Me & Death (3 page)

W
hat a dump. Reminded me of the Edgewater Hotel, down at the foot of Roncy. My ma used to fall asleep in the bar there, and I’d have to walk her home. This place was even worse than the Edge, though – dimmer, shabbier, dustier, staler. And completely colorless. From cobwebbed ceiling to sticky floor, the Jordan Arms and everyone in it were shades of black and white and gray. I felt like I was in an old movie.

A gray couple sitting on a rickety couch with their hands in their laps stared at me. So did the gray guy picking his teeth, leaning against a pillar.

I took a deep breath and let it out. There’s a moment when you accept the logic of your dream and it ceases to be scary.
This is your world, for now. Here are your friends, and enemies. This is your job
. So Jordan Arms was like my life, only uglier.

Fair enough.

I followed Denise to the front desk with my right hand clamped under my armpit to warm it up. The granny behind the desk looked familiar. Maybe because she wore a dark kerchief. I saw a lot of women like her on Roncy. They were usually shaking a cane at me because I was making a noise or a mess. Raf called them all
baba
– his word for granny.

Her name tag read,
Orlanda
.

“This is Jim, from Garden Avenue,” said Denise. “He’s here for the day. He’ll be going back.”

“I know who he is.” Orlanda pulled her sweater around her bony shoulders and split her face in a frown of disapproval. Dentures like tombstones.

She made me sign the register and handed me a plastic day pass.

“Not that you need it,” she said.

I knew what she meant. The hotel may have been black and white, but I was in color – I guess because I wasn’t dead yet. In my dragon shirt and blue jeans, I stood out like a searchlight.

I put the pass in my pocket.

The old couple from the couch tottered over. He didn’t want to come, but she pulled him along. She had a nose like a parrot’s beak. Pretty Polly, only she wasn’t pretty at all. She pointed at my shirt.

“Red,” she said miserably. Like it was the saddest thing in the world that my shirt was red.

“Yeah.”

She smelled like old people – wool and liniment and that gasoline reek that seems to come from the flaps and folds of dead skin.

Her man didn’t have a beard exactly but a few whiskers curled over the bottom half of his chin, hiding its retreat.

He wasn’t sad, like Polly. He was scared. I knew the look. Reminded me of Lloyd. He was sweating with fear, this guy. Made me mad.

“What’s the matter with
you
?” I snapped at him.

He whimpered, turned away.

I stepped toward him. Ugly old badger, I’d punch him in the throat.

Denise leapt between us.

“No,” she said.

“What the –”

She pushed me backward, both hands on my chest like what’s-her-name from
Seinfeld
. Man, she had cold hands! “Don’t be such a jerk, Jim,” she said. “What in heaven’s name do you want to fight a Grave Walker for? What’s the point?”

“He needs a lesson! He …” I stopped. “Grave Walker? What do you mean?”

“He’s a Grave Walker. Like I’m a Mourner. No point in fighting me either. You can’t beat a ghost, Jim.”

“Right! He’s a ghost. You’re not real. You’re a ghost, aren’t you?” I called after the old man. But he and Polly were moving away.

“I showed him,” I said.

“You’ve got a lot of learning to do,” said Denise sadly.

“You ever thought of wearing gloves?”

We went up the wide staircase to the second floor. A threadbare carpet stretched into the distance. Through an archway I saw an ice maker, and a vending machine, and the guy who had been picking his teeth downstairs. He gaped at me, wide-eyed, toothpick hanging from his lower lip, a package of jelly beans in his hand.

I wondered what gray jelly beans would taste like.

Next door down said, GAMES. We went in. The room was teeny – no bigger than my bedroom at home. Inside was a card table and chairs, and a TV with a treadmill in front of it.

Looked like we were the only ones who had been here in a while. Dust coated everything like icing.

Denise told me to get on the treadmill.

“No,” I said.

She didn’t say anything.

“Why should I?” I said. “I don’t want to run on a stupid treadmill. I want to watch TV.”

“You can watch TV while you are on the treadmill,” she said.

I got the remote from on top of the TV, dragged over a chair from the card table, and sat down. “No,” I said firmly.

I wondered what she’d do now. I wasn’t fighting her, exactly. I was just being decisive. Back home, Ma would walk away shaking her head when I acted like this. I didn’t try it often with Cassie because she was so unpredictable. (One time she asked me to save her some Frosted Flakes, but I poured them all into my bowl anyway. She got right up from the table, went to the store, bought another box of cereal, and emptied the whole thing onto my bed, along with the rest of the bag of milk.)

Denise sighed and put her hands on her hips. “Why do you continue behaving like a piece of crap, Jim?”

“Hey!”

“You must be one of the very stupidest people I have ever met. This experience – this visit to the Jordan Arms –
is a one-in-a-million chance, Jim. Don’t throw it away. Pay attention right here, right now. You will see the chains that tie you to Earth while you still have time to free yourself from them. You’re ripping up a winning lottery ticket. That’s how stupid you are. Didn’t Tadeusz explain things to you? He’s worried about you – he says you behave almost as badly as he did at your age.”

“You’re the stupid one,” I said. “You’re the ghost. Not me.”

Denise put her hands up to her head. I had a teacher who did that just before he sent me to the principal’s office.

“I was stupid, all right,” she said. “But I’m not now. I would give anything – anything except the life of my child – to have had your chance today, Jim. To see where I was going wrong while I could still change it. This is a preview of your existence after your die. Do you wish to spend forever here? Forever?”

The gray, the dust, the unbroken circle of quiet pain.

“ ’Course not,” I said. “Who’d want to live in this dump? But I don’t have to. That’s the whole point. I’m here visiting, right? I’m not going to die. I’ll wake up in a hospital. Oh, and by the way – Tadeusz used to be cool, but now that he’d dead he’s acting real lame.”

I pointed the remote at the TV and pushed the power button. The TV came on – in color, which was a relief – but there was something wrong with it. The picture was frozen. I pressed the other buttons. The scene didn’t
change. Looked like part of an old movie, two little kids in an upstairs hall. Grainy film. But –

“Hey!”

I stood up, went closer. “Hey, I know where that is.”

Get this: the movie was of my place. I recognized the upstairs hall. Our wallpaper was cleaner in the movie, and the railing was fixed, but it was home. The girl looked familiar too. The baby looked like any baby. Grubbier than usual, maybe. Shirt, diaper, feet. The girl wore a striped skirt and sandals, looked like she was in kindergarten. She glared at the baby.

“That’s Cassie!” I pointed at the screen. “Isn’t it? And that’s the upstairs at our house. There’s the bathroom at the end, with no door handle. What a yuck. I’m right, aren’t I? That’s my sister.”

“That’s her,” said Denise. “Twelve years ago.”

“She was a freaky-looking little kid, wasn’t she? Who’s the baby?”

Denise’s voice came in a whisper. “That’s you.”

Oh.

CHAPTER 6

T
here aren’t any family pictures in our house. I’d never seen myself as a baby – still haven’t, come to think of it, except this once. I stared at the screen, couldn’t get over it. Me. And do you know what I was doing? Smiling. Me. Smiling like a bastard because I could walk. What a stupid goof. Looking at myself, I felt a lump in my chest, like when you have to burp. I tried working the remote again. None of the buttons did anything. Piece of junk.

“Want to watch the show?” asked Denise from behind me.

I nodded.

“Maybe the TV will work if you get on the treadmill,” she said.

I shot her a look. Her face was blank.

“Yeah, maybe.”

I got on, pressed a button, and found myself walking to keep from falling backward. The movie started slow and uneven. There were pauses. It didn’t look natural at all. It was like I was reading the film, not watching it.

I walked faster, and faster, and finally broke into a run, swinging my arms to keep my balance. The movie picked up too, until it was playing at regular speed.

“How is this happening?” I nodded at the screen. “Where’s the camera?”

“There is no camera,” said Denise. “This is your past. You’re lying in the middle of Roncesvalles Avenue right now, with a subdural hematoma.”

Oh, yeah.

I felt the baby’s feelings as my own. When he staggered forward on the screen, I felt proud of myself. When he fell, I was surprised too. I ran harder, focusing on the screen, as if my effort could help the poor baby, struggling to pick himself up.

“Good!” Denise’s voice came from a long way off.

The TV picture got bigger, clearer, closer. It filled my vision. For a second, it was like I was inside the set, looking back at the dusty games room. Then I found myself in a full-color world – my hall at home. I wasn’t on the treadmill anymore. I floated in the air in front
of the bathroom door, staring down at the baby I used to be.

I was inside the TV picture, a witness to my own past. Weird? Oh, yeah. And kind of awful. You ever wake up in the middle of the night and you’re not sure who you are? It was like that, only worse. I was two people here. And still panting from my exertion on the treadmill.

“Well done, Jim.” Denise floated next to me. She was still in her hospital gown, still black and white and gray.

“Shut … up.” That felt a little better.

If it weren’t for recognizing the hallway and my sister, I’d swear that kid wasn’t me. I couldn’t remember ever hugging Cassie, but here he was with his hands around her waist and a big smile. When she dropped a red-and-yellow plastic ball, he hurried to get it for her. Who was this guy?

Cassie took the ball and pushed him away so that he fell back on his diaper. Still smiling. She got this cunning look on her face.

Jim
, she whispered.
Oh, Jim
…

I felt sick. I knew that look.

The baby smiled when he heard his name.
Gah gah
, he said.

Cassie held the ball up so that the baby could see it and tossed it gently over the railing. Steep wooden stairs on the other side. The ball bounced a couple of times on its way down to the front hall.

Jim
, she said, the way you talk to a dog.
Go get the ball, Jim
.

He grinned, slapping his dirty bare feet on the wooden floor of the hall as he staggered along. He stopped at the top of the staircase.

“No, Jim!” I shouted. “No!”

“He can’t hear you.”

Denise put her hand on my arm. Sympathetic. I shook it off.

Twelve years ago. That’s why there wasn’t any mold on the wallpaper. The hall railing didn’t have a piece missing because it hadn’t been broken yet.

Cassie pointed down the stairs.
Get the ball, Jim
.
Go on
.

“Ma! Where are you?” I shouted.

“She’s out. You know that.”

I sighed.

“You can’t do anything,” said Denise. “You can’t change what’s happened.”

So we watched. Jim couldn’t decide whether to walk down the stairs or go backward on his hands and knees. Cassie decided for him, giving him a hard two-handed push. He landed on the fourth or fifth step, bounced once, and rolled to the bottom of the stairs. Watching, I felt a kind of shadow of what he was feeling. When he landed sideways on the step, my left side hurt. When his foot got caught briefly in the banister, my trick ankle hurt. When he banged into the wall, my head hurt.

Baby Jim lay in a heap on the dusty linoleum. Cassie ran downstairs with a smile like broken glass. She bent low over him.

Now you don’t work, Jim!
she said.
You don’t work, and Mommy will throw you out, like the video when it didn’t work. Then there will only be me
.

She did a dance, swinging her rake-handle body back and forth. Her long dark hair swished around her head.
Only me!
She sang.
Only me
.

I tugged on Denise’s bare arm. “Why does Cassie hate Jim so much?”

She shook her head.

The lump was in my chest again, bigger than ever. “He – I – the baby liked her. He gave her hugs, and she …”

Denise looked even sadder than usual. “Yes, I know.”