The Postmortal

by Drew Magary

  ◗ Newly coastal McComb, Mississippi, was recently named the best new party town in the nation. Expect Jackson to hold the title a decade from now. (Maxim)

  ◗ Tap-water fees at city restaurants are now regularly hitting the five-dollar mark. (Bruno Ili’s feed)

  ◗ Another day, another homeless person preying on someone I know. My friend Jeff had a burrito snatched right out of his hand as he was walking down Eighth Avenue. I’m told the contents of the burrito included carnitas. (Jeff ’s feed)

  ◗ City orphanages are now waiving all adoption fees in hopes of getting more people to adopt abandoned children. Maybe if that tax credit is still around . . . (also from Bruno Ili’s feed)

  ◗ My friend Juri’s cousin had his Jerusalem cheese shop bombed yesterday. He didn’t seem to care. This is what he told Juri: “Two thousand years from now, we’ll still all be here in the Middle East. I promise you. We’ll still be fighting, of course. We’ll still be killing each other. But this is what we do, you see? We’re very good at fighting and killing each other. We know how to do this without going overboard. The cure changes nothing. They’ll make more Arabs, and we’ll make more Jews. They can kill as many of us as they please. We’ll never die completely. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go clean Gorgonzola off the toilet.” (Juri’s feed)

  DATE MODIFIED:

  4/12/2031, 4:04 P.M.

  “This is good”

  Dad was slipping away faster than I had anticipated. Three weeks ago we had to arrange 24-7 nurse care. I came up all three weekends to help, despite pro-death extremist threats against the trains. Two days ago one of the nurses called and told me that my sister and I needed to come and stand round-the-clock vigil, to wait for the end. Alison and I rented a plug-in, went to Sonia’s apartment, grabbed little David, and drove up as fast as we could.

  As we pulled into the driveway, I saw the nurse through the big kitchen window. She was a slender black woman named Toni. It used to be that I’d arrive home and Dad would have food and drinks ready and waiting. That isn’t ever going to happen again. But Toni, who over the past few weeks had proven adept at making us feel comfortable in the face of unrelentingly grim circumstances, had put a small bowl of Goldfish and two glasses of water on the kitchen counter for us. I hugged her for that. Toni is quite used to being hugged by people.

  She led us over to Mom and Dad’s room, which is on the house’s main level. I say “Mom and Dad’s room” because it still very much feels that way. After my mom died, my dad preserved their room exactly as it was. He left her toiletries by the sink, sometimes replacing them if they started to look old or rusty. He cleaned the room on Tuesday mornings, just as she did. He kept the numerous throw pillows on the bed, even though he spent the majority of my mom’s life bitching about them. And he still slept on the left side of the bed, leaving her spot unoccupied. He said he tried sleeping spread-eagle once, but it just wasn’t comfortable.

  That was the driving force behind his upkeep of the room. It wasn’t to keep Mom’s spirit alive, though that was an unwitting side effect. It was because that’s what made him most comfortable : to live the same way he lived when she was still breathing. He liked the room that way and had no intention of ever changing it.

  Alison and I came into the room. Toni went to Dad’s bedside to awaken him. He had to get up for a moment to take his pain medication. I had seen him just a week ago, yet the change was drastic.

  He was on his side. A thin, blue waffle blanket stretched over his body from the neck down. He was curled up, his back hunched into a crescent and his legs bent at the knee, turning his entire body into the shape of a question mark. His torso looked slight, as if the lump under the blanket had been caused by a fold and nothing more substantial. His legs, once sturdy, had dissolved into the kind of spindly appendages you’d see on a newborn foal. Under the blanket, they gradually faded down to nothing. You couldn’t even make out his feet. It was like he was slowly being erased from the bottom up.

  Toni patted his shoulder, and he stirred. He smacked his lips. Little flecks of dried yellow mucus surrounded his mouth. Toni took a damp cloth and wiped some of them away. She turned to me.

  “He’s not producing a lot of saliva now,” she said, “so we have to keep his mouth moist.” She took out a small squirt bottle filled with water and drizzled some into his mouth. He recoiled, like a toddler tasting spinach for the first time. “His gums and sinuses are inflamed, so the water causes lots of irritation.”

  He looked up at Alison, David, and me. His face was noticeably thinner, making him look oddly younger—like a sickly person twenty years his junior. He tried to reach for his glasses, but he was too weak. Toni took them off the nightstand and gently slipped them on for him. He looked at Alison. His voice was very faint.

  “That’s a pretty lady,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Alison replied. She barely whispered the words to him, fearing anything louder would cause him to shatter into a thousand pieces.

  I took Dad’s hand. “We’re thinking about getting married,” I told him.

  “Good. That’s good. Where is your sister?”

  “She’s an hour behind us. She’ll be here soon.”

  “Okay. I can wait.”

  “Are you comfortable?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you happy?”

  He licked his lips. “Oh yes. This is good, John.”

  I placed David at the edge of the bed. The baby stared at Dad as if he were a new stuffed animal that he didn’t quite know if he liked or not. Dad said hello to him. David said “baaaaaaa” and looked up at me.

  He’s going to turn one soon. When I picture David, I can only see him as he is. I can’t summon an image of how he looked two months ago without consulting a photo. The memory of what he was is replaced all too easily by what’s directly in front of my face.

  I turned to Dad. I saw him as he was now: gaunt, frail, dying. I tried to envision his face four months earlier, a face so familiar to me that it may as well have been a monument. But I couldn’t picture it. I could only see the atrophying man before me. The cancer had wiped the old him—the real him—away entirely.

  Polly arrived. Alison took her boys and David out for pizza while we stayed at Dad’s bedside with Toni.

  My sister patted Dad on the shoulder delicately. “I’m here, Dad.”

  “Good.”

  “Can we get you anything?”

  “No. I’m fine. You’re all here. That’s plenty.”

  He let out an exhalation that lasted a minute, blowing his spirit out of his body. His fate was his own now. His eyes opened wide, the whites now a yolky color. He took both our hands and spit out his last words. “Thank you. This is good. This is good.”

  He lay back and let go.

  That was it. I sat there with Polly for forty minutes, still as the body in Dad’s bed. It’s a funny thing when someone you love dies. You spend all your time with them, caring for them. Then they die, and you’re left with nothing to do. Your obligation to them is fulfilled. There’s no more consoling or hand-holding to do. There’s just this gigantic, yawning space of free time, which feels at once liberating and unnatural.

  We heard the front door of the house open and Alison and the boys stepping back inside.

  Polly rushed to tell the kids. I went out into the family room and looked at Alison. David was sitting on the floor, chewing on a board book. She could tell from my eyes. She ran to me and buried her head in my chest. When we’d talked about marriage a few weeks back, I’d told her I was certain I could stay married to her forever. Yet there remained, deep in the back of my mind, the tiniest shred of doubt. It was that eternal male instinct recoiling from the idea of anything other than total sexual liberation. I had waited for Alison all this time. I had dreamed beyond my wildest hopes of the day that she would be mine. And now she was. She was mine. All mine. No one else’s. Forever, if I chose. Yet the little animal in my brain was dissatisfied even with that, still
yearning for blondes with impossible bodies and unknown motives. I wondered then if it would ever go away.

  It did. As Alison embraced me and my dad lay dead down the hall, that last vestige of irrational boyhood was extinguished. Gone. There was no doubt anymore. Everything I wanted was clear.

  Toni opened a bottle of wine and offered me a glass. I took it and sat down on the sofa in front of the TV. She picked up David.

  “You mind if I play with him?” she asked.

  “Not at all.”

  She wiped David’s mouth clean and pushed his nose in. He let out a joyous wail. He looked around at his surroundings and pushed off of her chest. He wanted to get down and explore everything. Grab everything. Stick it all in his little mouth to get a better feel. He turned and stared at me as only a baby can. Everything is a puzzle they’re trying to solve. Hope and terror are the same emotion.

  “He looks just like you,” she said.

  “Like his grandpa too.”

  “Well, he’s a cutie. Yes you are.”

  I gestured to my wine. “Would you like a glass?”

  “No no. I don’t drink. I’ve got grandkids waiting for me at home.”

  “Shut up. You’re a grandmother?”

  “I have three grandkids. And I’m due again at the end of January.”

  “That’s amazing. You are the youngest-looking grandma I’ve ever seen.”

  “And I’ll be the best-looking great-great-grandma you’ve ever seen. If there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s produce children that have children. The more the merrier, as far as I’m concerned. God gave me the energy to do it, so I’m gonna take advantage. I’m gonna make a family so big that it’s gonna need its own government. I told my husband I don’t want a family tree; I want a family rain forest. I’ve watched my kids raise their kids, and I’ll watch their kids raise their kids, and their kids raise their kids, and on and on and on. That’s the miracle.”

  “That sounds pretty solid.”

  I looked at Alison. David bounced on Toni’s knee and let out a squeal.

  DATE MODIFIED:

  5/24/2031, 3:08 A.M.

  Home Cure?

  This just broke on Pharmawire:

  Home Cure Ready Soon

  By Cady Rourke

  Test results for a “home version” of the cure for aging produced by pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer have been “massively successful,” according to an internal company memo. A single-injection version of the vector could be ready for the general public as soon as next year, possibly for under three hundred dollars.

  Until now the cure has been administered as an outpatient procedure that requires drawing blood, followed two weeks later by three painful injections. Pfizer’s drug, tested under the name Vectril, produced similar results with just one injection, with no prior blood work required.

  “This means you can now get a prescription, pick the vector up at the pharmacy, and do it yourself at home,” said an anonymous director at the company. “In the future, this is how everyone will get the cure.”

  Pfizer’s stock tripled this morning when news of the successful testing was confirmed.

  DATE MODIFIED:

  5/27/2031, 2:16 P.M.

  “Look at me”

  Alison took me out for beer and pizza after David’s birthday party, and it was the first time since Dad died that I’d found myself in a convivial mood. With enough beer poured straight down my gullet, I was able to actually interact with everything around me. I noticed the copper tops on the restaurant tables and the gruff Italian waitress (who was clearly either the owner of the joint or at least married to the owner) barking orders at the Mexican cooks in the back. I saw two other kids who were also having birthday parties. This was at nine at night. As a father, I did not approve.

  I ordered a bourbon. “I always used to do this,” I told Alison.

  “Drink bourbon? I don’t remember you stopping at any point.”

  “No, I always used to order it at the tail end of a meal. My dad would sometimes come into town and buy me dinner. Whenever he did, I’d order a bourbon at the end of the meal, and he’d roll his eyes because he thought I was being Mr. Fancy Pants. Then the drink would come and he’d say, ‘What bourbon is that? I better have a taste.’ Then he’d drink half the glass. He’d never order one for himself. He always preferred to have the pleasure of drinking half of mine and giving me crap for ordering it. He was a devious old man.”

  “Well, now I have to drink half of yours when it arrives.”

  We lingered there for a bit while we shared the drink. I felt that gratifying warm burn in my throat after the last sip. I got up, took Alison’s hand, and escorted her out of the restaurant and back onto the street. We crossed over to East End Avenue and loitered a little bit more, along the railing overlooking the river. A handful of night joggers and drunken prep schoolers passed behind us. I was drunk myself and spent our moment there happily not giving a shit about anything. We turned and began walking back to First Avenue. The area had cleared. No one was around—a rare occurrence.

  I noticed a solitary figure walking down the street with his back to us. He was bald. As we got closer, I could make out his green scalp.

  “It’s a Greenie,” I said.

  “Let’s just turn around.”

  I refused. The beer had made me rambunctious. “HEY, ASSHOLE!”

  The Greenie turned and saw me. He wasn’t a random one. If I had picked him out of a lineup, I wouldn’t have been lying. He pulled up the corners of his mouth and flashed his big shark whites. “How you doing, birthday boy?”

  Since the attack, I’d always slip the Texan’s gun into the back of my waistband whenever I’d leave the apartment at night, careful to hide it from Alison. She helped keep my fear partially shrouded, but the feel of the Texan’s gun served to eliminate it entirely. It replaced fear with a compulsive desire for correction. Sometimes when I was walking on the street at night, I’d reach back and clandestinely wrap my hands around it. Grasp it, squeeze it, daydream about having the chance to take it out and exact a toll on those who would fuck with me. It was a joyful kind of paranoia, in which you believe they’re coming to get you, and you very much look forward to them trying.

  The Greenie flashed a knife. I took out the Texan’s gun. It was the first time Alison was made aware of its existence. “John, don’t.”

  The troll shifted his eyes to her. “She got a birthday too?”

  I broke. Immediately, I burst into a full sprint after him. He turned tail and ran away from me. Alison tried to keep up with me, to hold me back. I felt the grip of the pistol sweetly nuzzle against my fingers as I drew it upward. The Greenie turned into a small alley between two houses, stumbled on an uneven slab of pavement, and fell sharply to the ground, the knife flying out of his hand and hopscotching well out of reach.

  I pounced, jumping on the troll and pressing his bald head into the little raised pebbles in the asphalt. I pressed the gun to his temple. “How’s this? Is this funny to you?”

  “You don’t have the balls,” he said.

  “Look at me. Look at me!”

  He turned his head and faced me fully, still smiling. I hated that smile. Hated it, hated it, hated it. So I decided to destroy it. I turned the gun in my hand and brought the butt down right through his big, stupid veneers. They shattered on impact, like china falling out of a cabinet. He recoiled in pain, blood gushing from the corners of his mouth. I grabbed his jaw and twisted his face back in my direction, bringing the butt down again and again, breaking every last tooth I could find inside his hideous mouth. I broke and I bashed. I unleashed every hateful whirlwind that had ever gusted up inside my being. Whip, whip, whip. In no time his smile was gone. I grinned at him, his blood spattered across my face and oozing between my fingers. I kept grinning, trying to impress on him the absolute drunken joy I felt in crushing his face.

  “If I ever see you again,” I told him, “I’ll cut out your eyes and shoot off your fucking ears.”


  He fell unconscious. I let his head roll back on its side, cheek to cheek with the ground. I turned to Alison. I had forgotten to stop smiling. She saw it. She saw the demented joy. She stepped back away from me. And back. And back.

  “Alison.”

  Another step back. Then another. I tried to get closer to her. She kept backing away, in a daze. She backed to the end of the sidewalk, farther and farther out of my reach.

  “Alison, please. Alison.”

  The gap between us grew ever larger. She didn’t hear the truck coming down the street. She never saw it in her periphery as she stepped down from the curb and into its speeding path. She never turned to look as it plowed decisively through her in a single effortless sweep. It all happened in a blinding shot, as if meticulously choreographed.

  I ran to her and cradled her body. She was a loose bag of bones, like holding my son when he was first born. I could feel assorted parts inside her, but I couldn’t feel any structure to them. I turned her head so we could be face-to-face, but it was too late for any kind of touching goodbye. She was gone. My heart made a fist. I looked to the alleyway. The gun lay there. The troll was gone. I looked down the street and saw his head disappearing again into the darkness, slowly shrinking like the blip of an old television set when it’s been turned off.

  The sirens cruised into my skull and bounced around dreamily, like a conversation you overhear when you’re half-asleep. I saw paramedics rushing toward us. They tried to pry Alison from my arms, but I instinctively refused to surrender her. I had waited so long for her to be in my grasp. I pressed against her, trying to absorb her. They took her away. The best part of my life is now over. A wisp of beautiful reality that I’ll spend the rest of eternity desperately trying to hold on to, as it floats away like a speck of dust in time’s ever-expanding black chasm. All that’s left of her is the feeling—the memory of finding her again and telling her I loved her and hearing, at long last, her tender reciprocation. I love you. I’ll love until there’s nothing left. That was the moment I should have perished, and not one second thereafter. All was right then. Nothing ever will be again.