Before and Afterlives (14 page)

Angela’s husband buttons up his pants and asks what’s for di
nner. She says she doesn’t know. “What do you mean?” he asks. “You always have dinner ready.” She shrugs and tells him to get it somewhere else.

He looks upset and, in a threatening voice, says, “I guess I will. I guess
I
wil
l
get it somewhere else!”

He grabs his jacket and slams the door. She decides she doesn’t like doors. They open and close far too much, and the sounds they make—some creaking, some slamming, some slipping closed with only a slight gust of air—all of these sounds she decides are unnerving. She will close all the doors, she decides, and lock them. She will have the locks changed, then he will never be able to open them again.

In the morning, she wakes next to the old Angela, and on her other side another Angela has spent the night. The three wake up together at dawn, yawning, stretching their arms above their heads, sighing together. They make coffee. Even the old Angela gets out of bed. “I’m feeling better,” she says. “I’m feeling like a million bucks.” She thanks the other Angela for dealing with her husband.

“The locksmith is coming this afternoon,” says the other Angela, and the new Angela says, “Oh good, I was wondering if you remembered.”

They nod at each other, lifting their mugs to their lips and sipping.

In the afternoon the new Angela decides she wants a hairdo, a manicure, a pedicure, and maybe she would like to borrow that perfume. “Why?” says the other Angela. The new Angela shrugs.

“No reason.”

She spritzes the perfume on her neck and shoulders, drives to the spa and has her nails done, her hair done, and smiles a lot at Gregorio, the man who gives her a back massage and touches her in places where he shouldn’t. Well, she likes it, so it’s okay, she’s thinking, but really she never gave any indication that this was wanted. His skin is tan and his smile is straight and white. She decides she likes this, a white smile in a tan face. “What do you think about the beach, Gregorio?” she asks.

He purses his lips and thinks for a moment. “I like the beach,” he says. “It’s warm there. The sand is soft and hot. The waves are rhythmic, like lovemaking, no?”

“That’s what I think too,” she says. “Let’s go.”

They go to the beach and she fucks him behind a sand dune. He holds her tight and she can’t help but keep from looking around, above her head, off to the side, to see if anyone can see them. No one does. The sand is soft and hot, like he said, but it’s also itchy. He doesn’t smile when he fucks her, he grits his teeth. He grunts a lot. She doesn’t like this part of him, she decides. She says, “Smile!” as if she is taking his picture, and he does. A moment later, he goes back to grun
ting and gritting.

She comes home with sand clinging to her legs and takes a shower. That was interesting, she thinks. Now I know what that feels like. She doesn’t understand the attraction. Is this what her husband does that keeps him so occupied with other women? There is a spark, she admits, but it isn’t anything to keep her g
oing.

She decides Gregorio was a decent lover, but nothing sp
ecial. Not like his smile and his massage. His penis was much smaller than she imagined also. This is so often the case: Nothing in her imagination meets reality often enough. She decides the world isn’t nearly as interesting as it is in her head.

The four of them begin cleaning up the house. The old Angela and the other Angela, the new Angela and the even newer Angela who arrived that very morning. One sweeps, one dusts, one scrubs, one packs their husband’s bags. He has so many things that by the time she has him packed, over half the house is bare. She thought she had more things, but she doesn’t. She is left with kitchenware, a bedroom suit, and several shells from a beach where they honeymooned. She is left with two chairs and a table, she is left with her grandmother’s quilts and several almost full photo albums. She is left with the remains of his life outside her: people calling for her to tell them he is gone. She is left with only herself to rely on. She decides this is a good thing.

She sits down in one of the two chairs at the table. The ot
her Angelas put away feather dusters and vacuums, then gather round, smiling, laughing at semi-funny jokes. The newest one elbows her to join in on the fun.

So she does. She smiles. She decides she can do that too.

Lying here in this abandoned hotel, I have done it once again. Once every year or so, depending on my finances, I allow myself to die. It’s a way of life, a means to an end, or an end to life as a way of surviving. Any way you look at it, my body is a miracle.

Now comes the burning sensation of re-entry, a tingling that grows to feel like fire. As I find myself returning to my body, every cell expands, flooding with electricity. Then my eyes blink over and over, making adjustments to reality and to the grade of light. I gasp for a first breath, then howl like a newborn. After this I can begin to see the people who killed me hovering over my body, their oval faces peering down, curious, amazed.

This audience has been the eighth group to kill me. It was a thrill for them, I’m sure, even though some have already seen me do this. I’m developing a following. Times are rough, Jan co
nstantly tells me. People need something to believe in. Jan is my manager. She’s my sister, too. Improvisation, spins on old ideas, variations on a theme, she advises, is what’s needed to keep this act alive.

This act can’t die, though, even if I tried. Like the cat, I have nine lives. More than nine most likely, but in matters like this there’s always the unpredictable to take into account. So far, though, Jan and I haven’t figured out how to mess up death.

A young man wearing a dark suit says, “This can’t be happening.” I cough and spit up blood in my hands. There’s a golden ring on one of my fingers that wasn’t there when I died. This must be what I brought back this time. I try to recall how they killed me, but can only remember in pieces: a burn under my ribs where a knife slid in, the jolt of a gunshot splitting my chest open, my eyes flooding with blood after the blow of a hammer.

“Believe,” says Jan. I follow her voice to find her standing beside me. She waves her hand over my body, from head to toe. “You did it yourselves,” she tells them. “Ladies and ge
ntlemen, this is his body, his arms, his legs, his head and torso. You’ve kept vigil beside him since the moment of death. I hope the experience has been satisfying.”

There’s an old lady whose eyes have slowly narrowed to slits. “I’m not so sure,” she says. “I mean,
I
kno
w
he died. We saw the heart monitor, the flat line. But now that he’s alive again, it just doesn’t seem fair.”

A typical reaction, really. Some people are confused about what they truly want. She didn’t pay for a resurrection; she only wan
ted the death.

But we have their money, ten thousand dollars a head, and there are eight of them. We kept this group small since ou
tings like this—a killing instead of a suicide—are illegal. Hence the abandoned hotel, once known as The Flamingo. The carpet, the striped wallpaper, the floor of the drained pool, everything here is pink.

“Mrs. Bertrand,” Jan says, “you’ve just witnessed a miracle. My little brother, barely twenty-three years old, allowed you to kill him so he could return to us from death. How can you possibly be disappointed?”

Mrs. Bertrand sniffles. “Oh yes,” she says. “I know. I wasn’t really complaining. Don’t mind me.”

Jan smiles. Mrs. Bertrand smiles. The rest of the killers smile. I try, but only manage a weak sneer.

“Well,” Jan says later, “that was almost profitable.” She’s si
tting at a table in the corner of the room. Calculator and laptop out, spreadsheet of our budget glowing onscreen. The killers have left, have said their goodbyes, their goodnights, have given me their best regards. I’m still half-naked and bloody, although the blood dried hours ago, while I was dead.

“Wh
y
almos
t
profitable?” I ask. “Eighty thousand. That’s a good haul.”

“It will keep our heads above water,” says Jan. She grima
ces, taps her teeth with a long red fingernail. “Aiden,” she says, looking at me in her serious way. “You can’t go so long between exhibitions anymore. It’s been almost two years since the last one. People forget about you if you don’t give them what they want. Eighty thousand won’t get us through the next two years. And besides, we shouldn’t be so lazy. Dad raised us to work hard. We should honor his memory better.”

Goosebumps begin to pop up on my legs. I look down and find something very like a beetle crawling across the hairs on my thigh. It has a red V-shaped mark on its black-shelled back. I p
osition my fingers next to it and flick it across the room, where it lands beside Jan’s foot and waves its legs in the air desperately.

“Gross,” says Jan. “Why don’t you take a shower?”

“There’s no water in this place.”

“Well, put some clothes on and find some. You’re a go
ddamned mess.”

I’m a goddamned mess, I’m a goddamned mess. God damned, maybe; a mess, definitely. Jan has no tact, no co
nsideration with words. She thinks they are so innocent, something you can take for granted, so she uses them without thinking. She’s comfortable with clichés. I, on the other hand, am a little more than wary. Too often I find myself victimized by an over-used phrase
.
You’re a goddamned mess
.
I’m certain Jan didn’t think out the alternative meanings of that one.

First a stop at a gas station bathroom to wash the blood from my face so I’m suitable in public. Then a shower at the local Y, long and steam-heavy. There’s nothing like it to make me feel fresh and new again. As I wash off the second skin of dried blood I think, this must be like afterbirth, how a nurse wipes it off of a newborn’s skin.

“Jesus, what happened to you?” a man says beside me. He’s soaping up his hairy chest, staring over at me like he’s either disgusted or frightened. He walked in minutes after me and, though I’ve already washed off all the blood, a few fresh scars remain. Those will take a week or so to heal.

“Car accident,” I tell him. “Head-on, couple of years ago.”

“No kidding,” he says, lathering his underarms.

“I was lucky,” I say. “I wasn’t even wearing a safety belt.”

“Shit,” he says. “Yo
u
ar
e
lucky, buddy.”

I nod in this way that makes me look like I feel really lucky. Someone like him would appreciate a nod like that, I think. You can’t ever be sure what someone else wants, but I can’t help but try to anticipate.

This time I’ve anticipated correctly. The guy gives me a sympathetic shake of his head, an I-feel-for-you-buddy face, but it only manages to disturb me.

I look away, tip my head back, and fill my mouth with hot w
ater.

It wasn’t always such a bother, really. Resurrection, I mean. For quite some time it was a necessary, meaningful part of my life. If I couldn’t resurrect, I wondered, who would I be? Most likely I would have had a wallet with pictures of a wife and children inside it, credit cards, a driver’s license, and a decent amount of money. These articles, then, would have defined my one, singular life. But I have to stop this line of thinking. I can’t allow myself the fantasy of banality. It’s been years since I first resurrected, but the quotidian can still drive me wild with envy and fear.

The first time I died, I was fifteen. We’d just buried my f
ather two months earlier. I was having trouble learning how to live without him. I’d been crying a lot, and sleeping. Often I’d chew my nails down to the quick. Then one day I hung myself from our staircase banister. My mother found me later and, I’m sure you can imagine, a certain amount of hysteria followed from there.

She got me down, though, with Jan’s help. Jan was going to co
llege at the time, majoring in business management, but I’d had the decency to hang myself at Christmas, when I knew she’d be home to help my mother unhinge me.

My neck was broken. I can remember the snap, the grind of bone, and the awful copper taste that filled my throat. Then I fainted. Then I stopped breathing. Mom and Jan had gone out shopping. When they returned, arms strung with department store bags, I’d already been dead for several hours.

If they hadn’t been so overwhelmed, if they hadn’t wailed in confusion, they might have called an ambulance, and I might have resurrected under the blare of sirens. But instead my mother sobbed over my broken body while Jan tried to comfort her. They found a thick, leather-bound book in my hands, my fingers curled stiff around the spine. The pages were blank, so they didn’t know what to make of it. Shouldn’t it have held the reasons for my dying? Instead of being the period to punctuate the end of my life, though, it was blank, a beginning. When I opened my eyes and sat up a few minutes later, the first thing I did was ask if the stores had been crowded.

Jan slapped me. Jan slaps hard. She was so angry at first. Then after my mother came around from her faint and cheered up a bit, Jan had one of her big ideas. Those loans of hers, my mot
her’s debts, my dead father’s unpaid hospital bills. If I could do it again, this death trick, we could make a pretty penny. At the time I thought that could be a good benefit. But really the thing I was feeling was that, for the first time in my life, I’d found something a little like myself.