Motel. Pool. (15 page)

Jack sighed. “But you’re not the only one who can make stupid mistakes. I bet I have you beat five ways to Sunday, in fact. I got tired of not getting a leading role, and I kept pushing Sam. He told me I’d never be more than… more than an extra.” He shuddered, remembering the way those words had pierced his soul. “So I threatened him. Told him I was gonna tell the tabloids about us.”

“Wow. And I take it that would have ruined him.”

“Probably.” Jack rubbed his eyes. “I didn’t want to ruin him, I really didn’t. I don’t think I would have said anything to anyone. But I’m not sure. I don’t think he was sure either.”

“Did he send his wife to kill you?”

“Jeez, Tag, I don’t know. Doris
liked
me. She was a nice lady. Maybe she was just trying to help.”

Tag sat up too. He ran his fingers through his hair, which only made it stand up more wildly. Whiskers darkened his chin and cheeks, and he had a pillow crease under one eye. He was adorable. And… shit. Apparently Jack’s dick wasn’t so sated after all. Jack abruptly conjured himself jeans and a T-shirt, which made Tag raise his eyebrows.

“What were you doing in Arizona?” Tag asked.

“Heading back to Omaha.”

“To visit your family?”

Jack shook his head. “To go back to meatpacking. Maybe. But then my car broke down, and… and I was alone and desperate. I called Sam. Doris drove out to get me.”

“And gave you drugs.”

“I was upset. She said she was going to drive me to Nebraska, but I wanted… hell, Tag, I don’t know what I wanted. A different life.”

For several moments Tag looked at him gravely. “Did you kill yourself?”

Jack didn’t answer. He stared at his feet, which were still bare, and wiggled his toes. His toes were long and skinny, which was probably why his sister used to call him Monkey Feet. He called her Betty Spaghetti. He smiled slightly at a memory that had been lost for sixty years.

“I don’t know,” Jack told Tag quietly. “I wanted to go in the pool. I always loved swimming. It was almost like flying, you know? Only I drank a lot of booze and swallowed those pills and I was so
heavy
.” He looked up and focused fiercely on Tag. “I’ll tell you one thing for sure—when it came down to it, I didn’t want to die. I watched the sky moving away from me and I would have given anything to get it back. To have another chance. I would have gone back to meatpacking and living in the closet if only….” His words were lost as he started to sob.

Mourning for yourself was stupid, but that’s what he was doing. He cried over every lost birthday and Christmas, every hug he never received, every vanished chance to
feel
and
do
and
be
.

Tag clambered closer to him on the mattress and scooped him into an embrace.

Oh, Tag felt so warm and strong and real as he patted Jack’s back and squeezed him tight. Jack wailed like a lost little boy, possibly getting ghostly tears and snot all over Tag’s shoulder, but Tag didn’t seem to mind. He didn’t tell Jack that he was weak or foolish. He didn’t say anything at all, in fact, which was nice. Jack didn’t want verbal consolation, and he sure as hell didn’t want someone telling him things would be all right—because things never would be all right. What he wanted was exactly what he got: someone to lean on and hold him up.

Jack was still sniffling when he pulled away. “Sorry,” he said, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.

“Don’t be. It’s worth crying over.” Tag patted Jack’s shoulder a bit awkwardly, then stood. “I’m gonna hit the head. You okay?”

Jack nodded. He reached for the remote and clicked the TV on. Tag headed into the bathroom; a few moments later, the shower began to run. Tag had been right, though—television
was
stupid. It was brighter than in his day, and there were certainly many more options, but most programs were boring and the acting was terrible. Maybe nowadays nobody had that star quality Sam talked about. Maybe it was a whole world of Jacks.

Tag came out of the bathroom with his hair tamed and face shaved smooth. He was naked but didn’t appear self-conscious about it. He pulled some clothing from the dresser and put it on, then opened the fridge and drank milk straight from the carton. Jack wondered if the stuff tasted like the cardboard it was packaged in. When he drank milk, it came in a glass bottle left on the porch by their pudgy, friendly milkman.

“I need some exercise,” Tag announced. “I’m going to see if I can find a gym or something. Maybe I can sneak into one at a big casino.”

Jack hopped to his feet and conjured his old black boots. “I’ll help you look.”

But Tag shook his head. “Not this time. I need… a little alone time, I guess. Time to think.”

“Okay.” Jack tried not to let his disappointment show. Of course a fellow was entitled to some privacy. It wasn’t as if Tag had exactly invited Jack along, after all. Still, Jack couldn’t help a pathetic question. “You’ll come back?”

“Of course, man. I said we were friends. I haven’t always treated my friends like I should have, but I won’t screw you over. I won’t take off without saying anything.” He tilted his head slightly. “Will you be all right alone? You won’t end up getting sucked away, will you?”

“No,” said Jack, although he wasn’t positive.

“Good. So, relax. Can I get you anything while I’m out? A book or something to do besides watch the boob tube?”

Jack thought a moment, then decided to be daring. “Could you—I’ve seen on TV, people have little computers they carry around. And they’re full of information. Are they very expensive?”

Tag smiled. “I can afford one after last night. I’ll see what I can do.” He gave Jack a jaunty wave as he left.

T
HE
SUMMER
Jack was thirteen, a new community pool opened not far from his home. The Omaha press made a big deal of it, reminding everyone of the new discovery that chlorine killed the polio virus. Jack continued to supplement the family’s working-class income with his newspaper delivery route, and his mom ordered him to take his sister swimming each afternoon.
So I can have some peace and quiet
, she said—although Jack thought their house was generally pretty quiet even when he and Betty were home.

In any case, Jack didn’t mind. The sun beat down fiercely on their heads as they walked, and by midsummer the treetops were abuzz with cicadas. The pool was always crowded, with young children clustered at the shallow end. Teenage girls gathered in one spot on the deck, slathering on baby oil and watching the teenage boys strut and preen.

Jack never joined the other teens. He knew some of them from school, but he was shy and gangly and awkward and beginning to come to terms with his sexuality. The other fellows somehow honed in on this, calling him queer and worse. He was still a couple of years away from finding his confidence and the small circle of pals who admired his acting.

So as Betty paddled with her friends, Jack swam laps and practiced his dives. When his arms and legs grew tired, he’d find an empty spot in the middle of the pool, swim to the bottom, and sit there, cross-legged, as long as he could hold his breath. He loved those moments. He felt strangely invisible, but by choice rather than circumstance. And although he could see people moving around and hear them talking and yelling, everything was wavery, muffled.

He thought drowning would be like that experience, only more permanent. It wasn’t.

But as a ghost, phasing himself out of physical existence
was
very much like sitting at the bottom of a pool. He was vaguely aware of things going on around him—such as when the gray car parked in the former motel parking lot and the driver promptly fell asleep. But sounds and sights were far away, mostly unimportant, and he didn’t feel much except the cold. Time slipped by without him noticing, and his thoughts were as unfocused as his senses.

He was hovering in that nowhere place when the door slammed and Tag’s voice called out. “Jack? Are you here?” He sounded worried.

Jack immediately brought himself into the here and now. He forgot his clothes, but Tag simply grinned in relief. “I was afraid you were gone for good.”

“Just… resting.”

“Are you all right?” Tag was carrying a large plastic bag, which he set on the table before stepping closer to Jack. He placed his hand on Jack’s bicep as if to confirm he was real.

“I’m fine. Were you gone long?”

Tag glanced at his watch. “All day, pretty much. I gave up on the gym thing and ended up just walking. The Strip is funny—you see something down the street and you think it’s just a block away, but by the time you get there, it feels like miles. I think the scale of things is weird.”

“It’s a strange place.”

“Yeah. Like a city designed by Walt Disney’s evil twin. Um, do you know about Disneyland?”

“Disneyland? Sure. Opened last—it opened the year before I died. I never went. Is it still there?”

“It is, and the empire has expanded. There’s a Disneyland in Tokyo.”

Jack laughed. “Tokyo, Japan? You’re kidding!”

“I’m not. I’ll show you pictures when I get you wired up.”

Jack must have let his puzzlement show, because Tag grinned and gestured at the bag. He began to unload things from it: a black plastic box about the size of a hardcover book, a shiny red rectangle, and a glass and metal thing about as big as a pack of cards. There were cords too—lots of them.

“I sort of had an issue with all this because I don’t have a credit card,” Tag said. “I never thought about how hard it would be to do stuff without plastic. I went to the front desk and asked Buddy if he knew some way I could get us on a network. Turns out these rooms are wired for DSL and he’s willing to hook us up for a chunk of cash. Which I have plenty of.” He smiled and held up the book-sized thing.

Jack hadn’t understood most of what Tag just said, which made him feel like an idiot. “This means…?”

“This means give me a little time and I’ll have you surfing on your brand-new laptop.” He patted the red object.

“What?”

“Sorry. It’s a computer. I have to hook it up to the Internet with this router. Then I’ll show you how to use it.”

Oh. “Thanks,” Jack said, still feeling somewhat confused.

He watched as Tag searched behind the dresser, found a suitable outlet, and plugged in one of the wires. The rest of the process was confusing, with more cords and a fair amount of under-breath grumbling, but in the end Tag smiled widely and gestured grandly at the laptop. “Ready for a lesson?”

Jack was. He sat on the chair and Tag stood behind him, leaning in to demonstrate how to use the device. Ordinarily Jack would have been thunderstruck by what the computer could do—it was like magic! But he was distracted by the nearness of Tag’s body and the way Tag sometimes brushed up against his shoulder or arm. Jack had to clothe himself to hide his arousal; he wondered whether Tag noticed.

Really, though, the computer was amazing. He would never have dreamed of such a thing when he was alive. Tag showed him how he could research nearly anything, see photos, listen to music, even watch movies. His own films weren’t available, however.

Perhaps satisfied the lesson was complete, Tag fetched himself a glass of water and sat opposite Jack at the table. “I haven’t shown you the dark side of the Internet yet,” he said.

“Dark side?”

“Scams, malware, viruses, trolls, lolcats. And porn. Lots and lots and lots of porn. A pornucopia.”

Once again, Jack didn’t understand most of what Tag said—except the porn part. “You can watch dirty movies on this thing?”

“Dirty movies, dirty pictures. Livecams.” At Jack’s puzzled look, Tag shrugged. “Someone has a computer with a camera and a mic. You send them a message telling them what to do and they do it. Usually for a fee.”

“Live?”

“Yup.”

“Holy cow. I mean, I heard of sex shows, but… holy cow.”

Tag had a strange expression on his face. “You can’t do any of the pay sites—we’re back to the credit card problem again. But there’s plenty of free stuff, and if you want, I can show you how to find it. It’s not that hard.”

Jack snickered a little at the unintended double entendre, which made Tag roll his eyes. On the computer screen, a blinking map of the USA assured Jack that he could earn his criminal justice degree from home. Jack awkwardly used his finger on the touchpad to move the tiny arrow. When he passed the arrow over a photo of a pretty girl, he clicked just like Tag had shown him. The screen changed to a story about an actress who was, apparently, expecting a baby.

He looked across the table. “So if there’s so much sex on computers, does anyone bother to have it in person anymore?”

“Oh, you betcha. But computers can help with that. There are apps.”

“Apps?”

“Like, suppose it’s nine o’clock on a Friday night and you’re horny but it’s been a tough day at work and you don’t have the energy for a club or a bar. You can use the computer—or better yet, your phone—to find like-minded guys nearby, and then you can contact one and hook up. You can usually even see if their dick is sufficiently big before you choose.”