The Queen of the Dead (43 page)

“Whoa, man, it’s okay, it’s okay! I got this!”

“Can you do it without interrogating me like some nosy old biddy? Can you keep fucking quiet?”

“Hey, what’s with the language? I’m just making conversation!”

“Just get me to the airport! I’m running late as it is!”

“Jeez, mister, I said okay!”

The light changes and we roll. I’m embarrassed for letting the f-bomb slip. Professional class people don’t do that in front of their lessers. My problem as an old-fashioned working stiff is that, as much as most people annoy me, I don’t think of them as my lessers.

I take some satisfaction that the cabbie is keeping quiet, which, in turn, has eased his coughing. Still, I keep the handkerchief pressed to my face until he pulls up to the white zone at the airport. He pops the trunk and I step out into the blessedly germ-free air to grab my luggage.

I don’t know what the tip scale is for cab drivers. I can barely afford to pay him, let alone tip. I give him 15 percent. It’s more than this Chatty Cathy by way of Typhoid Mary deserves. Maybe I’ll get more than I deserve.

“We good?” I ask the driver before I walk away.

“Look, good luck,” he says. “I know you must be nervous.”

“Yeah. Try and get well.”

I’d like to think that’s the end of it but I’m running a gauntlet of sneezing, coughing people all the way to the fat lady at the ticket counter. She got a red Hitler mustache of raw skin under her nose from wiping at it with her third wad of tissue.

I wish I had some tongs or latex gloves with which to take my boarding pass. For God’s sake, I can’t afford to get sick, not for the best chance for gainful employment I’ve had in years! It’s probably a matter of time, though. Turning away from the counter every other person I see is suffering from some degree of the “Mayday Malaise.”

That’s how the logo reads behind cable news queen Stefani Dunham on TVs all over the airport. “Now this is a different kind of cold bug,” she says. “Aside from the fact that one out of three people come down with it, you can actually sort of function through it! Of course, some are saying it’s because Americans with jobs are afraid to miss work for any reason, given the economic situation.” Our head cheerleader-cum-broadcast journalist makes a face to let us know what she thinks of some people.

“Whatever the case, doctors say it’s an aerosol virus, which means it’s all up in your air!” The shot cuts to a gray-haired eminence mumbling authoritatively in a plush office. Back to Stefani: “And we’re not immune here!” She coughs theatrically into a handkerchief. “All this and a runny nose! A big shout-out to my make-up people here in the News Center for keeping me presentable! Hey, we carry on, what can you do?”

With my Irish luck, that’s the strain I won’t be getting. Claire struggled to make it to the bathroom and that poor dumb cabbie I rode in with was barely functional. I call my contact at the company in Kansas City. Giselle finally picks up. “Mr. Grace! To what do we owe the honor? Aren’t you still in Colorado Springs? You’re at the airport, right?”

“Yeah, I’m right here at the gate. I just wanted to make sure the interview was still on.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“That cold that’s going around. Everybody’s sick!”

Giselle laughs. “Oh, that! We’ve had a few people call in, but that’s not enough to stop us. You’re not sick, are you?”

“Oh, no, no! I’m fine! I was…concerned.”

“Well, give me a call when you make it to KC. Hopefully you can get here before Rob leaves for the golf course. You play golf?”

“It’s been a while,” I lie. “If nothing else, I’d make him look good.” I despise golf and the kind of people who play it. But this is the world I’m trying to bluff my way into. From out of the slave market and into the world of the Professionally Overpaid.

“Sounds to me like you’ll all get along. Again, give me a call when you land.”

“Will do. Thanks, Giselle.”

“Don’t get sick!”

Right. If my wife didn’t give it to me, if the cab driver didn’t give it to me, if the lady at the counter didn’t give it to me, if half the people at the airport didn’t give it to me—now I’m ducking into a narrow aluminum tube, settling in to breathe recycled air people have been coughing and sneezing into since last week.

We’re getting fresh germs all the time, too. Barely half the seats on the plane are filled but half of those people are sick. The flight attendants sit at their seats along the fore and aft bulkheads and scowl at us over their surgical masks.

If I can just stay well for 24 more hours. Twenty-four hours. Lord, that’s all I ask.

It’s a mercifully short flight. Eventually, I find myself in another TB ward of an airport, squinting through clouds of aerosolized phlegm to get to my luggage. I call Giselle. “Welcome to KC!” she says. “You know how to find us, right?” she says.

“Oh yeah. See you soon!”

At the rental car kiosk I check my pockets for the directions I’d printed from the Internet. “Uh, hey,” I ask the guy behind the counter. “Can I get some directions printed up here? I left mine at home.”

“What do you need those for?”

“To find my way to my job interview.”

He’s looking at me vaguely horrified, like I just pissed myself.

“Your vehicle has GPS.”

“Oh.”

“Man, really?”

Walking out to my vehicle, I have to work the keychain remote several times just to be sure this magnificent black luxury SUV is really mine. The new car smell is intoxicating. Nothing is slammed; the rear hatch closes with the touch of a button. I walk around to climb into the cab. Can’t slam this door, either. It’s like burping a Tupperware lid.

I turn the key and the air conditioning blows on full. The radio plays symphonic music in full-immersive surround sound and none of this seems a strain on anything. I turn down the music and give myself a minute to familiarize myself with the GPS. Not that I need a whole minute. It works on voice command.

The traffic is light on the way into downtown, allowing me to work on my breathing and concentration. I screwed up in my first call to Giselle. The rental car clerk’s attitude towards me was also telling. Going all the way back to the cab driver, if he spoke with such annoying familiarity to me it’s because I didn’t give him the proper nonverbal cues telling him not to.

I can’t afford to be friendly. I can’t show surprise every time I come across some delightful, if appallingly expensive toy the Courtesan Class takes for granted like hot and cold running water. If it’s apparent to anyone at the company that I’m Not of Their Tribe—say, someone who’s been driving the same car for ten years, doesn’t own a smartphone, etc.—they’ll throw me right back into the stagnant, dying pond I come from. One does not get a seat at the Kool Kids table out of kindness, or even ability. It’s because you’re already a Kool Kid and that seat has belonged to you since before you were born.

With that in mind I step out of the elevator and stroll across the sumptuous lobby like I own it. I’ve never met Giselle but I know her on sight: a meticulously groomed McMansionland beauty working the Hot Librarian look in her horn-rimmed glasses and a navy blue power suit worth two or more of my mortgage payments.

She blesses me with a cinematically white, straight-toothed smile: “Thank God, something’s going right today!”

“That’s what I’m here for,” I say, dry as a bossman’s martini.

“First, I need to apologize. I thought Rob was going to be here today, but—guess what!”

I raise an eyebrow: this had better be good.

“In the four hours since we spoke this morning we’ve had people going home right and left. Rob sometimes doesn’t get here until ten so I imagined he’d at least be here to welcome you to the city. He ended up calling in.”

“Given how I left my wife this morning, I can tell you, if you’re sick, you’re really sick. And I know what I saw in both airports on my way here.”

“Yes, sir, and I do apologize! I honestly didn’t see this coming! We’ve got so many people here working through their sniffles just fine. Anyway, it seems there may be some…consequence to this.”

“Yes?”

“Assuming Rob’s among the group of the Really Sick we’ll have to postpone the interview.”

“How long are you willing to put me up here?”

“How long are you willing to stay?”

“I came to talk to Rob. If it’s not too much of a problem, I’ll wait.”

“Even with your wife sick back home?”

“My teenage children can take care of her.”

Giselle puts an envelope on the counter. “There’s a voucher in there for a really good steakhouse in the Power and Light District. Should be enough in there for breakfast and lunch tomorrow at any number of places close to your hotel. Call me in the morning before checkout. Either I’ll have another envelope or a plane ticket.”

I smile tightly as I slip the envelope into my inside jacket pocket.

“I hope you don’t mind eating out so much!”

“Not at all. Thanks, Giselle.”

“Okay. We’ll talk to you tomorrow, then.”

“You bet.” I turn and walk out of the lobby. I manage to make it inside the blessedly empty elevator car before letting out a sigh of relief to blow the doors in. 

2.

I really don’t want to call. After weeks, months, years of the same old drag, day after day, I’m finally back among the living. I’m not losing my mind sitting at my laptop in my tiny basement office, my wife twiddling away at her computer just outside the door. Things are happening!

Still, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. So, after the most pretentious breakfast I’ve suffered in my entire life—a runny spinach omelet from some foo-foo yuppie bistro I wouldn’t go anywhere near if the meal wasn’t free with this voucher—I finally reach my son Jack by phone. It turns out Claire’s been bedridden since I left yesterday. She appears to be resting, though.

There’s talk of closing the schools until this blows over. He’s staying home today, regardless: “We did nothing yesterday, Dad. Nothing. It was a total waste.”

“Same here,” I say. “What can I tell you? Just look in on your Mom from time to time. Try not to get sick.”

“Dad, come on! If we were going to get sick don’t you think we would have by now? I took a regular snot-shower from all the people sneezing and coughing yesterday! I’m not going back until this crap’s over with!” He pauses. “Sorry, Dad. It just…I don’t even wanna think about it. It’s weird.”

“To say the least. What’s Sibyl up to?”

“She’s going into work today. Thanks for reminding me. I need to tell her to pick up some stuff on the way home.”

I tell him to do what he has to do, keep me posted, etc., and hang up. The bistro is within walking distance of the company. After settling up I top off the parking meter and stroll down the avenue to see Giselle. There are people out and about, but it’s not nearly as busy as it should be for the heart of downtown Kansas City.

“You’re lucky you’ve got your kids to take care of your wife,” Giselle tells me. “I’m all my mother has, and I have to come into work.”

“I’d be home too if I could help it,” I say. “So how’s Rob doing?”

“I don’t think he has the bad kind. You don’t feel like talking on the phone if you’re really sick. He’s sure he’ll have it kicked by Friday. In the meantime, he says enjoy the city on us. How are you liking it so far?”

“I’m ready to start looking at houses.”

“Great!  I’ve got some fliers and business cards for some realtors if you want to take the time to do that. “

I do. Hell, I’ve got today and tomorrow to fill until Friday—assuming Rob really does get better by then.

Meanwhile, note to self: Don’t get sick. Wouldn’t it my luck that Rob gets better, then I’m the one too sick to interview tomorrow?

Screw it. No matter how badly I feel this interview is going to happen.

Meanwhile, I notice there are very few people out. At least they seem more or less okay. Maybe Jack was right—if we’re not sick by now, we never will be.

In the evening I return to the steakhouse in the Power and Light District. There’s so few people there the manager comes out and talks to the customers. He hands out coupons for free desserts the sick people back home can use when they get better. Based on the conversations I’m overhearing, most people are here because it’s a break from listening to their significant others coughing and sniffling, and not being able to do a damn thing about it.

Looking at the couples scattered about the restaurant I think of the old joke: they’re married, but not to each other. I’m not judging. After the last four years of waking to the terror of the same day it’s not just a new city I want. Hell, I’ll save the company a bunch of money and they can just keep me here. I’ll find a house and buy my furniture a piece at a time, paycheck by paycheck. Sibyl’s eighteen; Jack will likely move out here with me, so I won’t have to sweat child support.

It’s not that I hate Claire or that I’m going middle-age stupid for young pussy or anything like that. Our you-and-me-against-the-world groove has run its course. That’s all. After bumping past each other in the house nearly every day for nearly four years, we’re done. After 22 years I expect she’ll be grateful to see me gone, too. She just doesn’t know it yet.