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The first time Eleanor meets Tahani, she thinks this must be the most beautiful woman she’s ever seen in her life. She’s tall. She’s elegant. She has a waterfall of hair, legs for days, and even a British accent. She’s like a sexy, stunning giraffe.
Also, she’s really forking obnoxious.
During this attempt, none of these opinions will change very much.
The eighty-sixth time Eleanor meets Tahani, she is falling from the sky.
As it turns out, there’s a bit more to flying than simply thinking positive thoughts and hoping for the best, although that itself is hard enough when Eleanor’s constantly stressing over how to hide the fact that she doesn’t belong here. No, apparently you also have to have qualities such as control and restraint—and surprisingly to no one, Eleanor’s always struggled with those two things.
“Eleanor, you have to relax!” shouts Chidi as Eleanor spirals through the air in uncontrollable loop-de-loops.
“Relax? That’s your advice? Relax?” Eleanor screams back, windmilling her arms and succeeding only in causing herself to spin like a top. “Make...it...stop!”
“Only you can do that, Eleanor!” Janet calls up to her, sounding infuriatingly calm. “Just take a deep breath and think happy thoughts!”
“All my happy thoughts right now involve murdering both of you!” Eleanor yells back. Evidently this is the wrong thing to say, as her levitation suddenly stops and she’s sent falling toward the ground at a high speed, screaming the whole way down. Eleanor screws her eyes closed, waiting for the collision, but when it comes it’s much softer than expected. Looking around, she realizes she’s landed on someone.
“Oh dear, are you all right?” asks Eleanor’s savior, untangling herself from their pile of limbs. Eleanor stares dazedly up at her.
“You saved me.”
“Well, not really, considering we’re already dead and we can’t get hurt here,” says the woman. “Although I suppose if you see it that way, who am I to argue? ‘Tahani Al-Jamil, heroine of the afterlife’...it has a nice ring to it.”
“Don’t get too excited,” says Eleanor, pushing herself to her feet. “ ‘Tahani Al-Jamil, well-placed cushion of the afterlife’ might be more accurate.”
“Two sides to every story,” says the woman with a sniff. Eleanor laughs.
“Eleanor Shellstrop,” she says. “Nice to meet you. Thanks for not letting me crash-land.”
Tahani smiles back. “Anytime, darling.”
∷
Attempt eighty-six ends two weeks later, and Tahani manages to make Eleanor about ten types of crazy in that time; but still, whenever she name-drops or shows off, Eleanor looks at her and the first thing she remembers isn’t annoyance, but rather a long drop from the sky and butterflies, always, in her stomach.
The two hundred and eighteenth time Eleanor meets Tahani, they are soulmates.
“This is your soulmate, Tahani,” says Michael, and Eleanor can’t help but stare. It’s not the fact that her soulmate’s a woman that’s phasing her, it’s the fact that her soulmate is so...tall. Honestly, Eleanor never expected she would end up with someone this tall.
Except, of course, that she hasn’t, because this isn’t her soulmate—it’s Other Eleanor’s soulmate. And to be honest, what with the clowns and the tiny house, Eleanor didn’t have a very high opinion of her doppelganger up till this point, but now? Yeah, she’s totally jealous now.
“Eleanor?” says Michael, and Eleanor realizes she’s been staring for way too long, so she unfreezes.
“Cool, bring it in, hot stuff!” she says, reaching out for Tahani, who accepts her hug. And, wow, she is a really good hugger. Eleanor kind of doesn’t want to let go.
“Well, excuse me, I have other people to attend to,” says Michael, and then he’s gone, leaving Eleanor and Tahani alone in the room together, which Eleanor is all kinds of unprepared for. Tahani pulls away and clears her throat, looking around at the tiny house with raised eyebrows.
“Well, this place is certainly...charming,” she says. “In its own...tiny little way…”
“Yeah, no, I hate it too,” says Eleanor. Tahani blinks.
“Sorry?”
Eleanor takes Tahani’s hands and holds them very tightly. “Listen, I can trust you, right? You’ll stand by me? Through anything?”
“Of course I will,” says Tahani, sounding bewildered. Eleanor assesses her face, but Tahani seems sincere.
“Promise me,” she says. “Say, ‘I promise I will never betray you for any reason.’ ”
“Eleanor, I promise I shall never turn my back on you for any reason,” says Tahani, squeezing her hands. Eleanor takes a deep breath, not breaking eye contact with her.
“Good,” she says. “Because I am not supposed to be here.”
∷
Attempt two hundred and eighteen ends two months and five days later, and when Eleanor finally realizes they’re in the Bad Place, part of her can’t help but be relieved. She’s not used to feeling this way about anyone—not used to caring this much about someone else—and when Michael snaps his fingers to erase their memories, she tells herself it’s a good thing in the end, because she’s half in love with Tahani already, and that can only lead to disaster.
The three hundred and fifty-seventh time Eleanor meets Tahani, she is covered in lasagna.
How the lasagna got on Tahani, Eleanor isn’t quite sure. All she knows is that she heard sniffles coming from behind the restaurant, and went around back to find a totally gorgeous woman plastered with pasta and crying quietly into her hands. Now, Normal Eleanor would probably have pretended she hadn’t seen and gone back the way she came, but Ethics Student Eleanor heaves a sigh and ventures over. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
The woman looks up. Even red-eyed from the tears, she’s unfairly pretty. “Please go away,” she says. “This is too humiliating already.”
“It can’t be that bad,” Eleanor says, trying to be comforting. “If I had a dollar for every time I left a restaurant wearing most of my meal, I’d have at least seven dollars.”
“That’s an oddly specific amount,” says the woman, drying her eyes. Eleanor shrugs.
“My life is full of oddly specific stories,” she says. “See? I have it worse than you.”
“I don’t think so,” says the woman. “I mean, you didn’t have a meltdown in the Good Place of all places and somehow knock over an entire cart of lasagna on yourself, did you?”
“Well, no…”
“There was lasagna on the floor. On the walls,” wails the woman. Eleanor pats her on the shoulder.
“Okay, so maybe you have me beat,” she says. “What happened?”
“My sister,” sighs the woman. “She isn’t even here and she still manages to ruin my life. Or my afterlife, as it were. Really, can people not take the hint that I don’t want to talk about her?” She glances at Eleanor. “I was in the middle of shouting that when I upset the lasagna cart. It was hugely embarrassing.”
“You know what? Don’t stress it,” says Eleanor. “This is the Good Place. No one’s going to judge you. Maybe you’ll even start a new fashion trend.” She plucks a noodle off the woman’s dress and sticks it to the front of her own shirt. “See? All the cool kids are doing it.”
Tahani gives her a watery smile. “I’m Tahani Al-Jamil, by the way.”
“Eleanor Shellstrop,” says Eleanor, shaking Tahani’s hand with a feeling of triumph. If all her good deeds are as easy as this, maybe being a better person won’t be as hard as she thought.
∷
Attempt three hundred and fifty-seven ends one month later. Her good deeds don’t get any easier, but talking to Tahani? Somehow, it always manages to make Eleanor feel like one day, she might actually belong here after all.
The five hundred and thirty-first time Eleanor meets Tahani, Micheal has decided to try something new.
So, when Eleanor steps out of his office, she immediately finds herself outfitted in a set of long gray robes. “This is a place of penance,” says Michael, in a deeply serious voice. “Of contemplation. Of...repentance.”
“Yes,” says Eleanor. “That...seems right for me.”
“Without a doubt,” says Michael. “Now, go. Ponder. Atone.”
“Mhmm,” says Eleanor, and gets the fork out of there as fast as she can. But there’s no escape—everywhere she goes, she’s beset by long lines of robed, marching figures, heads bowed and hands clasped. In practically no time Eleanor is ready to start screaming. Or breaking things. Or both, preferably at once.
“Will you join us?” says a voice from behind her, and Eleanor almost jumps out of her skin. The figure is a small, dark-skinned woman who looks way too into the whole deep-thoughts-and-slow-walking thing they’ve got going on. “Come forth and seek absolution.”
Please God no, Eleanor thinks, but, because she has no idea what will happen to her if she says that, she nods deeply instead and slides into the line. After just a few steps, someone treads on the back of her robes and Eleanor almost goes sprawling. Turning, she’s got an insult right on the tip of her tongue, but it dies when she makes eye contact with the person who tripped her.
“So sorry,” mutters the woman, who’s skyscraper tall and probably the only person in the world who could pull off these robes. “Still getting the hang of this...attire…”
“It’s nothing,” says Eleanor, but not before catching the look on the woman’s face as she lowers her eyes again. It’s the same look she’s been trying to keep off her own face ever since she arrived: a look that says, what the fork is this place?
“I’m Eleanor,” she hisses.
“Tahani.”
“So, this is weird, right?”
“Oh, thank you so much for saying that,” Tahani whispers back. “I was half-convinced I was still alive and having a bizarre sort of nightmare.”
“I know, I never thought of heaven this way at all,” Eleanor says. “I mean, I don’t think even really religious people pictured this. Well, probably some did, but…”
“Odd, isn’t it?” says Tahani. “And to think this is the Good Place!”
If this is the Good Place, Eleanor doesn’t even want to consider what the Bad Place looks like. It’s probably all fire and brimstone and classical Biblical hellscapes—if this is even Biblical, which Eleanor isn’t sure it is. She didn’t think Michael was sure either when she tried to press for details. Which is really very strange.
Unless…
∷
Attempt five hundred and thirty-one ends forty-two seconds later.
“Well, you knew that one wasn’t going to work,” says Vicky. “Unhelpful that they connected with each other so soon.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” says Michael. “They always seem to wind up doing that...”
The eight hundred and third time Eleanor meets Tahani, they are alive.
They are alive (again) and they are on Earth (it's been awhile) and they are participants of one study they know nothing about (same old) and one they (think) they do.
They are alive. Two hundred and eighty-six lifetimes ago they were dead, and they kissed at the Medium Place and decided to talk about it later and never got the chance.
Three hundred and two lifetimes ago they went stargazing and Tahani pretended to know all the constellations and Eleanor let her talk nonsense just to hear the sound of her voice.
Six hundred and seventy-nine lifetimes ago they held hands by accident boarding the train and didn’t let go until they absolutely had to, until the very last second they could.
Seven hundred and seventeen lifetimes ago she fell from the sky. Four hundred and forty-six lifetimes ago she stuck a piece of lasagna to the front of her shirt. Eight hundred and two lifetimes ago they met for the first time; one lifetime ago they met for almost the last.
Five hundred and eighty-five lifetimes ago, Tahani whispered to her under the covers in the dark. Would you have fallen for me if I weren’t your soulmate?
The answer is yes.
“Eleanor, meet the newest member of our ethical neuro-scientific study, Tahani Al-Jamil.”
“Hello, Eleanor. Delighted to meet you.”
“Al-Jamil. Oh, you're Kamilah's sister.”
The question is long forgotten.