by Kirk Farber
I feel drunk.
Surprisingly, I quickly adapt to driving. The familiarity of the highways and exit signs puts me in a better state. Traffic seems to be flowing well, until I see a car pulled over on the right side of the highway with its hazards on. Everyone ahead of me taps their brakes to slow down and gawk instead of simply moving over to the left, as if they’ve never seen a car pulled over before.
“Don’t stop on the highway,” I say to the traffic, “just keep rolling.”
Eventually the congestion clears, and I find my way onto more comfortable back roads away from all the noise. I think about my recent journeys and consider what I’ve found. London, Paris, and Barcelona. Different people, language barriers, and blazing sun. Lots of strangers and unanswered questions. What kind of trip is that? What could Zoe have done there that would be so worth sending postcards about?
I open the window for some fresh air. The stars are out tonight, trying their best to shine through the haze of the spring humidity. Cassiopeia and the Big Dipper hang upside down in the sky. On the roadside ahead I spot a black-and-white animal. From my perspective, it looks like a miniature cow, but as I get closer, I see it’s a cat with Holstein markings. The cow-cat sits on the edge of the road, ready to cross once I’ve passed. And I wonder, how can animals survive so close to speeding cars? I think of Zoe and her fierce compassion for animals, especially the feral and abandoned ones. She would probably make me pull over and feed it or take it to a shelter. But I keep on driving.
The night feels suddenly cold, and the stripes flow past my car in the same steady rhythm, like time slipping away. Dash dash dash. One by one.
chapter 27
I’ve read that in Haiti, magic is a part of everyday life. Things happen because they do, and people know better than to try to explain it. Objects float against physical law and people know things they shouldn’t. Zombies roam the earth. Many have witnessed the zombies, and reported them to be oddly familiar. They are not the glassy-eyed, open-mouthed, moaning creatures of horror movies, but everyday people caught in a half-animated state—quiet, desperate beings who swirl around in an eddy in the river of life. A curse, some say. A zombie curse. I’ve read several magazine articles on it, and I’m a believer.
It’s a harder sell to my sister.
“You are not a zombie,” Natalie says emphatically. Her effort to whisper in her office phone sounds like foamy-mouthed madness. “You just got back from a nice cabin weekend away with friends. Aren’t you supposed to be relaxed and refreshed?”
“There is a condition,” I explain, “according to the Bizango secret societies, that is similar to a precancerous body state, only it’s more of a primer for zombieness, or zombiehood, whatever you might call it.”
Nat scoffs. “I wish I could go on a cabin weekend away with friends.”
“Are you saying there isn’t such a state?”
“No, there is certainly not,” she hisses.
“A precancerous condition? Are you sure?”
“Yes, one can be in a precancerous condition, Sid, but you don’t have cancer. We ran all those tests already, and your white blood cells are perfect. You don’t even have signs of an infection. I’m sorry to say, but you are dangerously healthy.”
I consider this, but MRIs and CATs and EKGs aren’t designed to pick up pre-zombiehood conditions. Maybe there is such a machine somewhere in the dark heart of Haiti, but I’ll need to do some more research.
“What about my genetic disposition for aneurysms?” I ask.
“What about it?”
“I could fall over tomorrow. Bam. Just like Mom.”
“And I could get struck by a bus.”
“But you’re not walking around with a genetic disposition to walk in front of buses, Natalie. You don’t walk in front of buses more than most people, putting yourself at greater risk than most people.” I feel my voice rising against her whisper-scream defense. “I don’t know that you even come in contact with buses, actually.”
“I don’t have time for this today.”
“When is the last time a bus rolled through your waiting room? I mean, really, of course you’re not going to get struck by one because the closest bus line is seven blocks from your office!” I loosen my grip on the phone, pull the hot receiver off my ear. I cool down while she mumbles something to her secretary.
“So what’s your point,” she says.
“Lousy metaphor.”
“Point taken. No more bus metaphors.”
“Don’t get funny with me, doctor.” She hates it when I call her doctor. “You know I’m right.”
“You and I came from the same gene pool, Sid.” I hate it when she says my name like that. “But there are no other family members with a history of aneurysm, and even if there were, the chance that you would develop the same thing Mom had is extremely low, due to your age alone. Just because Mom had an aneurysm doesn’t mean you’re going to have one. You may give me one, of course.”
I pace in the living room, switch the phone to my cold ear. Nat’s voice changes tone with the temperature. She sounds foreign, French maybe. I switch it back to the hot ear. I can’t get over the feeling that there’s something she’s not telling me.
“We should feel lucky she went so fast,” she says, “without any suffering.”
“You’re right.”
“Mom was a rare case.”
A rare case? That doesn’t sound good. I’ve heard that all great medical students go through a period of time when they believe they have all or most of the symptoms of the diseases they study. Natalie never believed she had any disease. Maybe I’d make a great physician.
“Mom had a fusiform cerebral aneurysm…” she explains.
“Well, that makes it all clear.”
“…and that type of aneurysm rarely ruptures.”
“If you say so,” I say.
“What happened to Mom was a freak accident.”
“Okay.”
“Are we good for now?” she asks.
“Yes, I’ll let you go then.”
“Great. Thanks,” she says, and hangs up.
Rare case, I think. Dangerously healthy. I rub my hot ear. The blood surges through my veins, over and around my eardrums. I listen closely for rare objects passing through my bloodstream: little freak accidents waiting to happen.
My watch seems to be ticking exceptionally loud, but it’s only an acoustical trick. The kitchen clock, bedroom clock, and my watch will on occasion tick at the exact same time, causing a resounding knocking that echoes through the walls and my head. It’s my telltale heart. And my heart says I’m late for some much-needed therapy.
The jets spray the bottom of my car with an impressive force. I drive slowly to allow the under-body a good rinse. I continue into the wheel guide; the tire drops in. The lights change from green to yellow to red, and the car tugs forward. A giant black robot arm comes alive, slides away from the wall and across the width of the car. The heart of the car wash pumps water and foam through the arteries along the robot arm until it can no longer take the pressure. Twenty-four valves simultaneously open and streams of soap shoot down across the hood. The first pass covers the left side with pink foam, and I’m already beginning to relax. I close my eyes and listen to the whirr-snap of the arm as it covers the rear window and makes its final turn to complete the first coat. Globs of foam slop over the windshield. Twenty seconds of pure bliss. I am relaxed and right with the world. Another coating will follow shortly, I know—the tri-color foam that acts as a cleaner and a shiner—but nothing can beat that first pink coat. I am totally entombed inside the car now, protected under a layer of candy froth, sheltered inside the cinder block building that rests beneath a swath of majestic maple trees.
chapter 28
This image is stuck in my mind: a glorious bloom of brain cancer squeezing my skull.
I sit in my dining room and try to focus on something tangible. Zero resting across the room. The smell of fresh-brewed co
ffee under my nose. It’s not working. Usually the car wash trips help, but today this nagging picture overrides the peace of the pink foam.
Like kudzu tendrils slowly crushing an old Southern mansion, the disease’s grip is slow and steady. And that wonderful and sickening lilac perfume lets me know it’s there, doing its magic. Nothing personal, just hungry, need more room, don’t I smell pretty?
I feel hot liquid scald my leg before I register the shattering sound. I’ve dropped my cup of coffee. I look down at the cracked mess—a broken relic at my feet, freshly left by someone other than myself, it seems. A clue to something, or a warning. People don’t go just dropping things, the warning says. You’re slipping, buddy. You are slip slidin’ away.
“Believe we’re gliding down the highway,” I sing to myself.
Zero barks.
“You know the nearer your destination—”
He barks again.
“What!” I yell back.
Zero stops. He’s not a barker, really. He’s waiting for something. I lean down from my chair to pick up the pieces of the shattered coffee mug. He comes over and licks my face.
“All right, you’ve got my attention. So?”
Zero laps up the coffee on the floor.
“Hey, watch out, you might cut yourself. Coffee’s not good for you anyway. No more coffee. I should take you to the vet one of these days.”
He sits back and groans.
We sit in silence for a while. He lets out a shuddering sigh, like he knows I’m going to leave again but he’s not sure for how long.
“Hey listen,” I tell him, “I’ve got good news.”
His ears perk up.
“I think I’m done with traveling for a while. I’m going to stick around.”
I reach down and pat him on the head. He seems pleased.
“I just wonder if I’ve been looking in the wrong place all along,” I say, and get up out of my chair.
chapter 29
The basement feels exceptionally musty tonight. Maybe it’s just my mood. I feel like I need a Ouija board or candles and incense to get this going. I’ve never conjured Mom up before; she’s always come to me. Although one might argue I’ve been conjuring her up this whole time.
I retrieve the dusty bottle of Bordeaux from underneath the stairs and set it up on the workbench. I clip a work lamp on a rafter and direct the light down at the bottle, interrogation-style. I look through the window well to see if any neighbors are watching, but only rocks and worms stare back at me. I pull up a chair and sit down.
“Mom,” I say to the bottle. No response. I clap twice, like the Clapper. “Mom,” I say louder. “It’s Sid. We need to talk.”
Again, no response, which is fine, I wasn’t expecting the bottle would dance across the table. It doesn’t really matter what level of poltergeist activity occurs. I need to say some things, so I start saying them. Maybe she’s listening.
“My dog, Zero, is probably my best friend,” I tell her. “He’s a big help.” I tell her how Natalie is pregnant now, and that she’s turning into an angry, impatient version of her former self; I tell her about the red eye in the giant humming CAT-scan machine and the car washes.
I pause. Deep breath. I ask her if Zoe is on the other side and why she might be playing such a cruel game with the postcards. No answer.
“And why a bottle of French wine?” I ask, and stand up. “Why not a Californian or Australian?” I point at the bottle accusingly. “What happened to good old-fashioned mysterious phone calls? You know, static on the line? Spooky whispering?”
I must be getting pretty worked up because my heart starts to race and the scent of lilacs begins to float through the basement—a cloud of weighty perfume. I feel a chill in the air as the flowers fill my head. Mom pushes through then, a hushed voice, like I’ve awakened her from a nap.
“What are you saying?” she asks, her voice swirly and distant. “What are you saying to me?”
The work lamp suddenly glows brighter, infused with the new energy in the room. I squint under the hot light. My breathing labors, and I feel my balance washing out, my legs tingling, horizons tilting.
Her voice is loud, immediate, demanding: “What are you trying to say?!”
The room goes dark.
chapter 30
“Exhaustion,” Dr. Singh says, avoiding eye contact. He dots i’s on his notepad, underlines a few words. He scribbles away, as if working out a complicated math problem, possibly constructing theorems that prove his patients aren’t as important as he is. “You need rest,” he concludes.
I don’t care for the smell of this place—too much astringent and latex. “I collapse and all you can say is I need rest?”
Dr. Singh looks up briefly, about to explain himself, then continues writing. I’m not thrilled with his diagnosis, but I’m happy I managed to wake up unharmed in the basement and had enough sense to see my doctor without Natalie’s assistance.
Dr. Singh finally takes a moment from his jotting. He studies me with an expression of gentle contempt. “The body gets its rest one way or another. You weren’t giving it any, so it took it from you. Luckily, you weren’t driving.”
“What about my medical history?” I ask, and raise a finger to accentuate my point, but it has no effect. He dismisses my hypothesis with a quick head-shake.
“Your lab work is fine. But your electrolytes were probably down due to dehydration, and so you felt a lack of concentration, overwhelming tiredness.” He touches his hands together, open-faced, giving me a gift, the answer to this simple problem: “Exhaustion.” He plops down on a little four-wheeled stool to get on my level, and crosses his arms. “When is the last time you took a vacation?”
I open my mouth to explain about vacations and he cuts me off.
“Not a sightseeing vacation. That’s work. I mean relaxing. Sitting on a beach for a week, sipping mai tais. Not worrying. Not working. Not exhausting yourself.”
He puts extra emphasis on the word exhausting, perhaps so I’ll realize that this word and my diagnosis might be somehow related. I decide not to tell him about my recent twenty-five-lap adventure through Soapy Sudz.
“Five days,” he declares. “No work.” He holds up his right hand and wiggles all five fingers. “Relax. Enjoy something. And it’s best if you don’t drink alcohol. Ignore my mai tai suggestion. Although when you’re back in good health you might try a drink or two. I recommend red wine. It’s great for your heart.”
Suddenly Dr. Singh is caught up in a flurry of furious writing and violent i-dotting, the pen on the verge of ripping the paper. He fires off machine gun t-crossings, his brow furrowed hard. Deep creases cut into his forehead, subtle drops of moisture ride his lip. With an aggressive swoop-tap-tap and a loud rip, he hands me the yellow paper. “Remember, everything in moderation,” he says, and quickly exits.
I look at the illegible mess of my prescription. It’s strangely enticing. I know the only one who can read it is Candyce, the girl who sometimes works the front desk and is here today, but she may want to punch me in the stomach again after last month’s incident.
chapter 31
The thing with Candyce wasn’t entirely my fault. The whole date, our dinner together, it was really just a misunderstanding. I met her at Dr. Singh’s office before all this CAT-scan business. I’d come after work to get a strange pain in my neck checked out. She seemed so harmless sitting behind her desk, answering calls with her velvet phone voice, dutifully marking down appointments. She was so happy to be busy. I was feeling pretty anxious about my neck, and this nice girl with a dyed blue streak in her hair kept smiling at me between phone calls. And it was soothing. So when I finished with Dr. Singh and got his prescriptions, this same nice girl translated his handwriting for me and answered all my questions about the medicine I’d been prescribed, and assured me I’d be okay. I’d felt good about my visit; she said I was going to be fine.
As I left the building, the sun was low in the sky. The end of
another day without Zoe. And then I heard footsteps sneak up behind me and there was Candyce, smiling at me again. She assured me one more time I’d be fine, and asked if I wanted to get something to eat. And I was feeling so fine and assured that I agreed without realizing I’d agreed, hadn’t even thought about it really, what all the implications might be. I was feeling good about my visit, and when she mentioned food, I realized that yes, I was hungry after being so worried all day. So I agreed to go to dinner. This was officially our first date, according to Candyce, or she wouldn’t have been so upset, I’m sure of it.
As we walked downtown toward the restaurants, she started joking about how it was our first date and how romantic it was, then laughed at me and punched my shoulder when she saw my confused reaction, and we both laughed and it was all just a little uneven from the get-go.
We stopped at a sub shop. I thought this was a safe choice because to me, sub shop says extremely casual dining. She insisted on paying. I insisted we go Dutch. How cute, she said, our first date is Dutch, and then she laid on more of the romantic date business, making sure to roll her eyes so I knew she was kidding.
And we shared small talk, just the basics—if we liked our jobs, our favorite movies, the weather—and I could tell by the way she smiled that she liked me quite a bit, at least quite a bit more than I liked her. I mean, she’s really sweet and cute, and like I said, she definitely put me at ease back at the doctor’s office. She was very gracious. But then as we were sitting there and things seemed to be mellowing out, she gave me this strange look, like she might burst. She pressed her lips together so they formed a thin white line, and she started to look around as if something needed to exit her body and she needed a target. Then she looked directly at me. And sure enough, she opened her mouth and out came everything: a million words she could not stop.
