Pretend I'm Dead

by Jen Beagin

  First she unpacked her clothes, then several boxes of cherished possessions, including her collection of airline barf bags, which she found aesthetically pleasing, and art by developmentally disabled adults, poorly executed portraits, doodles done by strangers, doodles done by her clients. The main things to unpack, however, were her books, which she arranged according to the color of their spines: red to green to orange to blue to pink to brown, with a fade to black.

  “The white spines don’t belong,” Disgusting would have said. “Obviously.”

  She agreed. They made her think of cement, classrooms, the sluggish ticking of a clock. She hid them in the closet.

  Now her symptoms were returning. The Xanax was wearing off. She kept it in the sock drawer, right next to the Holy Dirt, her other medicine. The Xanax she’d stolen from a former client in Lowell, the Holy Dirt from El Santuario de Chimayo, a small adobe church she’d visited on her way into Taos. At the back of the church was a little room with a hole in the ground. The hole was filled with Holy Dirt, and the walls of the room were lined with pictures of various saints and the discarded crutches of formerly crippled people. They’d been healed, so the story went, on account of the dirt, and now thousands of people made pilgrimages to the church every year just to get their hands on it. Or legs, rather.

  She’d waited for the little room to empty of people before reaching down into the hole and grabbing a handful. It was red and claylike and she liked the feel of it in her hand. She’d made sure no one was looking and then tried filling an empty water bottle with it, but the mouth of the bottle was too small. She deposited several handfuls onto the front of her oversized T-shirt and then hurried out of the church, clutching the dirt to her stomach.

  In her truck in the parking lot, she’d transferred the dirt to a Tupperware container she found under the driver’s seat. During her first days in Taos she’d rubbed a bit of the dirt on her wrist whenever she felt anxious. It had felt silly initially, but before long she was rubbing it on other parts of her body for good measure—arms, neck, stomach—and not bothering to wash it off when she went out in public.

  Her bedroom window was small and too high for her to look out of without standing. Right now she could see the sky, which was currently a blithe, concentrated blue, the color of Windex. A few flimsy clouds clung to the mountains like discarded paper towels. The house had a yard: a large, scrubby field dotted with what looked like scouring pads—dry green shrubs with pale-yellow flowers. Between two cottonwood trees sat an abandoned 1969 Dodge Charger, formerly red, now freckled with rust and ringed by shattered beer bottles. The neighborhood dogs roamed free and traveled in surly packs, often stopping in the field to relieve themselves. Right now they were taking turns pissing on the Charger’s cracked flat tires before rolling languidly in the dirt. They didn’t seem bothered by broken glass.

  She heard something break—a dish, perhaps—in the other, sunnier half of the house, which was rented by an older married couple. Nigel was a tall, malnourished-looking Englishman in his late forties. His wife, Shiori, was Japanese and looked twenty years younger. But they seemed like twins to Mona, perhaps because she’d never seen them in anything other than matching pajamas. They bowed to her whenever they saw her, which she found endearing and sort of flattering at first, then downright irritating. But it seemed in character—they told her they’d met in India, where they’d meditated on eternal mysteries for twelve whole years. They had a studied and deliberate calm about them that struck Mona as affected. She could easily picture them out of their minds, chain-smoking and wandering around town in their pajamas.

  That morning they’d invited her for dinner, and she’d instinctively blown them off—an old reflex—claiming she already had plans. Now it dawned on her that the nearest grocery store was closed on Sundays and that eating would require a trip to the bigger store twelve miles away, and that the only people she regularly talked to were herself and Mr. Disgusting, who wasn’t even alive. Maybe she could bring herself to knock on their door, even if it made her feel like she had so often in her life: empty-handed and at the mercy of others, a pathetic orphan in a children’s novel.

  * * *

  IT SEEMED THEY’D ANTICIPATED HER change of mind: she could see a tea set for three on a low table in the living room. They bowed deeply in her direction. Oh what the hell. She started to bend forward, then felt ridiculous and called the gesture off.

  “Would you mind removing your shoes?” Nigel asked.

  She shook off her slippers, exposing her dirty feet. She was startled by their living room furniture, which consisted solely of a large modular wooden platform roughly three feet off the ground. It was sturdily built and had a light walnut stain. Unlike Mona’s, their walls were painted stark white and decorated with Japanese prints of desolate winter scenes.

  They motioned for her to sit on the platform. She obeyed, feeling like a large dog scrambling onto the dinner table. Shiori offered a pillow for her behind and she sat facing the large picture window, her legs folded awkwardly to the side. She’d always found sitting cross-legged unnatural. It also made her feel fatter and more out of shape than she actually was. Nigel and Shiori both arranged themselves in an effortless half-lotus position with their backs to the window.

  Shiori served tea while Nigel told Mona what he’d learned of the house’s history. Built in 1902, it belonged to a large family of piñon farmers by the name of Martinez. It had been passed down through the generations, and then, in the 1980s, there’d been a falling out among the remaining siblings and the house became divided against itself, both literally and figuratively. Now aging Californians owned it and rented it out as an income property. Mona waited for the story to get interesting—no rape? incest? murder?—but it never did. Instead she focused on Nigel’s mouth, a crowded elevator—too many teeth crammed into too small a space. His manner of speaking was puzzling yet oddly fluid and mesmerizing. He spoke slowly, carefully weighing each word or phrase, and had a habit of pausing, sometimes midsentence, to collect his thoughts. The pauses lasted from a couple of seconds to what seemed to be whole minutes.

  Shiori, on the other hand, rarely spoke and had the spaced-out gaze of a Manson chick. Her sleepy eyes were at odds with her short, spiky hair, and there was something . . . supernatural about her. Her skin. Pale and supple, it was utterly lacking in pores, blemishes, or identifying marks of any kind. She had a habit of keeping her thumbs hidden in her fists. Mona kept watch, hoping to get a glimpse of these mysterious thumbs, but it was useless—the fists remained closed.

  After Nigel finished his lengthy monologue, she tried to draw Shiori out by asking what her name meant in Japanese.

  “Bookmark,” Shiori replied softly.

  Mona nodded slowly, waiting for her to say something more.

  “Oh. Bookmark. Like an actual . . . bookmark?” she asked.

  “More like a guide,” Nigel interjected. “A guide that keeps you in place and lets you know where you need to be.” He gave Shiori a look of such naked devotion that Mona had to avert her eyes.

  “Do you know what your name means, Mona?” Nigel asked.

  “Cardboard,” Mona said.

  Blank looks.

  “I’m kidding,” she said. “I don’t know what it means. Probably nothing.”

  “Well, in Sanskrit mona means ‘alone,’ ” Nigel said.

  “Get out!” she said.

  He shrugged.

  “Is that where the word ‘monastery’ comes from?”

  “Yes,” he said. “It means ‘alone-place.’ ”

  “Well, the name definitely fits,” she said, “as I often feel like an island in a sea of retards.”

  She instantly regretted “retard,” a bad habit left over from her years in Massachusetts, where it was an accepted part of the vernacular. “Present company excepted, of course,” she added. “What about your name, Nigel?”

  “It’s an Irish name, I believe, meaning ‘champion,’ ” he said.

&
nbsp; “Everyone loves a winner,” she said.

  He gave her his crowded smile. “How are you adjusting to the climate?”

  “It’s extremely dry,” she said, and coughed. “I feel like my personality’s evaporating along with all the water in my body.”

  “It’s the altitude,” he said. “We’re at 7,300 feet—”

  “Do you like it here?” Shiori interrupted.

  “I’m not sure yet.” She shrugged. “Not much going on around here but the rent, it seems, and a lot of intense-looking Spanish dudes.”

  “So you’ve noticed the racial tension,” Nigel said.

  “I haven’t experienced anything firsthand, but I imagine the Spanish and Native Americans fight over land—and water, probably? The white people just seem to grow beards. But everyone—and I mean everyone—seems united in one thing, at least.”

  “What’s that?” Nigel asked.

  “Scratch Ticket Fever,” she said. “Everywhere I look, people are scratching scratch tickets. Nurses, waitresses, dishwashers, librarians, postal workers, coffee shop owners. Young, old, white, black, brown. On the sidewalk, on the hoods of cars, on dashboards, in stores, restaurants, parking lots, Laundromats, waiting in line at the bank. I’ve never seen anything like it. Scratching styles vary—some scratch slowly and seem to relish it, some are bored and detached, others look like they’re scratching out the eyes of their enemies or, like, beating off or something—”

  Nigel frowned.

  “Have you caught the Fever?” Mona asked.

  He tilted his head at her. “We’ve been spared,” he said.

  “The other crazy thing about this place is the wind. It’s like the town bully and molester. I’ve seen it try to undress people as they walk down the street. Sometimes I imagine the wind is blowing scratch ticket dust around, and that’s how people get the Fever. The dust gets in their eyes and turns them into zombies—”

  “It’s wind season,” Shiori interrupted. “It’ll die down in a month.”

  “Wind gets its own season?”

  Shiori nodded. “So does mud.”

  “Yikes,” Mona said.

  “You don’t care for wind,” Nigel declared. “Why?”

  “I don’t know—because it’s invisible? I don’t like being pushed around by something I can’t see.”

  “I find it soothing,” Nigel said, “and spiritual. It can’t be captured or contained—it can only be felt. It’s invisible, yes, but it has the power to move, to alter—”

  “Something’s burning,” Mona said quickly. “In the kitchen.”

  He and Shiori climbed off the platform and disappeared into the kitchen. Mona stared out the window. It was dusk and the magpies were having a party outside, singing loudly and darting in and out of the bushes.

  Magpies and cottonwoods make me think of country music, she imagined telling Mr. Disgusting.

  * * *

  THE FOOD WAS SIMPLE AND delicious—some sort of macrobiotic glop with tofu and yams. They offered Mona silverware, which she accepted, but they ate with their hands, a custom she assumed they picked up in India. She could now see why Shiori kept her thumbs hidden—unlike the rest of her fingers, they were short and oddly toelike, with slightly misshapen nails. Mona glanced at Shiori’s feet, half expecting to see thumblike big toes, but no, her toes were regular looking. Perfect, in fact.

  The walls were lined with books. Hundreds, about half in Japanese.

  “I see you like to read,” she said.

  “Yes. We both read quite a lot,” Nigel answered. “You?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  “What are you reading now?”

  “A Victorian homoerotic thriller called The Fingersmith,” she said. “It’s set in your native country. I can’t put it down.” She smiled, anticipating a long pause.

  “Are you a lesbian?” he asked finally.

  “No,” Mona said with her mouth full. “I think I’m probably . . . three-quarters straight and one-quarter fruit? Or maybe it’s the opposite.” She visualized herself wrestling him to the floor and trimming his caterpillar eyebrows. He would put up a struggle. She looked at Shiori, who was blushing. “I’m sorry.” She set her empty bowl on the platform. “I’m just joking around. It’s a defense mechanism. I hope I haven’t offended you guys.”

  “Are you well?” he asked suddenly.

  “Sorry?”

  “Are you well?” he asked again.

  “You mean, do I have cancer?”

  “Up here,” he said, pointing knowingly to his head. “Are you well up here?” He tapped his temple with his forefinger.

  She laughed and instantly relaxed. Now they could dispense with the small talk and have a real conversation. But they’re your neighbors, she reminded herself. Go easy on the candor. Don’t tell them about all the Xanax you’re eating, or about the Holy Dirt you’ve rubbed all over yourself, and, whatever you do, don’t mention Mr. Disgusting.

  “Well, I’ve had kind of a crazy year, to be honest,” Mona said. “I stopped taking my meds and overdosed on some other drugs—”

  “Good grief,” Nigel said. “When did you . . . overdose?”

  Mechanically, like an idiot, she looked at her watch. “Little over a month ago.”

  “Which drugs?” he asked.

  “Speedball,” Mona said.

  “What’s that?” Shiori asked.

  “Sort of like an extreme sport,” Mona said.

  “Are you a drug dealer?” Nigel asked seriously.

  She laughed. “Sort of. I’m a cleaning lady.”

  Nigel looked mystified. “What do you clean? Hotels?”

  “Houses,” she said. “I’m, like, tormented by dirt. When I walk into a room—any room—dirt’s the first thing I see.”

  “Do you see dirt in here?” Shiori asked.

  “Sure,” Mona said.

  She watched Shiori scan the room in confusion. “Where?”

  “Ask the dust,” she whispered, “on the lampshades.”

  “Are you an addict?” Nigel asked suddenly.

  She shook her head. “I have an off switch, thankfully. I’d never sell my mattress for drugs. Or, like, my refrigerator. Or my body. Well, maybe—” She paused. Nigel was looking at the ceiling with his head thrown back, apparently stretching his neck. “Am I boring you?”

  “You are your conversation,” he said to the ceiling.

  “Pardon?”

  He looked at her. “You are what you talk about.”

  “Hm, that explains why I always feel so . . . freakish.”

  He sniffed. “Feelings are just stories, Mona. They have a beginning and an end. In my view it’s best to observe them silently, without judgment, and then let them go. Don’t get too invested.”

  “Feelings are just stories,” she repeated slowly. “And who’s writing these stories?”

  “Well, you are, naturally,” Nigel said brightly. “You’re the author.”

  Another pause. She decided to wait it out and not say anything. She could tell by the look on his face that he had another pearl in the oven. He was probably full of them. So full, in fact, that he couldn’t help but deposit the pearls everywhere, uncontrollably and without aim, like rabbit poop.

  “You’re offended,” he said solemnly, his eyes seeking hers. “Don’t look for occasions to be offended, Mona. I’m only trying to help you. You seem . . . unwell.”

  Her feet were asleep. “Do you mind if I stretch out?” she asked suddenly. “Would that be weird?”

  “Of course not,” Nigel said. “Make yourself at home. Would you care for another pillow?”

  Before she could answer, he reached under the platform and handed her a green velvet pillow. It smelled like lavender. She lay on her side, cradling her head in the palm of her hand. Shiori returned carrying a tray of tea and biscuits. She poured Mona a cup, arranged a couple of biscuits on the saucer. The biscuits looked dry and inedible, but Mona ate them anyway, filling the silent room with the sound of her chewi
ng.

  “Why did you move here?” Nigel finally asked.

  “I’m not exactly sure,” she said. “Someone told me I might like it here.”

  “Well, what I do find interesting, Mona, is that you created an entirely new option. You made a truly creative choice. Now you are free of your past and can be whoever you want.” He looked at her expectantly, his eyes wide and smiling. “What will be your conversation?”

  “I was thinking of starting a cleaning business, actually, since that’s what I did in Massachu—”

  He and Shiori exchanged frowns.

  “You were hoping I planned to do something . . . else?”

  Nigel shrugged. “Just because you cleaned houses in the past doesn’t mean you have to do that here. You’re free to do whatever you want.”

  “Except I have to make a living—you know, pay the rent? I don’t have the luxury of loafing around all day, making a new conversation or whatever.”

  “I’m not proposing you loaf around,” Nigel said.

  “How do you two make ends meet?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “We live very frugally and have for the last dozen years,” Nigel answered.

  Not exactly a straight answer, which meant they were living off an inheritance of some kind. She wondered if it was his or Shiori’s. Maybe they both had one. In any case, she’d been working for people like Nigel and Shiori for years, people who thought rising above one’s circumstances was simply a matter of “working smart, not hard” and having a “positive attitude.” She was making do on her savings, but working smart would have her broke in less than three months.

  “You guys are artists of some kind, I take it,” Mona guessed.

  “We make music,” Shiori said, nodding.

  “What do you play?”

  “Well, Shiori plays the piano and is a wonderful cellist. I can play guitar and flute. But together we play instruments that we make by hand.”

  “Oh,” Mona said.

  “Shi, why don’t we bring out a couple things to show Mona?”

  They disappeared into the back of the house. She directed a prayer at the ceiling: Please don’t let them be flutelike instruments. Whenever she saw someone playing the flute she felt like snatching it out of their hands and bludgeoning them with it.