“Okay,’’ Cordelia said breezily as she came back in. She had changed her clothes again, and was wearing her doctor’s coat. A stethoscope hung around her neck. “Feeling more alert, are we?’’
“Yes,” Mario said for them all, though Oliver felt a pang of disappointment that she’d buttoned the white coat all the way to the top.
“I just want to check a few things, and ask you a few questions,’’ she said briskly as she unbuckled the remaining straps that held their legs immobile. She pushed up their hospital gown and placed the stethoscope on their chest and listened closely. A frown marred her lovely face, and she sighed.
“Well, it couldn’t be helped, I suppose. I had hoped the circulatory system might jumpstart, as it were, once the brain was back to normal capacity, but I guess we can’t have everything, now can we? ” She sat back and observed him. “Still, we have visual, auditory, speech, and touch.’’
“And smell,” Mario said.
“Really?’’ She seemed quite pleased. “That’s more than I’d hoped for. What about movement? Are you ready to try and get up?’’
“I think so, yes.”
“All right, but first, you must have some questions. Like who I am, and who you are. Yes?’’
“She doesn’t know we’re all here,’’ Zach said.
“Should we tell her?’’ Oliver asked
“No,’’ Zach and Brett said immediately, while Ike said, “Hell, yes,’’ and Ethan drawled, “Why not?’’
But Mario and Oliver made it four to two, and Mario opened their mouth to answer her.
“Yes.”
“Hmm. A man of few words,’’ Cordelia smiled. “I like that. Well, my name is Cordelia, but you can call me Dee. And do you know what your name is?’’
Six names rang out in the shared brain, and Mario finally just said, “No.”
“Well, don’t worry, hon, that will come. If not, we’ll just think up the perfect name ourselves. Now lean on me.’’
Mario took her arm, carefully swung their legs off the bed and stood, a little shakily. After a moment, Cordelia—Dee—led them across the room and back. By the time they reached the bed again, even Oliver, who was the least used to this new way of living, could feel the strength returning to their body.
“Are you hungry?’’ Dee asked.
All six considered this.
“No.”
“For nothing?’’ she said as they sat back against the head of bed.
“Ask her for the remote,’’ Ike urged. “I saw it on the table over there.’’
“How ’bout a beer?’’ Ethan suggested, but then Dee began unbuttoning her long, white doctor’s coat.
“Since your sense of touch seems so . . . sensitive . . .’’ She leaned in, and Oliver realized that under the long, while coat was . . . well . . . Dee, and nothing else. “I thought we’d try another little test,’’ she murmured, and her long, red fingernails trailed down past the edge of their hospital gown.
“Don’t you dare close your eyes, not once, Fancy Boy,’’ Ethan said.
Oliver agreed wholeheartedly.
“That was nice,’’ Dee said later, satisfied.
The guys agreed.
“Did you enjoy it?’’
“Yes,” Mario said immediately, without waiting for a majority.
“Damn, I wish Mario smoked,’’ Ike complained sleepily.
“Now, we need to get a few things straight,’’ Dee said a little more briskly. “First of all, your name. I’ve been thinking. You’re the perfect man, aren’t you? I mean, I made you. You’re sensitive—’’
“That’s me,’’ Zach sighed.
“—intelligent—’’
“Me,’’ Oliver said, smugly.
“—romantic—’’
“Number one in the box office,’’ Brett bragged.
Ike said, “Yeah, but does she know you like to wear women’s panties?’’
“Women’s panties?’’ Oliver yelped.
“They’re very comfortable, especially the silk ones,’’ Brett said stiffly.
“—you have a great sense of humor—’’
“Should I tell her the one about the two blondes in the bathtub?’’ Ike sniggered.
“—you’re rugged and manly—’’
“She ain’t never seen Brokeback Mountain, has she?’’ Ethan said “—and,’’ she continued, stroking their chest possessively, “you’re drop-dead gorgeous.’’
“And I can do her hair, too,’’ Mario said. “She’d look so much younger with a different cut.’’
“So since you’re the perfect man, you need the perfect man’s name.’’ She paused, then said, “Dwayne.’’
Silence.
“Don’t you like it?’’
“Dwayne?” Mario answered, timidly.
“Dwayne . . . that’s a jerk’s name,’’ Ike said.
“A redneck name,’’ Ethan said. “And don’t even think it. I ain’t no redneck. I’m a cowboy, and it just ain’t the same thing.’’
“Oh, say you like it,’’ Dee begged. “It would mean so much to me.’’
“Oh, God, she’s gonna cry,’’ Zach said. “She won’t stop. She cried about the damn dog for three solid hours. Don’t let her get started.’’
And sure enough, her eyes were filling with tears.
Oliver panicked. “Mario, tell her it’s fine. Tell her it’s fine.’’
Mario said, “Dwayne. It’s . . . it’s like I’ve always known it. Like I’ve been Dwayne forever.’’
“Wow,’’ Brett whispered. “That was good, Mario.’’
“It was me,’’ Zach said proudly. “I did that.’’
“You? How?’’ the guys asked in confusion.
Zach said, “I just did it. It was a sensitive moment. I mean, come on, I’m the sensitive part, remember?’’
I wonder if I can do that, Oliver suddenly thought. Take over. I’m smarter than they are, after all. It should be easy, if Zach can do it.
“You might try to remember, Oliver, that we can all hear your thoughts,’’ Ike said. “And I’m starting to think old Ollie here is a bigger jerk than Dwayne.’’
“We are Dwayne,’’ Brett said, and it was quite a while before any of them realized that Dee had fallen asleep.
“Hey,’’ Ethan said. “We’re supposed to fall asleep, not her.’’
“We can’t,’’ Brett reminded him. “We’re not alive anymore, so really, sleeping is sort of out of the question.’’
“Do you think she’d mind if we watched some TV?’’ Mario asked. But just then Dee gave a very unladylike snore, rolled over, and pinned them to the bed quite neatly.
“Now, remember, Dwayne, you mustn’t leave the apartment,’’ Dee told them in the morning as she dressed for work. Their hands kept trying to slide up under her blouse and she pushed them away in exasperation. “Stop it. I have a cerebral aneurysm at nine A.M. sharp, and I don’t have time for this.’’ The look on her face softened and she said softly, “But be waiting for me when I get home. Maybe some soft music, candlelight? There’s a bottle of Dom Perignon we can open.’’
“Can I wear your panties while you’re gone?’’ Dwayne said, and Dee’s mouth dropped open. “I’m just kidding, my dearest,’’ he added quickly. “Hurry home, beloved. I’ll be counting every minute until you return.’’ They licked the inside of her ear slowly and sensuously, and she shivered in response.
“I’ll be home as soon as I can,’’ she promised, and they watched her leave, a tender smile pasted on their face until they heard the lock click into place behind her.
“Can I wear your panties?’’ Oliver shrieked. “Are you insane?’’
“I just wanted to see if I could take over, like Zach did last night,’’ Brett said. “And are you seriously telling me you never once wondered what it would feel like to wear silk underwear?’’
“Hell with all that,’’ Ethan interrupted. “Let’s go try out that big screen TV.’’
�
��Wait,’’ Ike said. “I know we don’t need to eat or nothing, but I was thinking. It couldn’t hurt to try, could it?’’
“To eat and drink? But how would we . . . you know . . . get rid of it afterwards?’’
“We’ll worry about that when we have to,’’ Ike said. “I saw some beer in the fridge.’’
“Okay, but hurry up.’’ They picked up a TV guide they found on the coffee table. “There’s a Knicks game from last night being rebroadcast in five minutes.’’
Dwayne heard the door open, nearly ten hours later, and an exhausted Dr. Cordelia Rogers made her way into the luxurious apartment. Her eyes opened in horror. An empty pizza box lay on the floor next to a container of kung pao chicken, a dozen empty beer bottles were lined up like bowling pins on one side of the room, and Dwayne sprawled in the recliner, a football game on the plasma TV with professional golf in the picture-in-picture.
“We’re screwed,” Zach whispered.
Brett said, “Let me handle this, guys.”
Dwayne stood. The look in his eyes was borrowed from John Banning, Bounty Hunter that time he’d seduced Holly Hunter in Dead Men Tell No Tales.
“Dee. Cordelia, my dearest. I must apologize for the mess, darling. But I waited and waited for you, all day long. I missed you terribly.’’ By now he was at her side, and his hand stroked her cheek gently, then moved behind to remove the clips that held her hair back. “Why, Dee, do you hide this wonderful hair?’’ Her hair fell to her shoulders, and Dwayne saw her horror beginning to fade. When Dwayne slid his hands lower, stroking her back and pulling her in close, her pupils widened.
“That’s good, keep it up,” Ike said.
“I’ll take care of this mess, dearest. You need to relax. Let me run you a hot bath, then you soak while I clean this up. Then—’’
For a moment, his hands slid down, cupping her derriere and pulling her even closer. “Then I’ll join you in the tub,’’ he whispered in her ear, and she sighed in pleasure.
As soon as she was safely ensconced in the bubbles, Dwayne hurried out to the living room and rushed through the room. The beer bottles he tumbled into a plastic bag with the pizza box, the Chinese take-out went in the fridge, and the TV went on mute.
“Dwayne? I’m waiting, love. Will you be much longer?’’ Her voice was sultry, and Dwayne took one last, longing look at the TV screen.
“Coming, darling.’’
“Man, it’s going into OT,” Mario whined.
Brett was firm. “I’m the romantic part, and if we want to keep all this, well, then we have to make some sacrifices.’’
“Sacrifices?” Oliver said. “Were any of you paying attention last night? That woman is incredible. And now she’s naked, and wet, and covered with bubbles. This is just a football game.”
“Just a football game?” Mario shouted as Dwayne stepped into the large, steam filled bathroom.
Dwayne, with Dee’s eyes on his every move, slowly began to remove his clothing, almost in a striptease, and her face flushed as she watched.
“Just a . . . football game?” Mario repeated halfheartedly.
Dwayne watched intently as the bubbles began to disappear, and certain portions of Dee’s very wet, very soapy body could be seen.
Dwayne unbuttoned his cotton lounging pants and slid them to the floor, stepping towards the tub with a lazy, sexy smile.
Dee shrieked. “Are you wearing my underwear?’’
TWO ALL BEEF PATTIES
Jay Lake
I used to be a skinny guy with asthma, a pot belly, and a skin condition that kept my dermatologist in boat payments. Girls made me stutter, and my palms sweat badly whenever I had to shake hands. My name might as well have been Wilson. I was a network installer—ran low-voltage wiring through drop ceilings and down cube walls. Lot of dust in that line of work, played hell with my asthma, but it paid well and people mostly left me alone after they signed the work order.
That was fine as far as it went, though the only dates I had were with suicidegirls.com, and most of my friends were avatars online. You can have a lot of fun that way, but it never felt quite right. I pretty much gave up watching television, because even the losers on prime time had better lives than me.
Then the Unrapture came. That’s not what anybody who goes to church calls it, of course, but it struck the rest of us as funny. The dead came stumbling out of emergency rooms, morgues and mortuaries one summer afternoon. Accident scenes changed in a hurry.
People freaked out, then got over it pretty fast. The dead people can’t be their own next of kin, so the quick got to inherit Aunt Millie’s nest egg, while still having Aunt Millie around.
It got me back to watching TV, once Survivor: Dying to Get Off the Island aired. Turns out the dead are real good at a lot of things that play well on reality TV. Except for American Idol, of course.
The dead don’t sing so good.
Knowing that dying wasn’t necessarily the end of the ride made some people careless. Not everybody got Unraptured, far from it, but enough people did that the same kind of folks who planned on winning the lottery figured that falling off the roof while skeet shooting drunk wasn’t going to slow them down much.
It’s hard to shamble down Burnside Street moaning “brains, brains’’ if your own brains had been spattered across the back patio. Coming back from the dead required being pretty much whole. That much the Holy Rollers with their horror of organ donation had gotten right.
Me, I didn’t have a death wish so much as a lack of a life wish. Even the dead were cooler than me. I couldn’t get into their bars, either.
I can’t tell you that I did it on purpose, but one day I accidentally jumped some Cat7 network cable to the commercial 240v feed. Maybe I didn’t care any more. Maybe I was tired of who I’d been for twenty-seven years. Maybe I wanted to be on TV.
What I got was a view into the afterlife that made my eyeballs spin while my ears crackled louder than feedback at a Fourth of July punk rock festival.
Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.™
“Jeremy.’’
I looked up. Everything felt wrong. There was no other way to describe it. My tendons had been unstrung and taped in backwards. My muscles were knotted like a sailor’s nightmare. Thinking hurt.
“Jeremy.’’
It was a paramedic. Well, at least a gal in a white suit with a penlight.
“Wha . . . ?’’ My voice was wrong, too.
“Ok, buddy.’’ She smiled, first time a woman had looked me in the eye and done that since Mrs. Bagby’s math class in tenth grade. “I’m required to recite you your Pratt Rights. You are now dead. Your estate has passed to your designated heirs or next of kin. A court may take control of your estate according to the rules of your home state and county. You have no rights to your former residence or funds, though you may have limited claims on personal effects. You are no longer a citizen of the United States, but as a decedent on United States territory you will automatically be issued a work permit. Even though you are no longer a citizen, you still bear tax liability.’’
She dropped a sheaf of papers on my chest and patted it, and thus through the papers, me. “The Pratt people will have someone around with a kit and a starter funds grant. Good luck.’’
“Wha . . . ?’’ I wasn’t coming up with much new material.
Mr. Chua, who’d hired me for the job, leaned over. “You’re going to miss your delivery date, kid, if you don’t get back to work.’’
“Right,’’ I said.
And that was it. I was dead.
With three days the junk mail started filling up my PO box. I was living—well, residing—in the back seat of my Scion xB, but no one had taken away the box. The post office apparently didn’t care about my recent transition.
It was weird stuff, too. Come-ons for all-new wardrobes, pre-packaged according to my afterlife goals. Did I finally want to make it big in the horror movie ind
ustry? How about the poker tour, where the dead had a distinct advantage due to excellent facial control and a total lack of sweating?
Likewise banking services. My credit cards were gone with everything else, but there were people out there happy to take on a 100-year commitment from me. Apparently we dead people had no limit on our life expectancy.
So to speak.
The more interesting material was employment-related. Looking at the ads, come-ons and letters, I found the dead were a lot more risk-tolerant. Work on oil platforms, as salvage divers, as helicopter line-men; some jobs I’d never even heard of, that paid staggeringly well. They required no experience for Pratt-qualified applicants—the politically correct name for the dead.
I didn’t have to string wire through ceilings any more.
On the plus side, I didn’t have asthma any more either.
Once I realized that, I decided to try going to a dead bar.
Thaw frozen patties, dust with ground black pepper, broil in oven for seven minutes, serve over hamburger rolls with Velveeta cheese, mustard and onion, garnished with salt and vinegar potato chips.
“New, huh?’’ Angel, the bartender at the Revenant Agent was a Portland hipster. Dead, but still a hipster. She had tattoos that glowed and writhed with some chemical that almost certainly wasn’t approved for human subjects.
“Does it show?’’ I asked. No stutter, no sweaty palms. This dead thing wasn’t half bad, was it?
I’d come down in the mid-afternoon, right before happy hour. I’d worked overnight on Mr. Chua’s wiring job, for lack of a need of sleep and lack of a place to not sleep in, so I had the time. It seemed better this way.
“You look surprised.’’ Angel smiled. It was cute on her oh-so-pale face. “The new fish always have a stunned expression.’’
“Yeah. I’ll have . . .’’ I stopped. I didn’t know what it was I drank. When I was quick, I never could cope with the bar scene and I’d never been invited to a lot of parties. Dead, well, what did the dead drink?
“You’ll have an Edmonton Oiler,’’ she told me.
“I will?’’
Better Off Undead Page 17