by Lee Child
As a corpse, Victor received glossy brochures beckoning him to join other active seniors in their retirement communities. The retirees in the ads were always cutting up—spinning brodies in their golf carts or coasting on their bicycles with their feet kicked up in the air. And the active senior men were always with foxy active senior women who looked like forty-year-old models in gray wigs.
It was when he retired that Victor noticed Heidi started going out more. They’d only been married for a couple of years. But she was restless. She’d leave dinner for him, a plate covered in foil. He’d put it in the microwave and eat on a TV tray. When she got home, she’d turn off the TV and go to bed. She’d leave him sleeping in the Barcalounger.
They didn’t start fighting until the move came up. Victor was ready to go to Palm Springs; he’d been looking forward to it for years. But Heidi said she was too young to go out there. “What about my career,” she said.
“You’re a fucking secretary,” Victor said, “what career?”
Heidi got herself a townhouse up in Newport Beach with the settlement money. And Victor noticed that Ronny stopped calling him around that time. He suspected something he didn’t even want to say out loud. Ronny and Heidi were the same age, and she did “confide” in him. That’s what she’d called it. Fuck them, he said to himself. And he moved out to Palm Springs on his own.
A couple of days after Marina and Pedro split, Victor felt a tugging sensation at his abdomen. The TV was playing that show about the renegade cop who solves crime with his obsessive-compulsive disorder. The OCD cop worked with another cop who had Asperger’s syndrome. He solved crimes with his overbearing nature. That autistic guy’s going to get his own spin-off, Victor thought.
The tugging at his abdomen got stronger. And to Victor’s surprise, a slender, glistening cord shimmied out from the elastic waistband of his tracksuit pants. It aspired up, toward the ceiling, pulling at his navel.
Then Victor was on the ceiling, looking down at himself sitting in the Barcalounger. He held his hand in front of him, and it shimmered silver and white, like a TV screen in the old days when the programming ended for the night.
He remembered how he’d often wake up in his chair and that static screen would be crackling. It made him feel kind of blue, kind of alone. Now the TV played twenty-four/seven, and Victor didn’t wake up.
He looked down at the silver cord, tracing its trajectory. It looked so fragile—it was crimped and looping and it glistened wet. But it was strong. The cord anchored into Victor’s navel and it tethered his silver, shimmering self—his self that was floating along the ceiling—to the brown, dry corpse in the Barcalounger below.
I am dead, Victor realized.
Vic sat dead in front of his TV watching more episodes of a psychic renegade cop. He also regularly saw a show about a gritty renegade cop. This guy had so much grit that he took on international terrorists—Towelheads, Victor identified them—all by himself. Gritty cop was always under the gun. For instance, he had just hours to locate a nuclear bomb no bigger than a burrito. Under this pressure, the gritty detective had to do the only thing that a real renegade can do. He tortured suspects with ordinary household items: duct tape, ballpoint pens, and, in one case, an electric nose hair trimmer.
The AC kept the ranch bungalow cool and dry. The Freon circulated, leeching the scant humidity out of the air, wicking the moisture out of Victor’s body.
His skin cured into beef jerky. His eyeballs clouded over with a bluish white film, and they popped out of his eye sockets and rested on his cheekbones. They burst and flattened, so they looked like two hatched reptile eggs, dried under the desert sun into empty leather sacks.
Marina’s face flashed onto the TV screen. It was an old police-file photo. Her blond hair looked very yellow, and her roots showed. She was pale and when it was frozen on film like that—when she wasn’t talking or licking her lips—her jaw looked very long and narrow. A photo of Pedro appeared beside her. He looked frightened and bewildered, childish. Greasy fucking Mexican, Victor noted. A bright sheen bounced off the tight curls of Pedro’s mushroom-cap hairdo.
Then a third photo appeared: a bald man with face like a boxer—broken nose, piggy little eyes, mean slash of a mouth. The newscaster said his name was Boris something or other. He was an “associate” of Marina’s. Boris, Victor snorted. That’s rich. How fucking cliché.
Boris was being sought by the authorities, the newscaster said. Live film of a desert scene rolled onto the screen: a black Lincoln, high-centered on the edge of an arroyo. The car doors were standing open. A couple of lumps were lying on the sand, covered in white tarps.
Dirt nap, Victor announced to himself.
Week after week, Vic floated dead, bobbing along the ceiling of his ranch style bungalow. Below him, his desiccated husk withered into the Naugahyde of the Barcalounger.
The TV blasted.
Program after program. Commercial after commercial. Season after season. Through live coverage, and summer reruns. Through hurricanes, murders, and high-altitude bombings. Through real cops, fake cops, fake real cops. Through makeovers, liposuctions, and boob jobs. Through entertainment, infotainment, and docudramas. Through re-enactments, dramatizations, and purely fictional events. Through summer, then winter, and then through summer again. The television glowed blue and white, flickering over Victor’s lifeless face.
* * *
Marina had showed him how to set up his automatic payments. She’d been sure to leave enough money in the checking account to cover at least a year of utility bills. There were so many passwords, and clicks, and “I Agree” buttons—it was so easy to cash out the stocks and drain the 401K. And who had the money now? Maybe Boris.
It was two years before anyone came to the house. The visitor didn’t come to see Victor. He came to read the meter. He let himself in the side gate and walked around the back of the house.
The pool was drained dry and full of palm fronds. They’d blown down from the date palms over the course of two spring seasons when the winds are high and fierce. The dried palm fronds crinkled and rustled in the arid cement bowl of the pool. Tree rats harbored in the withered leaves, burrowing into the arboreal necropolis.
The meterman stepped back from the pool. Where there are rats, there are snakes.
He heard a television blasting. It was a game show. A crowd roared; Wheel of Fortune.
Some old person, he thought. Can’t hear.
He rang the back doorbell, then pounded on the door. He walked over to the glass sliding door, looked in the window through the gap in the vertical Levelors. He saw Victor—his profile sagging, his hair bristling, his leather hands were clamping black talons dimpling the armrests.
When the gurney wheeled out onto the driveway, the silver cord that attached Victor to the brown husk dissolved. He floated freely, into the cloudless sky, looking down at the streets in their tidy grids, the rows of palm trees lined up so neatly, so intentionally, and the swimming pools, blue and twinkling like merry gems.
As he floated higher, Victor realized, without alarm, that the shimmering silver pieces that suggested his form were drifting apart. The spaces between the silver became wider, and wider, until there was nothing but space. A brief thought flashed. Victor knew that he would, himself, be on television that evening. And he felt curiously happy, because he no longer cared.
* * *
CYNTHIA ROBINSON lives in San Francisco. She is the author of the Max Bravo series of black comedy mysteries. St. Martin’s Press published The Dog Park Club in 2010 and The Barbary Galahad is forthcoming in 2011.
Chloe
MARC PAOLETTI
“Pull over,” Dad says, voice barely audible over the hum of the air conditioner. “I have to go.”
I shake my head. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Pull over. Now.”
Dad knows I can’t refuse a direct order. I pull off the deserted highway into an all-night gas station, and continue past the pumps to a p
air of filthy white doors around the backside of the food mart. The left door reads Men. It’s 1:00 A.M.
Dad doesn’t get out of the car. Instead, he stays pressed into his seat, skeletal fingers clutching the dash. He twists painfully, and the LSU T shirt that once stretched tight across his torso shifts in a loose flurry of shadows. His head has only a few white strands left, and his sunken face looks tight, like it’s been slammed shut.
“We’re sitting ducks out here,” I say.
Dad doesn’t seem to care. “I need your help,” he says, and then unlatches the glove compartment with a shaky hand; the tiny door falls open with a thunk. He burrows underneath a pile of maps until he finds something. A ballpoint pen.
“What’s that for?” I ask.
Instead of answering, he pushes the pen at me with little stabs. “Cramps. Hurts.” His voice is dreamy with morphine.
The pen is clear plastic, the kind you can see the ink through, and I take it to humor him. Due to medication and chemo, Dad hasn’t been himself for months. A major liability if our rivals found out, which was why the family sent him to the middle of bumfuck nowhere to get better. Instead, he got so bad we had to take him back.
“Hurts,” he says again.
“I heard you the first time.” I pull the Colt .45 from underneath my seat and tuck it under my belt, then kick open the door and step into swampy night air that smells like motor oil and rotting green. Dad must be really out of it to take this kind of risk. Word could have already spread that he’s weak. We could both be dead before reaching the men’s room, but an order’s an order.
I’ve been taking orders from Dad my entire adult life. He ordered me to switch my course of study from architecture to law, which I hate like poison now. He ordered me to stay loyal to the family, no matter what, and ordered me to steer clear of Chloe—a woman I fell deeply in love with in law school—because she was an “unacceptable risk.” In other words, she wanted no part in the family business. Dad orders me like he fucking always does, and always has.
I scan the gas station. It’s clear—for now.
I circle fast to the passenger door and open it, forgetting that Dad isn’t belted in because the tight strap hurts his skin. He falls toward me, and I catch him against my chest before he tumbles out. His nose presses against my right temple; his breath feels warm against my ear.
“We have to be quick,” I tell him. “Think you can handle that?”
There’s no way to pull his arm across my shoulders. Instead, I slide my arms forward to the elbows under his armpits. When I stand, it’s like lifting a man made of cardboard tubes.
With him pressed nose-to-nose against me, I shuffle back blindly toward the restroom as smooth and quick as I can. I don’t want to jar his bowels loose before we get there, but I also don’t want to stay in the open longer than we have to. If the gas station attendant were watching, he might think we were two queers dancing.
I scan for threats to avoid looking into Dad’s eyes. Moths swoop and click against a streetlight bulb, and I’m tempted to let the light draw me in, too. Away from Dad, this place, myself.
“Veer left,” Dad says, slurring. He’s the only one who can see the way. “Now right.”
More orders. Or, as Dad might say, “proper direction.” The only direction I ever wanted to travel was away from the family with Chloe by my side. I’d never met a woman like Chloe, then or since. Gentle and almost pretty, she did things as they came, which turned the grinding shuffle of life into a spontaneous, free-form expression. I remember wishing I had the confidence to be like that. At the time, it was enough to simply be around her. I try not to think about what I could have learned from Chloe, and the terrible things I’ve learned instead.
My back thumps against the restroom door. I let my left arm go lax so Dad can reach down and turn the knob. To my surprise, the door opens. After pulling Dad inside, I notice the door can’t be locked without a key.
The room is twice the size of a broom closet and lit by buzzing fluorescents. I’d imagined graffiti-covered walls and an odor toxic enough to choke a horse, but the walls and floor gleam fish-belly white, and there’s a pine-tree chemical smell that’s almost pleasant. Water drip-drips into a clean sink below an unblemished mirror.
I shuffle Dad past a pair of sparkling urinals to the stall, bump open the door with my shoulder, and squeeze us inside. The toilet is to my right, his left, and has a thick black seat. The water is clear, but there’s a brown streak along the inside of the bowl.
“Line me up,” Dad says. Voice tight.
“Can’t you take it from here?”
“I told you. I need your help.”
I swing Dad around so the backs of his knees graze the rim of the bowl, and then use my right foot to kick his feet shoulder-length apart. He’s wearing dark blue sweat pants, which he struggles to push past his bony hips. I let him struggle a few moments longer before helping, and glimpse gray pubic hair. I move to settle him onto the toilet seat, but he clings to me.
“Still need your help,” he whispers, and points to his backside, elbow squeaking against the metal wall. “Hurry. Hurry. It won’t take much.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The morphine clogs me up.”
He keeps pointing, pointing, and I look at him incredulously. The nurses didn’t mention anything about clogs. “How the hell am I supposed to—?”
“The pen. Hurry.”
I think he’s kidding, but then he starts panting and wincing. Suddenly, I’m acutely aware of the weight of the pen in my breast pocket. My stomach goes cold. I’m not fucking ready for this. I’m ready to defend him from a rival-family’s assassin, sure, but not for this.
I look at the wall, the ceiling, but his eyes are waiting for me. He grimaces; a thread of spittle traces down his lower lip.
I need time to prepare, but it seems like time is never in the cards when it comes to Dad. He gave me just one hour to tell Chloe it was over after we’d been seeing each other for two years. One fucking hour, and the rest of my life to regret it.
Holding Dad steady with one hand, I pull the pen from my pocket and hold it by the capless tip. Blue ink stains my thumb. I figure the blunt end is the “proper” end since it’s less likely to catch, but who knows? I can’t believe what I’m about to do as I reach around Dad’s bony hip, and then trace the pen along the curve of his buttock. When I find the right spot, I pause, waiting for god knows what, and then I close my eyes and push slowly. Steadily. I feel strong, thick resistance.
As odd as it seems, when Dad sucks a breath, all I can think about is Chloe’s face when I told her we couldn’t be together any more. It was nearly the same look Dad had earlier in the car—face slammed shut, unable to believe what was happening. Normally, Chloe’s eyes were full of indiscriminate wonder. Within seconds, I’d erased it all.
I push the pen deep, until half disappears, and then twist sharply, roughly. Not taking so much care now. Dad grunts a warning. I yank my hand and the pen clear, and the echo of splashing water fills the stall, followed by the reek of fermented waste. I let him fall back onto the toilet seat, and then drop the soiled pen into his lap.
“Hurry,” I say, mimicking his earlier demand. His body trembles with effort.
Chloe had trembled, too, when asking for a reason. It was the first time she’d tried to pin me down about anything, the first time she’d attempted to divine a chain of precipitating events. I looked at her, my own face slammed shut, until she dashed away. I never saw her again. I’d let my soul mate go without a fight. How could I help her understand when I barely understood myself? Family members do as they’re told. It’s that simple and that complicated.
After letting Chloe go, I became an expert at letting other people go, too. At getting them let go, rather, as the family’s criminal defense attorney. I freed con men, wise guys, hitters. Too many to count. My imposed law degree and loyalty put to use.
I found out later—still many years ago�
��that one of the men I’d helped free had dealt with Dad’s “unacceptable risk.” On the day I’d said goodbye, Chloe had been shot once in the head, once in the heart, and dumped in the Red River. To do something about it would have meant disloyalty to the family. So I did nothing. Like I said, it’s that simple and that complicated.
I glance at the men’s room door. Part of me hopes an assassin barges in, guns blazing. The splashing stops. Finished, Dad’s commanding mien is all but gone. I tear free a few squares of toilet paper, yank him forward, and wipe him clean.
“Up,” he says, but it’s more of a question. He stares at his shoes. This time I support him with his left arm across my shoulders so we can both see. The pen clatters to the floor.
“This way,” I tell him as we shuffle forward. I yank his body closer to mine to better bear his weight, which has increased substantially somehow. “This way.”
We bang through the door, and I keep a watchful eye. Still nobody around.
After I load Dad into the car, I climb into the driver’s seat. Dad twists away from me toward the door. I draw my gun and point it at the back of his head.
I can kill him right now, and make up any story I want. Ambush, whatever. I can kill him—something I’ve dreamed of doing—before the cancer inevitably does.
But I don’t. Instead, I slide the gun back under my seat, and crank the car into gear. In a way, I make the decision for Chloe. Better that Dad feels every agonizing moment he has left. Better that he continues to realize the waste our lives have become.
* * *
MARC PAOLETTI is the author of Scorch, a thriller that draws upon his experiences as a Hollywood pyrotechnician, and coauthor of The Last Vampire and The Vampire Agent, the first two books of the Annals of Alchemy and Blood series. His acclaimed short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies, and, as a journalist, he has interviewed such notable figures as Sting and Beatles producer Sir George Martin. He has also published comic books and written award-winning advertising copy. For more information, visit www.marcpaoletti.com.
