Pretend I'm Dead

by Jen Beagin

  “Oh God,” Mona said.

  “Just try it,” Betty said. “It won’t kill you.”

  She would rather have a rock thrown at her head.

  “I’m thinking of a number,” Betty said. “I’m projecting it nice and large.”

  Mona stared at Betty’s perfectly shaped left eyebrow, but could only concentrate on the strange guttural noise one of her cats was making outside. The cat sounded as if it were repeating the word “ouch.” Owww-chh, it kept saying, over and over.

  “Betty,” Mona said, “is that your cat? It sounds like it’s in pain. I’d feel really bad if it got eaten by a coyote while I was reading your mind.”

  “She’s fine,” Betty said. “She’s just in heat. Now stop stalling and look at me.” She pointed to her eyes. “Here.”

  Mona locked eyes with Betty. A whole minute seemed to go by. This was, by far, the most eye contact she’d maintained in months. Perhaps ever. Betty’s blue eyes, she noticed now, were flecked with some other color—gold? No, copper. Jesus, they were stunning. No wonder she covered them with contacts—they were too beautiful to be seen naked. They needed protection. The contacts were like gloves, then. She realized it was probably time to say a number. “Eleven,” she said.

  Betty shook her head. “You have to really concentrate.”

  She counted to twelve and wondered if blue-eyed psychics were more successful than brown-eyed ones. Probably. “Eighteen,” she said.

  “You’re guessing,” Betty said. “Don’t guess. Just wait until you see it.”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Very good!” Betty said, clapping her hands. “Now it’s my turn. Think of a number and project it nice and big so I can see it.”

  “Project it where—on my forehead?” Mona said.

  “Just hold it in your mind.”

  “Maybe we should be wearing aluminum feelers on our heads,” Mona said. “Might make things easier.”

  “Do you have a number?” Betty asked impatiently.

  “Yes.” Two-oh, two-oh, two-oh, two-oh, she repeated to herself, visualizing the number.

  “Twenty,” Betty said, after five seconds.

  “Good guess,” Mona said. “I must be inadvertently cuing you somehow.”

  “Oh, please,” Betty said. “I’m psychic, silly! When are you going to stop mocking me?”

  Probably never, Mona thought.

  “Okay, Maura,” Betty said. “You’re up.” Mona stared hard into Betty’s eyes again, waiting for a number to come into her head. She was about to say “nine” before Betty stopped her and said, “Try again.”

  “Five,” Mona said.

  “Yes!” Betty said. “I knew you’d be good at this. Okay, my turn.”

  Mona thought of the number three. She repeated it to herself, but was careful not to move her lips or blink. She projected it onto a drive-in movie screen in her mind.

  “Very good, Maura. I can see your number more clearly now.” Betty paused. “The number three, that is!”

  “Whoa,” Mona said. “You’re freaking me out.”

  They went back and forth several times. It didn’t get any easier for Mona, but after staring into Betty’s eyes for a minute or two, she could suddenly see the numbers, large silver numbers on a blue background. When she read the number out loud, a kind of euphoria washed over her. She felt drunk and in love.

  As she was leaving, she asked, “Why do you think I can see the numbers? I’m not psychic.”

  “Everyone has some psychic ability,” Betty said. “It’s just a matter of being open. You have to learn how to see first and then you simply read what you see. Sometimes it’s very clear-cut; other times it takes some interpretation on your part. Then there are certain other kinds of knowledge that are already there, inside you, and the process of seeing and reading is a process of recovery, of recovering knowledge you already know.”

  Mona tilted her head as if she were hanging on Betty’s every word, but she was actually in screen-saver mode—physically present, yes, but the rest of her was miles away, in her apartment, disrobing and climbing into bed.

  When she did finally go to bed that night, she slept a miraculous twelve hours straight, without once getting up to do the usual things: guzzle water, despond, pee, eat peanut butter from the jar with her fingers, despond again.

  * * *

  ON THURSDAY BETTY DIDN’T FOLLOW Mona around, but stayed on her throne in the living room, reading her favorite magazine, National Enquirer.

  “You see the irony in the fact that you live in a trailer and subscribe to the Enquirer, right?” Mona said at one point.

  “Pffh! This is hardly what you’d call a trailer,” Betty answered.

  When Mona was finished cleaning, Betty invited her to sit down. “I can’t read your mind today,” Mona said. “Took too much out of me. I was so tired I almost died in my sleep that night.”

  “You’re a crack-up,” Betty said with a straight face. “What I want to do today is actually very different. It requires the opposite of concentration.”

  Mona sat down heavily and removed her sneakers, suspecting she’d be there awhile. She wished she had something better to do, but the sad fact was she didn’t. Her only plans that evening were to bathe and watch television, and Betty was better than television. Or network television, at least.

  She stiffened when she saw the large box of loose photographs at Betty’s feet. She’d always equated the viewing of other people’s personal snapshots with hearing about the dream they’d had the previous night.

  Betty rummaged through the box and pulled out a small handful. She shuffled the photographs like a deck of cards, then dealt one to Mona, placing it facedown on the table in front of her. “Okay, here’s how this goes: I want you to turn the picture over, look at it, then say the first words that come into your mind. No thinking and no editing. Just say whatever pops into your head. Okay?”

  Mona recalled the last time she saw a photograph lying facedown in a client’s house. She’d been at the Baxters’, a sweet but oddly formal couple in their late forties, dusting Mr. Baxter’s office, when she saw the photograph lying on top of his filing cabinet. She absentmindedly flipped it over, expecting a picture of one of their dogs, but was confronted instead with a close-up of someone’s dark, hairy asshole. Mrs. Baxter’s, she’d imagined.

  “Ready?” Betty asked from her throne.

  “I guess so,” Mona said.

  She flipped the photograph over. No asshole this time, just a man on a horse. This must be Johnny. The man had long black hair, dark skin, and was wearing head-to-toe denim. He was sitting bareback on a white Appaloosa with gray spots and a blue eye. In the background stood a snowcapped Taos mountain under a pink sky.

  “Feel free to really handle the picture,” Betty instructed. “You know, with your hands.”

  Mona held the photograph closer and peered at the man’s unsmiling, handsome face. “He looks like the stoic type,” she said.

  “See, now you’re thinking. No thinking allowed. Just spontaneous words and phrases. Whatever pops into your head.”

  “My thought bubble is pretty empty, Betty, to be honest. It always is at the end of the day. You have no idea how many chemicals I inhale on a daily basis. I’ll probably die of brain cancer in five years.”

  “I just said I’m not interested in your thoughts,” Betty said. “Just look at the picture and tell me if any images or words come to mind.”

  You forgot to say please, Mona thought irritably. Words were in fact coming to mind. Not just words, but snatches of poetry—very specific snatches from a very famous Plath poem. Fuck it. She wants to know what’s on my mind, I’ll tell her.

  “Daddy,” Mona began. “I have had to kill you.” She paused and looked at Betty, who was literally on the edge of her seat.

  “Don’t stop!” Betty commanded.

  “Bean green . . . language obscene . . . I could never talk to you. Clear beer, neat mustache. Love of the rack and the screw. T
here’s a stake in your fat black heart. Daddy, Daddy—” She stopped there. She’d almost recited the rest of the last line—“you bastard, I’m through,” but thought it might be too recognizable, not to mention dramatic and over-the-top.

  “Wow,” Betty said, pleased. “You gave me goose bumps, Maura. That’s called ‘channeling,’ and you are gifted.”

  It’s called “plagiarism,” Mona thought. But thanks.

  “ ‘Fat black heart’—I wonder if Johnny has heart disease,” Betty said anxiously. Mona shrugged.

  Betty shuffled the deck again and placed another photo facedown. This time Johnny was in a hotel swimming pool with his back to the camera, treading water in the deep end, his long hair in a bun. He was looking over his shoulder, squinting toward the camera, but his expression was unreadable. The phrase KING OF KINGS was tattooed across his shoulders in big black letters.

  “Nice tattoo,” she said. “That’s a Jesus reference, I take it.”

  “No thinking!” Betty said. “First words that come into your mind.”

  She closed her eyes and improvised. “Sweet children, bitter children, bright red teeth within a womb. A fist pounds on a steel door. Freezer burn, bloody gloves, blue feet—the clock is ticking.” Jesus, she thought. I’m giving myself goose bumps. Maybe I am good at this.

  “Oh my God, he’s going to have a heart attack!” Betty said, her eyes filling up. “He’s going to die for two minutes and then be brought back to life, and then he’s going to need surgery.”

  Mona was genuinely taken aback. “Are you kidding? I didn’t say that.”

  “Trust me, I know what I’m talking about,” Betty said, wiping her eyes.

  “You never told me you were married to a hot Mexican dude,” she said, trying to change the subject.

  “Be careful who you call Mexican around here,” Betty said. “Johnny and his family, along with everyone in their neighborhood, trace their lineage back to the Spaniards who conquered New Mexico in the 1500s. They identify as Spanish, not Mexican.”

  “You’re definitely still hung up on the guy, that much is clear,” she said.

  “Can we do one more?”

  “Sure.” She made a mental note not to mention hearts or blood.

  The last photo was a close-up of Johnny’s face, a face Mona suddenly recognized. “Wait a minute, I know this guy,” she blurted. She detected an instant change in the atmosphere of the trailer—subtle, but palpable—and thought of leaves on a tree turning over, baring their spines in anticipation of a downpour.

  “What do you mean, you know him?”

  She backpedaled. “I don’t know him. I met him once, when I first moved to town. He bought me a drink.”

  “Where?”

  “At that bar where he works—the Tom-Tom Room.”

  “TT’s,” Betty said, nodding. “Go on. Tell me everything.”

  “Not much to tell. I happened to sit next to him at the bar and he bought me a drink before his shift started. He works the door, he said.”

  “He bought you a drink?” she asked, incredulous. “Really?”

  Mona gulped. “Not like that—I told him I was new in town. He was just being friendly.”

  Betty looked away and took a breath through her nose. She’s letting it go, Mona thought. She’s putting it aside to process later. Impressive.

  “So how did he seem to you?” Betty asked languidly. “Happy, sad, angry, what?”

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “It was months ago. He seemed fine. He was wearing orange.”

  She remembered their brief exchange well. He’d introduced himself as John, not Johnny. When he went to order their drinks, he asked, “What’s your poison?”

  “Oven cleaner,” she’d said with a straight face.

  Her sense of humor sometimes made people—herself, included—uncomfortable, but he’d laughed easily. She remembered liking his mouth and the way he tipped his head back to laugh, exposing his throat. Good-looking, for an older guy. He’d bought her a beer and introduced her to the bartender. When she left, a little over an hour later, he’d offered his hand for a shake, and then faked a buckling of his knees when she grasped his palm. “Jesus,” he’d said. “Talk about an iron grip.”

  “Thanks,” she’d said, and blushed.

  But she couldn’t tell Betty any of that. Everything between her and Betty was different now.

  “Are you any good with a camera?” Betty asked suddenly.

  “Really good, actually,” Mona said, then kicked herself. She could see where Betty was headed.

  “How would you feel about taking some pictures for me? I’d pay you, of course.”

  “You mean, how would I feel about spying for you,” she corrected.

  “All I need are a couple of decent pictures. The ones I have are over a decade old.”

  “And why do you need them?”

  “Because then I’d know for sure when Johnny’s going to die.”

  “This is going to sound crazy, but why don’t you just call him and ask how he’s doing?”

  “Believe me, I’ve tried. He wants nothing to do with me. Whenever I see him around town, he runs the other way. It’s like he thinks I’m a vampire or Satan or something. Do you know what it’s like to be in love with someone who hates your guts? Hell is what it is. Hell on earth.”

  “Have you tried therapy?” she asked.

  “He’s my soul mate.”

  “If he was your soul mate, don’t you think he’d know that? I mean, wouldn’t it be mutual?”

  “He knows, he knows. I mean, deep down. He’s just scared. He had a terrible childhood. He was sodomized—”

  “Betty, listen—that Daddy stuff? It’s called poetry. Poetry by a famous person. Have you heard of Sylvia Plath? There’s nothing the matter with his heart.”

  “Maura, you don’t know how this works, okay? It came into your mind when you looked at the picture. It could be poetry or a brand of toilet paper. Either way, it counts.”

  “Well, what am I supposed to do, follow him around with my camera? I don’t think he’ll appreciate that.”

  “All you’d have to do is go to TT’s with your friends, hang around, have a drink or two, and take some pictures.”

  “I don’t have any friends,” Mona said. But the idea of spying on him actually appealed to her, more than a little. She’d always wanted to be a private eye.

  “You’ll figure it out, Maura,” Betty said. “And I’ll pay you fifty bucks per picture.”

  “Fifty?”

  “Five-oh,” Betty said. “That’s how much I want them.”

  “So if I come back with ten good pictures, you’re going to fork over five hundred dollars?”

  “You won’t get ten pictures,” Betty said. “But yes. So let’s see . . . if you take pictures this weekend, then have them developed, then bring them with—”

  “Ever hear of digital cameras?”

  “I don’t have one of those.”

  “Yeah, but I do,” Mona said, hating herself. “I can print the pictures at home and bring them with me next week.”

  Betty beamed at her. “You’re an angel, Maura.”

  * * *

  EVERY WEEKDAY AT DUSK, JUST after she got home from work, she heard the near-distant sound of drumming and chanting. She’d always assumed it was coming from the Pueblo, which was a mile or two from the house, and imagined fifty or so Tewa Indians, some wearing elaborate headdresses and body paint, dancing around a bonfire, chanting for salvation. Or money. Or happiness. Or rain. Or whatever it was people chanted for.

  And now, at last, she was seeing it live. She felt like a dolt—the music hadn’t been coming from the Pueblo at all but from loudspeakers inside the Tom-Tom Room, which was attached to a small hotel just down the road from her house. The drummers and chanters were in fact genuine Tewa natives, hired to put on a show for the tourists, but there were only five or six of them and they weren’t dressed in traditional garb. Instead they were wearing T-shirt
s, jeans, and running shoes and kept glancing at their watches. When they finished their set they took their beer to go and were replaced by a blues band whose entire repertoire consisted of songs about jail.

  She sat at the horseshoe-shaped bar, drinking a vodka tonic and waiting for Johnny. In an effort at disguise she wore a straw cowboy hat, except it wasn’t very low profile as it was pink and mangled on one side. She doubted Johnny would recognize her anyway—she’d met him only that one time, nine months ago now.

  The problem with spying in a bar, she soon realized, was that you got tanked while you were waiting for something to happen, and she’d never been one to nurse a drink. By the time he showed up she was half in the bag. He looked exhausted. In fact his weariness seemed stitched into his skin. He’d also gained a few pounds. His cheekbones had been as sharply prominent as coastal cliffs but now looked buried in sand, and his gut peeked over the waistband of his Wranglers. Despite the fat and fatigue, he was still easy on the eyes.

  He stayed at the door for the most part, checking people’s IDs. She didn’t feel like whipping out her camera, but she reminded herself that she could use the extra money, having knocked over a Tiffany floor lamp at the Baxters’ the previous afternoon. Naturally, she didn’t have insurance, so she offered eight free visits as a gesture of goodwill. Except the fuckers took her up on it, which she hadn’t anticipated. Their asshole fetish was fitting. So, rather than work off the damage, she’d just pay them in cash. Perhaps then she’d feel less indentured, and would stop calling them names like Mrs. Balloon Knot, Ass Hat, and Pucker Poo under her breath.

  After procrastinating for most of the evening, she managed to get two pictures of Johnny, one while he leaned over the bar to whisper something to the bartender, and another returning from the bathroom. He looked right at her after the flash went off both times, and she made sure to look the other way.

  She showed up again the following night. This time her disguise consisted of a pair of weak, red-framed reading glasses she’d purchased at the drugstore. The place was mostly empty except for a handful of single men at the bar and a few couples in the dining area. She was early again and strategically chose a bar stool that would give her a decent view of Johnny later on.