Lost Signals (9 page)

FLASH
 
!

. . . lightning only heard, Michael in the pisser, sitting down in the dark, rising when he’s done
 
; back through the little hall, back to the desk with the small television, the papers, the chips, and his phone . . . his phone letting him know someone wrote him, someone said they’re here, I’M HERE, Pamela already
 
?, and Michael sticks his head out the little window and sees (yes) Pamela standing at the gate, alone, anxious, no doubt, by the way she sways . . .

FLASH
 
!

. . . Michael out of the office, the green wooden door slamming shut behind him, racing to greet Pamela, nodding to her through the bars
 
; follow me, he’s saying, this way . . .

. . . behold . . .

. . . Michael letting Pamela in through a small door in the brush, Pamela remarking on it, saying how cool, a fucking door into a graveyard at night . . . Michael nodding yeah but come on it’s raining pretty bad now and the office is dry, come on, you’re gonna like this . . . and they run through the rain and she’s laughing and Michael doesn’t care if she makes too much noise, doesn’t care if he does either, let someone notice, let him get fired, there are other cool gigs like the night watchman at a hospital, the night watchman at a train station . . .

FLASH
 
!

. . . in through the green door, damp wood, and into the office and she looks so wonderful drenched like this and Michael notices for the first time she’s carrying two beers on the end of a six pack plastic thingie and he says,

“ah man I probably shouldn’t drink here”

and she says

“just one, each”

and he shrugs and shows her around the office
 
; shows her the letterhead SAMHATTAN CEMETERY, shows her the file cabinet with all the dead records and the little radio and the television and realizes he’s run out of things to show her then remembers the Givens Sensor Board, and turns around and shows her that, too . . .

“if one of these lit up . . . ”

FLASH
 
!

. . . they’re kissing, not the way he had planned but so what
 
; she’s not straddling him in the office chair, but their lips are together, two sets, warm and wet, he’s the one against the wall and she’s the one making this all happen—and with his eyes closed he hears one of the beer cans open and she’s handing it to him and now they’re drinking beers and kissing and dogs and cats are making a bunch of noise on the television and Michael is in young man’s heaven . . .

FLASH
 
!

CRACK
 
!

. . . they’re watching the movie together, eating pizza
 
; Pamela uses the bathroom and Michael likes that, feels for a second like they live here together in this really cool place . . . they take turns looking out the one window
 
; Pamela says the rain and tombstones look like the Old West together and Michael shrugs and then they’re laughing at her jokes, Pamela’s funny, Michael really likes her, likes that they only kissed and nothing else is going to happen
 
; he isn’t sure what he would do, isn’t sure how to do things like that
 
; glad enough for the kiss and receives a second flurry of kisses when it’s time for her to leave, here in the office, their lips together, so good, then a goodbye at the door in the brush and Michael scurrying across the grass, then pavement, back into the office where the movie has ended and it’s an hour past midnight and he already has a message on his phone that says THAT WAS FUN and Michael howls with delight and pumps a fist in the air and gets up on the chair and changes the channel . . . new movie . . . how about a black and whiter
 
? . . . an old one . . . a funny one
 
? . . . Michael shrugs
 
; the movie isn’t funny, isn’t supposed to be, but it’s good . . . black and white . . . except every now and then he sees a flash of yellow on the screen, some sort of mistake on the channel’s part
 
; or maybe the movie is so old that it’s hard to show it the right way, maybe it’s like a yellow stain, appearing, pulsing, rhythmically–-a commercial comes and Michael hops down off the chair and crosses the office and sits down in the bathroom . . . he’s thinking of Pamela sitting here
 
; it’s too gross to get too excited but still . . . when he’s done he leaves the bathroom and on the walk back to the chair sees the yellow light is still pulsing on the television screen and something very dark swirls in Michael’s belly
 
; pizza, beer, love, lust, he isn’t sure, then thinks oh no, I might know what might be making that light, that pulsing, and he turns around to face the Givens Sensor Board for the first time ever with a mind to see if it’s come to life . . .

. . . a flashing . . .

. . . it has . . .

. . . it’s come to life . . .

. . . Michael’s mouth is hanging open and he’s burning up with fear, not sure what to
do
, this isn’t supposed to happen this has never happened before . . . and he’s an inch from the board now, his fingertip at the blinking light, trying to determine which plot it is, who is sending him a signal, is this really happening
 
?, PLOT 22, he’s checking the ledger, who is where
 
?, but does it matter who it is
 
? PLOT 22 is blinking, holy Christ, someone is alive out there . . .

FLASH
 
!

. . . Michael runs to the window and looks out at the greater cemetery as if the person using the sensor might be standing upon their grave, calling for a stewardess . . . then he’s back at the board and knows who it is, knows of course who it is because there’s only one body in Samhattan Cemetery that could be breathing still, only one body buried today . . .

FLASH
 
!

. . . lightning, and the mailman’s sensor, too . . .

FLASHing

. . . Michael on the phone, immediately, talking to the police, telling them Randy Scotts’s sensor is going off, yes, the Givens Sensor, first time Michael’s ever seen one blink, PLOT 22, yes, what am I supposed to do
 
?, should I start digging
 
?, do I wait for you guys to get here
 
?, do I—

FLASH
 
!

. . . and the brief flat response from the officer on the phone . . .

“Leave him.”

. . . two words followed by something else, a barb at the dead man, but
leave him
is all Michael hears . . .

. . .
Michael on the phone with an ambulance now, worried that the police will arrest him somehow for disobeying (
leave him
), but what else to do, calling, frantic, getting someone on the line, someone in charge, someone to help, and that someone pauses and with no knowledge about how the police reacted, no way of knowing they were echoing the sentiments of Samhattan’s police, they repeat,

“Leave him.”

. . . Michael off the phone now, staring at the blinking Givens Sensor Board, shaking his head no, there’s a man out there, begging for help, isn’t dead, I can see his tombstone through the window, oh GOD HOW MUCH AIR IS IN A BOX THAT SIZE
 
?
 
!
 
?
 
! . . . Michael turning to face the black and white movie but he can’t watch a movie now, can’t eat a thing, has to get out of this office, has to get . . .

FLASH
 
!

. . . on the phone with the Cemetery President . . . Bailey Smith . . . Bailey will tell him what to do . . . that he should already be doing it . . . but Bailey
isn’t
saying that, Bailey is talking about how some people deserve things, some people make their own beds, leave him, Michael, leave him in the box . . .

CRACK–
BOOM
 
!

. . . Michael alone, more alone than before . . . feels the weight of the graveyard pressing in, like it’s crawling in through the little window, all that decay, and Michael shaking his head no, come on, no, I’m gonna have to do this alone . . .

. . . out the office door, the wood crashing against the stone behind him . . . he’s running to the shed, gets there faster than he plans, breathing hard, he’s opening the shed, grabbing a shovel, still wet and muddy from this afternoon . . .

FLASH
 
!

. . . lightning yes but the Givens Sensor Board blinking in his memory, too . . . with a shovel Michael runs along the pavement, his sneakers slick on the ground, crosses over wet grass, wet stones, giving earth, weak from the storm . . .

. . . PLOT 15, 16, 17 . . .

. . . Michael is thinking about Pamela, maybe he should call her, his phone is back in the office, maybe he should call Pamela, tell her he needs help, needs another hand, there’s no way he’s going to dig this guy up in time, how much time does he have
 
?, do you know, Pamela
 
? do you
 
? . . .

. . . PLOT 18, 19, 20 . . .

. . . rain pools at his brow and pours down his cheeks, his nose, falling to his lips . . .

. . . PLOT 21 . . .

. . . he’s thinking about Pamela, about her kissing him, their lips together in the office, how good it felt . . . how good it felt to talk to her, to laugh with her, to kiss her . . .

. . . PLOT 22 . . .

. . . Michael jams the shovelhead into the dirt, still soft, so soft, just buried today, so easy to get him out of there, hardly any work at all, but there’s a sound, a cracking, not lightning, not a photo, but a footstep, behind him, behind Michael, from the shadows of the trees at the graveyard’s edge, and a form, too, a big body in black, as if he’s wearing the same shadows he emerges from . . .

“What are you doing. Michael
 
?”

Father Stockard, standing so close now, close enough to reach for the shovel if he wanted to.

“The Givens Sensor Board,” Michael starts to explain.

“Leave him.”

Stockard’s voice as level as his eulogies.

“Father
 
?”

“Think of the girl’s lips,” Stockard says. “Think of the lips on the girl.”

Rain falling. A grave at their feet. A light no doubt still blinking in the office.

“How did you know
 
?”

It’s only a half-question. And at the same time, it’s two
 
:

How did you know about the girl
 
?

How did you know to be in the woods
 
?

But both answers are obvious.

Father Stockard raises a hand, the palm flat toward the grave.

“Leave him.”

Michael thinks about Pamela’s lips.

Leave him,
they said. They all said.

Michael backs up from the fresh plot, from the man who presses the button within.

Leave him
, they said. They all said.

He’s thinking of Pamela’s lips. As Stockard recedes back into the shadows, Michael thinks of those lips against his own.

He’s thinking of a whole town, too, agreeing to bury a man alive.

He turns and, as if just now realizing he’s wet, huddles up into his shirt and crosses the cemetery again, carrying the shovel like it’s just something to be put away, property of Samhattan, part of his job.

At the office he doesn’t turn around, doesn’t look back to PLOT 22 or any of the others.

He’s thinking of Pamela, kissing him.

Thinking of her lips.

He leans the shovel against the stone wall and enters the office. Inside, he hops onto the chair and moves the television, trying so that it doesn’t reflect the Givens Sensor Board behind him.

But it blinks. Whether he looks at it or not, it blinks.

It blinks to the rhythm of a whole town saying
leave him, leave him
—and it blinks, too, to the beat of Michael thinking of Pamela’s lips and the wonders in there, in kissing a woman, as her nails dig into your back a little, your arms, not like fingernails on wood at all, not because she has done something wrong and needs to break free, but needs to break free all the same.

“The fly sat upon the axle-tree of the chariot-wheel and said, ‘What a dust do I raise
 
!’”—Aesop

You ever get
the feeling someone is talking about you
 
?

Like you’re right at the end of the movie when the speaker starts popping and you hear that voice. Like once a week, right when you’re finally starting to relax around this spider web of power cords and surge protectors, you’re reminded you can never trust the wiring around here. Never move somewhere just because you like seeing a river out your window.

Remember when a nearby lightning strike fried something inside your picture tube and put a freaky green line through the middle of your screen
 
? That green line was there for about six months, mercifully getting smaller and smaller and almost fading away until it was just a glowing yellow smear in the corner of the TV, like you’d smashed a lightning bug on the glass and never cleaned it up. You don’t know if this room is some sort of electric Bermuda Triangle, but you can’t risk any more equipment and that’s why you move fast whenever you hear a speaker snap, crackle or pop.