by Rich Leder
“Let’s go,” Danny said.
Mike clicked on his flashlight, and they crossed the room to the casket and stood at the open end, where Linda was resting in peace.
Danny didn’t know how long he’d been holding his breath. He didn’t even know that he had been holding his breath. But after a few minutes of looking down at his mother, his lungs and his brain were ready to explode, so he opened his mouth to breathe and words came out. “Nice casket,” he said.
“Matte maple finish with a Rosetan interior,” Mike said.
“Like a hotel in a box,” Paul said.
“Stop talking,” Mike said.
“I know that suit,” Danny said.
“She liked that one,” Mike said.
“I like that one,” Paul said.
“Stop talking,” Mike said.
“She looks peaceful,” Danny said.
“George did a nice job,” Mike said.
“She looks good,” Danny said.
“She looks real good,” Paul said.
“Stop talking,” Mike said.
“I’m just saying if she wasn’t dead, I’d do her,” Paul said. “It’s a compliment.”
Mike grabbed the clown and pulled him to the ground, and the two men wrestled around in the dark on the viewing room floor until Mike had Paul in a nasty headlock.
“Stop it, Mike,” Danny said, the beam of the flashlight bouncing helter-skelter around the room.
“Tell him to stop talking,” Mike said.
“Stop talking, Paul,” Danny said.
“Tapping out,” Paul said, and he tapped Mike’s leg.
Mike let go of the clown, picked his wallet up off the floor because it had fallen out of his pocket while he was wrestling Paul, and the men stood again at the open casket, Mike and Paul breathing harder than they were breathing a minute ago.
“Are you carrying her?” Danny said to Mike.
“No,” Mike said. “Are you?”
“No,” Danny said.
Paul raised his hand to speak, but Mike shined the light in his face and said, “Don’t even go there.” Then he looked at Danny and said, “We’ll carry her together.”
And the brothers lifted Linda out of the coffin, carried her through the mortuary to the Pathfinder—Paul the Pervert leading them with the flashlight—seat-belted her into the back seat behind Mike, and drove to Mike’s house in Woodland Hills, where Jenny was waiting.
SHE’LL BE A WONDERFUL MOTHER
Mike sat in the front seat of the Pathfinder and tried not to lose his mind. For one thing, he had rubbed his nipples raw while wrestling with the pervert clown on the mortuary floor. For another thing, the brand on his chest was throbbing. And for yet another thing, he was nauseous to the nth degree at being so close in such a confined space to a dead body, no matter that the body was Linda—he had nearly passed out carrying her to the car. But if it was physically challenging for Mike to make it home in one piece, there were other challenges that made his physical state of being seem like cotton candy.
Mike was not a religious man. His mother didn’t have the time, money, or inclination for an organized church, and so he hadn’t been raised that way. She had encouraged him to find and forge his own spiritual path, and he had decided that there was an order to the universe and that the best way for him to serve that order was to keep his numbers straight and accurate. He believed that if a person did not serve the order of the universe in the best way that they could, there would be karma to pay. And the way he figured it, the payback he had already received would pale in comparison to what the universe would do to him for stealing his dead mother and bringing her back to life. The fate of his soul was up in the air, and there was no way to know where the hell it would land. But if it was spiritually challenging for Mike to maintain his sanity, there was still another challenge that made his spiritual state of being seem like buttered popcorn.
Mike was a married man, yes, but his marriage was in abeyance, meaning his wife had jumped ship for Jersey. And so right now he was a separated man, and a separated man had the same sexual needs and desires as a married man but no wife to satisfy them. He was only human, Mike was. Despite everything and all of it, he had to admit that he was attracted to Jenny Stone—her hot cowgirl get-up, her green and then blue eyes, her tight little body. There was something innocent about her, but there was also something naughty, beyond even the whole breathing-the-dead-back-to-life thing she had going on.
After the Frosted Flakes fight, Danny had left the kitchen to shower and change his clothes and gather his wits. Mike had stood the table right side up, grabbed a chair, and commenced eating the entire box of cereal—what was left in it, anyway. Jenny had pulled a chair beside him and put her hand on his arm and said that she would clean the kitchen when they were gone. It was a small moment, but she was close to him, and her voice was soft and kind, and her touch was warm and gentle, and her eyes looked like the tropics, and she smelled like mystery, and her lacy black bra made his groin grow.
As the Pathfinder pulled into his horseshoe driveway and rolled up to the front door, Mike decided that he would have to make some decisions about how to approach Jenny, formulate some kind of plan of attack, but not right now because right now he had to carry his dead mother into the house.
Danny sent Paul packing as soon the Pathfinder was parked. The pervert clown grumbled something about imprinting himself on Danny’s mother, like a doe on a faun, but he got in his truck and drove away without incident.
When Paul was on his way to wherever it was Paul went at night, Mike and Danny carried Linda into the house and laid her out on the living room sofa. Jenny adjusted Linda’s arms so that it looked like the dead woman was taking a ten-minute nap instead of an eternal sleep.
The three of them stood there looking at her for what seemed to Mike to be a long, long time. Or maybe it seemed like a long, long time because of the size of the thought that hit Mike’s head.
He was standing at the bottom of a deep grave that he had dug with his bare hands. He was wearing a blue pinstriped suit, and he was covered with dirt and mud and filth. It was pouring down rain, and he was soaked. He was barefoot. What the hell had happened to his goddamn shoes? He looked up. Rain hit him hard in the face. There was no way out of the grave.
And then he was in his living room, confused and lost and in pain he had never thought possible. He looked at his hands, expecting them to be caked with mud. He couldn’t stop looking at his hands.
Someone was standing beside him. Jenny. She held his hands with her hands. He turned to her. Her face was close to his face. She was beautiful. He hadn’t had sex with anyone but Marcy in decades. If he could do it with anyone, it would be Jenny.
“Are you okay, Mike?” Jenny said.
“What do you mean?” Mike said.
“You’re crying,” Jenny said.
Holy fuck, Mike thought. I really am crying. He wanted to dry his eyes, but he either wouldn’t or couldn’t let go of Jenny’s hands. He just stood there, looking into her eyes and holding her hands. And she was doing the same thing right back at him.
“Are we doing this?” Danny said.
The mood was broken, and Mike and Jenny let go, and Mike wiped his eyes and looked at Danny and his mother and said, “We should say a few words.”
“It’s not a funeral,” Danny said. “It’s the opposite.”
“Then we should say the opposite words,” Mike said.
“What does that even mean?” Danny said.
Mike had to think about it. That sentence had fallen out of his mouth unexpectedly, and he didn’t know what it meant. And then he did.
“She’ll be a wonderful mother,” Mike said, and he smiled at Jenny.
Jenny smiled back and then looked at Danny as if to say: your turn.
Danny looked at Mike and Jenny and then at his mother on the couch and said, “She’ll make the best enchiladas in the Valley.” Then he looked at Jenny, and they shared a smile, which Mik
e couldn’t help but notice.
“She’ll be the Rock of El Cab,” Mike said.
“She’ll hit a hell of a ground ball,” Danny said.
“She’ll be kind and loving and understanding and a living example of hard work, accuracy, honesty, and proficiency,” Mike said. “She’ll be the best mom ever.”
“Amen and peace out,” Danny said.
Mike nodded, and both he and Danny turned to Jenny, who looked at Linda, kneeled beside the sofa, made a sad little sigh, put her face very close to Linda’s face, and gently blew on it. Then her lips turned ever so slightly up at the corners, and she stood.
They waited in silence until Jenny said, “This could take a few minutes.”
“That’s fine,” Danny said. “Can I talk to you in the kitchen, Mike?”
“It can’t wait?” Mike said, gesturing at Linda and thinking: Typical Dan. Mr. Distraction. Can’t even focus on bringing his dead mother back to life.
“Jenny said we have a few minutes,” Dan said.
The brothers left the living room and walked to the kitchen. As she had promised, Jenny had cleaned the room while they were at the mortuary. Danny shut the door for privacy, turned to his brother, and said, “What the fuck was that? You’re hitting on her?”
“No,” Mike said, leaning against a counter. “Yes. Probably. Definitely. So what?”
“So you’re married, asshole,” Danny said.
“Separated,” Mike said.
“One week. Less than a week,” Danny said.
“Feels longer,” Mike said. In his mind, he couldn’t believe how long it felt—years, lifetimes, galaxies ago, when he’d been a different man.
“You have no idea what you’re doing,” Danny said, taking a step toward Mike.
It was true, and Mike knew it. If you had asked him on Monday—on Monday!—if he would be stealing his deceased mother out of a mortuary that Friday and laying her on his living room sofa so that she could be brought back to life, he would have said you were crazy. Now he was crazy. He had no idea what he was doing, and he didn’t care. “We have chemistry,” Mike said. “It’s burning down the house.”
“That’s stupid and ridiculous and stupid,” Danny said, moving toward Mike. “Did I mention it was stupid? You don’t know her at all, and she doesn’t know you.”
“Oh, I know her,” Mike said. “I looked into her eyes.”
“What color were they?” Danny said.
“Which day?” Mike said.
“Okay, bad example,” Danny said, and he stopped four feet from Mike. “Just keep your hands off my client.”
“You keep your hands off your client,” Mike said.
“What does that mean?” Danny said.
“I saw you smile at her. You’re as attracted to her as I am,” Mike said. “If I don’t sleep with her, you will.”
“I don’t sleep with clients. It’s bad for my business.”
“It’s our business, fifty-fifty, and I do sleep with clients because I’m a badass man.”
“You’re out of control,” Danny said, taking one angry step toward his brother.
“You’re out of control,” Mike said, and he took an angrier step toward Danny.
The brothers were face-to-face, maybe one foot between them, and they were both hot under the collar.
“You and Jenny, that’s not happening,” Danny said, and he grabbed Mike by the lapels of his black suit jacket.
“You and Jenny, that’s not happening,” Mike said, and he grabbed two handfuls of Danny’s black T-shirt.
They shook each other and pulled each other, each one battling to keep their balance. Their faces were red with anger.
“I’m very hungry, that’s what’s happening,” Linda said, opening the door and walking into the kitchen. “Is there anything to eat in this house? Stop fighting. You’re giving me a headache. Why are you both wearing black? Is it somebody’s funeral?”
She crossed the room to the refrigerator and opened the door as if she had not died of a heart attack on Tuesday. Mike looked at Linda and at Danny and then at Linda and everything about his universe that was one second ago in flux now stood stock-still.
SATURDAY
MORON DEPOT
Danny didn’t sleep. It had been one hundred degrees in the garage, and the fan that made a dying animal noise had at long last suffered its inglorious, inevitable death, first whining to an intermittent whir and then hissing to an everlasting stop. The irony of its demise, juxtaposed with Jenny’s resuscitation of his mother, had not been lost on Danny, not even at three o’clock Saturday morning.
But if the gasoline-infused heat of Mike’s garage had made it hard to sleep, then thinking about Jenny while sweating bullets in his bed had made it harder again by half. Was he obsessed with her? He had never in his life been obsessed with a woman before. Women had been obsessed with him, but he looked like Brad Pitt, so of course Hollywood women were falling all over themselves. But it had never happened the other way around. So what the hell was going on here?
There was only one explanation: Jenny was a voodoo queen, and she had put a spell on him.
That sounded stupid, but it wasn’t. Jenny was a voodoo queen (for Chrissake, she could raise the dead), and he was mesmerized by her beauty and power—he was under her spell in that sense. I’m a deer in her headlights, he thought, waiting to be mowed down in the middle of the road. Women like Jenny are murder on me.
Women like Jenny? Women like Jenny? There were no women like Jenny. Maybe that was it. Maybe his obsession was due in part to the fact that Jenny was the most special woman he had ever met. Maybe it was that and the further fact that she rocked a lacy black bra.
At four a.m., he got out of bed and went inside to sleep in the air conditioning and found his brother sitting in the living room on the sofa. Mike was staring at the television, watching home movies with the sound turned off. He looked worse than he had looked a few days ago, and, Danny thought, Mike had looked pretty shitty even then. He was still wearing the black suit he had worn to carry Linda out of the mortuary. His skin was pale and peeling where his sunburn had been especially nasty. He looked like he hadn’t even tried to sleep.
Danny sat on the other end of the sofa. Mike did not acknowledge him. Without saying a word to each other, they watched grainy black and white movies shot thirty years ago at family functions. Mike had paid to transfer the films onto DVDs and then taken the transfer expense as a write-off. He had thought that deducting the old home movies made him cool and had lorded it over Danny—because Danny didn’t think of it first. It didn’t make Mike cool. Mike was an asshole then and an asshole now, sitting on the same sofa where they had put their mother when their mother was dead.
They must have both dozed off because at six thirty, they both woke up. The home movies had ended two hours ago.
“When you’re out of The Oath, you’re out of my business,” Danny said.
“I’m not out of anything until you pay me the seventy-five hundred,” Mike said.
“I can’t pay you until I get the money back from Gary Shuler,” Danny said, and in his mind, he ticked off all the complicating complications of his complicated life—Shuler, of course, and then Harvey and Omar, although why they were in second place he had no idea, Greenburg because he was just so fucking pathetic, and now, like always, his asshole brother. And Jenny. Oh yes, and the fact that his mother was alive again.
“After the zombie hogtied and branded me, Shuler showed up and said he wanted to see Jenny bring a dead dog back to life,” Mike said. “He said he wanted to see that on Sunday.”
“That’s tomorrow,” Danny said.
“I know the days of the week,” Mike said.
“Shuler has the seventy-five grand,” Danny said, mostly to himself, and the gears in his brain groaned back to life after having been blown to bits by the resurrection of his mother. “And Harvey and Omar said the same thing to me. They want to see a dead dog brought back to life on Sunday or they
’re going to kill me and probably you.”
“They can get in line,” Mike said. “Shuler said if there’s no show on Sunday, he’s going to let Judd Martin torture me to death.”
There has to be a way to tie it all together, Danny thought, Shuler, Harvey, Greenburg, there has to be an angle. He could always find the angle, he was the Crown Prince of Angles—so where was the angle here?
He looked at his brother, who appeared to be a lump of laundry—soiled, wrinkled, lifeless. He was going to tell Mike about tying it all together, not because he cared what his brother had to say, but because he thought talking about it out loud might break his mental logjam and let the angle appear. He opened his mouth to say that they needed to connect the dwarf and the giant to the comedian cop and the dentist, but instead of that sentence, a single word fell out. It wasn’t a word Danny was expecting. In fact, it was the last word he ever thought would fall out of his mouth when what was on his mind was the angle. But it had fallen out, and now Danny knew why. The word was “Chachi.”
“What?” Mike said.
“Greenburg’s dog.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Tying it together.”
“Tying what together?”
“The dog has a bad disposition.”
“So what?”
“So we tell Greenburg we’re going to give his poodle a cost-free attitude adjustment, then we kill the dog, have Harvey and Omar and Shuler watch Jenny bring it back to life, Shuler gives us the seventy-five grand, I pay you, you move to New Jersey with Marcy and the girls, released from The Oath, of course, and Harvey gets your share of the business, which sucks but is better than Harvey murdering me.”
“And Mom?”
“What about her?”
“She was dead.”
“She woke up. It’s a miracle. Hallelujah.”
He was so happy with himself, Danny was. As he had done so many times before, he’d found the angle. He could feel his mojo rising. It lifted him off the couch. He paced the living room, the logistics of the weekend coming into focus. I’m back in the saddle, he thought. I’m at the gate and ready to run.