Have you ever loved so hard you’d forgive every sin?
From the Publisher: “Misguided admirers have long declared Romeo & Juliet a ‘timeless’ love story. In fact, true timelessness can only be achieved in the places where time itself is off the clock.
This is the story of Evan and Elle, a pair of soulmates from ethereal realms where there are nothing but souls. Their story of forbidden love has Shakespearean echoes with one whopper of a logistical catch. Instead of being wooed upon a remote balcony in italy, Elle is in Heaven while her Romeo is way down in Hell stuck with a really lousy roommate.
For their love to flourish, she has to lower Heaven; he must raise Hell.
The madcap love story is interspersed with heartfelt examples of forgiveness, redemption and an Afterlife so repetitively magnificent that inhabitants begin to pine for mortal grit.
The book challenges our Sunday School simplicities about right and wrong, good and evil and the Biblical real estate extremes where 83 percent of Americans believe our souls are bound to inhabit. Forever.
Today’s headlines have many convinced The End is nigh. Evan & Elle gives us a glimpse of what’s over there after it’s all over here…”
More info About the Author: “Chris Rodell is the author of six books, the most recent being Evan & Elle in Heaven & Hell: A Long Distance Social Media Afterlife Love Story. Pennsylvania Gov, Tom Ridge says, ‘Rodell writes about life the way Sinatra sings about New York, unflinching about the gritty realities, but with abiding affection and relentless positivity abut the future.’
A swashbuckling freelance writer since 1992, Rodell has rassled alligators, raced Ferraris, jumping out of cloud-cruising airplanes and in one week gained 20 pounds eating like Elvis — all for the sake of the story.
Besides unconventional biographies on Fred Rogers and Arnold Palmer, his other books include Use All The Crayons! The Colorful Guide To Simple Human Happiness and The Last Baby Boomer: The Story of the Ultimate Ghoul Pool, a 2016 satiric novel about the life and death of the last baby boomer (winner of the ’17 TINARA Award for best satire).
He is a sought-after and entertaining motivational speaker. Rodell lives in Latrobe with his wife Valerie, their daughters, Josie and Lucy, and a small loud dog named Snickers.
Author Site Book Launch: Latrobe author and Pittsburgh native Chris Rodell will be hosting a book signing July 22 from 4 to 8 pm at the historic Tin Lizzy near Latrobe to celebrate the release of his new satire, Evan & Elle in Heaven & Hell: A Long Distance Social Media Afterlife Love Story!
Chapter 1: Evan & Elle in Heaven & Hell
It was, to the stone-hearted cynics, an open-and-shut case of the good girl falling for the bad boy. She’d been tempted, they’d said, by the forbidden fruit. Took a walk on the wild side. Gone rogue.
As far as bad boys go, Evan Lee had been to them one of the very worst. For just one dark day. He was handsome, generous, and he had the self-deprecating sense of humor a charismatic person uses when he or she wants to deflect attention. It was a defense mechanism that he could not deploy the day he became the most hated man in America. It was on that day that he killed 37 men and women, in-cluding a busload of nuns.
Oh, and he killed a cat.
The cat was not included in any of the final tallies because, though many people were upset about the cat, it was still just a cat.
Elle Lavator paid them no mind. She knew it was true love, even as she’d freely admit calling theirs a match made in Heaven was a logistical impossibility. That was the foundational fact upon which the naysayers anchored their arguments. She just didn’t care.
Her critics, she’d say, could all go straight to Hell —
“Just as long as they take me with them!”
Even as a boy, Evan had the warm, knowing smile of a man who got all the jokes. Call him a bad boy and he’d deny it — contending he was a good boy who’d had one tragically bad day, one that made headlines around the world. It was a day even forgiving folk found difficult to forgive. But at its heart it was a love story and all the romantics were real suckers for love. And as love stories go, theirs was, all would admit, a real doozy.
Elle loved Evan and Evan loved Elle. A greater case of opposites attracting in all human history there’d never been.
She was angelic. Forever youthful, she was well-mannered and deferential about the feelings of others. She was a good listener and people instinctively knew they could confide in her. She was curious about everyone she met and had a nifty knack for putting all at ease. She was open-minded and forgiving of flaws. She saw the good in everyone, even seeing the good in the bad.
Evan? He’d become, well, one hell of a guy.
They met and fell in love the old-fashioned way: He’d bamboozled her with a bouquet of artfully crafted introductory lies. He said he was a good kid who came from a good family. He’d had a good job, was a good provider, had good taste, and was good, good, good for goodness sake.
He’d cunningly hacked her social media accounts so they simultaneously sent out Elle-signed notes saying she’d fallen on hard times and needed money sent to a secret off-shore bank account. They were so persuasively forlorn her friends re-sponded with a generous outpouring of casseroles, noodle salads and beaucoup wines of precious vintage.
Despite knowing it would lead to harsh community disapproval if anyone found out, he sent her a Facebook friend request. She confirmed it knowing, too, the disapproval on her end would be just as damning. Well, it would be darning. None of Elle’s friends ever swore.
The virtual appeal was instant.
She’d never experienced anything like it in her 24 brief years, a mortal portion that had been festooned with laughter, love and crocheted mementos of everlasting glee. Neither had he. Evan told Elle things he’d never told anyone. He was vul-nerable to her typed teasing and when she asked if he was a bad boy, he had to admit, yes, he was a bad boy. Boy, had he been bad.
“How bad?” she asked.
He paused for what in other places, other times, would have seemed like an eterni-ty, his fidgety fingers poised above the decrepit, old keyboard. Did he dare? “Pretty bad,” he admitted.
“You can tell me,” she said, and Evan instinctively knew he could. And, really, what the hell did he have to lose? A lot, he fleetingly thought, but he figured if he couldn’t unburden himself to Elle right then, when could he?
“I did some things I’m ashamed of. Some of the worst things you could imagine. Promise me you won’t unfriend me.”
“Tell me everything,” she typed.
Evan drew a deep breath, exhaled and typed his stark, momentous confession. “I killed my Mom and I killed my Dad,” he typed, pausing before adding, “Oh, and I killed Mom’s cat.”
Elle felt the breath whoosh from her chest, but felt spiritually bound to honor her vow. She responded with one word: “Explain.”
Evan’s mother had been the light of his life. She’d been his nurturer, his cheer-leader and most ardent public defender, much more ardent than all the court-ordered public defenders hired by the state of Ohio.
“So, when she began to succumb to early onset Alzheimer’s right after she turned 50, it just broke my heart. She sensed it coming and made me swear before things ever got really bad I’d help her die with dignity. That meant assisted suicide. W spent a week in Vegas. We put the whole shebang on her credit card hoping we could use her death as an excuse to avoid having to pay it, you know? Like some kind of hillbilly Make-A-Wish.”
He conveyed to Elle all the wonderful times and laughs he and Mom had shared, and how — yippee! — she’d won $225,000 on Black 19 at the Luxor. It had all been so dreamlike that Evan, like his mother a connoisseur of dark humor, felt certain it would all end badly.
Boy, did it.
“It was December 20, the day after her 54th birthday. I was 35. I filled her bed-room with scented candles. Lavender. In the background, Stevie Nicks was softly playing. Mom adored Stevie. We shared one last bottle of wine, an Opus One ’96 a fine cabernet blend. And with tears in my eyes, I began to read the 23rd Psalm.
“That’s when I heard my old man kick down the front door.”
Rusty Lee’d been estranged from them both, but had heard about the loot, and it had brought him running.
“I hear him storming through the house and I just pour the whole bottle of pills down Mom’s throat, pinch her nose and spill the rest of the wine down her gullet. She made me swear I’d finish the job no matter what. So I did what I had to do. Well, Mom just starts fighting back. She’s scratching at my arms and just fighting for dear life like it was all some big mistake. It was too late for that. So, I shove a pillow over her face and just start pressing down with all my might.”
His words on the screen were a blur to Elle as she tried to comprehend the mount-ing mayhem.
“Well, then Rusty comes barging into the room, waving a gun and screaming. I thought the bastard was going to kill us both. I forget about Mom for just a sec-ond and push the mean old son of a bitch with all my might. He trips over Copy and starts stumbling backwards down the hall.”
Elle collected herself enough to seek clarification. “Who’s Copy?” she typed.
“Copy was Mom’s cat!” He resumed, “Well, Rusty backpedals and trips over the Copycat. The frightened cat jumps up on a table, and his tail hits a lit wick and starts to sizzle. Copy lets out this otherworldly scream and darts behind the drapes, which instantly go up in flames. Now, the whole room just ignites.”
“I’ll never know if it was the fall that killed Rusty or if he’d had a heart attack. It could have been the eventual explosion. We’ll never know. All I know is he had high blood pressure and a ticker that was tuned to tank. Either way, he looked deader than Hell to me.”
He said the one thing he looked back on with real regret was stepping over Rusty’s lifeless body and prying the Smith & Wesson from his cold — lukewarm, really — dead fingers. Just like it said to do on the NRA bumper stickers Rusty had on his old pickup truck.
“And because I wasn’t thinking clearly and had by then drunk a lot of Mom’s wine and had popped a fistful of spare Xanax when she wasn’t looking, I stopped and blew out the pilot lights on the gas stove as I ran through the kitchen.”
He was about a quarter of a mile away when he heard the house — kerPOWWW!! — blow to smithereens. He’d been a regular drinker at The Canteen, a cowboy juke joint outside of town and pulled in to have some nerve-settling belts. He tucked the still-smoking peacemaker in his pants.
“It was just my bad luck that Billy Leonard was tending bar that day. We had a history that went way back to high school. He was just back from a stretch in the state pen for domestic violence. Everyone knew Billy was packing — and, man, that’s a clear parole violation.
“Anyway, Billy sees me and turns the satellite radio to the hip-hop station ‘cause he knows I can’t stand rap. I sweet-as-can-be ask him to turn to Outlaw Country He sneers and says he’ll get to it. I order a shot of Wild Turkey and tell Billy to leave the bottle. He snorts real rude-like and walks away. I pour one shot then an-other. Outside we hear the sirens go screaming past.”
Evan was typing like his fingers were about to fly off at the knuckles.
“By now I’m good and drunk and sensing my day’s about to get a whole lot more complicated, and I’ve had just about enough of Billy. So I pull out Rusty’s gun and — Boom! — I blast a hole clean through the stereo.
“I should have figured what would happen next. Billy goes for his gun. I wanted to just wing him, but because I was drunk my aim was way, way off. Instead of his arm, I blast him right between the eyes. Can you believe my luck that day? It was purely self-defense. Still, I should never have shot the stereo. I should have handled the situation with more maturity.”
Elle nearly typed a sarcastic comment, but didn’t want to interrupt the story flow. She was very considerate.
“I take the bottle with me, already way too drunk to drive, and head out to High-way 101 and just crank up the Ray Wylie Hubbard. By then I didn’t even know where I was going or why. I just thought I’d head up into the mountains, get good and drunk, and try and sleep it off like maybe it was all a bad dream.
“Well, I’m all over the road and this busload of nuns returning from the casino is coming straight for me because, well, I was so drunk I wound up in the wrong lane. The driver tries to avoid a collision and careens over the guardrail and rolls 70 feet down a cliff before landing upside down in the Hocking River. What a busload of nuns was doing coming back from a casino on a Monday afternoon, I’ll never know.
The full report stole Elle’s breath. It was just so much to comprehend. “How many died that day?”
“There were 37 if you don’t count the Copycat.”
“Gee,” she typed in brittle exasperation, “did you just happen to kill anyone else?”
“Just one more guy. But by then there wasn’t a soul left on Earth who gave a damn about that sorry bastard.”
“And who was he?”
“Uh, that was me. And that’s how I wound up here in Hell.”
This excerpt is published here courtesy of the author and should not be reprinted without permission.
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