by Liam Card
He smiled.
I smiled too, actually.
• • •
In spite of the facts that my funeral surfaced to me: affairs, crim-inals, bigots, and a giant helping of overall ignorance, I suppose it didn’t matter a grain of sand. None of it mattered at all in context with the Post-Death Line and the lives I had led. I had been male and female thousands of times. Straight and gay and everything in between. Practised every faith and none at all. I had died at birth and lived to be a hundred and six. I had been the best of Samaritans and the worst of criminals.
Honest and deceitful.
Faithful and adulterer.
Murderer and victim.
Wealthy and poor.
Loved and hated.
Leader and follower.
I had seen and done it all.
Bought the T-shirt, as they say.
However, the betrayal of Geoff and Alice continued to linger.
• • •
After the funeral service, I floated alongside my mother down to the church basement for the luncheon catered by my aunt Jean. Everyone lied about how good the sandwiches were. Stories continued to be shared among the guests. All in exaggerated form, of course, and as the stories of praise rolled off tongues, the thoughts that followed only highlighted my many faults. It baffled me why those were not talked about at this event. Those flaws equalled my strengths, didn’t they?
What a sad imbalance for celebrating a life.
While people milled about speaking half-truths about me and hating the sandwiches, Taitt Champion had allowed the pending nervous breakdown to bubble over in the parking lot outside the church. Many bore witness to this. Several thought he was taking my death quite hard.
“He really loved Luke,” Fran Davidson said while getting into her car.
“Such a shame. Closest thing to a real brother he had,” said my friend Adam Wood to his wife, Jane. Of all the onlookers, not a single set of arms remained uncrossed, as if to shield them from what they were witnessing.
The news of Taitt’s actions in the parking lot travelled quickly into the church basement, down the hall, into a room, and finally to my sister, who was taking plastic wrap off an assortment of now-stale desserts. When the news registered, she felt herself take one leap and landed in the parking lot seconds later. Everything in between was a blur, she thought. Upon arrival, Brooke did her best to get Taitt from the fetal position, where he rocked back and forth, sporadically kicking and clawing at the pavement, and screaming about a Sea Snake named Snee. After Taitt’s mind broke, I couldn’t bear witness any longer. Deathly slow as I was, I began floating home to see what Alice might do next.
• • •
Later that afternoon, I watched Alice bag my clothes for charity. She ran through a thousand scenarios for where her life could go from that point forward. It was throughout this process that I could finally determine which clothing she thought looked good on me. The flowered bathing trunks I would have never suspected.
The phone rang and rang all afternoon; people calling with their sympathies. She thanked them for attending the funeral and for bringing food, if they had brought it. She did this while trying on lingerie and looking in the mirror. “It’s so sad,” she would say to the callers. “It means the world to me that you called. I’ll get over it eventually, but it’ll take some time.” Then, as the caller on the other end continued to alleviate her grief, she would pose into the mirror and push up her breasts or lift the black lace or pull it aside, exposing herself to the mirror, as if attempting to seduce the person looking back at her.
She was grieving only that she had purchased the black and not the red.
• • •
The sun eventually ducked behind the century-old maples, and the doorbell rang. Geoff Black held a bottle of vodka in one hand and sheepishly knocked on the door with the other. The one with his wedding ring. Alice opened the door, and Geoff’s mind exploded with imagery of what would transpire. Thoughts Alice seemed to read from him perfectly, which amazed me. A silent transfer of images instructing the forthcoming sequence of events.
Truly remarkable.
Shortly thereafter, she and Geoff came together, but not in grief … in our marital bed. I hovered through the entire thing, buzzing and floating around, as if a different vantage point in the room might be less disturbing. However, every angle provided me with the irrefutable evidence that these two were connected on another level.
Throughout the carnal act I was taking in, Alice seemed hardwired to Geoff, able to share what she thought and wanted, exactly when she wanted it. In turn, he was able to do the same with her. All without speaking a single word. It was the moment when Alice paused to gather the pillow from my side of the bed in order to place it under her lower back for support, that I came to wonder if this might be common among the living who are perfectly matched spiritual counterparts. And in the category of love and the sub-category lust, my best friend and my wife seemed perfectly matched.
What was originally quite disturbing became a work of art. An act of beauty.
What I felt after that was regret.
Regret that I had never experienced that level of connectivity.
Regret that Alice and I had spent five years on Earth with the wrong person.
Regret that I had failed to seek out my matched spirit — wherever she was hiding in the world. My Diana-of-no-last-name.
When Geoff and Alice eventually finished, they lay on the bed winded and content. Alice proclaimed to God how good it all was, while Geoff searched for an exit strategy from his current wife. Certainly, that was not going to be a lay-up of any kind. Geoff and his wife, Anabelle, shared ownership of a high-end furniture store called Black & Blue. Anabelle’s maiden name was Blue; she adopted Geoff’s last name when they married. Hence the name of the store and company they were equal partners in. A store by which they were doing exceptionally well, importing luxury furniture from around the world and selling it for a significant markup. I had stood at their wedding and remember when Geoff told me, upon my return from gemology school, that he intended to marry a woman we both knew. “And I don’t have to tell you how loaded she is,” he said.
Geoff had said this because his family was the opposite of “loaded” and he grew up in a less prestigious area of the city, with his mother and father barely scraping by. His folks spent well beyond their means to ensure that Geoff got into a good school and would be rubbing elbows with children from affluent families. It was their hope that the money would rub off on him somehow and he would become successful through assimilation. Unlike the rest of our classmates, Geoff’s confidence had nothing to do with the bank balance of his parents. Geoff excelled in a category that couldn’t be bought or taught: good looks. Unfairly so, actually. That was the only hammer in his toolkit, and Geoff got by with it his entire life.
By grade ten, he had been approached by an agent when walking through the mall with his mom. Soon after that, Geoff was a full-blown model and his image began popping up on billboards, in magazines and catalogues. Every so often, he would miss school for a few days here and there because he had booked work in New York and Milan for fashion shoots, or to walk a runway into an ocean of flashing lights. Geoff, he was the real deal, but he didn’t let it go to his head. He knew where he was from. He knew he wasn’t like the kids he went to school with. Geoff became the guy who rich girls wanted to “slum it” with, as he put it.
“These girls love to mess around with me, but they’d never marry me,” he would say. “I don’t have the million-dollar family or the prestige to marry one of these stuck-up zombies.” With the money he made modelling, Geoff helped his parents carry the financial load and began to chip away at the mountain of debt they had undertaken. “The women, they make all the real money in modelling,” he said. “But it feels good to help my folks out.” Thus, nothing much changed for Geoff financially. He under
stood that fifty grand or a hundred grand wasn’t going to change the social status of his parents.
All he wanted were my smarts and last name. All I wanted was to be him.
During weekend sleepovers, we would howl with laughter as he acted out situations from class, as if he were one of the many stuck-up zombies. This usually led to one of his characters wrestling me to the ground, demanding a marriage proposal and a piece of my father’s real-estate holdings, or she would eat my brains. Geoff and I were best buds, and we didn’t care that we came from different upbringings and lifestyles. We were best friends because we had fun and because we were loyal to one another. One night, when we were camping out in the backyard, he told me that I was the best kind of person in the world. He said I was a like a unicorn or something, a rich kid with a poor kid’s disposition. And that’s why we were able to be best friends.
Fast forward ten years.
When he told me that he had found the woman he intended to marry, I can’t say I was on board one hundred percent. In an ironic twist, this woman was Anabelle, and she was one of the stuck-up zombies from our high school graduating class. She was the zombie he would mimic the most during our sleepovers years past. She was the one pinning me down and eating my brains.
“Her old man thinks I could be a good salesman, so he’s going to give us seed money to start a furniture business. Ultra high-end,” he said.
“Annabelle?” I said.
“She’s changed. Trust me.”
I disagreed and voiced my concern.
Somehow, he convinced me to stand at their wedding as his best man, because that’s what loyal friends do. No, Geoff, loyal friends say something when they think their closest friend is doing something insane and incorrect. He promptly told me to shut up and stop that kind of talk, so I took a front row seat for the impending train wreck as his best man and best friend. Best friends are first responders to the scene, ready to pick up the pieces when all of the rail cars fold into each other, open up like torn pop cans, and leave a swath of destruction a mile long. I was that friend. I was ready, but contrary to my prediction, no train wreck took place.
The truth was, Anabelle had, in fact, changed. She had become a really lovely and warm person, and we became good friends over the years. The unfortunate truth was that my ever-loyal best friend fell dangerously in love with his new money and lifestyle and showed signs of becoming an entitled zombie himself. The infection was in there; it was just a matter of time. Years passed, and we drifted apart as friends. When we were able to get the four of us together for a barbecue, he connected with Alice better than he connected with me. Not that I thought much of it at the start. But as he began to pull away from me, I saw less and less of him as Alice (unbeknownst to me) was seeing more and more.
“You’re thinking about Anabelle again,” said Alice, still winded from the athletic entanglement.
“I am.”
“I know it sounds horrible, especially on this day, but I feel like God removed Luke from the equation as a sign,” suggested Alice.
“A sign of what?”
“That we need to be together.”
“I want to be clear here. God killed Luke for us, is that what you’re saying?”
“I prefaced it with ‘I know it sounds horrible.…’”
“That doesn’t make it less horrible.”
“Forget the God part. Look, I think it was a sign. We need to act on it. Life is too short.”
“I just buried my best friend. I don’t need this right now.”
“But what? You needed this? What we just did right here after the funeral using his pillow to support my lumbar?” she said and hit him in the chest with it. “You needed that, but you can’t talk to me about our future, post–Luke Stevenson?”
Geoff said nothing. He simply stared at the ceiling. His thoughts were about being trapped in quicksand — sinking and sinking and sinking, until only his fingers were visible, still attempting to grasp at something for safety. Then both Anabelle and Alice entered his daydream, attempting to rescue him. The women dove head first into the quicksand after him until only their four kicking legs were visible. The kicking legs stopped. Twitched. Then flopped awkwardly from their hinges at the knees.
Geoff snapped out of it and sat up in bed, sweating.
“What’s the matter with you?” said Alice.
“Just relax on all that stuff for now,” he said. “It will all happen sooner or later.”
“On your clock, Geoff. Whenever you feel like it,” she said, rolled over, and clicked off the light on the bedside table. The antique knock-off Tiffany lamp that I had purchased for her because Nancy Greene had one just like it, except not quite as good.
• • •
At this low point, I thought it best to contact my Mentor Spirit. The rules stated I had twenty-four hours to do so, but feeling all of this new power and not knowing how to access it was frustrating.
I needed the advice of a veteran.
I needed the means to satisfy the second reason for returning to Earth after death: to identify the location and well-being of Diana-of-no-last name.
5
The Bookkeeper had armed me with instructions on how to contact my Mentor. I projected the desire to meet the spirit, and Robert F. Sutherland appeared to me seconds later. However, I could sense an awkward vibration.
“Luke James Stevenson?”
“Yes. You must be Robert.”
“Rob is fine.”
And we shared our respective histories within seconds. Rob, a young tobacco farmer from Farmington, North Carolina, near Winston-Salem, was ended not by smoking his own product but by the hand of an angry neighbour after coming into ownership of the massive family farm at only nineteen years of age.
Rob ran through my story, which I had uploaded to him.
“Sorry about the accident, kid. Damn shame, if you ask me.”
“Oh, it’s fine.”
“How’s the wife taking it?” he said, and then I shared with him the clip of Alice and Geoff Black, post-funeral. “Yup,” he said. “Seen that before.”
His vibration increased. “Look, I’m here for you one hundred percent, Luke, but can you do me a helluva favour?”
“Happy to.”
“Fantastic. I owe you one. First lesson — travel. I want you to imagine your form coming in on itself, condensing, if you will. When you feel a slight shock, I want you to quickly project the desire to visit an exact location.” He shared with me an exact location.
I didn’t question. I just did it. Focused.
I felt my form come in on itself, felt the shock, and projected the requested destination. In an immeasurably short amount of time, we both arrived in a living room in Tunja, Colombia. Thousands of miles were travelled in a fraction of a second. And there we were, hovering over a fortysomething woman seated in a wooden rocking chair.
This was game-changing.
I could see the world. Go anywhere.
Be anywhere in seconds of manifesting the desire and location. At that very moment, I thought that the ghost “buddy-system” was going to work out just fine, and for the first time since delivery, I recall being excited about my predicament.
“Close call, kid!” he said. “I really didn’t want to miss this. I’ve been tracking this channel for months now. Thanks for playing ball and tagging along so quick.”
“No problem,” I said. “But why are we here?”
Carmen, the woman, the one in the rocking chair, had become fed up with the years of ongoing battery on account of her husband and had been planning her escape for months. As it happened, I had arrived on escape day.
“It’s like a whole goddamn world of reality TV, Luke. In the form we’re in, you just have to choose the channels you want to watch, sit back, and enjoy.”
“Channels?”
“
Well, yeah, I call people’s lives ‘channels’ ’cause that’s how you have to treat them. And with our gift of travel, you can flip from one to the other with ease. Some people’s lives, you know, you just get all caught up in. Don’t get bogged down on just one. You have to keep flipping. Lucky for you, you’re here for the climax of this dandy. Trust me, friend. This’ll be one for the ages.”
By the time Rob had finished with the detailed preamble to the story, the husband had arrived home from work, and Carmen welcomed him with a three-ounce gin martini.
Three olives.
And a layer of ice chips floating on top, like having been broken up by a barge.
Before handing it over, she eyeballed him while taking a huge sip from it herself. He had no suspicion of it, but she did this to dispel any thoughts of poisoning. Poisoning hadn’t crossed his mind. But he did find it rather strange. Never before had Carmen participated in his alcoholism to this degree. Never had she been there to so actively offer it up on a platter and fuel a forthcoming beating.
Never had she been so bold.
As Rob had explained, the white-collar coward was used to hunting for his wife, finding her in different nooks of the house, cowering and whimpering.
“It’s like a version of hide-and-go-seek, but with a shit-kicking at the end,” said Rob. “She used to hide and pray to God that he wouldn’t find her. Only one day she realized God wasn’t listening or didn’t care, so she set out to do something about it.” Carmen stroked the stubble on his face and loosened his navy blue spotted tie.
“I’ll be in the in the bedroom. Hiding,” said Carmen. “Get as drunk as you want.”
What was this but an outright act of war? It was something that couldn’t be tolerated. He decided that due to this strange display of confidence and challenge to his authority, today’s beating would be particularly harsh. He wondered how he could get away with taking it up a notch and not have her end up in the hospital like that one time. Too risky. His mind pulsed with creativity.