Postcards from a Dead Girl (16 page)

I know there will be bruises on my waist the next day, she's hanging on that tight. I don't blame her. Speeding across cold water on a Jet Ski at fifty mph can be a little scary.

It's a vivid, cold, amazing dream. “Lean into me!” I yell back at Melanie. We both cower down into the wind, creating one sleek aerodynamic unit, protecting ourselves from the icy sea spray as we bash through the waves. A sheet of water splashes over us. I keep my hand on the throttle. Another wave slides across our backs. Her grip around me is unyielding.

The night hides us as we speed up the coast, away from the bad people who follow. We can't see them, but they're close, bearing down on us, just outside our periphery. The continuous jarring against the waves is taking its toll. I wonder if we'll make it.

Melanie says something into my back, a worried murmur. I feel it more than hear it. She can't take the running anymore. She's losing feeling, it's too cold. Her grip loosens a bit, a weakening in her attachment to me, to this vehicle. All around us is the vast, surging ocean.

I back off the throttle. Only one thing to do. I turn the Jet Ski around and head straight back into the source of our turmoil.
My heroine is startled but I can feel an uptick in her excitement. She too knows it's the only way, and I've done the only thing that can be done. Melanie's grip finds new strength, and I pull down on the gas once again. This time, I don't even feel the cold of the water because we're flying now, floating over the chop of the black waves, a storm cloud on its way to deliver a punishing release.

The Randomizer picks a number and I wait for someone to answer. I'm decked out in my plastic headset and hands-free microphone, staring through the cubicle wall ahead of me as I try to construct a face from some stranger's floating voice. This someone will almost certainly be in their home, and I will be transported to their living room through their earpiece and into their ear, inside their head, my alien voice taking up space in their mind for a few choice moments. What an incredible opportunity. But all I've got to talk about is cruise ships and five-star hotels.

I daydream about a mile-long, touchless car wash, the kind that pulls your car along after you throw it in neutral. This automatic wonder has four cycles of soap and a quarter-mile drying track that leaves your car spotless. It's twenty minutes of high-tech dirt eradication, a marvel of modern times. Space-age suds.

A distant voice in my ear wants to know who I am.

I steady my mic between forefinger and thumb. This is ground control, I say, and we've got another one ready to go on the Miracle Mile. Throw it into neutral and off you go. Imagine the serenity. Experience the bliss. This is no ordinary clean.

“I'd buy some if I knew what it was,” the voice says.

The Randomizer has made a connection. I know from the sound of her voice that she is five-foot-four, a waitress at the local mall. She smokes. She doesn't condition her hair enough and doesn't read much, but when she does it's romance novels, and she's not embarrassed to say so.

“Sorry ma'am, just trying to set the stage,” I say. “This is Sid from Wanderlust, and I have an exciting offer to tell you about.”

“Go on, Sid.” She sucks on a cigarette—a wet, dirty sound. “Tell me all about it. Tell me every naughty little detail.”

“When's the last time you took a vacation?” I ask.

“What's the big deal?” Natalie asks. “It's a phone call. You make them all day long.”

I want to tell her that it's not a big deal to her because she's not the one making the phone call. This is not some memorized pitch. There's nobody inside my ear coaching me on this one. I pace across the kitchen floor, my cell in the crook of my neck, and check the fridge again, as if there will be something new inside, on this, my third opening of the door. I'm also wondering why my cell phone connection only achieves crystal clarity when I'd rather not be talking on it.

“If you don't want to go out with her, that's fine,” she says.

“I do. I want to.”

“Good. Then call her.”

“I can't.”

“You can't?”

“I have some things I need to finish.”

“Oh,” she says, like she's heard that one before.

“Maybe next week.”

“She gave you her number, right? Don't keep her hanging or she'll be history.”

It doesn't feel like I've been ignoring her. Lately Melanie has
been in my head in strange ways. She returns to my thoughts like a satellite in orbit. Her faint signal passes my ears, again and again, barely audible, but constant, reaching from somewhere out in deep space that might not even exist anymore, like a lost ancient wisdom spinning through the sky. I want this wisdom, but I fear losing it. Losing her. Losing something else.

“I do want to call her. Just not this week,” I say.

“Not this
week
?”

“Next week would be better.”

“What are you doing that's so important you can't call a girl?”

I slide the kitchen curtains open and peer into the backyard—the mud mouth of my homemade spa yawns dreamily up at the night sky. “Big project.”

Natalie sucks at her teeth, pushes air back through the gaps, in and out, louder and louder. This is the hideous sound she makes when she feels she's being lied to but doesn't have the energy to argue. “Well, call her when you're not busy,” she says, “or let me know and I'll call her. Just don't leave her hanging, okay?”

“I won't.”

“Say it.”

“What?”

“Promise you won't leave her hanging.”

“I promise I won't leave her hanging,” I say plainly, but feel panicked.

She sucks at her teeth again. “Well,” she says, “I'll let you go. Have a good one.”

I hang up the phone and a pressure builds in my chest that feels like oversized shirts stuffed in a tiny closet. I take a deep breath and exhale slow and one of the shirts goes away. I walk out to the garage, and another shirt is gone. I grab a shovel, and with each step through the dewy grass of the backyard I feel
lighter, clearer somehow, ready to move earth under the sparkle of the stars.

As I dig, the sweat pours out of me. I'm going through a transformation, but I'm not sure if it's from life to death or death to life. I feel like other zombies might be approaching soon, around the corner at any moment, each of them lying down in their own graves with dreamless sleep and hopeless sighs. I wonder if I will join them.

Today I wouldn't mind if a postcard arrived from Tokyo. I might be tempted to travel to Japan, and I hear there's an entire class of people who live in six-by-three-foot tubes stacked so high they need ladders to reach them. Rows and rows of little tombs, people existing inside plastic cocoons, a city full of morphing insects.

The TV news says a story is coming up that may leave me shocked and dismayed. It's about my drinking water. I sit through two commercial breaks and still no water story. I wonder if there might be something wrong with our copper pipes, but then the news people return to caution me that it's about what might be in my actual water. It's not what I'd expect. One more break and they tell me if I drink enough water, it could have unexpected results.

I go to the kitchen and drink a full glass. And almost exactly as I finish swallowing the last of it, the feeling comes: a woozy, ringing-head sensation. The news was right; it's not what I expected. Suddenly lilacs are in full bloom in my kitchen. The sweet scent fills me up and ruins my vision. My skin begins to tingle, little electric sparks that flow up my arms and down my spine.
And while mentally I feel shocked and dismayed, deep down I'm peaceful. It's a strange juxtaposition.

“I can't be late,” a voice says, “they'll leave without me.”

It's Mom. Her voice is faint. I instinctively walk toward the basement stairs.

“Mom,” I say, “can you hear me?”

“Let me through, I must get on this bus,” she says.

“What bus, Mom?” I walk down a few stairs and her voice intensifies.

“I'll be late!”

“What bus?”

“I can't be late,” she's yelling now. “It's important!”

“I can hear you. Let me help.”

“Oh, you all forgot about me and now I'm late. I can't be late.”

“Where are you going?” I ask. Lilacs have followed me. I can practically taste them, bitter petals on my tongue.

“I must make it there.”

I go down the rest of the stairs and lean in next to the wine bottle thinking that maybe if I'm closer, she'll hear me better. “Where do you need to be?”

“Don't act like you don't know,” she says.

My flesh freezes. Did she really hear me? Was Candyce telling the truth? Somehow this doesn't make me feel better. “What do you mean? How would I know?”

“Everybody knows the bus to Timbuktu should've been here already,” she says, although now it sounds like she's talking to someone else entirely—some kind of supernatural ticket clerk? “You can't be late for the Emperor of Japan!”

I don't know what to do. She sounds upset. I try to console her. “You'll make the bus, don't worry,” I say. “It just pulled up, time to get on.”

Slowly the lilacs fade and the voices with it, as if in direct response to my words. My skin loses its chill and my balance returns, and while the trouble seems to be over, I wonder what it means that I'm all alone in my basement squatting over a bottle of wine.

A pair of female bronze legs walk toward me, their gait swift. They seem to have a conviction about them, a purpose all their own, as if they're disconnected from their body. They are sleek, toned, and strong—not to be messed with. If I weren't lying under forty pounds of cool earth, I might sit up to take a better look at what rests above them. For now, her top half is hidden in the dark shadows caused by the bright sun behind her. I'm back at the spa because I couldn't get the shape of my backyard spa right. The contours were all off, the whole aesthetic blown by inferior corners. So now I lie back in a professional outdoor mud spa, a ceramic tub filled with plenty of the good stuff. My phone, ice water, lemon slice, and complimentary towels rest on a nearby table.

My cell phone rings. I manage to squirm one hand to the surface to check the number. I don't recognize it. Because I seem to be attracting the unknown lately, I'm especially cautious. The two bronze legs have come to an abrupt stop at the edge of my bath. I flip open my phone. “Hello?”

“Is this, uh, is this Sid?” It's a woman's voice: soft, misunderstood, friendly.

“Who's this?”

“Melanie. We met at the coffee shop. If this is Sid.”

“Oh. Jane. Hello.”

“Jane?” she asks.

“No, this is Sid. Hello? Did you say Melanie? Hi!”

I pull my other arm from the muck to shade my eyes. The sun radiates from behind the owner of the legs. It's Gazelle, and she's holding my credit card up like a question. “Mr. Higgins—”

I nod. She doesn't nod back. “Sorry Melanie, I was talking to someone else. I'm, uh, I'm at a restaurant.”

“Oh, maybe I should call another time?”

Gazelle taps her foot, shifts her weight from leg to leg. “We have a problem.”

“That might be better,” I say. “Is that okay? Maybe I shouldn't have answered. That was rude.” I give Gazelle the okay sign. She's not okay.

“I thought maybe we could get coffee sometime,” she says.

“Of course, yes. Coffee. I love coffee.” Melanie laughs at this.
I love coffee
. Very smooth. I laugh too then, for too long.
Coffee. Ha ha ha
.

I wish I could tell Melanie about how telephone conversations in general make me anxious. I can never express with full intention what it is I'm trying to say. There is so much slippage, so many missed implications and lost nonverbal actions, it's a bit perplexing.

She says something in a funny voice. “Iced coffee is cool,” I think she says.

She must be trying to be funny, so I laugh because I think it's polite to respond to her joke. But then I realize I haven't spoken in too many moments and I'm pretty sure it comes across as a stonewall to her attempt at levity, which she's using to cover up
her surprise over my rudeness of answering the phone when I'm too busy to talk. The silence grows heavier; I feel it press against me.

“Well,” I say, “let's get together, then. Can you call me back in a little while?”

“Sure I can. Enjoy your meal.”

“What? Oh, yes, very good. Yum-yum.” Does anyone actually
say
yum-yum?

I clap the phone shut. Gazelle, once a coltish beauty, now towers over me like a megalith, arms crossed, her resolute figure refusing to block the noon sun from my photosensitive eyes. She wants me out. I'm not quite sure what to do, so I take a deep breath and sink below the surface.

The boy doctor who recently gave me stitches now has the pleasure of setting my pinky. He is bursting with questions but too embarrassed to ask them. Questions like: Why are you so dirty? Is this new injury from another fall? Who was the supermodel who brought you in, and why did she tell the nurse to make you pay cash?

And I have similar questions, but not nearly as immediate, although worthwhile nonetheless. Questions like: Who would guess that the Arizona Day Spa has two security staff ready and willing to forcibly extract bad-credit customers from their mud baths? And what were they so angry about? They've never had a credit card rejected before?

Chip gently separates my pinky finger from my ring finger and asks if it hurts. Then he touches my elbow and asks if that hurts. He does this touching and asking for a while, and I alter my response from a grunt to a head-shake. In between pokes he looks me over with hangdog eyes. One of his jabs makes me suck air through my teeth. Satisfied, he skips over to the medical supply cabinet, and away from my grimy body.

“Digging a swimming pool,” I loudly offer. The doctor con
tinues his supply search, rummaging through boxes, opening and closing cabinet doors. “Thought I'd jump in early, fell on the slope of the deep end.”

He holds up a roll of white tape like it's found treasure, then grabs a yardstick of metal and foam. He turns to face me. “This will only take a minute.”

As if on cue, a young woman down the hall screams for her life. I jump.

The doctor is unfazed. He's put in his time down here in the ER. This makes me feel a little better. The woman screams again. “I want to die,” she shouts. “Let me die already.” This, followed by the sloppy sounds of vomit spattering on tile.

The doctor begins his work: focused, intense, but moving with ease. “Kids,” he tsk-tsks. “Too many of them coming into the ER full of alcohol or drugs, or both.” He bends the metal-and-foam bar over my pinky and wraps the tip up with tape. “Wasn't like that when I was a kid,” he says.

When was that, last year? I want to ask. But he's doing such a confident job I keep my inside thoughts inside. He seems to have entered manhood in between my injuries. My pinky feels better already.

Then he says, “You're going to feel a little pressure.”

I wince because I've never heard that line and experienced good things afterward.

“I haven't done anything yet,” he says, and then, quickly, “Okay, here we go.” His squeeze adds the promised pressure, while adding nausea to my list of ailments.

“Extra-strength Tylenol should kill the pain,” he says. “Let me know how that splint holds up.” He clutches my other hand and brushes his thumb over the scar. I flinch. “Looks like that
healed really well. You're a fast healer. Your pinky should be good as new in no time.”

The moaning down the hall winds up again, quickly escalating to a holler. In scolding tones, a nurse reminds the patient it's her own fault she's eating barium-chalk sandwiches. “I hate you!” the voice shrieks. “I just want to die!”

My cell phone rings. It's my new friend Melanie. I can't answer with all this noise. I pick up my pace going down the tiled hallway, careful not to bump my bionic pinky against anyone. My footsteps echo off the walls. So does the ringing of the phone.

Ring!

Shit. I can't
not
answer.

“I hate you, bitch!” the junkie yells. “Go to hell!”

Ring!

Unhappy faces in the hallway. I remember cell phones aren't allowed in hospitals. Nurses snap their fingers. Doctors shake their heads.

Ring!

“Kill me now!” the junkie screams.

Snap, snap.

Walking faster.

Ring!

“Hey, buddy,” someone yells, “turn off your phone!”

I spin around to confront the yeller, to let them know I'm trying, and promptly slam my pinky into the wall. I suck air through my teeth.

Bright stars of pain.

Pressure, my doctor would call it.

The phone falls silent. I scurry down the hall a few more steps, but see Melanie has not left a message. My escape was in vain.
The junkie releases another primal scream. It bounces from wall to wall, off the ceiling and across the hall to meet me with a final exclamation point, as if to transmit the entire hospital's disdain for me.

My pinky throbs in time with my racing heartbeat, a pulsing radio signal sent out to all who might be listening. Enough already, the signal says, I've had enough. The demon junkie laugh-sobs behind me as I step through the automatic doors. Outside, blinding brightness. I squint into the sun. I can already feel a headache coming on.