Pariah (20 page)

The feeling of déjà vu struck Dabney, this scene less heightened than Karl’s would-be jumper scenario, but weirder. Karl had been in an agitated snit. This girl was quiescent as a newborn at her momma’s teat.

Stop thinking about momma
, Dabney thought.

“Your standing right on the edge has me a little nervous is all,” he said. “Maybe you oughta come away from there and let’s get introduced. My name’s John Dabney. Most visitors to my roof just address me as Dabney, but either will do. And I guess technically it’s not
my
roof, per se, but I sort of think of it that way.” He felt foolish running his mouth but didn’t stop. “I guess I owe you an apology, Mona.” He paused, hoping he’d engaged her, waiting for the stock response that didn’t come. The buzzing of flies filled the pregnant pause with white noise.
Why was it called
white
noise?
Dabney wondered. White neighbors. White noise. He blinked back to the moment, looking at the girl who hadn’t moved an inch. She was stolid as a figurehead on the prow of a ship, expression serene, skin unblemished. “I owe you an apology,” he repeated, trying to anchor himself in the present.

Thoughts of his seafaring days assailed him. That fat zombie sank like a ship in the ocean of ambulatory corpses. Thoughts of his momma ricocheted around his upper story, too. Maybe those orange slices were spoiled. No. They tasted just fine. Delicious. He’d smoked hashish many moons ago, while in Tangiers. He’d sampled peyote and psilocybin mushrooms while out west. This
was the way of the mind and Dabney didn’t pretend to know what he was all about, least of all on a neuron-by-neuron basis. It was the girl, maybe. Dabney was used to dilapidated specimens like Ellen and Ruth, even though they barely ever manifested in his domain. To see a healthy female so impalpable was putting the whim-whams on him. She turned to face him and sat down, crossing her ankles. Relief flooded Dabney. Even if it weren’t his fault, had the girl tumbled off his roof he’d have felt responsible—at least partially. Worse yet, the others might tar him with a grief-stricken guilty brush. The only thing worse than having no luck is to get some then lose it in a trice.

“What for?” she asked.

“Huh?”

“The apology?” Asked with unblinking eyes.

“Oh,
oh
. Oh, for not introducing myself earlier. For not showing my appreciation for the wonderful food you’ve brought us. I should’ve come down and said thank you. I would have. I don’t want to make excuses, it’s just . . .” Dabney trailed off and considered his next words with care. “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, ’cause I mean no disrespect, but, uh, how come those things don’t attack you like everyone else?”

“I guess they don’t like me.” Dabney looked at her, waiting for the rest, but that’s all there was. No further embellishment. The statement lay there like roadkill. “I need sunglasses,” she said, then got up and walked back into the stairwell.

Dabney stared into the half empty can of orange slices.

Or was it half full?

“We need to send Mona out for more supplies,” Alan said. “Specifically
toilet paper
. I don’t mean to be disgusting or anything, but just as with great power comes great responsibility, so
too does food come with an unfortunate byproduct. Not that responsibility is unfortunate but . . . All I’m saying is . . .” Alan moaned from behind the closed door, tossing the crap-smeared wad of newsprint out the bedroom window—there was no window in the bathroom. Only a couple of broadsheets remained of his last copy of the
New York Press
. “Who’d ever think you could be sentimental about something like toilet paper? Or those moist butt wipes? Oh, those were heavenly.”

“Agreed,” Ellen replied. She knew just how he felt. Unlike the rabbit pellets she was used to producing, all those victuals had gotten her innards producing waste again, and it wasn’t pretty.

“I mean, it’s bad enough hanging your ass out the window to relieve yourself, but to then sandpaper yourself is the icing on the cake,” Alan continued with an audible wince. “So to speak. It’s all so medieval.”

“Enough already,” Ellen said, marching away from the closed portal. “We need to have a building meeting and compile a list of necessities, provided of course that Mona’s zombie repelling wasn’t some fluke and that she’s even willing to go out there and do it again. So I’ll get some paper, and top of the list will be moistened butt wipes.”

“
Huzzah,
” Alan shouted. “Thank you!”

Alan vacated the window and looked around for anything else to tidy with. Maybe Mona would come through with the goods, but until then he needed to do something. As bad as the
Press
was to read, it was twice as bad to wipe with.

A year or two ago Alan had undergone a minor surgical procedure and had been given an overnight basket by the staff, mostly dull items like a cheapo toothbrush, no-name toothpaste, a packet of generic facial tissues. But the highlight was a pump-spray bottle of
Personal Cleanser
. Friends would come by and he’d amuse them with its label, which bluntly proclaimed it to be “No-rinse, one-step
cleansing for the perineum or body” containing “Gentle surfactants [to] aid in the removal of urine and feces.” He’d brought it home for a goof, but it had made his life far more bearable over the last several weeks. When he’d moved in with Ellen, he gallantly shared the last few spritzes with her, and now he wished he hadn’t.

Oh, for those gentle surfactants
.

Alan’s butt stung from the newspaper and felt distinctly unclean. He felt like some tormented Bible character, which was already easy to do given the state of the world. But this was more personal. A civilized adult man should not have to walk around with a poo-crusted tush. He rummaged through a nearby drawer and filched a pinkish baby-T and finished his hygiene ritual. The soft cotton-poly blend did a better job and was much kinder to his hinder. Why hadn’t he thought of this before? Satisfied he’d done the best he could, he lobbed it out the window to join the
Press
in the alley below. Hopefully Ellen wouldn’t mind or even notice that he’d used a garment of hers. Then it hit him.

Oh fuck me
.

Oh double fuck me twice
.

Not hers. This wasn’t some hipster baby-T, it was an
actual
T-shirt that had belonged to her baby, no doubt imbued with all manner of sentimental value. Perspiration began to pour off his forehead.

Oh Jesus
.

As a child, Alan and his mother had been invited by a coworker of hers to spend a weekend at the workmate’s summer cabin in Upstate New York. The work chum was a charming man, but Alan disliked him because he figured the guy wanted to put the make on his divorcee mother. Little had unsophisticated seven-year-old Alan realized the guy was gay. After dinner Alan excused himself, then raced into the guest bathroom and spent a fitful several minutes vomiting through his ass, only to be confronted with an absence
of toilet paper. Panicked, sweaty, ass raw from the torrential outburst and too humiliated to cry out for toilet paper, he searched the tiny rustic chamber in vain for anything to wipe with. He ended up using a flowery lavender hand towel, which he balled up and tossed out the window. In a private after-dinner moment Alan scooted outside and buried it in the adjacent woods. Weeks later the coworker asked his mother if she had accidentally packed the towel with her things.

Hopefully Ellen wouldn’t notice.

“I want batteries,” Karl said, clutching his exanimate boombox. “Lots of batteries.”

“Maybe some of those emergency lights, like for when there’s a blackout. It would be awesome to have light after dark again. To read without eyestrain? That would be amazing,” Alan chimed in, Ellen playing secretary and jotting down all the suggestions. All but Mona had gathered in Ellen’s apartment and were seated in the sweltering living room, made all the hotter by the group’s body heat.

“Hey, what about one of those camping generators?” Dave said.

“Good one,” Eddie said, slapping Dave’s back.

“I’d like some fresh razors. Oh, since we’re talking batteries, how’s about a couple of those electric razors?” Abe suggested, earning him appreciative
oohs
and
ahhs
from the hairy-faced men in the room.

“And a fuckin’ hair clipper,” Dave said, ruffling his scraggy hair. “ ’Scuse the language,” he added, looking at Ruth’s reproachful expression.

“Eventually, and I know it’s not a necessity, but maybe some art supplies,” Alan said.

“Yeah, like you said, ‘
not a necessity
,’ ” Eddie sneered. “So chill
on that shit, Picasso.” Since Alan stopped furnishing him with custom whacking matter, Eddie had ceased to be an art lover.

“Slow down,” Ellen said, her pen skating across the sheet of notepaper. The list was pretty long. The basic necessities were more nonperishable foodstuffs, fresh water, Alan’s precious—although she must admit they were superior, especially in the absence of bathing—moist butt wipes as well as traditional toilet paper, soap, toothpaste, dental floss and dental rinses, more candles and flashlights, and deodorant. “I don’t know how many trips Mona is going to want to make.”

“Hey, if she’s immune to those things, what else has she got on her schedule?” Eddie snapped. “We makin’ her miss her soaps?
Pfff
.”

“Yes, the exercise will do her good,” agreed Ruth, earning her a rare smirk of approbation from Eddie.

“And who’s to say she wants to be our little errand girl?” Ellen countered. “Who’s to say she won’t look at this, go ‘
the hell with these a-holes
’ and hightail it out of here, list in hand, gone, gone, gone?”

“Why so pessimistic?” Alan asked.

“I just don’t want to overwhelm the girl by being too greedy,” Ellen said. “We have a potentially very good thing with Mona and I don’t want us to turn into a bunch of jackals who drive her off with our yard-long shopping list.”

“Girlies love to shop,” Eddie said.

Ellen ignored him and reviewed the list. “Okay, in terms of needs versus wants, this is a pretty reasonable list. But how’s she supposed to carry all this?”

“She could take my shopping cart,” Ruth suggested.

“Old ladies and their shopping carts,” Eddie scoffed.

“I don’t see you making any useful contributions to this discussion,” Ruth sniped.

“Maybe she could boost a car,” Eddie said. “I could tell her how.” No one was surprised that Eddie possessed this know-how.

“You think if she knew how to drive she’d be hoofing it?” Karl said. “How’s she supposed to get through all the forsaken cars down there?”

“Maybe she could just take the shopping cart from the market. It’s not like anyone will mind,” Alan threw in. Nods all around.

“One more thing,” Eddie ventured. “
Guns
.”

Karl looked askance at Eddie.

“
Ooh,
I don’t know,” said Ellen, with a slight frown.

“What don’t you know? Guns would come in mighty useful against those fuckers out there.”

“How? We’d be like hunters in a blind shooting at ducks. You can’t shoot them all. We’d still be stuck here.”

“We should have guns,” Eddie reiterated.

“It would be sport shooting, nothing more,” Ellen added.

“So?”

“So what’s the point? I don’t like the thought of guns in the building. You think if you shoot a bunch you’re going to win a prize? This isn’t Coney Island, Eddie.”

Typical patronizing Upper East Side Jewy liberal
, Eddie thought. What Ellen thought was,
I don’t like the thought of
you
having guns, Eddie Tommasi. Too dangerous for the rest of us chickens
.

“Just ask her, okay?” Eddie said, smoothing his features. “Let her be the judge. She brings ’em back, great. She doesn’t, so be it.”

Having omitted Eddie’s request for firearms, Ellen handed over the list and asked, “Is that too much, Mona?” She’d decided to always address the girl by name when speaking to her. Her theory was that maybe she’d had her sense of identity eroded by walking amongst the undead for however long she’d been out there on her own. Ellen was as determined to reclaim this girl as she and the others were to having her run errands for them.

“Maybe more’n one trip,” Mona mumbled, folding the slip of paper and tucking it in her pocket.

“And you’re cool with going back out there? We don’t want to pressure you.”

“No big.”

And with that she wedged the earbuds in—her signature gesture, like Carson’s golf swing—and rappelled out the window via the ratty rope they’d used to haul her in. When she touched down on the roof of Dabney’s ruined van she looked up at Ellen and the others, all of whom wore the expectant look of latchkey kids afraid mommy would never return.

“I’m getting new rope, too,” she said, dangling the frayed end.

The others nodded yes and Mona climbed off the vehicle, the zombies spreading out with a sibilant anthem of reproach. As she headed north toward Eighty-sixth Street, her Hello Kitty knapsack looking back at them with its vapid beady black eyes, the throng opened and closed, a long, wide mouth that couldn’t devour this one small girl. When she turned the corner everyone but Abe, the self-appointed lookout, left 2B to resume the daily grind. Abe sat and watched as the zombies settled down, some still hissing and spitting like rabid bipedal cats. He pawed his scruffy chin, images of cranky and crotchety cowboy sidekicks floating in his mind. All he needed was to be stirring a pot o’ beans on an open fire to complete the picture, and now, with this Mona girl, the pot o’ beans was attainable.