Hungry for Your Love: An Anthology of Zombie Romance

by Lori Perkins

  I

  thought,

  Boy, do I wish I’d met him when I was alive, before my heart got so fucked with. I’d rather have him kill it than all those shits that did.

  “And then I found these rooms,” Ed was saying. “Like I said, I was literally dripping skin. I was craving the meat.”

  A low groan went up from the room.

  “I had lost my job and all my friends. Since then I’ve started recording music again and I’ve started a business so I don’t have to bartend. It’s other people’s music, I’m engineering. It’s not my stuff, but it’s a start. And I’m taking care of myself. I’m showing up to meetings, even on days when I have to drag myself off my corpse ass and shamble in. I have a sponsor and a sponsee. I don’t think about the meat. I’ve started talking to women again. When I feel really dead, I do something like pet a dog. I know it sounds lame but I pet a dog. Or I take a walk in nature. I never thought I’d be saying that in front of a room full of people before, but whatever, it’s true. I even do yoga now.

  And I can listen to music now, not just for work. It used to be impossible because it reminded me of how I used to just be able to hear the first chords of certain songs and start crying and how now I can’t cry but I listen anyway. So all I want to say is, even though I’m still a revenant, I’ll always be a revenant, that’s what the big book teaches, but there’s hope. There’s hope, man. Thanks for letting me share.”

  He stepped down and there was some slow, heavy-handed applause. I tried to catch his eye but he kept his head lowered as he took his seat. The guy next to him, Malcolm, the secretary, used what looked like tremendous effort to high-five him.

  We went around the circle and when it came to me I said, “Hi. I’m Casey and I’m a revenant.”

  “Hi, Casey,” they all said, including Ed—I wasn’t looking but I could distinguish his deep voice.

  “I just want to thank the speaker for sharing,” I began, still not looking at him.

  “It’s very inspiring to hear that. I’ve only just started coming to these meetings. The last relationship I was in was two years ago. It screwed me up really bad. My mom had just died and I kind of glommed onto this guy but he felt suffocated and split. I couldn’t eat or sleep. And I couldn’t write anymore.” I thought about making the joke about not being able to write to save my life, but I didn’t know if it was in bad taste, and besides, it wasn’t all that funny. “Anyway, that’s when it happened. Now I’m doing computer sales from home. I don’t like to go out. I have to stay away from the meat.” Everyone hummed. I stopped. “Anyway, thanks for letting me share.”

  When I finally looked up, Ed was watching me. I thought I felt my face get hot but that couldn’t be. I must have been imagining it.

  When the meeting was over Malcolm invited everyone to his home in Silverlake for a party. The house was a broad-beamed green wooden Craftsman with a big porch overlooking the lights of Sunset Boulevard. Malcolm built a fire in the fire pit and we stood around under the cold stars. Like most revenant gatherings, no one said much. A few were making a pathetic attempt at dancing, but it was really just shuffling their feet and occasionally nodding their heads. Still, it was better than what I could do.

  I was gripping an empty glass—sometimes it helped me feel human to have something in my hand—when Ed came up to me.

  “I enjoyed your share,” he said. “Casey, right?”

  I

  nodded.

  “I’m

  Ed.”

  I shook his hand. It was huge, with silver rings.

  “What’s this?” he pointed to my heart watch.

  I suddenly wished I hadn’t worn it; it seemed desperate, like something a revenant that wanted to be human too badly would wear. A poseur revenant. “Oh, nothing.”

  “It’s nice. Too many people stopped wearing watches with the cell phones.” He held out his broad, bony wrist. He wore an old-fashioned silver watch. “It was my dad’s.”

  “But I thought…” I began and stopped myself. I didn’t want to be rude.

  “I know. I think my dad fucked with me when I was a kid. But he was my dad.

  He didn’t know what he was doing. This helps me to remember to forgive him.”

  I nodded. I thought about the silver engagement ring Brian had given me. It was a really cool ring, engraved with tiny leaves and flowers. Sometimes I wanted to wear it but I couldn’t because it reminded me of how much I hated him and then chunks of flesh would start peeling off my face and shit. I wondered if I could learn to forgive him.

  “So your mom died recently?” Ed asked. His voice had a tender quality that I couldn’t recall hearing in another revenant.

  “Yes. She had cancer, too.” My voice, on the other hand, was dry and flat.

  “It’s a motherfucker.”

  I nodded.

  “And you’re young to lose a mom.” There was the tenderness in his voice again.

  “Not that young,” I said. “I was twenty-five when this happened two years ago.”

  “You mean when you went revenant? That’s young to be one of us.”

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “Well, I was thirty, so I’m technically forty now.”

  “You look good,” I managed to say.

  He winked. He actually winked. I’d never seen a revenant wink before, at least not in a sincere way, but more of in a spastic way like they were trying to imitate a human. Ed actually looked human. “You, too.”

  The flames of the fire pit were heating up my face to the point where I had to back away. That was a surprise—I was never hot anymore. I must have been imagining it.

  Then I felt Ed’s hand touch my wrist and I imagined a flaming up there, too.

  “Would you like to grab a ‘tea’ some time?” He made quote marks around the word tea—we really didn’t drink it.

  I nodded without thinking and he took out his cell and programmed in my phone number.

  “I’ll call you, Casey,” he said and I wondered if he was really one of us at all. Just like there were revenant poseurs, there were some humans who posed as us because it was trendy and seemed cool to them. God knows why.

  He told me to meet at the L.A. County Museum. I was a little nervous to be out in such a public place with all the meat walking around but I said the Serenity Prayer over and over as I drove west along Wilshire. I was wearing a black sundress and wedgies and I’d put on extra lotion to keep the skin from peeling on my shoulders and arms. I got there first and watched Ed walk up the wide, low stairs under the portico toward me. He had flat mirrored shades on so I couldn’t see his eyes. His shoulders were broad and his arms were a little too long for the white button-down shirt he wore. His legs, in jeans, were long, too. I felt really short, even in my high shoes.

  “You look nice,” he said, kissing my cheek.

  “So do you,” I replied. Rachel had said that if I felt uncomfortable making conversation. I could just sort of repeat what the other person said with a twist. I wondered if that would get me in trouble somehow.

  “Do you want to see the exhibit?”

  “Do you want to see the exhibit?” I replied.

  “Yes

  I

  do.”

  “I do.”

  “Good.”

  “Good.”

  “Casey,” he asked gently. “Can I ask you something? Are you nervous?”

  “Are you nervous?”

  He cocked his head at me. “No. I’m fine. I thought you seemed interesting at the meeting. I’d like to hear about your writing and whatever. You don’t have to be nervous with me.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

  He took my hand and led me toward the ticket booth. It was startling to have him touch me. Most of us didn’t ever touch.

  We went to the Pompeii exhibit. I wondered what it must have been like for the archeologists to find that stuff under the earth, under the ash. What it must have been like to dig up a marble god, a whole fresco
of a garden with fountains and birds and flowers painted in pale shades of blue and green. You couldn’t feel dead when you saw that.

  We circled around a statue of a satyr playing lasciviously with a beautiful nude girl. She had her fingers in his face and was twisting her torso as if to get away from them but they were both laughing. When Ed and I got closer we saw that the girl was a hermaphrodite, with breasts and a small erect penis. I felt something move through my body and I hardly knew what it was because it had been so long.

  “Roman kink,” Ed said, and we laughed.

  I hadn’t heard my laugh in so long that I didn’t recognize it at first. It sounded kind of nice, though.

  There were some giant horse heads on pedestals. Ed looked into their eyes but I had to stare up into their noses.

  “You have a better view,” I said. “All I see are nostrils. But I’m used to that, being so short.” I realized I had actually made a joke—a shitty joke, but a joke—aloud.

  “Oh, now I’m embarrassed, “ he said, coyly, covering his nose and we laughed again.

  Toward the end of the exhibit I wandered away from him over to an alcove where a giant statue of Aphrodite carved in white marble stood with her arms outstretched. I stood under her and closed my eyes.

  When I opened them, Ed was beside me. “Whatcha doin’?”

  “She’s beautiful, huh?” I said softly.

  “But do you think love looks like that?” he asked, staring up at her perfect white curves. “Or do you think it’s much more dangerous looking?”

  “Probably. But I like to imagine it’s like this,” I said.

  We weren’t talking like revenants; it was weird.

  We left the museum and walked out into the sunshine. After the air conditioning the day felt warm. But then I realized I was probably imagining the feeling of warmth.

  The sun could trick you like that if things were going well.

  We sat at the café and ordered a salad to share, which we didn’t eat, of course—it was just for show. We could have gotten chicken but sometimes you dig into it in a way that’s not appropriate—it reminds you of the meat—and there were a lot of people around. Ed told me about his job recording music, how he had gone to music school, used to be in bands. He said he still thought about writing songs but then he gave up because he was too old to be a rock star.

  “You’re not!” I said. I was surprised and a little embarrassed at my own vehemence. “You look great. You look like a star.”

  I could have sworn I saw Ed blush, but then his face was pale again.

  “You have to be a kid to make this work,” he said. “Seriously.”

  “But you could still write. You could still play. For yourself and your friends.” I wanted to say, I’d like to hear you, but I stopped myself.

  “Nah,” said Ed and I realized that he really was a revenant; he wasn’t a poseur as I had suspected. That’s what we revenants did. We gave up before we had even tried.

  “What about your writing?” he asked.

  “I won this big contest out of UCLA and then it was all downhill after that,” I said.

  “I hear you. Basically you’re dead at twenty-five in this town.”

  “Literally,” we said together and laughed, again.

  We walked down a slope and along a shaded path beside a fountain. White roses floated on the shallow water. There was something vaguely bridal about them. I wondered who had strewn them there. I felt a slight shiver up my spine and it surprised me.

  “Do you think we have souls?” I asked Ed. “Because that’s what I used to write about mostly—souls. But now I don’t think I have one.”

  He squinted at me and chewed thoughtfully on the handle of his sunglasses. “I don’t know, to be honest. I don’t think we’re supposed to, technically.”

  I looked at the white petals trembling on the surface of the dark water. “But those roses. When I look at them, in the water like that, I feel something. But I can’t find words for it.”

  “That’s why those Romans made art, right? Why we write music, isn’t it? Or write stories or whatever, poetry?”

  “But we don’t,” I said. “Anymore.”

  He took my hand again—mine felt tiny inside his—and headed through a red lacquer Japanese archway. I had the same startled sensation I’d had before when he’d touched me. “That’s going to change,” he said.

  On the way to our cars we walked around the tar pits with the statue of the father and the baby Mastodon standing on the edge of the bubbling black water while the mother Mastodon drowned in the tar. She had been drowning like that for years—I’d seen this statue when I was a little girl and it was already old by then. The baby had been screaming for all that time. It made me think of how I felt when my mother died, how she sank into the pit of cancer and I couldn’t save her; all I could do was stand there and scream silently and turn to stone.

  Ed walked me to my beat-up Honda and hugged me goodbye. I raised my mouth to kiss his cheek but he turned so our lips met. His mouth was a lot bigger than mine and it smelled like tea tree oil and peppermint. A lot of revenants favored those scents to disguise the way we smelled, which wasn’t always pretty. But Ed tasted good. I hoped I tasted okay to him. I’d used some breath spray after the restaurant even though I hadn’t eaten anything—doing normal things like using breath spray after going to a restaurant made me feel like I belonged.

  “I’d really like to hear your music,” I said. And then wondered if I’d offended him because he’d told me he hadn’t played since he’d changed.

  But he didn’t seem offended. He smiled at me. “Only if you read me something you wrote.”

  So that was it—we’d made plans to see each other again, sort of. At least as close to making plans as most revenants get. But I didn’t hear from him. Not that I was surprised—that was typical. It was kind of a miracle we’d gone on a date at all. If that was what it was. (He’d texted me to meet him at the museum that time, and I’d just written back, c u there). I didn’t get another text and I was beginning to think I was a complete ass for assuming I’d see him again or that he had been sincere about having him 36

  read him my writing, when the next Saturday night, he showed up at the meeting in the church basement. (The church didn’t know exactly what kind of meeting it was; I guess they assumed we were A.A.) Sometimes revenants pretended they didn’t know each other from week to week—it was hard enough for us to get out of the house and be around other revs—but he greeted me warmly and said my name. I felt him watching me during the meeting.

  When it was his turn to speak he said, “Hi, I’m Ed, and I’m a revenant.”

  “Hi, Ed.”

  “I had a really good week. I met this nice person and we did a nice thing at a nice place. I felt almost alive. Maybe I did feel alive. It’s been so long, I’m not sure. But anyway I’m just grateful to be here. That’s it.”

  I could have sworn this time, for sure, that my face got hot.

  After the meeting we went for fellowship at the coffee house next to the church and he sat next to me but he didn’t talk to me much. He was talking mostly to some pale, tattooed young girls, one who had scars on her wrists and one with a purple bruise around her neck. He seemed to have a positive effect on them; the one with the scars on her wrists even laughed stiffly, like she was imitating laughter, but still. I found myself wondering again if he was the real thing or some human on a mission to save us.

  He walked me to my car in the church parking lot. The chrome shone in the fluorescent light. The air buzzed with electricity and crickets. The night was warm and smelled of pollen.

  “Do you want to hear a song?” he asked.

  “A song?”

  “I wrote one this week. After we hung out.”

  I tugged on the heart around my neck. “Of course.” I realized how that sounded—like I thought he had written the song because of me. “I mean of course I want to hear it.”

  So we went to his place, a sma
ll bungalow with a courtyard full of banana palms and climbing jasmine. Inside, the walls were painted baby blue and hung with a variety of guitars. Ed lit some candles and we sat on the couch and he took an acoustic down.

  He slung it on and leaned forward. The fabric of his jeans strained against his knees, ready to tear. He looked at me.

  “So you used to write about souls?”

  I nodded.

  “This is a song about souls.”

  He sang it to me. It was dark and tough and bluesy. His voice was deep and warm and really, really good. His body rocked back and forth. Sometimes he threw back his head and opened his mouth wide and I saw his teeth, which were a little big but made him look sexy and fierce. I noticed that the incisors were slightly sharp, almost pointed.

  Hot, I thought.

  I hadn’t thought that word in years.

  After he was done with the song, I applauded. He grinned.

  “I like it,” I said. I wanted to say I love it but I didn’t want to sound like I was posing as a human.

  “Hey, hey, glad you like it, Miss Casey.”

  “Do you think we used to have souls?” I asked, thinking about his lyrics—the parade of ragtag souls marching through the town.

  He leaned back and put the guitar pick in his mouth, chewed on it—he liked to chew on things, it seemed. “Yes. For sure.”

  “And do you think people’s souls continue on after they die?” I asked.

  “Yes,

  ma’am.”

  “So then where do you think our souls went if we don’t have them now?”

  He took the pick out of his mouth, made a face at it and flicked it down on the table. “Good question. I don’t know, but I think they must be somewhere.”

  I couldn’t stop asking him things. I wanted to keep asking and asking and find out what he believed. It felt like so long since I’d had a man to ask about anything, one whose ideas I wanted to hear, anyway. “Do you think souls recognize each other, or if your souls connect and when you die, do your souls recognize each other when they meet again?”

  “Well, they aren’t personalities. They’re something else. So I don’t know exactly what remains and what you recognize. But I think there is some kind of recognition, or some kind of connection, maybe? I don’t know.”