The Dead Do Not Improve

by Jay Caspian Kang

  “They look old.”

  “Those early seasons were the best seasons.”

  Finch didn’t really see what that had to do with anything, but he asked, “What’s with the look on her face?”

  “That, believe it or not, is the product of market research. Our research team said that this sort of cartoon shit does better when the girl looks like she isn’t really enjoying what’s going on.” He paused, waited for Finch to respond, and when Finch said nothing, said, “Sorry, it’s sick, I know, but it’s not kiddie porn because there’s no victim, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know what’s really fucked up? We can do whatever we want to Lisa Simpson or Dora the Explorer or Minnie Mouse, but if we Photoshop footage from nonanimated sitcoms, the feds immediately start sending us e-mails. We ran this Rudy Huxtable reverse interracial series a couple years ago, and I swear we almost got shut down.”

  Finch, despite himself, chuckled.

  Hofspaur sat back down behind his desk and folded his hands, regally, in his lap. He asked, “What do you want to know about Dolores?”

  “Anything that seems relevant.”

  “Relevant? Her stage name was Gray Beaver, for the obvious reasons, but also because she was a quarter Potawatomi and incorporated some weird Indian shit in her videos.”

  “Gray Beaver?”

  “Yeah. You know, ’cause she had a gray beaver.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a bit slow for a detective there.”

  “Sorry. I don’t have my notebook with me.”

  Hofspaur laughed. Recently, it had been going like this for Finch.

  “Can you think of anyone who would want to hurt her?”

  “Not really. None of the red flags that come up for other girls ever came up for her. Even her fan mail was, dare I say, conversational.”

  “Conversational?”

  Hofspaur let out a faint Bronx cheer.

  “Yeah, like they were just usual fan stuff. Where did she grow up, what orifice she likes the best, if she likes black cock or white cock. Actually, I would say half of her mail came from this scene in a remake of Dances with Wolves where she blew smoke signals out of her twat.”

  “How?”

  “That’s what the letters were asking.”

  Finch grunted.

  “But yes, nothing alarming. Actually, we have someone from your department come in and teach the girls how to spot potential problems. Like a certain tone in a letter or something like that.”

  “Do you have the name of this officer?”

  “Bar Davis.”

  “Bar?”

  “I think it’s short for Barbara.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you want to borrow a sheet of paper to write down that name?” He held up the drawing of Lisa Simpson.

  Although he hated to kowtow to any sordid thing, this second viewing of Lisa Simpson, defiled, turned Finch’s stomach. Not because he felt the need to piously hawk over the idols of his childhood, but rather, because the drawing reminded him of Sarah. Even after finishing at the academy, when most of the convictions of youth are hammered over by the mantra of serve and protect, Finch still put his faith in the following equation: “I, Siddhartha Finch, love The Simpsons. Everything I find funny can be found somewhere in the first seven seasons of the show. Humor is important to human relationships. Therefore, if anyone born in America between 1970 and 1986 does not like or ‘get’ The Simpsons, he/she and I will be missing an integral component to human relationships. Only unhappiness can follow.”

  On their third date, Finch, giddied by a mention of Space Camp, rattled off a not quite relevant “It’s like that Simpsons when Homer did x” monologue. Sarah’s bemused but undeniably uncomprehending reaction—fluttering eyelids, a smile, mouth half open—hurt him, sure, but the prettiness with which she did it made him reconsider the idealism of his youth.

  Ten years had passed since the third date, and here he was, staring down a distance without contours, wondering if he had sold out the Simpsons Compatibility Equation to install the always-maturing, yet thoroughly compromised steps in his career of love.

  It was a moment he had expected to have at some point. Just not quite this early.

  Eyes downcast, he said, “Put that down.”

  Hofspaur complied.

  Summoning a little more bass in his voice, Finch asked, “So, there were no danger signs in her letters?”

  “No.”

  “All right. Thanks.”

  “Detective.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want the letters?”

  “Have there been any threatening letters, anything out of the ordinary?”

  “Only the usual crap from the stupid cyberpunk cult.”

  “Cyberpunk cult?”

  HOFSPAUR LED FINCH down a sterile hallway to a room lined with industrial shelving. Inside a banker’s box were hundreds of letters composed entirely with words cut out from newspapers and magazines. In vague, unimaginative language, they detailed the misfortune that would befall the reader if he or she did not stop his or her immoral activity.

  As Finch read through a handful, Hofspaur dug in the files until he came up with a letter that had been composed on a sheet of yellow legal paper. He slid it on top of the letters already in Finch’s hand.

  Dear GRAY Beaver

  You are a SLUTS. IF you do not CEASE AND DESIST with your behavior, we will come for you. You are befouling this city with your INSANE DEPRAVITY. We are SERIOUS. STOP immediately and GET YOUR ASS off the fucking INTERNET.

  YOU know who THIS is.

  Finch asked, “Are they Christians or something?”

  Hofspaur chortled and shook his head. “No. They’re not Christians. I don’t even know what the fuck to call them. They’re like communist Buddhist vegan assholes. Who all happen to be ex-hackers.”

  “Ex-hackers?”

  “And it begins again.… Yes. Ex-hackers. They all purified themselves or some bullshit and now decry the Internet as some filthy black hole designed to suck people’s life away from them. So, like all good little Star Wars–bred rebels, they fuck up sites like us, dating sites, social networking, et cetera.”

  “Huh.”

  “At the beginning, they could hack in and mess with our shit, at least for a few hours, but they haven’t been able to get around our security for a few years now.”

  “These hackers, do you know what they call themselves?”

  “The Brownstone Knights.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yeah. Pretty fucking lame.”

  “How do you know about all this?”

  “They have a website.”

  Hofspaur pulled out his phone, fiddled around with it, and pushed it in front of Finch’s nose. The website was ugly: all-black background, pine-green text, with two distorted photos of the storefront, a weather-beaten Victorian standing alone amid a lagoon of cement and chain-link fencing.

  The green text read:

  At the BEING ABUNDANCE CAFETERIA, we honor the abundance of the earth and ourselves, as we are one and the same. To that end, we do not believe in any separations, between animals and humans, between men and women, between races, religions, creeds, or class. Instead, we believe in BEING ABUNDANCE, a concept engineered by our founding couple, the indefatigable, bountiful Siobahn Menglehart and Jacky Stoddard. The core values of BEING ABUNDANCE encompass Love & Acceptance, Generosity, Worth, Gratitude and Creation or Responsibility. We believe the practice of BEING ABUNDANCE starts with what we put into our bodies. For tens of thousands of generations, humans have sanctified and ritualized both what and how we eat. We, at the BEING ABUNDANCE CAFETERIA, believe in the lessons of real history and therefore have created a space where San Franciscans can engage in the food act in a noncommercialized and noncompromised way. To achieve this purity, we gather our bounty from only organic, local growers, who, in turn, only use environmentally sustainable practices, as these are the best way we can
truly honor the earth. We invite you to step inside and enjoy being someone that chooses: loving your life, adoring yourself, accepting the world, being generous and grateful every day, and experiencing being provided for. Have fun and enjoy being nourished!

  Finch winced. He had never been able to stomach the combination of disorganized and optimistic things, especially to this extent. Turning to Hofspaur, he said, “How do you know the cyberpunks are affiliated with this?”

  “Have you ever been to Being Abundance?”

  “No.”

  “Have you eaten lunch yet?”

  THE WAITRESSES AT the Being Abundance Cafeteria were all beautiful and slouchy and bandanna-ed. An odd, reddish sheen radiated off each one’s cheeks. At first, Finch wrote it off as a trick of light, but as he looked around at the other customers cooped up in the long, narrow railroad apartment of a seating area, he noticed that everyone else, including Hofspaur, who, back at the Porn Palace, had been pink as the bottom of an infant’s foot, looked a little gray. At a long blond wood bar near the front entrance, five men sat Nighthawks style, drinking down some green liquid.

  There was something off about the men as well, nothing as noticeable as the waitresses, but similar to the unsettled sensation you get when you take money out of the ATM and the bills, which you rationally know are not counterfeit, nonetheless feel a bit too gritty in your fingers. After a quick up and down, Finch realized that the fabric of their shirts was a bit too airy and light. Despite the lack of open windows or doors, each of the men’s sleeves fluttered in some unseen wind.

  Upon walking through the front door, Hofspaur and Finch had been greeted by one of three brunettes, all of whom had short-cropped, bowly hair. Like all the other girls, she had that reddish sheen. Her eyes, Finch noticed, were set a bit wider apart than one would usually expect in a human being. In a voice bearing the full benefit of healthy lungs and good posture, she said, “Welcome to the Being Abundance Cafeteria. Would you like to hear the question of the day?”

  Hofspaur, sniggering, said, “Please.”

  “What future are you living toward?”

  “White power, brother.”

  “Excuse me?” Her eyes darted over to a small, bedazzled icon of President Barack Obama that had been pasted up on the cash register.

  “White powder,” Hofspaur said. “Trying to kick a habit. Hoping the future is free of white powder.”

  Relief flooded over her face. She touched her finger to her clavicle and said, “Well, I wish you all the best of luck with that. Everything you put into your body goes into your body.”

  “This is true. Can you bring us two bee pollen smoothies, please?”

  “You Are Vivacious. Amanda will be right over to take your food order. While you wait, enjoy the artwork and please, feel free to play the Abounding River Game.”

  A series of paintings had been hung up on the walls. Scanned from left to right, a narrative line revealed itself. A young blond girl with pigtails stands behind a brick wall. It is raining. On the other side of the wall, which appears to have been constructed at a forty-five-degree angle, the grass is green, rabbits stare impassively at pink flowers. A row of trees gamely hold on to their gigantic fruit. In the second painting, the girl, digging in the hard, ugly dirt on her side of the brick wall, comes across a small white box. The next few paintings show the girl opening the box, which contains a red apple and a glowing scroll.

  In the last five paintings, the girl eats the apple, reads the scroll. The wall dissolves, and the girl enters the bountiful paradise.

  On each table in Being Abundance, there was a basket filled with crayons, dice, and greeting-card-size reproductions of each of the paintings. On the backs of the cards were instructions on things to say to the people at your table, and, if you had procured prior consent, the people at the next.

  Hofspaur flipped through the cards and grunted. “These idiots couldn’t even make the game complicated.”

  “What would be the point of that?”

  The hostess came by with the drinks, which were a radioactive shade of green.

  “Well, it would at least have some allure to it.”

  Finch felt a tingly lift at the base of his scalp. To mask whatever his face was giving away, he scowled at his green drink and announced, “This thing tastes pretty toxic.”

  “That means it’s working. As I was saying, the game is so simple, as are these ugly communist paintings, because these idiots want to sell a linear path to happy. But the trick only works on people who are already happy. No miserable fuck wants to wake up one morning and realize that salvation is just an easy twelve-step jaunt down a path that’s been obvious the entire time. The straight line demeans their intelligence, their families, and all the fucked-up psychological trauma that brought them to their particular misery.”

  “And yet this place is crowded at eleven-fifteen on a Tuesday.”

  “People who refuse to respect traditional mealtimes are all happy. Or something like that.”

  “I don’t think that works.”

  “Sure it does. If you don’t really feel your misery or if it doesn’t exist, you can walk right out of it. That’s the accidental genius of this place. They make a bunch of nine-dollar drinks, sell a bunch of fucking horse food for twenty-five dollars, tacitly remind rich people of the possibility of misery, and then advertise a way out of it. It’s essentially allowing the happy to be temporarily confused about being happy and then showing them that all they have to do is be happy and think that the world is exactly what it is to the rich and happy.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A bountiful place. A place where the ears of corn are huge and the fucking blacks and Mexicans and Chinese and retarded don’t venture, even though they are welcome. There’s no net effect, except that someone paid nine dollars for a drink and twenty-five dollars for a plate of seaweed and someone pocketed that money. But no matter, there’s plenty more for nine-dollar drinks and twenty-five-dollar plates of seaweed. Keep it simple. Remind rich people that all they have to do to remind themselves that they aren’t miserable is to look in the mirror.”

  “You don’t think they do this on purpose?”

  “What does on purpose even mean? Everyone here, they’re all fundamentally happy people who need this”—he turned his palms up to the ceiling and gestured, disgustedly, at the paintings—“to temporarily displace their happiness, so they can discover it again. Anything rich people like: hiking in the outdoors, crossword puzzles, fucking opera, art galleries, volunteer work, domestic literary fiction, surfing, John Updike—it’s all the same: bullshit engineered to make people bored and kinda miserable until they finish, at which point they can allow themselves to feel satisfied for walking the straight line.”

  Finch couldn’t help himself. He was beginning to really like Hofspaur. He announced, “I surf.”

  “That’s a bit surprising.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you, more than any other cop I’ve ever met, are an ulcerous, miserable fuck.”

  “That’s a bit presumptuous, no?”

  “An old woman gets murdered in an area of the Mission rife with gang violence during one of the worst gang wars in the city’s history. You, the detective assigned to the case, are sitting at a cultish restaurant with the city’s nastiest pornographer, investigating inefficient cyberpunks.”

  A red-faced brunette came around to Finch and Hofspaur’s table and asked if they were ready to order. Finch, quickly studying the menu, said he’d have the sampler plate. A beatific glow glazed over the girl’s eyes. Bowing her head, she said, “You are diverse.”

  “The sampler plate.”

  “You are diverse.”

  Hofspaur pointed at the menu: Next to the description of the sampler plate were the words “I AM DIVERSE.” Every item on the menu had a different, loosely relevant affirmation.

  “I am diverse.”

  “You are diverse.”

  Hofspaur chuckled and announced
, “I am fertile.”

  The waitress bowed again and said, “You are fertile,” before smiling and shuffling away.

  Just then, the five men at the bar jerked up to their feet. The one with the most interesting facial hair stood front and center, while the other four fanned out behind him. In an effete, squeaky voice, he asked, “Are you Miles Hofspaur?”

  Hofspaur raised an eyebrow and smirked at Finch.

  The man jabbed Hofspaur’s shoulder with an insistent finger. “I am talking to you. Please pay me the respect of an answer. Are you Miles Hofspaur?”

  Hofspaur said, “Doctor Hofspaur, please.”

  “You are not welcome here, Doctor Hofspaur. Please leave.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You are not welcome here. Please leave.”

  “This is America. I can sit here and eat your food and pay you money.”

  The man who was doing the jabbing paused to solemnly close his eyes. Then, recomposed, he jabbed Hofspaur in the shoulder again.

  Hofspaur said, “What is illegal, by the way, is assault.”

  Finch kind of grunted. Again, the light tingle started at the base of his skull, but this time it felt more insistent. He thought of the scene in the movie Akira where Tetsuo balloons out into a breathing, blinking globe of blood vessels and eyes.

  “I will stop when you leave.”

  “I already ordered, fuckhead. I’ll leave when you stop sending your lame letters to my business.”

  “I don’t know what you’re referring to, but if you do not leave, I will be forced to call the police.”

  Hofspaur laughed derisively and pointed at Finch, who was trying to hide his face behind what remained of his green drink. “That,” he said, pointing at Finch, “is the police.”

  “Well, then the officer should be well versed that this is a private establishment and that we reserve the right to serve who we want to serve, and that in this case, we refuse to serve people who relocate men and women from the bounty of the earth into the wasteland of depravity and virtual death found on websites like smut.com and its affiliated websites.”

  Everyone turned to look at Finch, who, in turn, stared into the bottom of his glass. He became acutely aware of the empty space underneath his armpit where his holster usually would be.