A Place Where Nothing Ever Happens: Short Story (3 page)

“And, like, I know he's my dad and my best friend, but, geez, he won't leave me alone. He calls me all the time, and he wants to talk for hours. And hours.”

They were taking a midnight bath. The bubblebath smelled like oranges. A couple of scented candles flickered on the edge of the sink. Lauren lay with her back against Kyle's chest. Only a little bit of water had splashed on the floor so far.

“I've been telling him he should call Mom. But he won't. He won't tell me why, either. She asks about him all the time.” The phone calls from the dead had become big news. There'd been lots of TV specials and talk shows. Mediums who used to claim they talked to the dead were all exposed as frauds. The Catholic Church declared that the voices were demons working for the Prince of Lies (as it liked to call Lucifer; Kyle's dad had seen him from afar a couple of times and said he seemed like a nice guy). The Church's position was that the voices were trying to undermine Christ's teachings, by denying Heaven, salvation, and damnation. Religions everywhere were having trouble reconciling their dogma with what the dead were saying. And there were more troubles. There were pressures to retry murder cases in light of details learned from the dead, although not a single case had yet been brought to trial for that reason. Scandals erupted in families, governments, and corporations because of information from the dead. The stock market was taking a beating. The media was having a ball, though.

“I keep telling her that I haven't heard from him, to spare her feelings, but I hate to lie.” He slid a couple of fingers inside her while pinching her nipple. Lauren cried out, and her legs shot out of the bath, splashing water and bubbles on the floor.

“What am I gonna do? I feel so guilty about it, but I don't think I wanna talk to him anymore. At least, not so much. I know he's dead and bored and all that. But, fuck, I've got my own life now.” Kyle lifted his hands, emphasizing his frustration.

“Hey,” Lauren said. “Put your hands back where they were.”

A lot more water splashed on the floor after that. When the phone rang, they ignored it.

While they were towelling themselves off, the phone rang again.

“You should get it,” Lauren said. “It might be your mystery caller. One less thing on your mind once you clear that up.”

“Nah. It's bound to be either my mom or dad. Guilt or boredom. My life's great options.” With a deep sigh, Kyle answered the phone.

“Kyle! You're a hard guy to get a hold of.”

“So I heard from Uncle Flip. Turns out he was the one leaving all those hang-ups. He said he didn't want our first afterlife contact to be a message.” There was silence on the end of the line.

“Dad? Are you still there?” More silence.

“Dad?”

Kyle — barely — heard his dad mutter, “Flip . . .”

“Is everything okay, Dad?”

“Huh . . . sorry, Kyle. Hmm. Listen. There's something I have to tell you.”

After Kyle got off the phone, he ran over to Lauren's. He had so much nervous energy to burn. He didn't bother calling. He just ran.

Wait till she hears this
, he thought.

Once he reached Lauren's apartment, he used the boyfriend key she'd given him. The thought that he rated a key made him feel really horny. He stepped inside.

There was an empty cardboard box on the coffee table and some packing material on the floor. Lauren was hooking up a new machine to her TV.

“Look at you! Are you okay?” she said as she looked up at him.

“Huh? Yeah. I ran here. I've got such wild news!”

“Me, too. You'll never believe what happened to me today.” She finished hooking up the new machine. Kyle noticed what it was. “Hey! You bought a DVD player! Cool!”

Lauren walked up to Kyle, rubbing her face against his chest. “Mmm. You smell real sweaty and sexy, and I want to celebrate.” She grabbed his T-shirt and pulled it off. She gave him a mischievous grin and ran her tongue from his navel to his neck.

Kyle grabbed her, pulled her off her feet, and carried her to the couch. “Tell me what happened!” he said, while he removed her panties from under her skirt.

“I got a call from
Flicker
,” she rubbed one hand on his stiff crotch while unfastening his belt with the other. “The editor offered me a monthly column at $2000, plus features and reviews at fifty cents a word.” She reached over and slid a finger up his butt. “I can make a living at this!”

“Babe, that's so great!” He groaned. “Oh yeah, keep doing that.”

They stopped talking for while.

Kyle drowsily nuzzled Lauren's neck. They lay on the floor, their clothes strewn all over the living room.

She asked him, “So you never told me your news.”

“That's right. I guess I'll just come out and say it. My dad is in love with Uncle Flip.”

“What! Really?”

“Yeah, he was worried I'd freak out, but I think it's cool, if kinda sad.”

“Well, give me more details.”

Kyle propped himself up and leaned his back against the couch. “Well, it turns out that Dad has always had the hots for Uncle Flip, but never got the nerve to do anything about it while he was alive. Plus, he didn't want to hurt Mom. And he's pretty sure that Flip felt the same way. Come to think of it, Flip never did marry or have kids or anything, and he hung around with us a whole lot. Plus, he was always real chummy with Dad. Anyway. So I gave him Flip's number, and he's gonna tell him how he feels and try to hook up with him. I'll feel really good if I know I helped them get together after all this time. I mean, it won't be like they were alive” — Kyle ran his fingers through Lauren's hair — “but at least they'll be able to keep each other company.”

“Kyle, you're a real sweetheart, you know.” She kissed him, slowly and deeply.

When she disengaged herself, she got up and took something out of a plastic bag. “Remember when we missed that rare version of
The Big Sleep
at the rep?”

“Yeah.” Kyle grinned, looking at her naked body and remembering the first time they'd had sex.

“Well, we can finally see it.” She held up the DVD case of
The Big Sleep
. “It's on here. Let's watch it. I've been thinking so much about buying a player, and this DVD especially. But I couldn't really afford it. Now, well . . . my gifts to myself in honour of my new success!”

She put the disc in the machine, and they cuddled up on the couch. And Kyle — feeling Lauren's naked skin against his, enjoying her toes rubbing against his leg — thought,
Fuck, life is good. I don't care if I don't have a career or big goals or anything. I mean, I kinda don't mind my job; plus, being with Lauren is doing something. It's important.

As unexpectedly as the calls from the dead started, they stopped. When people tried calling the dead, they got “The number you have reached is not in service.” The phone calls from Hell had lasted a month. “A lunar month,” Lauren told Kyle. “The calls started on a full moon and ended on the next.” Kyle didn't know what that was supposed to mean. “I don't know, either,” said Lauren, “but it can't be just a coincidence.”

Surprisingly quickly, the world recovered. Already the news was filled with stories “proving” that it had been a scam or a practical joke. But Kyle knew better.

He never did find out if his dad and Uncle Flip met up with each other.
But they probably did, or will
, he thought.
Hell's a big place, but they have lots of time.

Lauren and Kyle moved in together into a bigger apartment, one big enough for her to have an office at home. They were getting dinner ready; Lauren's brother Jordan was in town and coming over. Kyle was a bit nervous about meeting him for the first time. He was a really important part of Lauren's life. What if they didn't get along?

Trying to get over his anxiety, Kyle said, “Hey! Get this. There were these two guys — ”

Lauren interrupted him. “You know, when I say you're funny, I don't mean that your jokes are funny, so you should stop trying so hard to make jokes.”

“Oh.” Kyle was confused. Was this some kind of roundabout way of breaking up with him? And he thought things were going so well. Shit.

“It's how you are, who you are, that's so funny. Just relax and be yourself. You amuse me in so many little ways. The look of panic in your face every time someone addresses you. The way you always spit exactly three times after you brush your teeth. How you constantly rub your nose. How you tend to lose yourself inside your own head. How you overreact to everything.”

“So it's who I am that's a joke?” Instead of breaking up with him, she'll laugh at him for the rest of their lives? Kyle tried to balance the damage to his ego with the sex and all the other ways she made him feel good.

“No, silly. You're charming! Everything about you is charming! You're so transparent and honest. Real and direct. I love that.”

“Oh. Alright, then.” He grinned.

Lauren sat him down, dropped on his lap, squeezed his hand between her thighs, and kissed him.

And Kyle looked into those bright brown, almost orange eyes of hers and lost himself in the love he saw in there.

Lauren jumped off Kyle's lap when the doorbell rang. Kyle savoured the lingering taste of her lips on his own.

Lauren walked back into the kitchen with her brother in tow, and Kyle looked up into his big, light-brown eyes, so bright they were almost orange. And Kyle thought,
Shit, he's really cute.

Claude Lalumière (
lostpages.net
) is the editor of eight anthologies, including
Island Dreams: Montreal Writers of the Fantastic
and the Aurora Award-nominated
Tesseracts Twelve: New Novellas of Canadian Fantastic Fiction
. He writes the Fantastic Fiction column for
The Montreal Gazette
. Claude is the co-creator, with artist Rupert Bottenberg, of Lost Myths (
lostmyths.net
).

“A Place Where Nothing Ever Happens” first appeared in
Interzone
#182 (November 2002).