came through here and was now stuck. He had taken one of the only empty seats.

He held up a small slip of paper. "Number thirty-three. You?"

"Sixty-four."

"How is that possible?" Rob asked. "Shouldn't you be ahead of me?"

"The counter only goes to seventy. It's gone around at least several times already," Anna explained. "They're having trouble processing the vengeful ghosts. City development's causing more buildings to be knocked down. Their problems aren't solved but the habitats or objects they're tied to have been destroyed. So they're dangerous and have top priority."

"Ah. I see. So how long have you been waiting? A couple hours? Days?"

"I think it's more like a few years. There's only about a hundred in front of me now, a long time they were stalled at two hundred. Gets a bit hard to tell time in a dimension that never ages, but I can get dates from people who just died. Everyone from the past couple years is here. I'm thinking it'll be at least another year before I'm seen. Longer for you, since there's at least a thousand in here."

"Fantastic." He watched a person get called up to the front and get shown down a hallway.

"Another guy said the same thing and later got caught trying to skip. They can tell what order the same number was given out in and that didn't end well," Anna warned. "Slips light up or something when they're called. I heard that from a few rows down."

Rob frowned. "So I just wait?"

Anna shrugged. "You don't feel boredom here. You don't feel much of anything here. It's strange. But we can talk about our people. What was yours like?"

"Not as attractive as his grandfather. He was cool but only okay looking."

"That's too bad. My person was good looking, let me tell you. And the shenanigans he and his friend got up to? But you're right, nothing like our original loves, eh?" Anna elbowed him in the stomach.

"No," Rob agreed, rubbing his torso where the elbow had really dug into him. Why did elbows have to be that pointy?

"Bertie?" a voice called from farther down the seats. "Bertie? Is that you?"

"It's still Rob," he called back.

Anna bounced in her seat. "You're her, or uh, him, aren't you? My hero. A pleasure to meet you."

"The same?" he said as they shook hands.

"I can't believe it," she said. "You're why I could join the army! Of course, that didn't end well, but I don't blame you!"

Rob was completely befuddled and that did not stop when Jeremy the First walked over and began standing awkwardly in front of him.

"Hey," he said as an opener. "You made it. Congrats."

Anna giggled and received two glares. "I'll butt out now. Not listening."

Rob stood and shuffled his feet around. "Hey."

"I suppose we should talk now that we've got time," said Jeremy.

"Yeah."

"I guess this is why you rejected me. You liked girls all along," Jeremy accused although it was half-hearted.

Rob stood and crossed his arms. "Just because I'm a 'girl turned guy' doesn't mean I like girls."

"You don't?" Jeremy seemed surprised.

"I don't know. I might? I didn't exactly have the chance to explore myself. But I liked you a lot."

"So then why ignore my feelings while we were living? If you liked me," he asked, genuinely curious.

Rob sighed. "I rejected you because you wouldn't love me if I were a man, and I wouldn't want to hide that from you if we were really together, especially married. And look what you did when you found out."

Jeremy seemed at a loss. "I thought we were over this betrayal thing. I know I was stupid, but it's not like I can go back and fix it."

"I'm not angry, Jeremy," Rob said, bringing his old friend in for a hug. "Just frustrated that our lives had to end like that. We lived in a messed up time. I can't wait to explore the afterlife with you."

Jeremy held on tight and after a moment rubbed at Rob's back more intimately than a friend was expected to do. "Me too."

"Dude," Rob said. "I'm a dude, remember?"

"And?" Jeremy replied, throwing Rob's words back at him but slightly altered. "Just because I only dated girls doesn't mean I like only girls."

"You WHAT?" Rob shouted in surprise. Then he calmed down. "Maybe we need to stop making assumptions about each other."

Anna clapped her hands. "Yay! This is great communication. I wish I had a camera."

Both men gave her twin glares.

"What? I'm bored, there's no TV for rom coms, I need to improvise."

Rob sat back down next to Anna and a seat opened up for Jeremy. The afterlife so far was a little weird, to put it lightly, but with Jeremy's hand in his and Anna asking them a multitude of questions about anything she could think of, it didn't seem so bad. He finally felt at peace.