The Dead Love Longer (9 page)

"Nothing's worth killing yourself over," I said. "Believe me, I know."

"Who are you?
Really?
Because you're not real.
You're not even here right now." He stared at the Scotch bottle as if I were its genie.

"I'm a friend."

"Friend?
I don't have any friends." The gun barrel tilted down but still pointed in my direction.

"Surely somebody cares about you. Got any family?"

"Two daughters," he
said,
his sibilants mushy from the booze. "I lost one, and I never had the other."

"You've got more than you know.
Money, accolades, starlets' numbers in your speed dial.
You're a producer who produces.
Dance of Dust, Love in the Afternoon, The Slow Parade
. Who wouldn't want to trade places with the great Ron
Wesmeyer
?"

He waved the gun toward his head. "I'd like to get the hell
out
of Ron
Wesmeyer
."

"Don't be a damned coward. Surely you've got something to live for.
Something besides yourself."

"I've screwed it all up," he said. "No hope for it now."

I felt myself fading, dissolving. I fought to maintain my grip on existence. My anger helped, and the discovery that in solving someone else's problems, I was facing my own.

"Listen here, buddy." I leaned over the table, trying to look menacing. "If you've got a chance to fix things, you better take it."

He blinked. "I must be as drunk as an agent.
Talking to a freaking ghost."
But the gun lowered again.

"You ever see
It's a Wonderful Life
?"

He nodded. "I was an
uncredited
gaffer for that movie."

"And you worked your way up. To the top, or least high enough that you're obscured by clouds."

"Yeah?
So what? That doesn't make me a decent human being. I've failed in the only thing that matters."

"Don't stop the movie until the final credits roll. You can always set things right. Take it from me. I'm the world's greatest expert on remakes."

He put the gun on the table and took a swig of Scotch. "At least when I write my suicide note, I can honestly say I'm crazy. I've got a ghost for a shrink."

I gave him a line so good, he probably ended up using it in his next movie: "Well, you can learn a lot about life from a dead guy."

Here sat one of the world's most powerful movie producers, reduced to a leaking sack of self-pity. And I was presuming to inspire him. "Tell me a story, Ron. Make it true, and at least die with it off your chest, if that's the way you want it."

He sighed long and empty like a man with numb fingers and nothing to lose. "It's my daughters. When I was working my way up, I didn't want kids underfoot. Both were illegitimate. I had a lot of flings in those days.
Hollywood
's never been known for its wise mating decisions."

I interrupted. "I've got to dissolve now, but that doesn't mean I'm not listening. If you think being alive is a pain in the neck, maybe someday I'll tell you
my
story."

My substance slipped away, leaving only me.
Wesmeyer's
eyes widened, but he took a sip of Scotch and continued. "Their mothers gave them up to orphanages. I always figured one day I would track them down, see what became of them,
maybe
help them out if I could. But you know how it goes. I was always too busy making the next deal. Then one of my daughters found me first."

I threw my voice. "Bailey."

He nodded, beyond the capacity of surprise. "She knew about the other daughter, too. She also knew my estate is worth about ten million dollars, and the cancer has reached my liver and colon. This late in the game, I figured I'd do way more harm than good if I tracked them down. A year is hardly enough time to patch up such a big hate."

Sounded like Bailey had a good source of information.
A source that must have skimmed a couple of mil off the top.
The captain took another gulp of Scotch and chased it with the rancid coffee. I shuddered in sympathy.

He wiped his mouth. "I drew up a will, figuring that even if I'd been worthless as a parent, I could make up for it by giving them lots of money. A poor substitute for love, I know, but it's better than nothing. Somehow, even that turned sour."

Sure. Bailey found out about the money and wanted it all. And someone named Lee was standing in the way. My batteries were nearly tapped out, but I mustered my voice for a question. "Does anybody else know about your two daughters?"

"No," he said, staring through me at the wall. "Their mothers are dead, one in a car crash and one from pills. So...wait a minute. My lawyer drew up the papers for my will."

Bingo.

"Do me a favor," I said. "After you finish your story, pick up the phone and call your other daughter. Life's too short, and there's no hell as hot as one that's filled with should-haves and regrets."

I hoped my caseworker got wind of my good deed. Even Santa knows who's naughty and who's nice. If Santa could do it, anybody could. I wafted weakly toward
Los Angeles
, the city of angels.

***

12.

Lee has a little courtyard outside her La Brea apartment. She takes it upon herself to keep flowers growing, to add a little natural color to the asphalt, concrete, and neon that occupies much of the Pacific basin. She has such a green thumb that even the smog can't kill her garden. Columbine, posies, marigolds, violets, she can do it all.

I was glad I didn't have to crush the flowers. I floated, thin as a Pacific wind, to the window. I took a deep breath, remembered I'd given up breathing a long time ago, and peeked through the glass.

A man with a gun stood behind Lee. She was writing something on a piece of paper, probably something she didn't want to write. Her face was calm except for her trembling lips. Her eyes were puffy from crying, but I was sure the tears were for my death and not her own.

You ever know what it's like to be loved? Not a lot of people do. Lack of faith had dogged my every step as a mortal, even when wonderful women fully expressed their love, opened their hearts and souls, and invited me to consume all I wanted.
Unconditionally.
And still I doubted. But, at that moment, seeing my sweetheart weep, with my photo on the table surrounded by a dozen wads of tissue, I knew.

My, she was beautiful. I had been afraid that seeing her would drain me, rip my ethereal fabric into existential shreds. Instead, I was energized, boosted, fueled by anger and love and the hope of an eternity together.

Hope. There it was again.

So big and true even a phony like me couldn't deny it.

I went through the wall.

Into Diana.

Not just bumping into her, like when you see some ex-lover on the street and give that embarrassed grin and get through the "How are you?" and "See you later" with not much in between.

No, I was
into
her, merged more deeply than we'd ever managed when engaged in bedroom acrobatics.

I'll admit, my idea of love had mostly been skin deep, and my only expression of affection was to follow the one part of me that always seemed to be pointed off a cliff edge. I'd tangled with some wonders, and I treasured them all, even though there was no way I could ever respect anybody stupid enough to fall for me.

So this intense, abrupt intimacy really threw me off my game. Diana had never invaded my thoughts, not to any real level of depth, and now here she was in my spirit meat, her ethereal fabric woven into mine, two angels dancing on the same pinhead.

"We have to talk," Diana said/thought/screamed/whispered.

"What are you doing here?"

"I made a promise.
To make your life a living hell.
Why stop right when it's getting fun?"

I glanced over at Lee, and she was still scribbling, the Goon
With
Gun unperturbed. Diana and I appeared to be invisible.

"Get out of my goddamned head," I said.

"Come on, lover. You said I was your soul mate, remember? And now that it's literal, you're getting cold feet."

"Because my feet have been dead for a couple of days."

I tried to shrug her off the way you might shake a pet monkey off your back, but she was duct-taped to my innermost being.
The deepest, blackest part of it.

I recalled something my caseworker had said, about regrets and using up second chances. And the big thing I'd been running from.

Guilt.

There, in the mausoleum of my heart, the "Diana" coffin was full of the most maggot-riddled, corpulent putrescence imaginable. I thought I'd walled it off, that it was so safely buried that the stench would never arise.

True, I hadn't killed her. She'd taken that particular choice herself, in consultation with whatever cosmic guide she'd consulted. My failure had been in refusing to let her be fully alive.

No, she hadn't been Diana Kelly
Rognstad
Steele, a creature of love and light, one of God's special children. She hadn't been a woman, a sacred entity that I nurtured and honored and celebrated. She hadn't been a temple of all that was valuable and worthy.

None of that.

She'd been nothing but a dump for my pain and darkness and selfishness.

I couldn't see her, but I felt her, and she took that journey with me, into the deepest hollows of my soul. Her eyes widened in surprise and maybe a little sympathy.

"Richard," she whispered, and it was the voice she'd used in her most tender and generous moments, when times had been good, when we were virgins to each other, exploring and brave and not walled off from one another.

"I'm sorry," I said, and that was enough. For the first time in my life, I'd said it without an inaudible "But..." trailing after it,
backloaded
with a litany of justifications and excuses for pathetic and cowardly behavior.

Tears ran down our shared cheeks, and they were as warm as the Pacific Ocean in August, as cool as lovers' sheets when the sweat is evaporating, as hot as Diana's cavorting flames of Hell, as icy as the finger of The Grim Reaper when he taps on your shoulder and beckons you home.

"Did you love me?" she said, and I embraced her as well as I could while wearing the same arms as hers.

"Yes, and I still do," I said, and it was true and not at all contradictory. I looked at Lee, who seemed frozen in the real world, hunched over the note, achingly gorgeous and radiating all the light I'd come to appreciate. This love didn't mean I was cheating or that I was in any way diminished or duplicitous.

I hadn't realized in my stinginess that there is not a limited supply of love, and that it flows through us from someplace beyond us, someplace better than us. And we are only conduits, and our job is to simply keep the pipeline open and let it gush instead of tightening the valves through our fears.

"I love you and I always will," I said.
"Forever."

That confession must have leaked through the borders of the dead and living, because Lee's head lifted. She looked over at the portion of the wall where I was immersed in my dead wife.

"Finish it," the goon commanded.

Lee gave a wry twist of her lip, turning up one corner in a smile that somehow seemed a secret signal.
Approval, maybe?
Understanding?

Diana's warmth flooded me, all the verdant, fecund moistness in which she'd enveloped me countless times, and I felt her rising into the ether.

"
Mission
accomplished," she said. "I'm free now."

And the resentment was gone, just like that, swept up on a breeze as I wished her Godspeed
and happiness.

The last echo was her whisper. "I love you, too."

Diana's work was done, but mine wasn't. I brushed the invisible tears away and took inventory of my powers. Even without flesh, I had carried a heavy weight around inside, and somehow dragging it into the light had killed the poisoned darkness inside. Still, my spiritual batteries had been drained by my stubborn clinging to old ways, past damage, and unrequited guilt.

I didn't think I could pull off
another materialization
. I had to do something, though. I couldn't bear the thought of seeing Lee die unfairly, even if dying brought her to my side of the spirit world.

The goon with the gun had an Errol Flynn mustache and was smart enough to wear gloves. I had no doubt that Lee's fingerprints were on the gun's handgrip, and the rifle that had killed me was planted in the closet. I hovered over Lee, sniffing her hair, reading the words she had written:

The guilt is too much to bear. I'm sorry for what I did to you, Richard. You were the only one I ever loved. And that's why I couldn't let you love somebody else. Wherever you are, I'm sure you understand.