Dying for a Living (A Jesse Sullivan Novel) (2 page)

Good thing he wasn’t into dresses or the poor secretary would’ve had more than a downtown view through the clear floor suspended above her desk. His desk, bookcase with reference materials, and the window behind him were all transparent too. I gave Ally a weary look. She got it.

“We need your blood type,” she said, almost as soon as Reynolds put his briefcase on his desk.

“O-positive, why?”

“This is a lot of glass.” I leaned over the metal rail encircling the loft area to see the secretary’s desk and floor just below. I know people dig the sleek, modern look, but all I saw was an accident waiting to happen. “We might have a problem if you cut yourself on any of this.”

Reynolds was confused. “The doctor told me any type of death was replaceable.”

I was certain no one told him that because I can only do so much for a body. Most of my clients still require post-replacement medical care. Point-blank gunshot wounds to the head, for example, are unlikely replaceable. What did he expect me to do? Pick up his brain chunks and restuff his skull?

Ally sat her purse in one of the four bright red chairs, the only splash of color in the whole place apart from the light and a hanging fern with its greedy outstretched tendrils.

“Jesse can keep you from dying, but she can’t heal your body. If you get hurt on any of this glass, you’ll need blood.”

I surveyed the titles on his bookcase and found not an ounce of pleasure reading, a real bore, this guy. Ally pulled a survey packet and clipboard from her bag, before fishing for a pen. Then she extended the ballpoint with a click, and settled into the chair.

“While you set up, I wonder if I can ask you a few questions about your replacement experience?” Ally asked.

Unraveling his laptop cord, Reynolds paused in his unpacking. “She hasn’t done anything.”

“No, not yet,” Ally replied, flashing her work with me grin. “You’ll receive your post-replacement survey in the mail in a week or two. Hopefully, you’ll fill it out and return it in the postage-paid envelope. These questions don’t pertain to the death-replacement itself, but rather the enrollment process.”

Reynolds bent down and plugged the cord into the surge protector under his desk. “All right then, Ms. Gallagher, if it makes your job easier.”

She tucked her hair behind her ears and tried to look sweet. “It does, thank you.”

Ally might be a lesbian, but she knew how to charm. I rolled my eyes. These two were making me nauseous. She readied her pen and read the first question aloud. “Did you intentionally plan your death-screening or did your physician recommend it?”

He settled into his seat and turned on the computer. “I went to get my blood-pressure checked and the doctor recommended it. He explained my insurance rates would lower if I pre-screened.”

“How much time passed between the physician’s referral and your meeting with the A.M.P.?”

“Amp?”

“Analyst of Necro-Magnetic Phenomenon.”

“The psychic,” he said, his eyes lighting with recognition. “I met her two days later.”

“Psychic is another derogatory term, Mr. Reynolds,” I said. Not to mention an inaccurate way to describe these ex-military, medically-altered analysts. My favorite A.M.P. was Gloria. She hated the term psychic and you’ve got to defend your friends when they aren’t around to defend themselves. “We talked about derogatory terms, didn’t we?”

The public wasn’t supposed to think of them as psychics anyway. Somehow that dirty little secret leaked to the public. PR pushed A.M.P.s as nothing more than gifted statisticians, brainiacs who could take all the factors of a person’s life and guess when they’d die within a twenty-four hour window, up to one year in advance. Use the word “psychic”, or “guess” for that matter, and no one would have invested in the replacement industry because the modern mind only believes in science and money. Of course Lane, my sometimes beau, argued that telling people AMPs were guinea pig soldiers tortured into becoming drug-dependent psychics, wouldn’t incite much faith either. He had a point.

The Death-Management Industry, including the whole screening through replacement process, had a 95 percent success rate. That’s almost as good as birth control. No one wanted to be surprised by death and now they didn’t have to be. People liked the security. The federal government liked the fact that every aspect of the process was taxable. Hello, revenue. And the military liked that they were putting a positive spin on their greatest screw-up this decade.

Mainstreaming the Death-Management Industry created jobs, fattened pockets and basically pulled all our heads above the waters of a recession. Hell, even China and Japan have launched their own Death-Management Industries in the last few months. Death-screening commercials now outnumbered breast-cancer commercials two to one. However, not everyone accepted the industry.

The Church launched their anti-Death Management campaign not long after the industry was established. But it wasn’t until lately, when the conservative party took office, that their power was really felt. Less people were screening. Those fat pockets were thinning. I was looking at the possibility of unemployment in a year or two. Frankly, I was okay with that—but for other reasons.

“Your A.M.P.’s name and how long it took for her to complete your evaluation?” Ally asked.

“Cooper something. Gildroy, Godfrey, or…,” he said. His eyes glanced down, unfocused. “I only remember the doctor called early the following week and asked me to come back in to discuss my options.”

Cooper Gooding. We only had one death-replacement agent named Cooper in Nashville.

“How did you feel when you first learned the news?”

He leaned back in his chair, running his thick hands through his hair. “You mean, when the doctor informed me some psychic—sorry, A.M.P.—said I was going to die? I didn’t believe it at first. It’s not the conversation one professional has with another.”

Ally kept scrawling on the page, nodding. “When the doctor informed you of the analyst’s results, did he make your options clear?”

He scratched his chin. “Either I took my chances and hoped the day passed without incident or I took precautions. I’d say my choice was pretty clear.”

“Was it a difficult decision?” Ally asked, looking up from the page.

“Not really,” he answered. “I get the money back if nothing happens. If it does, I’d say my life is worth more than a mere $50,000.”

“That’s right,” Ally said. I’d also have to return the $50,000 fee if I screwed up and he died. I could die myself and still wouldn’t even get to keep my 20% cut. Since he’d be dead, I guess that didn’t matter to him.

She reached the last question. “Would you recommend death-replacement to a family member or friend?”

“Ask me that one at the end of the day,” he replied. “Once I see what happens.”

Ally was packing up but I had one more question. “What do you do here?” I swept the grandeur of his office with my eyes.

“I’m a marketing and media consultant,” he said. “We do advertising for local businesses, night clubs, and popular consumer products.”

I bet he was one of our very own PR guys. Otherwise, I wasn’t quite sure why Brinkley put his file in my bin. Not that Brinkley would tell me if I asked. Boss Brinkley only showed interest in telling me what to do.

When the secretary went home at 5:00 P.M., I decided to play in her desk to ward off sleepiness. I’d been working seventeen hours straight. In addition to an impressive array of writing utensils, the secretary’s desk had several pictures of her kids and a coffee cup that said, “Procrastinate and you tempt fate!” A real go-getter this one. I played with her label maker, placing labels that read “Zombie touched this. Eek!” on everything: her chair, her cup, her computer. I spared the kids’ pictures.

I was about to turn on the internet when the computer popped then fizzled out. Was that smoke? Shit. I put my head on the desk. It was not the first time this week, month even, that I’d had something short out on me. It was like I short-circuited electronics by my touch alone.

It was a brand new problem that I could do without.

I didn’t even have time to come up with an excuse for exploding the secretary’s computer when a familiar sinking sensation washed over me. My grip tightened on the edge of the desk.

“Ally,” I said, calling her name as loud as I could manage with a tightening throat and nausea. I wanted her to know it was almost time. I looked up through the floor to see Mr. Reynolds freeze mid-motion. Ally spoke to him, but too softly for me to hear.

My vision blurred in and out of focus, making it difficult to see exactly what he was doing as the fading light in the room intensified. It’s like being really, really drunk except I’ve got all my wits about me. This disorientation was normal—bizarre but normal—, unlike this new failing electronics problem.

I recognized Reynolds’s movements as hesitation. Clients often freeze up when I start to react. No one wants to die. To the clients, in this moment just before it happens, it seems as if any movement could be the wrong one. He stared at me through the glass floor.

Sensing death was like a panic attack. I tried to breathe against the pressure in my chest. Nothing was actually wrong with me, except that I knew what was coming, or at least some part of me knew, and that part of me panicked. My limbs flooded with adrenaline and were ready for anything. Here in this bright office, it seemed unlikely I was going to get hit by a bus, stabbed, or suffer any bodily harm, right?

Wrong.

I closed my eyes and tried to quell this sick feeling. Before I opened them again, something heavy came crashing right through the desk, knocking me backwards out of the chair. I hit the back of my head on the window-wall with a thump and my ears rang on impact. Splintered glass from the crushed secretary’s desk sprayed like water into my face. I tried to shield myself with my hand and swore like crazy.

“Who designs this shit!” I pulled a large shard out of my left forearm. It had gone straight through the skin. Blood spurted out of the wound and my jeans were ruined. Again.

Ally came down the stairs as fast as she could without falling herself. She only took the steps one at a time, carefully holding onto the rail. Good girl. I wasn’t equipped to deal with two people dying at once. Death-replacement is a one-on-one exchange.

“Mr. Reynolds?” It took me a moment to realize it was his body that had fallen on top of me, lying now in the mess of the secretary’s shattered desk. I kicked a chunk of desk off of me and I pulled myself out from under him, dragging my burning arm through broken glass.

“Mr. Reynolds, can you hear me?” I checked his pulse and it was faint, slowing.

I opened his suit jacket and pressed my hands to his chest for a pulse as Ally’s voice echoed through the room. She gave the address and situation to the emergency operators on the phone. The tiny glass shards in my arms and legs burned like hell as they worked their way in deeper into my skin. I saved the freaking out until after she hung up.

“What the hell did you say to him? We don’t do suicides.” I was talking too fast. OK, so having a body drop on me unexpectedly had caught me off guard. At least I couldn’t be blamed for the broken computer now. “And what the hell is it with fat men falling on me? That’s two this week! I’m like one hundred and twenty pounds, assholes.”

It became a race to see who could speak the fastest with the widest eyes.

“I didn’t make him jump, thank you. I told him when you get pale like this it means it’s about to happen. So instead of paying attention to his own two feet, he watched you. He tripped on the laptop cord and rolled right over that damn rail.” She pointed up, looking freaked too.

“You have to stop telling them they’re about to die,” I said. I leaned close to his ear and practically shouted, “And you have to get wooden desks.”

As if reacting to the thunder of my own voice, my vision gave over completely, switching from dizzying spottiness to full-blown waves of color.

“Finally,” I said, relieved. “Do you see it?”

“You ask me this every time,” Ally said. “The answer is still no.”

The room was a shifting aurora borealis of heat and light and a comfort to see. Even weird shit can be comforting, when you expect it.

“Everything is light,” I explained for the millionth time because I really wished she could just see it for herself. “Nothing is solid. It’s kind of like those thermal readings.”

“Jesse, he isn’t looking so good.”

I focused on the man still partially in my lap. He was no longer a warm red-orange tinged with yellow like Ally. He was green now, edging his way into the dormant blue-gray I saw in so many other things like the floor, the desk, and walls. It was my job to keep the blue from overtaking him.

I can’t explain what I do exactly.

Death is the transformation of energy. I admit I’m guessing here. I did know that when someone was about to die, a tiny black hole was created inside them. Like a black hole in space, it looked like an empty swirling vortex. This vortex was what sucked all the warm, living colors out of a person, leaving nothing behind that could survive.

My job as a replacement agent was to convince the fleeting red of Mr. Reynolds, so ready to burn up its little flame and become a dormant blue that it really didn’t want to go into that swirling vortex drain after all. Somehow I did this by willing it.