Me & Death Read online

  “You sure this isn’t a dream?” I said. “I’m flying.”

  “Do you often fly in dreams, Jim?”

  “Sure. Don’t you?” I laughed at myself. What a dummy. “ ’Course you fly in dreams. You’re in this one of mine.”

  “This isn’t a dream,” she said with a sigh. “I only wish it were.”

  What a Gloomy Gladys.

  I wondered how she died. She wasn’t that old. No wrinkles. Her hair was gray, but that was because she was a ghost – it’d be dark if she were alive. Her skin was midway between light and dark. Her gray hand was cleaner than mine. Like a teacher’s hand. Polish on the nails.

  We slowed to a halt, hovering like bugs or helicopters. I could feel her disapproving of me. I’m used to that – most people disapprove of me. Teachers, store owners, streetcar drivers. My sister. I’m used to it, but I don’t like it. I opened my mouth to tell her to shut up when I noticed a jet flying right at us.

  From the ground, jets look like they’re taking their time, but up close they really move. This one had been a speck on the horizon a few seconds ago, and now it filled the sky. As it roared beneath us, I saw into the cockpit. Two guys in shirtsleeves, one of them fiddling with a dial, the other one drinking coffee. They didn’t see us, but we must have made some kind of turbulence because the plane shuddered as it went by and the guy spilled his coffee. I laughed. The plane sped away, vanishing as quickly as it had appeared.

  Denise made a fist with her free hand and began swinging it in front of her. Blind, flailing punches.

  “What are you doing?”

  She didn’t answer my question. Below us, the wind drove one puffy white cloud into another one. They looked like two billiard balls. When they hit, I half expected the target cloud to move off at a ninety-degree angle, like a billiard ball would. Didn’t happen. They came together to make one rounded cloud with a point at the top, like a big white teardrop. The horizon bent away into the distance.

  Denise was still punching the air. “Come on. I know it’s around here somewhere,” she said, a hint of exasperation in her voice.

  “What is?”

  Her left fist made a hollow knocking sound.

  “This.” She felt around and grabbed a piece of sky. I didn’t know how – it was all blue to me. But she found a piece to grab on to and pulled. There was a creaking sound, and a door-sized section of blue opened in front of us.

  “Welcome to the Jordan Arms,” she said gloomily.

  She pulled me through the door in the sky and shut it behind us.

  CHAPTER 5

  What a dump. Reminded me of the Edgewater Hotel, down at the foot of Roncy. My ma used to fall asleep in the bar there, and I’d have to walk her home. This place was even worse than the Edge, though – dimmer, shabbier, dustier, staler. And completely colorless. From cobwebbed ceiling to sticky floor, the Jordan Arms and everyone in it were shades of black and white and gray. I felt like I was in an old movie.

  A gray couple sitting on a rickety couch with their hands in their laps stared at me. So did the gray guy picking his teeth, leaning against a pillar.

  I took a deep breath and let it out. There’s a moment when you accept the logic of your dream and it ceases to be scary. This is your world, for now. Here are your friends, and enemies. This is your job. So Jordan Arms was like my life, only uglier.

  Fair enough.

  I followed Denise to the front desk with my right hand clamped under my armpit to warm it up. The granny behind the desk looked familiar. Maybe because she wore a dark kerchief. I saw a lot of women like her on Roncy. They were usually shaking a cane at me because I was making a noise or a mess. Raf called them all baba – his word for granny.

  Her name tag read, Orlanda.

  “This is Jim, from Garden Avenue,” said Denise. “He’s here for the day. He’ll be going back.”

  “I know who he is.” Orlanda pulled her sweater around her bony shoulders and split her face in a frown of disapproval. Dentures like tombstones.

  She made me sign the register and handed me a plastic day pass.

  “Not that you need it,” she said.

  I knew what she meant. The hotel may have been black and white, but I was in color – I guess because I wasn’t dead yet. In my dragon shirt and blue jeans, I stood out like a searchlight.

  I put the pass in my pocket.

  The old couple from the couch tottered over. He didn’t want to come, but she pulled him along. She had a nose like a parrot’s beak. Pretty Polly, only she wasn’t pretty at all. She pointed at my shirt.

  “Red,” she said miserably. Like it was the saddest thing in the world that my shirt was red.

  “Yeah.”

  She smelled like old people – wool and liniment and that gasoline reek that seems to come from the flaps and folds of dead skin.

  Her man didn’t have a beard exactly but a few whiskers curled over the bottom half of his chin, hiding its retreat.

  He wasn’t sad, like Polly. He was scared. I knew the look. Reminded me of Lloyd. He was sweating with fear, this guy. Made me mad.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I snapped at him.

  He whimpered, turned away.

  I stepped toward him. Ugly old badger, I’d punch him in the throat.

  Denise leapt between us.

  “No,” she said.

  “What the –”

  She pushed me backward, both hands on my chest like what’s-her-name from Seinfeld. Man, she had cold hands! “Don’t be such a jerk, Jim,” she said. “What in heaven’s name do you want to fight a Grave Walker for? What’s the point?”

  “He needs a lesson! He …” I stopped. “Grave Walker? What do you mean?”

  “He’s a Grave Walker. Like I’m a Mourner. No point in fighting me either. You can’t beat a ghost, Jim.”

  “Right! He’s a ghost. You’re not real. You’re a ghost, aren’t you?” I called after the old man. But he and Polly were moving away.

  “I showed him,” I said.

  “You’ve got a lot of learning to do,” said Denise sadly.

  “You ever thought of wearing gloves?”

  We went up the wide staircase to the second floor. A threadbare carpet stretched into the distance. Through an archway I saw an ice maker, and a vending machine, and the guy who had been picking his teeth downstairs. He gaped at me, wide-eyed, toothpick hanging from his lower lip, a package of jelly beans in his hand.

  I wondered what gray jelly beans would taste like.

  Next door down said, GAMES. We went in. The room was teeny – no bigger than my bedroom at home. Inside was a card table and chairs, and a TV with a treadmill in front of it.

  Looked like we were the only ones who had been here in a while. Dust coated everything like icing.

  Denise told me to get on the treadmill.

  “No,” I said.

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Why should I?” I said. “I don’t want to run on a stupid treadmill. I want to watch TV.”

  “You can watch TV while you are on the treadmill,” she said.

  I got the remote from on top of the TV, dragged over a chair from the card table, and sat down. “No,” I said firmly.

  I wondered what she’d do now. I wasn’t fighting her, exactly. I was just being decisive. Back home, Ma would walk away shaking her head when I acted like this. I didn’t try it often with Cassie because she was so unpredictable. (One time she asked me to save her some Frosted Flakes, but I poured them all into my bowl anyway. She got right up from the table, went to the store, bought another box of cereal, and emptied the whole thing onto my bed, along with the rest of the bag of milk.)

  Denise sighed and put her hands on her hips. “Why do you continue behaving like a piece of crap, Jim?”

  “Hey!”

  “You must be one of the very stupidest people I have ever met. This experience – this visit to the Jordan Arms – is a one-in-a-million chance, Jim. Don’t throw it away. Pay attention right he
re, right now. You will see the chains that tie you to Earth while you still have time to free yourself from them. You’re ripping up a winning lottery ticket. That’s how stupid you are. Didn’t Tadeusz explain things to you? He’s worried about you – he says you behave almost as badly as he did at your age.”

  “You’re the stupid one,” I said. “You’re the ghost. Not me.”

  Denise put her hands up to her head. I had a teacher who did that just before he sent me to the principal’s office.

  “I was stupid, all right,” she said. “But I’m not now. I would give anything – anything except the life of my child – to have had your chance today, Jim. To see where I was going wrong while I could still change it. This is a preview of your existence after your die. Do you wish to spend forever here? Forever?”

  The gray, the dust, the unbroken circle of quiet pain.

  “ ’Course not,” I said. “Who’d want to live in this dump? But I don’t have to. That’s the whole point. I’m here visiting, right? I’m not going to die. I’ll wake up in a hospital. Oh, and by the way – Tadeusz used to be cool, but now that he’d dead he’s acting real lame.”

  I pointed the remote at the TV and pushed the power button. The TV came on – in color, which was a relief – but there was something wrong with it. The picture was frozen. I pressed the other buttons. The scene didn’t change. Looked like part of an old movie, two little kids in an upstairs hall. Grainy film. But –

  “Hey!”

  I stood up, went closer. “Hey, I know where that is.”

  Get this: the movie was of my place. I recognized the upstairs hall. Our wallpaper was cleaner in the movie, and the railing was fixed, but it was home. The girl looked familiar too. The baby looked like any baby. Grubbier than usual, maybe. Shirt, diaper, feet. The girl wore a striped skirt and sandals, looked like she was in kindergarten. She glared at the baby.

  “That’s Cassie!” I pointed at the screen. “Isn’t it? And that’s the upstairs at our house. There’s the bathroom at the end, with no door handle. What a yuck. I’m right, aren’t I? That’s my sister.”

  “That’s her,” said Denise. “Twelve years ago.”

  “She was a freaky-looking little kid, wasn’t she? Who’s the baby?”

  Denise’s voice came in a whisper. “That’s you.”

  Oh.

  CHAPTER 6

  There aren’t any family pictures in our house. I’d never seen myself as a baby – still haven’t, come to think of it, except this once. I stared at the screen, couldn’t get over it. Me. And do you know what I was doing? Smiling. Me. Smiling like a bastard because I could walk. What a stupid goof. Looking at myself, I felt a lump in my chest, like when you have to burp. I tried working the remote again. None of the buttons did anything. Piece of junk.

  “Want to watch the show?” asked Denise from behind me.

  I nodded.

  “Maybe the TV will work if you get on the treadmill,” she said.

  I shot her a look. Her face was blank.

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  I got on, pressed a button, and found myself walking to keep from falling backward. The movie started slow and uneven. There were pauses. It didn’t look natural at all. It was like I was reading the film, not watching it.

  INT. HALLWAY – DAY.

  JIM (2) totters toward his sister, CASSIE (6). He

  beams at her, toothless. She glares back at him.

  JIM

  Gah! Gah!

  CASSIE

  Do you see the ball, Jim?

  JIM

  Gah.

  I walked faster, and faster, and finally broke into a run, swinging my arms to keep my balance. The movie picked up too, until it was playing at regular speed.

  “How is this happening?” I nodded at the screen. “Where’s the camera?”

  “There is no camera,” said Denise. “This is your past. You’re lying in the middle of Roncesvalles Avenue right now, with a subdural hematoma.”

  Oh, yeah.

  I felt the baby’s feelings as my own. When he staggered forward on the screen, I felt proud of myself. When he fell, I was surprised too. I ran harder, focusing on the screen, as if my effort could help the poor baby, struggling to pick himself up.

  “Good!” Denise’s voice came from a long way off.

  The TV picture got bigger, clearer, closer. It filled my vision. For a second, it was like I was inside the set, looking back at the dusty games room. Then I found myself in a full-color world – my hall at home. I wasn’t on the treadmill anymore. I floated in the air in front of the bathroom door, staring down at the baby I used to be.

  I was inside the TV picture, a witness to my own past. Weird? Oh, yeah. And kind of awful. You ever wake up in the middle of the night and you’re not sure who you are? It was like that, only worse. I was two people here. And still panting from my exertion on the treadmill.

  “Well done, Jim.” Denise floated next to me. She was still in her hospital gown, still black and white and gray.

  “Shut … up.” That felt a little better.

  If it weren’t for recognizing the hallway and my sister, I’d swear that kid wasn’t me. I couldn’t remember ever hugging Cassie, but here he was with his hands around her waist and a big smile. When she dropped a red-and-yellow plastic ball, he hurried to get it for her. Who was this guy?

  Cassie took the ball and pushed him away so that he fell back on his diaper. Still smiling. She got this cunning look on her face.

  Jim, she whispered. Oh, Jim …

  I felt sick. I knew that look.

  The baby smiled when he heard his name. Gah gah, he said.

  Cassie held the ball up so that the baby could see it and tossed it gently over the railing. Steep wooden stairs on the other side. The ball bounced a couple of times on its way down to the front hall.

  Jim, she said, the way you talk to a dog. Go get the ball, Jim.

  He grinned, slapping his dirty bare feet on the wooden floor of the hall as he staggered along. He stopped at the top of the staircase.

  “No, Jim!” I shouted. “No!”

  “He can’t hear you.”

  Denise put her hand on my arm. Sympathetic. I shook it off.

  Twelve years ago. That’s why there wasn’t any mold on the wallpaper. The hall railing didn’t have a piece missing because it hadn’t been broken yet.

  Cassie pointed down the stairs. Get the ball, Jim. Go on.

  “Ma! Where are you?” I shouted.

  “She’s out. You know that.”

  I sighed.

  “You can’t do anything,” said Denise. “You can’t change what’s happened.”

  So we watched. Jim couldn’t decide whether to walk down the stairs or go backward on his hands and knees. Cassie decided for him, giving him a hard two-handed push. He landed on the fourth or fifth step, bounced once, and rolled to the bottom of the stairs. Watching, I felt a kind of shadow of what he was feeling. When he landed sideways on the step, my left side hurt. When his foot got caught briefly in the banister, my trick ankle hurt. When he banged into the wall, my head hurt.

  Baby Jim lay in a heap on the dusty linoleum. Cassie ran downstairs with a smile like broken glass. She bent low over him.

  Now you don’t work, Jim! she said. You don’t work, and Mommy will throw you out, like the video when it didn’t work. Then there will only be me.

  She did a dance, swinging her rake-handle body back and forth. Her long dark hair swished around her head. Only me! She sang. Only me.

  I tugged on Denise’s bare arm. “Why does Cassie hate Jim so much?”

  She shook her head.

  The lump was in my chest again, bigger than ever. “He – I – the baby liked her. He gave her hugs, and she …”

  Denise looked even sadder than usual. “Yes, I know.”

  Cassie kept dancing. It was hard to watch.

  “Why don’t I remember this?” I said. “Am I too young?”

  Denise and I floated downward. D
ust motes jumped and swirled below us, golden in the late-afternoon light.

  “You do remember, Jim,” she said. “That’s why we’re here. If you didn’t remember it, it couldn’t haunt you.”

  She pointed to the baby, crying feebly. “See, you’re awake.”

  I heard a bumping sound at the front door. A key fumbling in the lock. Cassie heard it too. She broke off her dance and ran upstairs. When she reached me and Denise, she stopped for a moment. We blocked her path, floating side by side, a little above floor level. Her bright blue eyes were full of fear.

  “She can’t see us,” said Denise.

  It seemed like she was aware of us, though. She raced past me with her head down.

  Ma half stumbled through the door, looking way younger than she does now. Scary to think what twelve years can do.

  Sorry I’m late! she called. I only stepped out for a moment, but this man kept buying me drinks.

  The closer she came, the smaller and farther away she got. Baby Jim was falling asleep. The scene got smaller and dimmer, and then I was back on the treadmill in the games room of the Jordan Arms, staring at a blank TV screen, and panting like I’d just run a marathon.

  CHAPTER 7

  Waking from a nightmare is a relief. But this was like waking from one dream into another. I was still a long way from my bed at home. My legs shook. I got off the treadmill like an old man climbing out of a roller coaster. I made it to a chair and sat down. I couldn’t get the images out of my head: the baby with the toothless smile, and the sister who hated him, and the mother who wasn’t there.

  “How do you feel, Jim?” asked Denise.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You must feel wretched. I know I would. There was so much sadness in that brief scene. So much that you lost.”

  “Are you talking about my ankle?” I said.

  “No.”

  “ ’Cause I’ve had a bad ankle as long as I can remember. I didn’t know I twisted it falling down those stairs. My ankle turned over when I was crossing Roncy just now. That’s why I fell.”