The Postmortal (4 page)

“Yeah, unfortunately. It only puts you in park, not reverse.”

“See, I don’t want to stay old forever and ever. That’s why everyone your age is probably rushing out to get it. It’s not that people don’t want to die. It’s that they don’t want to grow old. Well, I missed out on that chance.”

“The unluckiest generation.”

“The unluckiest generation.” He sipped his drink. “You know I’m still due to be around here for a while, don’t you? I drink red wine. I eat my asparagus. I’m going to be annoying you for quite some time.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“If everyone ends up your age, that’s gonna be one hell of a party.”

“Could be.”

“What do we do about your birthday? Do we wish you a happy twenty-ninth birthday every year from here on out? Do we have to get you presents every year for the next thousand damn years?”

“I’ll just take a cake.”

“I can do that. I can bake a cake, you know. They have some incredible cake mixes in the store now. They have fudge ripples. Sprinkles. Everything. And they taste just as good as the ones people make from scratch. I’m telling you, cake-batter mixes are one of the great food innovations of the past sixty years. They are a fabulous, fabulous product. I suppose you’ll still be around when they find a way to improve them.”

“How will they do that?”

He thought for a moment. “They’ll fly. In the future, you’ll get to eat flying cake.”

He poured me a glass of whiskey, and we proceeded to talk about the Bills and graham-cracker piecrusts and his ten-year crusade to have a stoplight put in at the intersection of Rand Avenue and Route 118. I happily would have stayed there, talking to him about anything and everything, for God knows how long.

They changed the slogan on those First Avenue wild postings: DEATH BE PROUD. I don’t think it’s anywhere near as clever as the first one they tossed up there. Nearly all the posters had already been defaced by the time I saw them. There was one piece of graffiti that I particularly enjoyed. It had been done by someone who was clearly skilled with a can of spray-paint. It was the grim reaper, with his scythe plunged straight through his own back, impaling him and leaving him dangling in midair. He was stone dead.

Unlike two weeks ago, yesterday was an insanely gorgeous day. Razor-sharp blue sky, as if you were staring at it through polarized lenses. I took this as a good omen, and walked to the doctor’s office from the subway using my finest New York walking technique: ass tight, legs churning, chin up, purposely avoiding eye contact with any people or objects. I can walk ten blocks like that in five minutes, even if you spring a tour bus group on me in the middle of it.

I had a faint trace of anxiety way in the back of my mind as I approached Dr. X’s building. It had been two weeks. He could have been arrested or killed. Or he could have already fled the country for Brazil, taking with him thousands of dollars in cash (all in denominations under fifty dollars, of course). Or maybe those people decrying the cure as a giant hoax were onto something.

And the money. I’m not much of a cash person. I’ve never carried more than a hundred bucks on me at a time. Now I had 350 twenty-dollar bills to deal with (the clerk had no fifties). They wouldn’t fit in my wallet, and I didn’t want to keep them there anyway, since it would have bulged out and looked all too conspicuous. So I wadded the bills up and put them in my messenger bag. But my bag has roughly nine thousand pockets, and I’m the type of person who will put something somewhere and then immediately forget where the hell I put it. So on the subway ride there, I did this thing where I’d feel for the cash, only I’d feel the wrong pocket; then I’d quietly freak out and frisk the bag until I found the bulge. This happened at least three times.

But I was out of the subway now, and the crisp day quickly cleared all those niggling obsessions from my mind. It was nice out, and I was about to stay twenty-nine years old for the rest of my life. Nothing else mattered.

Again, the doorman let me sail right through to the elevator. I jammed the button and stared at the number glowing above the door as it moved progressively downward: eight, seven, six, five . . . still on five . . . still on five . . . still on five . . . Jesus, was someone herding buffalo into the car? It began moving again, finally settling on L.

The door opened, and out stepped an unreasonably attractive woman. My fervent urge to get in the elevator was instantly destroyed. She was nearly six feet tall (I’m six foot six), naturally tanned. California blonde. If she hadn’t been standing before me, I’d have sworn she could only be created with Photoshop. She radiated like some kind of bright-shining beacon, welcoming all to a newly discovered paradise, a gateway to unimaginable happiness.

She saw me, gave a small smile, and said hi in a party girl’s raspy voice. I said hi back. I think I said hi back. I may have simply mouthed it and forgotten to make an audible sound. That’s probably what I did.

She walked right past me. I turned to look. So did the doorman. She was the promise of eternal youth made flesh. A feeling of incredible urgency lit up my system. The kind of instant love you know isn’t the real thing but feels like it all the same. She had an impossible body, athletic and voluptuous all at once. Somehow. Some way. I have no idea. I immediately hoped she was coming from Dr. X’s office. I’ve never wanted to live forever so badly.

She breezed out of the entranceway and turned to walk down the street, out of view. I carefully etched the outline of her body into the most easily accessed part of my brain. That accomplished, I turned to the elevator to get back to business. It had already closed and gone back up. Eight, seven, six, five . . . still on five . . . still on five . . . Christ.

I made it to Dr. X’s door and knocked again. He let me in. His eyes were bloodshot. He beckoned me in and closed the door. I immediately handed him the cash, relieved that I no longer had to be its guardian.

“Oh, excellent,” he said. “Thank you. Would you like a receipt?”

“You give receipts?”

“Oh, sure. I mean, they’re not explicit. They don’t say, ‘Hey, I did something illegal.’ But I’ve had more than my fair share of clients who have employers that would happily cover the cost for this kind of thing.”

Scores was within ten blocks of the building. I immediately put two and two together.

“Before we get started,” I said, “I have a question.”

“Always with the questions. I like that you’re so inquisitive.”

“There was a blonde woman I saw walking out of the building. She was attractive. Highly attractive. Was she here just now, getting the cure?”

“I can’t answer that question. You know that.”

“But she was, right?”

“Again, I can’t answer that.”

He gave me a look that told me she was.

“Can I have her number?”

“What did I just say? Look, do you want these shots or not?”

“Yes, yes! Sorry.”

“Okay. Come on over to the chair.”

He led me over to a chair in the corner of the apartment. It had a lap belt and straps to bind your wrists and ankles. I became alarmed. “What the hell is this?”

“The restraints help keep you in place during the injections,” he said. “If I don’t use them, you wiggle all over the place and the whole thing takes forever.”

“I thought you said these were three simple shots.”

“They are. But I have to inject them deep into your tissue. If you want, I can apply a small amount of local anesthesia to each area. I do it for some of the female patients.”

“So this will hurt?”

“It’s an ageless life, John. Did you really expect it to be painless?”

I relented and got in the chair. He buckled me in, and I quickly had a vision in my mind of him jumping into his closet and coming back out carrying a cattle prod and wearing a gimp mask. Instead, he wheeled a small cart toward the chair and uncovered the tray on top. There were three huge needles. Hell, they weren’t even needles. They looked like railroad spikes. Katy thought you got sixty shots in your armpit. My dad heard a rumor that it was administered via a balloon enema. I would have preferred either option. I handle normal shots just fine. These were elephant shots.

“I do this fast. You’ll feel pressure, and it’ll sting. Badly. Here, hold this.”

He handed me a stress doll, one of those rubber ones with eyes and ears that bulge out if you squeeze it. “I don’t think I—”

“Trust me. You’ll want it.”

I held on. He plunged the needles into me in rapid succession and in increasing order of excruciating pain: first my shoulder (not bad), then my neck (agony), then my thigh (like reverse childbirth). I squeezed the stupid doll until its ears could practically touch opposite sides of the room. It was horrible, but it was over quickly. He bandaged me up, undid the restraints, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

“That it?”

“That’s it,” he said. “We’re all done. Enjoy the rest of your life.”

“Thank you.”

He gripped my shoulder and looked me in the eye.

“No, I mean it. Enjoy it. You still never know how much of it you have left.”

He patted me on the back and escorted me out. I pushed the elevator button. Again it stalled at the fifth floor. I couldn’t have cared less this time. Down to the lobby I went. I stepped out into the flawless morning. I made it a point to find that blonde girl again one day. I now have all the time in the world to do it.

Even if the cure is a complete hoax (and now that I’ve gotten it, that outcome is a virtual certainty), I still recommend you get it. The placebo effect is marvelous. I’m not supposed to feel supercharged from getting it, but I do. And if I find out ten years from now that it was all a lie, that’s still ten years of tricking myself into feeling downright ebullient. I’ll have to get it again after that.

I felt like I could run a marathon when I got out onto the street yesterday. But because I am far too lazy, I instead opted for a leisurely walk back downtown. I also stopped for a donut, because it felt like the right thing to do. As I walked down into the Forties, I could hear the growing sound of a crowd in the distance. After a few more blocks, everything came into relief. I was close to the UN. The pro-cure protesters were standing outside. And if there is a group of people out there even more fanatical than the pro-death supporters, it’s the pro-cure supporters. They looked angry. One woman appeared to be shaking with rage as she walked around with a sign that said, LEGALIZE IT. YOU ARE LETTING US DIE. She paced in front of the building, stomping her feet like a T. rex.

I made a turn to go across to Second Avenue, but police had already put up a barricade. Helicopters flew over the scene. My only way out was back up First. I quickly turned around to get away. A small flock of new protesters was coming my way. One of them jammed a flyer into my hand.

“Don’t take this shit lying down,” he said. On top of the flyer was the headline THE CONSERVATIVE CASE FOR LEGALIZING THE CURE, BY ALLAN ATKINS. I didn’t know you could now get Allan Atkins rants in flyer form. I turned to the crowd in front of the headquarters. Normally, you see protesters demonstrating peacefully, walking in circles and whatnot. But these people were in rows, facing a single direction, pressed as close to the building as the cops would allow them to be. They didn’t look content to simply voice their disapproval. They looked like they wanted in. I got back up into the Fifties and went across town and back down as fast as I could.

Once I was in our apartment, I downed some cheap champagne, ate a cold can of Chunky Soup, and watched a news report about what I had just waded through. Apparently, cops fired rubber bullets into the crowd an hour after I left. I’m pretty sure that’s the first time they’ve done that.

Katy was already drunk by the time I got to the bar. I had to catch up.

“Happy cure day!” she screamed.

“Shh!”

“Okay, okay. I’ll be quiet. But you have to tell me everything. And you owe me some doctor digits. Pony up, kid.”

We retreated to a corner table. I gave her Dr. X’s info. I told her everything: the chair, the needles, the protesters, etc. Even the blonde girl.

“She sounds hot.”

“She was.”

“Well, happy cure day. Cheers.”

“Cheers.”

“Do you realize that you’re now always going to look the way you look at this exact moment? From this day on? This is how you’ll look when you die. Do you realize that? It’s like I’m looking at your corpse!”

“I didn’t think of it that way, no. But thank you.”

“You realize you can never retire now, right?”

“What?”

“You can’t ever retire now. How are you gonna quit your job at sixty-five if you live for another five hundred years? Did you consider that?”

I had, but I’d placed it squarely in the “things I prefer not to think about” pile. “This just gives me more time to figure out what it is I really want to do,” I told her. “I’m not preparing for some sixty-five-year end goal anymore. That rush to save money, or whatever, is all gone now.”

“Ooh! I just thought of something else. Do you realize we could live another five hundred years and the Bills still may not win the Super Bowl?”

“Will you shut up about all the terrible stuff already?”

“Okay, okay. You’re right. No dark stuff. This is your cure day. And in a few weeks we’ll be celebrating mine too. Oh yes we will.”

We staggered home at 6:00 A.M. and I took a shower before going to bed. I washed off the night and emerged from behind the curtain looking relatively fresh. I looked at myself in the mirror: brown hair, round face, sloped shoulders, two gentle smile creases bracketing my mouth. A barely noticeable strawberry mark under my eye. Slight stubble that steadfastly refuses to grow into anything resembling a normal beard. I took a photo of myself. This is how I look now. This is how I’ll look when I die.