by Kim Fielding
“But… the gambling…?”
“The gambling is something else.”
Tag stood and began to pace. The room, which had felt like a familiar refuge, now made him feel claustrophobic. It was every damn place he’d escaped since he was a kid. Jack swiveled his head like a tennis spectator as Tag walked back and forth.
“Here’s the thing,” Tag said. “I was born with a genetic heart defect. It was the same thing that killed my brother. It was inoperable. When I was born, the doctors didn’t even want me to leave the hospital, but Mom and Dad had a fit. Their first kid never came home at all and they were determined I would, even if only for a couple of days.” Telling this story, Tag was reminded that his parents cared for him in their own fucked-up way.
“But you’re not dead,” said Jack.
“Not last I checked. I lived for a few days and then I just kept on living. Eventually my parents brought me in for shots or a checkup or something, and the doctors couldn’t believe it. The defect had corrected itself. There had been only one previous recorded case of that happening. ‘That’s a very lucky little boy,’ the docs said.”
“You were lucky.” Jack appeared caught up in the story, if slightly mystified as to where it was going.
Tag’s pacing had brought him to the door. He stopped and leaned back against it. “I was lucky. And that’s the thing. Right from the start, I’ve had amazing good luck. Not all the time about everything—if that was the case, I’d have landed with saner parents. But with lots of stuff. When I was three, I fell out the window of our apartment. We were up on the fourth floor. But the back of my shirt got caught by a tree branch one story down, and when the firemen got there, I didn’t even have a scratch. I made the evening news. Not too long after that, a neighbor caught me jamming a screwdriver into an electrical outlet in the building lobby. Turned out that circuit had shorted out a few days earlier and the slumlord who owned the place hadn’t bothered fixing it.”
He pried himself from the door, crossed the room, and sat on the messy bed, which smelled like sex. “My parents did a crappy job supervising me. If I hadn’t been lucky, I’d never have made it to my teens.”
“Well, I’m glad for your luck, then,” Jack said quietly.
“I’m not.”
When Jack frowned, Tag hastily added, “I mean, I’m happy I survived my childhood. But as I got older, something changed. I was still freakishly lucky, but now every time Dame Fortune smiled at me, I spit in her face. I fucked it up.”
“What do you mean?”
This was hard to even think about. Tag had once watched an Albert Brooks movie in which Brooks’s character got hit by a bus. In the afterlife, his fate depended on how he’d handled his life. There was a trial where the guys running the place showed painful clips of every dumb mistake he’d ever made. Now Tag was starring in his own version of that movie.
“When I was in junior high, we lived in this really scary neighborhood. The school was falling apart. But the city built a brand-new shiny school—state-of-the-art—and had a lottery for who could go. I won a seat. And three months later I screwed around in my science class and started a fire. They kicked me back to the shitty school.
“We moved the next year. I found a really caring language arts teacher. She got me into all the honors classes, helped me out when I was stuck. She found me a great scholarship and told me if I kept up the good grades, she’d make sure I got it. Full ride at a great university, right? I flunked out instead.”
“Tag, you—”
“Let me finish. I’ll spare you the gory details. I got all these amazing chances and blew every one of them. Dropped out, got kicked out. I’d score a great job and promptly get myself fired. I stopped and started community college a half-dozen times, Jack. I won a car in a giveaway and crashed it. I found a lottery ticket lying on the street, scratched it off, and won a thousand bucks. And I lost the damn ticket before I could cash it in.”
Jack stood and crossed the room so he could sit beside Tag. “You don’t have to tell me this,” Jack said.
“I sure as hell do. I was even worse with guys than I was with school and money. I’d run into some amazing man, he’d be totally into me, and I’d say exactly the right thing to piss him off or scare him away. Or I’d take off myself, like I did with Jason.”
“You haven’t done that with me.”
“Given time, I bet I would.” And that hurt twice over, because he knew he wouldn’t even get the chance to screw up the best luck of his life.
Jack settled his hand on Tag’s knee and squeezed gently. That was nice.
“So I started thinking of my good luck as more of a curse. I think maybe that happened when I overslept and missed a final exam, which meant I flunked the last class I needed to finally finish my degree.
“When I met Jason, I told myself this was the time I’d hold it together. I got a good job at the university. It paid well and it was fun. Rented a nice place. Got sort of serious with Jason. Until he proposed, and then I really lost it. And Jacky, the more things I ruined, the emptier I felt inside.”
“You came here to feel alive?”
Tag snorted. “Even I’m not dumb enough to search for salvation in Vegas. But I thought maybe a road trip would help—which it didn’t. Or maybe seeing nature’s wonders would kick-start me. We know how that worked out.”
“You found me.” Jack’s voice was almost a whisper.
Tag returned the knee squeeze. “I did.”
They sat in silence a while, just touching. But Tag was aware he still hadn’t explained the Vegas part of the story, and that’s what Jack had asked for in the first place. When Tag cleared his throat, it sounded unreasonably loud.
“I had some money in savings when I left Iowa. I… I wasn’t really thinking this thing through, right? But what I planned—even if I didn’t admit it to myself—was to come here and win really big. Push my luck to the absolute limits. Not sixty grand or a hundred twenty grand—I’m talking a million dollars.”
“And then?”
Tag dragged the words from his throat. “And if that didn’t get my heart going, I was going to fuck up more grandly than I ever had before.”
“Shit.” Jack twisted his body so he could lean his face into the crook of Tag’s neck. “How were you going to do it?”
“Dunno. Not drowning—that one hadn’t occurred to me. But pills, maybe. Swan dive off the Stratosphere. Slit my wrists in the bathtub. Drive my car into something really solid. Find someone big as Buddy and make him really, really mad.”
Cataloged like that, his plan sounded silly, overly theatrical. And it couldn’t truly be classified as a plan anyway—his mistakes never were. It had been more of a niggling feeling in the corner of his brain, an itch he knew he’d eventually scratch.
But Jack didn’t tell him he was stupid. He continued to snuggle and play with Tag’s hair. He had sort of a thing for Tag’s curls, which was endearing as hell.
“You lost all your money last night,” Jack finally pointed out.
“Well, yeah. Because my heart is going—but not because of the gambling. I told you. It’s because of you.”
Jack sat up enough to look at Tag’s face. “You lost on purpose?”
“Sort of.” He smiled. “I gave my good luck away.”
Blinking, Jack said, “You what?”
“I didn’t just lose a bunch of money, Jacky. Money’s nothing. Not important. I lost my luck. No—I didn’t lose it. I… traded it. For this.” He stood and retrieved last night’s shirt from the floor. He slipped the card out of the pocket and handed it to Jack.
“The jack of hearts,” Jack said. “Nice, but I still don’t—”
“Dane—the dealer—he got the cash and my luck. I got cab fare and the jack of hearts.”
“Which means?”
“It means as long as you’re with me, I won’t mess up. Might be only today, but dammit, Jacky, however long it is, I’ll do right by you.”
When
Jack handed back the card, Tag fetched his wallet and slipped it inside. He liked that. Better than a wallet full of greenbacks any day.
“You’re not making any sense, Tag. You can’t give away good luck like that. And a Vegas dealer can’t promise you won’t make more mistakes.”
“Why not?” Tag crossed his arms stubbornly.
“Because that’s not how—”
“You’re a ghost, babe. You’ve spent sixty years haunting an ex-motel. And we’ve been making love—I am in love. With you. A ghost. If we can accept that, aren’t other improbable things possible too?”
Jack chewed on that for a while before looking up with a small grin. “I guess I’m in no position to question the supernatural.”
“You’re really not,” Tag replied, smiling back.
“So now you’re broke and unlucky—”
“Or maybe just ordinarily fortunate.”
“—but you have me.”
“As long as I can keep you, I definitely got the better end of this trade.”
That called for another embrace, so they shared one in the middle of their motel room, complete with kisses and whispered endearments neither could bring himself to say any louder.
“So now,” Tag said when he could breathe again, “maybe you can help me with a plan. Some of us have to eat, and a real bed is nice, but forty dollars won’t get us far.”
Jack walked to the bathroom while Tag, curious, followed. Jack took Tag’s black toiletry bag off the hook, unzipped it, and dug around in the back pocket Tag never used. With a flourish, Jack produced a small stack of fifties, which he handed to Tag.
Tag thumbed through them. “What the hell?”
“After I saw you playing cards, I thought I better tuck some cash away for you. In case you lost the rest. I waited until you were asleep and I stole it from your stash. You had so much, I figured you wouldn’t miss a few hundred dollars.”
“Six hundred, and I didn’t. I’ve always sucked at math.”
“Well, good.” Jack gave Tag’s ass a friendly slap. “Now you can eat and we can have sex in a real bed, at least for a little while.” Unspoken between them was the last bit—until Jack disappeared for good.
Sobered by that thought, but grateful, Tag put the toiletry bag away. “I guess maybe I should go pay Buddy for another week and then pick up some groceries.”
Jack nodded. “All right. But also, you and I need to talk.”
Fuck. “About what?”
“About a ghost.”
Twenty
TAG DIDN’T go grocery shopping, nor did he pay for another week at the Baja. Instead he listened, grim-faced, to Jack’s ghost story. It wasn’t a detailed story. One of the other rooms at the Baja was haunted by a phantom so faint that Buddy could barely see it. But he could tell it was a child and it was afraid. When he tried to speak to it, the ghost hid from him. He was hoping Jack would have better luck, due to his undead status.
“What does he want you to do with this ghost, aside from a friendly chat?” Tag asked.
“See if I can help it find peace.”
Tag shook his head. “I don’t like it.”
“Why not? You don’t want to help?”
“It’s not that I don’t care. It’s only… I care more about you. And Jack, when you met those dam ghosts, you vanished. Poof. What if that happens again? And what if this time you don’t have the juice to come back?”
Judging by the wary look in Jack’s eyes, he had similar fears. But he gave Tag’s shoulder a quick squeeze. “I need to do this, Tag.”
“Why?”
“Because I was alone all those years and… and it was really hard.” His voice cracked slightly and he cleared his throat. “And because I know what my unfinished business is.”
Tag didn’t want to hear this, didn’t want to know it. He wanted to keep Jack forever and be happy and…. Goddammit. “What’s your unfinished business?”
“I wanted to matter, Tag. That’s why I went to Hollywood to begin with. I didn’t want to be this nobody from Nebraska, a faggot who worked at a meatpacking plant and fucked strangers in alleys.”
“You do matter. You matter to me.”
Jack’s answering smile was sweet and sad, and it almost broke Tag’s recently revived heart. “I know. I’ve been feeling a little… frayed anyway. But when you told me you love me—and I could tell you meant it—and you said how you’ve decided you want to live—”
“Because of you.”
“I know. I felt this pull…. Tag, I could fade away right now. There’s this warm feeling, deep in here.” He placed his hand on the center of his chest. “And it’s so good. Like… like coming inside on a really cold day and standing by the fire. If I weren’t keeping those flames under control, I’d be gone already.”
Tag’s throat was unbearably tight. “Gone?”
“Yeah. But it’s good, Tag. It’s… oh jeez, I don’t know what it is yet, but it’s good. It’s more than I hoped for.”
“Then why are you still here?”
“Because you’re here, dummy.” Jack bonked him lightly on the arm. “’Cause I’m greedy and I want a little more time with you. But I don’t think I can last much longer. So let me see if I can help someone while I’m here.”
You have helped someone, Tag wanted to say, but he knew he was being selfish. Yes, he wanted to hoard every second he had with Jack. But if there was some poor dead kid at the Baja and Jack could give the kid a hand….
“What if you run out of energy and get dragged off in the bad way? What if you don’t get an opportunity to go to the good place?”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“You’re not James Dean. You don’t have to be a daredevil.”
“I’m not,” Jack said. “I’m just doing what feels right. Only took me eighty years to get here.”
Tag had learned some hard lessons from his parents. How to take care of himself at an early age. How to hide his secrets and pass for normal, no matter how fucked-up things really were. How to run when trouble came and start somewhere new until trouble tracked you down again. He wanted to run right now. He could get in his car with his six hundred dollars and go to California or Idaho or Utah. Find a job. Try to forget he’d ever met a ghost named Jack Dayton.
He could fuck up his last moments with the man he loved, just like he’d always fucked up everything before.
Tag twisted his body and gathered Jack into his arms. “I love you,” Tag said, because those were the only words left that mattered.
BUDDY WASN’T at the front desk or in his apartment, which felt to Tag like a reprieve. “You can be a hero later, Jacky. How about a drive first?”
Jack smiled at him. “Yeah. Can we go back to California? Just a little way?”
“I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”
They drove the length of the Strip—tawdry in the bright daylight—and out of town. Tag stopped at the casino near the solar farm to fill the tank. “It’s stupid,” he announced to Jack when he got back in the car.
“What’s stupid?” Jack was smoking again, the little wisps of gray floating out the open passenger window.
“There are all kinds of energy sources around here. Sun, oil. Why can’t we use one of them to recharge you?”
“You want a solar-powered ghost?”
“Yes. That is exactly what I want.”
Jack chuckled. “I think I’d probably run on hydroelectric instead.”
“I don’t care if you run on AA batteries, Jacky.”
Jack’s hand felt nice on Tag’s thigh.
As they continued driving, there was nothing much to look at aside from long, wrinkled mountains that reminded Tag of sleeping dinosaurs. The highway was pretty much a straight shot, two long lines converging at the horizon. Even with a steady flow of traffic in both directions, the landscape had an abandoned quality.
And speaking of abandoned, not long after they crossed the state line, they came upon an old gas station. The t
all sign was falling apart and the building was boarded up. A single palm tree and one crooked Joshua tree were the only signs of life, and across the parking lot were the ruins of a gift shop that once sold fossils, cold drinks, and souvenirs.
“I wonder if that place has a ghost,” Jack said softly.
“Do you want me to stop?”
“No.”
The highway took a couple twists around some mountains, but they were in another flat spot when Jack laughed. “Is that real?” he asked, pointing at a sign that read Zzyzx Rd—1 Mile.
“I guess so. Want to check it out?”
“Yeah.”
Tag took the exit and then the overpass across the highway. The pavement soon gave way to very bumpy gravel as the road curved around the edge of a hill. “I wish I had four-wheel drive,” he said after the Camry scraped over a particularly rough patch.
“We can turn back.”
Tag stopped the car and looked at him. “Do you want to see what’s there?”
After a brief pause, Jack grinned. “Yeah.”
“Then let’s go.”
The road didn’t look all that promising, being lined mostly with rocks and scrubby brush. Tag caught a glimpse of a dry lake bed off to the right. But then there was a line of palm trees and a white gate across the road. A sign pointed ahead to something called the Desert Studies Center and to the right for visitors. He turned right.
“It’s a ghost town,” said Jack. It was—or rather, according to a sign they passed, it was a ghost health resort.
“This place was in business when you were alive, Jack.”
“I never heard of it.”
“I guess it didn’t cater to the Hollywood crowd.”
Tag parked the car in front of a long, low building with no remaining roof or windows. He and Jack got out and walked around. A pond of green water was edged by some ranch houses, a few of which seemed to still be in use, but most of the buildings were uninhabitable.
