Dead is Better (5 page)

Here, there is nothing to see. There is no time to swim with or against. Still I feel the need to unbutton my tattered shirt and to contemplate what once was my navel.

The five ragged and congealed bullet wounds, one in the navel, four others near it, beneath the overhang of my belly, are slits, not circles. There is hair, some crusted blood, some yellow bruising and some threads from my blue shirt along the edges. The holes in my gut are round with a gray smudge encircling them. What is it? I don’t know.

With my index finger I find a hole near my throat, which I, mirror-less, cannot see, but I know is there. When I withdraw my finger from the cavity, there is the gray material and a few strings of black mucous on my finger.

I wipe my hand on my blood-spattered, tattered shirt, then as I am about to stroke the dog’s head, she licks my finger clean with her dry, gray tongue.

I’ve learned:

I wasn’t killed in my apartment, at AndyCo. or in my car.

My distracted, rich, cousin Sheila didn’t shoot me.

Alan, my lawyer, didn’t kill me, either. I was of no value to him dead.

I don’t think Julia killed me although she’s capable of delegating the task to someone else.

And Julia knew that Serena and I were fucking.

My shit bother Mark—I’m not positive but he could have done it. Did the sale to MultiCorp mean that much to him? Or was it spite?

My 38 years of life on earth were an obscene waste of time, space, metabolism and semen—my own and my father’s. Not that I should have procreated. Just that I should have stopped the Bartleby the Scrivener shtick and taken something seriously, all the way. Done something, anything that meant something.

At the moment of my death, my murderer and I stood face to face.

“Death is not anything… death is not… It’s the absence of presence, nothing more… the endless time of never coming back… a gap you can’t see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes not sound…“

—Tom Stoppard

***

Welcome to KDeath, where it’s all dead folk singers all the time, and every day is Dia de los Muertos!

Good morning, good afternoon, and good night!

It’s another perfect not exactly cloudy not exactly bright so-called day here in the afterworld!

The dog stands and it is I who sit cross-legged, my bare chubby feet exposed to the fuzzy not-exactly light or darkness.

Wake up and smell the nothingness, I say as the radio DJ inside my head. That last set was Ramblin’ Jack Elliott’s “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” “Coming into Los Angeles” by Arlo Guthrie, and of course, Fred Neil’s “That’s The Bag I’m In.” Now for Mimi and Richard Farina’s “Reflections in a Crystal Wind.”

In my current porous condition, I wonder if the dog can hear the sweet, sad voices and dulcimers playing in my mind’s ear:

“If there’s a way to say I’m sorry

Perhaps I’ll stay another evening

Beside your door, and watch the moon rise

Inside your window, where jewels are falling

And flowers weeping, and strangers laughing

Because you’re dreaming that I have gone…”

Which reminds me of my dulcimer. Yeah. A big ass like me played the dulcimer. Lately it lived on the top shelf inside the tiny coat closet in my apartment in a shiny wine-colored case. I imagine Serena—grieving my absence, lighting a Jesus candle for me, or just philosophically moving on?—and her sister Maria, enlisted for this special job, is tossing the lovely instrument into a Hefty bag right now.

Is there a section of the afterworld reserved for people who died in motorcycle accidents? I’d like to find it and talk with Richard Farina for a while, then visit his wife Mimi wherever those who die of cancer go.

I am not sure if my current digs are permanent, or if the violent nature of my death brought me here, or if this destination is somehow unique to my, or I should say, our situation. The dog, like me, died too soon and at the hands of another. Hands that failed to feed or to nurture her. Does the arc of history really bend toward justice? We are beyond or outside history, I know that, unable to bend sunbeams or to cast a faint shadow.

Shit, I wasn’t fully alive when I lived. It makes sense that in death I am equally ineffectual.

The dog stands and presses her face against my cheek, nudging me from this reverie. We have places to pass through and people to see.

“Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.”

—Nabokov

***

We find ourselves wandering lonely as clouds about two feet above the new LAPD administration building exterior, planted with spiky drought-resistant plants, and fronted by a dark granite rectangular “water feature.” We move like ripe cheese through a grater through the slotted brass memorial to LAPD’s fallen, then swim through the glass into to the bright interior.

Rose glides ahead of me, her noble head erect, her legs frozen mid-stride like a galloping carousel horse, through men and women in dark uniforms or in polyester business suits, many of the men with mustaches, the facial hairstyle of choice for L. A. cops since I can remember—or maybe since “Magnum P.I.” was a hit on television.

Who the fuck is Rose, you wonder? A dead chick hasn’t found her way to my exclusive and out-of-the-way residence, has she?

No. I decided to name the dog.

Why name a deceased dog? Why not? She enjoyed receiving a name and she likes “Rose,” I can tell. It’s possible, too, that Rose may be my companion for eternity, that the world of the dead is it. But even if I have just a few death-miles left to go before I’m finally allowed some goddamn sleep, and our post-terrestrial collaboration is a fluke, the dog deserves to have a name—a dignity I’m sure her shitful abuser withheld from her in life that I can give her now.

If I had been shot to death in my apartment, we’d be haunting the Hollywood division station on Fountain near Wilcox. But the exact location of my last breath is something I must find out if I am ever to learn who did me in and why. And if I don’t know how I died, I can’t make sense of my dismal, pathetic waste of a fucked-up life—well not make sense of—but even begin to understand.

We sail through the light, modern lobby of the new ten-story police administrative office building behind City Hall. The lobby opens to the floor below as if it were a concert hall, not a structure built to shelter those who Serve and Protect the living from homicidal drug-crazed criminals. Rose and I float straight up, I below her belly, as if we were stacked inside an invisible and silent elevator, to floor five, just as my lawyer Alan, looking weary in a gray suit and black shirt and tie, emerges from a real elevator, across from which is a sign that says “5th Floor Robbery Homicide Division.” Alan pauses to consult a business card that he carries in one hand, the other holding the briefcase he had at Julia’s, then walks to the door on the right and enters.

I figure Alan is here to meet with the police officers about my murder because my shit brother Mark is too busy doing what? Striving to make Happy Andy board shorts—
hecho en Mexico
—immortal for MultiCorp.? Or this could be the day Mark meets with his private Pilates instructor or with his psychotherapist or his—get this—life coach. If anyone could use a coach it’s me, a goddamn death coach who could help me make unliving all that it can possibly be for me and for Rose.

Rose has alighted above the linoleum floor, and curls up like a cat, chin on paws, eyes half closed. I know she’s watching and listening and thinking seriously about something, so I leave her the fuck alone and float close to, almost on top of Alan as he shakes hands, one then the other, with the men I saw at my funeral—Detectives Lee and Sullivan—I assume, and takes an envelope from his briefcase.

Does Alan feel my proximity, his closeness to the poster boy for dissolution? For extinction? He involuntarily brushes something—me? A shadow? A mote of dust?—from his face, then chugs right along in smooth lawyerly fashion.

“Thank you for seeing me on such short notice,” he says.

“Anything we can do to expedite a homicide investigation, we are committed to do,” announces the detective in a lightweight gray suit and blue and red striped tie, either Lee or Sullivan. Both wear ID tags with the LAPD badge crest and small printing from lanyards around their sturdy necks, but without my glasses (I haven’t seen them since I died—where are they?), for the death of me I cannot read the print. The other man wears a slightly darker gray suit with a solid navy blue Donald Trumpstyle tie.

Both are clean-shaven and in their forties. One has short gray hair; the other is bald with a shaved head. The bodies of both are smooth and fit under their clothes, with the bulges of identical ankle holsters visible through the legs of their trousers.

“Mr. Stone’s family is eager to offer a reward for information about his murder. I have a check here for you to give to anyone who comes forward with something you can really use.”

Baldy takes the oversized business check, then hands it to Hairy, who glances at it and then places it on his desk. The room is filled with large desks and telephones. There are bulletin boards on the walls with pictures of faces—I’m not clear if they are victims or suspects, but I guess both—mostly male but some women—all hideous, scared, some of them with scrappy beards, bad skin and unbrushed hair—as if they were roughly awakened from sleep—all frowning and photographed in very bad light with a really crappy camera.

“Fifty grand. Are you sure they want to offer this much? There’s no guarantee that even good information will solve the case. Especially this kind of homicide.”

What kind? What fucking kind? I wait for an answer but Hairy doesn’t elaborate. Six shots is violent, yes, but not extraordinary, is it? And not difficult for a single shooter to accomplish. What was so different about my death? It couldn’t have been the victim, me, a nothing.

“Absolutely,” Alan says. “The family, AndyCo. and its sister company MultiCorp. have joined together to make this reward substantial in order to show how serious they are about finding justice for Charles Stone.”

I get it now. The reward money isn’t about the murder. It’s business, a chance to announce and advertise and, to use one of my shit brother’s favorite words—”monetize”—the merger basically for free. How clever of somebody to use the occasion of my untimely death as a public relations opportunity—I nominate His Shitiness himself, the first born Happy Andy son, Mark Stone and the little lady in the Nissan Leaf.

Rose has uncurled herself and moseyed over to photos of the “LAPD’s Ten Most Wanted Gang Members,” all sour-looking fellows, many with thin moustaches, and all in white t-shirts with “Name, Gang and Moniker” listed under their faces, many with what look like homemade tattoos on their necks.

I float close to read them: “Fernando Monterey. Crazy Riders Gang. Popeye. Carlos Benitez. The Magician Club. Dude. Leon Martinez. Paca Trece. Flash. . .” The names of some of the gangs sound like nice restaurants or sections of Disneyland: Toonerville; Cuatro Flatz, Avenuse; 38th Street, but these fellows are wanted for murder, attempted murder, and murder of a police officer. Under each picture is a warning printed in bold red ink:
“WARNING: THIS INDIVIDUAL IS CONSIDERED ARMED AND DANGEROUS. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO APPREHEND SUSPECT YOURSELF. IF SEEN, CONTACT YOUR LOCAL POLICE STATION ASAP.”

“We’ll coordinate with LAPD Public Relations and let you know when the news conference can be facilitated,” Baldy says.

“Thank you,” says Alan, readying to go. “I know the family thanks you for your efforts to date. Also, they would all like to be present at the news conference if that is possible.”

“That’s fine,” Hairy offers, “But let them know that to be useful, it should happen in the next day or two.”

“I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness.”

—Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

***

As Happy Andy used to say, Yippee. Wise, ironic Rose has mastered a trick, or at least revealed a trick she already knew, to me.

After decamping from the fifth floor of the LAPD administration building, I lead Rose around to the west side of the building, looking for grass. Instead we find brown patches of dehydrated sod and dirt over which tall, dusty palms stand guard. Rose wafts over to the place where grass should have been, as quiet and graceful as smoke, but instead of rolling, flips on her back and floats, legs and feet straight in the air, and gives me a sidelong look.

Rose is playing dead.

Once I get the joke, I laugh. A disembodied laugh, but still it’s laugh enough to shake my punctured belly, and had I breath, would be enough to whistle through the bullet hole in my neck like steam from a teakettle.

“We do not die because we have to die; we die because one day, and not so long ago, our consciousness was forced to deem it necessary.”

—Antonin Artaud

***

Strange that Rose and I would find ourselves across the street from one of my haunts in life, Roscoe’s House of Chicken & Waffles, on Gower in Hollywood. My regular thing was #3, Herb’s Special, “1/2 Chix prepared country style with two waffles,” with coffee and Sweet Netta Ta Ta—sweet potato—Pie and maybe a side of smothered mashed potatoes or grits. Two little perfect domes of whipped butter always perched on the light, crisp, slightly cinnamony waffles like tiny breasts. Two small containers of maple syrup, one for each waffle, rested on the plate near the perfectly crisped and golden chicken. Absofuckinglutely perfect. Often more perfect than fucking, which is another problem I’d rather not go into now.

But it’s really too bad the good and beautiful in-life food-and-drink-starved Rose can’t have a taste or even a meal of what Roscoe’s has to offer, but she, like me, is wholly indifferent to food or any other corporeal pleasure. We’re neither ravenous nor sated—just completely emptied of need—and noting the irony of being here bodiless, precisely here, hovering above the two red benches in front of Roscoe’s rough wooden exterior.