Me & Death (4 page)

Cassie kept dancing. It was hard to watch.

“Why don’t I remember this?” I said. “Am I too young?”

Denise and I floated downward. Dust motes jumped and swirled below us, golden in the late-afternoon light.

“You do remember, Jim,” she said. “That’s why we’re here. If you didn’t remember it, it couldn’t haunt you.”

She pointed to the baby, crying feebly. “See, you’re awake.”

I heard a bumping sound at the front door. A key fumbling in the lock. Cassie heard it too. She broke off her dance and ran upstairs. When she reached me and Denise, she stopped for a moment. We blocked her path, floating side by side, a little above floor level. Her bright blue eyes were full of fear.

“She can’t see us,” said Denise.

It seemed like she was aware of us, though. She raced past me with her head down.

Ma half stumbled through the door, looking way younger than she does now. Scary to think what twelve years can do.

Sorry I’m late!
she called.
I only stepped out for a moment, but this man kept buying me drinks
.

The closer she came, the smaller and farther away she got. Baby Jim was falling asleep. The scene got smaller and dimmer, and then I was back on the treadmill in the games room of the Jordan Arms, staring at a blank TV screen, and panting like I’d just run a marathon.

CHAPTER 7

W
aking from a nightmare is a relief. But this was like waking from one dream into another. I was still a long way from my bed at home. My legs shook. I got off the treadmill like an old man climbing out of a roller coaster. I made it to a chair and sat down. I couldn’t get the images out of my head: the baby with the toothless smile, and the sister who hated him, and the mother who wasn’t there.

“How do you feel, Jim?” asked Denise.

“I don’t know.”

“You must feel wretched. I know I would. There was so much sadness in that brief scene. So much that you lost.”

“Are you talking about my ankle?” I said.

“No.”

“ ’Cause I’ve had a bad ankle as long as I can remember. I didn’t know I twisted it falling down those stairs. My ankle turned over when I was crossing Roncy just now. That’s why I fell.”

She sighed deeply.

“You lost more than your ankle on the stairs, Jim.”

I thought back to what Tadeusz had told me.
You’ll see people you need to treat better
, he said. Who was he talking about? Cassie? Ma? I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand at all.

Denise suggested we go across the hall and get a drink. I said sure. I didn’t want to look at any more TV just now.

The vending machines crouched side by side like football linemen. I wanted a Coke and a chocolate bar, but the only drink in the soft-drink machine was ginger ale, and the candy machine was out of everything except Junior Mints.

Denise got a coffee for herself and showed me how to swipe my day pass to get my snack.

She took a sip and sighed. “Coffee’s always too cold here,” she said.

I wondered why a ghost would want coffee at all, whatever the temperature.

One of the fluorescent lights was off – it flickered and buzzed overhead. Irritating. We went back into the hall. I ate a mint. It was chocolate-coated, and I’d eat dog food if it was chocolate-coated – but it tasted pretty bad.

Man, this hotel sucked!

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

“Fourteen years.”

As long as I’d been alive.

There was a battered couch by the wall. We sat down on it, releasing plumes of dust into the air. Denise talked about how she died, after giving birth to her first child. Pretty dramatic story. Last-minute cab to the hospital. Fainting. Mess and doctors everywhere. Shouting husband. Pain. More pain. A tiny, coughing baby. Weakness. Cold. And then oceans of blood.

Yeck.

“I held my son as I died,” she said. “It was so sad. I was filled with such regret at all the things I wouldn’t see.”

She sniffed a little. I took a sip of ginger ale.

“What kind of things?” I said.

“Everything! I’d miss him teething and crying and going off to kindergarten, and picking me a bouquet of dandelions, and learning how to tell time. I’d miss him scraping his knee and falling in love, and going off to soccer practice, and graduating. All sorts of things.”

She sighed.

“You sure your baby was a boy?” I asked.

She glared at me. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing. Just a joke.”

“I don’t joke,” she said.

I took a sip of ginger ale.

“I’ve never spoken to him,” she said. “Never told him I love him. Do you think he knows, Jim? Does he realize that his mother loves him more than anything else in the world?”

She had been pretty tough down on the street, calling me a piece of crap. Now fat tears rolled down her face like trucks down a rainy highway.

“I don’t know,” I said.

I’ve never seen my dad. Never spoken to him. I’ve asked Ma about him a few times, and she says different things. Sometimes she’s poetic, sometimes forgetful. Once, she said he was like a sunset – red and fiery and headed for the horizon. Another time she told me he got real sick after I was born and had to go away. I asked her
what was the matter with him. With who? she said. Dad, I said. What about him? she said. I want to know what was wrong with him, I said. You want a list? she said. I told her it was okay, and that I was going to bed.

Does he love me? I’m going to say:
No
.

Denise was on her feet. “I can’t take it anymore. It’s been hours. I’ve got to see him,” she wailed. “I’ve got to see my boy right now.”

She dropped her empty Styrofoam cup and hurried down the hall. I followed.

“What happens to me?” I asked. We were at the top of the wide staircase leading down to the lobby.

“Don’t move, Jim. A Grave Walker will come for you,” she said.

“A what?”

But she didn’t answer.

She’d called that old guy in the lobby a Grave Walker. The guy I wanted to beat up. Was he coming for me? I hoped not.

The front door of the hotel was open, and a vivid blue rectangle of sky dominated the gray of the lobby. Out there, and a long way down, was my body. It was a weird moment. What am I saying – the whole day was weird. But that moment at the top of the stairs, looking at the world outside – that was among the weirdest.

Denise raced down the stairs and across the lobby, drawn back to Earth by her ties to a boy the same age as me.

CHAPTER 8

B
efore Denise reached the door, two people entered through it into the hotel. First was a bearded guy. I didn’t notice much else about him. The girl beside him, though, grabbed my attention with both hands.

I took a step down and sat on the top step to watch her. She was older than me. But not much older. Fifteen, maybe sixteen. Her hair was damp, worn shoulder length and pushed carelessly off her long angular face. She frowned now, worrying away at her wide lower lip. At this distance I couldn’t make out much about her eyes, but I imagined them to be deep and dark. She wore a dressing gown open over her hospital gown. She looked like an elf queen – maybe what’s-her-name from
The Lord of the Rings
only without the goofy ears.

I’d seen her before. She lived in my neighborhood. But I’d never noticed her. Maybe dying brought out her natural whatever it is. Or mine. She looked hot, I tell you.

She got her day pass from Orlanda at the front desk and walked across the lobby, head high. I stood. She was near the foot of my staircase now. She looked up, saw me, and stopped. So did the awful music playing in the background. I’d been trying to ignore it ever since I arrived at the hotel – headache-making stuff you’d expect to hear over the phone while you were on hold. Anyway, it
vanished now, leaving only a breathing silence, and me, and the girl.

I took a step and almost lost my balance. Ironic, after that childhood scene I had just witnessed. I grabbed the banister to steady myself. Kept walking. The girl smiled and pushed her hair back. Her dressing gown had blue teddy bears on it.

We met at the bottom of the stairs. I stopped. I was drawn to her like a needle to a magnet … but I didn’t know what to say.

She spoke.

“You’re in color too!” Her voice was husky.

“Uh, yeah.” I took a breath. Seemed like I’d been holding that last one in for a while. I noticed the awful music again.

“You know what that means?”

“Yeah. I’m here visiting. You and me, we’re not going to die.”

“Well, not today.”

We laughed together. Her breath smelled spicy. I was close enough to see her eyes now. Dark like her hair.

The bearded guy put a hand on her arm. “We have to go, Marcie,” he said sadly. “It’s time for your vision of sorrow.”

“Give me a second,” she said, without turning her head.

I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Yeah, she was hot, but she was also someone else going through what I was
going through. It was like she was proof that what was happening to me was real. Not a dream.

“Marcie, eh?” I said. “I’m Jim. From the neighborhood. You know.” I pointed at the floor. “Down there.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen you on Roncy.”

She hesitated and then held out her hand. I took it. It was soft and warm. I can’t tell you the last time I shook a girl’s hand. Never, I think. I didn’t know the right time to let go. She was the one who finally pulled away. An awkward moment, and yet at the same time not.

“So you’re sick, huh?” I said, gesturing at her gown.

“Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I’m in the hospital. Some kind of high fever. I got up to go the bathroom and passed out. You?”

“Car ran me down,” I said.

“Bummer.”

We laughed again. There was a kind of click inside me. I don’t know what else to call it. It seemed to go all down my back. She felt it too, like she and I were following the same thought along the same set of nerve endings. How do I know she felt it? Good question.

“I thought I was dreaming,” she said. “I mean … floating up to the sky and finding a hotel. That sounds ridiculous. But if it could happen to you too, then maybe I’m not dreaming. Know what I mean?”

“Oh yeah.”

The bearded guy grabbed Marcie’s arm. “Time to go,” he said. He had a nasal voice. I didn’t like him. She protested, but he was stronger. He pulled her upstairs. The soles of her bare feet were dirty, I noticed. After a few steps
she stopped struggling and went along with him. Denise had been stronger than me too.

A little kid stood about spitting distance away from me, staring at me quite openly, the way they do.

“What’s your problem?” I said.

He didn’t answer. His thumb was in his mouth with his first finger curled around the top of his nose. I figured he was interested in me because of the color thing. I was alive and he wasn’t.

“Beat it!” I said.

He shivered but didn’t beat it. Just kept sucking his thumb. His gray curly hair hung wet and limp in a modified Afro. He wore camper-style shorts and knee socks. He was scared. And there was something …
off
about him too. Why didn’t he run away?

The lobby was empty. Just me and the dust and the carpeting and this creepy kid. I went right up to him, thinking to scare him off. He took his thumb out of his mouth and made a mewing sound, like a cat.

Stopped me dead.

I hate cats. This little kid sounding just like one – out of no place like that – scared the crap out of me. I froze. I thought of the cat I had kicked onto the street. Which made me think of my friend Raf, who liked cats. Which made me think of the last time I’d seen Raf, under the dash of the big white Lincoln. What a screwup!

I couldn’t move, not even when the kid reached up to take my hand in his. I didn’t want to touch his spit-sticky fingers, but I had no choice.

“I’m Wolfgang,” he said. “It’s time for your second vision, Jim.”

He dragged me past the staircase to the elevator.

CHAPTER 9