The Drowned Life (26 page)

Bobby signaled to us with the flashlight from the alley between the Golden Dragon and a defunct dance studio. He was holding the black metal side door open. We stepped in.

He said, “Check this out,” and put the light up to a giant glass globe that was the top of a penny gum ball machine. I noticed that it was a beautiful antique, and then I saw what he meant. Within the bubble, a thousand roaches scurried away from the light, around and between faded gumballs.

“That's gross,” said Lynn.

Bobby laughed. “This way,” he said.

It was pitch-black inside, and we had only the single beam of light to guide us. From the little I saw of the painted Buddhas, silent fountains, and empty fish tanks, it was clear that the Golden Dragon had once been an opulent place.

We went through a hallway, and then Bobby said, “Okay, watch your step, we're going down.” He showed us to a set of metal stairs that descended into the basement. At least down there I could see a little light shining. In the corner of a large dark expanse, Mrs. Ming lay on a kind of army cot with small tea candles set on stands at each of the four corners. She was emaciated, her skin stretched taut across her ribs and skull. Her complexion was silver and her naked body was contorted so that she looked as if she'd been frozen in the act of falling. Her hair had shed off all over the pillow. Ming stood next to his wife and swept his hand in front of him, indicating that Lynn should approach.

To Lynn's credit, she didn't flinch but stepped right up and leaned over the body.

I gagged.

“Has she expired?” asked Ming, holding his hat in his hand and turning it by the brim.

“Definitely deceased,” said Lynn, still bent over the body. Abruptly, she stood up, turned to Ming, and put her hand on his shoulder. “I'm sorry,” she said. He nodded. “You're going to have to call an ambulance or at least the police,” she said.

I was surprised when Ming returned to the poker game the following Thursday night. We avoided the subject of Ming's dead wife, and I talked about my mother-in-law for comic effect. Somewhere around eleven p.m. the cards lost their luster. We switched over to just drinking. Ellis rolled a fat joint and we burned it. When things got so quiet we could hear the parrot on the front porch next door imitating the sound of a ringing phone, Ming shook his head and told us that his wife had come back from the dead to haunt him.

“What are you talkin' about?” said Gil.

“Shit, my ex hasn't even died and she haunts me,” said Bobby.

Ming's hands were trembling and there was sweat on his razor mustache. “She gets in bed beside me. The covers move and then she's there. Her touch is so cold. All night long she whispers through my dreams a story about her and me setting sail on an ocean liner made of ice. The captain gives us a tour all the way down to the very bottom of the ship. Then a man enters the chamber, screaming, frantic to tell us that the ship is sinking and water is coming down the passageway. In the morning…”

“B complex to counteract depression,” said Ellis.

Ming made no reply but, out of the corner of his eye, nervously studied the stream of smoke curling up from the tip of Gil's cigar.

“She's cursed me,” said the old man.

“Why would she do that?” asked Bobby.

“There was another woman, some years back,” he said. “I saw her until my wife found out, and then I broke off the affair. Out of spite, my lover put a spell on my wife. And now that she's passed
on, my wife haunts me.” Ming looked exhausted, on the verge of some disease, himself.

“Vitamin B,” said Ellis. “And some fish oil.”

Ming sighed.

“Are we on the verge of some ancient Chinese secret?” asked Bobby.

Ming cracked a smile. “I'm not Chinese,” he said.

“How can you have a Chinese restaurant?” asked Ellis.

“Around here?” said Ming. “Think about it.”

“Is this more psychological or like physical stuff?” I asked.

“Last night,” said Ming, “while I was sleeping, she materialized and stuck her finger up my ass. Like a crooked icicle. The cold scorched me to my heart.”

“What kinda deal is that?” said Gil.

“That's pretty psychological,” said Bobby.

“As usual, I dreamed we were on a cruise,” said Ming and tears formed in his eyes.

“Easy, easy,” said Gil.

“You know it all comes out of your head,” said Gil. “You're getting over on yourself.”

“Don't tell me about ghosts,” whispered Ming.

“Here's a proposition,” said Bobby. “I'll play you in a game of cards for your ghost. A hand of poker, five cards, suicide jacks wild.”

Ming grinned and dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand.

“Say he wins and you get the ghost?” asked Ellis.

“He wants the ice finger,” said Gil.

“We should play,” said Bobby. “As an experiment, that's all.”

“Oh, it's real,” said Ming, and his grin disappeared. He held his empty glass out to me. I filled it with beer from the quart I was working on.

“Humor me,” said Bobby.

Ming finished the beer in two long swallows. He finally nodded. “If you lose, you get my ghost,” he said. “If I lose, what do you get?”

“If you lose, you get to whip us up a batch of Chinese food next Thursday night. Moo goo thy pants, a platter of it,” said Bobby.

“In other words, there's no way you can win,” said Ming.

Gil dealt. It took only minutes and Bobby's three queens lost to Ming's royal flush. The second he saw that he'd lost, Bobby suddenly raised his eyebrows and said, “I feel a draft in my asshole.” Ming laughed harder than anyone.

Ming never came back for poker. I saw him on the street one day and called over to him. He waved and said hello. Then he was gone, somehow leaving a message for us with the parrots. “Going home,” the birds repeated in the old man's weary voice.

“Where's home?” asked Gil when we discussed the whole saga on the following poker night.

I guessed Korea, Gil guessed Japan, and Ellis was sure it was Mongolia. Bobby said, “Where the heart is.”

When the ghost grabbed Bobby it had nothing to do with his job, which was snorkeling in the Delaware River, cutting brass off sunken ships with an acetylene torch. How fitting would it have been, keeping in mind the dream that Ming's wife had spun for her husband, if Bobby'd drowned? He didn't, though. What he did was fall off the wagon.

When I asked Gil where his cousin was, he told me, “He's living in a trailer down by the river. I went to see him the other night.”

“How's he doing?” I asked.

“He's speedballing,” said Gil, shaking his head. “He's the walkin' prince of Death.”

Bobby attacked an old woman—busted her in the face and stole her purse. He got caught, was sentenced to ten years as a repeat offender, and got sent to prison. The night that Gil told us about it,
we didn't play cards but just sat in the living room and drank. On the next Thursday, when I went to Gil's the lights were out and no one answered the door. After that, on Thursday nights, I'd sit out back by the dying garden, smoke, and drink a few beers by myself. Summer slipped into autumn, but until it got too cold for them to be outside, I'd hear those parrots, in the distance, still channeling Ming.

During the first snowstorm of that year, the Golden Dragon caught fire, and from the front window, Lynn and baby Jack and I watched the old restaurant turn to ash. I noticed a figure standing outside on the sidewalk also watching the blaze. The strobe from one of the fire engines passed over him, and I recognized Gil, momentarily bathed in red. I hadn't seen him in weeks. I went out to the porch and called to him. Gil waved, came over, and climbed the steps, and I let him in.

The instant I saw him in the porch light, I could tell he'd followed Bobby off the wagon. He was pale and thin and his hands shook badly when he lit a cigarette. A sharp smell of gasoline came off his coat.

“You don't look so good,” I said.

“I went back to it after Bobby got busted.”

I almost asked, “Why?” but realized how stupid a question it was.

“Me and Ellis split,” he said. “I showed him an article in the paper one day by a famous doctor that said that taking vitamins was useless.”

“Are you kidding?” I asked.

“He said I was too negative, and he left me. My using again didn't help either.”

“Do you hear from Bobby?” I asked.

He took a drag of his cigarette. “Yeah, he called once for a minute. He sounded fucked-up, not high but shaky. Right before he
hung up I asked him what the joint was like, and he told me, ‘Like an ocean liner made of ice.'”

I shook my head.

“You've gotta stay away from me now,” said Gil, staring out the window. “Keep your doors locked, day and night. If you see me, don't talk to me. Make like I don't exist. I'll let you know if I kick it again.”

“Okay,” I said.

Without another word, he left. I never saw him again.