[Jenna's] Gang of Deadheads

by Paul Atreides

  Jenna let loose with a quick, frightened yelp. “That’s the — Why did he come after me?”

  Nancy reached out to lay a calming hand on Jenna’s arm. “He wasn’t coming after you, he wanted to stop you.”

  “Why? I was just trying to help that girl. What was happening to her, well it just — it’s not right!”

  “He knows that. But you interfered in his work.”

  Jenna’s indignant, stubborn streak bubbled to the surface. “How can trying to save someone be wrong? That doesn’t make sense.”

  From where he stood, Marvin couldn’t hear what was being said, but he was very familiar with the expression on Jenna’s face — the stance she adopted. He wanted to step in, to call out, Oh, please, kiddo, don’t. Don’t argue, don’t cop an attitude. It could get you killed. Well, sort of. He took a step in their direction and stopped dead in his tracks when he heard Jason’s warning.

  “Uh-uh. You jes’ stay right where you is, son. Don’t you go getting’ in the middle of dis. Ain’t none of yo affair.”

  Marvin turned toward the frail looking old man. It was all for show; the clothes, the unkempt, homeless look, the dialect. All meant to blend in with the multitudes of the dead. Few deadheads took the opportunity to give Jason more than a passing glance, but Marvin knew better. He’d seen the intelligence in those dark eyes the first time he’d run across him on the street in front of the condo building. He’d experienced the change that could happen in a moment. “But, I want to help.”

  “I know you do. But, dis our job, keepin’ you folks in line. Now, you listen to me, Marvin. You jes stay where you is.”

  Hearing nothing but Marvin’s answers, Tommy asked, “Dude, what’s he saying?”

  “Nothing.” A heaviness burned in Marvin’s lungs, like he dove too deep into an ocean. His shoulders slumped. He turned around again and watched the love of his life take a risk he knew from personal experience could swallow her whole. Tommy and Mike threw protective arms across his shoulders and he gave each one a wan smile.

  Nancy stood silent for a moment, searching for an answer that would return a sense of calm. Her response came in an even tone. “Jenna, she would’ve been okay, the man would’ve died. You changed that.”

  “I don’t understand. How?”

  Recalling the things she’d learned about Jenna in her talks with Marvin, Nancy upped her game. “What is so difficult to understand? You took the gun.”

  “I sure as hell didn’t see anyone else moving in to help!”

  “Because it isn’t for us to do.”

  “Well, if you don’t help people why was he there?” Jenna pointed an accusing finger at Jason.

  “To remove that abuser from any plane of existence, except into one of his own suffering. It’s what he does.” Nancy corrected herself, “What we do. It’s how we police our world. You’ll just have to accept what I’m saying, because believe me, as Marvin could tell you — if he had the strength to relive it — you don’t want to experience it. You don’t want to see it.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t stand by and watch someone get beat up.”

  Nancy shook her head. “Well, find a better way to help than trying to kill someone.”

  “Like?” Jenna challenged.

  “I don’t know. I’m just giving you fair warning. If you keep it up, Jason will have no choice.”

  The tone in Nancy’s voice didn’t do much to veil the threat of consequences and Jenna softened. “What do you mean?”

  Nancy took Jenna’s hands in hers. “It means, what you saw of him this morning was nothing more than a shadow of the hell he could put you in. Please, for your sake; for Marvin’s. Find a better way.” She let go of Jenna’s hands and walked away.

  Jenna turned to watch the small backhoe push the mound of dirt into her burial site. Her lips trembled in anger as much as in fear. A sensation of pain surprised her when she bit down on her lower lip in thought. She touched a fingertip to it, then opened her purse, retrieved a small compact and adjusted it to see how badly she’d hurt herself. There was no gash, not even a tiny droplet of blood. “Huh. Well, that’s interesting.”

  Marvin, Tommy, and Mike stood silent, waiting for Jenna, as Nancy strode away.

  Without looking anyone directly in the eye, Jenna marched past them with a gruff, “Come on, let’s go.”

  Tommy rushed over and matched her stride. As silly as he could be at times, unlike some folks who were as dead in the soul as they were in body when they arrived, he felt it was his duty to help people transition. His connection with Marvin made it seem all that more important. “You want to talk about it?”

  “What’s to talk about? If Nancy thinks she, or anyone else for that matter, can stop me from protecting someone who’s being beat up, or threatened with a gun, when there’s clearly something I can do to help, well…”

  Mike and Marvin followed, but stayed a few paces behind to give Tommy space and time to work his magic.

  “Oh, of course you can help them. Just not by killing anyone, you know?”

  “No, Tommy, I don’t know! It’s bullshit. Who put her in charge, anyway? Or this Jason guy? Why are any of us here if we can’t do anything to help?” Her venting now over, Jenna turned morose. Her voice faltered from anger to sadness, and her shoulders dropped in defeat. “It’s just not fair.”

  Tommy grabbed hold of her arm and gave her his most charming impish expression and lop-sided smile. “Come here, let your Uncle Tommy give you a hug.” Jenna hesitated and then allowed herself to be drawn into an embrace and began to sob. “It’s okay, Jenna. Really. You’ll get used to it.” He took a peek to see that Mike and Marv had halted and were out of earshot and whispered, “I’ll show you how to maneuver around here.”

  Jenna pulled out of the hug and gave him a questioning look. She kept her volume low when she asked, “Are you saying what I think you are?”

  Tommy shrugged with a sly smile. “Maybe. Now, come on, give your Uncle Tommy a smile?”

  Jenna sniffled. “Oh, alright, you win.” She linked an arm through Tommy’s and held out the other for Marvin. “Let’s go.”

  Marvin hooked her arm through his and Tommy offered his other to Mike. “Dudes, I’m suddenly starved. What say we go haunt a nice classy restaurant and have some fun?”

  -7-

  Several weeks after her funeral, Jenna sat next to Marvin on the balcony of their condominium with steaming cups of coffee and enjoyed the sounds of the wakening city. Tires whined as traffic increased in dribs and drabs. The echoes of clomping footsteps crawled up the front of the building as people (living and dead) began appearing on the sidewalks below in growing numbers.

  Marvin shuddered when a bus rolled past the building. “It still gives me the creeps.”

  “What does?”

  “I swear I can still see blood on the pavement down there,” Marvin said, nodding to the spot in the road where he’d lain after he stepped in front of the bus.

  “Oh, stop with the drama already.” Jenna nudged him with a shoulder.

  “Well, excuse me for —” The sight of a moving van pulling to the curb in front of their building cut Marvin’s remark short. “Huh, wonder what that’s about.”

  “Colleen and Patrick told me the family behind us is moving out.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, there was something about the board forcing them to sell.”

  “Good. Good riddance. The schmucks.”

  “Can they do that? The board, I mean.”

  “Well, if I hadn’t noticed the hidden toy in his pocket it wouldn’t have made it into the police report, and they probably would’ve gotten away with it.”

  Marvin remembered the morning Jenna and Mrs. McClaskey were found dead in a heap of tangled limbs at the bottom of the stairs. He had gone back down to the lobby to watch their bodies being loaded onto gurneys and wheeled out the front doors of the building.

  He had castigated the guys from the coroner’s office who plopped th
em onto the stretchers with as much ceremony as the EMT’s had used with him, which was to say none. “Hey, hey, hey, ya schmucks! Show a little respect, would ya?”

  They went on about their business in complete silence, slammed the back doors of the wagons closed, and with short, curt waves to the cop still interviewing a resident, drove off.

  Marvin glanced around the scene but didn’t see the toy truck that caused Colleen to trip and lose her balance. “Huh, that’s odd. Where’s the stupid truck?” He looked in the hallway leading to the first floor units, poked into every corner, nook, and cranny of the lobby. Ready to give up, he noticed an odd bulge in the coat pocket of the man from his floor — the father who allowed his kids to play in the halls and on the stairs no matter how many times Marvin complained about it. A light touch to the shape told Marvin all he needed to know. “You son-of-a-bitch.” He would’ve called him by name but, for the life of him, Marv couldn’t remember it. “If you think you’re gonna hide that and get away with your little rugrats killing that sweet old woman, not to mention my fiancée, you better think again.”

  Marvin pushed fingers against the truck until they penetrated the fabric, wrapped them around the bed of the toy and, with as much finesse as he could muster, pulled it out. He turned it over in his hand and smiled. Retrieving it had been as easy as pulling the gun from the store display the time he’d tried to kill Jenna and shot himself in the head instead.

  The neighbor, a confused expression on his face, looked down, altered his stance, and stuck a hand in his pocket. “What the — Where —”

  The policeman glanced up from his notebook. “Did you lose something?”

  “Oh, um … No.” The guy rattled keys in a pants pocket. “Just forgot which pocket I’d put my keys in.”

  “You lying sack of shit. You were looking for this.” Marvin tossed the truck. It dropped out of the air and landed upside down next to the newel post at the bottom step, its wheels spinning, just as Marvin had seen it the night before.

  His neighbor tried and failed to hold in an audible gasp. The cop cast a quick glance at the truck, looked directly at the distraught resident, and shook his head. He bent over, grabbed the truck and confronted the man. “Drop something?”

  The man let loose a nervous laugh. “Oh, um, yeah. I guess I did, huh?”

  “Look, Mr. Sullivan, if this was the cause of the fall — and it was, wasn’t it?” The policeman stared and waited for the man to drop his gaze in guilt. “It was obviously an accident. You didn’t need to bullshit me. But, you shouldn’t have tampered with the scene. I could get you on that, you know.”

  Marvin smacked himself in the forehead. “Sullivan, right.” He hated to admit it, but Tommy had been correct. Though his brain cells worked here in the afterlife, they hadn’t popped with new intelligence; he’d gotten no better with names. Of course, when he was alive he’d never put much effort into knowing his neighbors.

  “Now,” Officer Gentner continued, “I’ll let you off on the charge of interfering with an investigation, but I’m gonna have to put into my report that your kid’s toy was the cause of the fall, which killed the two victims.”

  “Oh, come on.” Marvin leaned around the man’s shoulder to read the name tag and, though he knew the men wouldn’t hear a single word (being as he was dead and all), he continued his rant. “Let me tell you something here, Officer Gentner, no matter how many times I warned this guy, he never cared. This is not the first time his brat’s toys were left on the stairs. You go ask the Secretary of the association how many times I reported it. I told them. I told them one day someone’s gonna get killed. Now look what’s —”

  Officer Genter flipped to a second page to continue his report when Jenna’s whispered voice rolled down from the top of the stairs. “Marvin … Marv!”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re yelling loud enough to wake the dead.”

  “Who’s sleeping?”

  “Did you once consider Colleen, or Patrick?”

  “Sorry … I forgot. Guess I got too used to being the only dead guy around here.”

  “Well, just stop now. Come up and let them take care of their business.”

  Marvin made it up five steps before he turned around and looked down at the two men. Glaring, he placed two fingers under his eyes, then pointed them at Sullivan. “I’m watching you, ya schmuck.”

  Marvin’s reverie ended when Jenna nudged him. “I guess it was good that you caught Mr. Sullivan trying to cover it up. I mean, someone else in the building could’ve gotten hurt. Well, I just hope they’re quiet,” Jenna said lifting her coffee cup to indicate the crew of movers, who’d jumped from the cab of the truck. “It’s too early to be rattling and bumping dollies full of furniture and boxes down the stairs.”

  Marvin’s entire response was, “Mmm.”

  “What should we do today?”

  “I think Tommy wanted to go see some new movie.”

  “Which one?”

  Marvin chuckled. “Who knows? He usually never makes up his mind until he gets there.”

  “Oh. Well, you know, I think I want to be out and about today. It’s actually nice. No sense in wasting it sitting in a dark theater.”

  “You’re coming to Epstein’s with us, though, right?”

  Jenna smiled at the distraught-but-expectant expression on his face. She liked that Marvin wanted to spend time together. She wanted to spend time with him, too. But all the same, she needed some space. As tough as it might be for her to admit, she’d begun to get used to handling life without him. “What’s the matter, Marvin? Does Tina scare you? You need me to protect you?” she teased. “Of course, I’m going.”

  “What, you don’t think she’s scary? The woman runs around that place looking stricken with apoplexy.” Marv played along, but his real concern was for Jenna’s safety. He shuddered at the fate that awaited her if she pulled another stunt like she had the morning of her funeral and loathed to let her out of his sight. At least until she learned to stick to the rules, but he had his doubts that would happen any time soon.

  -8-

  Despite Marvin’s protest, Jenna left the boys sitting in the booth at Epstein’s. She meandered down the street, turning her face to the warmth of the sun each time it peeked out from behind a bank of clouds. There was no rush to get anywhere, and she had no particular place in mind when she spotted a jewelry store across the street from where she stood.

  After watching the fun Tommy had playing in traffic just to see the reaction of driver’s when they felt the cold chill run through them, she knew it couldn’t hurt her. Still, she halted in the center of the street to avoid the oncoming vehicles.

  Inside the store, she gazed at the sparkling gems and, once in a while, reached through the glass to pull one from the case. Unlike some dead folks, she took care that no one could see the merchandise flicker out of sight as she picked it up. To her knowledge she’d been alone in the jewelry store; well, if you didn’t count the woman who stood haggling with the owner over the retail price of a charm bracelet for her granddaughter. Jenna turned in surprise when a voice called out to her.

  The woman wore a broad smile on her perfectly chiseled face. She brushed back a wave of thick, long, blonde hair with one hand while extending the other in greeting. “I’m Diane. I’d been hoping to run into you sometime. I’ve heard so much about you.”

  Jenna accepted the hand and smiled. She wondered if this was the same Diane she’d heard Davy mention. If so, there was room for suspicion.

  Diane barreled right along. “Isn’t this just the best part of being dead? We can wander into any old store and take whatever we want and never have to worry about the bills. Oh, but would you look at this necklace.” Without so much as a glance at the owner, Diane lifted it from its case and examined the large square-cut blue sapphire, surrounded by diamond baguettes on a heavy gold chain. She held it up to Jenna’s throat. “This would look positively stunning on you.”

  “What would I w
ear it with? And for what?”

  “For the wedding! Trust me, it’s perfect.”

  “Uh, who told you there was going to be a wedding?”

  “Why, Davy, of course.” Diane laughed and tossed the necklace aside. It landed with a clatter on top of the glass case. The jeweler looked around, astonished. He hadn’t heard the door chime, or spotted anyone besides the bickering client he was determined would not wear him down. He gave the woman a quick, suspicious glare, thinking she had clearly picked it up and dropped it to put him off his game. He hurried over to put it back into its velvet box, but an expression of confusion painted his face when he needed to unlock the case. Yet, he rushed back to make sure she didn’t reach over and somehow manage to snatch anything further.

  “Davy should forget it. It’s a ridiculous idea.”

  “But, I think it’s perfectly spectacular. He’s a genius, you know. The gown he picked out for your funeral was stunning to say the least.”

  “He may be a genius, but a wedding isn’t just out of the question, it’s preposterous. I’m capable of taking care of myself. If I didn’t need to be married while I was alive, I sure as hell don’t need to be married now.”

  Diane looked up from the case of jewels she’d been studying and saw Jenna with new appreciation. “Girl, you could be dangerous. But you know what? I think I like you.”

  “Gee, thanks.” Jenna managed a smile at the backhanded compliment and started toward the door.

  Diane snatched the necklace from the case and dumped it into her Gucci bag, caught up with Jenna and slid an arm around her. Outside the store as Jenna started to walk, she gave a small tug. “Hold on a minute, this could be fun.”

  The jeweler glanced over at the case and went berserk. Jenna and Diane couldn’t hear the exchange of words because of the thick bullet-proof glass, but watched the customer dump the contents her purse on the counter like a littered waterfall and turn out the pockets of her coat with such force one ripped clean off at the seams. The jeweler dropped down on all fours behind the counter. The woman made wild gestures as she intermittently stuffed her belongings back into her purse.