Postcards from a Dead Girl (10 page)

I know I shouldn't, but the credit card companies keep sending me offers, so I keep opening them. They're all so shiny and full of promise. The PlatinumExcella®. The PremierFreedom®. No annual fees. No interest for a year.

I already put my plane tickets on the DiamondPrestige
^®
, and my hotel rooms on the TitaniumRewards
^®
, which I think leaves a little room on my GoldPoints
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card for a few other expenditures. I'm just trying to adhere to Dr. Singh's orders about taking some time off worrying.

In this spirit, I decide to blow off work today. And while I may be abusing my flex-time privileges to the max, Steve hasn't said anything, so I keep my focus on unwinding.

And what better place than the Arizona Day Spa? I've probably passed this place a hundred times on my way to Wanderlust, but never stopped before today. The sign outside is painted with saguaro cacti and a deep red sky. It seems like a place people would go to relax. I enter through the front door and into the lobby, which is all desert tones—peaches and browns and turquoise. The menu of treatments hangs above a faux adobe fireplace. The full-immersion mud bath is tempting, but I know I would feel
guilty about the high price tag that goes along with it, hence killing the whole effect. I also pass up the seaweed body-wrap and the chocolate face-painting for the wonderful dark heat of the cedar sauna, which is free with the daily entrance fee.

The smell of the sweet wood is intoxicating enough, but the heat is so delightfully stifling I almost forget my troubles. I sit and sweat and labor at breathing. I might be feeling happy; I'm not sure. I decide to sweat some more, let it drip off my eyelids. I've left the light off and it's the closest feeling I've had to the car wash that I can remember, so that's good. Then the door opens.

“Anyone in here?” a voice asks.

Damn it
.

A click, and the room is filled with light.

“Oh sorry,” the voice says. A forty-something man with an excess of body hair and a deep, orange-brown tan enters the sauna. He doesn't turn the light back off. “I love the sauna,” he says, and pours a ladleful of water over the coals. Steam fills our little wooden box. The temperature increases. I forgive him for intruding; more steam is exactly what I needed. I feel like I'm breathing water now, or devolving to a single-celled creature made of pure liquid. A smoldering burn in my lungs forces me to breathe even slower. My eyes glaze over with sweat and I don't wipe it away.

The hairy orange man climbs up on the top level and stretches out the entire length of the bench—a sauna pro. Oranga-man, I think, I am in a sauna with a large monkey. He gives a quick exhalation to acknowledge my presence—or a grunt to ward off the other monkeys in the rain forest. “Good for the soul,” he says. “Sweats out the demons.”

I grunt back, and think about demons seeping out of my pores—little imps melting and running down the tip of my nose,
absorbing into the cedar planks below. And although I can barely breathe, all I want is for this stranger to be replaced by someone female, and I want to be sweating with her, mixing our demons together, sliding across each other's skin, breathing each other's hot breath, feeling the smoldering burn, until we both turn to liquid and evaporate.

“You look a little peaked, friend,” the orange man says. “You didn't fall asleep in here did you?”

I force myself to sit up, and sure enough my head begins to spin.

“Too much of a good thing can be bad, you know,” he says. “Everything in moderation.”

My cell phone vibrates just as Gazelle has completely encased me in a tub full of black, mineral-enriched, Moor peat mud. I set the phone to vibrate in consideration of my fellow entombed ones. I look down the row of the other gravesites adjacent my own, the pasty faces poking up from the ground, ceremonial cucumber slices covering the eyes of the dead. If they notice the buzzing, they're not letting on.

I considered leaving my phone in the locker room, but I'm still waiting for that call about the CAT-scan results. Now I'm not sure I can even answer because I can barely move my arms against the weight of the heavy earth. I'm covered in too much of a good thing. It's okay, though. I won't worry about it: doctor's orders.

My phone rests atop a clean, white, folded towel next to the mud bath, as if it's on its own separate spa retreat. I glance at the number. It's a 201 area code. New Jersey. I manage to slip my arm out, clean my hand on the towel, and answer before it stops buzzing.

“I found out more about you and your girlfriend,” the man says on the other end of the line. It's Corey, the reluctant clerk from Sunny Smiles. Hearing him say the word
girlfriend
feels unfamiliar and somewhat scary; I try to place its meaning and context, but it's
got my head spinning. I pull myself up out of the ground, slowly, my ear tight to the phone. “To be honest with you,” he says, and then he tells me what he knows, that when he put my cell phone number in his computer, it showed that my girlfriend and I were there about a year ago. “What was her name again?” he asks.

“Zoe?” I answer in a question. Her name sounds so strange out loud. Hollow, yet hopeful at the same time. Something inside me snaps to attention.

“You had a problem with your suspension, some kind of CV boot situation.”

“What's a CV boot?”

“Has to do with the integrity of the front axle.”

“Huh.”

“That's what the records show anyway.”

I feel my heart sink from the pressure of phantom thoughts, bits and pieces of truths not quite ready to be known—it's a weight heavier than forty feet of mud. I stop breathing for a moment, then inhale suddenly, a cartoon gasp. Corey tries to explain in between the dropouts of my cell connection, but I'm not listening anymore. In the spa windows I see my reflection: a pale white gangly mess, chunks of earth sliding down my body. I am alive from the grave.

“One of the guys said she spoke in a foreign accent sometimes. Chinese, maybe?”

The satellites in the heavens must be shifting because Corey's voice goes distant and fuzzy, then drops out completely.

Gazelle approaches me with a glass of water. “It's better if you stay covered for the full treatment,” she says. “You should get back down there.”

No thanks, I say internally, but I feel my head nodding yes, yes.

Yes, Gazelle, yes.

The voice isn't familiar, but the number is. It's the collection service.

“Sid's not here,” I say into my cell, and look out at the vastness of my dark backyard. I prop myself against my shovel. Digging is hard work, but I realize I might have the beginning of something wonderful: a six-foot-by-three-foot hole, almost a full twelve inches deep. The stranger continues to talk anyway—a real collection whiz—but I'm distracted with noticing how incredibly vibrant my skin feels since visiting the Arizona Day Spa. I've been going daily for two weeks now. It's like my epidermis is vibrating.

The collectors have all tried different ways to fool me. Yesterday an older, assertive woman insisted I call her back as soon as possible about important information concerning my account. I enjoyed her performance; it was bold and brassy. She put a little street into it, got a little tough. The day before that, a guy with a Bible belt accent and damnation in his voice warned me of repercussions. He used that word a lot: repercussions. I remember hearing about percussion bombs in the news and thinking how they must be loud and violent and obtrusive. So repercussions must be especially bad. The guy who's on the phone now is real
nice and friendly, like he's my favorite uncle, Ricky, calling to take me out to a ballgame.

“So, pal, how's it going today?” he asks.

“Pretty good, buddy,” I return, just as sweet.

“Sid?”

“Sid should be back later. He's at work.”

“He must work a long shift. He was just at work twelve hours ago.”

“Yeah, he works funny shifts. A hard worker, that one.”

“I'm talking to Sid, aren't I?” he says, silky smooth.

“Nope. Sid will be back later.”

“Come on, Sid. We need you to make a payment. It's the responsible thing to do. You've exceeded your limit.”

“I'll have him call you tomorrow.”

“Be a man, Sid—”

I hang up the phone, unearth my shovel, and slice back into the ground with its tip. It's a good night for digging. Cool. Serene. I can almost feel the night birds watching me. Another two feet and I will have my very own mud bath. I'll never need to pay the Arizona Day Spa again. And the cost of a tip for water, towels, and fruit service can get expensive, which the collectors sometimes take the time to mention while going over my current balance due. If they freeze my cards, that's fine, I don't need them anymore. And if the phone company wants to turn my phone off, that's okay too. They never give good service anyway.

I decide it's time for a test. What the hell. It's no therapy-grade peat mud, but it will do. I toss in a few dozen spadefuls of loose dirt, roll out the garden hose, turn on the water, and let it flow into the hole. I watch the sky as I wait. The dark shadow of an owl glides silently overhead. Maybe I'm being visited by my spirit animal as I live this secret, nocturnal life: my predatory
backyard existence. I try to spot the owl's location in the trees but something else catches my eye. It's Mary Jo, at the edge of my property.

“What are you doing?” she asks. She stands there, staring through the dark at the hole in my yard.

“Just digging in the dirt,” I say. “What are
you
doing?”

She creeps closer to get a better look. Something about my answer doesn't sit well with her. She looks at my shovel, then at me. “My folks are playing cards next door. What are you making?”

“Well,” I say, “it's sort of a project, I guess.”

Her eyes are wide and luminous, held steady on the dark puddle of water. She sighs. “I can't swim.”

“Oh, it's not for swimming.”

She waits for me to explain, but when I don't, she blurts, “It looks like a grave.”

I laugh a little, then take a good look at the hole. Sure enough, it does look that way. “You're right,” I say, without thinking.

“Are you digging a grave?”

“No,” I say quickly.

She backs up a few steps. “When my grandpa died, they put him in a hole like that. Are you gonna bury someone?”

“Oh, no. Of course not. It's not a grave.”

“Did someone die?”

“No,” I assure her. “It's not what you think—”

She keeps backing up, her voice rising. “Did you kill someone?”

I reach my hand out to stop her. “No! It's a spa, okay? It's a mud bath!”

She looks cautiously at the hole again. “Killing is a sin,” she warns, continuing her slow escape.

“It's a mud bath,” I say. “For relaxing. Grown-ups sit in mud to relax!”

She squints at me. “No they don't. My parents don't.”

“Well, some do.”

“You're lying. People don't sit in mud.”

“Sure they do.”

She looks terrified. I decide some levity might ease her fears. I jump in the hole. “See?” I splash around, toss some mud in the air for added effect. “It's fun!”

She stares at me, aghast. A loud clucking noise escapes her throat, and she unintentionally jumps straight up in the air. She lands, spins around, and dashes toward the black edge of my yard, the soles of her feet white flashes in the night.

I want to yell more assurances to her, but she's gone. Oh well. She'll keep my little secret; it's her secret now too. I lay back and try to enjoy my new creation. The mud's consistency is all wrong, though, and the water is way too cold. It's downright freezing. I hear shuffling in the far reaches of the yard and wonder if Mary Jo has returned in a more jovial mood, but soon Zero comes up to the edge. When he sees me, he lets out a big sigh and lies down.

“It's a spa,” I tell him. “For relaxing.”

He doesn't have anything to add, so we sit there for a while together, under the silence of the starry night.

The next morning, I am restless. I stand before the kitchen window, cereal bowl in hand, shoveling wheat flakes in my mouth. I chomp and slurp while staring at the apparent grave I've dug in the backyard. I finish eating, toss my empty bowl in the sink, and wonder what to do with myself.

Instinctively, I grab the phone to dial Natalie. Her number makes the shape of a house with half of a roof. I punch the speed dial instead and hit send. Maybe I can get some answers out of her about my CAT scan. The musical beep-boops sing out like so many other speed-dial songs—for all I know it's all the same song, put there to let me know everything is working.

I heard somewhere that soda machines actually had to be rebuilt by engineers because they were too quiet. People would put their money in the machine, press a selection, and somewhere between the selection pressing and the five seconds it took to drop the correct beverage, the customer would lose his temper and kick the shit out of the machine. Five seconds. Too many machines were being destroyed, so the engineers redesigned them to include loud clicks and buzzes and a tumbling drop to fill in the silence.

The problem with my cell phone isn't that it's too quiet, it's just inconsistent. Somehow my house is stuck between the analog tower and the digital tower. Every two minutes my connection changes. Analog, digital, roam. One bar, four bars, no service. It seems random when I'm talking, but there's a pattern, I'm sure of it. Like someone turning a switch in the Great Cell Phone Lab, and I'm the rat experiment. How many clicks will make the rat throw the phone against the wall?

Natalie picks up, but I can't hear her voice.

“It's your brother!” I yell, as if by sheer volume I will transmit a better signal. Natalie has had it with my shoddy coverage, and I keep telling her I'm going to throw my phone out the window one day. She tells me I always say that.

“Sid? Is that you?”
Ksssh
.

“It's me. Can you hear me?”
Ksssh. Ksssh.
“Nat?”

“Yeah, I can hear you. What's up?”

“There you are.”

“When are you going to get a new phone?” she asks.

“Tomorrow. I promise.”

Another click. More static. Silence.

Dial tone.

I press speed-dial number two.
Beep boop boop
, it sings.
Boop boop beep
. She picks up.

“Make it quick, Sid.”

“Sorry. I'm really going to throw this out the window one day. Seriously.”

“Promises, promises.”

“I wanted to know if you heard back about the CAT scan. I know it takes a while, but—”

Kshhh
. Click.

“Hello?”

Beep boop boop, boop boop beep
. Another voice. “Hello, Dr.
Kssssh
's office.”

“Natalie?”

“Kssssh
is with a patient right now.”

“Linda, it's me, Sid.” Linda is Natalie's office manager, and she doesn't like me because I often refer to her as
the secretary
. She is not the secretary, she has pointed out, she is
the office manager
, and she could use a secretary herself. “Can I please talk to Nat?”

“She just ran down the hall. She's really busy today.”

“Can you just ask her—”

Analog. Digital. Roam.

“Hello?” Linda's voice does a herky-jerky dance. “What did you say?”

I shout through the waves of static. “Tell her to call me back!”

Dial tone. No signal.

When I throw the phone against the wall, it hits with a loud crack, but to my dismay, it doesn't shatter into a million pieces—not even a few dozen. It's only scratched on one side. I flip it open and look at the screen.

Four bars.

I stare at my damaged phone, and wait for my heart to stop beating so fast. The coverage bars pulse up and down like the decibel meter on a stereo system, and I get lost in the rhythm of a memory. It's one I haven't had in a while. In it, I'm lying in a gurney.