The Loving Dead

by Amelia Beamer

  His ear stung. He put a hand to it. He saw blood. “Kate?” he asked. She was chewing. That didn’t matter. He touched her cheek. Love was all about the moment. He untied one of her wrists. Freed, her fingers pulled at his shirt. He used the rope to tie his other wrist to hers. That way, if anyone found them, they’d know what had happened. That he’d gone willingly. Then he leaned to kiss Kate, readying himself.

  chapter seventeen

  ten years later

  Kate no longer asked one of the other bartenders at Patient Zero to walk her back to her car at the end of the night. Half of the customers still called it Cato’s; the employees hadn’t gotten around to making a new sign. Most of the storefronts on Piedmont Avenue were back to being occupied by retailers, though the really boutiquey stores selling things like handmade organic fair-wage baby clothes were gone. Evolutionary dead ends.

  She dried a glass with a towel, setting it in the rack. Business was slow tonight. She watched the television, which showed Piedmont High School’s production of The Tempest. Prospero was eighteen at best, but had the gravitas of someone who remembered everything. “Full fathom five,” Kate mouthed along with Ariel.

  Derek sat down at the bar. Kate poured him a shot. Employees weren’t supposed to drink on the job, but everyone did it. “You’re up after Audrey,” he said. “She’s got another two songs after this.” His cheek had a long shiny scar, and he was missing an eyebrow. Kate had never gotten the nerve to ask him how it had happened. She could guess well enough. Still, some people were into that. Evidence of the new order.

  “There’s almost no one here,” she said. “Won’t be much in tips.”

  Audrey was dancing to “Rodeo” by Juvenile. In the colored spotlights, you hardly saw how gray her skin was.

  “Like the new shirt.” He drank from his cup.

  “It’d look great on your floor, right?” That was one of his lines. He flirted out of habit, as she did. The shirt had been an impulse buy from a street vendor, a baby tee on which was printed No Bugchasers in pink letters. It rode up, showing off the Ouroboros tattoo around her hips that had cost several weeks’ take. The pain and exhilaration from being tattooed had been the closest she’d come to an orgasm with someone else in years.

  “Any floor, baby. Try me.”

  “That drunk still hanging around outside?” Kate asked, mostly to change the subject. She didn’t have to tell him that it was bad for business.

  “I can’t do anything about it. I’ve told him to go away. He’s one of them. It’s a little tactless, hanging around in front of this place. PTSD, sure, fine, but we’ve all been through worse than he has. I wish the council would do something about them.”

  “Most homeless people are mentally ill,” Kate said. “There just isn’t funding. Prop Eight failed. It’s the damn three-quarters majority requirement.”

  “New government, same old problems. People would rather have the power on, and the water running, never mind getting some of these potholes fixed. That’s what the Reparation was supposed to be about. Not just jobs. Not just safety. I drove into the city the other day—”

  “‘When you ride alone, you ride with Hitler,’” Kate quoted. She’d gotten it from a novel about kids whose parents were making the bomb during WWII. Gas coupons and rationing. The public libraries were gone, but Patient Zero had a take-one-leave-one bookshelf.

  “I picked up some people from the casual carpool. But listen to this, at the tollbooth they made us all sign a waiver. Sheet full of names, on both sides. Bridge has finally been declared unsound, but what’s the option? Walk through the BART tunnel? No, thank you.”

  “You could drive down to the 92. It’s a newer bridge.”

  “Yeah, but it’s out of the way. Another hour or two, depending on traffic. I don’t have the gas credit for that. Everything takes longer, these days. You’re old enough to remember how it was.”

  The song finished. Drake’s “Best I Ever Had” started. Audrey flipped upside down on the pole. Her hair hung down like a mop. She wore it long to cover her scars. Kate watched her. Audrey had a beautiful body. She’d gotten ripped, ab muscles visible. Sometimes they’d trade backrubs after their respective sets. The pole took it out of you. But she never touched Audrey at home. In the beginning, they’d both been afraid to live alone. They split the bills, and they didn’t talk much except for work. It was like being married, except that neither of them was seeing anyone else.

  “I’ll watch the store if you want to get ready,” Derek said. “This’ll be your last set before the power goes out.”

  Kate poured herself a shot. “All right, I guess. Only for you.” She drained it, trying to psych herself up. She went into what used to be a storage closet. She took off her shirt and bra. She pinched her nipples erect, then put clamps on them, grimacing. A clamp had fallen off once, during her act. She changed into white panties. Then she put on a black leather hood with holes for her eyes, nose, and mouth. She used the hood not because her face was scarred but because it wasn’t.

  Patient Zero was a fetish bar. The fetish was survivors like her, but there was overlap with the BDSM community. She and Audrey were lucky that they’d each been locked up. Most zombies had been shot on sight by the time research groups at UCSF and Stanford had come up with antiretrovirals that worked. Audrey’s song ended. The applause faded. Derek called out, not bothering to use the mic: “Next up, put your hands together for our very talented Kyrie Eleison!”

  Kate made her way to the stage. She stood, looking at the mirrored ceiling, and waited for the song to start. She’d picked “Easy Come, Easy Go” by the bluegrass Jugtown Pirates as her first piece. They still played the bar circuit, mostly in San Francisco. The stand-up bass player reminded her of Michael; he made the same goofy faces. She’d chosen the song for the chorus: “Life keeps moving along.” And because people thought it was funny. When the crowd was particularly frisky, she’d swap it out for their song “My Baby Left and Became a Stripper.” She climbed up the pole, swirling around. She made eye contact with the audience. It was mostly middle-aged guys who smelled of beer and work sweat. She touched herself. It was a job. “Bonnie and Clyde” by Haystak was next.

  A slender guy came in and sat down. Kate felt the blood leave her head. It couldn’t be. It was. Walter. Or his father. No, it was him. She felt weak. So he hadn’t died.

  She kept dancing. He wouldn’t recognize her, the hood covering her face. “Comfortable” by Lil Wayne came on. She did a belly roll, making the snake’s tail twitch. She refused to be self-conscious. When the song was over, she collected her money from the floor and bolted from the stage.

  She sat in the closet for a while after changing back into her clothes. She counted the cash. Almost fifty, in Bear Republic dollars plus a few wrinkled US dollars. End-of-the-night take. The United States was a joke; bankrupted from the Siege. New England had incorporated. Southern California was now the Orange Republic; Northern California and Oregon the Bear Republic. States printed their own money, but everyone still took US currency. She put the bills in her pocket, then checked her reflection in a mirror that had been manufactured decades ago to fit in a high schooler’s locker. Her skin was pale and gray in the light from the single incandescent bulb. They’d shaved her head in the hospital, years ago, and she’d decided she liked it that way. It was a kind of penance. Too little, too late, but it was something. She put on lipstick and smiled at herself.

  The light went out. It must be midnight already. She came out of the closet. Derek was lighting candles. Audrey had gotten her guitar and was sitting on a stool on the stage in the semidark, playing Tracy Chapman songs. A few of the customers had stayed to look up her skirt and sing along; others drifted to the bar.

  Walter sat by himself, head propped on his hands, examining his bottle of beer. He wore a Stanford sweatshirt with the anti-zombie logo. Kate went behind the bar. She grabbed another bottle of beer from the melted ice in the cooler, and set it in front of him. He looked up.r />
  “Fancy meeting you in a place like this,” she said.

  He blinked a few times. “Kate?” he said, tasting the word as if for the first time. “I didn’t know. Oh, God. I’m so sorry.” His face did some complicated things. “How are you?”

  His voice sounded like she remembered. That was hard.

  “Surviving,” she said. “Glad to see you are, too. I’m one of the lucky ones. I was in the hospital for a while. Then moved into a tiny apartment by the lake with my friend Audrey. I lost touch with a lot of people. Went off the grid, basically.”

  “Happens, especially when phones and the Internet are on-again, off-again. I lost all of my email to a server crash.” Was he trying to explain why he hadn’t tried to contact her, or was he saying that he understood why she hadn’t contacted him? She rather liked the idea that all of their correspondence was gone.

  “So you’re working here?” he asked.

  “It’s all right. Not a lot of jobs for people like me.”

  “If I’d known, maybe I could have brought a whip.” He smiled as if he already regretted the joke.

  “I’ve got it under control, thank you very much. Antiretrovirals. The whip sound doesn’t work once the drugs are in your system. You see the size of those speakers? I’m not sensitive to sound any more, for sure. Glad to see I didn’t give it to you, though.”

  He took a sip. He’d aged. It was in his face, and his posture. “I’ve been looking for you, believe it or not. For years. I needed to see you, Katie. I asked around at Mills, after they opened again, but no one knew anything. I needed to know that you were OK.”

  “Yeah.” She shook her head. “Yeah, I just told you that I was in school to impress you.”

  He looked away. “I guess I deserved that.”

  “I actually do write, now,” she added, softening her voice. “Not for publication, though.” She thought of a quick poem. The world does not end / How precious your guilt / How poisonous your love.

  “Kate, give me a hand?” Derek called from the other end of the bar. Now that the dancing was over, the drinking had picked up.

  “Sorry. ’Scuse me.” Kate touched Walter’s hand, out of habit. His skin was soft, in an age where most people worked outdoors. He flinched, just a little, but she noticed. Probably he’d never been touched by a zombie before. People always expected her skin to be cold.

  “Wait—when are you off shift? I’d love to buy you a burger or something.” In the old days, they’d eaten steak. He must have come down, from whatever he did then to whatever he did now. The panic during the Siege had killed off the remaining banks. His 401(k) was surely lost. Retirement was a joke.

  “I’m vegetarian, these days. I’ll never eat flesh again.” She smiled, trying to look malevolent. If she scared him away, she wouldn’t have to talk to him. “Be right there,” she called to Derek.

  “Touché.” Walter wasn’t sure whether to laugh. That meant she made him nervous. Good. “Pizza?” he asked. “There’s a place down the block that serves late.”

  She considered.

  “Please?”

  “Excuse me,” she said. She moved to the other end of the bar and mixed a Manhattan for a white-haired man who always tipped. She threw in an extra cherry.

  “That guy bothering you?” Derek asked.

  “No. Just someone I used to know. We went out a few times.” She saw no reason to conceal it.

  “Really?”

  “Before.”

  “I was going to say. You never date.”

  “It’s not the zombie thing. I just had a bad experience once.”

  “With this guy?” Derek’s face darkened.

  “Oh, no. Another guy. It’s all conflated in my brain, though. I don’t like to talk about it. I’m not embarrassed; it just tends to weird people out. Violence might turn people on, here, but trauma turns them off. There is a difference.”

  “Well, you looked haunted, cutie. Just tell me if you want me to get rid of him.”

  “Thanks.” She bumped her hip against his, checking first to see that he wasn’t holding anything that would spill. He smiled. She slung bottles of beer, made here in Oakland, and mixed a few cocktails. When business calmed down, she leaned against the back counter. It was good to have work. Derek stood next to her.

  “Stick with your own kind,” he said under his breath. “I don’t have to tell you why. The vitalists don’t understand what it’s like. They’ll parade you around to show how PC they are, dating a zombie, but they get over it fast. It’s all a fantasy. And they’re lousy in bed. Afraid to touch you.”

  “Believe me. It’s not like that. I’m not dating anyone. This guy, he wants to get the guilt monkey off his back. He ran out on me during the Siege.”

  “Everyone did shit they regret. Especially us.”

  She nodded. Honesty / until it hurts / No safe word. “I ate my friend. I don’t talk about it.”

  “So did I!” Derek said. “I ate my girlfriend. How sick was that? I mean, I took it home to her. It was my fault. I think of her every day.” He poured a shot for each of them from the well. The alcohol burned on the back of her throat.

  “Yeah. I mean, I don’t remember all of it,” she added. “I tied myself up and told my friend to go away. But he didn’t. Then I woke up in a hospital. I saw pictures. What was left. They couldn’t even take a dental impression. His face was gone. He’d tied himself to me.” She’d never told this to anyone, outside of the hospital shrink. The kiss of death / a shotgun / smears the lipstick.

  “And we remind them of it, so the only jobs we can get are working for tips in a fetish bar. I guess there’s always farming, but we’re not safe outside of urban areas. We’re barely safe in them.”

  Kate put her arm in Derek’s. He at least understood. On Tuesdays, he danced and she emceed. He squeezed her arm against his side, then let go.

  “You don’t owe him anything, darling.”

  “No,” she said. “I suppose not.”

  After last call, Walter was still there. He’d had a few beers, but he wasn’t drunk in her professional opinion. She busied herself cleaning, wiping down the bar and then the pole. She carried a cooler of melted ice to one of the two single-stall bathrooms, dumping it into the graywater reservoir that was hooked up to the toilet. The bathroom walls were riddled with graffiti. She found a Sharpie. She wrote: Water washes blood / You can’t tell me / it’s OK.

  She used the toilet, flushed, then washed her hands in the sink. There was a knock, and she went to the door, in case it was a customer.

  “Leave the mopping up to me,” Derek said. “You’re not making it any easier by putting it off. If you’re going to go talk to him. Which I’m still not sure you should.”

  “I owe him this much,” she said, realizing she’d made a decision. “I owe myself this much. Wish me luck. And thanks.”

  “Luck,” Derek said. “I’ll give Audrey a ride home.”

  “You’re the best.” She retrieved a sweatshirt from the closet and went to collect Walter.

  “Thanks for waiting. Shall we?” she said.

  Walter stood. He seemed shorter than he used to be. She followed him. The street was quiet. The guy who’d been hanging around outside had gone to wherever they went. Since the BART train had ceased, homeless people had claimed the tunnel. It was always dark down there, or so she’d heard, and there were often fires. Drunks smoking in their cardboard beds. Kate had signed a petition to clear out the tunnel and close it down.

  “Thanks for seeing me,” Walter said. “It means a lot.”

  “No worries.”

  “It’s not exactly like old times. I never did take you to the Claremont. I owe you that, I suppose.” He reached for her hand.

  She squeezed it to be polite, then dropped it, ignoring his last comment. “Well, nothing is. So what are you doing these days?”

  “Lawyers always have work. Contracting for the government, mostly. The office is gone. Squatters moved in, last I heard. I g
ot one of those efficiencies downtown, and I work from there. I miss the way things used to be.”

  “Everyone does. I never thought I’d pine for retail work. That’s what I did, back when. I never told you about it. There’s a lot I didn’t tell you.”

  He nodded. “Customer service is good for the soul.”

  “Have you ever done it?” She thought, after she’d said it, that she could have made a joke about him not having a soul, and was glad she hadn’t.

  “I do it all the time. Unless you’re talking about retail customer service. I was a trolley-cart kid. My first job. They’d just invented them.”

  “Seriously. They’d just invented kids?”

  “Sort of. I was a prototype. But I did work retail.”

  It was easy to slip back into the joking. They could segue from there to anything. She stopped. They walked down Piedmont Avenue. She let him lead.

  Walter cleared his throat. “So you’re living with someone named Audrey these days, you said?”

  “She’s all right. We used to work together, and we work together now. Chick singing on stage? Between us we make enough for rent and utilities. She still misses cable and Netflix, but I don’t mind so much. We watch old movies and news on the indie stations when the power’s on, or read borrowed books.”

  A homeless guy stood in their path, muttering. He wore a hat and several jackets, despite the warmth of the evening.

  “Let’s cross here.” She put a hand on Walter’s arm and steered him towards the street. She kept talking. “Doesn’t matter that Hollywood’s dead, or New York publishing. There’s already enough culture to last anyone’s lifetime. I saw Casablanca the other day for the first time. I can understand why a generation of women were in love with Bogey.”

  The homeless guy’s eyes widened. She forced herself to look away. It was dark. Maybe he hadn’t seen her skin. She always hated this, the yelling that would follow. Sometimes they’d walk after her, like Mary’s little lamb, picking up other crazies as they went. She often wore hoods, sunglasses, makeup, anything that would cover her skin.