by Rich Leder
The humor was wasted on Judd. “I can kill you any goddamn place I want, any goddamn time I want. There are no rules.”
And then Judd took two big strides, grabbed Mike by his shoulder, getting a handful of Mike’s suit jacket, and walked him back across the viewing room to Mrs. Peterson’s casket, holding the knife to Mike’s carotid artery. The blade was cold, and Mike wondered if that was where the expression cold steel came from.
“Please, Judd,” Mike said, the words fighting past the lump in his throat. “For God’s sake, my mother died last night.”
“Swell. You can join her. Get in the casket,” Judd said when they reached Mrs. Peterson.
“What?” Mike said.
“Get in the casket.”
“It’s occupied.”
“It’s not a fucking toilet. She’s dead. Take her out and get in.”
“I’m not taking her—”
He couldn’t finish the sentence because he felt the knife pressing harder against his neck, and it scared him to silence. He didn’t think he had pissed himself, but there’s still time for that, he thought.
“Do it,” Judd said.
Mike knew he had no choice. He reached in, grabbed Mrs. Peterson under the arms, and lifted and dragged her out of the casket, and put her on the floor. Waves of nausea rolled through him. He could puke any minute.
“Now you,” Judd said.
Mike climbed up and slid into the casket. He was sweating profusely. He couldn’t feel his hands.
Judd moved behind him, at the end of the casket, leaned down, and put his mouth by Mike’s ear, the Bowie still at Mike’s throat.
“From now until the end, I’m in every shadow, watching you, measuring you. I’m a zombie, and it’s the Day of the Dead.”
Mike felt Judd move away, felt the blade lifted from his neck. He couldn’t move. He wanted to, but he simply couldn’t. He realized his eyes were closed. He wondered how long ago he had shut them.
“Unconventional choice, Mike,” George said. “Very unorthodox. Thirty years in the funeral business, and this is a first for me. Trying it on for size when the deceased is already…well, anyway, what do you think?”
Mike opened his right eye. His left eye wouldn’t obey the command. “It’s a lovely casket.”
YOUR CLEAR, DURABLE, ALL-WEATHER AGENT
Paul the Pervert used an overburdened bungee cord to tie down the ragged blue tarp that inadequately covered the dangerously tall and shaky mountain of Danny’s office and personal furniture that had been stacked helter-skelter in the bed of the clown’s battered Ford pickup.
“You won’t be able to see who’s behind you,” Danny said.
“Way I look at it, they got to see me,” Paul said.
He wore the rat-shit clown costume, the creepy makeup—with black eyes, bloody nose, and barbed wire teeth—the rainbow wig, and the supinated Docksiders. A vile, half-chewed cigar hung from his mouth. He smelled like a decaying dumpster filled with rotting food. In other words, Danny thought, about status quo since yesterday’s audition. He imagined that Paul had not slept, bathed, or changed his clothes since their meeting—or possibly since he had been electrocuted on Fairfax.
They pulled away from the dilapidated two-story strip mall and drove south on Reseda to Sherman Way, made a left, and went east to Woodman, where they turned into the Ralphs parking lot. Danny stopped the Pathfinder as far from the store as possible—no need to subject innocent bystanders to the pervert clown unless necessary—and the pickup parked beside him.
Danny’s clothes, files, and camera gear were piled in the back seat. His hula dancer lamp was riding shotgun next to the dehydrated-dry-and-shriveled-brown dead fern that was now vibrant and green and alive—the fern Jenny Stone had breathed on. He lifted the fern, got out of the car, and walked to Paul’s open window. “Wait here.”
“I’ll take roast beef on a roll,” Paul said.
“No, you won’t,” Danny said. “You’ll eat later.”
“Hope so,” the clown said. “Ever since I got electrocuted, my bowels do weird things I can’t control. It’s worse when I’m hungry. You’ll see.”
Danny threw up a little in his throat, put on his shades, and walked across the lot to the grocery store. It was like crossing Egypt. The temperature was one hundred and five degrees but it felt like one fifty on the tarmac. Baking in the smog, the sea of cars was inhumanly hot. He could feel solar flares radiating off their chassis.
Inside, he was met by an arctic blast of air conditioning. There was a late afternoon crowd, and half a dozen registers were open. Checker number three, at the far end of the store, was Jenny Stone.
Danny walked down the row of registers, grabbed a random construction magazine from the rack, and got in line. Jenny didn’t notice him until she had scanned his magazine and looked to see who was building an outdoor deck in this hellish weather.
“Hi, Jenny,” Danny said. “I don’t know if you remember me.”
“Danny Miller. We met yesterday. I remember,” she said, looking at her line. There was no one behind him. She held up the magazine. “Are you a talent agent and a carpenter?”
“Yes, I mean, no, no, I’m not a carpenter. Yes, talent agent. No, carpenter.”
“Then why are you buying a build-your-own-outdoor-deck magazine?”
“I’m not. I mean, I am, but I’m—what I mean is I came to talk to you about this.” He put the fern on the checkout ramp. “Are you scamming me?”
It took her a second to recognize the plant, and then she did. “No.”
“You breathed on it, and it came back to life?”
“Yes.”
There’s something different about her today, Danny thought. Not everything, but something, maybe one thing, that’s night-and-day different from yesterday. What is it? “Plants, pets, people. That’s what you said. If they’re dead, you can breathe life into them. You told me that in my office. I heard you say those words—plants, pets, people. I mean, look at this plant. Is this true, or are you playing me for a fool?”
“It’s true.” She checked her line. Still no one behind him, but down by the juice aisle, there was a woman with a full cart heading for her register.
In that same moment, Danny realized what had changed since they met in his office—she was wearing a bit of blush, a little lip gloss, and a pretty shade of eye shadow. She wasn’t a little mouse today; she was a little mouse with makeup. She had worn none at all to her talent agent interview, but to check groceries she had put on mascara? It was curious to him, but he didn’t have time to think it through right now. “Your mother said you should use your talent to make money.”
“My mother was wrong.”
“Your mother was right.”
“You said entertainment was a tough business.”
“I said I would think about it and get back to you if I came up with anything, and I came up with something.”
He saw a glimmer, a faint spark of hope in her mascaraed eyes. “What?”
“The way we use your talent to make money is…we get people to pay you…to breathe life into death. It’s so simple, it’s genius.”
He watched her look down at the build-your-own-outdoor-deck magazine as if one of the feature articles, perhaps the one about the latest floor-abrasion technologies, would help her remove the abrasion from her life and leave a clear, durable, all-weather finish. That’s me, he thought, catching a ghosted glimpse of his handsome self behind the price of the magazine on her checkout screen, your clear, durable, all-weather agent.
“How will we find them,” Jenny said, “these people?
“We don’t have to find them. They’re everywhere.”
The full-cart woman was behind him. She was overweight, and everything about her was orange—her hair, nails, makeup, clothes, shoes, everything. She looked like a pumpkin. Danny looked in the Pumpkin’s cart and saw can after can of cat food. He thought of Greenburg’s misery and said to the Pumpkin, “Do you have a pet at home?”
“I have a cat,” the Pumpkin said, perking up and looking for the hidden camera. “His name is Frodo. He looks like a Hobbit. Am I on TV?” She took out her smart phone and pulled up a picture of him. Damn, Danny thought, he does look like a Hobbit.
“We’re all on TV,” Danny said. “But this is much more important than being on television. This is a matter of life and death.”
“Oh my,” the Pumpkin said.
“If Frodo died, God forbid, would you pay to breathe life back into him?”
The Pumpkin looked at Danny and Jenny and at the picture of Frodo and went from shock at the question, to sadness, to grief—a vast emotional journey that took two seconds there and back. “That’s a terrible thing to say to me. Why would you say that?”
“Because it’s a matter of life and death,” Danny said. “If Frodo was hit by a car and was dead in the street, would you pay to bring him back to life?”
“Yes,” the Pumpkin said, tears coming to her eyes. “Poor Frodo…”
“If he fell off the roof and died?”
“Yes, yes…” the Pumpkin said, tears spilling over and running down her cheeks.
“If he was killed by a coyote?”
“Oh my God, yes, I would…”
“If he fell into Silver Lake and drowned.”
“Please, please, stop, I would, I would…”
Shoppers at adjacent registers noticed the crying Pumpkin and watched the show. The Pumpkin saw them and held her phone out so they could see her poor dead cat. Jenny offered the Pumpkin a box of tissues. She grabbed two and dabbed her eyes.
“It’s all right. Nothing happened,” Danny said. “Frodo’s fine. He’s home and probably waiting for you by the front door. Now, here’s the big question, for all the marbles, how much would you pay to bring him back? Final answer?”
The Pumpkin blew her nose and said, “Anything. Oh my, everything.”
“You win,” Danny said.
“So I am on TV?” the Pumpkin said, brightening again.
Danny nodded and pointed to the multiple Ralphs security cameras overhead and then turned his attention to Jenny, feeling emboldened. He removed a Miller Talent Agency contract from his pocket and put it on the conveyor belt. “I want to sign you, Jenny. I want to represent you. I want you to be my client.”
“You do?”
“I do,” he said, handing her the pen people used to sign credit card receipts and personal checks. “It’s a ninety-day deal. It says I represent you exclusively in all national and global media. Page three has a clause that spells out my fees and expenses—contract, administration, headshot photography, audition video, postage, phone calls, travel, meals, meetings—you get paid back out of my commissions. It’s standard, non-signatory stuff. What do you say?”
“It doesn’t sound like entertainment.”
“Not yet. First, we establish your talent in the entrepreneurial marketplace, and then the whole, wide, multi-media world will knock on your door—movies, books, television, all of it.”
Jenny looked at the contract, looked at Danny, and looked at the Pumpkin, who held up her photo of Frodo. Then she took the pen and signed the contract.
Danny countersigned and said, “That’s a hundred for today, contract fee. Cash is better than a check. I don’t take cards.”
While Jenny reached for her purse beside the register, the Pumpkin said, “Do you want to represent me too?”
“Absolutely not,” Danny said, leaning in and speaking softly in her ear. “But with your financial support and his good looks, Frodo could be famous.”
THE DEEP END OF THE DARK WATER
On his way home from the George Edwards Mortuary, Mike called the police to report Judd Martin for forcing him into Mrs. Peterson’s coffin and holding a knife to his neck. He told the desk sergeant that the bankrupt real estate developer and contractor was stalking him and claiming to be a zombie. “Stalked by a real estate zombie, got it,” the sergeant said. “Hold on a minute, I’ll file your complaint under ‘No One Here Believes You.’”
Then Mike called Marcy at her parents’ house in Paramus, a phone call that went worse than the conversation with the desk sergeant. Now, in addition to being one part furious and one part freaked out about her husband losing his job at Wasserman and Waddell, she was all parts positively not flying home so long as there was a crazy man with a knife stalking him. In fact, there was no way—no way in hell, she had said—that she and the girls were moving back to Woodland Hills ever, unless Mike could confirm that the crazy man with the knife was behind bars. Marcy had let Mike talk to his daughters only after making him swear he wouldn’t mention anything about being fired or stalked. He had tried to sound upbeat, like things in the Valley were clicking along as always, but his life was falling apart, and he didn’t think he had pulled it off. “Get some sleep, Dad,” Bethany, his fifteen-year-old, had said. “You sound beat-up.”
He was beat-up. What a miserable couple of days it had been. He told himself he would start dieting tomorrow and stopped at the In-N-Out Burger on Ventura, near his house, and overate himself into a stupor—two Double Doubles, two fries, a root beer and a chocolate shake. Then, buzzed on fat, salt, and sugar, he drove home to pass out.
His house was across Ventura, north of the Boulevard, on Penfield near Hatteras. It was a 1960s California ranch, slab-on-grade, long and narrow with a sloping roofline and flowerboxes beneath bay windows. An attached two-car garage was at the south end, the bedrooms were at the north end, and the public rooms were between them. It was a blue-gray house that had faded over the years to gray-blue. Mike and Marcy had bought it fifteen years ago, when Wasserman and Waddell first hired him.
Since moving in, they had redone the kitchen and bathrooms and closets, laid wood floors from end to end, replaced the windows, put in a pool and new air conditioning units, upgraded the plumbing, added a sunroom, and refurnished to their heart’s content. This was going to be the year, with his partnership, that they were going to redo the roof, resurface the driveway, replant the landscaping, and repaint the place.
They were going to do this with Mike’s raise and partner profit participation because there was no equity left in the house. Mike had maxed it out and refinanced at a lower rate enough times over the years that his mortgage payment was only somewhat higher than when they had originally purchased the property, but his mortgage amount was considerably higher. His equity was gone and gone with it was his safety net, his margin for economic error. Mike and Marcy had spent and spent and saved nothing. I’m in the same boat as my clients, he thought as he pulled into his driveway. Where the hell did the money go? Why the hell didn’t we save more? What the hell will happen to us?
He also thought, Who the hell’s truck is that?
Backed up to his garage in such a way that he couldn’t get past it to park inside was a beat-to-shit Ford pickup. It was always Marcy’s Honda hybrid that blocked his access—either it was too close to the middle of the garage for him to fit his five-year-old Acura sedan inside or it was left in front of the door (like the Ford). But her car was at the Park ’N Fly on West Century Boulevard, and so he had thought, on the way home from the In-N-Out, at the end of this miserable couple of days, maybe he could at least and finally find some solace by actually parking inside his garage instead of in the driveway. Maybe that small moment would have signified he had bottomed out and his luck had changed. Maybe it would have propelled him forward to find a job, lose some weight, and reassemble the pieces of his life. A man’s fate had turned, he had seen on Duck Dynasty, on less than that. Now even that moment had been taken from him.
He parked facing the Ford, grill to grill, got out of his Acura, and walked around the side of his house to the backyard, looking for the owner of the pickup, completely missing Danny’s Pathfinder parked in the shadows of the far side of the horseshoe driveway. It was possible that his wife had scheduled some kind of pool repair and not told him, but there was nobody working on his pumps or filte
rs. Very often, the girls would be out here when he got home from work, swimming before dinner, making a racket and a half. But the house was dark and quiet.
Except it wasn’t. The lights were on inside the garage, and he heard someone talking—or singing—in there. His brain began to burn. How could this be happening?
He moved to the back garage door and tried the handle, locked. He listened again. Yes, someone was in his garage. Someone was singing in his garage. He took out his keys, opened the door, stepped into the garage, and stopped breathing.
The two-car space was filled with Key Largo furniture. One side was an office; the other side was a bedroom. A Tiki bar with a hula dancer lamp (plugged into the electric garage door opener directly above it) was the room divider.
Some kind of disgusting clown was standing in front of a blue screen singing a foul-mouthed version of “Farmer in the Dell” while being filmed by Danny. The clown was holding a blow-up sex doll and was doing vile things to it. Neither his brother nor the clown exhibited the slightest bit of shame or embarrassment upon Mike’s entrance. Indeed, Danny looked at Mike and gestured for him to remain silent until the clown was finished singing and doing whatever it was he was doing to the doll.
The scene was so surreally revolting, so shockingly nauseating, that Mike didn’t at first feel his own rage. What he felt instead was that somewhere inside him a line of switches, like in the cockpit of a fighter jet, switches inside him that had never before been touched, were now being toggled on, one at time, all in a row down the line. As each switch clicked on, lights flashed and bells rang and he lost a little more of himself, got a little bit closer to the deep end of the dark water.
