Yours, Mine, and Ours (9 page)

“D’you want to hear my top three unusual deaths?”

“Of course I do.”

“Aw, come on, I’ve had a hard day—wait. What?”

“I want to hear about them. And I will bet I can guess at least one of them.” I was thinking in particular of Martin I of Aragon, who literally laughed himself to death; Eleazar Maccabeus, who jabbed a spear into an elephant’s belly and was crushed to death when it died on top of him; David Douglas, who fell into a pit (along with a bull!), then was crushed and gored to death; and Sigurd the Mighty, who beheaded an enemy, strapped the severed head to his saddle, then later died of an infection caught when the dead man’s teeth scraped his leg. (My favorite. Ah, irony, you are a cruel mistress.)

“You really want to hear?” She seemed delighted and suspicious at once.

“I really want to hear.”

Thyme abruptly sat down, as if she were afraid she’d lose her feet if she had not. This was alarming and interesting. “What?”

“I’m sorry. It’s been a long day with a lot of surprises and I just … no one ever wants to hear about them.”

“Cops and FBI agents do not want to hear about unusual deaths?” Odd. Why
wouldn’t
they?

“They always say they can top me and when they can’t, they get mad.” She sighed. “So nobody asks anymore.”

“That’s terrible.” I was moved to rare sympathy. “Some people are just rude.”

“Okay, well, since we’re talking I’d have to say my favorite is prob’ly Dan Andersson—the Swedish writer? He died of cyanide poisoning. The hotel staff forgot to air out his room after spraying hydrogen cyanide for bugs.”

“Yes, that follows.” No mint on the pillow for him. “Though if you want to talk about writers and their odd demises, don’t omit Tennessee Williams.”

“Are you going to listen, or just try to one-up me?” she asked irritably. I noticed her accent thickened in proportion to her mood. “That man was a disaster area … choking on an eyedrop bottle cap was just the coup de grace.”

“Not a big
Streetcar
fan, hmmm?”

“He’d unscrew the top of the bottle, stick it in his mouth, then put his eyedrops in. They think his gag reflex was reduced because of all the booze and pills, so he choked to death on the stupid thing. My gosh, a writer abusing drugs and alcohol—
what
are the odds?”

“So it isn’t just the manner in which they died? We have to discuss personal lives and hobbies, too?”

She threw up her hands. “Oh, come on!” Long gone was the fiery hysteric intent on saving me from the Thyme in the mirror. And the weepy apologizer had also disappeared. “Since when is abusing booze and drugs a hobby? Now listen up: number two on my list. Lucius Fabius Clio. Choked to death on a single hair in his milk.”

“Good one.” Unusual
and
repulsive. “Keep going.”

“Francois Vatel.”

“No.”

“Killed himself when he was unable to provide King Louis XIV with enough seafood to serve his guests.”

“
No
. That was never proven.”

“There are firsthand accounts! People who
saw
what happened.”

“Yes, and as agents tirelessly fighting crime we have never come across an unreliable witness.”

“It
happened
. You—”

“If your list is part myth and part fact, we should just—”

“Sorry to break up the hugely geeky argument, you huge geeks, but I’ve had enough of you two for one day.” George was checking his phone and grabbing for his suit jacket. “Later, bitches.”

Meanwhile, Thyme had not backed off so much as one inch. “There were several sources for— You know what? You want to get some dinner and talk about it?”

“I would. Now, if you want to talk about
factual
unusual deaths, I could mention Jim Creighton.”

“Ruptured his bladder swinging too hard at a baseball. Sure, but then you’ve gotta think about Tycho Brahe, who had to hold it so long—because it would have been really bad manners to leave the party and pee—
his
bladder ruptured.”

“Another myth!” I took Cadence’s suit jacket off the back of my chair (why she thought she could pull off a butterscotch-colored pantsuit I did not know) and shrugged into it. “Are these unusual deaths or unusual myths?”

“How are you not getting that these deaths have been corroborated?”

“So has everything in the
National Enquirer
, and they are constantly incorrect. They are famous for it. If you were to suggest Humayun, however, I would agree his death was unusual
and
factual.”

Thyme grabbed her enormous purse and trotted after me. “Oh, what bullshit! He died in a stairwell, Shiro, a
stairwell
! He heard the call to prayer, and since it was his habit to kneel when he heard it, he fell down the stairs. How is a lonely, slightly hilarious death in a stairwell more unusual than someone dying because they never got to pee?”

“All right, do not get shrill. Jeff Dailey?”

“Nuh-uh. Teenagers die all the time—look at our June Boys Jobs! Dailey died playing video games, which is more lame than unusual.”

“Nineteen-year-olds do not drop dead of a heart attack after marathon video-game sessions,” I protested. “They drink enormous quantities of Red Bull and ingest copious amounts of saturated fat and then try to have sex. How can you— All right. All right.” I tried to calm myself. This was a fascinating conversation. This was a wonderful conversation! “You cannot question Basil Brown’s fitness for your list.”

“Drank himself to death with orange juice.”

“Carrot juice,” I corrected.

“Wanna bet?”

“Yes. Bring much cash.”

She did. And I won some of it. Then she won some of it back.

I could not remember the last time I had enjoyed an evening more, though I would not deny Agent Thyme brought out an enormous competitive streak in me. By evening’s end, I was laughing almost as often as I was restraining the impulse to boot her in the ankle. It made me wonder: Is this how normal people get to feel, all the time?

chapter twenty-five

I opened my
eyes and was thrilled to find myself in my apartment, in Shiro’s gray kimono pajamas, in my very own bed.
This bed is juuuuust right!

It was dark out and I looked at my bedside clock: 2:37
A.M.

It felt like a gift. And an even bigger gift as I carefully glanced around. No strangers in here with me. Nothing appeared to be trashed and/or set on fire. I wasn’t in a holding cell. I wasn’t bleeding. I wasn’t even hungry, though the last meal I could remember was a hastily bolted breakfast sixteen hours ago.

No, not hungry at all … pretty full, in fact.

I got out of bed, stepped into my sock monkey slippers, and went into the kitchen. Shiro had left files, extensive notes, and a memo addressed to me (and CC’d to Michaela, George, and Emma Jan Thyme) on the table.

I went to my bathroom and looked in the mirror. The skin around my left eye was slightly swollen. And I’d bet my yearly therapy bill that the explanation was sitting on my kitchen table. I always got all the gory details of Shiro’s assault shenanigans; if I occasionally woke up with a black eye or a cast, she at least kept me in the loop. Puffy skin around one eye hardly rated as an injury.

Ah, the old saying: a day without a trip to the ER is a day without sunshine. Ha!

Okay.

Okay, then. Shiro had been driving our body for several hours. It could have been so much worse. (It
had
been so much worse.)

Curious, I checked the fridge. I usually did that when I knew I should be hungry but was really, really full instead. There was a sizable doggy bag on the first shelf. The Oceanaire Seafood Room. Only the best place in the Twin Cities to get fresh seafood. Jeepers Louise, we couldn’t afford that on our salary! Ah … but I knew who could.

Shiro had sure been busy, which I expected. But what was this? Everything was expected, except the trip to a wonderful expensive restaurant. She must have gone with someone; she’d never go alone. In fact, most of her meals were at sushi bars or bolted over our kitchen sink.

Okay! Shiro had kept my date with Patrick. I would rather have gone myself, but if I couldn’t, I hoped Shiro had had a good time driving my body. Sometimes I hated having to share it. But sometimes, I was glad when another piece of me could have a little nondestructive fun.

Bemused, I went back to bed.

chapter twenty-six

In the morning
I sat down in a Perkins to have breakfast with my best friend, Cathie Flannery. She’d gotten there first, which was unusual. What she was doing wasn’t.

“Agh, what are you doing? Stop it.” I flopped down into the bench across from her. “Leave that stuff alone.”

“Back off, triple threat.” Cathie suffered from OCD, among other things. In the five minutes or so before I’d arrived, she had alphabetized everything on the table, then laid it all in a straight line (still alphabetized, remember). F is for fork. S is for salt; it’s also for Splenda, which was right next to it. And, at the end of the line, W is for water glass.

“Give me that. I was thirsty all the way over.” I liberated the water glass from the line of OCD tyranny and gulped noisily. Shiro must have had a lot of plum wine last night—I’d woken up wanting to drink the world.

My friend had bright red hair and freckles (not a huge shock for someone named Flannery), was teeny—she barely came up to my chin—and whip slender. And she had the vitality of a dozen people. This is a terrible thing to say about a best friend, but I sometimes found hanging around with her to be exhausting. I’m not even going to say how Shiro felt about it.

We’d met, years ago, at the MIMH (Minneapolis Institute of Mental Health). She was there because she was a disturbingly enthusiastic cutter. Her folks thought it was a suicide attempt. Unfortunately, they were old school: ignore anything that could lead to years of therapy. Don’t talk about it. And get rid of the problem. And deny, deny, deny.

So they’d institutionalized her. And when we got to talking after a T-group session, we found we were really interested in what the other went through. She was amazed that I lived at MIMH. And more so when I told her I’d been conceived there, too. And I was amazed that “normal” parents could do that to their own child.

Anyway, we’d liked each other straightaway. Neither of us was in any position to judge the other, so the only other options were to ignore each other, be friends, or be enemies. We liked the middle choice, and went with it.

Now, years later, I was dating her brother and she was the only family I could remember. Given what my mom did to my dad

(look out look out look out look out PLEASE DADDY LOOK OUT)

that was a sizable blessing.

I greeted the waitress, who looked at the odd table arrangement but had no comment (one of the many reasons we liked it here) and ordered the usual: pancakes with extra butter and extra syrup.

“Vomit vomit vomit,” Cathie commented.

“Do I critique your meals?”

“All the time. So, hey. Listen.” She rested her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands. “Why’d you stand my brother up?”

That was a strange question, and it must have shown on my face because she added, “I don’t mean just you. I meant all of you. None of you showed up.”

“Wait. Patrick wasn’t with my body last night?”

“It really skeeves me out when you put it that way.” She shuddered. “And no. He called last night to see if you were at my place, but no soap.”

“Oh, fudge nuts! Gah, I can’t believe it!” I ran my hands through my hair. “Oh, boy, that’s—wait. Shiro went out to dinner. I assumed with him. But then who was she hanging around with all night?”

“What, like
I
know?” She pulled out some of the Handi Wipes she always had in her purse, picked up the salt shaker, and thoroughly wiped it down. Then the pepper shaker. “Did you have to go nab a serial killer or something?”

“I wish.” Oh boy, that would have been soooo great. “Huh. That’s … okay, but there was a doggy bag. I doubt they’d hand those out at a crime scene.” (And gross! Imagine if they did.)

“Those poor kids. How many murders have—you know what? Don’t even tell me; it’ll wreck my whole morning. And isn’t that weird? All those dead boys scattered like dice all over the country … How has it been kept out of the national news?”

“I have no idea. That’s Michaela’s job.” And she was really, really good at it. It helped that nearly every reporter she ever met was terrified of her. “Mine is to catch that rotten fish-smelling bum.”

“When?
When
are you going to learn how to swear properly?”