The Dead Do Not Improve

by Jay Caspian Kang

  I’ve pictured myself killing him again and again, and sometimes it convinces me that I am sick, but mostly it convinces me that I am a citizen. I hope you can understand why.

  MY HAND STILL cradling Ellen’s hand, I tried to hold off another oncoming memory, but it rammed up against my ribs, insistent as a shark’s nose. Breathing in through my nostrils, I tried to feel drunker, and then, less drunk. Writers, for years, have been trying to figure out how to properly depict the fleeting, truncated, and always segmented nature of memory, but what about when it just up and crushes you straight in the sternum?

  Those mornings in the parking lot with my three friends, the Ronizm mornings: Seth Bloomberg picked me up at seven-twenty on the dot. Our precalculus class started at eight-ten, and the teacher, an obese fading blonde named Ms. Butler, who, as if to hold up a stop sign against our pity, was always telling stories about her accountant husband, strictly forbade tardiness. At the time, Seth and I carried around the proofs of our delinquency as our best offering to the outside world, but we both still agreed that it was probably important, or at least elite-bohemian, to get into a good college. It was only a fifteen-minute drive from my house to school, but there was the five minutes it took to roll a joint, the five minutes to slowly roll through the main avenue of my subdivision while smoking the joint, the eight to ten minutes it took for us to get breakfast sandwiches at the Wilco, and the ten or so minutes we spent in the school’s parking lot with our other two friends. Seth drove a safety-orange 1974 Volvo inherited from his dead grandmother, who had just used the car to shuttle back and forth from the one kosher grocery store over in Durham. The speakers were fragile and snapped irritably every time we tried to play anything with more than a teaspoon of bass. This was a problem. All we listened to back then was gangster rap. Looking back, I wonder if I might have missed out on part of the point of “Straight outta Compton,” The Chronic, or Doggystyle, because until I left high school, I had never heard those songs and albums, or any of the West Coast trunk bangers, with even a percentage of the required level of bass. Does “Fuck tha Police” ring less true if Cube’s voice gets all tinny because the only way you can turn up the volume is to crank up the treble?

  Whenever those ten minutes in the car were over, we’d sling our backpacks over both shoulders to differentiate ourselves from the Phish heads and lacrosse players, as if there was some need to do so, and trundle off to class.

  In precal, I sat between Heba Salaama and Paul Offen. Years later, Heba Salaama, better known to the greater student public as Heavy Salami, won a hundred thousand dollars on some network TV weight-loss show, but back before her dreams came true, in those pre-9/11 days when the last name Salaama was simply a curiosity, Heba was the terrifying, ethnically ambiguous girl who sat next to me in math, who kept telling me that I smelled like weed, who threatened to tell Ms. Butler if I didn’t let her copy last night’s homework. Paul Offen, our school’s lone autistic kid, complete with an old man’s gut, a greasy maw of black, thick hair, and a beard of pimples whose size and brightness were all the evidence we needed to prove God’s great indifference, sat to my left. All of us who thought we were good and openhearted funneled our piteous love into Paul Offen. Girls were forever buttoning up his polo shirts to cover up his wiry black chest hairs and the sad paleness of his tits. The kids of Chapel Hill’s noblest class—the beautiful interrelated kids whose parents operated on hearts and ran artists’ retreats—were always driving off campus with Paul Offen riding shotgun, oblivious to how much we all secretly hated him for taking up such a coveted space.

  Everyone rationalized God’s cruelty by trumpeting up Paul Offen’s abilities in all things math. Paul Offen, they said, had been a chess prodigy who had gone off the rails. That was what had made him autistic. Paul Offen was only in Precalculus and not BC Calculus because Mr. Thomas, the effete, dandruff-speckled head of the math department, was prejudiced. The truth, of course, was that Paul Offen was not good at math and the only reason why he passed precal was that whenever we had a test and Ms. Butler would retire behind her desk to think fondly of her husband and his hefty load of account books and calculators, she would stare at the thick-necked and charming lacrosse dudes who were taking Precalculus for their second, third time. Had she bothered to watch the row with the big Arab girl, the melon-headed Asian whose eyes were always squintier and bloodshot, and the autistic kid, she would have seen two unabashed sets of eyes planted firmly on my paper. And had Ms. Butler taught trigonometry the semester before or Algebra II before that, and if she had been the sort of louse who simply cannot gloss over God’s apparent levity, then she would have known what only I knew, that Paul Offen’s math genius was always in lockstep with my own. Over four straight semesters, he and I got everything right and wrong together. I think Mr. Thomas might have known because after passing back yet another test that Paul Offen and I had seen eye to eye on, he asked me to stay after class. Taking off his glasses to wipe away some of the dandruff that was always storming over his head, he asked me if I minded answering an awkward question. I have no idea what sort of look was on my face, but it must have been awful, because Mr. Thomas just sighed and told me I could go to lunch, and nobody ever spoke of it again.

  Paul Offen, for his part, won the math award for our senior year. In the well-tended section of my memories, I can still remember the academic awards ceremony: the stifling heat in the gym, how it flushed the bare legs of the cheerleaders into a radiant pink, the line of teachers in modified short-sleeved black gowns, which, on account of a budget crisis, looked as if they had been made out of modified garment bags, the clatter of brass and the dull pound of the bass drum as the band shifted about in the bleachers, the hard-screwed scorn on the faces of those who were to be honored as they awaited the jeers of the mob. In earlier years, they had always ended with the English awards, but this year, because Paul Offen was being honored, the math award had been moved to the anchor position. I sat up in the bleachers by myself and watched as my Jewish friends all took their awards and quickly scuttled off stage. When Mr. Thomas walked up to the stage, the crowd fell into a hush. All you could hear were the nasty shushes from all the bighearted girls. Mr. Thomas said something about grace and diamonds in the rough, and we all grimaced, but when he finally announced Paul Offen’s name, the crowd leaped to its feet, the band blew out “St. Thomas,” and the gym was filled with thunderous applause. Paul Offen waddled across the stage and stood stiffly as Mr. Thomas hugged him and handed him his reward: a protractor planted on a slate mount. He looked up at us through his greasy glasses and the hedge of his thick, unruly bangs, and nothing on his face registered that this was a moment any different from any other in his life.

  For years, for me, the deep-sea trough, point bottom of human sadness, existence, even, was Paul Offen not being good at math. I did not begrudge him for cheating off me, nor did I care about the math award, or even the sham of his reception. Rather, it upset me to know that the will of an entire town, all meshed together to force God’s equalizing hand, could not actually make Paul Offen good at math, and, instead, it had been the stupidest and most typical of scenarios that had validated his offering to us all. Paul Offen had cheated off the Asian kid. The next year, as I was trooping around from rave to rave with Hugh, trying to kill myself in the ugliest way possible, I would sometimes stare out at the groups of kids screeching and blissfully engaging in chemical bondage and suddenly be back in that gym with the same heat, the same flushed cheerleading thighs, the same efforted and brutal love. A silly slogan would flit through my head—“It is never not Paul Offen.”

  Forty years after the Sumer of Love, I moved to San Francisco, because, among other things, of the Summer of Love. There was a girl back in New York who would never forgive me. And another in Boston. Both girls were of the caretaking type, and when they saw someone whose roots had been blasted up out of the ground, they tried their best to pat back down the dirt. What the Baby Molester’s sister said about San Francisco
is true—the worst have scraped out the mantle of the best and wear it around as something real. It takes no genius to see that. But I moved to San Francisco because the masquerade of kindly gestures is, at least, kind. And it remains kind. And all the people who would sit back and comment on the garishness of the costumes, the hollowness of the dialogue, the lack of divine conviction, well, all those people are either dead or fifteen years old.

  11. When the funeral finally broke up around dusk, what was left of the crowd stumbled back down the hill, snapping heels, rolling drums, giggling at misfortune. I was hammered. From its crest, the hill looked like a soft green slide. A few of the girls began tumbling down. All those surgically enhanced curves bouncing or not bouncing on their way to the street. I revved back, ready to launch myself after them, but then I saw Ellen’s outstretched hand, palm turned up, waiting for me to accompany her down the hill.

  How were we going to get back to San Francisco? Officer Bar Davis’s squad car was gone. Ellen called the cab company, but they said it would be half an hour before anyone could get down to Colma. The funeral goers were piling into a fleet of unmarked white vans, and just as I was about to head over to ask if they had any room, a black limo pulled up in front of us. The window rolled down, revealing Hofspaur’s cue ball head.

  “I imagine you have some questions. Come on inside. We’ll give you a lift back to the hotel.”

  The door of 172 Pacific was heavy, black. A Hot Topic’s worth of religious trinkets had been tacked up on the white frame. There was a mezuzah, a dreamcatcher with blue threads faded from the weather, a bronzish crucifix with a nappy-headed Jesus hanging from the nails. Just to the left of the doorbell, Finch swore he spotted a smudge of blood.

  After knocking, Finch went through a litany of questions, whose answers, he hoped, would help verify his sanity. What has happened today? Did these circumstances happen to you, or did you create these circumstances? Answer chronologically, please. Where the fuck is your gun?

  Before he could draft any answers, the door swung open.

  It was Bad Vibes Bob. Finch almost didn’t recognize him out of his wet suit, but there were the burlish, Popeye forearms, the marine chin, the bright blue eyes, which might have been even beautiful had they not been sold off, soul and all, into the slavery of scorn. For a moment, the two men stared at one another in the doorway. Finch, poker-faced, coppish; Bad Vibes Bob seething, but not with anything more than the usual bad vibes.

  Bad Vibes Bob broke the silence. “What’s up, dude.”

  “Can I talk to you?”

  “Yeah.” Bad Vibes Bob turned his back and slouched off into the dark foyer. Over his shoulder, he said, “Come on in. We were wondering when you guys would show up.”

  172 Pacific was in dire need of a woman’s touch. Finch felt his nose wrinkling at the bare white walls, the cracked cornices and moldings, the scatter of empties, loose pretzels, the bags and fry containers from Burger King, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Carl’s Jr.

  Finch muttered, “Where is there a Wendy’s in this city?”

  Bad Vibes said, “Daly City. On the way back from Lindy.”

  “You surf Lindy now?”

  “I did three weeks ago. South winds.”

  “You’re going all soft on us, Bob.”

  In the kitchen, a pyramid of pizza boxes was stacked up on the island. Everything smelled like trash after a heavy rain. Through some unseen speaker, Finch heard the crescendoing chorus of “Take on Me.” The doors of the cabinets had all been ripped off. An army of plastic figurines, most still in their original boxes, stared down from the shelves. Finch could feel their menace. At the back of the kitchen, at a table crammed with CD cases and computer monitors, sat the fattest man Finch had ever seen in his life. Some striped, yellow thing sat atop his mountainous gut. The fat man was stroking this thing’s head, but his attention was riveted on the screens. He did not look up when Finch and Bad Vibes Bob entered the kitchen, nor did he look up when the yellow thing hopped off his gut and scampered over to Bad Vibes Bob. Only when “Take on Me” finally wound itself out did the fat man look up at Finch with two unblinking and noncommittal troll eyes, staring through Coke-bottle glasses. The glare from the monitor contoured the whorls of grease on the lenses, the matting of sweat on his forehead, and the two-day growth on his chin, sparse and black.

  Finch regretted not bringing his gun to the party. The fat man fanned out his monitors invitingly and said, “Hello. Welcome, Inspector Finch. We have something to show you.”

  That was when Heather stepped into the kitchen. With Finch’s gun, of course.

  Before Finch could envision what might go down, Heather just up and fired.

  GOOD-TIME SLIM, UNCLE DOOBIE,

  AND THE GREAT FRISCO FREAK-OUT

  1. The limo was a relic. The champagne glasses were from the Gordon Gekko collection, the mini-TV in the corner looked as if it should be ticking off skyrocketing stock quotes for Wang Computers. I felt a bit embarrassed for us all, driving around in this elongated heap of anachronisms. But a limo is still a limo, I guess.

  When we turned onto the highway, Hofspaur hit a button and the glass partition slid down, revealing the same short-cropped, blond head of hair we had seen from the backseat of Officer Bar Davis’s squad car.

  She turned around and winced.

  Hofspaur said, “You two have already met Field Agent Bernstein.”

  Ellen coughed. Me, I was too drunk. Field Agent Bernstein, née Officer Bar Davis, jerked the wheel, swerving the limo through two lanes of traffic, onto the exit ramp for the 1 South. “We have to be careful that we’re not followed.” Hofspaur explained, “You two are in some danger, and it’s paramount we reach a safe space. From here on out, please maintain radio silence. Cell phones off.”

  We drove down the hill toward Pacifica through a bank head of thick, gray fog. In the parking lot of a McDonald’s, Field Agent Bernstein herded us out of the limo and into a green Toyota Corolla. We drove around on the surface streets, passing by squat, efficient houses whose bright colors and well-tended lawns couldn’t quite ward off the fog’s cold grip. At the corner of some street and another, a cavalry of teenage kids rode by on BMX bikes that had been rigged up with surfboard racks. Their wet suits were draped, like black flags, over their handlebars. We pulled up in front of a nondescript pink house and watched as the fog slowly erased their retreating forms.

  Field Agent Bernstein got out of the car and started walking up toward the pink house. Hofspaur said, “Come along.”

  We did, although now that I think about it, I have no idea why.

  FOR THE ENTIRETY of our silent drive down the 1, the same two scenes kept running through my head. In the first, I was dying somewhere squalid with a bullet in my gut. As I gasped for air and muttered some meaningful stuff, Ellen’s face would hover over me like some radiant, teary planet. She would press her finger to my lips and say, “I have to say something,” and then confess, earnestly, that she was a double agent working for someone or the other. “But,” she would say as I was gathering up my last breath, “somewhere along the way, I fell in love and I’m sorry.”

  In the second scenario, Ellen lies dying on some squalid floor and I am the one hovering like some radiant, teary planet, but this time, when she makes her gasping, tortured confession, she reveals her pregnancy.

  I know it was ridiculous, but try to understand, it had just dawned on me that I barely knew this girl. If Bar Davis was not Bar Davis and our danger was not danger, wasn’t it also possible that Ellen was not Ellen? But there was nothing to do. I took her wrist and led her into the pink house.

  2. Inside, the furniture was old. The television was huge. The photos stared out from thick bronze frames. An antique foggy mirror hung from its mount—all the evidence of an old woman who, from time to time, receives gifts from her offspring. Bar Davis was seated on a couch next to Hofspaur, still grimacing, but it was more of a grimace of soft concern, the way a dog lover will grimace as he clips the toe
nails of his beloved golden. She waved toward a yellow cretonne settee and said, “Please. Sit down and listen.

  “As Miles alluded to before, I have not been completely forthright about my identity, so allow me to reintroduce myself. My name is Tovah Bernstein of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Recently, I have come across some information that should be concerning to both of you, but especially Mister Kim. Without going into unnecessary detail, Mr. Kim, we have reason to believe that members of the San Francisco Police Department, acting under the command of an executive at a large Internet security company, have enacted a plot to frame you for the murders of your former neighbor, Miss Dolores Stone, and your former colleague, Mister William Curren.

  “Last night, however, as you might have heard on the news, a letter was received from a group calling themselves the Brownstone Knights. The letter was mostly incomprehensible, but thanks to the efforts of Inspector James Kim, the origin of the Brownstone Knights was quickly traced back to the writings of Cho Seung-Hui.

  “The confluence of the fact that you were the only person connected to both victims and your own peculiar background, which includes both Korean heritage and a laundry list of published short stories, all of which, I might add, exhibit a fascination with guns, gang culture, physical abuse, and violence—”