Dead Set

  “It’s not hell, is it?”

  “That’s everyone’s second question,” he said. “We’re in a place called Iphigene. It’s a kind of way station. A place where you spend time before moving on.”

  “How long do you have to stay here?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I think it varies. A lot of things are like that here. You kind of feel your way along. Not much is written down,” he said. He grew quieter, more thoughtful. “I think you have to figure out the rules for yourself. Iphigene is kind like a video game, you know? What do you need right now, the golden key or the flaming sword? When you figure that out, you get on a bus and move on to the next level.”

  “Iphigene,” said Zoe. “It reminds me of Coney Island. Kind of old and messed up, but in a cool way. Can we look around?”

  Her father nodded. “Let me give you the tour.” As they crossed the street, he took her hand. Zoe smiled, feeling about six again.

  They walked back to the corner where the bus had dropped her off. There was an open-air newsstand with a dark green awning. They sold magazines and newspapers in what looked like a hundred languages. A clothing store, with mannequins modeling different coats, stood next to it. Farther along was a movie theater with an old marquee where the name of the movie was announced with removable plastic letters: JEAN COCTEAU’S ORPHÉE. At the end of the block was a bar with a big picture window looking out over the ocean and a crescent moon on the door, where people talked and laughed in the semidark.

  “Look at all the restaurants,” she said as they crossed to the next block. “Do you eat here?”

  “Some do,” said her father. “I think it’s another choice. I haven’t eaten a bite and I’ve never been hungry. Some souls never leave the restaurants. They just eat and eat. I guess it’s comforting. Some don’t seem to know they’re dead. Hell, I wasn’t sure at first. But you learn.”

  Zoe stopped walking and hugged him. “I hate that you’re dead,” she said. “Everything’s wrong. Nothing works. My life sucks.”

  “I’m so sorry. I wish I was with you. But your mother will take care of you. She’s strong.”

  Zoe let out a harsh laugh. “She can’t do anything. We lost the house. We live in a shitty little apartment. I don’t have any friends. Mom just cries all the time.”

  They sat down on a bench and looked out at the calm, black sea. “Your mother is the strongest person I know. She might be upset now, but if you can help her, you’ll both get through this okay.”

  “But everything is such shit.”

  “And everything is going to be shit for a while,” he said. “That’s what happens when you lose someone you love. Then, one day, weeks or months from now, things aren’t quite so shitty. Then, little by little, they start to get better. Eventually, you’ll get back to who you really are, and what your life is supposed to be.” He sighed. “But for a while, things are just going to be rotten and it helps to have someone to help you through it. You and your mother can do that for each other.”

  Zoe nodded. She sat back and laid her head on her father’s shoulder. He said, “When you two aren’t fighting, what’s your mom doing with herself?”

  “She’s trying to find a job, but it’s been so long. It’s really hard for her.”

  He shook his head. “So many stupid choices,” he said. “That’s another lousy part about being dead. You can see your whole life laid out in front of you. Every stupid, mean, and pointless thing you ever did. Me working all the time and your mother not working was a terrible idea.”

  “Mom did all this art before.”

  “She stopped a little while before you were born so she could be a stay-at-home mom,” he said. “We wanted you to have a kind of home neither of us had.” He fell silent for a minute. Zoe sat up and looked at him. He was frowning. Deep lines creased his forehead, and crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes darkened his expression.

  “You know, it could have been me who stayed home,” he said. “I wouldn’t have minded being a house husband. But I’d played with computers and was good at it, so when a friend started his own company, a job just landed in my lap. And your mom ended up being the one who stayed home.”

  “That’s funny. I thought what you did, working all the time, was the sacrifice.”

  He laughed at that. “Did you see any of the album covers your mom designed? She had a really savage talent,” he said. Zoe could hear the pride in his voice. “She’d stroll into the offices of these little labels and all the tough-guy wannabe artists would try to intimidate her. She’d just stare ’em down.”

  “I remember,” Zoe said. “Some of those old covers were really good.”

  “If I’d worked less I could have spent more time with you, and let your mom do more of her own art.” He shrugged. “But I didn’t. That’s one of my biggest regrets.”

  The sun was getting lower, burning a deeper, redder shade of orange as it slid toward the horizon. Below them on the beach, the amusement park was lit up like a birthday cake.

  “Let’s go on the carousel,” her father said. He took her hand and they ran across the street, down a wooden staircase, and across the light, clean sand to the park.

  There weren’t many people on the rides, and no ticket sellers. No one was in charge to tell them to stay behind the yellow line or to wait until the ride stopped, so they both leaped onto the carousel while it was still turning. Zoe chose a white stallion, trimmed in gold and crimson. Her father chose a snarling sea serpent, painted in lurid pinks and purples. After the carousel, they rode the spinning teacups and then the Ferris wheel. At the top of the wheel, Zoe could see Iphigene laid out below her. Behind the long street that ran along the ocean, row upon row of giant apartment buildings stretched into the distance as far as she could see. At the far end of the long street, off to her left, was a huge white marble building. It looked like a strange combination of a fairy-tale castle and a cathedral.

  “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the building.

  “That’s City Hall.”

  “Dead people have a city hall?”

  “We prefer the term postlife.”

  It was the kind of dumb joke he used to make back home, and hearing him say something so ridiculous felt really good.

  Next, they went on the roller coaster. It was enormous, bigger than any coaster Zoe had ever seen in the living world. She was a little nervous getting into the front car, but her father was so happy and confident that she went anyway. The coaster was like the one at Coney Island, old and made of wood. It clacked and creaked the whole time their little car crept to the crest of the first drop. Near the top, Zoe looked down and the city was nothing but a bright toy at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. She closed her eyes and grabbed on to her father’s sleeve. He put his big hand over hers and they stayed like that the rest of the way up.

  Then the clicking stopped, and they began to fall. Zoe’s stomach rose up into her throat. Then she heard something new. It was her father screaming at the top of his lungs, the big, insane whoop that people always made on roller-coaster drops. She felt her father’s arms go up into the air as the whoop went on and on. Zoe opened her eyes a crack at the bottom, just as the roller coaster whipped them around the first corner. She let go of her father’s sleeve and tried to whoop, too. He took her hand and held it up with his, and they whooped together, screaming like idiots, with pure joy as the sun came down slowly over the sea.

  Something unclenched inside Zoe, almost without her being aware of it until the feeling had begun to pass. For the first time in what seemed like a million years, she felt all right. She might even have called the feeling happy. She smiled and it wasn’t the rueful half smiles of her recent life, but a real one. She and her father were together, side by side, and she felt whole and healed in a way that all the words and doctors and pills in the world couldn’t have fixed. And she saw that he was happy, too,
just to be with her. And that was enough.

  Later, as they strolled along the boardwalk, Zoe asked, “Where do you live?”

  He nodded toward the apartment buildings. “Back there a few blocks.”

  “How many people are there here?”

  “I don’t know. The buses bring new people all the time.”

  They stopped and leaned on the rusty metal fence separating the boardwalk from the beach. The sun was just falling below the horizon, and night was spreading like a dark tide across the sky. A few yellow stars flickered faintly high above.

  “I hate to say it, but it’s time for you to go,” her father said.

  “Can’t I stay a little longer?”

  “When I came down to the beach tonight, it was because a little voice whispered in my ear that I should go to the bus stop at the boardwalk. Now that voice is telling me that I have to take you back.”

  “You can get on the bus, too. Come back with me.”

  “I can’t leave here yet. It’s not my time.”

  “I don’t want to go.”

  “You have to go. I want you to go,” he said. “This is a place for the dead, not a living girl. No matter how beautiful she is, or how wonderful it is to see her.”

  Zoe looked down at her feet. “Walk me back?”

  “Try to stop me.”

  Zoe looped her arm in her father’s and held on to him tight all the way to the bus stop. Lights had come on in the restaurant and the bar. The movie-theater marquee was lit up. The street looked like something from a pleasant dream of the perfect small town.

  A bus was already waiting when they reached the end of the boardwalk. Zoe’s father pulled her close and kissed the top of her head.

  “Go and live your life,” he said. “Be happy. Be crazy. And always remember that I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Dad.”

  At the bus’s entrance, her father said, “Your mother doesn’t know about any of this, does she?”

  Zoe shook her head. Her father nodded and smiled. “It’ll be our secret,” he said. “But when you get home, promise to kiss her for me.”

  “I will.”

  He held her hand as she got on the bus. Zoe found a window seat and pressed her palms against the glass, as if she could reach through it and touch her dad’s arm one more time. The bus engine rumbled to life. Her father blew her a kiss as the bus pulled away. Zoe closed her eyes. She thought she was going to cry, but she felt the ground open up and the powerful sense of falling. Then the surging tides that had carried her to her father and Iphigene swept her away.

  Zoe gasped when she came down, back into her body. But she was happy. Excited even. A few small tears lingered on her cheeks. She took a long, deep breath and wiped them away.

  “So, was it what you wanted?” asked Emmett.

  “Oh, man. It was a million times better than I hoped for. I feel like I’m flying.”

  “Good. Not everyone is so chipper when they come back. I’m glad you are.”

  Zoe felt Emmett bustling around her, loosening the straps, unhooking wires. Suddenly the blinders came off her eyes and she could see again. The old store looked wonderful. Even Emmett looked wonderful. Everything was perfect. She didn’t even need the aspirin Emmett had given her.

  “I want to take him home with me,” said Zoe.

  “You want your father’s disc?”

  “Yes. I know it’ll cost me something, so just tell me the price and I’ll pay it.”

  He tugged at the last few Animagraph straps. “Look how eager you are,” he said. “You must have had a wonderful time.”

  Zoe recognized his tone as the beginning of a negotiation. “I did. Thanks for helping me get there. What do you want for the disc?”

  “You don’t even have an Animagraph. What will you do with him?”

  “I don’t want to play the disc,” Zoe said. “I just don’t like the idea of my father’s soul stuffed in some dusty bin like old socks.”

  “Of course,” replied Emmett, nodding and scratching his chin like he was thinking. “The price is this: your blood. Not much. Just a few drops of blood on a tissue or cloth. Give me that and you can take dear old dad home with you.”

  Zoe looked at Emmett and didn’t hesitate. “I’ll bring it tomorrow.”

  “I can help you do it now. I’m sure I have a straight pin or box cutter behind the counter somewhere.”

  Zoe looked at Emmett’s rumpled clothes and dirty fingernails. The dust on the record bins. “No thanks. I can do it.”

  “I was just kidding,” said Emmett with good humor. “This will be a snap for you. You’re a strong girl.”

  “Keep my dad’s disc handy,” she said. “I’ll be back at the same time tomorrow.”

  “We’ll be waiting with bows on.” Zoe left the shop while Emmett was still putting away the Animagraph, too filled with restless energy to stand still.

  Outside, the San Francisco night air was crisp and perfect. The fog was rolling in from the ocean. Emmett’s quirks couldn’t touch her buoyant mood. Besides, she’d finally figured him out. He was like those Japanese businessmen she’d read about. The ones who pay all that money for schoolgirls’ panties. Fine, let him have his creepy collections. What he wants is easy. It’s nothing. One last time with the razor and then never again. I’ll do it after dinner.

  The night remained perfect, beautiful, a frozen moment of goodness, but she had to admit she was getting chilly in nothing but her jeans and an old Circle Jerks T-shirt. She stuffed her hands deep into her pockets to warm them up. Something crinkled against her fingers. She pulled it out. It was the butterscotch candy the old woman in Iphigene had given her. Zoe unwrapped it and popped it into her mouth. It didn’t taste like much of anything at all, but that was all right. She sucked on it all the way home, wondering where she should keep her father’s disc. Maybe on her dresser, so she could see it when she got up. Maybe on the wall near where she’d tacked up that old single her mother had designed for the Cramps. There were lots of possibilities.

  Six

  The elevator was out again when Zoe got home. She stumbled up the stairs as exhaustion numbed her arms and legs. The trip to Iphigene and back had taken more out of her than she’d realized. According to the clock in the liquor store window down the block, it was almost eight. She’d been gone for hours. Still, nothing could break her buoyant mood and the new optimism bubbling inside her. Today she’d seen her father and tomorrow she’d bring him home. What could be better than that?

  “Zoe?” Her mother was sitting on the living room sofa. The room smelled of cigarettes and blue-gray smoke curled from the fresh butt in a saucer on the floor. Her mother looked as tired as she felt, Zoe thought.

  “Hi. Sorry I’m home so late.” She leaned against the wall on the other side of the room, trying to look relaxed, like nothing had been going on.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Nowhere. Out walking around.”

  “Don’t lie to me. Where have you been?”

  Zoe stood up straight as a familiar old tension filled the room.

  “At a record store,” she said.

  “Till eight at night? What record store?”

  “This used place in North Beach. They have a lot of old punk vinyl. I even saw a couple of covers you did.” She should have seen this coming. The buzzkill and her mother’s seemingly magical ability to start in on her just when she was feeling good. Zoe stared down at her shoes.

  “Don’t change the subject,” barked her mother. “Your school called me today. You’ve been cutting classes.”

  Zoe closed her eyes and tried not to groan. The scene they were starting was way too familiar.

  “Just a couple,” she said.

  “More than that, according to your school.”

  “Well, they’re wrong,” Zoe shouted.
“No one knows me here. They wouldn’t know if I was there or not.”

  “So, you don’t answer when they take roll?”

  “Not always,” said Zoe, hating how stupid she sounded telling such a feeble lie.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Even though she knew she had no right to be angry, Zoe couldn’t help herself. Why did this have to happen now, just when things were getting better? “Believe what you want. Nothing I say matters around here, anyway.”

  “What does that mean?” her mother asked, her voice getting low, her tone wary.

  “You brought us here. This apartment. The new school. This whole stupid life we’re living was your idea.”

  “It’s starting again, isn’t it? The lies. The disappearing.” Her mother reached for the cigarettes, caught herself, and dropped them to the floor.

  “Nothing is starting again,” mumbled Zoe. She pressed the palms of her hands to her forehead, trying to force down the headache that was building behind her eyes. “Why are you acting like this?”

  Zoe’s mother stood and tried to grab her. “Let me see your arms.”

  Zoe crossed them tightly over her chest. “No!”

  “What are you hiding?” Her mother grabbed again, caught Zoe’s sleeve, and pulled. Zoe twisted away, got loose, and backed into the hall.

  “I’m not hiding anything,” Zoe said. “But I don’t want to be examined when you say it like that.”

  Her mother came closer, red-faced and furious. “How the hell am I supposed to say it, Zoe? ‘Please, dear, if you don’t mind, let me see if you’ve decided to start mutilating yourself again.’ How’s that?”

  “I don’t do that stuff anymore, I swear,” Zoe said, her voice small and childlike, a tone she hated.

  “Then show me.”

  “Not when you’re like this!” she yelled.

  “I want to believe you,” said her mother, turning away. She walked back into the living room and stood with her back to Zoe. She seemed to be thinking. “What about all the classes you’ve been missing?” she asked.