Zombie

by J. R. Angelella

  But a strong chemical odor pours out from inside my bedroom, mixed with sweat and dirt and something else. I flick on the lights. Dad sits on the edge of my bed, his bare feet on the carpet, his hands in his lap, still wearing his clothes from the night before, bloodstains on his collar and cuffs, hair messy and tangled.

  “I didn’t realize you still had these.” He stares at the wicker chairs across from him. His eyelids are heavy and flinch at the light. “Sit down. We need to talk.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, heading him off, dancing between all of the Codes, unsure of how Dad will proceed. I sit in one of the wicker chairs. “I didn’t mean to cause any trouble.”

  Dad talks about real estate. He talks about subprime mortgage rates and a realtor’s commission and asks me if I’ve ever read David Mamet’s play Glengarry Glen Ross. He asks me if I know the ABCs of sales. I don’t know any of it, but I say that I do because I’m trying to figure out where he’s going with all of this.

  “All of this is to say that what I do for a living, sales and property management and sourcing leads, it all directly affects you, which is why I need to know what you know about this homemade video. I won’t be mad. I promise. But I need to know.”

  I tell Dad exactly what I saw on the DVD and not an image more.

  “How did it make you feel?” he asks.

  “You are never here,” I say.

  “But you see that I’m okay,” he says. “You see that I’m all right, right?

  “I saw the video, Dad. It made me sick.”

  “I’m still the same person,” he says.

  “I heard screaming last night. On the phone. What’s happening?”

  “You should have left the video alone, Jeremy.”

  “What happened to that man, Dad, the one strapped to the bed? Were you there in the crowd? Was it real? Can you answer me? I’ll take any answer, so long as it is an answer to any of my questions?”

  “What you saw is not what you think that it is.”

  “I saw Mr. Rembrandt give you the book and the movie in the parking lot of school. How could I leave it alone when you’re disappearing every night?” I say.

  “He said no one would see,” he says.

  “How do you even know my English teacher?” I make fists and punch them into my legs with each word for effect. “What-is-happening-to-you?”

  Dad licks his lips and has been for a while now. “That’s an interesting question,” he says. His mouth must be so dry. “I’m evolving,” Dad says.

  “Liza doesn’t exist,” I say. “In real life, she doesn’t exist.”

  “Now, wait a second, she does exist.”

  “She’s a fictional whore, Dad. She’s a fictional whore in some old and crappy book. There’s no way that you’re dating a whore, like you keep lying about?”

  “She’s a saintly prostitute, saved and reformed.”

  “Once a whore, always a whore,” I say.

  “Jeremy, I know you didn’t read your summer books, but I hope if you aren’t accusing me, that you at least did your research and read this book?”

  “I read the back of the book.”

  “Lazy like your brother. Enough. What about you? Let’s focus on what’s happening with you?” He aims a fist at my closet—closet open, board game boxes on the floor, board game boxes open, and my women’s magazines everywhere.

  My magazines. An old Cosmopolitan lays open on the carpet. A woman wearing a red bra and blue panties dances in front of a man in front of a full-length mirror. The caption across the top says: 101 Ways to Spice Up Your Sex Life.

  Dad continues. “I have been sitting here all night. Waiting for you. To come home. Because when I came up here to apologize last night. To explain. You weren’t here. And I couldn’t figure out, for the life of me, where you could have possibly gone. Sitting here trying to figure out. Trying to. What is wrong. With my son.”

  “Where do you go at night?” I ask. “I know there isn’t a Liza. I know that’s a lie.”

  “You’re not gay, are you?” he asks, squaring himself across from me. “Well?”

  I wonder if Zink’s father ever asked him that question.

  “Women’s magazines,” he says. “In your closet. I called your mother. I called your brother. She didn’t hear from you. She never saw you. He never saw you. He never heard from you. Are you gay? Where did you go?”

  “He wouldn’t open the fucking door,” I say. I choke up on my bat and wind up.

  “Why would your brother ever lie to me?”

  “Because,” I say.

  “Because is not a fucking answer, Jeremy. What do you think you saw last night? Why is it that you keep seeing things that aren’t there? Are you taking the correct amount of medicine?”

  “Whose blood was it in the basement?” I ask. “I know what I saw.”

  He rubs at the red still on his cuffs and collar. “I ran over a dog, Jeremy. It ran out from the woods and crossed over a median. Probably sick, diseased, and now deceased.”

  “Nothing about any of this is making any sense,” I say.

  “Remember when you were a kid and got gum stuck in your hair and Mom had to cut it out with scissors?” Dad rubs his eyes with his palms. “Jesus, Jeremy. I came up here last night to explain. Bu then I found …”

  “They’re magazines,” I say.

  “Women’s magazines,” he says.

  “I met someone,” I say, my eyes on the woman in the magazine with the red bra and blue panties. “Her name is Aimee White.”

  For the first time in some time, Dad is without speech.

  “I met her at school. She’s the student director of the fall play. A Doll’s House.”

  I want to scream—Torvald, Torvald, Torvald.

  “Her name is Aimee,” I say.

  “Is she attractive?”

  “I like her.”

  “Smart?”

  “Very.”

  “Ha.” Dad stands, excited, and stacks the magazines in a pile against the wall. “You need to call her.” He closes my closet door and opens the blinds. “For a date—dinner and a movie,” Dad says.

  “Shouldn’t I see if we click first? Should I wait three days?”

  “There is absolutely no reason you can’t date more than one girl. There’s no need for you to tie your dingy to only one dock. You need to keep your options open.” Dad unbuttons his shirt. His white undershirt is stained red with dog blood too—on the short-sleeve and collar. “You should call her. Make a date for tonight. Unless there’s a reason why you wouldn’t.”

  I dial the number and it rings and rings and rings before going to voicemail.

  “Leave one,” Dad whispers. “But don’t sound desperate. Like you don’t need to be calling. Like you got better things to do.”

  The anxiety of waiting for the beep forces my sweat glands to overproduce. Then, finally, after all the uber-sweat, there is the beep.

  “Aimee. I was wondering if you’d like to go out to dinner and a movie tonight. If you’re free. I’m free. Dinner and a movie. I don’t know what’s playing. But I’m sure you do. Call me. Call me back. Thank you very much and goodbye. Oh, and this is Jeremy.”

  I end the call.

  Total. Dickbaggery.

  Dad says, “I have to be honest, I’m not sure Aimee will call you back after that train wreck.” Dad stands to leave when my phone buzzes in my hand and it’s her.

  We talk. Aimee couldn’t have been happier to get my call, even though she did say my message creeped her out a bit. She kept saying, “Why are you acting like we didn’t already have this conversation last night?” I try for a dinner and a movie, against all better judgment, but she, rightly, shuts the idea down. Instead, she reconfirms our plans for tea at the Daily Grind before going to Mykel’s chopography art exhibit together.

  Dad shakes his head the entire time I’m on the phone. He shakes my trash can full of bats. He walks to my dresser. He picks up a pill bottle. Then, when it’s all said and done, he pi
nches a pill and aims it toward my mouth. I stop his hand with mine and open my palm. He hesitates, but eventually drops it down. I catch it like a goddamn professional.

  I pretend to swallow it before opening wide to show him the emptiness.

  He leaves, his footsteps pounding down the stairs.

  I spit the pill onto my comforter.

  Next to a red stain.

  Dog blood.

  79

  In the shower, I prepare to scrub my body raw.

  Steam fills the room like fog from some kind of war. My conversation with Dad still has me dizzy. Somehow we talked about everything, but learned absolutely nothing. If anything, I got farther from the truth. Further from the truth about Liza and Rembrandt and the video and book and where he goes at night.

  I lather with soap and shampoo. Exfoliate my face with a salt scrub sample from one of my magazines. Condition and rerinse.

  I wipe condensation away from the mirror so I can see my reflection. Like a big fat cliché, I flex. My sad little man muscles are nothing to brag about, barely even noticeable.

  I wrap the towel around my waist and walk to my bedroom, my chest puffed out, my towel tightly secured.

  Before I pluck a pair of underwear from the Scrabble box in my closet and pull on my jeans, before I rub on deodorant and spritz myself with cologne, I first stand by the window and wait for Tricia. To see if I can return the peep show.

  I wait for her, but really I’m waiting for something else altogether.

  80

  Tricia walks Travis past our house as I wait for Jackson to pick me up. She stops at the bushes that border our walkway. Travis blasts it with his piss. Never is there ever a more awkward moment to strike up conversation with a hot chick than when a dog takes a leak.

  I fight the urge to tell her I very recently waited for her by my bedroom window half-naked. I’m not quite sure what I would have even done if she had been home.

  We speak in clipped sentences, exchanging awkward everythings. We don’t make direct contact, both of us following the Code. She asks if I’m feeling better, and I assure her that I am. That I no longer have a bug. That it was probably a 24-hour thing. I even touch my forehead for effect. Lame.

  She says she’s happy to hear I’m better. Travis isn’t stingy with his piss and generously spreads it around. Tricia asks me if I have a hot date and I reassure her that we’re just friends. That it’s really nothing serious.

  “A word of friendly girl advice,” she says. “Don’t tell her that.”

  Travis finally runs dry and pulls Tricia farther down the sidewalk. She slows him, stops, and turns back.

  “Jeremy, I meant what I said the other day—I am always here to listen. If you need it.” She looks to my house, then to hers. “Things can be tough sometimes.”

  “Does that mean you’re staying in Baltimore?”

  “Travis and I will be around.”

  “What happened to Harvard?”

  She gently pulls on the leash and Travis comes trotting back to her and sits at her feet.

  “I’ll be honest with you, if you’ll be honest with me,” she says.

  “I don’t know how not to feel hopeless sometimes,” I say.

  “Funny, I kind of have the same problem.” She watches Travis sit quietly by her side, staring up at her for some kind of command. “I’m not in school anymore.” She holds her hand out to me and I accept it. She squeezes my hand. “I’m a patient at Sheppard Pratt.”

  “Jesus. I’m so sorry. Are you sick?” I have heard of people going to Sheppard Pratt before but never really knew why. “Could they not help you at Johns Hopkins?”

  She laughs. “When you’re finished with my Instyle, just put it back on the porch.” She snaps her fingers and Travis catapults himself into a trot as they both continue down the sidewalk. “I don’t ever mind sharing.”

  “Tricia,” I say. “Tonight I won’t talk about the weather.”

  “I never thought for a second that you would.” Her smile could start a war among men.

  Her fat-ass father waits for her on the porch and opens the door again like some sort of parental concierge. She unhooks Travis who leads the way inside.

  And they all fall away to nothing.

  81

  Jackson’s ugly-ass mini-Smart Car, a graduation present from Dad, rolls up to the house like a giant red gumball on the loose and barely stops behind Dad’s BMW. Jackson honks his horn like a maniac and throws open the passenger door.

  “Get the fuck in before he comes out.” Jackson watches the front door. The screen door is closed but the front door is open, and all that’s there is Dog, watching us, her ears back. Jackson says the last thing he needs is another face-to-face with the old man where he tells him how to live his damn life.

  We are all involuntary members of the same fucked-up club.

  Jackson maneuvers his ridiculously small car past Dad’s BMW still parked where it was last night—the BMW bloodless, clean and dent-free. His eyes look like a week of sleepless nights. His hair is perfect though, parted, but in a natural, non-douchebag kind of way. His clothes are wrinkled but that’s not entirely surprising considering how messy his apartment looked. It smells like fast food and smoke. Jackson places the plastic tip of a thin cigar between his teeth and hands me a box of multicolored condoms.

  “Dad gave me my first box when I was your age,” he says. “Now I’m paying it forward.” Jackson lights the end of the cigar and drags on the tip, holding the smoke in, before exhaling in a satisfyingly long stream. The car fills with smoke. He offers me a drag, careful to hold the cigar together where he had cut it open and filled it with whatever the fuck.

  I’ve never had the urge to smoke weed, but more specifically I’ve never had the urge to smoke weed with Jackson. I hold my box of multicolored condoms and politely decline his blunt.

  I stand corrected. The car smells like fast food and burnt asshole hair.

  He takes another pull and holds the smoke. “You’ll never forget your first box of Jimmy Hats.” After, he exhales. “Mine were Magnum, ribbed, and glow-in-the-dark.” He smiles with the cigar in his mouth. “That was definitely a good period in my life.” He smokes some more.

  “Does Dad seem different to you lately?” I ask.

  “You mean, like, is he crazy?” he asks.

  “He was in the basement last night. He said he’d hit a dog with his car.”

  Jackson looks at me with some wide-ass eyes, the plastic tip of the blunt back between his teeth.

  “It’s why I was at your apartment. It’s why he called you last night, looking for me.”

  “That’s fucked up that he killed a dog with his car, but I don’t know what you’re talking about as far as the old man calling me last night, Stumps. I pretty much make it a point to avoid him, like, always.”

  “No. Last night. I came down to your apartment.”

  “I know. I had a chick with me, which is why I didn’t let you in, but Dad never called.”

  “He said he called you and told you about hitting the dog. The dog blood. He said he was worried about me and he called you. To make sure I was okay.”

  “Stumps, the last time I heard from or saw Dad was when you stormed out of my apartment like a little twat.” Jackson holds one toke too long and coughs his brains out like a clichéd pothead. “That … was … a … good … one,” he says between coughs.

  “What’s Sheppard Pratt?” I ask.

  “Who do you know at the Shep?”

  “Tricia said she was a patient at Sheppard Pratt.”

  “No way!” He laughs. “The Shep is Baltimore’s premiere psychiatric facility.” He offers the blunt to me again, pinched between fingers. The plastic tip has bite marks on it. “It’s where people go who lose their damn minds.”

  “You mean crazy?” I decline the cigar again.

  “I mean bananas. She probably had some kind of breakdown. Happens all the time to chicks. They’re so fucking emotional.” He inhales and
exhales with ease. “Condoms and weed, baby brother. It’s what keeps us men sane.”

  When we get to Fell’s Point and he parallel parks his ugly-ass car down the street from his apartment building, I leave the box of condoms in the passenger seat, unopened.

  IX

  NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

  (Release Date: October 1, 1968)

  Directed by George A. Romero

  Written by John A. Russo and George A. Romero

  82

  The street lights reflect against the cobblestone streets of Fell’s Point and black water of the Chesapeake Bay. Nothing down here seems to stay the same, but I’m beginning to believe that about most things.

  Aimee appears out of darkness. A street lamp washes her in yellow light. She wears a black skirt, above the knee, with black kitten heels and a red, long sleeve, scoop neck shirt. My magazines have prepared me in more ways than I’m even aware sometimes.

  Before I have a chance to decide between greeting Aimee with a professional handshake or a more romantic hug, she grabs my hands and pulls me through an old wooden door, the entranceway to a coffee shop—the Daily Grind.

  Her hand is soft and warm and for the first time today I feel hopeful about things and never want to let it go. Immediately, I worry that my damn nose is bleeding again and touch my nostrils with my free hand.

  “You’re fine,” she says. “Don’t worry so much. You carry it in your eyes. It’s okay to take a break once in a while.” She brushes the back of her hand against my cheek.

  Aimee orders a fancy flavored tea—mandarin orange mint tea that smells like an Indian spiced fruit bomb. The barista is a dude with a tiny bird-sized bone stuck horizontal through his nostrils and he toils like each drink is the Sistine Chapel. The barista passes the hot tea to Aimee and I say, “This one’s on me. My treat. I insist.” I pay the barista as Aimee sources us a table.

  When she is far enough away, I say, “Buddy, I need you to hook me up with whatever fancy tea a fancy tea drinker would drink.”