"But no people."
"No people. The world's over, isn't it, Jared?"
"Pretty well."
"You're real, aren't you?"
"Yep."
Silence falls where in other days traffic would have hummed and honked. "This is life, then, isn't it? I mean, this is it."
"Basically."
Hamilton and Pam hold hands. Pam says, "What do we do now, Jared? Is this it forever—silence? It's so quiet down here. Lonely. You're the ghost. You're the expert."
"Your brains are as tender and fresh as a baby bird's. Walk home. Enjoy your clarity. Go romp in a hot tub. You count; you were meant to exist. I'll be seeing you again."
And with this I vanish.
30 EVERYTHING IS BRAND-NEW
Richard was my best friend growing up, although we did grow apart over the years. He was one of the people I missed most when I died, so I'm kinda choked to see him again. But there are severe limits on how much I'm allowed to reveal to the living, so I can't be as gooey with Richard—or the others—as I'd like.
Richard is huffing up Rabbit Lane with a shotgun, so I slide down the hill to meet him. "Hey, Jared—thanks for fixing Karen's legs. That was beautiful."
"It was the least I could do."
"We came home and played splits on the front lawn with a steak knife for an hour. She's just so high on life now. Good trick with the lighting system down at Save-On, too."
"You flatter me shamelessly. Where are you walking to?"
"Out for a stroll before the sun sets to get a good view of Mount Baker. And the weather—it's so beautiful today. It's the end of December and it might as well be June. But then again there could be a snowstorm in three minutes. Weather's random these days."
"So I've heard." I walk alongside Richard.
"Were you alive when Mount St. Helen erupted, Jared?"
"No. Missed it."
"That's right. It was huge. And you missed new wave and alternative rock. Rap. Grunge. Hip-hop. People wore some pretty stupid clothes. Cars got really good, though."
"I didn't miss out on earthly things entirely, Richard. Check this out—I can do the 'Moonwalk.'"
"No way. This I've got to see."
"Just you watch me now …" I slinkily Moonwalk up the road while Richard belly-laughs. "Am I doing something wrong?" I ask.
"The opposite. It's perfect."
"Thank you. I'd like to see you do it."
"Oh please, no."
I float back beside him: "So you see, I'm somewhat up to date." We continue our walk. "Fucking A. The neighborhood's one big mess, don't you think so?"
"I don't think you ever get used to the silence, Jared. Back before the plague or whatever it was, the neighborhood looked almost identical to the way it did the year you died. But now—" We survey dead trees, rangy vines, an occasional charcoal stump where a house once stood, a bird resting on a skeleton's ribcage. Pavement is crumbling and cars are stopped in the strangest places.
We pass a dog's skeleton, bleached clean by sun and acid rains. "Pinball, may he rest in peace. The Williams's Doberman. It tried to attack Wendy, but Hamilton shot him in time. It was only hungry. Poor thing."
"Sad."
"So Jared, tell me: What about when you were dying back in 1979.
What was that like? I've always wondered. I mean, were you scared near the end, when you were dying in the hospital? You seemed socalm—even at the end when all those machines were pumping gorp in and out of you."
"Scared? I was scared shitless. I didn't want to leave Earth. I wanted to see the future—the lives of people I knew. I wanted to see progress— electric cars, pollution controls, the new Talking Heads album. .. . Then my hair fell out and I knew I'd crossed the line. After that I put a good face on it because my parents were falling apart." Richard is lost in thought. "Do you think about death much?" I ask.
"Pretty much all the time. How could I not'? I mean, look at this place."
"And what do you think?"
"I don't worry about dying. I figure that I'll just meet up with everybody else in the world wherever they went. But if I'd been you back in high school, I don't think I'd have been able to put as good a face on death as you did. I'd scream and yell and beg for more time, even on this clapped-out hulk of a planet we live on now."
"You like it here?"
"No, but I'm alive."
"Is it enough—being alive?"
"It's what I have."
"Richard, tell me the truth—and you have to tell me the truth, because, um, I'm a heavenly being."
"Shoot, buddy."
"Did you use Karen and me both as an excuse for you not to continue your own life? Did you bail out of life?"
Richard looks hurt, but then makes a dismissive "nah—why not?" gesture. "Sure. I pretty much withdrew, Jared. But I was a good citizen. I put the trash out every Tuesday night. I voted. I had a job."
"Did you feel kinda hollow inside?"
"A bit. I admit it. Does my answer make you happy?"
"Hey man. I need to ask. I need to know how you are."
"But I stopped withdrawing when Karen woke up."
"Fair enough."
"Do we have to discuss this, Jared? Let's talk about the old neighborhood. People. Friends.""I've visited all the others today. You're the last. I saved the best for last, my oldest friend."
"I'm honored, you stud."
We continue walking and cut down into St. James Place and approach my old house, a slightly shambled split-level rancher, baby-blue. On the right hand side there are cinder burns from when the house next door burned down. "The fire was three weeks ago," Richard tells me. "Lightning." We stand at the end of my driveway. "Here's your house. You wanna go inside, Jared?"
"Could we? I've wanted to go in there, but only with somebody else. It'd make me nervous to go in alone."
"You? A ghost? You get nervous over bodies?"
"Yes. So I'm a wuss on this one issue."
"You get used to them. Trust me. Hamilton calls them Leakers."
My old front lawn is knee-high; all of the ornamental shrubs have browned and withered. Green ivy has persisted, overgrowing onto the front door, which is unlocked. It opens silently as Richard tries it. A whoosh of warm air comes out, as does a foul, ammonia-like stink that makes Richard grimace at me: "You still want to go through with this, Jared?"
"Please."
Time has stood still inside. "Oh boy, Richard. It's almost identical to the last day I was here—my final day pass out of the palliative care unit. I wasn't supposed to eat meat, but Dad cut my turkey up into bits the size of peas and said to hell with it. I puked my dinner and then some blood and then the paramedics had to come. My parents and sister were so frightened. It was such a bad scene."
Richard stands in the front area and waits as I float through the house. A new TV here, a microwave oven there, some fridge magnets, but otherwise the house remains as it was when I left it. I approach the staircase, but Richard looks at me. "Are you sure you're okay with this, Jared?"
"I'm fine. As long as you're here. Let's go up."
He walks behind me and we enter my old bedroom, now a sewing room. Then I look in the old bathroom, my sister's room, and finallymy parents' room. "Let me look first," Richard says. I tell him it won't be necessary, but he's adamant. He nudges the brown door open, peeks in, blanches, and then tiptoes out. "Leakers. I guess I have to tell you it's pretty gruesome in there."
"I need to see." I walk in, Richard behind me, and I see my parents' remains mummified into their bedsheets and mattress. "Sorry, man." Richard says.
"It's okay. It's Nature's way." I walk through the room—my photos are on the wall, they never took them down—and I see the hand mold I made in kindergarten. "Where are your own parents, Richard?"
"They're in their Camry at the Douglas Border Crossing. Linus and I made an overnight mission down there last summer and found their car. We were going to bury the remains, but it just wasn't, um, possible." I look
around the room some more. "It's darkening outside," Richard says. "I have to go now—to see Mount Baker. You want to come?"
"I want to stay here with my folks a bit more. I wish there was something I could leave you with," I say, "a gift—a small miracle I can perform for you. Is there anything you want or need?"
Richard, now standing in the driveway says, "No. It sounds ridiculous, but I've got everything I need. Are you sure you want to stay here?"
"I'm sure. Good-bye, Richard. Thanks for coming in with me to see my folks."
"It was nothing. Thank you for fixing Karen's legs. When are you coming back again?"
"In two weeks,"
"See you then, buddy."
"Bye, guy."
31 ONE IDEA WIN
I was never a good "talker" when I was young and alive. Usually, a shrug and a smile carried me through most social situations. And to meet girls all I had to do was have a stare-down contest with them and make sure not to blink. It never failed. But now I've got the gift of clarity and directness.
What's clarity like?
Try to remember that funny feeling inside your head when you had math problems too difficult to solve: the faint buzzing noise in your ears, a heaviness on both sides of your skull, and the sensation that your brain is twitching inside your cranium like a fish on a beach. This is the opposite sensation of clarity. Yet for many people of my era, as they aged, this sensation became the dominant sensation of their lives. It was as though day-to-day twentieth-century living had become an unsolvable algebraic equation. This is why Richard drank. This is why my old friends used to spend their lives blitzed on everything from cough syrup to crystal meth. Anything to make that sloggy buzz make a retreat.
It's been two weeks since my last visit. The sky is clear but smoky smelling and a fine ash falls from no identifiable source. In the house's kitchen, both Wendy and Pam are playing solitaire on personal computers electrified by the Honda generator. Their hair is dirty. Linus, still partially blind, can't get the water pump fixed—and their voices are raspy from uneven weather and from colds, which still seem to appear even without a population base to spread them. Their bodies are swaddled inside down coats adorned with hundreds of Bulgari jeweled brooches.
"Did Richard say he'd have the heater and the water fixed by the afternoon?" Pam asks, and Wendy says no. "Oh pooh. My hair feels all matted like a wad of Slim Jims. I'm getting a club soda. You want one?"
Wendy declines and strolls onto the patio where Linus is bundled up as though in a Swiss tuberculosis sanitorium. "Hey, Linus, are you sure you're wearing enough white terry robes? You look like Bugs Bunny in Palm Springs."
"Tee hee." Linus is still recovering from a wicked cold garnered from the three-day-long blind walk home from up on the mountain where I gave him pictures of heaven.
"Brrr. It's cold out," Wendy says. "But the sky looks pretty."
"I can tell by the sound of your voice," Linus says, "you're hiding something. Wait—let me guess. Yes, you've checked the Geiger counter, haven't you?"
"Guilty as charged. Chattering like maracas."
"Some surprise."
They Stand silent for a second, then Wendy says, "Jane is starting to reject her food. I'm not feeling so hot, either.""You sound fine," Linus says. "Jared's back tonight. He'll tell us what to do."
From the living room they can hear Hamilton cursing the cold, throwing a Yellow Pages into the fireplace for a meager dollop of heat.
"Oh—look!" Wendy says. "Up there—a bald eagle—still alive. Flying."
"I'll take your word for it. This pesky blindness, you know."
"I mean, it's so large—the big white head, the yellow beak. It's so big I can see the color from here."
"I'll live. I'm going inside now." He has difficulty finding the latch.
Inside the living room, Linus feels his way past Hamilton, asking, "What are you reading?"
"I'm taking my minty fresh new brain out for more test drives. Industry and Empire by Eric Hobsbawm—about the English Industrial Revolution. Also, One More Time by Carol Burnett. The funny lady of television and films remembers her beginnings. The coast-to-coast bestseller that warmed the hearts of millions."
"Well it's cold in here. We should find a smaller house that's easier to heat."
"No. Maybe we can just start putting bits of this house into the fire, and when we run out of this house we can find another big house."
At that moment, Megan's bedroom explodes with a top-forty hit from 1997. "Bloody hell." Hamilton sits bolt upright then stomps down the hall to Megan's door. "Turn down the bloody boom box, Megan. We can't think out here." Megan makes no response, so Hamilton nudges open the door and finds Megan and Jane sitting on the bed where they've stationed themselves for the past two weeks—a landscape of half-used Gerber jars, cigarette butts, CD's, and batteries. Hamilton turns the music down to a low level. Hamilton glowers at Jane, who gawps right back at him. Hamilton has the spooky sensation that Jane is far more aware of the world than any of the others. "Are you coming out for dinner tonight?" Hamilton asks. "It's a
Sunday dinner. A good one."
"Maybe. How do you know it's Sunday?""Wendy's PowerBook."
"Right." Megan turns off the stereo and picks up Jane. The two look out the window onto the driveway, where Richard has parked the car and is carrying cases of tinned foods into the house. "Oh goody-goody," says Megan, "more canned food. No, excuse me—I see a few boxes there, too. Lucky us—such variety." Richard sees Megan and suddenly Megan feels badly for Richard, who is the one person trying hard to maintain civility and comfort during the entire fucked up and crazy year. She calls out the window, "Dad, do you want me to help you with those?"
"They're nearly all in, Sweetie. Thanks anyhow."
Richard places the final box down on the garage floor. Walking into the house, he sees Karen by the small pool, which in the course of a year has converted itself into an enormous science project on algae. "You okay down there?" he asks.
"I'm fine. I went for a small run. Now I'm just taking in the air. It turned warm a few minutes ago."
Richard goes inside and Karen resumes her sentry over the gone-to-seed backyard. The sky is oranging and she is sad because her voices have departed. She can no longer see into the future or even try to explain the unexplainable. She is merely mortal, and a frail mortal, too. But we've all had our hopes returned, she thinks. Jared will know what to do next.
From somewhere in the house comes the sound of rattling paper. It's Linus feeling his way back out to the patio carrying a bag of charcoal briquettes. "It's gotten warm out all of a sudden," he shouts, "let's barbecue, methinks." Within minutes, the ball barbecue is opened, the briquettes lit, the embers are glowing, and spirits are raised.
The darkening sky is becoming a warm, dead Xerox and the winds blow forcefully as though aimed from a hair blower. Yet there is no sound—a warm river flowing over the skin; the amplified sound of the Moon. It is summer in mid-winter.
My old friends are seated on the back patio, toasting marshmal-lows and joking around. They know that my two weeks are up and I'll be returning shortly.
Richard asks Linus, whose eyesight is just now returning, to count how many fingers he's holding up. Karen darts about serving drinks and flaunting her new legs ("Shirley MacLaine in Irma La Douce"). Hamilton and Pam sit calmly, their facial muscles loose, their crow's-feet vanished. They listen to the voices of the others with the peace of small children. Wendy helps Linus guide his stick near the flames; she is silent about her pregnancy by me, having kept details of our encounter hush-hush. Megan, seated on a faded folding chair, beams as baby Jane gurgles and clicks with her continuing enchantment with the gift of sight, not crying once since her encounter with me. Richard, bearing a marshmallow-clumped trident at his side, is simply pleased to see his friends so jolly.
"I can smell the skins burning," Linus says. "Carbon."
"Isn't it just the prettiest thing?" Pam adds. "Hey, King Neptune— st
art toasting your prongs."
As I look down at them from the sky, their barbecue is the only speck of light on Earth for hundreds of miles save for the lava that oozes down Mt. Baker's slope and a small forest fire north of Seattle. I become a star in the sky and grow until Megan sees me and says, "Look. I bet that's Jared now."
Seconds later, I appear at the patio's edge and Megan smiles, saying, "Jane, say hello to Jared," making Jane twitter birdishly.
"Are you able to eat, Jared?" asks Karen. "Marshmallows—a bit stale, but they plump the moment they burn."
"Hey, Kare, no food, thanks, no."
"A dance, perhaps?" She sweeps around the patio, her dress twirling and her eyes flashing because she is in love with the world.
"How about some lemonade?" asks Hamilton. "Num num. Made from a powder, of course, but lemony fresh nonetheless."
"Thanks again, but no, Ham." I move a bowl of potato chips and sit down on a stump Karen's father once used as a chopping block.
Linus, semi-blind, holds up his glass in my general direction and says,"A toast to Jared." The others join in with a cloud of hear-hear's. "Our miracle man."
I blush. Wendy, who's heavily dolled herself up for the night, sugars moonily, "Helloooo, Jared."
"Hey, Wen, looking good." And then there's a pause as in the old days when we made bonfires down at Ambleside beach, a bonfire's flames with embers hypnotic and silencing. "Guys—I need to speak with you all," I say, and I receive seven smiling faces in return—eight, now that Jane, as well as Linus, has vision. "Please listen."
The fire spits as insects kamikaze inward.
"It's hard for me. It's hard stuff. It's about all of you."
"Us?" Karen asks.
"Yup. All of you. And just because I'm able to speak more clearly than when I was alive doesn't mean I feel any more comfortable doing it. Cut me some slack. I'm here to speak to you about transforming your lives and yourselves. Making choices and changing who you are."
32 SUPER POWER
"You've all been wondering why it was only the eight of you who remained to see the world's end. It's because you've all been given a great gift, but a confusing one, too."
Girlfriend in a Coma Page 23
