See You in Paradise Page 9

  “He what?” Ruth barked in response to the news.

  “He spoke,” I repeated. “He looked out the window and said, ‘Nice day.’” This was the lie Chloe and I had agreed upon.

  “It’s cloudy.”

  “Maybe he thought that was nice.”

  A silence hung between us. I cleared my throat.

  “Do you want to come see him?” I said. “Chloe and I are here now.”

  “What is she doing there? This isn’t her shift.”

  “We’re sharing,” I said.

  Mrs. Larsen sighed. “I’ll be there in an hour,” she said.

  It was a very long hour. Now that Dan was responsive and alert, he was uncomfortable to be with. Also he appeared to want to feel up Chloe again. He stared at her restowed rack, blinked rapidly, and emitted a trickle of inarticulate mumbles which occasionally, startlingly, broke out into intelligibility. “frummarfladmmbabaamummummboxturtle,” he said. “Gunnuunnnununnnufrenchfries. Hoffoffofoffffagaggaafucker-salassalassallaaaapeanut, peanut, peanut.” He licked his lips, which would prove to be a permanent tic.

  “I’m going out for a smoke,” Chloe said quietly.

  “All right,” I replied.

  “Mummahumummacigarette,” Dan said.

  “You want a cigarette?”

  “Ummacigarette.”

  She reached into her purse, removed a pack, and slid out a cigarette. Dan leaned forward. She placed it in his mouth.

  “It’s backwards,” I said.

  “Like he knows.”

  Dan relaxed into his pillows. The cigarette dangled from his lip like a dead branch from a maple tree. He seemed relieved and his blinking slowed.

  When Chloe returned, it was with a slightly unsteady Ruth Larsen, who gripped Chloe’s arm for support. The first words from her mouth were “Jesus Christ.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Larsen,” I said.

  A change came over Dan when his mother walked into the room. He sat up again, and the cigarette went erect in his mouth. He brought up his hands, much as he had when Chloe took her shirt off, and his fingers groped and twitched. He scowled.

  “What did you do to him?” Mrs. Larsen demanded.

  “He just got like this,” I said weakly.

  “Fudder. Fudder! Prmbnmnshn.”

  “Daniel!” she bleated. “Stop that nonsense immediately!”

  In response, Dan let out another “Fudder” and sprang out of bed. We all jumped back. Mrs. Larsen screamed a little scream.

  After weeks of his being dead and days of him lying insensibly in the hospital, Dan’s sudden mobility struck us all dumb with astonishment. He tottered around the room like a child, bracing himself against the table and chairs. His gait was stiff and rubbery, but he made it to the window and looked out. He turned, his cigarette clenched between yellow teeth. “Fudder!” he growled. His mother cringed.

  “You’re scaring your mother, Dan,” Chloe scolded.

  She shouldn’t have called attention to herself. Dan turned to her. His face relaxed, his eyes grew misty, and the wet cigarette fell out of his mouth. “Tizz,” he sighed, flecks of tobacco sticking to his chin, and he lunged forward and embraced Chloe, lifting her off the ground. She let out a yelp. His hands found her behind, engaging it in a desperate clutch. “My God,” Ruth Larsen said.

  “Dan,” I offered, “put her down, please.”

  “Sazz. Nisazz.”

  “Thank you, Dan, that’s enough,” Chloe gasped. It seemed to get through to him. He set her on the ground, and she gently pushed him away.

  “Peanut,” he said. “Fudder.”

  “What have you done to him?” his mother again asked us.

  “Mrs. Larsen,” Chloe said, her face red, “we’ll be taking a little break now. I think you need some quality time with your son.”

  “I—”

  “He needs you, Mrs. Larsen.” She motioned to me with a thin, pale finger. “Let’s go,” she said, panting.

  I followed. She led me right to my apartment and into bed, where we went at it with giddy élan. When we were through we lay together, tangled in the sheets, breathing slow and even breaths. It was a relief to be alone, after the day’s shocks and embarrassments.

  “How long do you have off work?” I asked her.

  “Just this week.”

  “Me too.”

  I waited a moment before asking, “What should we do then? I mean, the two of us.”

  She didn’t answer immediately. I assumed she had dozed off, so I nudged her and asked again. Her response was a sigh. “I heard you the first time.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Let’s not talk about that now.”

  “Okay.”

  “Let’s just be quiet.”

  “Okay.”

  “Good.”

  By week’s end, Dan could almost pass for normal. He was allowed to go home, and his doctors paid him visits there. They were surprised at his speedy recovery and expressed this surprise with smug, proud ejaculations, piquant little hmms and huhs, which they delivered while nodding. Dan returned them in kind, an unlit backwards cigarette dangling from his mouth, his fingers clenching and unclenching at his sides. His speech was coherent but strange, as if run multiple times through translation software. The doctors asked him questions and recorded the answers on dictaphones.

  “Please describe your tenth birthday party.”

  “Hmm?” Dan replied.

  “Daniel, the caboose?” his mother spat. “The magician?”

  “Hmm, ahh, yes. Motherpaidaman. Parkingthecaboosein-CentralPark. Eatingicecreaminside, yes. Mymanyfriends. Yes. Andthemagicianwithhisrabbit. Ofcourseyes. Fudder. AndChloewiththequartersinherears.”

  Chloe giggled. It was true, the magician had removed quarters from her ears, as a trick. All of us had been there, at that party, and all of us were here now, crowded around the fireplace.

  “Peanut. JanekissedMattbehindthefountain. Yesss.”

  “I did?” Jane said suddenly.

  Matt turned to her. “You don’t remember? How could you forget?”

  Her face crumpled. “I’m sorry, darling.”

  “But how the hell did Dan know?”

  Dan, however, had gone on reminiscing. “Mmmmmremmmmmemberitwell,” he said, nodding. The cigarette bounced on his lip. “Andmotherfatherfighting. Mothersayinghowcouldyou. Andwiththatwhore, she said, yesss.”

  Ruth’s eyes grew wide.

  “Andfatherfantasizingmurderingherinhersleep, yess. Fudder. Watchingthemagicshow, dreamingofslittingmothersthroat, yessss.”

  Nils Larsen was not home. Upon Dan’s arrival he had left suddenly, and wisely, on a “business trip” from which he had not yet returned. Everyone else, though, was staring at Zombie Dan in horror. He seemed to notice not at all. He was standing beside the fireplace, leaning against the mantel, rubbing his chin. Every once in a while his tongue shot out and licked his lips. The cigarette sagged but never fell.

  “AndofcourseRick, fudderfudder, Rickwasstealingmoney. Fromthehousekeeper. Yess. Stealingmoneyfromherpurse. Stealingabottleofmedicine. Tryingtogethigh, yessss, andthehousekeepertoldRick’smother. ThatRickwasstealing. Andhismotherfiredher. Fudderpeanut, yesss.”

  “What!” Rick said, leaping to his feet.

  “Sotrue, sotrue. Attheparty, Rick, feltsoguilty, yesss, nicetits, yesss. Butheforgot, everyoneforgot, everythingisforgotten.”

  Rick was slowly lowering himself back into his chair, his face crumpled like an old newspaper. Jane threw her arms around Matt, as if for protection. The doctors amplified their hmming. Pencils scratched on little pads. Beside them, Paul gazed expectantly at Dan, his face livid with masochistic excitement.

  “Do you remember, Danny? Do you remember what I was thinking?”

  Dan ground his jaw, seemed to sniff the air. “Skidmark. Skidmark. Youpoopedyourpants.”

  Paul’s face blazed with delight.

  “AndChloedearChloe,” Dan said, seeming to study a corner of the ceiling.

  Chloe sat
up straighter.

  “ChloeChloe, alwayslovedhersoverymuch. Betsywasmygirlfriend, yesss, JenniferAmyPaulaNancy, but Chloe, fudderfudder, Chloemysecretlove. Yesss.”

  “Oh, my,” Chloe said.

  Dan turned and looked at her and smiled. The cigarette tipped up and for a brief moment he looked quite a lot like FDR.

  “Peanut,” he said. “Nice ass.”

  Chloe had gone pink. “Thank you, Dan.”

  Ruth Larsen stood up suddenly. “I want you all out of here. All of you. Now!”

  Jane obeyed immediately. She pulled Matt to his feet and began to drag him toward the apartment door. He appeared lost as he stumbled after his terrified wife. Paul followed, a wry smile in place on his lips, and Rick slouched after, his face shattered.

  I glanced at the exit, hoping that Dan wouldn’t notice me. I motioned to Chloe, and she got up from her chair, but she headed for the hallway and for the room where she had been staying. I offered a questioning look, but she only winked. I supposed she wasn’t going back to New Haven just yet. Meanwhile Mrs. Larsen was shouting at the doctors. “Liars! Liars! You didn’t tell me they could do this!”

  A squirrelly-looking man in thick glasses was nodding, and stroking his plasticine goatee. “Yes, well,” he said. “Yes, well, we’re still researching this particular … unexpected … ah … quirk …”

  “Hmmm, DoctorGiles,” Dan said, gesturing with his cigarette, “youreallyshouldhavethatlookedat.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Thethingonyourback, hmm, couldbefudderprecancerous …”

  The little man’s eyes widened as he backed out the door, his coterie of associates encircling him like a hedge.

  “Out!! Out!!” screamed Ruth Larsen.

  I wanted to go after Chloe. But instead I turned and left.

  I went back to work. I was a graphic designer for a natural-products company. It wasn’t something I’d ever intended to do—I’d begun there as a copy editor—but when the previous graphic designer had quit to move to Wyoming and raise pigs, I temporarily plugged the gap. Temporarily turned to permanently, though I was still making my old salary. My boss, Patty, had rejected eight drafts of my new herbal douche label and was now demanding changes to my ninth. We sat alone in the conference room with the reeking remains of lunch pushed to one side, and she squinted at the proofs, curling her nose in disgust.

  “It’s too girly,” she said.

  “It’s for girls,” I offered.

  “Not for girly girls. For womany women.”

  “You want it womanier?”

  “Womanier, yes.”

  When I spoke to anyone at work, for any reason, this was usually the kind of conversation that resulted. I missed the crass directness of Chloe. I yearned for her, in fact. I masturbated in the men’s room on our floor with a cardigan sweater over my head, in protection against the surveillance camera. And of course I called Ruth Larsen’s apartment several times a day. Nobody ever answered. I even looked up Chloe’s boyfriend in New Haven and called him to see if he’d spoken to her. “That sick bitch can go fuck herself,” he replied. Matt and Jane hadn’t seen her—“We would both like to put this behind us forever,” Matt said sternly, seeming by “this” to mean, among other things, me—and Rick’s girlfriend wasn’t letting him come to the phone. Paul just laughed at me. “Don’t be a fool,” he said. “You don’t want her.” I didn’t have the guts to ask why not.

  I spent my afternoon womaning up the douche label with some elegant Edwardian script and digitized sprigs of ivy. Then I went home. There was a message on my answering machine—a woman’s voice. She had left only a number, and an unfamiliar one at that. I called it. Ruth Larsen answered. It sounded like she was out of doors—I could hear traffic and voices.

  “Meet me at the Homburg Bar,” she said, and gave me an address downtown. “We have business to discuss.”

  “What kind of business? Have you seen Chloe?”

  Mrs. Larsen tsked and let out an impatient sigh. “All in good time,” she said.

  What, then, is the soul?

  No, really. If there was one issue revivification raised that could not easily be resolved, it was this. If you believed in the soul, in heaven or hell, in eternal life, what did revivification tell you? On the face of it, not much. Revivs often could remember their death trauma and the events leading up to it, and they had no trouble remembering their return to life. But in between was a blank. None of them ever remembered a single moment. They didn’t even seem to have noticed the passing of time—there was death, and there was life, and nary a wisp of a dream intervened between the two.

  One school of thought held that the revivs disproved the existence of the soul. They remembered nothing, the argument went, because there was nothing. When you’re dead, you’re dead. The restoration of life, then, was no big deal—it was like starting up a car. God was nowhere shaking his shaggy head in divine disapproval. There was only man and nature and eternal oblivion.

  There was another school of thought, however, that regarded revivification as proof of the soul’s existence. The evidence was that the revivs were different. Something, the argument went, was missing. That thing was the soul. The revivs were zombies. Their souls were in heaven, or in hell, and what limped around on earth was an empty shell, a machine.

  I had never been much for religion, but the second school certainly seemed to have a lot going for it. When asked to describe their revived friends and neighbors, when asked to choose a word that best characterized this new breed of human being, just about everybody said the same thing.

  Soulless.

  The Homburg was a hole in the wall, or more accurately, in the ground. It was in a basement underneath an art gallery, and had a cement floor, its concavity sloping toward a central drain, like a locker room shower. The walls were tile and the lights harsh and bare—yet the room was murky, its corners lost in darkness. Mismatched tables wobbled here and there, occupied by bored-looking hipsters, and I wondered how on earth someone like Ruth Larsen had heard about the place.

  I saw her bony hand first—beckoning from a corner booth that was partially concealed by a curtain—and then her equally thin face, peering out from behind the fabric. I went to her. She had already ordered me something—a whiskey, neat.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t drink whiskey.”

  “Drink it.” Her eyes were sunken and red and underslung with postman’s sacks, and her cowl of hair drooped like a broken umbrella. I did as she asked, dispensing with the drink in a single gulp.

  “Gahhh,” I said.

  “Now,” she muttered, peering once again behind the curtain, “let’s get to business.”

  “Mrs. Larson,” I said. “Please. Can you just tell me if you’ve seen Chloe?”

  She nodded. “Yes. I have seen Chloe. She is still in my house,” she spat. “She has quit her job and spends her days having sex with Dan.”

  “Um,” I said. “Oh.”

  “They drive about in his convertible, eat at restaurants, attend parties, and hump all night in his bedroom.”

  “Okay …”

  “On my husband’s dime.”

  “I see.”

  I suppose I knew all along that this was going on. But why him? Why Zombie Dan? He was without any redeeming qualities whatsoever. I hung my head. A little bit of whiskey seemed to be left in the bottom of my glass, and I held it upside down over my mouth for long seconds as it found its way out.

  “I suppose you’re wondering what Dan has that you don’t. I suppose you’re thinking he’s not a real man. That he’s a zombie. That he has no soul.”

  “Sort of,” I admitted.

  “You’re full of anger.”

  “I am pretty angry,” I said.

  “Rage. You’re enraged. Well, I am here to tell you that I am, too.” “You are?” I asked her.

  “Yes, I am. And I bet you’re wondering why. Well, it’s because that thing is not my son.” Her long finger emitted a faint, dam
p rattle as she waggled it in my face. “It is not my Daniel. It is a monster, and it must be stopped. It can read my thoughts. It remembers things about me that I worked very, very hard to forget. It is an offense against nature.”

  “Well,” I said. “I wouldn’t call—”

  “Those smug quacks! They knew it all along! All they wanted was another test subject—it’s all part of their stinking quest for knowledge.” She leaned closer. Her fingers, horribly dry, brushed my wrist. “It’s true about zombies, you know. They do eat brains.” She bit her lip, as if the thought had made her hungry. “Their souls are gone, so they want yours, and mine. They can steal them, right through thin air!”

  She peered once more behind the curtain, then reached into her handbag. “And that,” she said, bringing out a small silver pistol and setting it on the table, “is why you’re going to kill him.”

  I let out a little yelp. “Whoops! No, no, sorry …”

  She shushed me, seizing my arm. “I paid to bring him here, and I will pay to send him back.”

  “But that’s murder!”

  Slowly, she shook her head. “That’s where you’re wrong. Killing a human being is murder. Killing a zombie is a public service. Especially one with dangerous powers. My son is dead, and his body has been stolen by a monster. A monster that is fucking your girlfriend.”

  “I don’t think shooting Dan will get Chloe to like me again.”

  “Chloe isn’t going to like you again anyway, you idiot,” she growled. “That’s not the point.”

  I felt very strongly that I ought to leave, but something kept me there, even aside from Mrs. Larson’s death grip. Perhaps it was the whiskey. I felt slightly dizzy and very much open to suggestion.

  “Did you slip something into my drink?” I asked.