Sort of Dead

by Rob Rosen

  His hand was on my knee. “She’s scared. Or at least shaken. If we’re still alive, she must be looking for help, a solution to whatever problem we just caused her. That, fingers crossed, will take more time than whatever Voltan has planned.”

  It seemed our fates were resting on one digit placed over the other one, namely that crossed one. I threw in a couple of toes, just to hedge our bets, then suddenly thought of the term hanging on by a thread. And ours was frayed. “I’m glad I met you, Clark. And sorry I met you, Clark.” I glanced around. It was, suffice it to say, a short glance. “All things considered.”

  Despite all those things, he laughed and tousled my hair. “It’s always darkest before the dawn, Nord. Think less doom and gloom and more Disney parade.” He tousled in reverse. “Plus, Voltan will come through for us. I mean, you died and came back. We beat those odds, so why not these?” He leaned in close, closer still. “And I’m glad I met you, too, Nord. With or without all this added shit.”

  My grin resurrected itself. After all, so had I. “Are you always this upbeat, Clark? Or does being locked inside a basement bring out the optimist in you?”

  “Never,” he replied. “I was never optimistic. I sat in front of my computer and worked and jacked off with online strangers. Then I met Voltan and you, Max and Bruce and even Anna Nicole Smith, kind of. So, yeah, like I said, with or without that added shit, I’ll take it. I’ll take it and wait for Voltan, for fate, which seems to have something up its proverbial sleeve for us. Also, think about it: if Chaz’s wife sent us, then Chaz’s wife knows where we are. How can Paula kill us if someone knows we’re here?”

  “But she doesn’t know we’re here. In fact, no one knows we’re here.”

  He shrugged. He stood and stretched his long legs. “So what? The bitch upstairs doesn’t know that.”

  The door suddenly swung open and my heart suddenly clamped tight. I heard a click. I thought of the gun. I swallowed but nothing went down. The Sahara was dewier than my throat. The click, however, was followed by a clack. And guns don’t do clack. Click and bang. That’s it. Nor do they go click, clack, click, clack, which is what came next, followed by, “Girl, you’ve been saved!”

  The swallow came to fruition. “Um, what?”

  Clark pointed my way. “Yeah, what he said.”

  “Saved!” she said. Or he said. I mean, it was a he, only he was dressed like a she. That is to say, we’d been saved by a drag queen. And a large one at that. Or at least tall. Then again, the heels, which made that aforementioned click and clack, were on the high side, so he and/or she could just as easily not have been tall.

  “Um, what?” I repeated, eyes wide.

  Clark nodded and was still pointing. “How?” he asked.

  Only, I knew the how. Or sort of knew it. Because I felt them a second later, three spirits, three spirits on both sides of the towering drag queen who stood before us, arms outstretched, smile, too—but with all that lipstick, outstretched seemed about all her smile could be.

  I turned to Clark. “This is what Voltan had us stall for.”

  “Who,” said the drag queen. “Not what.” Her outstretched arms went all akimbo-like. “Eve. Eve O’Destruction. Savior for tips.”

  I patted my pants and retrieved my wallet. I handed her a ten. “All I have.” I looked at Clark. Ten more got added. “Voltan somehow contacted you? Where’s Paula? Are we, you know, safe?”

  Eve tapped her heels. “And you’re welcome.”

  We’d been sitting. Now we stood. And still she towered, even over Clark, who was rather Eifel-like himself. I reached my hand out. “Sorry. Trauma. And thanks.”

  She shook my hand. Hard to do with the nails she was sporting, but she managed. Clark also shook her hand. “Yeah, thanks, uh, ma’am.”

  She sighed in a loud exhale. “We have to go. In answer to your question: Bruce, not this Voltan fellow, contacted me.” She cocked her head. It took her wig a second to catch up to her neck. “Someone on this planet is named Voltan?”

  I managed a grin. Miracles did happen. Seemingly frequently, as of late. “Someone on this planet is named O’Destruction?”

  “Touché,” she replied, turning to head back up the stairs. She looked over her shoulder. “As to your second and third questions, Paula has been, shall we say, diffused, temporarily, and, no, we are not safe.” The click and clack returned. We followed it, rapidly. Which was surprising, considering the heels Eve was donning.

  And so, up we ran and in we ran and through we ran, eventually making it to the front door, where we spotted Paula, who was writhing on the floor, howling like a banshee. “Cheap hairspray in the eyes,” explained Eve. “Gets ‘em every time.” FYI, said hairspray had been hidden in her wig, which explained the added towering coming from her northward regions.

  In any case, like she’d said, Paula had been temporarily diffused. Which was a good time to kick her when she was down. Literally. Meaning, I kicked her. Then grabbed her gun and our cellphones. Then kicked her again. Then hightailed it out of there, me and Clark and the towering drag queen and my three spirit friends.

  Eve, thankfully, had a large van waiting outside. Then again, it had to be large. Not to fit her, no, but the dogs, the ones she groomed, what with it being a dog grooming van. It was pink. Everywhere. Inside and out. Pepto-Bismol had nothing on that van of hers. Inside, there was a table for the dogs to get groomed on, plus all the various accoutrements needed for grooming, all of them also in, of course, pink.

  We hopped in. Eve had to duck as she climbed in the driver’s seat. Clark and I were in the back—with a collie and a pug, both of which seemed well-groomed and happy to see us. Me, too. That is to say, I was happy to see us, too. Alive. Mostly. Sort of. Because if I was sort of dead I was also, at least temporarily, sort of alive. But temporarily was better than the alternative. Far better. And far we soon were, too, as Eve applied her foot to the gas pedal like she applied lipstick to her lips. Which is to say, heavily and with little care of staying within the lines.

  “So,” I said from behind her, “what are our plans now?”

  She laughed from the front seat. She had a manly laugh. Then again, she wasn’t the most femme drag queen to begin with. She looked, in fact, like Channing Tatum in stilettos and a beehive. “Our plans, sweetie? Nope, your turn now.”

  I grimaced. “Yeah, I was afraid of that.”

  Clark tapped her on the shoulder. “Um, you said you didn’t know who Voltan was. But then, how did you know about us? How did you find us? And why help anyway?”

  She pulled off onto a side street. Her wig came to a standstill just after the van did. The dogs in the back were already asleep and peacefully snoring. “Bruce,” she said with a sigh and slight bow of her head. “He was…was…”

  “Your boyfriend?” I asked.

  She turned her head in profile. “My brother.”

  Huh, I didn’t expect that. Bruce was a gay porn accountant and his brother was a dog-snipping drag queen. It must’ve made for wonderful dinner conversations.

  “How did he get you to rescue us?” I asked. “Are you clairvoyant?”

  She giggled very Channing-Tatumly. “No, but that would be a good drag name. Claire O’Voyant.”

  She seemed to have a predilection for adding O’s to last names. “So how then? Computer?”

  She turned her face further my way. She was pretty. Manly, but pretty. She looked like Bruce, in fact, especially around the eyes. If Bruce, of course, could wear pink, glittery eyeshadow in Arby’s. “IPhone. It was on the counter. A message started typing on its own. An address. Save my friends, it then said. Dispose of Paula.” Her eyes momentarily cast downward. “It was signed by my brother.”

  “But he’s dead,” I said, my voice soft, sad. “Why would you believe the message?”

  She locked eyes with me again. “Because the keys were pressing by themselves. And the Russians mess with elections, not Hello Kitty iPhones. And if my brother was trying to reach me from the g
reat beyond, I had a feeling it was important to do what he asked.” She blinked. “You were locked in a basement. Bitch had a gun. Seems it was indeed important.”

  I told her the short tragic story. It got kind of long because I’m a gay man who simply adores tangents and because she was a drag queen who simply adored witty non sequiturs, but I told it just the same, and she nodded just the same, and Clark nodded just the same, and, in the end, I added, also quietly and so as not to shock her any more than I already had, “He’s here now. Your brother, Bruce, I mean. He was able to visit you, to follow you back to me. He’s hovering, I believe, somewhere near the pug. As is that guy named Voltan we told you about. Plus a guy named Max, who is, um, who is my, well…” Yeah, I left it at that, mainly because Eve started to cry, and she already had far too much makeup on, and pretty quickly looked like a cake left out in the rain.

  “Bruce,” she said, eyes scanning, hoping for a glimpse that would never come.

  And it was then I felt him, pushing his way inside. “Please, Nord,” he pled, “let me talk with my brother.”

  I didn’t need to give it a second thought. “Of course,” I said. “And thanks for saving us.”

  Our souls brushed as he filled the void I created for him. It was a unique sensation, like an earthquake that rumbled through my being, or what remained of it. And then I was hovering outside my temporary home, namely Voltan’s body. I’d been in there a long time, so that being outside felt strange again. Strange but freeing. The weight of life had gone. I was filled with peace—and joy, of course, at seeing Max.

  “Miss me?” I asked.

  Voltan pointed at himself. “You almost got me killed.”

  Max raised his hand. “I missed you.”

  Voltan rolled his eyes, or at least seemed to make a valiant attempt to. “You almost got me killed and now the enemy is on to us. Your cover was blown. A woman with a large gun knows what we look like, who we are, where we live and work. Or worked, seeing as we can’t go back there now.”

  I pointed to the gun that was still in Voltan’s hand, the Voltan inhabited by the dead accountant. “Had a gun, but, yeah, sorry. Though at least we know she’s a bad person, now.”

  Voltan, the spirit one, shrugged. “You broke into her home. You know she’s having an affair. She was scared and locked you in a basement, but she didn’t kill you outright. All that is to say, fine, she might be a royal bitch, but she didn’t necessarily kill you in cold blood at your office.”

  I cringed. Hearing that last bit never got any easier. I heard crying. I turned around. We all stared at Bruce and his brother, both of them in a sort of disguise, though not ones that hid the truth of who they were. The two men hugged, cried, hugged harder, as if letting go would be letting go forever. In a way, that was probably true. Sad but true. Clark watched all this, too, petting the dogs as he did so.

  “I’m so sorry,” cried Bruce. “You told me. You told me to stop with the steroids. I didn’t listen.” He pulled an inch away and scanned his brother’s now-smeared face. “Far too much lipstick, by the way.”

  She also pulled an inch away. “Drag queens are like vampires, little bro: both avoid daylight for a very good reason.” She punched him gently on the arm. “You should have listened, Bruce. You should have listened. And now, I’m barely getting by. You did my books, helped me with the financials. I have no one to turn to for advice anymore.”

  The crying resumed. Had we had tear ducts, we, too, would’ve cried. Instead, we hovered, miserably. And when the tears dried up, Bruce said, “I know, I know. But I have to go. I love you, but I have to go. This isn’t my body. This isn’t my world, anymore. But will you help my friends if you can?”

  She looked at the diminutive stranger she was clinging onto like moss to a tree, then to Clark, then in our general direction. “Why bother, Bruce? What’s the point now?”

  “Poof,” he said. “We’re all waiting for it. Hard to explain. And not certain I should, anyway. But if you help Nord, you might be helping all of us, maybe even yourself, karmically speaking.”

  “I make dogs feel pretty. I’m racking up karma points right and left here, little bro.” She winked. “I’ll help, Bruce. You’re my brother. You’ll always be my brother. Besides,” she said, staring at the stranger before her, “this one seems to need all the help he can get.”

  I nodded. “Amen.” And with that, the switch was again made, me inside Voltan, the others gone, back to Arby’s. Their energy must have been drained. Me, mine had zoomed to deep in the green, death once again cheated, if only for a while. I’d have to stay with Eve for Bruce and the others to find me again, or go back to Clark’s place, but that suddenly seemed dangerous. Everything seemed dangerous. I’d gotten myself into a mess of trouble; the mess seemed to have spread like wildfire. I wondered with a sense of dread if it would soon engulf us all.

  * * * *

  We drove away in the pink puppy mobile. Eve told us her story, about how she bought the van, started the business, all with the help of her brother the accountant. She had a flare for dog barbering. The kitsch factor didn’t hurt. Bruce did all the paperwork, kept the books, maintained the website. The business flourished. Until…

  Yeah, we knew the until. We all had an until. It was the ultimate common denominator.

  And then, oddly enough, she was smiling. I think. With all the smeared lipstick, it was hard to tell. She pulled out her cell. It was also pink. Rhinestones covered it. Again, pink. I thought I’d been uber-gay in life; guess there’s always room to grow. “You said your boss’s name is Chaz McGraff, right?” I nodded. “His wife is Didi McGraff, right?” I thought about it. I remembered Chaz had said that, said Didi had been in Aspen. I again nodded. She typed on her cell. She lifted it for me and Chaz to see. “This Didi?”

  I squinted into her phone. So did Chaz. We shrugged in unison. I’d been in her home, as had he, but we hadn’t seen any photos of her, nor had I ever met her at work, before my own untimely until. She’s been to the office, I was certain, but I’d never been introduced to her. I again gazed at her photo. She was pretty. She looked rich, bored. She looked like a female version of Chaz. “No idea if that’s her, Eve. But if it is, so what? I never worked with Didi. Never even seen her before. She’s not on our short list of potential, um, backstabbers.” My now-standard cringe cringed.

  She also shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. Her husband is cheating on her. This Paula person is, you assume, blackmailing said husband. You also assume you were murdered because of a document that ties all that together. Maybe Didi also doesn’t want that document released. Rich people hate to have their dirty laundry aired. Or maybe she’s also in on this blackmail, somehow. In other words, maybe, just maybe, she should also be added to your list. For all you know, she could have been in on all this with her husband and Paula. You assume it was one person who killed you, but what if it’s two. Or three.”

  My cringe turned to a shiver. Clark moved in closer, patted my back. Even the dogs gave a nuzzle. “And what if it was?” he said. “What if Didi was involved? What can we do about that now? They’re on to us and they must assume we’re on to them. They know what we look like and where we live. Heck, they know our birthdays and social security numbers.”

  She shrugged. “Then it’s a tie. They know that you know about the affair. They probably assume you know about the blackmailing, or at least that something isn’t right about one or both or all three of their finances. It’s an assumption, sure, but they’re bright people, and you two have been in both their houses. Paula held a gun to you and locked you in her basement. All that is to say, you have just as much on them as they do on you. Again, tie.” She pointed at her massively high heels. “And tie goes to the runner.”

  “Huh?” huhed I.

  She shook her head. “Never mind. We have a head start. And you now have me. And fuck if my brother is going to die for nothing. And I don’t know if that karma shit is real or not, but I’m leaning toward a yes, just in case.�
�

  I smiled despite the fact that I was still lost. Loster even. Clark smiled at my smile. I looked at him and rubbed his hand. “You getting any of this?”

  He shrugged. “The puppies are cute. The van is pink. Drag queens have been our saviors in the past, collectively speaking. And we didn’t get killed back there. So, nope, not getting any of this, but at least the plus-column is growing by a smidge.”

  Eve clapped her hands, her taloned fingers outstretched. “That’s the spirit.” She frowned and patted my back. “Sorry.” She then started the engine up again as the van roared to life “Oh, and I know Didi. Tangentially speaking.”

  My huh rehuhed. “Huh?”

  “All those rich folks have dog walkers. I know her dog walker. Ergo, I know her dog. Never cut the bitch’s hair, but I met her once.”

  “Didi?” I asked.

  “No, the dog. Muffin.”

  My head had been cocked. It cocked the other way. “Muffin McGraff?”

  She let go of the steering wheel and touched lacquered fingertip to powdered nose. “I said the same thing when I met her. Muffin McGraff? It’s a memorable name. Hence my memory of it. Hence my memory that she belongs to your boss and his wife. My dog walker friend mentioned them, too. Hates them. The Cock and the Bull, he calls them. One crows about his money and the other is full of shit.”

  “The former has a nice cock, by the way,” I made note.

  She giggled. Manly, but still. “Yeah, heard that, too. Big dick all the way around.” She turned her head to the side for a moment. “You slept with your boss? Naughty Nord.” She tsked me.

  I sighed. Clark sighed. “Long story.” And one we hadn’t yet shared. Mainly because our story was already long enough. Plus, she’d just had a close encounter of the weirdest kind, namely with her dead brother who’d been temporarily inhabiting the body of a diminutive medium. And while drag queens simply adore drama, even that had to be almost too much to bear. So, yeah, we told her our story, but left out the gory details, namely the length and girth of my possible murderer’s manhood—Chaz’s being both lengthy and girthy.