The Dead Do Not Improve

by Jay Caspian Kang

  He said, “Oh, yeah?”

  “It’s the only part that’s not”—for the first time since she had materialized, she hesitated—“uh, that’s not sharp, you know? Like, every part of styling hair is so precise, so angled. You need a protractor these days to cut bangs, and every woman wants her hair straightened first, which makes things even harder because if you screw up once, it looks like someone took a hatchet to their head. It’s so nerve-racking, what with those metal scissors and the smell of burning hair and all the precision.”

  She lifted the towel from his hair and peered in, professionally, at his face. “I sense that I’m boring you. Here are your pants.”

  Looking down, he was confronted with his bulging erection. Lionface smirked, following his eyes, and said, “You have a truly abundant gift there. Your wife must be very happy.”

  In an attempt to force his will down to his cock, Finch frowned.

  She said, “Have you ever held anything in your hands and just known it was real and that the sensation you felt from the thing wasn’t just the ephemeral rush provided by words and images? Like it was a real thing?”

  Finch grunted.

  “I once had a pair of hiking boots like that. All-leather, none of this crappy synthetic crap, Vibram soles, and double-cushioned insides. Whenever I’d hike around the Headlands in those boots, I could feel that they were real things and not just the fluff from the assault of advertisers. Do you know what I’m talking about, Detective? The difference between the abundance of things and the false charm of words?”

  Once again, he grunted.

  “I can tell by the tan line on your neck that you are probably a surfer, no?”

  No surfer can ever resist the opportunity to identify himself. Finch managed a nod.

  “I am from San Clemente, and as a result, my brothers all surfed, and so I know a bit about it. I’m certain there are boards where you just can tell that someone put their love into shaping it and glassing it, but that there are also boards that are made entirely of fancy words and computer designs.”

  Finch nodded. He tried to say something, but his jaw was no longer cooperating.

  “Being abundance, Detective, simply means choosing to be those real things, those real boards, those real boots, and not buying into the absurdum of adjectives and computer designs. That’s all it is. It’s the feeling of surfing the real board and knowing you and it are one and that those sorts of things and feelings are not rare, but are simply hidden from us by those who wish to dominate through words.”

  Lionface touched his shoulder. His erection jumped. Finch sat up a bit straighter. Lionface smiled and revealed a mouthful of straight, white teeth.

  BY THE TIME Jim Kim pulled up in his new white Lexus, Finch’s faculties had mostly returned. His legs ached and his throat felt scraped out, but he knew where he was, at least. He had no idea what had happened. All he could think was that the cyberpunks had spiked the drinks in an effort to get back at Hofspaur, but then why cause a scene? And why had Hofspaur taken him to Being Abundance? As he creakily got into Kim’s car, Finch was sort of hoping that Kim would open his fat mouth and explain all.

  “What the fuck happened to you, Keanu?”

  “I can barely talk.”

  “You need to go to the hospital?”

  “Probably.”

  “Fuck me.”

  “I think I’ll be okay.”

  “The hot girl on the phone said you were allergic to pollen or something.”

  “How do you know?”

  “That she was hot? I don’t know, man, she sounded hot. You know how certain bitches just sound hot? I don’t know why I have to explain these things to you when you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  Finch shook his head. For a few blocks, they drove in silence. Kim turned up Franklin and started hauling up the hill toward Pacific Heights. Finch was too exhausted to ask where they were headed, so he just hung his head and stared at the floor mat.

  “This bitch is acting all holy here,” Kim said. It was his habit, when angry at Finch, to describe the situation to an invisible third party.

  “Let’s not talk about it right now.”

  “Okay.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Cleanup.”

  The Lexus crested California Street and barreled down toward the Marina. Although he had grown up just a few blocks from here, in a house with its own moneyed view, the sight of the hazy bay, with its clutter of sailboats and Alcatraz sitting small but significant in the center of it all, always made Finch pause and bask in an unabashed civic pride. Whenever he saw the bay or the Golden Gate Bridge swallowed up in fog, the grim-faced surfers crossing Great Highway on their way out to the shore pound at Ocean Beach, even the valley nerds wobbling along the 1 on their ridiculously efficient bicycles, he felt his hatreds soften, at least a little. It had always made sense to him that the silliest people would congregate in beautiful, inefficient spaces where they would be entertained by their surroundings but always have the built-in excuse to barely function.

  THEY PULLED UP to an unremarkable two-story in the Marina. Squad cars were parked at aggressive angles out front. A female officer was spooling yellow caution tape around a chewed-up, droopy madrone.

  Kim explained, “We got called here. Everyone else is out at some stupid function at the Giants game. We just have to clean up, then assign it to whoever’s next up.” He made eye contact with the female officer and gave her his usual salute—two hands on his belt buckle and a slight yet firm thrust of the hips. She rolled her eyes and motioned toward the front door.

  THE BODY WAS in the upstairs flat—a sunny railroad-style with a kitchen whose appliances all had European names, but not quite the right European names. The floor, at least the parts not covered in blood, was an off-cordovan. The greats of American outdoor photography hung on the wall. Given those details and the location, Finch did not even really have to see the body: white, mid-twenties to early thirties, gym-built torso, probably moved to the city after college, either in the Midwest or New England, divorced parents, house share up near Squaw Valley for the winters. Somewhere, clunking around in one of the closets, they would find a pair of skis. In the medicine cabinet, a vial of bad cocaine and a medicine bottle stuffed full of some annoyingly high-grade marijuana.

  Two young, twittery officers hovered above the body. Both wore white plastic gloves. Finch and Kim exchanged a not-so-private look of disgust. Without prompting, the officers began a tandem explanation of what they thought had happened.

  “We responded to the call. Landlord noticed the door was open, called up for some service issue. Toilet, I think.”

  “We get here, hysterical woman on the front lawn screaming in Chinese. She’s pointing at the door, so we head upstairs and find the body.”

  “He had his ID on him?”

  “Yeah, wallet with one hundred thirty-eight dollars in cash, credit cards, ID, everything. Found some marijuana paraphernalia in his pockets as well.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “William Curren. As far as we can tell, that ski pole’s the murder weapon. Blood on the end of it. The size of the, uh, puncture wounds on his neck matches up with a, uh, forced entry, you know, into his throat.”

  Kim growled. Neither officer noticed.

  “Yeah, so we did an eyeball approximation of the radius of the ski pole and approximated that the holes in his neck were a match. We scanned his, uh, parts, for traces of drugs, but there was too much, uh, obstructive blood.”

  Kim sighed and asked, “Anything else?”

  “His fingernails.”

  “Yes?”

  “They are clean.”

  The two officers went back downstairs to cordon off the block and greet the coming circus. The body was laid out on its back, arms and legs splayed out at angles that could have been produced only by a fall from over ten feet, meaning either his arms were broken or someone had purposely put him in this position. His eyes were
closed, as was his mouth. Everything—face, neck, cowboy shirt, jeans, Rod Lavers—was absolutely ruined with blood.

  Finch said it first. “Fuck.”

  “Why does he have his hands spread out like Saint Francis of Assisi?”

  The usual clutter of Finch’s brain cleared momentarily—he noticed, with unusual clarity, that his thoughts were moving a bit more slowly than usual. He suddenly knew what was wrong with Sarah, what he should say when he got home, but the knowing expressed itself more as a lightness in his heart rather than an actionable, worded thought. When he saw the blood—the sight of a body always was good for a little surge of adrenaline, but despite the concurrence of all this brain activity, each thought stayed separate, rational, and symmetrical—he said, “Whoever did this must have stayed with the body for a bit.”

  “I see six clean puncture holes all to the neck, but not much damage anywhere else. Doesn’t seem to be bleeding from the head.”

  “Yeah, what the fuck. Where’s this ski pole?”

  “Over by the fridge. It’s hardly bent at all.”

  “That’s a trekking pole.”

  “What?”

  “A trekking pole.”

  “What?”

  “It’s used for hiking, not skiing. It’s a bit more rigid to support your weight as you go down hills.”

  “Good lord.”

  “How the fuck did they get these holes so clean? And why didn’t this kid struggle?”

  “Those CSI-watching retards put the wallet back in his pocket.”

  “Jesus.”

  “All right. We have William Curren, account manager at getoverit.com, office phone 4156678282, cell phone blahblahblah. Credit cards, California driver’s license issued to this address, some cash, some other business cards, Caroline Sanders, associate at who cares, toothpick, no wallet photos, sandwich shop punch card …”

  “No bloody footprints.”

  “Noted. No black glove.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Fuck. Is it that time already?”

  “Well, I don’t think there’s much else we can do here.”

  “All right then, let’s go find the fucking Internet.”

  THEY WENT DOWN to Cozy’s Kafe on Lombard. Kim tried to commandeer the pay-per-use Internet terminal from the woman at the desk. After five minutes of haggling, she agreed to let him use it as long as he bought two sandwiches.

  William Curren had spread himself thick over the Internet. There was a Facebook account, a Myspace, a photo stream (90 percent of the photos involved outdoor activities), a Yelp account (reviews, mostly negative), and a blog entirely made up of links to eighties music videos. From his Yelp account, Kim and Finch learned Curren’s last meal had been at Sun Fat, an order-by-picture Chinese dive down on Jackson Street that doubled as a Pinoy karaoke bar. He complained about the service and said his barbecue pork bun was “perfectly adequate,” adding, “That’s not a compliment.” From Facebook, they learned that he had grown up around Boston, gone to Tufts, and moved out to the Bay Area to work for getoverit.com, which, as far as they could tell, was some sort of scam. They couldn’t learn much from the comments on his wall, only that they hated his friends. After more Googling, they found his thisiswhereIbe account, a service that allowed you to “check in” wherever you went. Over the past four days, William, who seemed to go by Bill, had checked into the Secret Smoke Spot on 4th and Minna, the Blasted Shields Pub on 5th and Mission, Blue Tangerine on 18th and Valencia (“The almond cheese on the nachos is bomb.”), Limon on 23rd and South Van Ness, Starbelly on Market and 16th (“service is slow, but hot!”), the 7-Eleven on Sanchez and 18th (“;-)”), and, finally, Sun Fat on Jackson.

  Kim said, “You know what? I’m glad this kid’s last meal was so shitty. You fucking white people. You go into a nice, cheap establishment where they let you get rice and chicken, hot and sour soup, and fucking egg rolls for four dollars and you complain because they won’t look you in the eye? And why did he write it as a fucking haiku?”

  “He put a picture of Lion-O from ThunderCats as his profile pic.”

  “Lion-O was black, don’t you think?”

  “Let’s not do this now.”

  “Okay, but think about it. He was like a big black gay man.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Who the fuck is Richard Feynman, and why are all these people quoting him?”

  They went on like this. Kim e-mailed some of the more pertinent info to Goldwyn back at the office. A waitress brought them their sandwiches and wondered why two officers of the law found it necessary to speak so vulgarly.

  After a few bites, Finch noticed that his thoughts had sped up a bit. But there was still the clarity, a deep blue, cold clarity. It felt strangely familiar.

  “Hey, Jim.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think I know what happened to me back in that restaurant.”

  With special attention paid to Lionface’s breasts, Finch described what had happened at the Being Abundance Cafeteria.

  Kim said, “That is fucked.”

  “Fucked.”

  “She was topless?”

  “Yes. And who has ever heard of a bee pollen allergy?”

  “Everything looked scaly?”

  “Yeah. And some of the light was bulging.”

  “Your pupils do look dilated, Keanu.”

  “Exactly. She looked like she was checking for that.”

  “Are you seeing things very clearly right now? Like, is there some calm clarity to your thoughts?”

  Finch burped. Kim’s mouth swung slightly open, and the hard, sarcastic gleam in his eyes softened a bit. Then he picked up his knife and sawed his sandwich in half.

  After chewing thoughtfully, he said, “Why would these weirdos drug a homicide detective?”

  “To be fair, it might have been for the other guy.”

  “Do you want to go down there, arrest them all?”

  “I don’t know.”

  For a second, because neither knew what to do, they stared at the computer screen.

  An e-mail popped up in Kim’s in-box. It was from Goldwyn.

  TO: James Kim

  FROM: Eric Goldwyn

  SUBJECT: getoverit.com

  Thought that website looked familiar. Went back over the Dolores Stone file. Turns out her neighbor, PHILIP KIM (your cousin?), works for the same site. Called up the office. They said he hasn’t been to work in nine days. Not sure if it’s relevant, but thought you might be interested.

  ALICE’S ADVENTURES THROUGH

  THE WINDSHIELD GLASS

  1. Taxidermy, the spot where I agreed to meet up with Performance Fleece, was a bar up on 22nd and Guerrero. Back when it was called The Liberties, I used to meet Adam there for drinks because none of the flabby old drunks at the bar reminded us of what we had left behind in New York. All traces of the old Irish pub had been entombed in a thick layer of staple-gunned fur—the heraldic shields that once hung above the top shelf of the bar had been replaced by Goodwill salvage stuffed animals.

  Performance Fleece was at a small, furry table near the back.

  She said, “Why did I want to see you?”

  “Hello.”

  The lines on her face had fractalized, deepened. Those cheeks, which had radiated with the pink good health of New England, now looked drained of any health or protest. I admit, it made me feel a bit empowered to be on the other side of one of those girls who so tightly, and effectively, guard the secrets of their makeup bags.

  Still, she smelled like freshly cut grass.

  I sat down, smiling stupidly. She clacked the salt and pepper shakers together. Pewter deer heads. I asked, “What are you drinking?”

  She shook her head, but then, miraculously, smiled. She said, “Whiskey and soda.”

  I went up to the bar and ordered two. The bartender looked me over and poured two doubles.

  We drank them down without saying much. The color—that good post–hocke
y practice color—flushed back into her face.

  “So,” I said, “what’s this about?”

  “I’m a direct person.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, I’ll just come out and say it, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “I left Mel.”

  2. There’s no need to detail a girl’s domestic misery in her own words, especially when those words are frazzled words, so for Performance Fleece’s sake, I’ll paraphrase. She and Mel had been having problems for quite some time. They had met as freshmen at Williams—he, the dark Italian star of the hockey team (her words), and she, the blue-blood field hockey star from Choate (her italics). Their relationship had taken on easy contours from the start. In a nice private-school way, she and Mel were well aligned and stayed so for years.

  Whenever she felt bored, she’d ask Mel to take her down to visit his family in Providence. There, she would sit down at one of those Italian feasts they show in those movies, with gigantic happy women (her words) who wore gold jewelry and drove American cars and men who smelled like trashy women. It was Mel’s family, more than Mel himself, that kept Performance Fleece around. She had always shown an interest in other cultures. (I snickered at this, but after she stabbed me in the back of the hand with a cocktail straw, I shut up.) No, not lame, like that. Not like those girls who travel abroad to Tibet or some fucked-up place and take 16-mm photos of poor children playing soccer, but more like I was interested in fucking a lot of different types of guys, like in middle school, I gave one of the METCO kids a blowjob after he got done with football practice. At Choate, I stole out of my dorm and let two of the Mexican guys who worked in the dining hall fondle and suck on my breasts, for like an hour, and rub me. Over the pants. (Again, her words. Note: longest sentence I had heard out of her. Plus, she giggled.)

  She did not know why she stayed with Mel for all those years. Maybe the stability of the logic behind their union helped her with the guilt she felt over her true inner slut. Or maybe she did love his family enough to lease out their son. Maybe Boston just didn’t make sense to her without Mel. They had the same friends, they ate at the same five restaurants, they drank at the same two bars, they shopped at the same supermarket, and both took the T to Downtown Crossing. Love and cities are always inextricably entwined. There’s no restaurant or corner store or run-down dive in any city that doesn’t double as a monument for a lost love. I think that’s why we always stop and stare whenever we come across a girl crying in public. We sense the imprint of a memory being pressed onto the sidewalk, onto the building contours, onto the names of the streets.