Imperfections (22 page)

“You discovered something that could change the world… writing obituaries?”

“Don't freak out, okay? But I've come across deaths, two people, three people, more, everyone all linked together.”

I failed to see the source of wonder.

“I'm talking more than just two married people dying in a car wreck,” Leonard continued. “More than a bus full of geeks plunging off a cliff on the way to a computer convention. I'm talking about far-reaching, seemingly abstract, seemingly coincidental deaths. I think I can prove that there are no coincidences in death.”

“Great,” I exclaimed, not sure what was being demanded of me other than not to “freak out,” which I thought I was managing quite admirably.

Donna's orbit around the yard took her in a precariously close swing by us. Leonard waited until she passed.

He sighed. “Don't you see?” his voice hushed. “Death is predictable. There are connections between us all and our deaths are laid out before us, if we can only figure out how it works. There's a pattern, a huge web that connects us all.”

“I don't get it.”

“Oscar Wilde became legally entangled in a lawsuit over relations with the Marquess of Queensberry's son. Wilde went to prison, two years hard labour. Both Wilde and the Marquess died in 1900. Ten months apart. They were ten years apart in age.”

“Wow,” I said to the silence Leonard had let linger. I hadn't meant it to sound sarcastic.

“I was doing some research and… you know about the day that music died, right? So that morning, the band wants to get on a plane but it only seats three. Buddy Holly is on board, of course, the band can't go on without him. The Big Bopper has the flu, so his buddy Waylon Jennings gives up his seat. Ritchie Valens flips a coin for the last seat with his bandmate Tommy Allsup, who loses. They take off and later the plane crashes and Buddy, the Big Bopper and Ritchie all die.”

“You said there was more to this than geeks plunging off a cliff. It's not some mystical connection they all died at the same time. Musicians dying in plane crashes, happens all the time.”

“Hear me out. Know who else died that same day? Far away, in New York, a fellow by the name of Vincent Astor has a heart attack and dies. He was the son of John Jacob Astor the fourth, the fellow who, before dying on the
Titanic
, helped design the turbine engine on the plane that the Big Bopper went down in.”

I glanced at Leonard. “It's not an exact science you're onto is it?”

“No,” Leonard agreed. “Not yet. I've just started to figure it out. The part you don't seem to get, the world-changing part is, from this I may well be able to predict when people die.”

There was a moment of silence when Donna swung by again as she roamed the gardens. What Leonard was talking about started to sink in. If you knew when you would die, you could live for that day. Retirement savings would be an exact goal. People could say goodbye to loved ones, write up their will the day before they expired, live life to the fullest, assuming they knew when they would check out.

Donna threw her cigarette butt into the garden and then lit a fresh smoke.

“These aren't the only ones,” Leonard said quietly. “I have come across thousands of such deaths. Some are obvious, others aren't. Aldous Huxley and C.S. Lewis. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, both on July 4th, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. I've barely scratched the surface.”

A muffled doorbell rang from inside the house.

“So, have you got any predictions?”

“Prince Rainier of Monaco and Pope John Paul II could happen. Sometime soon after the year two thousand.”

“What's the connection?”

“Both longest ruling monarchs of this century in the two smallest kingdoms in the world. I'm also banking on Paul Winchell and John Fiedler dying on the same day as each other. All four of them are going to buy it in the same year. The connections run deep.”

“Who are Paul Winchell and John Fiedler?”

“The voice actors for Tigger and Piglet.”

“Shit,” I gasped.

“I know,” Leonard agreed.

Father slid the patio door open. “Food's on,” he said.

Donna waved her cigarette and said, “I'll be a minute.”

“You boys go in,” Father said. “I'll keep my future daughter-in-law company. Tell everyone to start without us so the food doesn't get cold.”

“When am I going to die?” I asked Leonard.

“I'll work on it,” Leonard said as I followed him inside.

We ate. Donna and Father were not seen again until we were almost done reading our fortune cookies. Abigail introduced us to the fortune “in bed” game where you read your fortune aloud and said “in bed” afterwards. It works with every fortune.

“You'll find fortune and glory this year… in bed,” Abigail read.

“You'll be filled with friendship and love… in bed.”

“You are strong, willful and fun. People like to spend time with you… in bed.”

“Oh my God, Richard, your Dad is amazing…”

That was what Donna said when the two of them returned, exploding through the patio door in a storm of giggles and breathlessness. Donna was flushed. Father glistened. They didn't even try to hide it and the funny thing was, I felt instantly lighter, happier and relieved.

Donna and I started our engagement on such shaky ground, what with the orgy and all, that I was not surprised it ended the night she met my family. She wasn't out of my life. I would see her at shows. I would see more of Father, too, as he would be in the audience, supporting Donna.

I cracked my fortune cookie in half, pulled out the dry piece of paper and read one of the more disturbing fortunes I've ever seen.

“Past troubles will pale in comparison to what is to come…”

CHAPTER 12

There Are No Fat Angels

Light flashed so bright it was almost a sound. It burned every image seen before that moment right out of the mind, leaving the brain a soft, grey template ready for its first impression. A clean slate with no memory of past loves or previous traumas, happy moments or sad ones.

The pure white light faded to a pale blue as flawless and familiar as a lover's eyes. It was a colour that had its own soul. When I think about its beauty now, stumbling along with inadequate words and a broken recollection, I realize how insufficient language is to capture such perfection. I have to rely on the clunking tools of metaphor and simile to get close to an accurate description. Even still, it hits wide of the mark.

The blue was broken by occasional drifting wisps of clouds. They started as baby hair skiffs and grew more substantial as the seconds passed. They were white, so very white. Once the clouds were dense enough to stand on, the first few tones of music filled the sky: slow, sustained, electronic notes.

I stretched my feathered wings, light reflecting pearlescent from a fine film of lavender scented oils covering them. I stepped down onto clouds as firm as any ground I had ever touched. I took a tentative step and looked around, ready for the plunge back to Earth.

There is a Heaven
, I thought.
I'm in Heaven.

I looked around, uncertain.

To become an angel, to be blessed to walk among the clouds, I had successfully shed fifteen pounds of flesh that had barely been clinging to my skeleton in the first place. I had donned pants made from zippers and vinyl, pants that clung as tightly to my skin as my skin clung to my bones. A pair of aviator sunglasses crowned my newly etched cheekbones and my chiselled jaw. I wore a white shirt with black block-letters spelling out
Ozone Kills
. There were holes cut in the back of the shirt so my wings would sprout through and I could stretch my full five-foot wingspan. There were slits cut in the fabric of my shirt, the gaps stitched with a golden fleecy mesh through which my ribs could be seen, my collarbones, my breastbone making ripples under my skin.

This year, 1998, the same year I wound up in Heaven, was the year most developed countries finished their phase-out of ozone-depleting halocarbons in aerosol sprays and industrial chemicals. In Australia, under the magnifying glass of the biggest ozone hole ever recorded, people's tans had never been so deep and bronze. Only my skin, sparkling golden in the brilliant light, was more beautiful than theirs.

It took my mind a few seconds to overcome the vertigo and it took my feet a few more to trust standing on the clouds like they had once trusted the ground. When I was sure I wasn't going to tumble to the Earth below, I walked with a little more surety. A few more steps and it struck me that, if I were to fall, my wings could save me. The thought gave me confidence. A few more steps and I was getting up to speed. This was easy. A few more steps. A nod to old St. Peter. I rounded a corner, my feet pumping and my mind growling through clenched teeth.

I am the most desired slip of angel flesh that ever walked.

I am a firecracker exploding in your face. I'm taking an eye with me. It's mine, now. I own it.

I fucked your wife on the hood of your Porsche.

I am a screaming baboon shaking a tree.

When Chester had called a week ago to tell me he could get me into Ozone's Heavenly Show, he phrased it something like this. “Okay, don't shit yourself but I can get you into the Heavenly Show.”

“No shit? Paris Fashion Week? Ozone?”

“I'm not shitting you, Richard. There's a catch though. Before I call them back to confirm, I need to know you're in, that you're committed.”

“Shit, yeah. What do I have to do?”

“Lose fifteen pounds. I need you in fifty/eighty-six pants and an eighty-seven shirt.”

Twenty-inch waist. Thirty-four-inch inseam. Maximum thirty-four-inch chest. Minimum thirty-two.

“Holy shit,” I gasped.
 

“Yeah,” Chester agreed. “But they don't make $80,000 pants for just anyone, Richard.”

Were those proportions even possible?
 

Yes.
 

I could do it. I was twenty-two years old, my body was still malleable. I was close. Chester was right, fifteen pounds or so should do it. So I said, “Book it.”

Chester hung up. A rush washed over me. I was in. This was the biggest thing that could happen to me. Ozone. Paris. This was the peak. Most people had to look back at their career to find the high point. I was fortunate to see mine coming, to be able to take full advantage of it. My career could not get higher. My head swam with the lack of oxygen at that altitude.
 

I was skinny and I had no idea how to shed fifteen pounds of flesh that I didn't have, let alone in a week, not without dying. But this was Paris. This was Ozone. This was worth dying for. I needed help. Luckily, I knew an expert. I grabbed my cellphone and speed-dialled
6
.

Father answered.

Small talk. I was too distracted to remember what was said. I needed to get to Donna. Each moment that passed was an ounce of unlost weight.

“Put Donna on.”

My thoughts raced. How had my weight become an issue? There is no more consistent a stigmatization than that of being overweight. The results of being obese are clear. Judgments about people, their morals, their worth are made first by physical appearance. It only takes seconds. In magazines, movies, advertisements, it is implanted in us. There are no fat superstars. There are no fat models. There are no fat angels. The world is rougher on obese people than anyone else…

“…and the fatties do it to themselves. They're lazy and dirty and smelly and self-decapitating, in the purest sense of the word, because they just don't care,” Donna said.

I couldn't remember when my thoughts ended and she began talking.

Also, I think she meant “self-deprecating.”

“They don't care about their appearances so they don't care about their lives or what they accomplish. They don't care about others. They're totally unmotivated and don't contribute and that's it. It's a sickness, in a nutsack, a sickness in the brain,” Donna said. “Though I hear the fatties are jolly. If I ever get to know one, I'll have to see.”

“I see.” I needed to stay positive.

My psychologist, the one I started weekly sessions with after Donna ran off with Father, said positive feelings are a coping mechanism to help us live through the bad times. She said they make us look to a more viable, happy future that helps us endure the ever-difficult present. Negative feelings are also important because they validate the authenticity of positive feelings. One has less meaning without the other. She said that the perfect ratio for happiness is 2:9, positive to negative feelings that is. She had read it somewhere in a textbook.

“What did you want, Richard?”

“I need to lose fifteen pounds in under a week.”