Who’s That Girl?

by Celia Hayes

  *

  “Small sacrifices? Did you say small sacrifices? Not eating sweet food after six o’clock is a small sacrifice! Wearing a tie on Sundays is a small sacrifice!” Brian cries, while he follows him around the room on his swivel chair. “Going to the urologist’s is a…” he ponders for a few seconds and adds: “Okay, that’s a big sacrifice, but a necessary one!” he specifies solemnly. “But not sleeping with anyone for three months? That’s just plain sadism.”

  It’s poker night and they’re at Dave’s place. These occasions are men only: each of them bring a six pack of beer and they usually watch NBC Sports while playing and making bad jokes, smoking cigars and complaining about the referees. But not tonight.

  There was a sudden change of plan, and now it’s just the two of them, alone in what Dave calls ‘The Bunker’, an apartment on the sixth floor of a smart little building on 36th Street. It’s hardly bigger than a two room apartment and he found it by chance, while he was sitting browsing the ads in a bar not far from The Chronicle’s offices. He didn’t read the ad with much interest at first, but he had soon found himself obsessed by that apartment. He managed to visit it twice in a week, get hold of the plans and find an interior designer who would take care of the furniture and decoration. He got the keys and even had his name on the intercom after only a month.

  The place had originally been an accountant’s office, which had then become home to a pharmaceutical rep and now, after complete refurbishment, it had turned into an elegant bachelor pad for relaxed evenings, equipped with all mod cons and was the perfect place to escape from frantic daily city life.

  This is the place where Dave spends his Saturday nights and where every single detail, from the adjustable lights to the dark curtains, is meant to create the right atmosphere for him to realise his wildest fantasies. He would never give up even one of the bottles of perfumed oil he keeps in his apartment, but right now he’s dragging away big black trash bags crammed with anything that might remind him of the existence of women. He’s getting rid of the lot and he has no intention of changing his mind. He’s throwing away all the magazines, bath salts and bottles of Moët & Chandon and trying not to pay attention to the annoying voice in his head that for the last few days has been shouting “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I’ve made my mind up and I’m not going back.”

  “Dave! It’s three months!”

  “Yeah, Brian – three months,” he replies mockingly to his friend. “It’s not ten years, it’s just three short months out of my entire life.”

  “Dave, three months might not be too long for me but it definitely is for you. And come to think of it, it would be long even for me, and I am certainly not you.”

  “What do you mean? What kind of guy do you think I am?” he says, raising his eyes towards his friend, while taking a bottle of stimulating coconut gel from the coffee table.

  “Well…” Brian mutters before catching sight of the gel. Dave follows his friend’s eyes and realises what he’s holding in his hand. He looks at it in disapproval and says, “Whatever, it doesn’t matter. From now on, that is a closed chapter.” And he throws the bottle in the trash.

  “Okay, but please explain to me why you came here, instead of staying in your own home. I mean, you want to steer clear of women, so you move here? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “I need peace and quiet, and this is where I can find it. Anyway, think about it: nobody would ever try and look for me up here in Nob Hill, because everybody knows I never sleep here.”

  “I understand, but I seriously doubt that you’d be in danger of finding a line of ex-girlfriends waiting for you on the front lawn anyway. Come on, man, you’re being paranoid.”

  “Better safe than sorry,” he replies. “And anyway, it only takes me about twenty minutes to reach the office from here, and that means that I consume less time and money and have fewer chances to get… distracted. Let’s be honest: what I need to do right now is think about my career. I can’t just rely on luck any more,” he says, trying to convince himself more than his actual audience – which is Brian and a few reproductions of modern art.

  “Look, I don’t know what to think about all this… No, wait,” Brian interrupts him, leaping from his chair in horror. “What are you doing? You’re not seriously thinking about throwing Onky away, are you?” he cries, snatching from Dave’s hands a strange wooden reproduction of some weird, unknown pre-Columbian fertility deity and hugging it to his chest.

  Dave grabs it back and pushes him away. “Cut it out, Brian!” Then he turns to the statue and says: “I’m sorry, Onky, but you’ve been fired.”

  He throws the statue away without a second thought. “You’re breaking my heart. You know that, right?” Brian mutters, pointing accusingly at Dave. “You just killed the very spirit of this house and one of the most important things in our friendship with it. We shared our Playboys for twenty-two years – doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  “Shit! I nearly forgot the most important thing of all.”

  “What is that?”

  He goes over to his bookshelf, pulls open a couple of drawers and starts searching amongst documents, empty CD cases and other random stuff that’s inside. He’s sure he put it there, but he can’t find it any more. “Come on, I know you’re here…” he murmurs to himself while digging around in dusty pieces of paper. He doesn’t usually keep anything personal in the house on Pacific Avenue, but there are a few things that he prefers not to have around at home. It’s nothing really important, but it’s always better to be discreet when you have a lifestyle like his. Nobody has ever searched his stuff, but he doesn’t want to run any pointless risks.

  “Ha!” he exclaims victoriously when he sees the worn corners of a little red phone book. It’s small and cheap, one of those phone books that you can easily find in any thrift store, and it looks like it’s ready to be thrown away, but as soon as Brian sees it, he goes pale. “No!”

  “I have to.”

  “No, you don’t. You can’t throw it away!”

  “I have to,” replies Dave inflexibly, waving it under his friend’s nose.

  “No!” Brian complains, while reaching out both hands to him. “There are all the numbers of the Playmates 2000 to 2005 in there! Can’t you remember how hard it was for us to get hold of them?” he asks between sobs.

  “You mean how hard it was for me,” Dave corrects him.

  “Right, and now do you really want to throw away the fruit of all that hard work? Don’t you have any pity? I can’t take this, my heart isn’t strong enough,” he moans, grasping at his chest. “I’m almost forty, do you know what the chances are of someone my age surviving a heart attack?” He throws himself desperately at Dave. “I’ll pay you, but please don’t destroy that phone book. Where will all those poor bunny girls go when they need shelter?”

  “Not to your house, that’s for sure. Come on, deal with it,” he says, pushing him away with a smile. “What would you do if you had one of Playboy’s ‘bunny girls’ number anyway? If Katy found it, you’d end up in a wheelchair for the rest of your life,” he says, going over to the trash can to eliminate that link with the old Dave, that reckless guy who almost destroyed all his hard work and reputation.

  “You’ve got the wrong idea, I don’t want anybody’s number,” says Brian, trying pull himself back together. “I’m out of the game anyway.”

  “So why the hell are you kicking up such a stink about me throwing everything away?”

  “Because you’re like a brother to me. A rich, buff brother with no serious commitments. Knowing that you were out there having fun almost made married life bearable,” he sighs.

  “Don’t worry, Brian. I’ll be back to my regular life in three months,” he reassures his friend, patting his shoulders. “And when I am, I promise you that I’m going to do my best to make your marriage the happiest one in history!”

  “Yeah, I’m sure you will,” Brian jokes.

  A
t that moment, a phone starts ringing.

  “Is it yours?” Dave asks.

  “No, mine’s dead, the battery’s flat – it must be yours.”

  Dave points to the jacket hanging on the back of a chair by the table, where he put it when he arrived. Something is flashing in its pocket. “Who the hell can be calling me at this time?”

  “You should turn it off now and again…”

  “A journalist never switches off his phone, Brian!” retorts Dave, retrieving his phone. It’s been a tough day, but all in all he’s managed to keep calm, until now at least. But one quick glance at the screen is enough to spoil his mood and make him feel utterly depressed and unable to face any difficulty. “No! Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  “Who is it?” asks Brian from the other side of the room, shocked by his extreme reaction. Dave was completely calm a moment before and now he’s pacing back and forth and cussing the whole universe.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  “Dave?”

  “Fuck!” he repeats, running his fingers through his hair.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “Simone.”

  “What?”

  “It’s Simone!” He repeats, as though that were enough to explain his behaviour.

  “Who? The dancer from Las Vegas?”

  “No, that’s Mary. This is Simone, the air hostess from New York.”

  “Let me guess,” interrupts Brian, holding up his hand and closing his eyes like a mind reader. “Let me see if I can imagine her correctly… So, leather upholstery,” he says, mimicking the shape of a curvy woman with his hands. “Small front airbags, shapely bumper,” he continues whilst biting his lips. “It’s a sports model, right? What colour? Blue? Nah, maybe white? Or chrome red?”

  “Yes, exactly,” confirms Dave with a grim smirk, while he looks at his phone. “Damn it all to hell!”

  He hadn’t foreseen this. He’s barely begun his three months and he’s already thinking of giving in.

  Maybe he could just… No, he mustn’t! “No exceptions, no exceptions,” he repeats to himself as he tries not to answer the call.

  “Hey,” says Brian, aware of his friend’s frustration, “come on, it’s just one night,” he says in a sympathetic tone. “This will help you say goodbye to Onky in a more honourable way. It’s just for one evening, nobody would know about it. Starting from tomorrow, you can forget that you even have a dick, but go and have fun, at least tonight!”

  “I don’t know, you might be right. And she doesn’t even live here…” says Dave, trying not to show too much enthusiasm for the idea.

  “That’s what I’m saying!”

  “She doesn’t usually stay in town longer than three or four hours. I’m sure she’ll be flying back to Moscow before midnight,” he says, checking the time.

  “Great! You can go and get her and take her back after a couple of hours. It’s perfect.”

  “Hmm…” Dave finally turns to look at Brian, as if he’s hoping for a sign. He tries to think of all the pros and cons. And the pros seem to outnumber the cons… “Brian, get the hell out of here.”

  “Yeah, that’s the Dave I like to see – straight to the basket!”

  “Yes, sure,” mumbles Dave, feeling defeated as he grabs his stuff without even looking at his friend. “I think I should be back in less than half an hour,” he says, thinking aloud while he looks for his car keys. “And, Brian, could you…” he says on his way towards the door, gesturing at the trash lying on the carpet.

  “This stuff?” Brian asks, knowing what his friend is trying to say.

  “Yeah. I mean…” Dave stammers in embarrassment.

  “Yeah, no problem. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”

  “Thanks. It’s just that otherwise I won’t make it on time,” he says whilst nervously checking his Rolex again.

  “Sure, off you go now.”

  “I’m going, I’m going…” he says once he’s finally in the hall. He barely says goodbye – he doesn’t really need to be polite with Brian, they’ve known each other forever and a simple gesture is enough for them to understand what the other means. He turns to check the living room one last time to make sure everything is in order and then disappears, slamming the door. Brian suddenly finds himself alone, but he doesn’t mind. He starts roaming around the apartment with an ambiguous smile on his face, enjoying the temporary silence and mentally organising the rest of his evening. He could go to the bar, or he could surprise Katy by coming home with take-out from the Chinese. Why not? He already knows what he’s going to order: two plates of chicken with almonds and some fried noodles. But before enjoying those delicacies, he needs to do something. He pulls the fertility statue out of the trash bag and puts it back in its place on the table by the sofa.

  “Welcome back, Mr Onky,” he greets him fondly. “You’ve just been reinstated. Let’s consider this a fresh start, huh?”

  Once he decides that there’s nothing else he needs to do, he leaves, taking the trash with him. He makes sure that his keys are in his pockets and prepares to head home. He picks up his jacket from the sofa and just when he’s about to open the door Dave reappears, holding some keys in his hand. He looks at them in amusement. “Did you really think you could fool me?”

  Brian burst into laughter. “I almost did, though! Almost!”

  “And you thought it would be that easy, right?”

  “I am going to win that hundred dollars, Dave. It’s already mine.”

  “You’re delusional.”

  “We’ll see!”

  “I’ll take a cheque.”

  “You’ll last a week. Tops.”

  Chapter 9

  Corpses for Sale

  “And are you planning to carry on working in the burial services industry?” I ask him, while staring at the floor as if it was the most interesting thing about the situation. Since I arrived, Mr Murphy hasn’t stopped telling me about the dozens of aspects of his job of which I was previously totally ignorant, and describing them to me in the smallest detail. This place is totally, totally surreal – an old building full of latex heads that seem to be staring at me out of their glass eyes as though they were on the verge of asking me if I’m interested in buying burial recess 4B. The atmosphere isn’t really doing much for my concentration, especially since I’ve had to eliminate coffee from my diet, and I can remember so little about all the macabre details he’s been describing to me that I’m just as ignorant now as I was at the beginning.

  “My father was a gravedigger, and he started out by helping his father, who was a gravedigger too, just like his father. And my grandfather, who worked in the funeral field for over thirty years, learned the job from his father, who was…”

  “A gravedigger,” I prompt him, hoping to finish this interview as quickly as possible.

  “No, actually, he was a baker,” he corrects me with an annoyed sniff. “But the back room of his store was very large, and that winter was freezing,” he remembers with a timid smile, as though trying to justify his family’s change in direction.

  “And who could blame him?” I comment.

  “That casual decision was a very lucky one for we Murphys, as the business never stopped growing. We are one of the leaders in the field now, and we’ve been successfully using the most innovative techniques in thanatopraxy for years.”

  “Do people ever ask you to… to…” I stutter trying to find the most appropriate words, while having a hard time not staring at a mummy with the best ash-blonde highlights I’ve ever seen. “Sorry, as I was saying – do people often ask you to slightly modify the skin pigmentation of the corpse before the funeral ceremony?”

  “Of course, that’s one of the most requested extra services,” he explains proudly.

  “Oh, so that’s an ‘extra service’?”

  “Sure it is, just like theatrical representations, costumes, commemorative films, photo albums with the dead, and much more,” he says, and then looks at me with an a
lmost threatening expression and asks, “Didn’t you read our brochure before coming here?”

  “Err… it must have slipped my mind.”

  “How is that possible?” he replies furiously, clapping his hands to summon over a young guy who is sitting half asleep in the corner. “Milo! Milo! Bring us the special offers brochures! Now!” The boy immediately goes to fetch them from a cabinet at the entrance as I stand there watching, paralysed, still holding my recorder and with the most astonished expression I’m capable of on my face. “You can’t not mention our latest offers,” Mr Murphy resumes, and without waiting for me to reply, he pushes me towards his office. In the room, which is a sort of storage closet with no window, I see a creepy display case full of ceramic vases. “We offer our clients many deferred payment options, allowing them to choose from among the best funerary packages,” he explains. “For example, they can get small loans to buy the most beautiful floral compositions available locally. We were even awarded a prize last year for using gardenias in our funeral cushions.” At that point he looks at me and says: “Since you’re already, ahem, over thirty…”

  Thirty what? Thirty pounds? Or does he actually mean thirty years? Great, we have someone for 4B over here!

  “You don’t do any sport, your diet is unhealthy and you probably drink too,” he says, accurately describing my life in detail just by looking at me. “I’d say we could plan your payment instalments for the next twenty or twenty-five years, if we exclude the management expenses, which are always paid in advance. That’s our policy,” he explains with a wide smile.

  “I see, and I’m very grateful for your offer, but I’ve actually just received some news that might mean I’ll be committing suicide in the next couple of months, so you can understand why I can’t accept.” I slowly try to back out through the emergency exit. “I mean, I may not have enough time to fulfil the whole payment…”

  “Well, you could ask someone to be your guarantor.”

  “I wouldn’t really know who to ask…”

  “You could also consider our new special offer: two corpses for one – together for eternity. It’s become very fashionable among couples lately.”