The Living and the Dead

by Greg F. Gifune

  In truth, Lana had no idea why she’d opted to stay. Perhaps it was fate.

  “Mind if I ask where you’re from?” the driver pressed.

  “Actually, yes, I do.”

  “Mystery, everybody’s got some.”

  “Let’s call it privacy.”

  “Sorry to pry then, just making conversation.”

  “On the way in we passed those shacks, what—”

  “Almost all of them are empty now. Most who lived in them moved out or died off, so they sit abandoned. Few folks still live out that way though.”

  “That woman—”

  “Rae.”

  “She and her children looked as if they planned to burn everything.”

  “They won’t be burning much of anything in this rain.”

  “But why would they do that? Why would they take all their things and put them in the yard like that? Why would they stand in the rain?”

  “Might be planning to leave town, figured burning everything’s easier and cheaper than taking it with them, or maybe they’re leaving it all there for trash pickup, who knows? Not much left here for somebody like her, no real reason to stay, especially with kids.”

  “They looked—I don’t know—like they needed help. They looked…lost.”

  “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Sure did.”

  “But those children, do you think we should call someone, or…”

  “Rae’s been acting strange—even for her—for a couple days now. But people got the right to do whatever they want with their belongings, I guess.”

  “You know her then?”

  “Everybody knows everybody in a town this size. Rae’s the town fortuneteller. Every town’s got at least one, right? Her people lived and worked the old midway here for years, but she and her little ones are all that’s left. I’m sure she’ll be fine. Probably doing one of her rituals or something, never can tell with Rae.” The driver gazed in the direction of the ocean. “Hell of a rain.”

  “I like rain,” Lana said, letting the visions of the woman and her children slip away. “It can be so peaceful sometimes.”

  “Not tonight. There’s a storm brewing, a bad one.”

  “Yes, well,” Lana said awkwardly, reaching for the door, “just give me a minute to look the place over.” With a polite smile she left the car and headed up the dirt walkway. From the corner of her eye she saw the driver adjust his position so he could get a better view of her.

  Still cognizant of his stare, she turned, key in hand, and gave a brief wave. Although the taxi was distorted in the rain, she saw him return the gesture just as she opened the front door and slipped inside. She saw him from the window, still watching the cottage, and realized she was standing in the near-dark, so she searched the wall for a switch, found one just inside the door and flicked it, filling the room and front windows with light.

  Ignoring the musty odor and stale air, she gave the small cottage a quick inspection. Basic, fairly clean and functional—good enough, she thought. She stood there a moment, breathing deeply. There was something final about this; as if everything leading up to this moment had been reversible. But the act of renting this place, even if only for a brief time, was a statement, a commitment to follow through with her earlier decisions.

  Lana forced herself back out into the rain, retrieved her bag from the cab then rifled through her purse and removed two hundred dollars in cash. “Here’s four days in advance. Is there a working telephone? I didn’t notice.”

  “There is, but it’s a payphone, an old coin-operated job.”

  “All right,” she sighed, “that’s fine.”

  He stuffed the cash into a small cigar box on his seat without counting it. “By the way, name’s Mallard. But everybody calls me Duck.”

  “Cute. Have a nice night, Mr. Mallard. And thanks for the help.”

  “What do they call you?”

  “Lana.”

  “Nice doing business with you, Lana.” He shook her hand, using it as an excuse to slip her a business card which read: Dempsey Cottages. It included a phone number. “That’s a direct line to Dempsey’s place. If he doesn’t stop and check in with you tomorrow at some point, you’ll find him back at his cottage. I’ll let him know I rented this one to you and pass the cash along.”

  “All right, thanks again.”

  “My pleasure, you take care now.”

  Lana returned to the cottage, closed the door behind her and peeked out from behind flimsy curtains at the growing darkness.

  The cab had already pulled away and vanished into the storm.

  4

  With its low ceiling, few windows, rummage sale furniture haphazardly arranged without the least attention to style or layout, dull beige walls and old wooden floors—dusty and partially concealed with inexpensive throw rugs—the cottage seemed an odd place for modern technology. There wasn’t even a television, after all, only a radio in the kitchen and one that doubled as an alarm clock in the bedroom. But on one side of the main room—the living room—Perry sat in a ragged old chair, a laptop computer on the coffee table next to him. In his hands he fiddled with a small video camera, a joint dangling from his lips as the smoke curled around him like slowly creeping vines.

  Across the room from him, Lennox riffled through a hefty stack of old 45 records, selected one then dropped it onto the small portable record player. She’d bought them at a yard sale in town earlier that afternoon while she and Perry had been out on their daily walk. The previous owners seemed happy to be rid of them—they’d only charged five dollars for the whole lot and another ten for the player—but far as Lennox was concerned, this was some cool shit. She loved older things, music, books, films, paintings and even people that existed before she had, that had moved through the world while she was still some vague concept in a faraway mind.

  Through the scratch of the aged and cheap stylus, drums then horns bled from the small speakers, followed by the unmistakable vocals of Etta James belting out the classic Tell Mama.

  Lennox had never heard of Etta James before, but liked her immediately. This was a woman of substance, of soul, grit and passion, a woman that had known pain and triumph, death and life both, a woman of courage. Someone lacking those qualities could never sing like that, Lennox was certain of it.

  “You love those old records, don’t you, baby?” Perry muttered as he finished plugging the camera into the laptop. He sat it on the coffee table and began positioning himself so he could see his video-self on the computer screen.

  Grooving, Lennox listened to the music, her head pecking like a chicken, big retro hoop earrings swinging with the beat. “It’s better than the shit you listen to,” she told him, clapping her hands together and swaying her hips in a sultry dance that took her to the center of the room then back to the record player in time to play the song again. “This is a woman you’re listening to.”

  “This is a woman I’m looking at,” he said, squinting through the smoke.

  She laughed and danced faster. Alone and happy that way, she ran her hands from her short dark hair, down across her face, blocking deep brown eyes cloaked in black eyeliner before continuing to her throat, shoulders and waist, caressing herself the way a lover might.

  “Work it, baby,” he encouraged, “that’s so hot.”

  She gave the camera an annoyed smirk then flipped it off, but Perry snatched it from the table and aimed it at her anyway, watching the room blur and spin on the computer screen before focusing on Lennox’s dancing form.

  “Aim that thing at you,” she said.

  Perry chuckled, drew on the joint. “You’re live, baby.”

  “Fuck off.” She said it nasty but smiled at the same time, dancing over to the record player even after the song had ended. She flipped the 45 over and played the alternate side. “This chick rules, are you even listening?”

  “I can hear her if that’s what you mean.”

  “You’ll never get a wireless signal up here. Cell phones don’t
even work.”

  “I know, figured I’d give it a shot just for fun.” He held out what was left of the joint as an offering to her but she waved him off, dancing again as a new song began. Perry stabbed the joint back between his lips, returned the cam to the table with it still pointed at Lennox then focused his attention on the laptop. “We can always do a private film tonight, I guess.”

  The lights in the cottage suddenly flickered, nearly dying before surging back to life. The record player slowed, slurring the song with baritone ghost-like moans until it regained speed and returned to normal, along with the lights.

  “Whoa.” Lennox stopped dancing. “That was close.”

  “Holy shit, check this out. I got a signal.”

  “No way.”

  “Yeah, it’s crap, but steady. I’m gonna see if I can find a good chat room.”

  “Like there’s any such thing.”

  “Always people looking on here,” he said, clicking away at the laptop. “That’s what makes it cool. There’s always someone watching, or willing to.”

  “Why does anyone care?”

  “Because they’re interested, Lennox, that’s why.”

  “People that don’t even know us, it’s so stupid.”

  “That’s the whole point. It feeds into the voyeuristic tendencies of the human animal. Some people like to show, some people like to watch. We can’t help it. None of us can.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  He glanced at her long enough to give a playful dirty look.

  “I don’t know why people waste their time online anyway,” she said. “It’s all machines.”

  “No, it’s human beings. The machines only help to connect us.”

  “I don’t need a machine to connect. And if you don’t need the machine then why be online at all?”

  “You’re online right now.” Perry motioned to the camera. “Live all over the world.”

  “Being available all over the world and being seen all over the world are two different things.” Lennox’s dancing resumed, slower, and in time with a haunting ballad. “Why do people waste their lives sitting in front of computers?”

  “Why do you think?”

  “I mean, why watch someone else’s life when you can live your own?”

  Brow knit, Perry’s eyes scanned the screen. “I think it’s cool we live in a time where we can flip a couple switches and talk to or see people all over the planet whenever we want to. You can always connect with somebody day or night. It makes loneliness obsolete.”

  “Watching a computer screen to connect with another human being sounds pretty lonely to me.”

  “Shit, here we are in the middle of nowhere and there’s wireless service. Granted, the signal’s weak as shit—bouncing in from God knows where—but it’s an unsecured network so it’s better than nothing. Maybe the storm’s actually helping. Point is technology’s everywhere. That’s the future.”

  “You can have the future.”

  This time he waved her away. “You’re not in touch with technology, Lennox. Shit, you’re the only twenty-four-year-old woman I know who doesn’t care about cyberspace. It’s like you want to go back and live in 1940 or something. That’s not the world we’re living in.”

  “Maybe I don’t like the world we’re living in.”

  “What difference does it make? You’re here.”

  “And I don’t want to go back to 1940,” she muttered. “1980 would be good, though. I could be Pat Benatar and you could be Billy Idol.” Lennox laughed, because she knew Perry wasn’t entirely certain who those people were, and therefore wouldn’t respond. It felt nice to be the one in the know instead of listening to one of his treatises.

  “Listen to that rain,” Perry said. “Coming down like a mother out there.”

  “I bet by morning it’ll be sunny and so hot again we won’t be able to breathe.”

  “Either way we need to get out of this town.”

  “Any time you say.”

  Perry typed a bit more adamantly, apparently responding to someone in the chat room. “We should go to L.A.”

  “We could be movie stars!”

  “You be a movie star. I’m a director.”

  Lennox rolled her eyes and kept dancing. “If you’re already a director then I’m already a movie star.”

  “That’s right, baby,” he said, adjusting his position in the chair. “You are.”

  She shook her head. “The shit I do for you.”

  “Nobody does anything for anyone. We only do things we want to do.”

  “Oh, that’s deep.”

  “Careful, it’s copyrighted.”

  She spun around once more then stopped and stood before him, the cam and God knows who else. “And that’s not always true.”

  “Whatever. Just take your top off.”

  “Why do you look at me on a screen when I’m standing right here?”

  “I like to see you the way they’re seeing you.”

  She slowly peeled her T-shirt off and tossed it aside.

  “The bra too, Lennox, come on, they want to see.”

  “Why do you want them to see?”

  “It’s not about me. You want them to see. And it’s OK for you to want it.”

  Lennox reached behind her, unclasped the bra then shook the straps from her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. At first glance she looked annoyed, but a slow smile gradually curled her lips. Rather than wait for him to ask, she unbuttoned her shorts, pulled them down then stepped out of them. “Since we’ve decided you’re officially a director, this should have a name. What are you calling this little opus, Barefoot in Panties?”

  “Opus. Nice. Good word usage.”

  “Fuck you, how’s that for word usage?”

  “How about we go with Barefoot Out of Panties?”

  “Again?” She resumed her dance. “You’re so predictable.”

  “You’re driving them wild, baby,” Perry said, conversing through the keyboard with those watching. “How does it feel to have so much power? Isn’t it intoxicating?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Men never get to experience that. Not really.”

  “Men experience enough power. Besides, that’s a sexist thing to say.” Lennox stopped dancing just long enough to flip the record over again. When she started up again she made sure her breasts were turned toward the cam. “See?”

  “Yeah, we see,” he said, though still watching her onscreen. “Lose the panties.”

  “Lose the panties,” she said, comically copying the tone of his voice.

  As the storm raged outside, rattling the windows and rocking the cottage, Lennox removed her underwear and smiled for the cam, no longer dancing but still and focused on the tiny red light. The moment she tossed her panties aside, a chill coursed through her, covering her bare flesh in goose pimples. “Jesus.” She hugged herself. “It’s so cold in here all of a sudden.”

  “Baby, move your arms. You’re blocking.”

  “Do you feel it?” she asked, moving a bit closer to him.

  “It’s because you’re naked.” Perry typed something quickly. “Come on over here next to me.”

  “Wait a sec.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  Lennox glanced around the cottage. Something was wrong. The sounds of the storm seemed louder suddenly, more intrusive, and there was something else, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on but something more, something that had not been there before. Her skin tingled and she felt a tremor emanating from deep within her. “I don’t—maybe—maybe we shouldn’t do this tonight, OK?”

  “What are you talking about? You love this shit, what’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” she said absently. “I feel weird all of a sudden.”

  “Are you OK? You just went all pale.”

  She gave a befuddled shrug. “I’m all right, I guess.”

  “Seriously, baby, we should hurry, this signal’s not going to last. Play a little f
or everybody.”

  Lennox squeezed her breasts and again looked to the camera. Head spinning, and a feeling washing over her she could neither identify nor explain, she knelt next to him on the floor. She could hear the wind, the rain, and the incessant scratch of a record long over stuck in a groove of static. “Is anyone really watching?”

  Perry slid the camera around so it was facing them both, then stood and pulled his jeans down. She looked at the computer screen, as she could see it from her kneeling position, and noticed the little chat boxes full of messages scattered across it. Something about the look of the screen seemed different tonight, altered, and even a bit frightening.

  “How many this time?”

  Perry consulted the laptop. “At this exact moment, seventeen people.” He gently pushed her mouth toward his erection. “Isn’t that cool?”

  She stared at the red light on the cam a moment, then into her own restless eyes staring back at her onscreen. “No.”

  5

  He didn’t know why he thought of the kittens just then, perhaps because it was raining so hard. The wind had grown more violent and the dirt road to his cottage was flooding out, the water running into trenches of mud and filth, rushing off through the trees and vanishing somewhere on the other side. It reminded him of the tropical rains in Vietnam, a violent, pissed off, jungle kind of rain that assaulted and left you stunned and forever aware that you were just as insignificant and powerless as everything else in its path.

  Duck threw on the back floodlight. A patch of backyard prior to the woods appeared to reveal the small house he’d built for a family of stray cats he cared for. He wondered if they were OK in there tonight. Before he’d built the little house they’d lived under a bush with the mother kitty and occasionally the father, and although he fed them every night and tried his best to care for them, on nights when it stormed he’d awaken with a start and wonder if they were all right, if they were warm and dry. And although winter was still quite a ways off, he’d already begun to worry about how he’d keep them safe and warm once the temperature dropped and the heavy snow and ice moved in. Often, while lying in bed, he’d try to picture where they were at that exact moment, vulnerable amidst the turmoil of nature.