Why Visit America

by Matthew Baker

  Naomi had never been frightened by pain or suffering or death, but there was something eerie about the altar room. Most of the terminal patients were comatose. Withered atrophied bodies that were fed intravenously. The rest of the terminal patients were bedridden. Elderly bodies reduced to withered husks. Dying figures coughed and moaned and muttered and called out from cots as the medics on duty emptied out bedpans and changed drip bags and spooned mashed peas and chunky applesauce between trembling lips. The smell of incense and lilies was thick in the air. Although even the patients who were conscious were generally too addled by dementia or pharmaceuticals to carry on much of a conversation, residents were encouraged to socialize with the dying, and all of the women visited the altar room at least once during the day, sitting on worn stools beside the cots, holding the hands of comatose patients, wiping the brows of bedridden patients, praying at the feet of the ancient statues, quietly playing singing bowls with wooden mallets. Joaquin, the chef, came through the altar room periodically to deliver refreshments. Silver platters heaped with persimmons. Trays piled with plump pears. Chilled bottles of water, infused with lemon wedges or sliced strawberries. Emily was often in there, murmuring in the ears of comatose patients, reading fairy tales aloud to bedridden patients, prowling through the cots with a covetous look. Naomi avoided being in the altar room when she was there, and though death had never frightened her, violence of any kind profoundly disturbed her, and she avoided being in the altar room during sacrifices too, when the sharp curved blade of the ceremonial dagger would be drawn across the tender throat of a shrieking rooster or a struggling peacock, and dark blood would spatter across the rough pale stone of the altar, taking hours to evaporate into the air. Every afternoon a comatose patient was chosen to die, removed from life support by the medics, vanishing from the world to the sound of a flatline. Emily was always there, hovering nearby with a hopeful expression as life left the body, and whenever a bedridden patient suddenly died without warning, Emily would rush to the altar room to be as near to the freed soul as possible, followed by an entourage of women. Naomi liked to be in the altar room at quieter times. Liked to be helpful. To rub the arms of comatose patients to prevent bedsores, to scratch the legs of bedridden patients to soothe itches, and to sit listening to the peaceful beeping of the life-support monitors, which made her nostalgic for the hospital. Yet even then there was something creepy about the altar room. Pregnant women and terminal patients had both occupied the same building at the hospital, of course. But still, the juxtaposition of the pregnant women and the terminal patients in the altar room troubled her, and she felt followed sometimes by the empty stares of the decrepit statues along the wall.

  There was something eerie about the birthing room too. The birthing room was across the compound, a vast circular chamber the exact same size and shape as the altar room, but instead of a hundred cots radiating out from a stone altar, the birthing room was completely empty aside from a single hospital bed, shining under a spotlight at the center of the chamber. Rather than having statues standing along the perimeter, rustic wooden shelves were arranged along the wall, lined with gigantic healing crystals, lumps of amethyst and topaz and citrine and quartz that glowed in the faint underlighting of the shelves, casting glimmers of color across the floor. Dust twinkled in the air. Nobody was ever in there. None of the residents were due for months. Naomi sometimes peeked in through the arched doorway, placing both her hands on her stomach, feeling her baby move under her fingers, imagining giving birth to the child in there someday. If she shouted, her voice would echo through the chamber, the sound reborn every couple of seconds with another bounce off the wall.

  That was how she passed days at the Oasis. Getting periodic medical exams by the doctors, doing yoga with women who ignored her, practicing meditation with women who ignored her, eating mochi, drinking lassis, getting massages, and wandering the compound. A clanging bell announced when dinner was served. Tad ate dinner with her every night, babbling excitedly about whatever podcast he had listened to while he was working. After dinner she would hang out with him, playing board games from the entertainment room, or video-chatting with her parents, or streaming new romcoms together, or reading popular science magazines. Some nights he would have sex with her. Some nights he wouldn’t have sex with her. Each night he dutifully inserted his retainer before climbing under the covers to go to bed, mumbling his final thoughts for the day as he drifted off to sleep, faintly lisping. The concrete walls were thick. Naomi never heard any noises from the other bedchambers. Tad slept peacefully, probably dreaming of lines and shapes, the shifting measurements of changing angles. Naomi slept fitfully. When she couldn’t sleep, sometimes she took walks, padding barefoot through the compound in the darkest hours of the night, when the hallway was lit only by the dim emergency lighting above the doorways to the bathrooms. Jane lived at the compound too, but she was never awake that time of night. The only staff on duty that time of night was whatever guard was in the security office and whatever doctor was in the medical office, there in case of emergencies, getting paid to sit quietly. Naomi liked to climb the central stairwell to the tiled patio on the roof, where the other residents sunbathed during the day. To sit there under the moon. Just to look at the stars. She missed Vegas. She had never imagined that was possible, but she did, missed the neon and the noise and the heat and the traffic, and the celebrity imposters, and the ridiculous billboards, and the tourists stumbling drunkenly down the sidewalk in skintight clothing, and the gambling addicts waiting in line at the pawnshops, and the newlywed elopers parading out of kitschy chapels, and the cheapskates strolling out of buffets with purses full of stolen pastries, and the catcallers, and the gangsters, and the missionaries, and the doomsayers, even the putrid stench of the garbage baking in rusted trash bins in the alleys. Being able to drive around, and run errands, and grocery shop. Lounging around in her condo. Getting to visit her parents. Smelling sauteing garlic, taking a bath while her husband cooked brunch. Rama sat with her on the roof occasionally, watching intently as bats arced over the compound. Naomi never saw anybody else up there that time of night. Sometimes she would stay on the roof until dawn, when she would hear the station wagon that the chef drove arrive in the parking lot with a crunch of gravel, and then she would slip back down the stairs, heading toward the dining hall to get some breakfast.

  Naomi was rummaging through the video collection in the entertainment room one day when she heard a group of residents stroll through the doorway, plopping onto couches, sinking into armchairs, chattering with Emily, who took a seat on a plush leather ottoman, grinning wickedly at the others, hair cascading from an elegant waterfall braid.

  “Hold on, which guard?”

  “The young one,” Emily said.

  “Chase, with the gauges?”

  “We did it in the greenhouse once,” Emily said.

  “Wait, you’ve hooked up with him more than once?”

  “I couldn’t take it anymore. I was completely losing it. I’ve been super horny since the first trimester. Danny knows that. If he didn’t want me to sleep with other people then he should have been here. Money isn’t an issue. He chose to keep working. He decided not to come.”

  “I’d rather just use a vibrator.”

  “I haven’t been horny at all.”

  Naomi fumbled a cassette, which hit the floor with a clatter. Emily glanced over at her, then turned back toward the others.

  “I mean, it’s whatever. He’s the best of what’s around. The other guards are too old. And the cook is just creepy. I’d be afraid of catching a case of eczema or something, hooking up with him. You just know his back is hairy. You don’t even have to look. And the other options around here are just as unattractive,” Emily said, looking over at her again with a faint smirk.

  Naomi realized that she was talking about Tad.

  Naomi stormed back down the hallway in a blind rage, not even paying attention to where she was going, furious both to have had h
er husband be considered an option for seduction and to have had her husband be deemed too unattractive to fuck. She trembled with barely contained anger. She went back to the bedchamber.

  “I can’t do this anymore,” Naomi said.

  Tad looked up from the desk.

  “I want to go home,” Naomi said.

  Tad took in a breath, then let out a sigh. He set down a pencil. Rama mewed, peering out from the shadows under the cot.

  “I don’t want to be here any more than you do,” Tad said.

  “I really don’t think that’s possible,” Naomi said.

  “Trust me,” Tad said.

  “Nobody here will even talk to me,” Naomi said.

  “Baby. We’re so close. Just hold on. We only have to make it a few more months,” Tad said.

  And she tried, but the situation only got worse. When she ran to get a drink of water during yoga class, Emily took her place, forcing her to move to a mat at the back of the room, where she couldn’t even see the instructor through the contorted limbs of all of the women who shunned her. When she ran to take a pee during meditation class, Emily edged out her cushion, forcing her to move to a place at the back of the room, where she couldn’t even concentrate on the teacher over the distracted whispers of all of the women who shunned her. Emily organized a sleepover in the entertainment room, ordering a dozen sleeping bags online, buying stovetop popcorn, getting pizza delivered, and then invited every resident except for her. Naomi tried approaching the other residents when the women were alone, trying to make friendly jokes, trying to make superficial banter, even just trying to exchange some fucking pleasantries about the weather, and the women rebuffed any attempt at conversation, as if acting on orders to exclude her. When she went to the medical office for a checkup at her scheduled time, Emily was there instead, insisting that she needed to be examined at that very moment in order to make a session with the masseuse, insisting that stress could be incredibly harmful to a child in the womb, insisting that the massage was absolutely crucial to the health of her baby, and she threw such a tantrum that the doctor finally caved and pushed back the appointment with Naomi.

  Jane found her afterward, looking apologetic and embarrassed.

  “I’m so sorry about that,” Jane said.

  “I’m paying to be here too,” Naomi exploded.

  “I know,” Jane said.

  “I shouldn’t have to deal with this catty shit,” Naomi exclaimed.

  “I’m sorry. You’ve been so patient. Thank you for that. Truly. I know how hard it can be to deal with her. There’s nobody here who visits my office as often as she does, every day, even during the night, always with some new problem or demand. There’s no excuse for it. I just try to remember that she had a difficult upbringing. There are mental health issues. She’s under a lot of pressure from her family,” Jane said.

  Naomi went into a bathroom, the only place she knew she could be alone at that time of day, and shut the door and slapped the lock and sat cross-legged on the floor under the sink, blasting trance music over her headphones, letting the noise shake her, letting the sound consume her, like she’d done as a teenager whenever she’d been so frustrated that she’d wanted to scream. She hated how important that minor interactions could seem in an isolated social setting. She had friends back in the city. Friends from college. Friends from childhood. On an intellectual level, she knew that she was likable. On an emotional level though, she felt like a loser. Back at home, in real life, she wouldn’t have given a fuck what women like that thought about her, but having to live with the women, having to share space with the women, seeing those women and only those women every single day, she would have given her life for a smile. Being rejected by the other women there felt like being rejected by all of human society. It was absurd. It was crushing. That was all she wanted, was a friend.

  That next evening a new couple arrived at the compound, a woman in a holographic jacket with thick bleached hair and a man with a muscular build wearing a black tracksuit, who both looked vaguely familiar. Naomi was sitting near the altar with Rama, petting the cat behind the ears. Eavesdropping as the couple took a tour of the facility, Naomi realized that the woman was a celebrity tennis player, a gold medalist, a world champion, and that the man was a supermodel. Naomi had seen his face on billboards downtown, in pouty advertisements for peacoats and underwear. He had grown up in Newark. She wasn’t sure where she had read that, and was embarrassed that she had.

  Annabelle, the tennis player, wasn’t pregnant yet.

  “We don’t get to have sex while you pull the plug on somebody?” Annabelle said.

  “That actually isn’t necessary,” Jane said.

  “But what if a soul enters a new body at the moment of conception?” Annabelle said.

  “It certainly might,” Jane said.

  Annabelle frowned, looking at the withered figures sprawled across the cots in the chamber. “So then shouldn’t he be trying to come in me at the exact instant that one of these guys flatlines?”

  Jane smiled awkwardly. “Fertilization doesn’t occur the moment that the sperm enters the vagina. Conception happens anywhere from an hour to a week after sex. It’s impossible to predict the exact moment that you’ll become pregnant.” She clasped her hands together. “For that matter, we don’t know how to identify the exact moment that a body has died, either. Medically we used to consider a body dead after the heart had stopped, but that definition has become problematic, now that we have defibrillators that can start a heart back up again. Many physicians now define death as the moment that all electrical activity ceases in the brain, but even that definition is problematic, as various organ systems within the body can continue to function long after brain death occurs.” She spread her hands wide. “And even if we could pinpoint the exact moment that a body had died, we don’t know how these matters work spiritually. If a soul remains with the body for a time, or leaves the body instantaneously.”

  Spencer, the supermodel, looked totally lost.

  “So, like, why did we even come here, if we’re not supposed to fuck while some dude gets terminated?” Spencer said.

  Jane handed the couple the key to a bedroom.

  “You’re paying a lot of money to be here, and that money ensures that this facility has a steady supply of dying bodies. You can start trying to conceive whenever you’re ready. Tonight, if you want. And on the day that your child is conceived, and at every other stage of your child’s development, we can guarantee you that there will be freshly departed souls nearby, looking for a healthy human body to inhabit,” Jane said.

  Naomi briefly fantasized about becoming friends with the new couple, doing group activities, doing double dates, which she knew was ridiculous. It seemed ridiculous. But the next day she was sitting alone in the dining hall when the tennis player approached her with a tray of food.

  “You want to be alone?” Annabelle said.

  Naomi stared.

  “You can sit,” Naomi said.

  “Why aren’t you eating with the others?” Annabelle said.

  Naomi hesitated.

  “There’s a certain hierarchy here,” Naomi said.

  Annabelle rolled her eyes, setting the tray down on the table, sitting down in a chair with her hair tied back in a messy ponytail. With a shock, Naomi saw that she had a bowl of cereal. Naomi gazed at the cereal in amazement. Geometric marshmallows bobbed in the milk, colorful triangles and circles and squares. Naomi had been craving cereal for months, but the dining hall didn’t have any, and she had been too embarrassed to ask for any or order any online.

  “Where’d you get the cereal?” Naomi said.

  “Smuggled a box in. Figured all of the food here would be natural or organic or probiotic or whatever. I would have starved to death. I need a balanced diet of artificial flavors to get through the day,” Annabelle said, and then took a bite.

  Naomi watched her with a sense of longing as she chewed and swallowed the cereal.

 
“I’ve never actually seen you play tennis,” Naomi admitted.

  “I’m a typical baseliner,” Annabelle said.

  “I don’t have a clue what that means,” Naomi said.

  “I hit at crazy angles,” Annabelle grinned.

  Naomi’s heart leapt at the sight of a smile. She glanced across the dining hall, where the rest of the residents were gazing at Emily, listening to her tell some story, and then she turned back around toward Annabelle, watching her gulp a sip of chocolate milk. Naomi felt ecstatic suddenly. She felt extraordinary. She felt fantastic. Joaquin was flipping omelettes behind the counter.

  “I heard an interesting rumor last night,” Annabelle said through a mouthful of marshmallows.

  “What rumor?” Naomi said.

  “That most of the people who die here used to be homeless,” Annabelle said.

  “I thought everybody who dies here is getting paid?”

  “Well. Their families are. Which seems fair. I mean, imagine if you had some junkie uncle who’d been living on the streets the past fifty years, totally refusing to go to rehab, refusing to give up the drugs, occasionally hitting your family up for money or favors, and then suddenly he’s in a coma at a hospital, hooked up to life support, with no chance of resuscitation, and some company comes along offering you a huge windfall of cash just to take him out into the desert to pull the plug.”