by Jack Ketchum
You ask me, the best that fifty-one percent of the human species has to offer can be found right here in the City. L.A. just can't hold a candle to it. Neither can Boston or San Francisco. You don't believe me? Come over to the World Cafe some time and sip your Bud and keep your eyes on that window.
Of course it's a little different now.
You can mostly tell the dead by the grayish look to the skin or of course if they've been mutilated in some way but from the distance of bar to sidewalk not by much else. You might notice that the hair had little sheen maybe. That the sun didn't catch it right. But you had to get up close to see the clouded eyes or the blue fingernails and you didn't usually want to get that close. If you did, that was what your sidearm was for. And none of us had shot one in a long time, male or female, old or young, and didn't care to.
The dead walk briskly in Manhattan, just like everybody else. Thing is, they have no place to go. The law protects them now, at least to some extent, but they're not allowed to work jobs or have careers. They get food stamps, welfare, public housing. I pretty much always felt sorry for them. Sure, a small percentage get out of line now and then, would rape somebody, mug somebody, rob a liquor store. But no more than the living.
Most of the bum rap they got came from the cannibalism thing. That's what the crazy ones would do, kill regular folks and eat them. There was a lot of hysteria over that at first. That's when the mayor revoked the Sullivan Law and passed the concealed-carry ordinance. But once the Army retrieval squads rounded up the crazy ones you didn't hear much about cannibalism anymore. Hardly ever.
Fact is, the dead don't seem to fuck up any more than the living. It's a simple, primitive prejudice against a minority, nothing more. Sure, you wanted to be careful, just like you wanted to be careful of a lot of things and people in New York. But I'd stopped carrying my own gun a long time ago. A lot of us did.
Still, it was kind of like a game with us, a bar contest.
Seeing who could pick out the dead ones.
"Eyes left."
This one sure wasn't dead. Chestnut hair tied back long and gleaming, tan shoulders glowing in the sun. Curve City too, if you know what I mean. The silky dandelion-print dress seemed spun onto her. Low cut and no bra.
"Jesus," said John, "are those nipples or fuckin' spark plugs?"
John could be crude but he had a point so to speak. Her nipples were extremely elongated and hard, like they wanted to spike through the fabric. "If they're sparkplugs," Neal said, "maybe they need to be regapped. Know a good mechanic?"
"Notice that nipples are back this year?" I said. "For a while you hardly ever saw them."
John nodded solemnly. "It's a good thing. It's a godsend."
Then she was gone and two pretty smiling Goths walked by dressed in black, chrome nubs glittering in their vampire-red lips. It's eighty degrees out there and they're wearing black. They were holding hands. "You gotta love this town," I said, smiling.
We turned back to our drinks and talked about Tom Waits on the juke. Neal had seen him fall off his piano stool in Nashville. Whether it was part of the act was still open to question.
"Eyes left."
John let out a low whistle. "Can you say chest fruit?"
"No, but I can say mammiferous," I said. "Can you?"
"What she needs," said Neal, "is an exemplary and thorough breast examination, care of Dr. Neal, to be promptly followed by regular pants-sausage injections on a daily basis."
"What if she's a vegetarian?" said John.
"Then I've got a plantain that'll change her life."
"You guys are terrible," I said.
"Listen to him," John said. "We're terrible and he's standing there cross-legged."
Then it was back to the drinks and talk again. Cigarettes had gone up nearly fifty cents. Rent control was once more being threatened in the legislature. ABC grips were considering a walkout. The usual New York bullshit. Then, "Eyes left," again.
"Call it," John said. "Dead or alive."
"Alive," Neal said but then his squint grew narrower.
I knew she was dead before she was halfway by the window. "Dead," I said. Easy on the eyes at first, sure. But then you caught the autopsy staples showing in the gap between the top of her jeans and the bottom of her peach blouse. She glanced in at us and you could see it in the eyes.
"The winner!" said John. "Anna, get this gentleman another Dewar's on me and another Heiny for myself."
"What am I," Neal said, "chopped liver?"
"And a plate of chopped liver for Dr. Neal of the exemplary breast exams."
These guys. I mean, you can't take them anywhere.
Anna knew us all pretty well by then though and poured refills for everybody. No chopped liver made an appearance. We drank.
"Gustavo told me a story last night," Neal said. "About those apartments over the flower shop. Hey, where the hell were you two guys last night, anyway?"
John shrugged. "I was home doing the Sunday Times crossword puzzle and listening to ole Blue Eyes. What, you go out every night? I had to work today. Not everybody's an artiste and makes his own fuckin' hours. Some of us gotta work in the morning, y'know?"
"I was on the computer," I said. "Online from about ten to midnight. They did another Dead Chat last night."
Neal made a face. "Why do you bother with that shit?"
"He's a voyeur," John said, "of the dead."
"No, I just like hearing what they have to say. And let me tell you, they have some stories. When they start writing novels I'm really fucked.”
“Eyes left."
We looked. "Hubba hubba," Neal said.
A real head-turner. Tall and sleek with mile-long legs walking along like a runway model in this sheer off-the-shoulder top and flowing organdy dress. Lots of jewelry and fiery red hair.
The redheads always get to me.
Behind us Anna laughed. "You perverts! She's dead!"
She was right. When she turned her head you could see the long, unhealed gash along the side of her throat. Like somebody had tried to cut her head off but didn't quite make it.
John groaned.
"So much for hubba hubba," I said.
Neal ordered a plate of fried calamari and Anna went to place the order with the kitchen. We watched her too. Anna was quite a looker herself but way off bounds. You didn't mess around with your bartender.
"So? Like what?" John said.
"Huh?"
"Those stories you were talking about. These Dead Chats. What's so fuckin' interesting?"
"Okay. Take this guy last night. Ninety-two years old, starved to death in his own apartment. Got out of bed one morning, got dressed, wanted to take a leak but his bedroom door wouldn't open. He starts yelling for his nephew, who lives with him. Nephew's only sixty-four. No answer. So the old guy opens his bedroom window, takes a four-story piss, then goes back to pounding on the door and yelling for his nephew. Who still doesn't answer."
"Where's the nephew?"
"I'm getting to that. So this poor guy's trapped in his bedroom with no phone and no food and nothing but a John Grisham novel to keep him company. Can you imagine that? He's trapped in there for a week with John Grisham. So finally he just lies down on his bed and dies."
"So then he comes back, right?"
"Right. And you know what they say. Sometimes they're stronger than when they were alive. So he pushes at the door and this time it opens. What's been blocking the door is the nephew. He's dead on the floor from a heart attack."
"How come he didn't come back like the old man?"
"No brains."
"Say what?"
"See, the nephew had a plate in his head from a war injury. So when he fell down behind the heart attack his head slammed into the radiator knob. Pops the plate right out of his skull along with half of what's inside. Rats made short work of whatever was left."
John laughed. "I dunno whether you call that good luck or bad. For the nephew I mean."
"Got me
. Depends on your point of view, I guess most of them seem pretty content, though. At least they're walking around."
"Eyes left! Quick! Man, is that one hot dish or what?"
John and I looked. Then gagged.
"Yeah, one hot dish of ground chuck," John said.
"Prick!"
She was roadkill in a sundress, probably pushing three hundred pounds and all of it rot. One eye was gone and so was her lower lip. At least she'd done her hair up nice. Neal was having a good old time though, laughing at our expense.
"Now that's what I call a wood-killer," John said.
I had to look away. "Jesus, I bet she leaks, leaves a trail of drippings. There oughta be a law against the ones like that."
"The dead aren't toxic, remember?" Neal said. "Nobody knows why but they're not. So there's no reason there should be a law, you bigot. Come on, now. The dead are people too."
He was mocking me. I probably deserved it. I could get a little preachy sometimes on the subject of the dead. There were laws to protect them these days and I agreed with those laws. A lot of people didn't. But sometimes it got to be a little much even for me, seeing the really-maimed or rotten ones like this. I once saw a guy walking down Broadway carrying his guts in front of him in a wicker basket.
Wasn't pretty.
"You were saying something about Gustavo and last night? Something about the flower shop?"
His calamari had arrived in front of him and Neal was nibbling the batter off a piece of squid to expose the grey-black tentacle. That wasn't pretty either.
"Oh, yeah. Last Saturday he's sitting here in the bar tossing back a few tequilas and notices a couple of squad cars pull up over there. They don't have their lights on or anything but he just happens to notice them and while he's talking up some woman beside him, he keeps an eye on them. Comes from growing up in Spanish Harlem—you watch the cops. Anyway, they're no sooner out of their cruisers when the old lady who runs the flower shop comes out and she's yammering away and keeps pointing up to the third-floor apartment over the shop."
"That apartment's been empty for years," John said.
"You bet."
"So what happens next?" I said.
"The cops—four uniforms—go up into the apartment and they're in there a while. The old lady's still outside wringing her hands and looking like she's gonna have a heart attack right then and there. So Gustavo says fuck it, leaves his drink on the bar and walks over and asks the lady what's going on and the lady tells him that she keeps hearing this loud banging sound coming from upstairs. She's spooked. The apartment's wiring's bad and nobody's supposed to be up there. She's too scared to check it out herself so she calls the cops.
"Finally they come back down, and three of them are carrying kids wrapped in blankets. Little kids. A few minutes later an ambulance arrives. Turns out the kids are a year old, two years old, and about three years old—two boys and the oldest one's a girl. Their parents went dead two days ago, OD'd on heroin and then came back with brains so fried they were totally retarded, wandering around and jabbering and bumping into walls. But that's where they were living, in the old apartment over the flower shop. Squatters, sneaking in and out at night."
"So they died. And came back...?"
"Five days later. But for those five days..."
"Oh shit. Nobody to take care of the kids. They're lucky they didn't starve to death."
"Right. And the apartment's a total shithouse. Gustavo talked to one of the cops and I guess it was pretty grim. Garbage all over the place, clothes and dirty diapers and human shit all over the floor. The three-year-old told them that they were drinking out of the toilet bowl. Sinks hadn't worked in years."
"What'd they do with the parents?" John said.
"Dead junkies walking? Took 'em straight to the ovens. Can you believe it? Stuff like that happening right across the street?"
"So what was the banging sound?"
"Huh?"
"The banging sound the old lady heard."
"Oh jesus, yeah. The three-year-old was whacking cockroaches with a hammer. That's what they ate."
My stomach went sour. John was shaking his head. But it was just another case in point as far as I was concerned. Some people were total fuck-ups, alive or dead.
Even after the roaches-as-baby-food story Neal still had the munchies. He ordered two more sides. Oysters on the half-shell and grilled octopus. I ordered another drink.
I guess we were all getting pretty tanked. The ass-end of Happy Hour was long gone and it was getting dark. We listened to Jagger singing "Midnight Rambler" on the juke. The bar was filling up. Now that the sun was going down most of the action was coming in. Down at the end, Madeline was sitting with her current squeeze and we heard her laugh at something he said, the same phony laugh she always used on them, a lawyer's laugh, dry as a ten-page brief. Madeline drank zombies. She thought that was pretty funny.
"Be honest," John said. "You ever make it with one?"
"With a dead woman?" I shook my head. "Never. But Burt did. You know Burt, he'll fuck damn near anything."
Neal laughed. "Burt? That psycho's so perpetually horny he'd probably fuck this plate of octopus."
"Better finish it quick then," John said, "case he comes in. Burt say it was any good?"
"Said it was damn good, actually. Wasn't what he expected, her being dead and all. I guess it got pretty lively. Of course he had his Colt under the mattress just in case. He said they're not cold inside the way you'd think. More like room temperature."
"Stands to reason," John said.
"Get one at high noon this time of year, I bet she cooks," said Neal.
"But what about winter? Be like sticking your johnson in a Slurpee."
"It'd be different, that's for sure." He shrugged and sucked down an oyster. Then his eyes bugged and he swallowed fast. "Eyes left, gentlemen," he said. "I mean really left!"
We looked.
"Christ in a coffee shop," John said. "She looks like...she looks just like..."
"...Daryl Hannah," I said. "Oh my god."
And for a moment I thought the tall, willowy blonde peering in through the window really was Daryl Hannah. The resemblance was utterly uncanny. The long, wild hair, those thick, parted lips, that graceful neck, those big, bottomless eyes.
Neal damn near knocked over his scotch.
"She's looking right at us!" he whispered.
She was.
I was loaded enough to shoot her a smile and raise my glass. Neal and John just gawked at her.
"Know what, fellas? I'm not sure she's looking at us," John said. "I think she's looking at you, slugger!" He slapped me on the back. Hard. Scotch spilled. Ice tinkled in the glass.
But he was right. It was me she was looking at. Our eyes held for a moment.
And then she was gone.
John slapped me again, easier this time. "Don't take it too hard, old buddy. You know the babes. One minute you're Mr. Chick Magnet, you're fucking Fabio for a second, and then..."
"Chopped liver," said Neal.
"That's right, chopped liver. Maybe she caught one of your two grey hairs. Thought you were old enough to be her daddy."
"I am old enough to be her daddy."
"Nah," said Neal. "She took one look at our man here and realized he was out of her league. That she's outclassed all the way. Huffed off probably to pout about it."
"No she didn't," said John. He was looking over my shoulder. "Huh?"
"She didn't huff off. She's coming in."
I turned and there were those eyes on me again, directly focused on mine like lasers coming toward me. There was something deliberate and almost predatory about the way she walked. The designer jeans were so tight they looked sewn onto her hips and legs. Long, long legs. Daryl Hannah legs. I get my share I guess but I knew I didn't deserve this. God was either smiling or laughing at me. I didn't know which.
She stopped directly in front of us and her gaze took us all in. "Who's got the balls to buy me
a drink?" she said.
"Why does it take balls?" I said. First thing that came to mind. The scotch speaking.
"Because after a couple I might be more than you can handle. When we go back to my place, that is."
I guess we all came pretty close to losing our drinks through our noses on that one.
Bar-tramp, I thought. Either that or a prostitute. Though I'd never seen a whore who looked as good as she did. But when they came onto you that hard, you knew something was wrong. Ordinarily it was an instant turn-off. Not with her, though. Not with some Daryl Hannah look-alike. With this one it went the other way. You just had to play it through. See where it went.
"You sure know how to make an impression, lady," John said. "Thanks. I'll have a Hurricane. Who's buying?"
I was. I introduced her to John and Neal and told her my name. She shook hands like a man, hard and abrupt.
"And you?" I said.
She laughed. "You care about my name? You guys really give a damn about my name? Come on. That's not what you care about."
The smile softened it some but she was still being an asshole. Haughty, arrogant, maybe buzzing on something stronger than a Hurricane—whatever the hell that was. Maybe even crazy. In a bar you got used to seeing them now and then.
She asked what we did for a living. Another turn-off under most circumstances, asking right off the top that way. But we told her. Artist, cameraman, writer. She didn't seem particularly interested or particularly uninterested either. Just seemed to take it in. Normally you tell a woman you're a writer the next question is what do you write. Not with this package. She nodded and drank and pretty soon the first one was gone so I ordered her another.
Her long slim fingers plucked at a piece of Neal's grilled octopus and she swallowed it down. Didn't ask. Just took. Her privilege.