Cross Dressing (12 page)

Dan remembered one time when his mom was so crippled by depression that she couldn’t get out of bed. After missing a few meals, Dan and Michael realized they’d have to cook their own, so they pretended to run their own restaurant. Dan designed a menu while Michael cooked bacon and eggs
sprinkled with instant chocolate powder. They gave themselves a four-star rating and swore to keep the secret ingredient strictly between themselves.

Dr. Wu was as lost in his own world as Dan was in his. “Unfortunately,” the doctor said, “they couldn’t separate Dan from cardiopulmonary bypass, so he required ECMO support which led to some uncontrollable bleeding. He used every unit of his type blood we had.” Dr. Wu pointed at the document on his desk. “And somewhere during all this they had to do an emergency tracheotomy because of a ventilation problem. He was in ICU for a while with multiple IV inotropic drugs maintaining his blood pressure.”

Dan rubbed at his bleary eyes as he remembered the night their mom had told them they had to move out of their house. She said they couldn’t afford to live there anymore. As the two boys packed their belongings in the dimness of their sad little bedroom, Dan started to cry. “I’m scared,” he had said. “Why do we have to move?”

Michael stopped packing his box and sat down next to his brother. “I don’t know,” he said, “but it’s going to be all right.” He put his arm around Dan. “As long as we’re together we’ll be fine.”

Dr. Wu turned the page and continued reading. “Then the damnedest thing happened.” He looked up momentarily, almost embarrassed. “An intern who had spent some time in the Third World diagnosed
tetanus
, of all things. Of course, that would explain the stiff muscles, dysphagia, hyperreflexia, and opisthotonos, but none of the rest of us had ever seen it. We never even considered tetanus because Dan’s medical records showed he’d been immunized. Unfortunately, the diagnosis came a little late. Your brother went into serious convulsions during which his glottis and respiratory muscles went into spasm. He was unable to breathe and cyanosis ensued. He lapsed into a coma and we eventually ran several
brain scans and angiograms which confirmed brain death, so we harvested what we could and called it a day.” Dr. Wu’s eyes lingered on the bottom line. “We did everything we could,” he said. “Honestly.”

Dan sniffed his running nose. Things weren’t always bad as kids, he thought. He and Michael had shared the happiest moments of their lives together. They had played all the tricks that twins play, on parents, teachers, and friends. Each of them always knew what the other was thinking. They finished each other’s sentences. They had laughed and played and conspired. They were confederates in their own war against the evils of their world. But now Dan’s accomplice, his best friend, his brother, was gone. Forever.

Dr. Wu stood and walked Dan out to the hallway. “Father, I know this is a difficult time for you,” he said. “Apparently Dan’s employers were quite shocked as well.”

“His employers?” Dan squeaked slightly when he asked the question.

“Yes. We notified them, to save you the trouble.”

“I see.” Dan felt faint.

Dr. Wu stopped at the elevators and punched the Down button. “They sent over half a dozen lilies,” Dr. Wu said. “And they offered to design and print the funeral announcements. Obviously caring people.”

As they stepped onto the elevator a panic suddenly seized Dan. He grabbed Dr. Wu by the arm. “Did he get the last rites?” The doors closed.

Dr. Wu looked at the floor. “I don’t think so, Father.”

Dan feared that Michael had lapsed into the coma before he could ask forgiveness for the fraud. If that was true, then Michael couldn’t have atoned for his sin, and depending on whether insurance fraud was a venial or a mortal offense, Michael’s soul could have been suffering the temporal punishments of purgatory, or worse, the tortures of hell. All of
Michael’s good work just flushed down the toilet, and it would all be Dan’s fault. He shook Dr. Wu. “Why didn’t you get him a priest?”

Dr. Wu shrugged. “The admission form said Dan was agnostic.”

Dan slumped. He hadn’t thought about that.

The elevator doors opened and Dr. Wu urged Dan out. “Well, here we are,” Dr. Wu said. He delivered Dan to the front desk so he could take care of the paperwork. “Call if you need anything.”

The woman at the desk flipped through a dozen pages of a computer printout, pointing out the various procedures and drugs that had been applied to Michael in his final hours. She handed Dan a copy of the document. Like a dazed diner at an overpriced restaurant, Dan glanced at the various items and their cost. Then something caught his eye. “You amputated his legs?” He pointed at a series of enormous charges on page six.

“Oh, that …” The woman smiled. “That’s what we call an inadvertent surgery,” she said without batting an eye. “It was supposed to be a Mr. Stone, but somehow they got your brother instead. Stone, Steele, it happens.” She flipped to page eight and pointed at the top. “See, here’s where we credited you,” she said. “So there was no charge for that. Like I said, it was inadvertent. No harm done, really, when you think about it.” She then turned to the last page and pointed to the bottom line. “I need you to sign here as next of kin.”

Dan took the pen and froze momentarily when he saw “Total charges due: $329,442.09.”

The woman folded Dan’s copy of the document and stuffed it into an envelope. “Good thing he had insurance on this one. Paid a hundred percent.”

Dan slowly signed his name, “Michael Steele.” Then he
went back and inserted “Father” and drew a small cross, just for good measure.

S
cott managed to rise above his unemployment funk by listening to his motivational tapes. He had listened to them a hundred times since being fired and they were finally starting to pay off. First they got Scott up off his couch and out looking for a new job. However, since no one in advertising would return his calls, Scott was reduced to the lowest possible level of employment—retail sales. In fact, Scott had just returned from an interview at Transistor Town, a huge stereo warehouse outlet that was in the throes of its second “once-in-a-lifetime Fujioka sales event.” As if that weren’t demoralizing enough, Scott didn’t know if he would even get the shitty little job. The interviewer, a Mr. Ted Tibblett, told Scott to go home and wait for his call.

Fortunately, Scott wouldn’t just have to sit in his crummy, cramped apartment staring at the phone. That’s because Scott’s motivational tapes had led him to take up a new hobby. He hoped the repeated pumping action that was involved would eventually bring him some much-needed release. According to the pamphlet he had read, Scott’s new hobby was both challenging and rewarding and “by no means high risk” (though in the next sentence the pamphlet did recommend wearing safety glasses so as to avoid going blind).

Encouraged by his tapes, Scott had purchased a BullyBoy 200 Handloading Press and a brand-spanking-new Ruger Super Redhawk .44 magnum with the handsome stainless steel finish. He bought the gun and the loading press at a gun show up in Ventura. The helpful folks there explained that for maximum stopping power, Scott would want to hot-load some semijacketed hollow points, the sort of thing that mush-roomed
on impact and did obscene things to “any sort of animal tissue.”

Scott was hunkered down at a card table that he had pushed up against a wall in his tiny apartment. The wall was covered with Fujioka logos from the current campaign. His campaign. In the middle of the wall was a picture of Dan that Scott had cut out of The Prescott Agency’s annual report.

With a shiny brass case in the shell holder, Scott carefully seated the large primer anvil-side-up in the primer pocket. Employing the aforementioned pumping action, he carefully lowered the press handle, pushing the primer arm all the way into the slot of the shell-holder ram. Next, Scott deviated from the standard reloading manual, opting instead to follow the tips he had picked up at the gun show. Using the loading kit’s sensitive scales, Scott measured double the recommended amount of gunpowder into the small bowl, then poured it through the small plastic funnel. Then, just to prove his point, Scott tapped several extra grains of the powder into the large brass casing. “More is more,” he repeated for the hundredth time that day.

After hot-loading a half dozen rounds, Scott prepared the stainless steel Super Redhawk for duty, sweetly kissing each cartridge before slipping it into the cylinder. An hour later Scott was sitting on the sofa admiring his weighty tool when the commercial came on the television. He stiffened when he heard the silk strings of the koto. He looked up and saw it wasn’t the real commercial but part of an “Eyewitness News Break.” The news anchor was at his desk with the Fujioka commercial superimposed over his shoulder. The spot was suddenly replaced by Dan’s photo—the same photo that was pinned to Scott’s wall.

“The creator of Fujioka’s popular ‘More Is More’ ad campaign, Dan Steele, died today at St. Luke’s Hospital,” the news anchor said. “The thirty-six-year-old ad executive …”

That’s all of the news report that Scott heard. His head filled suddenly with an apocalyptic cacophony of throbbing, screeching, grinding noises of indeterminate nature. Scott had been psychologically violated by the news. It was bad enough that the bastard had stolen his idea, Scott thought. But now he up and dies, thus securing his legend in the annals of advertising history and, at the same time, depriving Scott of the sweet revenge that was the only worthwhile thing he had left to live for. Raw nerves and humiliation came crashing together in a hot flash and Scott went completely ATF. He raised the .44 magnum and blew the television tube into fifty thousand tiny pieces. Urged by the extra gunpowder, the .44 kicked like a senator going before an ethics committee. The hammer spur smashed into Scott’s forehead, causing a hairline fracture in his frontal cranial bone. Blood trickled down between Scott’s eyes, but he didn’t seem to notice. He just stared through the stars at the smoldering pile of boob tube.

Then, as quickly as the madness had descended upon Scott, it disappeared. The apartment was suddenly quiet as death. The television had been silenced. The dissonant clatter in his head vanished. The thunderous report from the .44 had purged the room of all sound. As the smoky blue haze drifted peacefully toward the cottage-cheese ceiling, Scott sagged, the wind sucked from his sails. He looked like a small child who had told the truth, but whom no one believed.

“It was my idea,” he said.

D
an was exhausted. He hadn’t slept for thirty-six hours. He was too upset and angry. At the same time, he was slowly coming to terms with the fact that Michael was dead, though he still hadn’t admitted to himself what that implied about his own future.

He was back at his apartment in Santa Monica trying to
figure out what to do next when he suddenly remembered that
Comedy On Demand
was about to come on. Dan hadn’t seen the final edit of the Shaftem, Dickem spot, and he was curious about how it came out. Unsure of what else he ought to be doing, Dan flopped onto his sofa, flipped on the TV, and waited for the show to start.

The spot opened with the exterior shot of a rain-slicked city street. Police cars with flashing lights blocked traffic as the cops struggled to subdue an obviously intoxicated man who was wearing only his birthday suit. Only this time, the naked man was Dan and the cop was Scott Emmons. “You’re drunk … you’re naked … and you’ve committed felony insurance fraud,” Scott said.

There was an abrupt cut to a courtroom. WHAM! The judge smashed his gavel. “Guilty!”

Another abrupt cut to an overcrowded jail cell. WHAM! The door slammed. A large and dangerous-looking man sidled up and put his arm around Dan. “Let me show you the showers,” he said. “We’ve got Dove.”

Another inmate leaned in close. “The soap that creams your skin while you wash.”

Dan woke abruptly, snapped from his nightmare and keenly aware that he was up to his neck in it. He looked at the TV and saw that COD was running children’s programming, which meant Dan had slept through the night and part of the morning. He got up, had some coffee, and reflected on his legal situation before returning his lawyer’s call from the previous day.

An hour later Dan was in the office of Karen Vaughey Esquire. Karen was a Stanford grad, top of her class. She was a sharp blonde, capable in all aspects of the law. Dan target-modeled her as “Elite Esquire.” Mid-forties-attorney first-class-flying, yogurt-eating, theater-attending, treasury-bond-holding three-VCR owner.

Dan had shed the priest outfit in favor of jeans, a T-shirt, and a baseball cap. He sat across the desk from Karen, sucking on a lemon drop he had grabbed from the bowl in the reception area. He told Karen that he was thinking about telling the authorities what had happened.

“Bad idea,” Karen said.

“Why? What am I looking at?”

Ms. Vaughey looked over the contents of a manila folder as she spoke. “Well, since the hospital’s already been paid, the insurance carrier would come after you for the three hundred thirty thousand. Then the DA would file a criminal complaint for felony insurance fraud. And finally you’d get hit with a civil suit that would cost you as much to defend as to lose, which you would surely do.”

Dan’s head dropped into his hands. “Great,” he said. Dan wondered what he ever did to deserve this. “Just t-fucking-rific.”

“It gets better,” Karen said, trying to suppress a laugh. “Since it’s an election year, the DA will want to nail you to a cross for some extra votes.”

Dan attempted some indignation. “He was my brother, for God’s sake! It’s not like I made money on the deal.”

Karen shrugged and tossed the folder onto the desk. “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Juries hate people like you.”

The thought slapped Dan in the face. “People like me? What’s that supposed to mean? I was just trying to take care of my brother!”

“All they’ll see is the guy who makes their insurance rates go up,” Karen said. “Now, if you had
killed
your brother, I could probably get you off. But this is serious. We’re talking other people’s money. You’re looking at three to six for the fraud, plus a stiff fine, forty-fifty grand, plus the hospital bill.”