Postcards from a Dead Girl (13 page)

I sit straight up in bed, shocked into reality, awakened from another crazy dream. My brain slowly identifies the material objects around me: bed, lamp, clock. I'm in my room. I'm with a girl. We must've fallen asleep. I look down at Candyce-not-Jane. She faces me, eyes closed. Her head tilts as she talks to the dream-people in her dream-office. “She didn't tell me the meeting was canceled,” she says.

Oh God, she sleep-talks?

I get out of bed and amble to the kitchen. Zero's awake too, thumping his tail against the linoleum. The closer I get, the quicker he thumps. He prances to the fridge.

“What are you so excited about?”

He stares up at me with anxious eyes, his tail whipping through the air.

I scratch his head, open the fridge, and dig out some lunch meat, which starts Zero salivating. Just the sound of the deli bag wrapper gets him drooling. “Easy,” I tell him. “This stuff is terrible for your heart.”

He sits, then stands on all fours, then sits again.

I throw him a slice of bologna, which he inhales. At least he's
more relaxed. I decide I'm not hungry, but pour a glass of milk. Zero licks his chops, stealing glances toward my bedroom.

“I'm not sure about that girl either, buddy. She talks a lot, but I think she's mostly harmless.” I take a strong whiff of the milk, and gag a little. I pour it down the sink drain and run some water. “Don't worry, she probably won't be around much longer.”

Zero trots back to his dog bed.

I pour out the rest of the bad milk and get back in bed too. It takes me a while to fall asleep because I'm anticipating more of Candyce's sleep-talking. I stare down at her blue-streaked hair, and it somehow makes me sad. I feel like I want her to be gone, like she's taking up my space, talking at shadows and making it uncomfortable for me to be in my own room. We haven't even done anything serious, but already I want her out. I manage to fall asleep but wake up a while later, with Candyce six inches from my face.

“What time is it?” I ask.

“I was waiting for you to wake up. I was trying to be quiet.”

“How long have I been sleeping?”

“All night,” she says.

I rub my eyes and sit up and she sits back, legs akimbo.

“I need to tell you something but I don't want you to be mad at me,” she says.

“Okay.”

She shifts her position on the bed and shakes a last cigarette from the box. She lights it and sucks in the smoke, sizing me up for my potential reaction, then purses her lips and exhales through her nose. She starts to form words but they stop. She tries again, but they're stuck. A vein rises on her neck, pulsating wildly, as if her explanation might be caught behind it.

“What?” I ask.

“Promise you won't be mad.”

“How can I promise that? I don't even know what you're talking about yet.”

“Just don't get mad.”

“Fine,” I say, and cross my arms.

“You're getting mad.”

“Just say it.”

“Okay, okay,” she says. “It's just that it's a little weird. I mean, it's not weird for me, but you might think it's weird or you might think I'm weird because of it.”

“What is it?”

“I just don't want you to think I'm weird,” she says. “Or that I'm lying. It's something that happened last night and I thought I should tell you about it.”

I uncross my arms and take her cigarette away to steal a drag. I sit back. I am waiting. Waiting to hear what will make me mad and think she's weird. Then out it comes.

“I think I met your mom last night,” she says.

I say nothing. I think my eyebrows go up.

“Not in the normal way, like giving her a hug or shaking hands, she just talked to me, inside my head.”

I must be moving away because she creeps a little closer, hopping little hops to close the gap. She whispers, but it's louder than when she talks in her normal voice.

“Every so often I'll hear people talking to me who aren't there,” she says. “Not always, only a few times. My grandmother talked to me a year after she died. She just said hello, but your mom was really chatty.”

I haven't mentioned anything about Mom to Candyce, least of all the bottle of Bordeaux downstairs, or the times I've had similar experiences. I wonder if Mom is on a rampage, destined to be re
membered by talking to everyone who enters my home. I wonder if she can hear me right now, as I discuss her little conversation with Candyce. I wonder why I'm suddenly feeling angry.

“What did she say?” I ask tersely.

“You said you wouldn't get mad.”

“I just want to know what my mother said to you.”

“She wants to know how you are, mostly. So I told her what you do for a living, and how you met me, and that you came in for a CAT scan but Dr. Singh thinks you're fine, and—”

“You told her all this.”

“She misses you. She—”

“Where was I during all this? Why didn't you wake me up?”

“You were sleeping so nicely and I was restless so I got up and went in the kitchen and then I started hearing her voice sort of in my head but not.”

“Fascinating.”

“You don't believe me.”

“It's just very…”

“Weird. You think I'm weird and lying.”

I am silent.

A smile creeps across Candyce's face; she can't stop it. “She said she likes me.”

“Really,” is all I can get out.

“She said I was fun. She was excited, asking so many questions.”

“Like what? What was she asking that was so exciting?”

“She wants to know where the train to Timbuktu is because she's late for an appointment with the emperor of Japan.”

We stare at each other a moment.

“Of course she is,” I say.

Candyce's face drops. “I shouldn't have said anything.”

“No,” I say. “It's okay.” But my voice is rising and I can't control it. “I'm just curious what questions my dead mother is asking a girl I've known for less than a month, a girl who I've never even truly fucked and who decided to peruse my home in the middle of the night while having lengthy conversations with my dead mother?”

Candyce sits patiently, her eyes sad. “I see,” she says and climbs off the bed. She gathers up her clothes, and quickly gets dressed. “I thought I could trust you; you seemed like a nice guy.”

“Did I mention that she's dead?”

She grabs the doorknob to leave, but turns back first. “And you won't ever be fucking me, Sid. Good-bye.” Then she walks out and slams the door behind her.

I sit and smoke the rest of her cigarette. I don't even like smoking. It stinks and tastes horrible and last I heard it causes 312 kinds of cancer, as well as heart disease and impotence.

“Timbuktu isn't even in Japan,” I say out loud, but I think she's already gone.

Since it's the weekend, I sleep until noon. I throw some clothes on and go outside to sit on my front porch. I stare at the mailbox. Mary Jo is nowhere to be seen, probably because it's Sunday and that means no deliveries to monitor.

Then I notice someone walking up the street.

A tall man with dark hair and a smooth gait. He's about three houses away, crossing to my side. He's got a beer in his hand, and a cigarette dangles from his mouth. His shirt is untucked and he's barefoot. Something about his posture strikes a chord of recognition, maybe it's the angle of his shoulders, or how he holds them back. With each new step, I'm sure I know this man, but until he is close enough for me to see the gray in his eyes, I don't realize it's Gerald the Post Office Guy, in civilian clothes.

He continues in my direction, pulls a hit from his smoke, and follows it up with a swig of beer. A hint of danger energizes the air as he approaches—an odd sense of unease, the kind that might accompany witnessing your parents having sex, or seeing Santa Claus unmasked. I'm so used to seeing Gerald in his uniform, performing his federal duties, I've never considered he might have another life outside the United States Post Office.

“I know what you're doing,” he says when he gets within speaking distance. He continues to walk closer. “I know all about it.” He starts up the porch steps.

“You work at the post office,” I say.

He nods and his eyebrows rise. He points at me with his cigarette. “You're good.”

I feel duped—an outstanding citizen, a hero of mine, is smoking in my peaceful front yard, pointing at me, drunk. Well, maybe not drunk, but well liquored. At least he's drinking something respectable, although Guinness in a can always struck me as an oxymoron.

Now directly in front of me, he offers his hand. “Most people call me Gerald,” he says.

“Sid,” I say, and offer my left hand, the nondamaged one, and we shake.

“Nice to officially meet you, neighbor Sid.”

I hold up my right hand. “Cut it on a broken glass,” I explain, but he couldn't care less what I did to it.

My cell phone rings. I hold my finger up to Gerald. He shrugs. I answer; it's the robot lady. She sounds so pleasant most of the time. But today it's different. She sounds like popcorn—kernels of vowels and shells of consonants popping off the sides of their yellow plastic prison wall.

“This…un…sage…cell…one…pruv…”

I try my best to decipher the words.

“An…portant…ular…serv…der…”

Apparently it's an important message from my cellular phone service provider. I'm getting cut off due to late payments. I haven't actually had service provided, and now I'm getting cut off. I'm so angry I want to call back and complain, but I know I won't get decent reception where I'm standing. I focus on my new friend.

“I didn't realize you were my neighbor,” I say.

“Yep, live a couple streets away.” He holds out his cigarette pack: a neighborly offering.

“No thanks. Don't smoke.”

He takes another hit. “I enjoy cigarettes,” he says, and blows twin columns of smoke through his nostrils like a cartoon bull. “They give me pleasure.”

“They also give you cancer.”

Gerald doesn't seem to mind. He takes a sip of his Guinness. “Three hundred and twelve kinds of cancer actually, not to mention certain other maladies.”

“CNNhealth.com?” I ask.

“Is that where I got that from?”

“Must be. I read the same article.”

“I read everything,” he says, and points at his cigarette. “I like to know what I'm getting into.”

“Heart disease, emphysema, and impotence, according to the latest study.”

Gerald waves away my impressive statistics. “That's the least of the world's worries.” He takes a final sip, crushes his can. “Crazy, how times change,” he says and wistfully searches the sky. “When I was a teenager, I used to take Suzy Schroeder out to the drive-in movies in my Ford pickup truck. We might sneak a couple of the old man's beers. That was the height of our summertime rebellion. Nowadays, kids race around in their modified street cars, texting each other for sex hookups and crystal meth, packing heat and ready to use it. World's headed in a strange direction.”

My phone chirps a two-note melody to alert me of the text-message version of the important message I just heard.

Gerald opens his fist to cradle the chunk of crumpled aluminum that was his Guinness. “Do you have any idea how
many objects are flying around up there so you can talk on that thing?”

“Not enough, apparently,” I say and turn off my phone; it sings a melancholy tune.

Gerald holds the can up like it's a satellite floating across the heavens. “Twenty-five thousand. Twenty-five thousand! And that was last year's count. Probably another five thousand this year alone. It's getting crowded up there. The government ran out of earth to pollute, so now they're polluting space.” He coughs. A pale cloud of smoke appears in front of him, freshly discharged from his lungs. “You know, a broken satellite is about to come down and nobody knows where?”

“Really,” I say, and instinctively look up.

“Satellite Sixty, they named it. Makes it sound controllable, I guess. Just another number, nothing harmful. But Satellite Sixty is going to crash down on someone's head one day soon. Check that out on your CNN.” Gerald drops the can; it lands with a clunk. “So,” he says, “enough of the philosophizing. Let's get to it. What are you digging in your backyard?”

“Oh, it's nothing.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it's really nothing.”

“Because I've got digging equipment, I could help you out if you need it. Neighbor to neighbor.”

“Oh, that's nice, but I'm fine.”

“So what is it?” he asks.

“It's a spa.”

He nods. “Uh-huh,” he says, like he doesn't believe me. He picks up his satellite can and starts to walk toward the backyard without asking. “Well let's take a look.”

“Wait—” I yell after him, but he's on a mission. I catch up with
him in the back, where he stands at the hole's edge. I feel a little ashamed at the asymmetry of my design. It looks so hacked up, totally unprofessional.

“Some spa,” he says with a grin.

I shrug. I can't help it if I don't know what I'm doing.

Gerald considers the dimensions of the hole and steps back, like he's trying to figure what the hell kind of spa would fit in this garbage pit. Then he gets close to me, close enough so I can smell the beer on him.

“You gotta do it in levels and make it square,” he says.

We stare at one another for a moment, and then he shakes his head and smiles, like we're sharing a secret, like we're on the same frequency.

“If it's not the taps on your phone, it's the junk in the sky. Gotta hide somewhere. I've got dozens of plans for shelters like this. I'll set you up, no problem.”

“Oh, but, it's—”

“Hell, you can have them. I'm already dug in.” He nods at the ground, studies the layout of my backyard in relation to my house.

I can't break his enthusiasm. I don't want to provoke him either. “So you have a shelter already?”

A friendly smile grows across his face. “I just like to get away. Somewhere quiet. You know, dark.”

I know exactly.

I think Gerald and I are going to be good friends.