Pretend I'm Dead

by Jen Beagin

  “I’m coming in,” Mona said aloud.

  She entered and quickly shut the door behind her. The light was dim, the curtains drawn, but she could make out the dog, a medium-size pit bull, wagging its skinny tail and staring at her expectantly. She bent down to pet the dog. The dog was wearing an enormous menstrual pad attached with a belt. She squinted at the collar; the word “Pretty” was stitched onto it in red cursive letters.

  “Pretty,” she said, and turned on the overhead light. She and Pretty locked eyes. Her eyes were almond shaped, the color of caramel, with blonde eyelashes.

  “You’re on the rag,” she said. “How embarrassing, all out in the open and everything. Is that why she keeps you hidden in here?”

  Pretty wagged her tail.

  “Are you bored?”

  Pretty licked her chops and swallowed.

  “Do you have cramps?” she asked.

  “I don’t get cramps,” Pretty said.

  “Why aren’t you fixed?”

  “Trying to get pregnant.”

  “So you have a husband,” Mona said.

  Pretty shook her head. “I’m not tied down. I have sex with friends from the neighborhood. One of them has three legs.” She sniffed her pad and then turned back to Mona. They stared at each other again.

  “Well, I’m on my period, too, if that makes you feel any better.”

  “I know,” Pretty said.

  “Do you want to come home with me? I’ll give you a good life.”

  “I have a good life,” Pretty said.

  “I need you.”

  Pretty yawned. “Go fetch your camera. Get some shots of you and me on the bed.”

  “Can’t,” Mona said. “I’m too fucked up.”

  Pretty sniffed the air. “Someone’s coming,” she said.

  Mona bolted to the den and looked out the window at the driveway. No one yet.

  Floor, feet, get moving. She found a notepad and pen in one of the kitchen drawers. DEAR SUSAN, she wrote in block letters. HAVE A GREAT PARTY. MONA. She fastened the note to the fridge with a magnet. Her handwriting looked more like foot writing. She laughed, removed the note, slipped it into her pocket.

  * * *

  AFTER MANAGING HER WAY HOME in one piece, she mistakenly looked in the mirror. Her mascara had run, though not far, just around the crease delineating her cheekbones. Pupils, thumbtack-sized and depthless. Most of her hair had escaped its braid. She freed the rest and ran her fingers through it, and then bent down for a comb under the sink. When she looked in the mirror again, she saw her naked white skull for a single terrifying instant. She made a strange yelping noise and turned off the light.

  In the living room she walked in circles and wondered why she didn’t own a stereo. She heard knocking.

  It was Shiori, wearing black cotton pajamas. “Come in,” Mona said.

  Shiori stepped into the kitchen. “I saw you pull into the driveway and drive over the bushes.”

  “Oh,” Mona said.

  “Are you all right?” Shiori asked. “Your eyes look really . . .”

  “Fucked up?” She cleared her throat. “I cleaned this lady’s house today and I got hungry so I ate some brownies. Turns out they had hash in them—or PCP? Either way, I’m definitely hallucinating. On the drive home I convinced myself that the highway was a church parking lot.”

  “You’re here now,” Shiori said. “You’re right here.”

  “Right. Here I am.” She laughed nervously and looked at her watch. It was only 5:00. It was going to be a long-ass night. What to do with herself? Writing in her diary was out of the question. She gazed at the television, at a loss.

  “You should eat something,” Shiori said. “Come over. We’ll make dinner and keep you company.” She took Mona’s hand and held it loosely. “Don’t worry. You don’t have to be alone.”

  Keep her company—right. Shitty timing, though, since she was bleeding. Well, she didn’t see it going that far anyway. They could do other things, perhaps. Shiori could simply sit on her lap, for example, maybe hump her leg. Mona would be fine with that.

  “I’ll come over after I change,” she said. “But if you don’t see me in ten minutes, would you mind coming back for me?”

  “Of course,” Shiori said, and squeezed Mona’s hand.

  She showered and changed into a pair of green silk pajamas—when in Rome—and then walked around to their half of the house. Her vision was fuzzy at the edges. You can totally do this, she told herself. Your parents were swingers, remember?

  The door was open. “Come in,” Nigel called. He was sitting in full lotus near the edge of the platform and patted the pillow across from him. “Welcome. Make yourself comfortable.” She crawled onto the platform, settled into the pillow. Burning sage and sitar music wafted in from a back room. She wondered what it looked like back there. She expected to find out soon enough.

  “Are you all right?” Nigel asked. “Shiori told me what happened.”

  “I’ll be fine in an hour or two,” she said, “but right now I’m in the pain cave.”

  Nigel paused. “ ‘Pain cave.’ What an expression.”

  She didn’t have the heart or the energy to tell him that the expression wasn’t hers. Her stomach was making strange music with what sounded like a Jew’s harp.

  “Can you hear this?” she asked Nigel, pointing to her stomach.

  “No,” he said.

  Shiori came in carrying a sandwich plate and a glass of milk.

  “Nothing fancy,” she said, and sat beside Mona, a little closer than usual. Their knees touched. This feels intimate. She bit into the sandwich—almond butter with honey and sliced banana on toasted grainy bread.

  “You guys eating?” she asked, her mouth full.

  “We had a big lunch,” Shiori said.

  They seemed content to watch her eat. After two more bites and a wash of rice milk, she asked, “Why aren’t you guys talking?”

  “Embrace the silence for a few minutes,” Nigel said. “Take a deep breath and go into yourself. Make conscious contact with the force that created you.”

  “Conscious contact,” Mona repeated. “Okay.”

  “It can only be done in silence,” Nigel said. “The French composer Claude Debussy said that music is ‘the space between the notes’—”

  He stopped talking suddenly. She heard the noise, too. Long, low, like someone shuffling a deck of cards. It took her a second to realize it was her, farting.

  “Excuse me,” Shiori murmured, smiling.

  “Was that you or me?” Mona asked.

  Shiori shrugged.

  “I guess the force that created us has gas,” Mona said.

  Now her ears were burning and felt too large for her head. She clamped her hands over them. “Monkeys,” she heard herself say. “Did you know that if you drop a cigarette in the couch cushions it can smolder there for hours before suddenly bursting into flame? Not that you have a couch.”

  Nigel didn’t say anything, but he flicked his tongue at her. His red, pointy tongue. Shiori sat still, staring at her expectantly. Clock’s ticking, she thought. Better choke the rest of this sandwich down. She stuffed the remaining crust in her mouth and emptied the milk glass. Nigel continued flicking his tongue intermittently.

  “Did you know that male garter snakes have not one, but two penises?” she asked. “And they’re both forked, just like their tongues. They keep the extra one hidden in their tail for emergencies.”

  Nigel nodded absently.

  “Let me tell you about their mating habits,” she continued. “Garter snakes hibernate in the winter, in a hole in the ground. In the spring they come out of the hole and wait at the entrance for the females, who take longer to wake up. Soon there are hundreds of them waiting and they form this vast writhing carpet outside the hole. It’s, like, insane. Indescribable. Finally, the females slither out and onto the moving carpet. An orgy ensues. The females have sex with a shit ton of males, but—and here’s the interesting
part—afterward they’re able to select which sperm they want to fertilize their eggs. It’s called ‘cryptic choice,’ because it’s not obvious from the outside.”

  Nigel responded by flicking his tongue at her yet again.

  “Nigel, what’s with that?”

  “Pardon?”

  “You keep doing that thing with your tongue. It’s freaking me out.”

  “I’m not doing anything.” He exchanged a baffled look with Shiori.

  “Nice try,” Mona said, and rolled her eyes. “Okay, look—I think I know what’s going on here. I mean, you’ve made it pretty obvious. You guys want to have a three-way, right? Well, guess what? I think I’m up for it.” She fumbled with the silk buttons of her pajama top. They were as slippery as wet lemon seeds, but she managed to unbutton each one. She peeked at her tits, which were partially exposed and looking pretty good. Nigel’s eyes flickered over her chest before returning to her face. Shiori was staring straight ahead at Nigel.

  Guess it was her move. She rested a tentative hand on Shiori’s thigh, testing the waters, as it were. The water was warm and she could feel a current pass through her hand. Without thinking, she dove in slow motion toward Shiori’s face, her lips brushing against her jaw before catching her small mouth. She waited a beat, treading water, but Shiori’s mouth remained closed, impassive. She’d hit the shallow end, evidently, and felt a sharp pang in her chest. She pulled back and looked at Shiori’s eyes, which were open wide, and then she quickly climbed out of the water and sat there, shivering, with her head in her hands.

  “Mona,” Nigel said gently. “I think you’ve misunderstood our . . . intentions toward you.”

  She moaned. “I should go,” she mumbled. She got up to leave. A misstep forced her backward, throwing her shirt wide open. She felt herself flush, and, mortified, she stumbled out of the house, the screen door snapping shut behind her.

  “Why’d you let me do that, for fuck’s sake?” she asked Bob, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. “Talk about humiliating.”

  “Nothing happened,” Bob said. “Besides, did you really want to see Nigel’s schlong?”

  “No,” she said morosely. She sat at her kitchen table and drank a beer. “I wanted to touch Shiori’s boobs, though. I really did. I wanted to bury my face in them.”

  “You don’t want to have sex with your neighbors, Mona,” Bob said. “You’re just lonely. Maybe it’s time you got a dog. An older dog—”

  Shiori’s pale face peered through the window over her kitchen sink. Mona ducked but it was too late. Shiori let herself in and took a seat at the kitchen table.

  “You again,” Mona said. “I guess I should start locking my door.”

  “You ran away before we could explain,” Shiori said. “We do want something from you, just not . . . that. Nigel and I have taken an interest in you and would very much like to be your mentors. We both feel we can teach you how to live well. How to be your best self. Nigel has been doing it for years. He had a small following in India—that’s how we met, in fact. I was one of his students. I think he misses having that. He’s a great mentor, if you give him a chance.”

  Join a healthy cult of some kind, Disgusting had advised. Get a guru. Is this what he’d had in mind?

  “You guys should have had children,” Mona said thoughtfully. “They’re more . . . malleable. I’m too old for this crap. I also happen to think I could teach you a thing or two about living. For starters, you could read something published in this century. That would be your first assignment. You might want to watch a film every now and then—I could give you a list a mile long. And why not eat a little sugar once a week? I know you like it. Also, what man in his right mind turns down a threesome? Hey, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad it didn’t go down. It would have been a huge mistake. I can totally see that now.”

  Shiori blinked at her.

  “Listen,” Mona said. “Would you mind sitting on my lap for a couple of minutes? Or giving me your underwear?”

  “My underwear?”

  “I want to smell you,” Mona said.

  Shiori stood and smoothed the front of her pajamas. “You’re not ready yet,” she said. “But we’ll be here when you are. We’re going to watch the sunset now. You’re welcome to join us.”

  “I think I’ll pass,” Mona said.

  Shiori shrugged and walked out.

  Mona snorted. “Can you believe these people, Bob? Talk about gall. Rich people are so, like, out of touch. You know what I’m saying?” She looked at the ceiling. “I need a favor. I need you to tell me if Mr. Disgusting’s with you. I followed his directions. I moved all the way the fuck out here. Is he with you, or what? I bet he’s sitting on your lap right now.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I’m not expecting a long conversation—that’s probably against the rules—but could you give me some kind of sign?”

  The ceiling was vibrating, breathing.

  “It’s me, Mona,” Bob said at last. “I’m right here.”

  She closed her eyes.

  “Don’t you recognize my voice?”

  She opened her eyes. The ceiling looked shiny now, sweaty.

  “It’s been me all along. You can keep calling me Bob, though. I always wanted a three-letter name. Which reminds me, I think you should call your dad. You need to talk to someone other than me, and he’s home right now, this very minute.”

  “So I guess you’re really dead?”

  “Call your father,” he said. “He’s waiting to hear from you. He’s waiting for you to reach out to him.”

  “Jesus,” she said. “Take it easy, Bob.”

  She checked her hands—the earthworms were still alive, their hearts beating visibly under her skin. Her thoughts, however, seemed lucid enough. She stood before her bookshelf, felt the familiar urge to reshuffle. She wanted to break up the blocks of red, pink, and green with some negative space. Perhaps it was time the white-spined books came out of hiding. She opened the closet—they were right where she’d left them, lined up on the top shelf. She began adding them to her bookcase, but it was all wrong. Wrong, wrong!

  They needed their own shelf. She cleared a space for them on the shelf she reserved for bird figurines. This time she arranged them so that their titles formed sentences: “Man walks into a room with the pharmacist’s mate as I lay dying of accidental blindness and assorted fire events, of white noise and housekeeping and the secret lives of people in love. The elephant vanishes to the lighthouse east of Eden. You remind me of me, Natasha. The mysteries of Pittsburgh and Ulysses are an invitation to a beheading, stories in the worst way about grace in the age of wire and string, the ambassadors and anagrams of a farewell to arms, already dead.” This chewed up what would have been the dinner hour.

  “Pick up the phone, Mona,” Bob said.

  “All right, all right.”

  She brought the phone to the closet and sat on her hamper, figuring she’d be able to concentrate better in an enclosed space. Mickey answered on the sixth ring.

  “Well, hello,” he said warmly. “Hello, hello. Been a while since I heard your voice.”

  “Two years,” Mona said.

  He grunted and then there was a silence. She asked him how the plumbing business was.

  “I’m not a plumber anymore. I don’t fix toilets anymore, I sell them. I work for a manufacturer now. Clients are a whole different breed. Tell you what, the lady I pitched to this morning? She really chapped my ass. One of these days, I tell ya, Bang, zoom, to the moon, Alice!”

  “I ate some hash by mistake today,” she said. “At a client’s house.”

  He didn’t respond, but she could hear him breathing.

  “A client’s hash,” she repeated. “I ate it. By mistake.”

  “Wait, what’re you doing with clients?”

  “Cleaning. I told you that in the letter. Did you get my letter?”

  “Ah, Christ. Don’t work for yourself, girlie. Go work for the federal government. Benefits,
pension, 401(k). You gotta thinka your retirement. Don’t make the same mistake as me.”

  Did he just call her girlie? Yes, he did. “What color are my eyes?”

  “What?”

  “My eyes. What color are they?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Brown.”

  “I’m regretting the brownies, Mickey. I really am.”

  “Don’t call me Mickey. I hate that. Call me Dad,” he shouted. “Dad!”

  She held the phone away from her ear. He was in worse shape than she was. Much worse.

  “Two words,” she said. “Alcoholics Anonymous.”

  He laughed. “I’m done with the double A. Besides, I’m not an alcoholic, I’m just bored.”

  “Right,” she said. “Makes perfect sense.”

  “I’m serious. I only drink when I’m bored or in pain. Strictly, uh—how do you say it—medicinal.”

  He stumbled over the word, as he did all multisyllabic words, drunk or sober. He had trouble getting his mouth around “Massachusetts,” for example, along with “unfortunately,” “sophisticated,” “vocabulary,” “educational,” and “apologetic.”

  “You have no idea what it’s like to wear a hook for thirty years. It really fucks up your neck and back. I’ve had three surgeries and now they got me hooked on oxy. I’m almost dead.”

  The pity card. Used to work like a charm. At eighteen he apprenticed at an auto body shop that serviced race cars. One day he was carrying a tire across the parking lot. Not sure how—she’d never asked. Sometimes she pictured him rolling the tire across the lot; other times she saw him hugging it to his chest. The explosion had been massive—a tire bomb, the paper called it—and he’d been thrown fifty feet, through the plate-glass window of a dentist’s office next door.

  The paramedics hadn’t been able to get his gurney in and out of the elevator because his arms couldn’t be strapped down—they’d swelled to over twice their size—and he screamed whenever they were touched. They were filled with pus and debris from the tire, which had confused her at first—how did little bits of rubber get inside his arms? The surgeons tried to remove the debris, but they didn’t get it all, and his left arm was broken in eight places, and the bones of his right arm had been pulverized, so they kept it in traction for several months. She wasn’t sure when the gangrene set in, but because his arm was in traction right there in front of him, he’d been forced to watch it eat its way to his elbow.