See You in Paradise (14 page)

The Homburg was a hole in the wall, or more accurately, in the ground. It was in a basement underneath an art gallery, and had a cement floor, its concavity sloping toward a central drain, like a locker room shower. The walls were tile and the lights harsh and bare—yet the room was murky, its corners lost in darkness. Mismatched tables wobbled here and there, occupied by bored-looking hipsters, and I wondered how on earth someone like Ruth Larsen had heard about the place.

I saw her bony hand first—beckoning from a corner booth that was partially concealed by a curtain—and then her equally thin face, peering out from behind the fabric. I went to her. She had already ordered me something—a whiskey, neat.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t drink whiskey.”

“Drink it.” Her eyes were sunken and red and underslung with postman’s sacks, and her cowl of hair drooped like a broken umbrella. I did as she asked, dispensing with the drink in a single gulp.

“Gahhh,” I said.

“Now,” she muttered, peering once again behind the curtain, “let’s get to business.”

“Mrs. Larson,” I said. “Please. Can you just tell me if you’ve seen Chloe?”

She nodded. “Yes. I have seen Chloe. She is still in my house,” she spat. “She has quit her job and spends her days having sex with Dan.”

“Um,” I said. “Oh.”

“They drive about in his convertible, eat at restaurants, attend parties, and hump all night in his bedroom.”

“Okay …”

“On my husband’s dime.”

“I see.”

I suppose I knew all along that this was going on. But why him? Why Zombie Dan? He was without any redeeming qualities whatsoever. I hung my head. A little bit of whiskey seemed to be left in the bottom of my glass, and I held it upside down over my mouth for long seconds as it found its way out.

“I suppose you’re wondering what Dan has that you don’t. I suppose you’re thinking he’s not a real man. That he’s a zombie. That he has no soul.”

“Sort of,” I admitted.

“You’re full of anger.”

“I am pretty angry,” I said.

“Rage. You’re enraged. Well, I am here to tell you that I am, too.” “You are?” I asked her.

“Yes, I am. And I bet you’re wondering why. Well, it’s because that thing is not my son.” Her long finger emitted a faint, damp rattle as she waggled it in my face. “It is not my Daniel. It is a monster, and it must be stopped. It can read my thoughts. It remembers things about me that I worked very, very hard to forget. It is an offense against nature.”

“Well,” I said. “I wouldn’t call—”

“Those smug quacks! They knew it all along! All they wanted was another test subject—it’s all part of their stinking quest for knowledge.” She leaned closer. Her fingers, horribly dry, brushed my wrist. “It’s true about zombies, you know. They do eat brains.” She bit her lip, as if the thought had made her hungry. “Their souls are gone, so they want yours, and mine. They can steal them, right through thin air!”

She peered once more behind the curtain, then reached into her handbag. “And that,” she said, bringing out a small silver pistol and setting it on the table, “is why you’re going to kill him.”

I let out a little yelp. “Whoops! No, no, sorry …”

She shushed me, seizing my arm. “I paid to bring him here, and I will pay to send him back.”

“But that’s murder!”

Slowly, she shook her head. “That’s where you’re wrong. Killing a human being is murder. Killing a zombie is a public service. Especially one with dangerous powers. My son is dead, and his body has been stolen by a monster. A monster that is fucking your girlfriend.”

“I don’t think shooting Dan will get Chloe to like me again.”

“Chloe isn’t going to like you again anyway, you idiot,” she growled. “That’s not the point.”

I felt very strongly that I ought to leave, but something kept me there, even aside from Mrs. Larson’s death grip. Perhaps it was the whiskey. I felt slightly dizzy and very much open to suggestion.

“Did you slip something into my drink?” I asked.

“Yes, dear. Liquor.” She seemed to relax a bit and released me, leaving pale throbbing stripes on my numb wrist. I slowly dragged it into my lap. “You were about to ask me,” she went on, “what the point was of killing that … creature in my home.”

“What’s the point?” I obliged.

“Do you,” she asked me, “love your job?”

“I hate my job.”

“Do you love your employer?”

“I can’t stand her.”

“Would you prefer never to have to work again? Would you like to invite your employer to perform a sex act upon herself?”

I pictured a scenario of this variety, one that would beg to be followed up with an all-natural douche. I said, “I’d like that, yes.”

She pushed the little gun an inch closer. It made a sound like fingernails scraping the lid of a coffin.

“We’ll take care of everything,” Mrs. Larsen whispered, leaning close. “We have means. People like us always get a second chance. And now we’re giving you one.”

Slowly, gently, I reached out and picked up the gun.

In the taxi on the way to the apartment, I tried to get it all straight in my head. If the existence of the revivs meant there was no God, then revivs were as human as anyone else, which meant that killing one as wrong. But if the revivs, by their very soullessness, proved that God was real, then it was all right to kill them, because they weren’t human. But, given this logic, the existence of God made killing okay, and his nonexistence made it a sin. Somewhere I was missing something. I watched the buildings of the Avenue heave by outside as darkness brought their corners into sharp relief, and I considered just how unimportant it was—what I was about to do—to almost all of humanity, and how very much peculiarity the world seemed capable of absorbing.

I got out at the Larsens’ building and walked to the elevator. The doorman nodded at me, glancing at my jacket, which was tugged down on one side, from the gun’s surprising weight. I managed a nervous smile.

There was no one else in the elevator, no one else to slow down the ride. I stared at myself in its mirrored wall. I didn’t look like a killer. I wasn’t a killer. I was merely going to set things right: the balance of nature, the balance of my checking account. I cleared my throat, though I didn’t have anything to say. I didn’t intend to speak to Zombie Dan, just put him out of his misery.

He answered the door before I even reached it. The doorman had called ahead, of course.

“Ah, hellothere, comein, fudderfudder. Wewerejusttalkingaboutyou.”

“Um. You were?” He grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the apartment.

“Good evening,” Chloe said. She was standing in the hallway in a bathrobe, rubbing a towel on her hair. She turned to Dan. “You’ve got this under control, honey?”

Dan nodded. “Nicetizz.” I reached for my pocket and found Dan’s hand there, waiting for me. His other hand already contained the gun. His tongue gently dragged along his top, then bottom, lip; he seemed to have found a stylish way of executing the tic. “Fuddernevermindthis,” he said. “Mypoormother. Dreamingnightandday. Peanut. Ofmydeath.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Shealreadytried. MattnJane. AndRick. NotPaul, shesafraidofhomos, fudder.”

“Is that so?”

He was leading me into the living room. The gun he tossed onto the pink shag. I winced as it hit the ground.

“Donworry, fudder, Itookoutthebulletsthismorning. Now.” He sat me down on a comfy chair, removed a cigarette from a pack in the pocket of his sport coat, and inserted it backwards into his mouth. “Wehavealot. Totalkabout. Niceass.”

“We do?”

His eyes were not blank, not empty. There was something in them, something new and strangely comforting. I felt, under their scrutiny, very small and inert, like a pebble, perhaps, or a scrap of paper. Dan’s smile was crooked and not quite under control, and the unlit cigarette twitched on his lip.

“Whyyeswedomyfriend.” He blinked, and blinked again. “Suchasyourfudder. Father. Forinsssstance.”

“I never knew my father,” I said. Behind him, Chloe could be seen sauntering barefoot into the kitchen in a cotton sundress and cardigan. She caught my eye and gave me a little wave. She seemed different, too. More confident. Gentler. I longed for her.

“Ofcourseyouknewhim,” Zombie Dan said, crossing his legs. “Thefishingtrip. Whenyouweresix.”

“I never went fishing with my father,” I said. “He left my mother when I was too young to remember. He was … abusive. It led to her breakdown.” I’d said this so many times before, to so many people: therapists, girlfriends. But for the first time it didn’t sound quite right.

“Butyouseethatswhereyourewrong.” The cigarette stood at attention, wiggling at me like an accusing finger. “Fudderfudder. Itwasyourmother. Whodrovehimaway. Nizass. Thefishingtrip, hetoldyouthis. Butyoudidntbelieve, fudder.”

“That’s not true!” I said. My underarms were slick with perspiration and I had to pee. I thought about the phone conversation I’d had earlier. With my boss. When I was trying to get a cab. The terrible things I called her. The suggestions I made to her about what to do with her douche label. I sunk a little deeper into the comfy chair.

It was in a cabin of course, a log cabin. In the Adirondacks. It had a shag carpet and smelled like spray deodorant, and we ate all-beef franks raw from the plastic package.

“Damn,” I said.

“Donworryoldbean,” Zombie Dan said, leaning close and resting a cold hand on my knee. “Thislife, fudderfudder, ismerelyascrim. Betweentheconsciousmind. Andthesoul. Tits. Andnowwepull. Backthecurtain. Cigarette?”

“I don’t smoke,” I said.

His response was a stiff, sad smile. He reached into his pocket, took out a cigarette, and proffered it, backwards, to the vicinity of my face. Chloe’s head poked out from the kitchen door.

“Go on,” she said to me brightly. “It feels so good to let go. Just give him what he wants.” And she disappeared with a wink.

Where was he now, my father? Far away, no doubt, maybe with some other family. And my mother? Right where I’d last seen her, in her sad, sagging house upstate, four hours away. Too bitter, too angry, too crazy, really, for me to visit. A card at Christmas, a card on her birthday. If she was so terrific, why had I changed my phone to an unlisted number? Why did I shudder at the very thought of her? My life, I could see now, had been a lie. I supposed that I had always known—why else would I have lived it so leadenly, in denial of its impermanence, insulated from its deepest pleasures and agonies? Like I wasn’t really alive at all.

I looked deep into Dan’s eyes. His hand was steady. His tongue darted out and licked his lip. I opened my mouth and let him place the cigarette there, a sacrament.

The Buck Snort Restaurant is empty of customers. This is not unusual for any Thursday night, but on this night, to any reasonable observer, it would seem nearly inevitable. The storm outside is severe; few travelers would dare risk the roads. A hurricane of this magnitude hasn’t reached so far north and west into New Jersey in generations. Trees have been uprooted and have crushed the roofs of houses; power lines are down, spitting sparks into yards and alleys. Most informed and mobile residents of the area have left: by and large, these are affluent people, people who work elsewhere. Sensible, responsible people. This particular corner of the county, however, is as poor as it was a hundred and fifty years ago, when its first itinerant farmers, Civil War veterans granted land by the federal government, set up operations and—due in part to the clayey soil, in part to their own ineptitude—failed to thrive. The nearest town is called Banner, but the Buck Snort is not in any town. It would be a roadhouse, but it lacks a liquor license. It’s a low, brown wooden building surrounded by a cracked asphalt parking lot. The sign that announces its existence is painted on wood and hangs by two rusted hooks in a log frame at the edge of the lot. The legs of the log frame are planted in a couple of half-barrel tubs that are bolted to the asphalt. The tubs also contain dirt, which supports several dead yew bushes. Each side of the sign is illuminated by a single lightbulb mounted in an all-weather light fixture that is in turn mounted to the frame. The sign itself is flapping and twisting in the wind as though it were made of cardboard, and the rain lashes violently against it.

At 8:20 PM, the wind grabs the sign and flings it so hard against its frame that it smashes one of the lights. There is a flash and a pop. The one remaining light, and the lights inside the Buck Snort, wink out in sympathy, then, a moment later, come back on.

One of the two people sitting inside the restaurant glances out the window, then grunts. His name is Bruce. The other is named Heather. They’re brother and sister. They’re both thirty-seven years old. They are sitting, silently, at separate tables, in opposite corners of the Buck Snort. Neither has spoken in three hours. In front of Bruce sits a plastic model of a sports car, which he has been meticulously gluing together for the better part of the day. Arrayed around the model is a debris field of plastic bits and scraps, and pages from an assembly manual. Arrayed around the debris field are a three-quarters-empty bourbon bottle, an empty and very dirty glass tumbler, and four mostly empty plastic snack bags. Heather is slumped behind several piles of old magazines, a stack of eight and a half by seventeen inch construction paper, and a large bottle of wood glue. She is holding a pair of scissors and is using them to cut out the torsos of women from advertisements in the magazines. Her stash of comestibles occupies a paper grocery sack on the chair beside her; it includes a gallon of pulpless orange juice, a plastic tub of garlic-flavored bagel chips, and several jars of pickles.