See You in Paradise (12 page)

But still, who then? Who among the drowned, the frozen, the asphyxiated, would get to come back?

The rich. Naturally.

Riots had been predicted, the burning of hospitals and medical schools, the overthrow of the government. None of it materialized. The rich had been getting the goodies for millennia—why should that change now? People shrugged and got over it. After all, it wasn’t like the rich could live forever now. They would still die—it was just that now they could get a second chance in certain circumstances. And the rich had always gotten second chances at everything. No, the fact that they could be brought back to life was no big deal, and when you thought about it, not even very surprising.

Besides.

Besides, once the process started becoming commonplace, once people had gotten a look at the revivs, had talked with them, touched them, slept with them, it became clear that, as a general rule, they were a little bit off. You could miss it if you weren’t paying close attention, but they were definitely not quite right. They had, for instance, a way of walking, a kind of sway, an instability. Their hips seemed to ratchet back and forth, like the platen of a typewriter. Their fingers had a habit of twitching or suddenly clenching. Their jaws moved with a bovine circular motion, whether or not they were eating—and when they did eat, they were fussy, often choosing a single item from a varied dish and pushing the rest aside, like children. They had a watery way of speaking and a faraway look in their eyes, but when you asked them, with irritation, if they had heard even a single word you had said, they were able to regurgitate your side of the conversation with pedantic thoroughness, all in a deadpan monotone that made everything you said sound foolish and dull. And they rarely advanced any ideas themselves, no intellectual abstractions, no opinions, not even suggestions for where to eat dinner or what movie to see. They were robust, it seemed, healthy-looking, upright, but passionless—you would never see them jump for joy or raise their voices in anger. They seemed to have a normal sexual response, all the parts worked and if they liked you they would do what you suggested and appear, in some detached way, to get off. But the expected and hoped-for moans, screams, and grunts just did not happen.

Also, they smelled different. A bit spicy. Not at all bad—better, in fact, than regular people. But it was different all the same.

So if you asked a random person from the street whether, if they choked to death on a Jolly Rancher, they would like to be revived, the answer was generally yes. But not an especially enthusiastic yes. “Sure,” accompanied by a shrug, was the common response. By and large, revivification was thought to be something weird rich people did, something along the lines of hymenoplasty, or owning an island. It was impressive, but maybe it wasn’t exactly a great idea.

You weren’t, it turned out, supposed to call revivs
revivs.
Political correctness dictated that, if you had to refer to them, you should call them
restored-life individuals.
But, the argument went, since they were not disabled, any specialized term was an insult, and it was best to say something like “Ronald has gotten a second chance at life,” or, “Francine has recovered from her fatal trauma.” Better still to keep mum—to just pretend there was nothing amiss, because really there wasn’t. Everything was totally normal. Calling somebody a
reviv
was a lie—every person is just a person, and that’s all there is to it.

You were never, in any circumstances, supposed to call them
zombies.
This was, however, the most commonly employed term.

“My God,” Chloe said, after that first long day at Dan’s bedside. “He’s a fucking zombie.” The six of us were sitting around a table at the closest bar to the hospital, a too-well-lit place with vinyl settees separated by terra-cotta planters full of ferns. The settees were too low for the table, and we had to reach up to get our drinks, which we needed very badly.

As it happened, the meeting at Dan’s mother’s apartment was the first time we’d all been together in many years. Our manner with one another was familiar and weary. As teenagers, we had been inseparable; now we were grown, and had grown apart. Not completely apart, of course. We knew too much about one another for that: the broken homes, the crazy relatives; the dramas of self-discovery, the dirty secrets. The myths we armored ourselves with, out in the world, were worthless here, among people who had witnessed their genesis; and allegiances and estrangements had arisen and retreated among us more times than anyone could count. Chloe and Matt were once an item, as were Chloe and Paul. Rick and Jane had once seemed destined to spend their lives together, but they had broken up, and now Jane had married Matt. Paul and Rick had spent a drunken, carnal week together in a cabin upstate, and now Paul was in a relationship with a man twice his age, a painter from Long Island, and Rick had a girlfriend in Brooklyn. Chloe evidently had a boyfriend—they lived in New Haven—but I had long carried a torch for her, and she and I had managed a few moony glances at each other over the course of the day. I had a good feeling about Chloe. Hearing her call Dan a fucking zombie sent a pleasurable itch across my back. She had always been vulgar.

“I’m afraid you’re right,” Paul groaned.

Matt sighed, shaking his head. “How did we ever get into this mess?”

“It’s my fault,” said Jane, who always blamed herself for everything.

Rick said, “Let’s just tell Ruth to go to hell.”

“Oh, we can’t do that,” I said.

“Fuck, no,” Chloe agreed, offering me a sly glance from the corner of her eye.

The group parted at the subway station. I lived nearby and could walk. Instead of following the others to the trains, Chloe grabbed my hand. “Let’s go to your place.”

“Don’t you have a boyfriend?” I said.

“Feh,” she said, with a shrug, and we walked off arm in arm.

As the days passed by, Dan slowly came around. He looked pale, and there were bandages on his head and neck where the revivification fluids and electrical current had gone in, but his eyes were clear and he followed us with them as we moved around the hospital room. Chloe and I had taken to sharing one another’s shifts.

“Let’s make out,” she said one morning.

“He’s watching us.”

“So?”

She sat on my lap and we snogged as a cool polluted wind blew through the open window. I hazarded glances at Dan, who gazed at us intently, blinking. His soundless mouth opened and closed. Without solid food, his doughy countenance had given way to a new and slightly frightening chiseled look.

“I think he’s trying to talk.”

“Who?” Chloe said.

“Dan.”

She tossed her hair over hear ear and winked at Dan. “Zombie Dan,” she said. “Do you remember sex?”

A small groan seemed to escape him. Or maybe it was a noise from outside.

“How about boobs? Do you remember boobs?”

“I’m sure he remembers boobs,” I said, trying to nip this one in the bud.

“Here,” Chloe said brightly, hopping down from my lap. I awkwardly adjusted myself with a sweaty hand. Chloe stood beside the bed, unbuttoning her blouse. Dan stared. He seemed excited, though not in an especially lascivious manner. Before he died, women’s breasts had always rendered him speechless; he tended to ogle. It had always irritated me when this resulted in his getting laid, which was most of the time.

But now his excitement seemed purely empirical, like that of a scientist gazing in sober wonder at the test results scrolling across a computer screen. Chloe unlatched her bra and did a little dance. “Remember, Dan? Boobies?” She scat-sang the stripping song.

“Okay,” I said. “That’s probably enough.”

“It’s therapy,” she said. “We’ve got to get his motor running.” She leaned over, bringing her chest about six inches from Dan’s stunned face. “Here ya go, pal, get a good look.”

Neither of us was prepared for the speed with which Dan’s hands shot out from under the sheets and clamped themselves onto Chloe’s breasts. She yelped. I gasped and jumped out of the chair to pull her away. But she warded me off. “No, no,” she said. “I think it’s all right. Look at the little bastard go.” Dan had settled into a firm, somewhat mechanical knead, palpating Chloe like a masseuse-in-training. He scowled, licking his lips. A sound escaped him.

“Was that a word?” Chloe asked.

“Oh my God,” I said.

“Stizz,” said Dan.

“It was a word!”

“Niztizz!”

“Oh, listen!” Chloe cried, turning to me. “He’s talking! He’s saying ‘Nice tits’!”

It was true. He was quite coherent now. Clearly he was remembering—“nice tits” was a thing he always used to say.

We called Ruth Larsen, who since the procedure had spent far more time than we had expected sitting around the family apartment. She claimed to be attending to Dan’s business affairs. But a zombie didn’t have any business, and it seemed clear that she was really spending her time drinking. Chloe had been encamped in one of the many guest rooms at chez Larsen and could attest to the woman’s dissolution, which involved a lot of vituperative mutterings and slow, self-indulgent groans. A nurse had told us that her reaction, upon seeing her child show the first signs of renewed life, was to run crying from the room. We hadn’t seen her around the hospital since, though she insisted that she habitually sat with him through the night. The nurses, upon hearing she had told us this, had rolled their eyes.

“He what?” Ruth barked in response to the news.

“He spoke,” I repeated. “He looked out the window and said, ‘Nice day.’” This was the lie Chloe and I had agreed upon.

“It’s cloudy.”

“Maybe he thought that was nice.”

A silence hung between us. I cleared my throat.

“Do you want to come see him?” I said. “Chloe and I are here now.”

“What is she doing there? This isn’t her shift.”

“We’re sharing,” I said.

Mrs. Larsen sighed. “I’ll be there in an hour,” she said.

It was a very long hour. Now that Dan was responsive and alert, he was uncomfortable to be with. Also he appeared to want to feel up Chloe again. He stared at her restowed rack, blinked rapidly, and emitted a trickle of inarticulate mumbles which occasionally, startlingly, broke out into intelligibility. “frummarfladmmbabaamummummboxturtle,” he said. “Gunnuunnnununnnufrenchfries. Hoffoffofoffffagaggaafucker-salassalassallaaaapeanut, peanut, peanut.” He licked his lips, which would prove to be a permanent tic.

“I’m going out for a smoke,” Chloe said quietly.

“All right,” I replied.

“Mummahumummacigarette,” Dan said.

“You want a cigarette?”

“Ummacigarette.”

She reached into her purse, removed a pack, and slid out a cigarette. Dan leaned forward. She placed it in his mouth.

“It’s backwards,” I said.

“Like he knows.”

Dan relaxed into his pillows. The cigarette dangled from his lip like a dead branch from a maple tree. He seemed relieved and his blinking slowed.

When Chloe returned, it was with a slightly unsteady Ruth Larsen, who gripped Chloe’s arm for support. The first words from her mouth were “Jesus Christ.”

“Hi, Mrs. Larsen,” I said.

A change came over Dan when his mother walked into the room. He sat up again, and the cigarette went erect in his mouth. He brought up his hands, much as he had when Chloe took her shirt off, and his fingers groped and twitched. He scowled.

“What did you do to him?” Mrs. Larsen demanded.

“He just got like this,” I said weakly.

“Fudder. Fudder! Prmbnmnshn.”

“Daniel!” she bleated. “Stop that nonsense immediately!”

In response, Dan let out another “Fudder” and sprang out of bed. We all jumped back. Mrs. Larsen screamed a little scream.

After weeks of his being dead and days of him lying insensibly in the hospital, Dan’s sudden mobility struck us all dumb with astonishment. He tottered around the room like a child, bracing himself against the table and chairs. His gait was stiff and rubbery, but he made it to the window and looked out. He turned, his cigarette clenched between yellow teeth. “Fudder!” he growled. His mother cringed.