Dead Lines, A Novel of Life... After Death

  Her blank and empty eyes vibrated. They seemed to point not quite in his direction, but through and beyond him. The image filled out like a balloon, assuming a counterfeit and temporary solidity.

  Not Lydia. But it looks like her.

  The image moved it's lips. As if pushing through gelatin, the sound arrived late at his ears. Phil, how could you do this, how could you just die? came the high-pitched silken wail, only a little louder than the buzzing of a fly.

  The eel shadows swooped through the door and into the bedroom like descending hawks. He could feel them brush his shoulders like the tips of cold, damp fingers. The figure jerked in a horrible simulation of fear, trying to escape, dodging faster than flesh, like a bad film edit. But escape was impossible.

  Peters mouth went stone dry. He wanted to look away, block his vision with a hand. Instincts old and deep instructed him that he was about to bear witness to something private, a sight no living human should ever have to see; but he could not stop himself.

  He stared. Pity held him. And curiosity.

  The eel shadows swarmed and lanced and worried the image, snatching away scalloped bites and crumbling pieces. It lifted it's hands in weak defense, shuddering with an astonishing, dry simulacrum of pain. Whatever it was, it's time had come. As the likeness of Phils ex-wife diminished and deflated, it's wailing turned tinny and desperate. It unraveled drastically, peeling and dissolving in shreds like a tissue-paper cutout dipped in a bowl of water. In a few seconds, the last of it's murky outline disintegrated and fell away. Sated, the shadows fled, draining like water around his feet. The room seemed to shiver off the last of them, leaving just the bed, neatly made and undisturbed, and the threadbare carpet and empty shelves.

  The image, the delusion, the reflection or copy of Lydiawhatever it might have beenwas gone. Peter leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb. He could not move. For the moment, he could not even turn his head. Blood pounded in his ears. His calf cramped and he gritted his teeth. Even in his worse days of besotted grief, he had never seen anything remotely like this.

  Pitiful, something left behind, dropped like an old Kleenex.

  His heart slowed. The heat behind his eyes cooled. Finally, he had to blink. That instant with his eyes closed terrified him and he felt his neck tense and intestines curl.

  Nothing came. Nothing touched him. Quiet and still. The room was innocent.

  Nothing had actually happened.

  Nothing real.

  Peter was finally able to turn. He put out one foot as if rediscovering how to walk, then another, and slowly left the bedroom, reaching back with numb and inept fingers to close the door. The hangers caught. He could not close the door all the way, so he angrily slammed it. The hangers jangled. One fell and bounced off the wood floor with a tinny resonance. The whine of the hanger wire made him grit his teeth; it sounded too much like the voice.

  He gave up and walked on what felt like tingling stumps to the couch in the living room. Sat on the couch with hands folded on his lap. Did not even try to relax. Watched the carnival of the city across the water, darker now in the wee hours. His neck knotted and stayed that way.

  He was still alive and wasnt sure he wanted to be, not if he had to think about what he had just seen.

  PETER WATCHED THE dawn light gather slowly over San Francisco, then burst forth along the eastern hills, reflecting gold against skyscrapers and banks of fog, the most beautiful sight of all: day.

  He was making a big, grown-man decision. There was only one way to reactit must have been a bad dreamand two things to do. He walked into the kitchen and poured himself a bowl of Cheerios, chewing reflexively each milky mouthful. The milk had been in the fridge since Phils death and was on the edge of spoiling, but served well enough.

  He forced himself to take a shower in the big bathroom, removing his clothes with catlike caution, climbing into the claw-foot tub, and drawing the curtain around on it's pipe, tucked inside just enough to keep water from spraying on the floor, but with a clear view of the open bathroom door. This took tremendous will but it had to be done, and just this way. The water was set hot and stung his back. Phil did not believe in wimpy showers; no water inhibitor valves for him.

  No Bergson valves.

  As Peter scrubbed using Phils rounded block of Ivory soap, he tried to recall what a Bergson valve was. Something he had picked up reading The Doors of Perception in the sixties.

  This is the end . . . beautiful friend.

  Aldous Huxley. Something about drugs opening doors, or was it spigots? Letting the taps of reality flow free. Hed look it up when he got home. Or maybe Phil had a copy.

  After toweling dry, he dressed in the living room, putting on his good wool slacks and a black long-sleeve shirt and the thrift-store suit coat to get ready for when they delivered Phil, or whenand he did not know how he would react to thisthe real Lydia turned up again on the porch.

  Peter washed the bowl in the sink and suddenly started snorting with laughter. It didnt last long; it wasnt funny, really. It was sad. I see live people, he said, and started snorting again until he had to take off his glasses to wipe his nose and his eyes.

  His best friends wake was today and he couldn't keep his act together long enough to get a good nights sleep. He had to start seeing things. Peter the screwup, two nights running. Maybe he was hoping to draw attention to himself; poor Peter, maddened by loss once again.

  Really sad.

  The self-hatred built like bad clouds before a storm. Then it burst and went away. Peters ground state was a mellow kind of cheer, high energy at times, but usually slow to blame or anger. Sometimes he just reverted to the ground state when things got really bad, without explanation, but no solution, either; the bad clouds inevitably returned. He would have to deal with them. Just not now.

  It did not feel like a dream, he told himself. He was clean and well dressed, wearing his beige silk coat. He had become a figure of calm masculine dignity, gray-bearded, with wide-spaced and gentle eyes and glasses, lacking only a pipe.

  Bring it on.

  He sat on the porch swing, relishing the sun, the cool fresh air.

  What a great house, Phil, he said. Really.

  A dark blue unmarked panel truck came up the road trailing a thin cloud of exhaust and dust. It parked on the gravel beside the Porsche and a man in a dark brown suit got out, carrying a square cardboard box.

  Is that Phil? Peter called from the porch.

  Delivery for Ms. Lydia Richards, the man said, holding out the box in both hands. He had thick, theatrically wavy gray hair and walked and spoke with a jaded but professional dignity. Peter had once known a stripper who had married an undertaker. It was all about flesh after all.

  I'lltake him, Peter said.

  Are you authorized by the family to receive the mortal remains of Mr. Philip Daley Richards? the dignified man asked.

  I'm family, Peter said, and signed for Phils ashes.

  CHAPTER 8

  PETER GINGERLY PLACED the box on the mantel of the fireplace. It barely fit.

  The mornings explanations werent making much sense now.

  Lydia, where did Phil die? he rehearsed out loud, standing before the fireplace. Lydia, I don't think he died in the house. Did you die in the house, Lydia? Because it wasnt Phil who showed up this morning, in the dark.

  He rubbed his lips as if to wipe away that potential conversation. Best to just let the wake roll on. Unlike Peter, Phil had not become a teetotaler. He would have appreciated a few drinks hoisted on his behalf. But solemn speeches and rows of furtive people dressed in black would have bummed him.

  Peter looked down at his hands. They were trembling. He was not cut out to lose people. He was not cut out to face the death of loved ones, and he had loved Phil. Maybe he was not meant to be a friend or a husband or a daddy or any kind of serious human being. He had been at his happiest, he thought with a real twinge, facing the softer truths of young flesh, bawdiness and bodies live, parties on sets that some
times turned into happy orgies. So much joy and laughter, walking around with a large pad of newsprint and a marker, wearing a wide floppy Shakespearean hat and nothing else, sketching his actors while orating like Richard Burton; loose easy conversations and kisses and oral sex and gentle, easy fucking and food, just between friends.

  In the sixties and early seventies, he had stayed well away from the serious and somber.

  He would have loved to go on that Old Farts Hot Dog Tour, had there been time; that would have been something he could have done well with Phil. This, he did not think he was going to do well.

  Lydia, do you burn incense, practice astral projection?

  Peter gave it up.

  At noon, still alone in the house, pacing, glancing at the mantel, Peter realized that the cardboard box was not decorous. He walked up to the fireplace and lowered the box to the brick hearth. Inside, a bronze-colored plastic urn looked both cheap and better. He lifted the urn from the box and centered it, creating two urns, one on the mantel, one in the mirror above the mantel. Phil and anti-Phil. Through the looking glass.

  By one oclock, Peter was irritated and not in the least nervous or worried about what he would say. By two, he was furious. He opened a can of baked beans from the back of the cupboard and ate them cold. He spooned up the sweet smoky beans and the little lump of pork fat and thought of all the potluck food Lydia would no doubt bring.

  As he finished the last bite, the Trans chimed in his pocket. He answered.

  Yeah?

  Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?

  Who is this? Peter asked.

  Stanley Weinstein. Mrs. Benoliel told me you were in the Bay Area. I'm calling to say thanks.

  For what?

  For convincing Mr. Benoliel to invest in our company.

  Did I?

  You did. And he did. Were bubbly. I'm inviting you to come to the Big House and meet the crew. We have some of your reward, and if you're interested, we might have some work for you. Ive been doing my research. I didnt know I was meeting a famous man.

  Peter stared out the window at the city. Where are you? he asked.

  Michelle says you're somewhere in Marin. Were not far, if thats trueand I don't otherwise know, because a Trans unit cannot be located, it is completely private.

  I'm in Tiburon, Peter said.

  Thats grand. Were less than half an hour away. Let me give you directions. You can't miss it, actually. Do you know where the old San Andreas prison is?

  Ive never been there.

  Nows your chance. California Department of Corrections closed the prison three years ago to sell the land. Very posh, four hundred and fifty acres, great Bay views.

  I didnt know that, Peter said.

  We lease space in the condemned wing. It's right next to the gas chamber. When can you get here?

  Theres a wake today. Maybe tomorrow?

  I was sorry to hear about your friend.

  Thanks, Peter said.

  You'll need some time, obviously. Why don't we get together at eleven tomorrow morning? If thats not too soon.

  Peter realized he could use the money, if any, to get home. Thanks. I'llbe there.

  Weinstein gave him his Trans number and the backup landline office number. Were still having some glitches, he explained. Just temporary.

  Peter wrote the numbers on a piece of scrap notepaper with a ballpoint pen.

  Looking forward to it. I think you'll enjoy the whole experience. Weinstein ended the call. The cutoff was noiseless. The silence next to Peters ear just got deeper. He closed the unit, then turned over the paper. Phil had cut an old typed manuscript into smaller pieces. Always thrifty.

  He read the truncated bit of dialog.

  Do you play any games? Megan asked him, licking her lips.

  Not really, not very well, Carlton replied huskily.

  Why? Do you have something against rules?

  Peter folded the scrap and put it in his shirt pocket, then walked down the drive for the fifth time in the last two hours to see if cars were coming. For a moment, he wondered if Lydia had died in an accident and he actually had seen her ghost last night. Perhaps she had committed suicide, taking his five hundred dollars and driving down the road to the beach and drowning herself in the cold waters of the Bay. That was crazy. Crazy thinking. Here he was, seeing things, almost flat broke, hoping for a payout from Stanley Weinstein because he didnt have enough money to get home.

  His imagination had slipped into a tense, angry riot when he finally saw cars driving up Hidden Dreams Drive. The first one, a green new-style Beetle, carried two people. The driver was Lydia. Behind the Beetle came three more cars.

  Peter straightened his coat and walked back to the house.

  What the hell, he thought as he climbed the porch. Phil, you might have liked this. I sure dont. But it has your touch, somehow.

  CHAPTER 9

  LYDIA LOOKED TIRED and pale but vital, and she certainly behaved as if nothing untoward had happened. She introduced the guests to Peter. Two he had met long ago, writers from a group Phil had belonged to for almost thirty years, the Mysterians. Peter had attended several meetings and liked them well enough. Mystery writers, reporters, a couple of cops. The two Mysterians that Lydia had invited were both male, portly, and in their sixties. Peter had the impression they were gay and lived together.

  Two women Peter did not knowmatronly, in their early fortiescarried Tupperware bowls of potato salad and green salad and a foiled tray of lasagna up the walk and into the kitchen. Four other unfamiliar faces drifted by and were introduced, all male and in their mid-to-late fifties. The guests shook hands with Peter, stood awkwardly in the living room, and circulated past the bronze plastic urn, giving it sidelong glances.

  I'm glad Phil showed up, Lydia whispered to Peter in the kitchen. Peter watched her closely. They had him for two days before they called me, she said. I don't know why they didnt call you.

  You kept his last name, Peter said. Lydia brushed his shoulder with her arm. She smelled cool and nervous, beneath the haze of tobacco. If she had not smoked for thirty years she might still be beautiful. She faced him square and her expression turned to concern. You look bad, Peter. Maybe you shouldn't have stayed here last night.

  It was not a comfortable evening, Peter admitted.

  Spooky? she asked, piquant.

  He awarded her a thin smile for the jab.

  I doubt it was Phil, Lydia said. He's long gone. This world never did suit him. I didnt suit him. But you know, even so, I kind of lost it yesterday, she suddenly confessed, her eyes bright. I had a little fit. I started shouting his name, in the empty house. Isnt that strange? Just blew out my grief. I felt better after. I didnt know I still gave a damn.

  Peters eyes turned warm again. Where were you when that happened?

  In his bedroom. Looking at all the empty shelves. Why?

  Standing at the foot of the bed?

  What does it matter?

  It doesnt, Peter said.

  Lets get this over with, Lydia said with a shrug.

  She called the guests into the living room. The room was not crowded. Three of the men stepped up to the mantel and offered half-accurate descriptions of Phil, short, false literary tributes. The second called him a neglected talent. The third spoke fondly of a short story that Phil had not in fact written.

  Lydia thanked them quietly. Peter spoke for a moment about their friendship, saw eyes glaze, and felt his throat get thick with emotion. None of them had known Phil well. Phil was not famous enough to want to suck up to, not in town often enough to make a strong impression; and none of them had known about the house.

  They then stood around eating sandwiches and potato salad on chipped plates from Phils sideboard. The two gay male writers took the opportunity to step out on the porch to smoke.

  The four men Peter did not know left quickly when they realized there was to be no liquor. Phil would have left as well, Peter thought. The two on the porch return
ed and wanted to look around the house, examine the artifacts and old mystery pulps and Phils books, but Peter politely put a stop to that by saying the best of the collection was in boxes now, not much to see. Phil would not have liked strangers pawing his prize possessions. They seemed mildly affronted. Lydia politely accompanied them down the drive, back to their car.

  The matronly younger women stayed to clean up. Peter helped stack the old plates on the drying rack beside the sink. Only then did they introduce themselves. The redheaded woman with a plump, pleasant face was Hanna; the mousy-haired one with an expression of peaceful vacancy was Sherry.

  We only knew him to talk to a few times, Hanna said. Sherry nodded. He was nice. Sherry wants to write, but neither of us have published much.

  We keep journals, Sherry said.

  We don't write real books, like Phil, Hanna said.

  Lydia returned to the kitchen and sat on the stool. Thats that, she said.

  Where did Phil die? Peter asked.

  Does it matter? Jesus, Peter. Lydia stared at him with large, expressionless eyes. They didnt tell methe MEs boys, I mean. Neither did the cops. She tongued her upper teeth, picked at a piece of lettuce with a fingernail, then concluded softly, Not in any of these rooms, I guess.

  Hanna and Sherry regarded each other with bowed lips.

  Peter took Lydia aside, into the living room. Did you do anything here yesterday I should know about? he asked.

  Another odd question. You look odd, Peter.

  Humor me.

  I made arrangements. I told you. I had my moment, my grief thing, then got ready for what has turned out to be a truly sad little shindig. By the time you arrived, I was completely worn out. What is wrong with you?