Afterlife (37 page)

They waited for her to speak, halfway through the second glazed. “I don't even know who I'm supposed to call,” she said, meaning about the body.

Mark and Steven exchanged a helpless shrug. All their deaths had been in the hospital. “The police, I guess,” he said, not quite sure what the crime was.

Silence again, and they each finished a second glazed, then passed the bag and took a third. It was such a relief that they weren't assorted and nobody had to fight for jelly. They seemed content right now to focus all their energies on guilty pleasures, not making another move until the full dozen was polished off. The comfort of the sugar was like hiding under the covers.

So when the first feeble cry bleated from the next room—“Hey”—they didn't quite believe it. In some quite tangible way, Ray Lee was already gone, and this was the wake. Steven reached for the dough-nut bag to pass out the fourth and last, and the cry sounded again, no louder but more insistent: “Hey!”

They all came out of the daze at once, rocking the table as they leapt up. They crowded through the doorway like a SWAT team, staring at the Korean in amazement, as if he'd just come back from the dead. Not very far back, but definitely struggling to raise up on one elbow, and with a certain determined grin on his ancient face. Margaret rushed to the bed, then knelt on the floor and cradled Ray's shoulder. “Careful,” she said, but Ray succeeded in propping himself on the elbow, his grin widening as if he'd conquered Everest.

His milky eyes looked from one to the other. “What I miss?” he asked.

Margaret reached for a glass of water on the bedside table and held it to Ray Lee's lips. Dutifully he took a sip, but barely a hummingbird's worth. Then he made a face and pushed the glass away. And Steven was thinking:
Did
he have a stroke? And was he dying in fact, or was it the start of a hundred false alarms? He tried not to feel impatient.

Ray Lee murmured something to Margaret and pointed to a wicker chest of drawers. Grunting to her feet, Margaret padded over and opened the middle drawer, neatly piled with laundered shirts the Korean would never wear again. “Unnaneath, unnaneath,” Ray prodded her. She slipped her hands beneath the shirts and pulled out a large envelope. From five feet away Steven could see the Shaw Travel return address printed in the corner. Across the front in a large hand, Ray had written, “Last Wishes.”

Now he made an impatient gesture, a soundless snap of the fingers, indicating that Margaret should take out what was inside. She did so, drawing out two sheets of paper. Ray made a double jerking motion with his head, curt as a Samurai, calling Steven and Mark forward to look over Margaret's shoulders.

The first page was a receipt from Forest Lawn, neatly detailing with appropriate X's instructions for cremation and interment. Steven had filled out one just like it, wild with grief the morning after Victor died. Actually Margaret had filled it out because Steven couldn't hold a pen for shaking. By contrast this one seemed quite placid and undramatic, Ray Lee's elegant penmanship unhurried. Dated in August, before all his problems began, or at least before he couldn't hide them anymore. On the bottom line it said there was seven hundred and thirty dollars in an escrow account to cover expenses.

“Okay,” said Margaret, mostly to break the silence.

Ray Lee nodded for her to go on. She turned to the second sheet, lined yellow legal paper with a list numbered one to twenty-two. The first line said
white china dog and jade cuff links to Tony Yi
, with an address in San Diego following. Scanning down the list, Steven saw several addresses in Korea, the booty as minor as
yellow scarf
and
Walkman
.

Exhausted by his labors, Ray fell back against the pillow, panting. He had drawn the sheet up to just under his nipples, so the waste of his body wasn't so jarring as when he lay there naked. Margaret moved to his side again and said gently, “Will you have some more water?”

Ray frowned and shook his head as if the question were absurd. He squinted at Mark, not quite sure he remembered him. Then smiled because he did remember, and looked at Steven. “This your boyfriend?”

“I guess,” said Steven, flushing. “I mean, we just got started.”

“'Bout time,” declared Ray Lee.

The next moment he was asleep, breathing deeply, an odd, chilling pause at the end of every exhale. Steven leaned his shoulder against Mark's, indicating the visit was over. Margaret followed them out. They all stood for a moment staring at the table where their half-eaten final doughnuts looked completely unappealing, like wads of suet.

“I guess he came back 'cause he knew I had all these questions,” Margaret said.

“Look, why don't we get a nurse,” Steven declared. “This could go on for weeks.”

“And who's going to pay, Steven? You?” She made a shooing motion at both of them, and they headed onto the porch, Steven vowing to check in later. There was a soft indulgent look on Margaret's face as she let them go. Her love for Steven—happy to see him happy—lifted its head briefly, as if Steven and Mark had made it onto the last train out of a war zone and she was blowing kisses from the platform.

It only sank them deeper as they guiltily stole away, almost ashamed to touch each other, almost afraid. Each knew just what the other was thinking, that all the world in front of them was a minefield, that every kiss might have to be paid in suffering three times over, that one of them would be left behind. They piled into the Jeep like a couple of soldiers stripped of weapons, the dumpsters full of dead flowers mocking them like a mass grave.

Back home in the bedroom, Steven flung himself down and buried his head beneath the pillow. Mark straddled him, kneading his shoulders and neck, feeling the muscles unclench. Steven fell asleep almost as quick as Ray, once he gave into the notion of being taken care of. Only because it wasn't the real thing. Having spent the morning in the last room in the hospice, they needed the vanilla version, a man massaging his friend to sleep.

Even after Steven was softly snoring, Mark didn't move right away, taking comfort from the peaceful rhythm of his breathing. When he got up, he drew the sheet lightly over Steven, loving his own tenderness, daring it the way he used to dare things carnal. He unplugged the phone and closed the door quietly behind him. He was still flushed with protectiveness as he went in the kitchen, where Sonny Cevathas was sucking up a glass of milk and a peanut butter sandwich.

It seemed to Mark that Sonny was always eating, storing up food for the winter like a bear. Coolly he turned down Sonny's offer of half the sandwich, contenting himself with a glass of water. As he sipped it, he described in grisly detail the scene in Ray Lee's apartment. If he hoped to kill Sonny's appetite, he failed. Sonny went on from the sandwich to the last of the pumpkin pie, eating it with his fingers right out of the box.

“If he's lucky, he'll die today,” Mark declared bleakly. Then, as Sonny smacked his fingers, not missing a crumb: “So tell me, what're your plans?” The slightest chill of emphasis on the possessive, as if he meant for Sonny to sketch the progress of his own demise.

Sonny smiled, mouth full of pie, taking no offense. “No plans,” he said, “but I think I'm finished here.”

Mark perked up. “You found a place?”

“Oh, no. I've stayed too long in L.A. as it is.” He looked out the kitchen window, pondering a moment. He seemed to be gazing up the hill for dramatic effect. He really was an extraordinarily beautiful man, thought Mark, undamaged and somehow untouched, despite the hands that had mauled him. Would it be harder for him to shrivel and die, with so much beauty to lose? “And you know what's funny,” Sonny said quietly. “The only one I'm really gonna miss is him.”

Mark thought he meant Steven, but when Sonny's eyes stayed fixed on the hill, Mark finally turned to look. The dog lay dozing in the shade of the sycamore, fatter than anything wild in the mountains, its mottled coat sleek and free of snags. Mark winced at the florid sincerity, vapid as anything he himself had ever okayed for Wednesday night.

“Uh, why don't you take him with you?”

“No, he's a loner. Just like me.” Dead-on serious, not a trace of irony, like a cowboy choking up over his horse. “Make sure Stevie takes care of him,” he said, as earnest as a Cub Scout.

“He'll probably outlive us all,” retorted Mark dryly. “Where exactly are you going?”

“Don't know yet. I've only had one session.” He turned from the dog and gave Mark a glassy smile. “I should know better after today.”

“I see,” replied Mark, as polite as he could, and happily Sonny was already late. He darted out the kitchen door. The dog jumped up to trot after him as he headed around the garage. Mark didn't even feel any excess of contempt, so glad was he that the younger man was leaving Steven's house.

He moved to trash the pie box and wipe down the counter, something he'd never have done in his own house, because what else were maids for?

“He's pretty, that one, but he'll fuckin' believe anything.” Mark turned as Dell stepped in from the dining room. “That's the kind they get to run the concentration camps. 'Cause God tells them to.”

“Uh-huh,” Mark replied, cynic to cynic. “And what do you believe?”

“Me, I'm a good Catholic. I believe in hell.”

“And what are
your
plans?” Mark inquired, more brazen now, having struck paydirt already.

“Fuck, man, I'm out of here in a few days. Mexico.” He seemed delighted Mark had asked, and went on with some excitement. “Spend Christmas with the family. Take
mi madre
to midnight Mass. Get drunk with my sisters' fat husbands. Should be a blast.” He rolled his shoulders and twitched his hips.

Mark laughed, though he wasn't sure exactly what was funny. “Linda's going with you?”

“No, I don't think so.” Here he seemed reluctant, even disappointed.

“But you'll come back and start a new life,” said Mark, pressing the point.

“I guess,” replied the other vaguely, examining the palms of his hands, where the calluses of his previous life had practically disappeared. He barked his one-note laugh. “And if I don't, maybe I'll come back like Sonny. Be a prince next time.”

They laughed together, though Mark was still an inch away from grasping the joke. He had a certain admiration for Dell's forays into urban mayhem, and wished he could do the same sort of damage to Lou Ciotta. But having acquired so much power himself, even if it all meant nothing now, he couldn't imagine being so far from power, learning an alien tongue in order to be a servant.

“You love Steven?” Dell asked suddenly.

“Yeah.”

“For sure? You gonna stick with it?”

“Yup,” said Mark. He was getting a little sick of having his vocation examined.

“'Cause if you hurt him, I'll break you in little pieces,” said Dell, his voice as even-tempered as could be, his smile pleasant. For an instant Mark could see the dead calm at the bottom of Dell Espinoza's rage. He was strangely serene in his fury, the eye of his own storm.

Mark groaned. “Are you for rent, by any chance? There's someone I'd love you to terrorize in Beverly Hills.”

“Sorry. I don't want to fuck with my amateur status.”

They parted as equals, a couple of tough guys. A deal had been struck between them, though its terms were mostly unstated. Mark left the kitchen with the curious satisfaction that if they ever needed a bit of serious revenge, the knees of their enemies whomped with a baseball bat, Dell Espinoza was their man. It was such a comfort to have your own terrorist.

He crawled in under the sheet and tucked himself up against Steven, who stirred himself from the green lagoon of his nap and murmured, “What? Did anything happen?”

Mark slipped a hand under his shirt and rubbed his belly. “I think your tenants just gave notice,” he said, trying not to sound smug about it.

Steven spoke in a sort of dreamy afterthought: “But where will they go?”

Mark was too groggy to tell all the machinations. “To meet their fate, of course,” he said, glib in spite of himself. But apparently it was a good enough answer for Steven, and so they slept without apology, as if their house was all in order.

And in the living room Dell watched “The Three Stooges,” mostly because nothing else was on, certainly not for laughs. His pillow and blanket were stowed in the hall closet, along with his 976 notebook and a change of clothes. He had kept up with his laundry, sensitive about leaving no mess. Once Dell was up and dressed, the living room was the living room again, no evidence of squatters. The entire month of November he'd lived in Steven's house without any privacy at all. He accepted this without complaint, like a man in prison who had no choice. Besides, even with the TV on, he had developed a certain radar for knowing when someone was about to walk in.

Yet he seemed to listen now with an extra sense of tension and alertness. His head was tilted, and he barely breathed. He heard the Mercedes drive away, so he only had to watch his left flank, in case Mark or Steven had to run out for something. Moe was bopping Curly on the head with a trumpet, while Larry played the accordion and sang. Dell moved off the sofa and knelt by the hearth. He opened a cupboard door low in the wall where firewood was stored. It was smutty with cobwebs and crumbled bark and a couple of fragrant cedar logs lying side by side.

He shifted one of the logs to the side. Underneath was a package about eight inches square, wrapped in crumpled brown paper. He lifted it out and unfolded the wrapping, the Stooges brawling over his shoulder. Inside was a black revolver that glinted with an oily shine. He just stared at it for a minute, slightly amazed, as if he was still trying to convince himself it was real.

Maybe he would have believed it more if he'd gone in and bought it himself. But it came to him like this, handed over by Alfonso Nava, no questions asked. Dell had called him Friday morning: “You bring me a gun, you can have the truck.” Alfonso grunted yes without any hesitation. He knew a steal when he saw one, also understood that the real trade here was a shift of power. He wanted Dell to owe him one, a debt that would be satisfied by the hand of his sister Linda. Alfonso Nava had come to L.A. from the killing grounds of Guatemala. He couldn't have cared less what Dell Espinoza wanted with a gun.