by Rob Rosen
I grinned as we settled in, again side by side. “Thanks for the compliment? I mean, I’ve never been compared to a USB port before.”
He held my hand. There was a pause. “I…I know you’re not Voltan, Nord. It’s just…”
I squeezed his hand. “I know, Clark. I get it.”
He nuzzled in next to me. “You ever been in love before, Nord?”
“Before I died or after?”
He flinched. “Maybe, until this all, um, blows over, we forget that I’m sleeping with a dead guy, okay?”
Hard to forget. Impossible, in fact, since I was the dead guy in question, but I agreed just the same. “No,” I said. “Never been in love.” Was I now, though? I mean, I barely knew Max. Could I love him? What if he went poof? What if I did? Would we be separated until the end of time? The thought was terrifying at best. “I worked too hard, Clark. It was a small company. I wore a lot of hats. Sixty hours a week was the norm. On weekends, I ran errands, hung out with friends, tricked instead of dated, just to make life easier.” I chuckled. “FYI, it never got any easier. Or less lonely. And why am I telling you all this, anyway?”
“Makes us even.”
I looked his way. His hand was still in mine, which was comforting in a different sort of way than Max’s hand in mine, “Even for what?”
“You saw me suck my own prick. Dick for tat, sort of speak.”
“People would kill for a dick like yours, Clark.”
“Yeah, but they haven’t walked a mile in my Jockey shorts.”
I let go of his hand. I rolled over. I missed Max. I missed Arby’s, to a degree. I could feel the weight again, the weight of life. Stress was heavy. Worry was like gravity, always pushing you down—and for some, six feet under. I wanted to find my killer. I wanted to be back where I belonged, even if I didn’t quite know where that was.
“You have a plan, Nord?”
I nodded into the pillow. “We need to infiltrate, to get close to them, close without them knowing it. I think I know how to do that.”
“Think?”
My nod turned shrug. “Depends on how up to date your résumé is and how well we can fake mine.”
He laughed. “Life sure does have a funny way of taking a left turn every now and then.”
“Yep, Clark,” I said. “Tell me about it.”
Chapter 5
We flicked on the computer, went to my employer’s website. Turned out, my old job was already posted. I wondered if my replacement would sit at the same desk, inches away from where my body had just recently laid crumpled and bleeding.
As for Clark, his current job, he did contract work, which explained his working from home. He could push most of it off to the near future, work nights to keep from falling behind. He assured me it was no big deal. In the short while we’d known each other, he’d come to the conclusion it wasn’t worth sweating the small stuff.
In any case, I drew up two résumés, word for word what they were looking for. I coached Clark, told him what to say and how to say it. We even had fake references, namely each other, using several equally fake names and emails. Again, it was a smallish company. The background checks would be at a minimum, mostly lax and perfunctory. Plus, I knew, what with my murder and all, the applicant pool must have dried up like the Gobi in summertime, so we were sure to be shoe-ins.
FYI, shoe-in was putting it mildly. An entire drawer of shoes was tossed our way. Shoes and socks and laces, in fact. Payless should have so many shoes. Which is to say, we would start immediately. The next day, in fact. I would get my old job back, plus a raise. Clark would work in the IT department. Thankfully, neither of us would sit anywhere near where I had died. Actually, that entire area was now home to a rather large ficus. Ashes to ashes, house plant to house plant.
“Well,” said Clark once we were back in his living room barely thirty minutes later, “that was easy.”
“They were desperate,” I said. “They didn’t even mention the murder. They saw two people willing to work who clearly didn’t know what had just happened there. Easy, fine. Depressing, though.”
He put his hand on my shoulder. “Still, we’re in. Plus, I’ll have access to files, to records. You’ll have access to the three suspects. Is that so bad?”
He was smiling, and so I was smiling. “You always this glass-half-full-like, Clark.”
He giggled. He squeezed his hand on my shoulder. “Never, Nord. Not until I met a guy in a turban, slept with a dead guy, and had a floating reality star in my house. Funny how when your world gets flipped upside down, so does your frown.”
I blinked. “We’re not alone.”
He looked left, then right, then realized what I meant. “You can sense them, like Voltan can?”
I nodded. I shook my head. I shrugged. “More like, I can sense them because I’m one of them.” I looked out toward Max. Voltan was to his left, Bruce his right. Anna Nicole seemed to have floated this one out. I couldn’t see them, but I knew exactly where they were. The joy returned, as if Arby’s had landed in the living room.
“Everything okay?” I asked. A light switched on and then off. “Lewis enjoying death?” I felt a sharp poke, then another. I grinned. “Voltan. Is Voltan playing nice with his clientele?” The light again flicked on and off. My grin widened. I told them all we’d done, all we planned on doing. I looked toward Voltan. “I had to use your social security number. Hope you don’t mind collecting a rather hefty salary while you’re dead.” I was joking, but I was glad he was getting something out of all this. I mean, I was borrowing his body, and all. I had seen his boyfriend’s pretty pee-pee. I had seen his own pretty pee-pee, had held it, stroked it, had wiped his ass, even. Though far be it from me to admit any of that. “We start work tomorrow. If all goes well, we’ll figure out who killed me quickly enough and have Voltan back in his turban in no time flat.” Again, the light flicked on and off. They seemed okay with my plan despite the fact that said plan was still quite planless. Planish, we’ll call it.
The dearly departed did just that: departed. Clark and I were again alone. “You look different,” he said.
I grinned. “I’m not exactly myself these days.”
He shook his head. “You look less…”
“Happy. Joyful. At ease.” He nodded his head. “There seems to be no pain in death, no anxiety, tension. Only life does that to you.”
He sighed. “Tell me about it.”
And so I did. I stood up and sat next to him. I took his hand in mine. He was my friend now. I felt it. I knew he felt the same. There was this bond between us, the remarkableness of the situation tying us together. “You’re so young, Clark. Smart, good looking, nice. Above all, you seem to be a good person. I know that’s not always enough, that people see you differently than you see yourself, but I see it. You’re helping me even though it could cost you.” I pointed to the TV, to the computer, to the tiny world he never seemed to leave. “But these, these are a crutch. You connect to the world with them, but it’s not the same. It’s better to actually smell a rose than to see one on a screen. Because, before you know it…”
He was frowning. I was frowning. I missed Max. I missed my life. “I think it’s all easier said than done, Nord. Hindsight is twenty/twenty. You never found love. You worked too hard. If someone came to you from beyond and told you all this, what would you do?”
I stood up. He stood up with me. I pulled him in, hugged him hard. “Clark,” I said, my head on his chest, “in all likelihood, no one has ever come from beyond, not this way, not like me, and so this…” I hugged him ever harder. “This is special. And so, if I’m telling you to stop jacking off all day in front of a computer and start living your life,” I looked up, locked eyes with him, “I think you better fucking listen.”
His grin returned. “Were you this smart in life?”
I laughed. “Clark, I’m not even this smart in death; I’m just winging it now. But I died and I had so much left to do. I just don’t want that to happen
to you. Or for you to grow old and have so much left to do. And if hindsight is twenty/twenty, consider me your reading glasses.”
He was tall. I was short. His chin rested on my head. “How do you think I’d look in a turban?”
“Thinking of making a matching set?”
I could feel his shoulders shrug. “Let’s find your killer, Nord, then we’ll talk.”
* * * *
The next day was our first day at work. It was odd to say, odder to do, to go back to where I had been killed, and also where I’d already worked for years, only now as a stranger. I met everyone I already knew, shown work I’d created. I pretended not to know Clark, the one man I could trust there. I buddied up with Paula from the get-go, had a friendly conversation with Chaz, the CEO, managed to finagle a desk near Glenn, the CFO. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, I remembered. Did that include murderers, specifically my murderer? If so, did the expression hold water? I mean, what if I got killed a second time? Ugh.
I met Clark in the bathroom sometime in the middle of the day. We were side by side at the two urinals. “Doing okay?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Fucking bizarre to be back here.”
He nodded. “Can Max help? Voltan? See what we can’t?”
My shrug turned shake. “They aren’t connected to this place. They could only come here with me.” I tilted my head his way. “So, tag, you’re it.”
I could see a gulp ride up and down his slender throat like an elevator car. “Give me a day,” he said. “Let me get access to everything, find a way to cover my tracks, so that no one suspects either now or later. See what the police have already seen, perhaps are still looking at.”
“That doable?”
He smiled. I wish I’d have met him in life. We would’ve been friends for sure. That smile alone was reason enough to like him. “As you said, it’s a smallish company. Computer security is probably on the mediocre side. Not much worth stealing, I’d imagine.” His smile amped up. “Did I mention how handsome you are?”
I laughed. “Thanks?”
He tucked his prick back in. Must’ve been like doing origami with a schlong that big. “Just practicing, for when the time comes.”
“Smart.”
He headed for the door. “Duh, dude. Duh.”
I stared down at my dick. At Voltan’s dick. At Voltan’s heavy balls. I peed out of a stranger’s willie. I ran my fingers through his bush, which was in need of a trim. I popped a stranger’s boner. To repeat the obvious: weird.
And things were about to get a whole lot weirder.
For at that very moment, in strode Chaz, my boss and possible murderer. He nodded as he flipped his dick out. “Lewis, right?” I nodded, my legs suddenly trembling. “Anyone ever tell you that you look like that actor Woody Harrelson? Only a bit shorter?” His eyes, just for an instant, travelled south. South, by the way, was where my dick was. My dick, by the way, was still mostly erect. “Bathroom stall seems a better place for that, Lewis.”
I blushed. Literally everywhere. Even my steely prick turned a brilliant shade of red. “First day jitters, sir.” Sir. He was barely ten years older than me. And ten times more an asshole.
His eyes again went equatorial, only for uncomfortably more than an instant this time. “Big thing, little packages.” He laughed. It was a nervous laugh. It was an evil, sinister laugh, but that might simply have been me projecting.
I, too, laughed. It was a terrified laugh. It had reason to be, mainly because he pulled an inch away, then two, then eight. Because, yeah, eight is what he was sporting. “First day jitters,” he said.
“But it’s not your first day, sir.” I was suddenly staring him in the eyes. He did look like John Hamm. Funny how I never noticed that before. Then again, he was an ass, and it was easy to overlook the handsome part. Plus, he was my boss and an ass, so it was twice as easy. Now he was my John Hamm-look-alike boss with a fifth-limb of a cock, and so, fine, I finally noticed.
“Guess I’m nervous for you.” He gave it a shake. It seemed to grow, to thicken in his left hand, the one with the wedding ring on it. “I know this neat trick to alleviate that.”
I stared from his dick to mine. Mine was impossibly hard, too. My dick didn’t know it cared for Max; my dick only saw another dick and wanted to play. Fucking dick. Maybe Arby’s had it right; boners would be the cause of man’s downfall. Hopefully not this man, though, namely me. This man, after all, already had a downfall. And barely fifty feet away. Still, the Azz was my suspect; this was my possible in with him.
“Does this neat trick of yours involve rabbits, a hat, sawing anything in half?”
He winked. “Nah, but I can make your dick disappear.” He winked again. “Down my throat.” One wink was douchie enough; two was overkill—and he was already a possible overkiller to begin with.
I pointed at his hand. “But you’re married.”
He shrugged. “You’re more my type than my wife’s. Besides, she never sucks dick. Claims she has a bad gag reflex. Me, no gag reflex. Wanna see?”
I did. I didn’t. I did because I wanted to be friendly with him, to spy on him from up close. I didn’t because of Max. Then again, Chaz wouldn’t be sucking my dick so much as Voltan’s. Which was justifying, but still. In any case, maybe there was another option.
“How about tonight?” I offered. “Someplace less tiley.”
He seemed to think it over. “My wife, Didi, is in Aspen.”
“Skiing?”
He shrugged. His dick did the same. “More like fucking her ski instructor, if I had to bet.”
“Progressive marriage.”
The shrug remained in place. “Works for us.” He eyed me again. Me. Not my southern regions. “You know, you seem awfully familiar. Have we met before?”
If he only knew. “Maybe in another life.”
The wink returned. He peed. He stuffed his willie away. “Maybe that’s it.” He backed away from the urinal. “I’ll send you the address, Lewis. See you tonight.” He kissed me on the cheek—my boss and possible killer. I rarely even shook his hand, back in the day. Now I’d seen his hard cock and got a kiss for my efforts.
I passed Clark in the hallway on the way back to my new desk. “What’s with the face?” he whispered.
I grabbed at said face. “What? It’s new. Something sliding off that shouldn’t be?”
He tilted his head in a way that seemed like he was thinking I had possibly lost it. FYI, I had, no possibly about it. “Chaz the Azz showed me his boner, kissed my cheek, and arranged for a date tonight.” I whispered all of this. At least, I hoped I did. I was still getting accustomed to my soul’s new digs.
Clark scratched his head. “I got a welcome pamphlet and a key to the server room. Maybe I get the rest of it this afternoon.” He leaned in. “You’re not kidding, are you?”
I shook my head. “There’s a bright side.”
“Guy had a big dick and gave good cheek-kisses?”
I nodded. “Two bright sides.” I pulled him into the kitchen, away from prying ears and eyes. “I’m going to his house tonight. If I can switch back with Voltan, I can snoop as Nord. Maybe I can even take Max and Bruce with us.”
He squinted my way. I could tell he was putting one and one together and not getting a very pretty two. Took him a minute before he replied, “You’re going to send Voltan on a date with a possible killer and definite asshole? A date, might I add, not with me.”
“Well, yeah, but the date in question has a big dick and gives good cheek kisses. Plus, he looks a lot like John Hamm.”
He punched my chest. I probably deserved it. “And I was so starting to like you.”
I sighed. I knew I was asking a lot, that I’d already asked a lot, but this would speed things up. I could look for clues, possibly solve this on day one. I told all this to Clark, which got me yet another punch in the chest. “Ouch, dude,” I said. “What was that one for?”
“I wasn’t done the first time.”
It was his turn to sigh. “Will I get to see Voltan again?”
“For sure.” I nodded vigorously. As much as I knew he wanted to see Voltan, I wanted to see Max.
He stared at his hand in mine. He was a good guy. Fate had done well by us. Or God had. Or whatever force it was that brought us all together. “Fine. We’ll ask him.” He leaned in closer. “Was it as big as mine?”
I shook my head—again, vigorously. “No one’s is as big as yours.” Well, maybe Bruce’s, but far be it from me to rub salt in a wound.
The smile returned to his face. “Finally, a good answer.”
I rubbed my chest. “Just trying to protect the rental property.”
“Good idea.”
“I have my moments.”
Few and far apart though they seemed to be.
* * * *
Work went by in a haze. I was trained to do a job I knew better than the person training me. I was given assignments I’d already been given. When my old name came up, it was said in hushed, reverent whispers. When my death came up, namely by me, I was met with blank stares. No one had answers and so no one answered me. Even the ficus was keeping quiet. Or vigil. I was hoping for the latter.
At five, I met up with Clark in the parking lot.
“Any more dick sightings?” he asked.
“I think I met my quota.”
He patted my back. “Congrats. And I have access to everyone’s computers.” He grinned as we got in the car. “The security system was installed about the time when AOL was all the rage.” He was laughing. Tears were streaming down his cheeks.
“Sounds like you had fun today,” I said with mild surprise.
“I did. I did have fun today.” He looked my way, the smile widening. “I thought I liked working from home, thought I preferred the freedom of it. Turns out, I miss people, even stupid people with passwords that really are password. Go figure.”