Halloween

by Paula Guran

  Or used to get—Edwin had managed to screw that up as well. To keep the money from dwindling away quite so fast, what he’d gotten after his dad died, he’d taken on a contract from the local animal shelter, to take care of the gassed dogs and cats, the ones too ugly or old or mean to get adopted out in ninety days. An easy gig, and reliable—the world never seemed to run out of stiff, dead little corpses—but Edwin hadn’t been picky enough about raking out the ashes and the crumbly charred bits from the cooling racks. Edwin had still gotten some human-type jobs, family leftovers from his father and grandfather running the place, and some old widow had opened up the canister that nothing but her husband’s remains was supposed to be in, and had found the top half of a blackened kitten skull looking back all hollow-eyed at her. Things like that were bad for business, word-of-mouth-wise. Even the animal shelter had unplugged itself from Edwin, and then the state had revoked the cremation license, and now the oven also wasn’t working, or Edwin hadn’t paid the gas bill or something like that. Edwin had told him what the deal was, but he hadn’t really paid attention.

  “I don’t get it.” He pointed down the ticking hallway, toward the prep room. “Why do they keep dropping jobs off here, anyway?”

  “Hey.” Edwin was sensitive about some things. “This is still an ongoing business, you know. Mortenson’s gets booked up sometimes. They’re not that big.” That was the name of the other place, the nicer one. “So I can take in jobs, get ’em ready, then send ’em over there. Split the fees. Works for them, works for us. This is how you get paid, right?”

  Barely, he thought. Hard to figure that the other funeral parlor did a fifty-fifty with Edwin, since they would do all the flowers and the setting up of the casket in the viewing room, the hearse and the graveside services, all of that. The actual getting the body into the ground. What would they pay Edwin for providing a slab-tabled waiting room? Not much. So no wonder that the most he got from Edwin, for driving the van back and forth, was a ten-dollar bill or a couple of fives. Only this time, there was no van.

  “Actually,” he mused aloud, “you should pay me more for this one. If I were to do it at all. Since I’d be providing the wheels.”

  “How do you figure that?” Impatience lit Edwin’s pudgy face even brighter and shinier. “Gas is cheaper for a motorcycle than a van. Even a hopped-up monster like yours.”

  If he hadn’t finished off the six-pack, back at the motorheads’ place, he might have been able to come up with an argument. It’s my gas, he thought. I paid for it. But Edwin had already steered him down the hallway, past the clocks, and right outside the prep room door.

  “Just do it, okay?” Edwin pushed the door open and reached in to fumble for the light switch. “We’ll work out the details later.”

  Edwin had another sideline to get by with, dealing cigarettes dipped in formaldehyde, the being something he had gallon jugs of. The customers at the funeral parlor’s back door were all would-be hoody teenagers, slouching and mumbling. Their preferred brands seemed to be Marlboros and those cheesy American Spirits from the Seven-Eleven. Edwin fired one up, puffed, then handed it to him. “Just to calm you down.”

  It had the opposite effect, as usual. The chemical smoke clenched his jaw vise-tight, the edges of the contracting world burnt red. He exhaled and followed Edwin inside the prep room.

  “This better not be a bag job.” He handed the dip back to Edwin. “Like that one that got hit by the train. That sucked.”

  “All in one piece.” Edwin pulled the sheet off. “Looks like she’s sleeping.”

  He looked down at what lay on the table, then shook his head. “You sonuvabitch.” His fist was ready to pop Edwin. “This is not right.”

  “For Christ’s sake. Now what’s the matter?”

  “What’s the matter? Are you kidding?” The table’s cold stainless-steel edge was right at his hip as he gestured. “I dated her.”

  “How long?”

  He thought about it. “Four years. Practically.”

  Edwin took another hit, then snuffed the dip between his thumb and forefinger. “Not exactly being married, is it?”

  “We lived together. A little while, at least.”

  “Like I said. Come on, let’s not make a big production about this. Let’s get her over to Mortenson’s, let’s get paid, let’s get you paid. Done deal.”

  He turned back toward the table. At least she was dressed; that much was a comfort. She had on her usual faded jeans, with a rip across the right knee, and a sweatshirt he remembered buying her, back when they’d been an item. The sweatshirt said UNLV across her breasts. For some reason, she’d had a thing about college basketball, even though they’d never gone to a game. There was a cardboard box full of other Rebels junk, sweats and T-shirts and caps, that she’d left when she moved out of his apartment. Plenty of times, he’d come home drunk and lonely and horny, and he’d pull the box out of the closet, kneel down and bury his face in its fleecy contents, lifting out the tangled sweatshirts and inhaling the faded, mingled scent of her sweat and Nordstrom’s cosmetics counter perfumes, more stuff that he’d bought, usually around Christmastime. He still kept in his wallet the list she’d written out for him, the stuff she wore. Which meant that now, every time he opened it up to pay for a drink, he’d catch a glimpse of the little folded scrap of paper tucked in there, and his equally frayed heart would step hesitantly through its next couple of beats, until the wallet was safely tucked in his back pocket again and he was recovered enough to continue drinking. Which helped. Most of the time.

  He didn’t have to ask how she’d wound up here. She’d had bad habits, mainly the drinking also, back when they’d been hooked up. But he’d heard they had gotten worse after the split-up. He had mixed feelings about that. On one hand, there was a certain satisfaction in knowing that she was as screwed up about him as he was about her. On the other, a certain pang that came with the thought of her heart wheezing to a stop under the load of some cheap street crap.

  Which was apparently what had happened. He could tell. Whatever prep work Edwin had done, it wasn’t enough to hide the blue flush under her jawline. He’d had buddies go that way, and they’d all had that delicate Easter egg color beneath the skin.

  “So you’re gonna do it, right? Don’t be a schmuck. Think about her. For once. If you don’t take her over to Mortenson’s, I’ll have to dump her in a wheelbarrow and take her over there myself.”

  “Yeah, like that’s gonna happen.” He knew it wouldn’t; Edwin got winded just heading upstairs to get another drink. “This is gonna be double.”

  “Fine. You got me in a jam. Just do it, okay?”

  It struck him that maybe this was some elaborate joke on Edwin’s part. What would the punchline be? Her sitting up on the table, opening her eyes and flashing her old wicked smile at him?

  I wish. That was something else that wasn’t going to happen.

  “Exactly how do you propose I’m gonna get this done?” He knew from previous jobs that she wouldn’t be stiff anymore. She didn’t even smell stiff. “Maybe I could sling her over the back of the bike and bungee her down. Or maybe across the front fender, like those guys who go out deerhunting with their pickup trucks.” He nodded. “Yeah, just strap her right on there. Who’ll notice?” The dip load in his brain talked for him. “Maybe we could make a set of antlers for her out of some coat-hangers.”

  “Look,” said Edwin, “you don’t have to get all pissy about this. I’m the one doing you a favor, remember? I thought of you because you’re always going on about how you need the money.”

  Which was true. He nodded again, deflated. “All right. So what exactly did you have in mind?”

  Edwin had already thought it through. He pulled the handcuffs out of his jacket pocket and held them up. “These’ll do the trick. We just sit her on the bike behind you, throw her arms around your chest, clip these on her wrists and you’re all set. Anybody sees you, just another couple cruising along. Young love.”


  “No way. She never liked to ride bitch.” He’d found that out after he’d already pulled the stock seat off the ’Busa and put on a Corbin pillion for her. “She always wanted her own scoot. Remember, I was gonna buy her that Sportster? The powder blue one.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Edwin gave him a wearied look. “It’s not as if she’s in a position to complain about it, is she?”

  The guy had a point there.

  Took a lot of wrestling—for which Edwin was no frickin’ use—but he finally got on the road. With her.

  He rolled on the throttle, in the dark, kicking it up from fifth to sixth gear as the single lane straightened out. The chill of her bloodless hands, icy as the links of the handcuffs, seeped through his leather jacket and into his heart.

  He stayed off Boulder Highway and the bigger, brighter main streets, even though it meant racking up extra miles. There was a helmet law in this state, though he’d never heard of the cops enforcing it. Or anything else for that matter—you’d have to shoot the mayor to get pulled over in this town.

  Still, just his luck, the one time some black-’n’-white woke up, to get nailed with a corpse on back of the ’Busa. Cruel bastards to do it, though. He could see, without looking back over his shoulder, how her hair would be streaming in the wind, a tangling flag the color of night. With her pale cheek against his neck, she’d look as though she were dreaming of pure velocity, the destination that rushed just as fast to meet you, always right at the headlight’s limit.

  And if he closed his own eyes, as if he were sharing the same furious pillow of air with her . . .

  Not a good idea. He didn’t even see the patch of gravel, dropped on the asphalt by some construction truck. His eyes snapped open when the rear wheel started to skid out from beneath him. He yanked the ’Busa straight from the curve he’d banked into. The bike felt awkward and top-heavy with her weight perched a couple inches higher than his own. He steered into the skid, wrestling the bike back under control, his knee clearing the guardrail as he trod down on the the rear brake.

  That all took about one second. But that was enough to have shifted his cold passenger around on the seat behind him. The handcuffs rode up under his armpit, her face with its closed, sleeping eyes no longer close to his ear but now pushed into the opposite sleeve of his jacket, down below his shoulder. One of the boots that Edwin had worked back onto her ivory, blue-nailed feet had popped loose from the rear peg. Her denim-clad leg trailed behind the bike, the boot’s stacked heel skittering on the road. The body slewed around even more as he squeezed the front brake tight. By the time he brought the ’Busa to a halt, she was almost perpendicular on the seat behind him, her hair dangerously close to snagging in the wheel’s hub.

  “God damn.” Edwin and his stupid ideas—this whole job was becoming more of an annoyance than it was worth. He levered the kickstand down and leaned the bike’s weight onto it. Her hair swept a circle in the roadside debris. He was annoyed at her as well. If she had still been alive, he would have figured she was doing it on purpose. Drunk and screwing around again. Her weight toppled him over as he swung his own leg off the bike.

  Now she was underneath him. As though she had brought him down in a wrestling hold—back when they had lived together, he had taught her a couple of moves he remembered from the junior varsity squad. Above him, the stars of the desert sky spun, wobbled, then held in place. If he rolled his eyes back, he could just see her face, somewhere by his ribs. If she had opened her eyes, she could’ve seen the stars, too.

  His thin gloves scuffed in the sharp-edged rocks as he rolled onto his hands and knees, pulling her up on top of himself. That much effort winded him. It wasn’t that she was so heavy, but every part of her seemed to have cooked up its own escape plan, as though none of her wanted to get dumped off at another funeral parlor. Her legs sprawled on his other side, the boots twisting at the ankles.

  The handcuffs had been an even dumber idea. Edwin probably got some thrill out of the notion. It would’ve worked better if they had dug up a roll of duct tape and strapped her tight to his body. This way, she had just enough of a hold on him to be a nuisance. In that, not much had changed from when she had been alive. He rooted around in his jacket pocket for the key; couldn’t find it. It must’ve popped out, somewhere on the ground.

  He tried standing up, and couldn’t make it. He toppled forward and grabbed the bike to keep his balance. The near-vertical angle rolled her weight forward, the handcuffs sliding onto his shoulderblade, her head lolling in front of him. The bike gave way, the kickstand scything through the loose dirt. The hot engine burned through his trouser knee as he fell.

  The three of them—corpse, motorcycle and its rider—hit the side of the road hard. He could smell gasoline leaking from the tank’s filler cap. The links of the handcuffs gouged the middle of his spine. She was sandwiched between him and the toppled bike, her face upturned toward him, as though waiting for a kiss, one denimed leg wedged into his groin.

  He pushed himself away from the bike, dragging her up with him. The handcuffs slithered down to the small of his back as he managed to stand upright at last. That brought her face down to his belt level.

  Well, that’s sweet. He stroked her tangled, dusty hair back from her brow. Just like old times. Memory tripped through his head, strong enough to screw him up worse.

  “Come on,” he spoke aloud. “Nice and all, but we gotta get going.”

  He reached down, grabbed her above the elbows and lifted. She only came up a few inches before he realized he was pulling up his trousers as well, the frayed denim cuffs sliding above the tops of his own boots.

  “What the—” He looked down. His eyes had adjusted enough to the slivered moonlight, that he could see her hair had snagged in the trousers’ zip.

  It must’ve happened while he and the corpse had been wrestling on top of the fallen motorcycle. Every stupid, annoying thing was happening tonight. That brought back memories as well.

  Her cold face was caught so close to him, he couldn’t even slide his hands down between her cheek and the front of the trousers. Not without undoing his buckle first; the loose ends of his belt flapped down beside her shoulders. He sucked in his gut and managed—barely—to pinch the zipper’s metal tag. “Damn,” he muttered. “Come on, you bastard.” Half-inch by reluctant half-inch, he worked the zipper open, his knuckles chilled against her brow. Loosened, the trousers slid partway down his hips.

  The world lit up. Headlight beams raked across him, a car rounding the road’s curve. He shielded his eyes from the probing glare. His shadow, and hers, spilled back across the empty landscape.

  He could see the silhouettes of the people inside. The driver, his wife beside him, a couple of little kids in the backseat, their faces pugnosing against the side windows as they got a better look. He glanced down and saw how perfectly the white, shifting light caught her profile. Or at least the part of it that wasn’t shadowed by his open fly.

  Then the headlight beams swung away from him and down the length of road farther on. The car was right next to him; he could have let go of her arm and rubbed his hand across the car’s flank as it sped past. Close enough that the people in the car didn’t need the headlights to see what was going on, or think they saw. There was enough moonlight to glisten on the handcuffs’ links as the driver looked up to his rear-view mirror, the wife and kids gaping through the rear window.

  My life’s complete now. He had been there when some tourist yokels from Idaho or some other numb-nut locale had caught a glimpse of another world, where other stuff happened. Like the tightly rolled-up windows of their rental car had been the inch-thick glass of some darkened aquarium, that you could push your nose up hard against and witness sharks copulating with jellyfish, all blurry and wet. It would give them something to talk about when they got back to Boise, especially the bit about the poor ravaged girl being handcuffed around the guy’s waist.

  Two streaks of red pulsed down the asphalt. The car had hit i
ts brakes. Worse; he turned, looked over his shoulder and saw another red light come on, above the car. It flashed and wavered, with blue-white strobes on either side. They weren’t tourists from out of state; he saw that now. He watched as a Metro patrol car threw a U-turn, one front wheel crunching across the gravel, then bouncing the suspension as it climbed back onto the road.

  “Shit.” The headlights pinned him again. He looked down and saw, as if for the first time, how luminous pale her skin was. They could tell, he thought in dismay. One thing to be spotted getting skulled on the side of the road, even with the handcuffs involved—that was probably happening all over this town at any given moment, not worth the police’s attention. But with a corpse—was that a felony or just a misdemeanor? It didn’t matter, what with him still being on parole for things he couldn’t even remember when he was straight.

  He lifted harder this time, his hands clamped to her rib cage, hard enough to snap free a lock of her hair and leave it tangled in his zipper. Her arms still encircled him; that actually made it easier to sling her against one hip, his other hand tugging his trousers back in place. The difficult part was getting the bike upright again, but somehow he managed, even as the patrol car’s siren wailed closer. Red flashes bounced off the tank and the inside of the windscreen, as he lugged her onto the seat behind him, the cuffs slipping across the front of his jacket once more.

  The ’Busa coughed to life. As he kicked it down to first and let off the clutch, the cop car slewed a yard in front of him, spattering road grit against the front fender. He yanked the bike hard to the right, bootsole scraping the asphalt, then wrenched it straight again, pouring on the throttle. Something loose—maybe her boot?—clipped the patrol car’s taillight as he jammed past.

  He was already into fourth, redlining the tach, by the time he heard the siren coming up behind him. Fifth, and the yowl faded for a moment, then just as loud again as the driver cop stood on the accelerator pedal. Hitting the nitrous button wouldn’t do him any good. The road was too straight; if they had been up in the mountains with some tight twisties to slalom through, he could’ve left the cops way behind. Out here in the flat desert, though, they could just keep hammering on top of him, long after the nitrous canister was exhausted, until he either gave up or sliced a curve’s guardrail too close. The first would leave him on the ground, but alive at least, with a tactical boot on his throat and a two-handed forty-four pointed between his eyes. The second would probably leave two corpses on the ground, one freshly bleeding from the impact.