Undead and Unfinished

by Davidson, MaryJanice

  Today he was sporting the relatively benign Christian Bale. I was sporting my usual blonde-with-red-lowlights, which I was fated to stick with for five thousand years. Thank God I’d gotten a touch-up a couple weeks before I died. Bad hair ... forever. That’s just mean. And so, so wrong. Nobody deserves that.

  “But he was bitching about how his kid did the Heimlich on some other kid in the cafeteria ... I guess the school’s giving him a plaque for making a cheerleader barf up a French fry. Like the world would miss one cheerleader.”

  “Too mean,” I commented.

  Marc waved away my criticism. “Ren cornered me when I was weak from not having my fifth Coke, and I let him talk me into the switch. So where was I? Huh? Huh? Yeah,” he added as if I’d said something. “Stitching scalps and fending off rash-infested babies, disimpacting a sundowner, getting puke on my shoes and in my shoes, and pretending I’m in a meaningful relationship so Dan-Dan-the-Ambulance-Man quits asking me out”

  “It sounds pretty yuck-o,” I acknowledged.

  Marc took a swig of Coke. “ER lied to me, Betsy. All the TV shows about doctors lied to me. There’s nothing glamorous about working in an ER. Not one thing. The only reason I even applied to med school was because I had dreams of being in a George Clooney-Eriq La Salle sandwich.”

  “Do I want to ask what disimpaction is? Or a sundowner?” About the sandwich, I could fill in the blanks. Frankly, I’d heard worse ideas.

  He shook his head. “You know I’ll answer you.”

  “Okay. So, not asking.”

  I had called his bluff on that once.

  Once.

  “Anyway,” I continued, “you didn’t really miss all that much.”

  He snorted.

  “Yeah, okay, you missed tons. It was weird and scary and interesting.”

  “Like all of the devil’s visits.”

  “up.”

  “Or a trial by jury.” He shuddered. “How’s Jess?”

  “Oh, you know. Stressed. Missing Nick. And the holidays are starting up. Bad time.”

  “So her parents are burning in hell. Literally burning in hell.”

  I shrugged.

  “Well, what did Jessica say about it?”

  I shrugged again. I didn’t blame Marc for loving gossip or being curious. But that didn’t mean I had Information written on my forehead in purple Sharpie.

  Marc leaned back, slung an arm across the back of the chair next to his, and gave me a long look. I slurped and waited him out. Gone were the days when a long, studied stare would startle me into blurting out my bra size. I was a stone of patience. A stone!

  “Y’know, Betsy, there aren’t a lot of dead black guys who lived in Minnesota and had one daughter, married a showgirl, and made a billion dollars before their thirty-fifth birthday.”

  Then I, the stone, nearly sicked up Julius all over my friend’s cheese curds.

  Chapter 16

  Don’t let my gorgeous face fool you,” Marc said, dabbing Julius out of his eyebrows. “I do occasionally have to resort to detective work. Even research. And that stuff—well, it made all the local papers at the time. The guy was the pride of Minnesota, the state’s biggest philanthropist, proudly raised on a farm (so the yokels liked him, too), and had better press than Tiger Woods, pre-affairs.”

  “Yes,” I managed through gritted teeth. I hated even hearing the fuck-o’s name, never mind about his disguise as a dad who wasn’t a perverted narcissistic egomaniac. “He got good press in life.”

  “Right up ‘til his daughter made headlines winning her emancipated status. And his fatal car crash with his wife the same day.”

  I looked longingly into my empty Julius cup. Another four or five of these would go down great. Also? I felt remorseful and stupid, which I hate. I should have known Marc would have figured out all that stuff, probably about ten minutes after he met Jessica the first time.

  He jabbed his finger in my general direction. “You should have known I’d figure that stuff out.”

  “I was thinking that very thing.”

  “I know why you hate November—and there was no need to knock over the entire Fine Cooking display at the Barnes and Noble.”

  “I couldn’t take it. Sixty pictures of giant bronzed roasted turkeys. It—it loomed, practically.”

  “Still. If you hadn’t mojo’d the manager, we’d be sitting in the security office right now. Anyway, I know you’re anti-Thanksgiving and anti-family—”

  “I am not anti-family!” I brought the flat of my hand down on the table, then winced when I heard the sharp crack. Stupid, cheap plastic tables. “I’m pro-family. I’m all for families. But our situation is not a family. It’s a comic book. We’ve got the Antichrist, my eighty-year-old dead husband, my dead stepmother who gets off on popping into my room when I’m exploring the wonderful world of chocolate syrup with Sinclair—”

  “Aw, God.” Marc rubbed his eyes. “Do you know how long it’s been since I got laid?”

  “—my dead father who isn’t haunting me for some reason—”

  “Wait. Are you complaining that he’s dead or that he’s not one of the ghosts giving you to-do lists?”

  “—my orphaned best friend who recently quit having cancer, my half-brother-slash-son who is immune to any and all paranormal weirdness—”

  “Not the worst superpower to have.”

  “—a gay ER doc equally obsessed with sex, texting, and Beyoncé—”

  “Which makes me completely normal, except with really good taste.”

  “—and a roommate-slash-secretary-slash-bodyguard who knows my husband better than I ever will—”

  “Don’t forget how awesomely hot she is. I mean, you’re cute, Betsy, but Tina ...” Marc whistled and glanced at the ceiling. “D’you think she’d cut her hair and give it to me?”

  I flinched but kept on: “That’s my family, okay? Norman Rockwell never painted this. Because if he did? Everyone would run screaming from the room. Sort of like I’m thinking about doing right now.”

  “Boo-hoo. You’re in perfect health—”

  “I’m dead, Dr. Doofus!”

  “And rich—”

  “But it’s not my money.”

  “Community-property state, babe. And you’re married to a gorgeous guy who adores you, and you have all kinds of cool Scooby-esque adventures—”

  “Which occasionally end with a friend catching bullets with her frontal lobe.”

  “I’m just sayin’,” he continued, unmoved by my rising hysteria. “Better find another shoulder to cry on, honey.”

  “I will.” I jumped up. Time to get gone before I decided to see how often Marc would bounce if I threw him over the railing and into the amusement park. “I will do exactly that.”

  “See ya,” he replied, admirably unconcerned.

  I snatched his unopened can of Coke, taking bitchy pleasure in his flinch—he probably hadn’t seen me move. “And I’m taking this. Yeah! Reap the whirlwind.”

  I stomped toward the escalators, not acknowledging his, “Don’t forget, you said you’d clean Giselle’s litter box tonight!”

  As far as parting shots went, it was a pretty good one.

  Chapter 17

  All is well, beloved stud muffin o’mine. I have decided to forgive you.”

  I was smiling at Sinclair from our bedroom doorway. Yep, time to forgive him for whatever it was he did, and get laid. It had been—jeez, was that right? Four days? Four? No wonder I felt so bitchy and out of control.

  “Mmm,” the love of my (un)life hummed. His back was to me as he was sitting at the small shaker-style desk in the corner, working on his laptop. We usually had a please-no-paperwork-but-how-about-oral-sex-instead rule in our bedroom, but exceptions were made now and again. I mean, he was a rich powerful king-type guy. When we weren’t putting our footprints on the ceiling, memos had to be read. Or written. Or whatever the hell he did on that thing.

  “So, I didn’t see you here last night when I came
back.”

  Nothing.

  “In fact, I haven’t seen much of you in the last day or two. What with our little, uh, you know, and the devil dropping by.”

  Tap-tap-tap of his fingers hitting the keyboard.

  “So, the devil. Dropped by. But I took care of it.” Yep, never underestimate the negotiating power of felony assault.

  “How fortunate none of your thoughtless actions will come back to haunt us. Or hurt us.” Tap, Tap-tap,

  “Uh ... okay. Are you all right?”

  Tap, TAP-TAP-TAP, I wondered if the tips of his fingers were going to punch through the keyboard. “No,” Sinclair replied. “I am not. I have an inordinate amount of paperwork. I must clean up another of your messes. I have asked you no less than four times to be at my side for a significant social obligation—”

  “What, this again? C’mon, Sinclair, teatime with vamps? Barf. And again, I say barf.”

  “I. Wasn’t. Finished.” Still he wouldn’t look at me. Why wouldn’t he turn around and look at me? More: Why weren’t we having sex right now? “You say you want our people to be more independent, less predatory, and—how did you so charmingly phrase it? Ah. ‘Less sucky in all things, pun intended.’ ”

  “Heh.” Good one.

  “But you resist any opportunity to give them positive reinforcement. You resist any opportunities to appear at my side as a show of our concentrated, combined ruling authority. You—”

  “—are wondering who bit you on the ass.” I knew it wasn’t me, literally or figuratively. Could he have a headache? A fang-ache? Overworked, maybe? Hard to imagine ... Sinclair lived for this shit. Grumpy because he was on the same four-day-sexless streak I was? Bingo.

  I crossed the room and put my hands on his shoulders, surprised to find his muscles were thrumming like steel cables. “Yeesh, you’re grumpy tonight. But I have a cure, which will entail you making that sexy-clinkey sound when you unbuckle your belt, and then I will make that oh-God-put-it-in-right-now sound, and—”

  “Do not say that!”

  “What? What?” I was astonished; he hadn’t shouted it so much as roared it. Then I realized a God had slipped out, which felt to most vampires like a paper cut. On the genitals.

  “Oh, jeez, I—oh, jeez! I mean, sorry. Uh, sorry. It just slipped out.”

  “It continually slips out. You have no interest in modifying your behavior even when it harms those closest to you. You have had years to implement this adjustment and have not troubled yourself. This, while those around you risk their lives. Or lose their lives. I find it ... dishonorable.”

  Was it possible I never left Payless Shoes with Laura the other day? Instead of coming here for the Saturday Satanic Movie Fest, perhaps I’d passed out in Payless and everything that had happened since was some sort of crappy-shoe-induced fever dream brought on by lack of sex and impending November.

  I guess he got tired of me just standing there with my mouth unsprung, because he put the final spank on his verbal cat o’nine tails with, “I require your absence.”

  “Uh. You do?”

  “Remove your hands. Then remove the rest of you. Quietly, if you can manage such a feat.”

  I yanked my hands back as though he’d gotten lava hot. Then I took a slow step backward. Then another.

  Something was seriously screwed up. Had I been that much of a brat the other day? Well, sure. But this was not new behavior. Certainly not new to Sinclair, who ran up against my self-involved brattiness about eight seconds after we met.

  “You seem ... um ... upset. D’you want a smoothie?” Or a tranquilizer? I wondered if Marc had made it back from his AA meeting yet; I had the feeling I’d need his shoulder again, and there were only so many burdens I dared put on Jessica this time of year.

  Marc had a love-hate relationship with AA. As he described it, AA was like a high school girlfriend who was hot, one you’d known for a long time, but who also cheated on you. So Marc and AA broke up at least once a year but always got back together. And why the hell was I thinking about Marc’s easy-come-easy-go alcoholism now?

  I wrenched my thoughts onto a more relevant track. “When did you feed last?”

  I was surprised to feel my shoulder blades hit the bedroom door. I’d let him back me all the way across the room. Or, rather, I’d let me back me all the way across the room.

  I had seen Sinclair enraged, despondent, joyful, horny, worried, irritated, tender, motivated, goaded, annoyed, terrified, ravenous, and provoked. But the stranger hanging out in my husband’s suit? I’d never met him before. Cold and hateful were sentiments I never dreamed my heart’s love, my only love, would use on me.

  Also: he hadn’t bothered to answer my question. For a weird moment I thought maybe this time, I was the ghost.

  “Maybe I’ll just ...” What? Kill him? Kill myself? Race for Tina’s vodka collection? Set the house on fire? Smack myself in the face until I woke up? That last was probably not the worst plan in the world ...

  “Why are you still here?” He didn’t bother to raise his voice that time. And he sure hadn’t turned around to look at me. He was re-engrossed in his work; I no longer rated strong emotion.

  Then, a life preserver was tossed my way when I’d never wanted an escape hatch more: “Living Dead Girl” started blaring from my pants.

  My ring tone. My hands shot into the pocket of my cargo pants (hurrah for eighteen pockets of varying sizes even if khaki made me look like I recently escaped basic training!) as I clawed for the Rob Zombie—blaring lifesaver.

  “Oh, thank God. I mean, hello?”

  “Betsy?” A small, crumpled voice. A tearful voice. “Betsy, are you there?”

  Sure, Laura, I just don’t know where here is right now, what with my husband channeling Joey Buttafuoco. “What’s wrong? You sound—”

  “I’m naked!”

  “Uh, figuratively, or—”

  “I just woke up here!” she whisper-screamed. “I don’t know how I got here. All I remember is going to bed last night in my room, and now I’m naked in the spoon!”

  As someone born and raised within an hour’s drive of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, I knew at once what the problem was and, even better, where it was.

  “I’m coming,” I told her, dropping the phone back in my pocket and all but diving out my bedroom door.

  It wasn’t running away. It sure wasn’t a retreat. A family member needed help. I had to go, no matter what just happened with my husband, no matter how much I wanted to stay and thrash this out.

  Yup. That was my story. It even had the advantage of sounding almost true.

  Chapter 18

  Hennepin Avenue wasn’t too wretched—it was only ten at night—which made me wonder why Laura was waking up at such an odd hour (and naked, no less). She was a student at the U of M; she tended to stick to the typical daytime schedule of a nine-to-fiver. Time enough to pin her down on that one once I rescued her from the spoon.

  The spoon was one of the things the Twin Cities were famous for (aside from subzero temperatures that would make a weasel squeal).

  It was an enormous sculpture of a spoon with a cherry sitting in the bowl of said spoon, and was the pride and joy of the sculpture garden. The husband-and-wife team who created it were hailed as artistic geniuses, and gobs of people came to look at the thing every year.

  Not me, though. Once was enough (ninth-grade field trip, which was made even more exciting when Jessica barfed her Dilly Bar all over my new sweater). Okay, it was a very nice gigantic spoon. And a very vibrant, pretty cherry.

  Uh, geniuses? The ones who thought this up were geniuses? The guy—the husband—even admitted that he sketched while he ate. He would get inspired. While he ate. No wonder he thought of doing a giant spoon. He was probably wolfing down ice cream at the time. Maybe even an ice cream sundae. With a big red guess what on top? I s’pose we’re lucky he didn’t sculpt a giant pudding cup. Or a giant tuna melt.

  Okay, so, as a people, we midwesterne
rs are easily impressed. All anyone has to do is eyeball the sculpture garden to figure that out. Don’t even get me started on the guy who did the sculpture of a bench. He used three kinds of materials for his sculpture. Of a bench. Which people keep insisting is art. When it’s a bench.

  This was probably why my major had been Studies in Cinema, as opposed to Art History, before I dropped out. Never mind; I had stuff to do and Antichrists to haul out of giant cherries.

  I parked (badly), then beat feet over to the sculpture garden. I was wearing good shoes, of course, but they were Dolce and Gabbana floral print sandals, which meant they were gorgeous, expensive, and flat. I could actually run in them.

  For a wonder—at least it was a chilly night—there weren’t any couples trying to sneak over to have sex in the spoon. So I found Laura alone, shivering, and—she hadn’t exaggerated for dramatic effect, though I’d had hopes—naked.

  “What happened?” I asked, already shrugging out of my jacket. I handed her a small, crumpled Target bag—no time to shop, or wrap—which held one of a thousand pairs of my leggings. (You know how, a couple years ago, everybody credited Lindsay Lohan with bringing back leggings? A vicious, damnable lie. I brought ‘em back. Me.)

  I didn’t bother to bring shoes—she was two sizes bigger than me. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

  “I don’t know! I woke up in here. And I was cold and this thing—this spoon is so cold! And—”

  “Wait. You woke up like this? Just like this?” I watched as she yanked on my leggings—should have remembered to bring underwear—and pulled the jacket closed over her breasts. “How did you call me?”

  “There was a guy with a sketchbook—he said he’d quit sketching because it was dark, but was still hanging around—and he gave me his phone. He said I could use it. And then he—” She peeked around the spoon. “I guess he left.”

  “I didn’t pass anyone.” And couldn’t smell or hear anyone. Enh ... one worry at a time. “What’s the last thing you remember?”