Dead Souls Read online

  Despair doesn’t quite touch what I’m feeling right now. Wretched is closer.

  Sarah sits next to me, grips my arm, all mother hen. “He thought you might react like this. I hope you don’t mind, but he told me a bit about you. Your parents.”

  Oh God, she’s still trying to help me. I suppress a very inappropriate burst of laughter, but there is no help for me. I’m beyond help, beyond reach.

  I close my eyes for a moment. Rewind the hours, to the bit just after I stepped out into the rain, the glass entry door of the apartment building clicking shut behind me. No, the whole thing needs a rewrite—there’s no emotional payoff here. If I were in the editing bay for a Sumpter, Inc. commercial, we’d recast too, unless the ending had some kind of romantic/comedic punch line, because no one wants to identify with a neurotic, self-centered, and jealous protagonist. If I were going to shoot this thing, the main character, WOMAN OF TODAY, wouldn’t be the suspicious girlfriend stereotype; she would be empowered, confident, able to navigate challenges. Instead of walking barefoot in the rain, she’d have flagged a cab, talked the endearing, supportive minority EXTRA into giving her a free ride.

  I’m locked out of my apartment and someone I love is in trouble.

  A meta piece of cornball that, but because it’s self-aware, it hits as postmodern irony while still stirring the emotional tropes. The cabbie would drop her off, wave away her attempt to pay, and instead of darting to the entry of the apartment building across the street to spy, huddled and shivering—what was that word Scratch used? Pathetic. No, instead, she’d have walked over to Justin, taken him firmly by both hands.

  What’s wrong?

  Of course what’s wrong couldn’t be pancreatic cancer, too depressing for thirty seconds; no it’d have to be something travel-­related, with an exotic destination.

  There’s a malaria outbreak in Niger.

  Yes, Justin’s a member of Doctors Without Borders, and Pink Coat will be in pink scrubs, cast as an accompanying nurse.

  I’m coming with you.

  You can’t. You’re not even packed.

  Give me five minutes, I will be.

  And then she pulls a small, round Sumpter Omni disc out of her purse, unzips it so that it transforms into a full-size duffel bag. I’ll pick up what I need at the airport.

  SUMPTER. Ready for anything. An American original.

  END SCENE.

  For a beautiful, intangible few seconds, I am so good at my craft that I almost believe it.

  A cool hand picks up one of mine. Thin, piano fingers. Justin’s. “Are you okay?”

  Am I? No. I open my eyes. Justin sits on the coffee table, hand gripping mine. There are dark circles under his eyes—he hasn’t been sleeping either. And it really, truly, breaks my heart that in this moment, he is taking care of me instead of the other way around.

  “I just didn’t want to tell you until I knew for sure,” he says. “Sarah insisted I get a second opinion.”

  A memory floats down, the early days, when Justin and I were still getting to know each other. Cutting lettuce for salad in the kitchen.

  What’s your dad do?

  Oh, he’s an oncologist. Carrot shavings on the floor, a bottle of cabernet sauvignon on the porcelain-tiled counter, breathing. I was happy, happier than I’ll ever be again, and didn’t know it.

  Where does he live?

  Seattle.

  Finally Sarah cracks—tears bead her eyes. “Bathroom?” she asks.

  I nod behind me. “Through the bedroom.”

  She leaves. Justin and I just sit there, frozen. The floorboard heater crackles and snaps.

  “So what’s . . .” I begin, then stop. Trying to form the next few words is impossible, I feel submerged somehow, drowning, and the surface of the water is so very, very far away.

  Justin holds my hand a bit tighter. “There’s nothing to do. When the tumor grows, I’ll probably get the surgery, do a little chemo, which will help . . . prolong things, a bit. Not much.”

  “How long?”

  “A year . . . maybe.”

  I collapse into myself then with deep, shaking sobs—I can’t help it. Justin moves next to me on the couch, wraps his arms around me, and I press my face into his chest. Sometimes in my dreams, I crawl into his heart like some kind of magic sprite—a sign, my therapist said, of my inherent distrust and aversion to the world. You can escape everything but yourself, he’d said.

  “It’ll all be okay, I promise,” says Justin. He strokes my hair, the way it always soothes me. Used to soothe me.

  “It’s not.”

  “I’ve thought things through. I’ve made you the beneficiary of my life insurance policy . . .”

  I sit up. “Stop. Just stop it, Justin, you’re not—”

  “It’s half a million dollars. And my father was going to leave me his condo in San Francisco in his will, but he said you can have it.”

  “Justin, we are not having this discussion, I don’t—”

  “I need to do this Fiona.” Now his eyes bead with tears. “I need to feel like you’re going to have . . . something after I’m gone. No one’s ever given you anything. Frankly, you’ve had a pretty shitty life. Let me do this for you.” He caresses my cheek. “Let me do this for the girl I love.”

  It burns, that word love. If I’d just trusted him I never would have ended up in the bar, would’ve never met Scratch, wouldn’t have been so emotionally vulnerable, desperate. Easy pickings for any predator. No, this circle of hell I’m in was partly my creation. I opened the door. I let Scratch in. And then the worst moment of my life strikes, a thought that shatters me to my very core, almost makes me crack into a hundred thousand pieces. I could have saved Justin. If I’d known, I could have sold my soul and saved his life.

  But the world doesn’t go up in flames. I hear the rumble of traffic outside—people on their mysterious, self-absorbed, private journeys, no idea what’s in store for them. Hoping it gets better, whatever it is.

  And now I know what hell really is. The realization that no matter what personal tragedy befalls you, the mechanism that winds the clock of reality just ticks along, barely marking your time here and certainly not caring. All of it, all of it, completely, and utterly, pointless.

  There’s a polite cough. Justin and I sit up straighter, wipe our eyes with the back of our hands almost simultaneously. Sarah, helpful sister Sarah, enters the room, tentative as a cat.

  “Um . . . Fiona?”

  I turn to her and what I see in her hand is the second worst moment of my life.

  She holds a business card between her thumb and middle finger, as far away from her as possible, like it’s contaminated, like it’s a used tissue that could bear typhoid. Water drips from the card onto the floor.

  “I found this uh . . . floating in your toilet.”

  She takes a step closer to offer it to me, restore it to its rightful owner. Ever so helpful, that Sarah, ever so considerate. But I know what it is, can tell by the grain of the card, and that telltale waft of sulfur.

  It’s what’s in store for me.

  1 YEAR, 2 MONTHS LATER

  CHAPTER SIX

  THERE’S A NICE SNAP to the December air, twilight softening the edges of the city. It’s good to be walking; it’s good to get out of the apartment, the smells of the apartment, to take a break from Justin’s day-to-day erasure. He likes his caregiver Opal—no one can’t like Opal—always friendly but in an unobtrusive way, a wisp of a woman in her late thirties, who, it’s easy to tell, holds an unknown sorrow. She’s expensive too, but now there’s money, plenty of it. It’s remarkable what one can learn while invisible. Passwords to my coworkers’ e-mail accounts, gossip splayed out in front of me, about me, the closed-door meetings where the real power moves, so that I’m always three steps ahead, maybe five. It’s uncanny, they say, she did it again, they
say. Invisibility has pushed my five-figure salary to six.

  Your talent, Alejandro once said, is extremely rare. I got a twofer, meaning I can be invisible and corporeal, or invisible and non-corporeal, a ghost passing through walls or instantly transporting to a different location, although clothes don’t come with me in either instance. A major nuisance. It’s been hardly worth bothering with at all since the end of summer, just too damn cold, and by now the novelty has worn off—I don’t throw up as much but still occasionally get nauseous—and have come to realize ignorance to a certain extent is bliss. You’re better off thinking your subordinates appreciate the employment ­opportunity you gave them, that your coworkers aren’t gaming to make you look bad, that your name has never made a layoff list.

  That the man you love has an engagement ring, which he takes out occasionally from its resting place in a sock at the back of his underwear drawer, turning it over in his hands, rueful and sad.

  Tonight our hospice godsend is making Justin pancakes for dinner, one of the few things he can still stomach, although just the act of eating wears him out for the night. He’ll probably go to sleep while she reads out loud to him. They’re on a murder/mystery kick, halfway through John Grisham’s The Firm, surprising because Justin never read when he was well, had no time for it, no patience. One of the strange gifts that cancer brings—time. I don’t read to him though, because I can’t help but wonder whether he’ll live long enough to reach the end.

  Everything has become that hourglass, an unanswerable question. Like the bags of ice I buy because it’s easier on his stomach, sucking cubes instead of drinking a whole glass of water. Will there be a morning, after he’s gone, when I’m pouring the rest of the cubes into the sink to let them melt, disappear? When I carry a bowl of chicken broth, letting the crackers get good and soggy so they’re easier to digest, I wonder: Will this be the last time I make it for him?

  His last his last his last. Anything and everything could be his last. He might not even be alive by the time I get back. My stomach clenches at the thought. Although I’m told I should be thankful—the doctors are amazed he’s lasted this long. Surgery proved useless, maybe even incited the cancer to be more aggressive, and now the tumor has pushed out his stomach so that he looks eight months pregnant. They eye it with something that makes me uneasy, trying to hold back how eager they are to cut into him, take it out, write it up in a journal somewhere. Maybe there’s a prize among doctors, like fishermen who catch the biggest tuna, get their photos taken with its massive bulk. Will there be a Facebook posting with Dr. Anderson, holding a growth the size of a newborn in his bloody hands, a smile plastered on his face, 8 lbs.!

  Nothing would surprise me, not now.

  I pass an Italian goods store, Antonini’s. Their storefront window is adorned with pine boughs, small glowing lights, different sizes of Panettone on display, an espresso machine—a La Pavoni by the looks of it. But why the pine boughs?

  Oh right, Christmas. In years past, I’d ditch the city, hole up in a cabin deep in the heart of Mendocino until it was over and the garbage trucks picked up the Christmas trees left at the curb with the recycling. I’d joke I was having a “me-cation.” I fooled everyone but Justin. He never pressed me.

  I pass by Launderland, where Opal takes the soiled comforters because the laundry machines in the basement of the apartment complex are too small. Single-women washers, Justin used to say. He hadn’t wanted to move in with me, tried for as long as he could to hold out on his own—I’m not going to be a burden—but when he passed out and didn’t tell anyone for a day, Sarah became immediately useful. She threatened to make him a ward of the state, at which point he caved. It was an unspoken known that when he arrived in my apartment, boxes brought by movers like they were the offerings of the Three Wise Men, that he would never live anywhere else again, except, maybe, the hospital.

  “Spare a quarter?”

  I look down, and there’s a homeless man with a cardboard sign, PLEAse help, God BLEss. Older than anyone should be on the streets, with a white grizzled beard and knees poking out of threadbare pants.

  I stop, reach into my purse for one of my folded fives, and don’t find any. Can’t remember the last time I gave one away. When did I stop keeping them? It gives me a prickle of unease, bad juju, like I might somehow hasten Justin’s bad end, although I should be beyond superstition at this point. I dig for a quarter, find two, and drop them into the man’s waiting hand.

  His last his last his last.

  And the fact that I could have saved him from all this, if only I’d known.

  I keep walking. Fold my arms over my chest, watching my breath trail behind me in the cold air.

  But maybe . . .

  Maybe is all I’m hanging on to these days.

  Because there’s a paper in my back pocket, burning like a brand, and a question that I’m going to put to Alejandro, who’s been evading my calls and texts of late.

  Fuck though, I need a drink first.

  EVEN FOR A LAPSED ATHEIST, it feels sacrilegious to drink in a church, but it is the one place I feel relatively safe, where I’m not constantly looking over my shoulder, painstakingly aware of every passing stranger. Wondering if Scratch is hidden in some shadow, about to claim his favor. Alejandro says we’re all suffering to some extent from post-traumatic stress disorder, and that God himself wouldn’t deny us this small respite, even if we are dead souls, by sharing a drink in a former choir loft.

  Besides, Alejandro had said the first time I joined his little group, we are already damned. There is no such thing as being more damned.

  And tonight, as I climb the spiral staircase, I do note a sense of it all falling from my shoulders, the heavy, dark weight of it. Maybe this is how Christians feel, why they come and kneel every Sunday.

  Alejandro has a standing reservation for the entire choir loft every Saturday so we can talk freely, although rarely is there a large enough group of dead souls to fill it. It’s usually us regulars, with drifters who edge nervously in and out, either still so green they’re in denial or old-timers approaching a decade without hearing from Scratch, trying to fly far under his radar, hoping maybe he’s forgotten all about them.

  Tonight it’s just the regulars. Jeb/Dan, Alejandro of course, Ellen, Renata, Jasmine, Mike, and Clarissa. Someone’s missing . . . but then I remember, Gary’s approaching the ten-year mark. Probably doesn’t want to rub elbows, risk getting contaminated with our bad juju. His tech company, VUEWORKS, just went public and he’s now worth more than a hundred million. Hopefully he’ll get a chance to enjoy it.

  “Oh, Fiona, you came,” says Alejandro with his characteristic warmth, his standard welcome. But I can’t meet his eyes this time, and he notes this.

  “Fiona!” Jeb stands to give me a hug . . . or is it Dan? I can never tell the two apart. They’re both “frosh” at Holy Names University, an institution I’d never heard of, they both always look like they just rolled out of bed, they’re both majoring in cybersecurity, plus they both sport the same übershort blond hair and stubbly goatees. Dan traded his soul to be irresistible to women, and Jeb, who’s more of a comic book geek, traded his so he could fly, a trick he also manages to use to score dates by pretending he’s a magician and levitating a few inches off the ground.

  “Hey . . . you,” I reply, returning the embrace. He smells like weed.

  “Jeb,” he says.

  “I knew that.”

  “Yeah, right,” says Dan, who’s tilted back in his chair, grinning.

  Everyone looks at me—no one buys it—but I’m late, they’re all probably three drinks in, and the vibe is good-­natured, collegial. I make a note of Jeb’s red T-shirt so I don’t make that mistake again, take off my jacket and drape it over the back of the chair, put my bag on the floor, then take my usual seat at the round table. Like Camelot, Clarissa is fond of saying.

  Only we
’re no knights.

  Streetlight floods through the stained glass window, a copy of the north transept rose of Chartres Cathedral with the Virgin Mary, the Queen of Heaven, surrounded by medieval kings and prophets. Alejandro had named them all once, but I never remember stuff like that. The choir smells of beer, candle wax, old incense, and Murphy Oil Soap.

  “The usual?” Renata asks, leaning her elbow on the balcony rail. Tonight her long, curly red hair catches the glow of the hanging chandeliers made with recycled wine bottles.

  I nod, and she signals a waitress below. An associate professor of queer studies at Mills College, Renata always sits closest to the balcony so she can keep an eye on the crowd, watching for him. She still has trouble with the idea of Scratch and the patriarchal duality of a good and evil supernatural system, but isn’t in a hurry to see him again either. Like me, she didn’t believe she was talking to the actual devil, who’d chosen the form of a white middle-aged man to play off her entitlement issues. So she tossed out an ask that was an attempt at sarcasm, not a real wish, and is now struggling with its repercussions.

  Oh, yeah? If you really have the power of a deity, make me straight, she’d told Scratch. And he did. A deep blow to her career, and her ten-year relationship. She can’t even manage bisexual.

  “Gary’s ditching us again?” My fingers tap the table, a nervous tic that always sinks me in poker. “I was hoping he’d be buying.”

  “His daughter has a recital,” says Clarissa. “How’s Justin?”

  “The same. And worse,” I say. Clarissa is stunningly beautiful—her ask was that simple—but what’s strange is that she hasn’t shed the mousy girl inside her. Even though you should be able to imagine her walking down a runway, you can’t. Alejandro has tried, many times, to take her picture, and he says that she always blinks or turns her head at exactly the wrong moment. Anti-photogenic, is what he calls her. Still, even those photos sell well. A postmodern attempt at deconstructing beauty, raved a reviewer.

  Clarissa covers my hand with hers for a moment. It’s like a shy bird has lit there. “I’m truly sorry.”