Some Like It Shot

by Elise Sax

  “I even got a slightly used four-door Mitsubishi. Paid for it with cash. The reviews for an automatic peeler put me over the top.”

  I told him about my preference for no underwires and left to fill his order. As I was ladling the loaded potato into a bowl, the door opened and Eddie Acid walked in. Eddie was our resident retired celebrity. He had been a successful punk rocker in the early eighties.

  He limped into the shop and there were a few audible gasps from the ladies, but not as many as before he got shot in the butt. Eddie stuck his tongue out and tried to do his punk rocker pose, but he was still injured and couldn’t pull it off.

  “Eddie Acid’s here,” he announced, loudly. “I’m here with good news!”

  “How’s your butt, Eddie?” one of the truckers asked and roared with laughter. The laughing was contagious, and the other truckers at his table joined him, wiping their eyes with their chili-stained napkins.

  Eddie’s face turned red, and his Mohawk slumped a little to the right. Punk rockers weren’t used to being laughed at.

  “I’ll have you know that I was shot in my upper thigh!” Eddie barked back at the truckers. “Upper thigh! Upper thigh!”

  I served Bud, and I went back to Eddie. “Would you like to take a seat?” I asked him gently. His eyes were swirling around in his sockets, like he was smoking Irving-inspired eyeball-eating marijuana.

  “I’m not here for food, Agatha,” he croaked. “I’m here to ask for volunteers from our townspeople,” he said more loudly. I heard the sound of a shop full of diners shifting in their seats. The volunteers at the Punk Rock Knitting Championship hadn’t fared too well, and I didn’t think the townsfolk wanted to jump into any more nightmarish local events.

  Cash was thrown onto a few of the tables as a dozen diners stood up and slinked out of the shop, but that didn’t stop Eddie from making his pitch.

  “Taco-eating contest, people!” Eddie called out and ran a hand over his Mohawk. “The taco-eating contest is happening this Saturday, and we need volunteers for set up and clean after. It’s for charity, people!”

  “Shut up, Eddie!” someone called out. “I wake up in a cold sweat every night because of you!”

  “This time it’ll just be tacos,” Eddie called back. “Tacos. Nobody ever got hurt from a taco.” But he rubbed his bullet-bruised butt when he said it, and I wondered if Eddie was also waking up at night in a cold sweat.

  He made the rounds, making his pitch for volunteers. Augustus finished making his own pitch for grass and left the shop. Another dozen diners followed him out. Finally, we were experiencing a little lull in the shop. Clearing a few tables, I brought the dirty dishes to the back counter. Mouse was busy pushing buttons on the tablets and packaging meals. Her hair was messed, and her face was covered in a slippery coat of sweat.

  “I’ve got this under control,” she squeaked, like she had nothing under control. “Totally under control. It’s just a little busy because of the chili. But I’m okay. We’re okay.” She put her hand on her chest. “It’s all right if my heart keeps skipping a beat. I’m not going to die. Right?”

  “Maybe you should take a break,” I suggested.

  “I don’t need a break,” Mouse exclaimed in a half scream. “I’m fine! In fact, you take a break. You need a break. I don’t need a break. The delivery apps are a good idea!”

  The door opened, and my friend Amy Hawthorne came in with three cats on leashes attached to a belt on her waist. Amy was a professional cat walker and a soup shop regular. She sat down at a table by the kitchen, and I filled a saucer of milk for her cats.

  “Phew, it’s crazy out there,” she told me. “I’m wondering if they’re putting LSD in the water supply or something.”

  “What happened now?” I asked, but quickly put my hand out, palm forward. “Never mind. Don’t tell me. I’m turning over a new leaf. I’m never getting involved with anything in Sea Breeze again. Never.”

  Amy laughed. “Oh, right. The second someone winds up with a bad cough, you’re going to be all over it, trying to find the culprit.”

  I took a seat across from her. “No way. I’m a new woman. I’m merely a dispassionate observer.”

  “What if you trip over a corpse at night? Will you be dispassionate?”

  I nodded and put my elbows on the table, resting my chin on my interlocked fingers. “I’ll call 911 and then go to bed.”

  “You don’t have a phone, Agatha, but wow, I’m impressed at your non-nosiness,” Amy said. “Speaking of bodies, have you heard from the sexy detective?” I gasped, and my elbows slipped and my head fell onto the table with a loud thud. “Are you okay?” Amy asked.

  I sat back up and rubbed my forehead. “I’m fine. I think there was a little earthquake. Or the table is uneven.”

  “Well?” Amy asked, “Isn’t Remington returning to duty tomorrow? Two clients of mine have it marked on their calendars.”

  Detective Remington Cumberbatch was a gorgeous new cop in town. He was a dead ringer for The Rock, but he had hair. He had almost died a couple weeks ago, and he had been recovering since then.

  And he had kissed me.

  But nobody knew that.

  And there were other things about him.

  Nobody knew the other things about him, either.

  “Yes, he’s supposed to go back to work tomorrow,” I said and worried about that fact. Was he ready to go back to work? Was he ready to carry a gun and walk around town, searching for criminals?

  I gnawed on the inside of my cheek and glanced at Mouse. She was packaging soups at a breakneck speed. A delivery man came in and grabbed a bagged lunch from her. I felt guilty about leaving her alone in the shop, but the lunch rush had died down, and Mouse had told me that she was doing fine. So, I decided to go check up on Remington and see how he was doing.

  The minute I stepped onto the sidewalk, I nearly got run over by a power scooter. The driver honked his horn. “Get out of my way!” he yelled at me.

  “You’re not supposed to be on the sidewalk!” I yelled back at him.

  A private scooter company had set up a free introductory program in Sea Breeze for people who were too lazy to walk. It had only been a few days, but it was already mayhem. Another scooter honked at me, and I whipped around to see a delivery man carrying the soup order on a borrowed scooter.

  “Out of my way! Don’t you see that I have a delivery to make!” he yelled at me and almost sheered my ankles off as he putt-putted away.

  “You’re not supposed to be on the sidewalk!” I yelled at his back. “And tell your customers to walk here. Walk! Walk! Why can’t people walk?”

  I wanted to yell at him some more, but he was long gone. It was frustrating being angry without anyone to yell at.

  I had a lot to be angry about. I had a burlap bag filled with stoner pennies in the shop. I had electronic tablets screwed to the wall. And then there was Remington.

  And John.

  My heart pounded in my chest, thinking about it.

  I crossed the street and turned right on the way to Remington’s apartment. As I passed the bus stop, I noticed a Buddhist monk dressed in red robes. When I got closer, I realized it was Sid Black, who had been a suspect in a woman’s murder just a couple of weeks before.

  “Sid?” I asked.

  He smiled, benevolently at me. “I’m Sid for a little while longer before I take my monk name,” he said.

  “You’re becoming a monk?” Last I spoke to him, he was a hound dog who believed in open marriages. His weenie had been all over town. “You know that Buddhist monks have certain restrictions on them?”

  “You mean the vegetarian thing?” he asked. “It’s going to be hard to give up steak. I lifted weights for years, and now I’m going to be sitting in a monastery in Nova Scotia, eating salad. Did you know that people eat raw zucchini nowadays and call it pasta? News to me! But I’m up for changes if I heal spiritually.” He took a step toward me. I could smell Sloppy Joes on his breath. “Between you
and me, I gave away everything. The house, the cars, everything.”

  “Isn’t half of that your wife’s?” I asked.

  “Since I haven’t taken my vows yet, I guess I can tell you that I don’t give a shit about my wife. Not after what she did. I dumped her complete collection of feminist literature on the driveway and lit them up. Susan Sontag burned the best.”

  His eyes rolled around in their sockets, and he adjusted his robes. I took a step back. “Have a nice time in Nova Scotia.”

  “I’m not sure I’m allowed to have a good time as a monk,” Sid said, rubbing the back of his neck. “But while I’m meditating for eight hours a day, I’m going to focus on the image of Susan Sontag’s books burning. That’ll give me motivation.”

  I side-stepped another scooter on the sidewalk and walked away. I had lived a very private life for a very long time, living with my aunts and taking care of the lighthouse on my own. But since I had taken over the soup shop from my Auntie Prudence, I had learned that every person had their own problems to deal with.

  It turned out that life was complicated for everyone. But I was reasonably certain that nobody’s life was complicated in the same way that Remington’s life was.

  If Remington had a life.

  That was up in the air.

  It had been a dicey two weeks with Remington.

  Or John.

  Or Remington.

  Oh boy, life sure was complicated. But it turned out that death was even more complicated.

  Remington lived on the top floor of a small, four-story apartment building right on the beach. It was clean and bright and recently remodeled. After I walked there, I stood at his front door and felt the usual pounding of my heart right before I knew I was going to see him.

  I put my hand on my chest and willed myself to calm down. No such luck. My heart had no intention of listening to my head.

  That was a bad sign.

  After a few minutes, I finally drummed up the courage to ring his doorbell. Remington answered a second later.

  Chapter 2

  “If one sticks too rigidly to one’s principles, one would hardly see anybody.”

  –Agatha Christie

  Remington stood with his forearm resting on the doorjamb above his head. He greeted me with a wide smile, and I found myself sucking in air at the sight of him. I tried to avert my eyes, looking up at the ceiling, looking at my fingernails, looking at my toes in my sandals.

  Anywhere but at the tattoos on Remington’s arms or the way his muscles corded down his forearms toward his large hands.

  “Agatha, so good to see you,” he announced with honest joy. He opened the door wide, and I walked in. “Please take a seat on the white couch. It’s extremely comfortable, and it has a view of the ocean when you sit on it. See?”

  There was a wall of windows in Remington’s apartment that opened to a balcony. He was right. The apartment had a great view of the ocean, the beach, and a few signs warning bathers not to enter the water because of raw sewage. I had been to his apartment every day since he was released from the hospital, so I already knew about the view, but I had never sat on the couch. I took a seat on it, and sure enough, the view was even lovelier sitting down. Remington’s heavy body made the couch jump when he plopped down next to me. He was very close. Too close. I could feel the warmth of his leg next to mine.

  He stretched his arm out on the back of the couch behind my neck. “This is nice,” he said, his voice deep velvety smoothness. “I’ve very much enjoyed exploring this apartment with its television and supply of boxed, processed baked goods, but I must admit it gets lonely without you.”

  I scooted a little away from him on the couch and wiped my forehead with the back of my hand. “I visit you every day,” I said.

  “A visit every day is a lot less than I’m used to, Agatha,” he said. “After all, I’m used to seeing you all day and all night. Watching you. Since you were born.”

  That was true. He had been with me my entire life.

  Not Remington. John.

  Because Remington wasn’t exactly Remington. He looked like Remington. He sounded like Remington.

  At least for the most part.

  But Remington Cumberbatch was now John Richards.

  John had been one of the prosecutors during the Salem witch trials, and he was responsible for my mother’s death. He had allowed my mother to live long enough to give birth to me, and then John had died soon after. Died with a curse from the Bright family. Since then, John was doomed to haunt the Bright women. He had been in a prison of sorts for hundreds of years, watching my every move.

  All of that sounded creepy, like an ethereal stalker, but the truth was that I had fallen in love with him, and the same could be said about him toward me. It was a love that could never be consummated because I was alive and he was dead without any form.

  Then, two weeks ago, everything changed. Especially his form. John got a form, and boy, it was a really good form to have.

  John had tried to save Remington’s life, but it backfired. Something went terribly wrong, and instead of John going away forever, only his ghostly appearance went away forever.

  Because now Remington was nowhere to be found except for his body, and John was taking space up in it. Dead John was alive John, and he was wearing a Remington suit.

  The whole thing made me uncomfortable, and I didn’t know how to act around it. Remington, I mean John, had kissed me in the hospital, and it nearly made the top of my head blow off. But I knew it wasn’t Remington. Only John could make me feel that way.

  I felt guilty, and so did John. He was stealing a body that wasn’t his, although we all knew that there was a possibility that this wasn’t forever.

  Because it didn’t look like Remington was totally gone.

  “You want to hear something strange?” John asked.

  “I’m not sure I can take much more strange in my life.”

  “I don’t think I’m alone in here,” John said, pointing at his head. “Remington is still here. It’s all I can do not to call you Aggie. And I have a terrible desire to work out.”

  He flexed a bicep to show me his muscles. “I’ve forgotten what it feels like to be alive,” he continued. “But this is more than just alive. As John, I did things like sail across the Atlantic and build my own house, but this guy has got major hormones running through his veins, and I’m pretty sure I could pick up a car. And there’s another thing,” he said, pointing to his crotch. “I’m circumcised. It’s a whole other world down there. You want to see?” He leaned toward me and waggled his eyebrows. I knew he was teasing me, which was totally Remington and not at all John.

  “No, I don’t want to see your new circumcised penis,” I lied. I wiped at my face again. This was getting too hard to take. John had stopped trying to get in my pants after I told him that we needed to work this Remington thing out before anything could happen between us, but that didn’t change the fact that I still wanted him. I wanted him more than Irving wanted one of Auntie Ida’s strawberry scones.

  I got up off the couch and took a deep breath. I went into Remington’s kitchen and filled a glass with tap water. Remington’s apartment was modern and clean with white paint. It was the complete opposite of the house that I shared with my aunts.

  The counter was covered in small appliances. In his new zeal to discover all things modern, John had taken apart several of them and put them back together. It was also a way for him to enjoy his renewed ability to touch things. He was euphoric at his new chance at life, to feel the air on his face, to touch objects, and to smell my hair. And there were other sensations and desires that he enjoyed and wanted to explore further with me. Dangerous ones.

  Good ones.

  Uh oh.

  I took a big sip of the water.

  John came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my middle. I gasped and dropped the glass into the sink, making it break into a million pieces. His lips found the crook of my neck, and he inhaled
sharply. My head flopped to the side to give him more access, and I moaned.

  “We’re not supposed to do this until we figure things out. Remember?” I asked him.

  “We’re not doing anything. I’m just breathing you in. Breathing. I’d forgotten how good it is to breathe. You want to breathe a little with me? Breathe hard?”

  “You flirt a lot. You never used to flirt before.”

  “It’s either the headiness of being alive again, or the fact that Remington is in here somewhere. He’s very influential. I kind of like it.”

  I kind of liked it, too. But that didn’t stop the fact that this was inappropriate and awkward, and I was feeling a lot of guilt about using Remington’s body without his consent. I didn’t know how much longer I could fend off John’s advances and let Remington’s body have me and my virginity. So, things were urgent. I had to move things forward with fixing the Remington/John situation. I pulled away from his embrace and turned around.

  “I came over to remind you that tomorrow is Remington’s first day back at work,” I said.

  “I know,” John said, nodding. “I found his gun and have been practicing with it. It’s almost as good as my circumcised penis.”

  He winked at me and waggled his eyebrows, again.

  “Remember that you have to act like Remington while we figure out how to fix this. Nobody must know what happened.”

  John sat on the counter. “I wouldn’t worry about that. Even if they found out, they wouldn’t believe it. I don’t even believe it, and I was a ghost for hundreds of years. Don’t worry, Aggie. I’m as cool as the other side of the pillow.” He smiled. “See? There really are two of us in here. I say stuff like that all the time, and I don’t even know what it means.”

  I left the apartment in a hurry, not wanting to drag out our goodbyes because every time I said goodbye, it was all I could do not to take off all my clothes, jump on him, and wrap my legs around his waist.

  Being attracted to two men at once was difficult enough, but being attracted to two men in the same body was downright torture.