The Last Time I Died (18 page)

Last time I snooped through someone’s stuff, I found a stack of unopened letters from my father. Had to be a hundred of them jammed into the back of Foster Mother’s closet. Not sure what her plan was. To give them to me when I was an adult and it was too late to have a relationship with the man? To wait until he quit sending them and then burn the lot en masse? To save me the pain of a bi-weekly reminder that my father killed my mother and was staring at the walls in a concrete box instead of teaching me how to use a stick shift? She probably didn’t think it out beyond getting them out of everyone’s sight as soon as possible. She was always a coward.

I had convinced myself that he hated me and stopped writing after his initial barrage. For the first week I got letters from him every day. They were always waiting for me on the kitchen table when I got home. Foster Father sniggered and shook his head to make sure I knew he thought my father was a loser. But I loved getting them. Loved them so much I ripped the envelopes open right in front of Foster Father and savored every word. Reading them was the only time I could hear my father’s voice in my head. I was scared and confused and this was the safest interaction I could have with him. A one-way conversation that I could replay as often as I liked.

Not that I would have written him back. Or maybe I would have eventually. When I found the stack in the closet I read one of the letters at random but that was all I could handle. It didn’t really matter anyway. He had died three months earlier.

Cordoba’s open door stares back at me. The hallway leads to a bedroom. It must be a bedroom because I think I see the corner of a comforter. There has to be a closet back there somewhere. I’m sitting in her secret illegal operating room that’s practically out in the open. Whatever is stuffed in the back of her closet must be exponentially worse. I’m not going to look.

I roll up my drawings carefully, grab the meds, and leave. The sooner I recover, the sooner I can die again.

*It’s ten months ago.

I walk through the office trying to avoid eye contact with anyone who might say something to me or, worse, ask me a question.

I’m at my desk. I have seventeen voicemails and sixty-five unopened e-mails. What the hell could be so urgent? I’m an estate attorney for Christ’s sake.

The e-mails are the usual bullshit about meetings and marginally important questions that would be so much clearer if the asker had gotten off their fat ass and walked down the hall to ask them in person. As I scroll down they get more and more shrill. Where’s the Holman file I promised? Why wasn’t I in the staff meeting? Why am I not answering my phone? Where am I?

Babies.

On top of all that it looks like the date and time on my computer are off. About a day ahead.

I check my phone to reset them correctly. It says the same thing.

Today is Wednesday.

I thought it was Tuesday.

I would have sworn it was Tuesday.

What happened to Tuesday?

I’m wearing the same suit I wore Monday. I stink. I haven’t shaved.

This is my first sober blackout, at least to the best of my knowledge. Maybe there have been others but I don’t remember. That’s the point, right? I stand in front of my humming desktop machine trying to understand what happened. Trying to remember. Last thing I can recall is leaving the office Monday evening. Nothing special. It was a fairly grueling day as usual, but mostly because I now find my work a contrivance of this modern age that’s defined by the finicky and petty. I left Monday night. Hailed a cab. Black.

It’s a clean black. A seamless transition between thirty-six hours ago and one minute ago. As if a surgeon came by and nipped the intervening time out. Gone.

I check my phone to see if there are any outgoing calls that might jog my memory. Nothing. Plenty of incoming messages, all from the office. None marked as listened to.

I left Monday night. Hailed a cab. Black.

I shut everything down and leave.

Two hours later I’m standing outside an apartment building on the Upper East Side.

It was a bad idea to come here like this. I’m drunker than I would like to be and I have no plan beyond asking her to come back. Maybe I’ll beg.

I ring the buzzer and wait.

If you bothered to track down the bartender with the wonky eye and the gray teeth at that Lower East Side bar I can’t remember the name of, you could ask him about the night I told him about the girl who was going to have my children.

Obviously, it was Lisa, and I doubt the bartender would remember me slurring my prediction through the haze of my umpteenth martini as I watched her score an eight ball for us from her dealer who delivered, but I did it and he heard it and if she and I had stayed together longer I would have been one hundred percent correct. And then she would have never left. Not if we had a kid. Lisa was like that.

I knew. This was a few years ago. We weren’t even dating at the time and I knew. Maybe I’ll tell her the bartender story and see how that goes. I think I might have told her that one before.

A younger couple comes out the front door. They’re in the middle of a fight and so wrapped up in themselves they wouldn’t notice if I darted in behind them before the door shuts.

No.

That would be bad form.

She’ll let me in or she won’t.

An hour later I stop ringing her buzzer and go home. It was a dumb plan.

(Dear me.)

It would appear that the absurd little schemes of our man are beginning to pay dividends. Just look at the old boy trudge down the street. Such determination! Such focus! A fugue state of ataxic self-importance. A midden of ego. It’s a far cry from the preening jackass he presented himself as only weeks ago.

Our man can barely maintain an upright posture, for heaven’s sake! He is weaving. Careening even. And yet, there is the unavoidable impression that he is unstoppable. Indomitable!

Let’s review his most recent history. Two productive excursions across the transom of the afterlife to collect bounty of immeasurable personal value followed each time by an immediate return trip to his barracoon of living and breathing with the rest of humanity. The pressing question on our collective minds is exactly how long he can continue this grueling cycle. The human body can withstand only so much abuse and there can be little doubt that the old boy is pushing his physical being to its design limits. It is unnatural. Untenable. Surely, the awl of God’s pride will be making its point known in the near future. What a foolish little man.

But save yourself the trouble of cautioning him. He is resolved to move forward regardless of the price tag. Intentionally blind to obvious caveats. Purposefully deaf to well-meaning advice. Willfully ignorant in the face of common sense.

And on he marches. Head down. Chuffing audibly from the effort.

Pay close attention to the pride of gentlemen walking past our man at this very moment. There are three in total. The alpha male of the group allows himself a double take and his face clouds as he can’t help but think to himself that he recognizes ‘that bum’ from somewhere. He slows and watches with knitted eyebrows and furrowed forehead as the old boy toddles past. But no, he says to himself, the chap I’m thinking of was of a most robust demeanor. Strapping. Not shriveled and stooped and hobbled. Not reeking of last week’s gin and this week’s body odor. No, no that couldn’t be Christian Franco. Perhaps a distant relative or simply a random stranger who bears striking resemblance. A distressed doppelganger. Imagine the chances! Oh, the fellows back at the office will have a hearty laugh at this encounter.

He says nothing and moves on, but only a few steps later, unable to shake the conviction, he turns again to have a closer look. Based on the erratic behavior of the hobo in question, the intrepid gentleman is well aware that he is putting himself at great risk of receiving a scurrilous tongue lashing, if not a homemade knife to the gut, but proceeds with his impromptu plan nevertheless.

Our man’s name is called out but to no avail. And again, only louder and with a degree of petulance. The gentleman has begun to feel the thrill of challenge dripping down the back of his neck. What began as simple curiosity has become a game he is unwilling to lose.

Christian!
he calls out, but the old boy continues his grunting trundle away from our new friend.

Christian Franco!
he calls out to this lower-caste occupant who appears to be ignoring his advances. Oh, the cheeky gumption of petty men. How often does a nonaction become misconstrued as a challenge? A silence interpreted as a threat? Nothing as something? It is no more than flapdoodle and malarkey, but this is the nature of adult males.

The gentleman’s compatriots have returned to him, after noticing their leader missing from the pack. He explains the conundrum he finds himself in.

That’s Christian Franco and the gentleman intends to prove it to them.

I decide the only thing I can spend my remaining cash on is food.

Which means I can’t afford to pay for a cab and I can’t take the ride and beat the fare because I can barely walk much less outrun some fat Czech driver. Looks like I’m shuffling home.

It’s late afternoon. There are no windows in Cordoba’s lab so this comes as a surprise to me. Could have been midnight for all I knew. I head up Allen and make a left on Broome when I hear my name. They must have been calling me for a while because by the time it registers whoever is calling sounds agitated.

It’s a man. He may be someone I recognize.

—Franco?! Christian?!

It’s a guy from the law firm. I think his name is DiRienz. Frank. Or James. We used to be office friends. Sometimes we got drunk together. I sort of remember him. He talks very loud. As I recall, he felt it made him a better litigator. It didn’t. He smiles and I can’t tell if he’s happy to see me or happy to see that I look like a deranged homeless guy.

—Dude, what the fuck?

He must have walked by me and realized who I am a few steps later. He’s walking back up toward me followed by a gaggle of adoring douchebags from the office. I used to know some of them.

—I heard you got fired for driving a car into a bank or some shit.

I find them hostile although I doubt they intend to be. They’re smiling with their perfect teeth. Leering interchangeable hyenas. I can see they’re shocked by my appearance. I should be embarrassed but I’m enjoying their discomfort on so many levels.

—Aren’t you supposed to be in rehab or something?

That’s not concern in his voice. I’m silent because I have nothing to say to Frank or James DiRienz. He’s not concerned for me. He’s digging for a good story to tell the boys at the Monday morning staff meeting. His eyes are eating me up.

—Well, um, it’s great to see you. Are you working or . . .

He trails off when even he realizes what an idiotic question it is. Yes, FrankOrJames. I’m working. I’m running M&A at Goldman. I’m heading up NASA’s next Mars expedition. I just signed a three-picture deal with Warner Bros.

Look at me. I’ll never work again. It’s not an unsettling thought.

I turn to walk off and as I do, I bump into a guy in a chicken costume handing out flyers for a local restaurant. The impact knocks my arm and sends my syringe/magic meds pack flying out of my pocket to the ground. The ground! FrankOrJames and his dipshit buddies all see it. And there they’ve got their story for Monday. Not only do they see the syringe fall out but they watch me scramble to grab it. It’s my lifeblood and I act like it. The street is crowded and if someone steps on it, I’m fucked.

I drop to all fours and lunge for the vial before an old lady crushes it with her chunky, sensible shoes. I’m flat on my stomach across the sidewalk. Who cares. I hold my meds and syringe close to my chest and stand back up. FrankOrJames and company eye me very closely. What am I supposed to do here, boys? Take a bow? Fuck off.

I start to move past them when FrankOrJames puts a hand on my shoulder. I’m not sure why he feels the gesture is appropriate. I don’t think we were that close. We might have done some blow in a bathroom once. Maybe I’m wrong. I know when he walks away the first thing he’ll do is wash his hands.

—Bro, are you okay? You need to talk to someone?

Mmm-hmm. Why don’t you give Arnold Rosen a call for me? Oh, never mind, I already solved this problem myself. I cracked the code. Something you, FrankOrJames, will never do. But I don’t feel like explaining that to you because I guaran-fucking-tee you wouldn’t understand. Take your little news update back to the hive and choke on it, bro.

—I have to go.

I move past the slack-jawed meatheads with their padded bellies and continue toward my home. I wonder if they’re taking pictures of me with their phones but I don’t care enough to look back over my shoulder. This little incident shouldn’t take too long to get back to Harry. That doesn’t bother me. I’m done with him.

My legs start to warm up as I shamble along. Soon it almost feels like a walk. Like I’m human.

I don’t hear the footsteps of whoever is following me. I feel them. It strikes me as absurd that DiRienz would continue the ruse of concerned former coworker this far. He was never that committed to the joke as I recall. More of a one-liner kind of guy. But I know he’s there and it’s one more thing I have to deal with. I can’t have anyone interfering with what I’m doing no matter how much they think they can help me.

I turn up Bowery. This will do the trick. DiRienz was most likely headed for happy hour and every step he takes after me puts him that much farther away from his next Jägerbomb. Yet I still feel him. Good god, could it be that he has an iota of altruistic tendencies in his dinky little brain? Impossible. So why is he still there?

Every ounce of energy I have left I consider sacred, but I decide to invest some of it in turning around to tell Frank or James to fuck right off. Pretty sure it will pay off in the long run.

He’s not there.

My side of the street is empty. On the other side an old lady pushes a cart the opposite direction. So what was all that about?