Sort of Dead

by Rob Rosen

  “Lost me,” I said.

  “I wish,” he replied. “Getting awfully tight in here.”

  “In any case…”

  “Right,” he continued with. “She was arrested as an accomplice, seeing as she was his mistress, and had lied during questioning to seemingly cover for him, but then had a change of heart. Guess a few days in jail can do that to a person.”

  “What kind of change of heart?”

  The pause returned. Had I had any breath, it would have been baited by that point. “The gun, Nord. She told them where he had a hidden safe at work, gave them the combination. The gun was in there, the one that killed you, his fingerprints on it. Just his. So…”

  Also, had I had any breath, I would have sighed. And Voltan seemed to still be in charge of his lungs. “So he did it. Not Didi, not Glenn, just Chaz.” Huh, but I would’ve sworn I was right.

  And still the pause returned. “Um, yeah, about Glenn.”

  “What about Glenn?”

  “Well, we had dinner with your mother a few days ago, me and Clark and Eve,” he replied, “and Glenn was there.”

  Times like those, would’ve been nice to have a head to scratch. “Why would Glenn be at my mother’s house?”

  “He quit working for Chaz, Nord. About a week after everything happened. Wanted nothing to do with him. Nice guy, by the way. Glenn. Not Chaz.”

  “Uh huh, and, again, why would Glenn, this so-called nice guy, be at my mother’s house?”

  “Did I mention that he was the one who invited Eve to the dinner?”

  “Voltan,” I said, trying to remain calm, especially since I was body squatting at the time, “none of this is making any sense. Why would Glenn invite Eve to my mother’s house? Her house, not his. Hers. And why Eve, of all people?”

  “You called him a homophobe,” he replied. “You thought he might have killed you because he hated gay people.”

  “And?”

  “I, uh…I think he’s trying to make amends.”

  “At my mom’s house, with Eve?”

  He nodded. At least I think he nodded. Sort of felt that way. “Well, mainly because he’s, you know, um, dating your mom.”

  I coughed. That is to say, he coughed, but I was pretty certain I was responsible for said cough. “No fucking way.”

  “Way,” he replied.

  I started to reply, then stopped. This was a good thing, right? My mom had been alone for a long time. My mom deserved not to be alone, especially with me being gone now. Plus, Glenn was a good guy. A little on the boring side, sure, but at least he hadn’t killed me. And then I realized that my dying hadn’t been for nothing, and that we had accomplished something when we’d been investigating my murder, namely bringing joy back into my mom’s life. That was something. That, in fact, was everything. “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay? You’re, uh, okay with that?”

  I nodded. That is, I made him nod. Meaning, I could see why he wasn’t thrilled to be sharing his body with me. “Yeah, it’s kind of…cool.” And it was, and I was more than okay, like really more. “Still, where does Eve fit into all this?”

  “Glenn quit his job,” he replied.

  I suddenly got it. Weird, but I got it. “Glenn is in finance. Eve needed help on that end. So Eve and Glenn are—”

  “Business partners.”

  Here I thought I’d seen everything. And this coming from a man who had died and been to heaven—almost. I mean, I’d been killed and still found the time to become a temporary drag queen. “But a drag queen, dog grooming van business?”

  He laughed. I felt it rumble through me. Or through him, anyway. “One to start. Three in the works. More drag queens being interviewed. From what we heard, the bank is signing a loan any day now. Maybe even today, in fact.”

  “For Glenn?” Oh, man, I would’ve loved to have seen Glenn interviewing drag queens.

  “Glenn and Eve.”

  I was about to reply when another spirit popped his head in. “Um, don’t mean to interrupt,” said Max, “but I think you’ll want to come out and see this.”

  I nodded, and so Voltan nodded. “Be right back,” I told him.

  “Oh goodie,” came the reply.

  I popped out. There was Max. Max was looking at Bruce. Bruce didn’t look so great. Which is to say, Bruce seemed to be fading.

  “Poof!” I shouted at Max. “He’s going poof!” Though it was more like a slow fade. Go figure. And, man, was he smiling. Bruce suddenly made the Mona Lisa look sad. “Bruce!” I hollered. “Thank you for everything!”

  He nodded. “Good luck, you two!” he hollered back, though he now sounded muffled, like a blanket was around him, and perhaps one was, to a degree. A heavenly one, I was sure. He was looking up. We were gazing out.

  And then he was gone.

  I again looked Max’s way. “Well,” I said to him, “guess it’s real, huh?” I neglected to say one down, two to go.

  “But why now? Why here?”

  I smiled. I’d made a true friend. I thought everything we did had been pointless, but my mom found a boyfriend and Bruce found, well, I hadn’t a clue, not yet, but by the look on his face before he found it, I’d say it was something amazing. “Because,” I replied to Max, “everything is going to be okay with his brother now. Or sister. Depending on what time of day it is, I suppose.”

  “Lost me.”

  My smile went super-nova. “Welcome to the club.” I then pointed back at Voltan and Clark. Voltan was looking up at us. Clark had managed to find some underwear and still seemed less than thrilled with our presence. Or perhaps our timing. “Eve was taken care off. Bruce’s loose ends were no longer loose. The bank loan must’ve gone through. Ergo, poof. In any case, and back to me, all evidence points to Chaz. Paula is out of jail. The police have the gun that killed me. Didi is rich, single, and in the clear.”

  “I sense a but in there somewhere.”

  “Yeah, as in, but he didn’t do it. But she set us up. But she shot me and framed her husband. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, I just know it, feel it down to my very core.” Mainly because core was all I had left.

  “Uh huh,” he said as he floated there. “And how are we going to prove all that? I mean, not like we had much luck last time, right?”

  “Yeah,” I replied, “but last time we didn’t use our talents correctly.”

  * * * *

  Voltan and I didn’t split up as before. I didn’t switch places with him, and he and Max didn’t go to Arby’s. Perhaps that was our mistake the first go around. No, we were a team, and a team needs to stick together. Lesson learned. Fool me once, hello morgue; fool me twice, no fucking way, that shit ain’t gonna happen again.

  Max and I would be okay for a while with the living, so long as we didn’t expend too much energy, so we hovered in the back seat as, a short while later, we were heading to Didi’s place.

  Max turned my way. “I don’t like taking them there,” he said, pointing toward our friends. “She killed in cold blood before, you know.”

  I knew. Man, did I know. “There’s no other way for us to get there. You can get us to Clark’s place because of the tether, but not to Didi’s, not without them. And I’m tethered to Voltan I suppose because we’ve shared a body. So, whether by fate or happenstance, the four of us are tied together, at least for this part of our journey.” I reached out and mostly held his hand. “I miss Bruce.”

  He grinned. “Is it strange that it feels like I always knew him?”

  I felt it, too. I felt it about Max as well. I didn’t feel the same about others we’d met in Arby’s, so that wasn’t it. “We were three men from the same place, all around the same age, all dying far too young. It’s as if we shared a common path, a common destiny.”

  He nodded and gripped my hand tighter in his. “But do those destinies all ultimately lead to the same place?”

  It wasn’t something we discussed, not really. What would happen to us? Even if we went poof, could we find
each other in the next place? Or what if we went poof decades apart. Some people in Arby’s had been there far too long, Anna Nicole Smith and the O.K. Corral fellas as cases in point. “We found each other in death, Max. Look at all the souls in Arby’s, and you and I still found each other.” I leaned over and mostly kissed him. “Faith, Max. You gotta have faith.” Sure, didn’t do George Michael much good, but still.

  He nodded and mostly kissed me in return. “It’s all I’ve had since the moment I met you, Nord.”

  I giggled into his mouth. “Hallmark would have a field day with that one.”

  “What can I say, you bring out the schmaltz in me.”

  And then from the front seat we heard, “We’re here.” It came out a bit lackluster. “You sure about this, guys?” asked Clark. “What if you’re wrong and the police are right?”

  Max was still holding my hand. “Good question.”

  It was, of course. Then again, what if I wasn’t wrong? Wasn’t that a better question? And, besides, we had a few aces up our sleeve that Didi could never expect, even though it seemed she’d been playing with a stacked deck all along.

  “They just need to get us inside,” I told Max. “We’ll do the rest.”

  “We will?”

  The living hopped out of the car. The spirits floated through the metal. Membership has its privileges.

  Clark looked to Voltan. “You have a plan, right?”

  Voltan looked to Clark. “I thought you did.” He looked back at us. Or about where we were floating. “Anything?”

  I popped my head in. In his head, I mean. “Do you both still work for the firm?”

  “We left when the shit hit the fan, seeing as it was blowing in our direction.”

  “Did you leave on a good note?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “We quit. Their CEO had been arrested. Paula was arrested. They had other things to worry about, but, yeah, the note was good, maybe a c-sharp.”

  We were standing on her front stoop. The front door wasn’t ajar, unlike last time. “Okay,” I said, “tell her you were passing by. Tell her you wanted to check in on her, see how she was doing since her almost demise. If that doesn’t get you inside, tell her you have things to discuss about work, things you saw that she might need to know about.”

  “Such as?” he asked.

  “Don’t worry about it. Just act scared.”

  “Um, huh?”

  I started to extract myself. “Don’t worry; you’ll know it when you see it.”

  Pop, my head went. Not poof, but it’d do in a pinch.

  Voltan turned to Clark. “Act scared,” he said.

  “I am scared,” replied Clark.

  Voltan blinked a few times. “Then we should be fine.”

  Clark looked my way. “I’d say pray, but it doesn’t seem to have done us much good thus far.”

  “I prayed for you, Max,” I said to the spirit by my side. “Looks like at least that prayer was answered.”

  He grinned. “There seems to have been a delayed response then. Let’s hope for more immediate results this time around.”

  Clark rang the bell. Two of us stood there waiting. The other two floated. All four were nervous as all hell. I’m only guessing about the other three, but it was a damned good guess. Two minutes later, she opened the door, then squinted at our friends. “Can I help you?”

  Clark nodded, gave a slight wave. “Remember us, ma’am? We sort of maybe saved your life a few months ago.”

  The squint returned. It looked more evil than curious, but perhaps I was projecting. “The boys dressed like girls.” She seemed to force a smile. “You look better this way.” The smile faded just as quickly as it had appeared. She knew who they were. She knew their connection to her husband, perhaps to me, to Paula, to everything that had happened before her husband had been arrested. She had killed me. She had always been one step ahead of us. Today was theoretically no different—at least in her eyes, which were still squinting. With all the Botox, it didn’t look easy to pull off. “And how can I help you boys?” I think she tried to make it sound motherly. FYI, nope. More like she was trying to get them to take a bite out of an apple, of the poisoned variety.

  “We were passing by, Didi,” said Clark.

  “Thought we’d see how you were doing,” added Voltan.

  “Fine,” she replied curtly. “Fine. I’m fine. Thank you. For everything.” She paused. The guys paused. “Well, if that’s all…” The door started to close. I reached out my hand to stop it. Little good that did me.

  “No,” barked Voltan. “I mean, wait.”

  “For?” she asked tersely.

  “We, uh, used to work for your husband,” Voltan said.

  She nodded. “What are the odds then that you would’ve been the ones to save me three months ago. A strange coincidence, I would say.” The squint became a sneer. “Unless, of course, it wasn’t. A coincidence, I mean.”

  Voltan nodded, turned to Clark, to me, and then gulped. “We saw some stuff, Didi,” he said. “At the office. We thought maybe you’d like to know what we saw, what with all of us being friends, I mean.”

  Friends. Like Dorothy and the witch kind of friends. Too bad she was already in the house and not under it. I wondered if there was a handy-dandy bucket of water around if it came to that.

  “Really?” she said. “What sort of stuff?”

  Clark looked left and right, then whispered as he leaned in, “Maybe we should discuss this inside.”

  She looked less than thrilled. Like far less. Like root canal less. “You have five minutes. I have a tennis game to get to.”

  “You’re not dressed for tennis, Didi,” said Voltan.

  She opened the door for them. “To watch,” said the spider to the flies.

  We entered. We were in. That is to say, Voltan was in, I was tethered to Voltan, and Max to me. Just like crazy glue. Emphasis on the crazy. FYI, I didn’t like being there all that much the first two times. Round three felt far, far worse, but at least we finally had the upper hand.

  “Now what?” asked Max as we floated to the living room.

  “I’ll be right back,” I replied.

  “Um, huh?” he said. “Back from where?”

  “Stay here,” I told him.

  “Where else would I go?”

  But I was already gone.

  Chapter 11

  Like I said, I was only gone a short while. The dead, even the sort of dead, rarely get asked for favors, and so they were all eager to help. I called for a dozen volunteers. I got double that. Meaning, she’d be doubly fucked, and we’d have to use up much less individual energy.

  “What the…” said Max, the living room now swarming with the dead.

  “We went about it all wrong last time, Max,” I told him. “We should have played to our strengths.”

  “We can float through walls,” he said. “How would that have helped?”

  I smiled. He was cute when he was confused. He was cute when he wasn’t confused, but he was even cuter now. “We’re dead, Max; we can haunt! And Bruce was able to travel with us, so it stood to reason that all of them could.”

  “Genius,” he said, the proverbial lightbulb clearly pulsing above his see-through noggin.

  “Better late than never.”

  I looked at Voltan and Clark, who were now on a couch, with Didi on a chair to their side. They had managed to get some coffee, so that must have wasted a good seven minutes. Now they looked uncomfortable as they stalled. Didi simply looked pissed. Then again, that seemed her standard look. Pretty and pissed. Perhaps Chaz was better off where he was.

  She looked at her watch. “I really do have to go,” she said.

  And that was my cue.

  “Go,” I hollered, “to hell!”

  We started off slow. A light from a nearby lamp went off, on, off. They all looked at it, then at each other. “Weird,” said Didi. But weird wasn’t about to cut it, not even with a Ginsu. In any case, that light flicked faster
as the light overhead blinked in syncopated rhythm. Didi jumped up. “Must be a short.”

  “Um,” said Voltan, “but the lights weren’t on to begin with, right?”

  Didi started to reply, then stopped. The lights stopped, too. She waited, paused, neck pushed out in anticipation of more flicking. Then, BOOM, all the lights went on, all of them, every single light flicked on by every single spirit in the place, followed by the TV, the stereo, the volume turned up, up, up, until the living had their ears covered with their hands, their eyes tightly squinted shut.

  Clark hopped up. “Turn it off!” he shouted above the din. “Off! Off! Off!”

  We turned it off. All of it. They again looked at each other, eyes wide, perspiration worming its way through Didi’s makeup. Sweat-proof my ass. Clearly, Revlon didn’t know about the sort of dead. “Didi,” said Voltan, “what the fuck is going on?”

  Didi didn’t look pissed anymore. Confused, sure. Nervous, you bet. But pissed got tamped down for a bit. “I…I don’t know. I’ll…um…I guess I should call an electrician.”

  Voltan chuckled. “Or an exorcist.” It came out menacing-sounding, despite the joking nature of it. Bravo for him.

  Didi shook her head. “Nonsense,” she said, “there are no ghosts he—”

  But we cut her off. Like she cut my life off. Abruptly. Cruelly. The lights all flicked as one, every appliance turned on, everything with electricity on full blast, and then, then the pièce de résistance, every bulb shattered at the exact same instant, splintering into thousands of shards all around them, the noise deafening, until, once again, deathly silence.

  I winked Max’s way. “If we can press keyboards, why not break glass?”

  He gave me a thumbs-up. “Like I said, genius.”

  “Fun!” said one of the other spirits, the rest of them all eagerly nodding their heads in agreement.

  Meanwhile, Clark and Voltan sat clutching each other, terror on their faces, real tears streaking their cheeks. Take that, Meryl Streep. I clapped, but that was also sadly silent. I mean, I was good, but I wasn’t that good.

  Didi was gripping a pillow, eyes moving left to right. They should, of course, have been looking up. “I…I don’t understand.” Her voice came out weak, fearful. “What’s happening?”