The Ups and Downs of Being Dead

by M. R. Cornelius

  “She’s gorgeous,” he’d sighed. “Is she a model?”

  “Are you kidding?” the friend snorted. “Look at those breasts. They’re udders. And have you see her ass?”

  Yes, in fact, Robert had seen that luscious ass; had already imagined gripping it with both hands. The woman was a goddess.

  His friend shook her head. “She’s a wannabe. With that figure, she’ll never make the catwalk. My guess is she’s trying to make it onto some magazine editor’s couch.”

  Unfazed by his friend’s comments, Robert took the initiative and approached the blonde. He felt quite confident in his pin-striped jacket with the wide lapels, and his Elton John platform shoes.

  Sure enough, when the gorgeous blonde saw him, she thrust out her chest and gave him a coy smile. She didn’t bother with introductions.

  “Who are you with?” she asked.

  The question threw Robert off, but he hastily explained that he’d come to the party with an old friend.

  “No, silly.” Her eyelids fluttered over emerald-green eyes. “Are you with a retailer or a magazine?”

  Robert could still remember stretching up to appear taller, jutting his chin out to strike a pose as he informed the foxy lass that he was the owner of the Audrey’s clothing chain.

  She’d never heard of it.

  He explained that his stores sold designer fashions at affordable prices.

  “You mean knock-offs?” Her lush, full lips shrank into a snarl, and the gleam faded from her eyes as she scanned him up and down. “So, what does that make you? The Knock-off Gnome?”

  Gnome? He was a good three inches taller than her. If she hadn’t been wearing those killer stilettos, he’d have towered over her. And the way she dismissed him—quickly turning away as though she had inadvertently spoken to someone on the wait-staff—any other man would have felt like a fool. But Robert took her rejection as a challenge. What a putz.

  * * *

  Robert was just finishing a more upbeat version of meeting Amanda when Sam slowed at a small huddle of people at a bus stop.

  “Here we go,” he said. “Let’s practice catching a bus.”

  “Why bother?” Robert asked. “Didn’t you say I can just visualize where I want to go and be there?”

  Pinching his lips, Sam nodded. “Sure you can. But you’ve got a good long time to wait. If we’re lucky, technology will catch up in maybe seventy-five years. So, what’s the need in rushing from place to place?”

  “But taking cabs is a hassle,” Maggie said. “You don’t know where they’re going until someone flags one down. Buses have routes, and schedules. So they’re much more reliable.”

  Sam stepped in front of a heavy-set woman toting a red umbrella, her pudgy face pinched with impatience. Turning to Robert, Sam shot him a wry smile.

  “I do cut in line.”

  A city bus pulled up, and when the doors opened, Robert, Sam and Maggie boarded ahead of the woman and made their way to empty seats in the back.

  Robert glanced around the bus. “How can you tell if someone is dead? I mean, you two look the same as everyone else.”

  “That’s pretty simple.” Sam shouted, “Hey, you!”

  An old man sitting next to an elderly woman looked up. Both Maggie and Sam waved, but the old man just scowled and turned forward again.

  “How did you know?” Robert asked.

  “I didn’t.” Sam shrugged. “But if he wasn’t dead, he wouldn’t have heard me. Every now and then you catch someone eavesdropping on a conversation, or they make eye contact when you pass on the street.”

  The three of them settled onto one bench, although Robert noticed that he couldn’t really tell if he was sitting.

  “Do the living ever sense that we’re around?”

  “Every once in a while you get a tortured soul that puts off such a foul aura that the living can feel him,” Maggie said. “Maybe even see him.”

  Sam snorted his disbelief, but Maggie was adamant. “I saw a dead soul in New Orleans who was screaming and whirling around his brother like that Tasmanian devil in the cartoon. Evidently, the brother had been too drunk to drive, but he didn’t turn over his keys. He ended up crashing, and the dead man was pretty sore about it. The brother never knew he was there kicking up a storm, but a woman walking her little dog passed nearby. The pup backed right up onto the woman’s foot and piddled on her shoe.”

  “That doesn’t prove that other people can sense our presence,” Sam argued.

  “Okay, watch this.”

  Maggie drifted up the aisle until she came to a woman holding a large shopping bag on her lap. Planting her feet apart, Maggie rubbed her hands together, then flexed her fingers like she was about to play the piano. She placed both her palms on the woman’s cheeks and actually let them sink into her skin. For a few seconds, her hands worked the woman’s face like she was kneading bread dough. Then she jerked away. The woman’s cheek twitched.

  “Presto!” Maggie bowed at the waist.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Sam said. “How do we know she wouldn’t have twitched anyway?”

  “That was kind of impressive,” Robert said.

  As she sat back down, Maggie gave Sam a triumphant smirk. “Who hasn’t caught a sudden movement out of the corner of their eye, and credited it to a reflection or a shadow? And what about that itch between your shoulder blades that you just can’t reach to scratch? Maybe it’s someone you knew trying to get your attention.”

  Once the bus reached the heart of the city, Maggie stood. “Let’s practice some maneuvers, shall we?”

  Sam got to his feet, gave a tiny wave with his fingers, and simply vanished through the back of the bus.

  Robert gasped. “What happened?”

  “Oh, he’s just showing off.” Maggie motioned for Robert to position himself in front of the back doors on the bus. Once he was in place, Maggie told him to get off.

  “Aren’t we going to wait for the driver to stop?”

  “You can’t always depend on the bus or cab or train to stop where you’re going. So you just get off when you want.”

  Robert stared at the narrow bus doors. “Just pass through.”

  “That’s right.”

  He balked.

  “Oh, what?” Maggie chuckled, “Are you afraid you might scrape a knee, or get hit by a car?”

  The niggling comment grated on Robert. He wondered if her husband Joe really planned on coming back.

  Unwilling to be intimidated, Robert closed his eyes and charged forward. From behind, he heard the bus rumble away. He opened his eyes and found himself floating above the street.

  “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Maggie said.

  “Piece of cake, eh Robert?” Sam said as he jogged up to him. “Now let’s get back on.”

  Because no one was waiting at the stop, the next bus didn’t slow. Maggie and Robert stood out in the street, so that when the bus drove through them, they would automatically be on board. Sam stayed on the sidewalk, intending to finesse a side entry.

  The bus passed through Maggie and Robert. As the seats whizzed by, Robert watched Sam calmly step in from the side. But then the bus kept right on going and Robert found himself outside the back of the bus. He scowled as he watched it drive away.

  Sam and Maggie slipped out to join him in the street.

  “Don’t worry,” Maggie said. “We couldn’t do it the first time either.”

  “It’s kind of like those moving sidewalks at the airport,” Sam explained. “It takes a little practice to get on and off.”

  After Robert mastered boarding, and staying on a bus, they moved on to high-rise buildings.

  “I prefer to do things the same way I did when I was alive,” Maggie told Robert as they walked into the lobby of a ten-story office building. “So I ride the bus, I take the elevator if I can. It gives me a sense of normalcy.”

  “The problem is we can’t punch the elevator buttons,” Sam said. “So depending on your level of patience, it’s
usually easier to slip through the elevator doors.”

  “Or if you know where you’re going, you can go in and out the window,” Maggie said.

  A man in a nicely tailored suit waited at the elevator. Robert scanned the tapered lines of the jacket, the professional tie, the expensive shoes – probably Bruno Magli. Dressing like that for work was all over for Robert. There would be no more crisp white shirts, no pouring over ties, or buffing shoes. He was really going to miss slipping into a newly-tailored jacket for the first time, and inspecting the lines in front of the three-way mirror.

  Who knew what men would be wearing when he came back in seventy-five years. Dear God, he hoped it wasn’t some one-piece leotard, or a shapeless white robe.

  The man at the elevator paged through e-mails on his i-Phone. Robert totally understood how moments in time, even thirty seconds waiting for an elevator, were never wasted on idleness.

  “Why so glum, Robert?” Maggie asked. “Does he remind you of your former life?”

  “He sure does,” Robert said. “I spent nearly every waking hour on my business. Marketing, strategy meetings, business trips. What will I do now?”

  “Don’t worry,” Sam reassured him. “There’s so much to do, you’ll never miss your job.”

  “I doubt that,” Robert said.

  Panic washed over Robert again. Seventy-five years, maybe a hundred years of waiting, with nothing to do. No planes to catch, no conference calls. It felt like he’d been sentenced to life in prison.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “I need a drink,” Robert moaned.

  “Come on,” Maggie coaxed. “You’re taking this all wrong.”

  “No, I’m not,” he said. “The only thing I’ve truly enjoyed about my life was my business.”

  “That doesn’t say much about your family,” Maggie scolded.

  Slumping his shoulders, Robert stared at the numbers above the elevator light up as the car descended.

  “I just want to find the nearest bar and drink myself into a stupor.”

  “Getting sloshed never solved any problems.”

  Funny, that was the very same thing he’d told Amanda, the next time their paths crossed.

  It was nearly a year after Sherry McClintock’s post party. Robert had flown the red-eye into LaGuardia, and was nearly dozing in the backseat of a cab when the driver growled. Robert glanced out the window to see Amanda strut into some bar in Midtown. How pathetic, the way his heart had strained like a dog on a leash, wanting just to be near the woman. He’d thought of her a million times, even flipped through magazines on the off chance she might be in an advertisement. But he’d never been able to track her down. And then there she was. He’d swiveled around to get another look at her through the back window of the cab.

  He pounded the driver’s headrest and told him to stop, but as soon as the cab drove away, Robert had second thoughts. Surely, Amanda was meeting someone – a boyfriend? Other models? What if they all ridiculed him? He tortured himself with worst-case scenarios, including a drink tossed in his face, before he finally yanked the door open and walked in.

  The bar wasn’t at all what he’d expected, no glitzy lights or loud disco music. It’s only purpose was catering to drinkers, with a long bar along one side and booths down the other. There wasn’t even a jukebox, just a radio playing quietly beside the cash register.

  That late at night, most of the barflies were slumped over their drinks. A boozer near the front door slid off his stool and shuffled toward Amanda, who was perched on her own stool midway down the bar. The guy slowed when he got closer, but before he could even open his mouth, she snapped, “Get the fuck away from me.”

  She hadn’t even turned to see who it was. And she hadn’t glanced hopefully toward the door when Robert walked in.

  So maybe she wasn’t meeting anyone. More confused than confident, Robert took a stool three seats away from her, noting the shot glass clutched in her fingers. She tossed back the amber liquid like she was in a drinking contest. Before the booze had time to hit her belly, she was signaling for another.

  Once the bartender refilled her glass, he sauntered down to where Robert sat staring. Without taking his eyes off the woman, Robert ordered a Dewar’s on the rocks. The smirk on the bartender’s face challenged Robert to get farther than a “fuck you” from the bitch.

  He downed half his drink for courage, then braced an elbow on the bar and turned.

  “You know,” he said, “this might not be the best place for a lady to be seen drinking like that. Someone might get the wrong idea.”

  Why had he thought she might find him gallant, or charming?

  She stared straight ahead, checking him out in the filmy mirror behind the booze bottles. When she spoke, it was a loud, bust-your-balls brashness that everyone in the bar could hear.

  “Why do men think they can start up a conversation with a woman they’ve never met just because they’re in a bar?”

  Robert kept his voice low and calm. “Actually, we have met. Amanda Litrell – right?” He swirled his scotch across the ice cubes before taking another sip. “I was at Sherry McClintock’s after-show party.”

  The party certainly hadn’t been the social event of the season. With her short-lived career as fashion designer in the toilet, Sherry McClintock had scuttled off to Europe to fade into oblivion. But fade, she did not. Instead, she fell in with a jet-setting crowd on the Riviera, met the emir of some Middle Eastern country, and became the wife of one of the richest men in the world. They were undoubtedly the most sought-after guests at the most upscale events worldwide. And suddenly, people who boasted that they had attended her one and only show were semi-celebrities.

  With a slow turn of her head, Amanda looked down the bar at Robert, her eyes in a lazy half-mast. One eyebrow cocked up. Did she think he was lying?

  Her voice dropped to conversational level. “And who are you?”

  “Robert Malone.” He gripped his glass, preparing for a second humiliation. “I own the Audrey’s chain.”

  As expected, she snorted, rather unladylike, and shot her next Cuervo. “The king of cheap knock-offs. And what are you doing in New York?” The tequila caught up with her and she wobbled on her stool. “Trolling for more fashion ideas to rip off?”

  Robert stood, stretching his chest up and out. Do or die time. “Why don’t we move to a table where you’ll be more comfortable while you insult me?”

  Would she call him a gnome again? Was that when he’d get the drink in the face? Actually, she didn’t have a drink at the moment. He hid his fear behind a slight smile.

  “How did you ever come up with a name like Audrey’s anyway?” She staggered off her bar stool. “Seems like Robert’s Discount Mart would have been more appropriate.”

  She careened across the aisle and tumbled into a booth. Ever the gentleman, he blocked the view of her voluptuous bottom as she struggled to right herself.

  “My mother adored Audrey Hepburn,” Robert said once he slid into the booth across from her. “Unfortunately, the stores in our small town didn’t offer the kind of fashions my mother wanted. Neither did the Sears catalog.”

  Amanda sneered. “Maybe the pages with the good stuff were in the outhouse.”

  Robert leaned back and relaxed. The woman was a viper, no doubt about it, but he realized her insults were meant to hide her own insecurities. He took a moment to drink in the gold lame camisole with the cowl neckline that displayed her magnificent breasts; the flecks of purple in her cloisonné bracelet that complimented her fuchsia mini-skirt; her blond hair pulled into a tangled twist like she’d just been wrangling in the back seat of a car.

  “So, tell me,” Robert said. “When you headed out this evening in that divine creation, were you intent on castrating the first man you saw, or is this a spur-of-the-moment thing just for me?”

  “Are you always this sleazy?”

  Robert laughed. “Why am I sleazy? Because I think you’re gorgeous?”

  “No,
because you’re trying so hard to pick me up. You sound like every other barfly.”

  “Actually, I’m too busy, and too tired, to spend time hanging out in bars.” He turned to the bartender who was gaping at them as he rubbed circles on the bar with a rag. “Coffee?”

  The guy nodded and gave Robert a lurid wink. Thank God Amanda missed it.

  “Then what are you doing here?” she asked.

  Robert leaned forward and folded his hands on the table. “The truth? I was on my way to my hotel when I saw you. And I couldn’t believe my good fortune at running across you again. I guess I’m a glutton for punishment.”

  The bartender set two cups of coffee down, then pulled his bar rag out of his apron and took a swipe at the table, hoping to catch some of the conversation. Amanda did not oblige. She sat staring into her mug until he left. Then she raised her head and Robert saw big tears pooling in her eyes.

  “You remembered me from a year ago?” she whispered.

  “Are you kidding? How could any man forget you?”

  A renegade tear broke free and she quickly sopped it up with the corner of her cocktail napkin. Then she clenched her jaw. “Stop being nice to me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I just got treated like a piece of shit, and I’m not in the mood for some twerp like you trying to put the moves on me.”

  Robert blew the steam off his coffee before he took a sip. “What happened?”

  Her lips clamped tight to keep from trembling as she searched Robert’s face. What could she possibly be afraid of? That he might mock her?

  She inhaled deeply and blew out the breath. “I couldn’t get into Studio 54.”

  “What’s that? A talent agency?”

  The laugh she blurted out turned into a sob. “Where have you been? It’s like the hottest disco in Manhattan. In the world.”

  “Ah.” He nodded as if he understood. “And you didn’t have a reservation.”

  Again with the look of horror, the bitter attempt at a laugh. “You are such a moron. There’s no such thing as reservations. You wait in line for hours, and if the cretin at the door thinks he can hook up with you later in the bathrooms, he’ll let you in.”