Breathers (4 page)

“Here you go, honey.” My mother hands me a plate with a hot, steaming, freshly iced cinnamon roll. I smile and go to sit down at the kitchen table.

“Oh, Andy, could you take it downstairs?” she says. “We have company coming over.”

go to a therapist twice a month.

His name is Ted. He and Helen used to work together, so he sees me as a personal favor to her. If you can call charging twice his hourly rate a favor.

I've been meeting with Ted for six weeks. Several other members of the group have seen Ted on one or more occasions, but I'm the only regular. Naomi went once and said she didn't get anything out of the session that she couldn't get from watching
Oprah.
Tom's been in three times but canceled his last two appointments due to conflicts with the League Championship Series between the Giants and the Cubs. Neither Carl nor Jerry thinks they need therapy. And Rita isn't ready to talk to anyone outside of the group.

I don't think Ted really helps me much, if at all, but it gets me out of my room two nights a month and Wednesday nights have a dearth of quality TV programming.

“How are you feeling today, Andrew?”

That's the first thing Ted always asks me, a smile plastered on his face like someone's taking his picture and he's supposed to look happy about it.

Ted is fifty-five going on thirty. Over the last five years
he's had a facelift, necklift, chin tuck, and cosmetic muscle enhancement. He works out in a gym five days a week, has a wardrobe that comes exclusively from The Gap and Eddie Bauer, and he has a full head of his own hair that he dyes dark brown because he's going gray. He also wears a twenty-four-carat gold hoop in his left ear, which he had pierced for his fiftieth birthday.

I know most of this because Ted has told me all about himself during our previous five sessions. I guess he feels comfortable with me. Either that or he figures one of us has to do the talking.

He stares at me, still wearing that fake plastic smile, waiting for an answer to his question. I scribble the word
Peachy
on my dry erase board, which is resting in my lap and elevated at an angle against my bent knees. Ted sits just behind me and off to my right, so he can read my responses. I can see him out of the corner of my eye. Even after six weeks, I still catch him staring.

“Do I detect a hint of sarcasm?” asks Ted.

I scribble
You think?
beneath my first response.

In the corner above us, a timed air freshener releases the scent of lilac into the room with a hiss. The air freshener wasn't there on my first visit.

“Then why don't you tell me how you're honestly feeling.”

I glance at Ted over my shoulder. He smiles at me with a strained expression. No teeth.

How am I honestly feeling? I'm resented by my parents, abandoned by my friends, and discriminated against by a community that no longer considers me human. That's how I feel.

But I can't say this to Ted. He wouldn't understand. And even if he did, he wouldn't care. So I erase the other words on my dry erase board and scribble down the word:

Abhorred.

“Good,” says Ted. “What else?”

Discarded.

“Yes,” he says. “Is that all?”

Frustrated.

Demoralized.

Bereft.

Anxious.

Insignificant.

I hesitate, then erase everything and scrawl out the word
Tired.

I wait, expecting a response, but receive only silence.

I know Ted hasn't snuck away because I see him over my shoulder. I know he hasn't fallen asleep because his eyes are open. And I know he isn't dead because I hear him breathing.

On the wall above Ted's framed diplomas and certificates and letters of achievement, there's a digital clock that shows the hours, minutes, and seconds in a red LED display. I sit and watch the silence stretch out one second at a time.

… thirteen … fourteen … fifteen …

We have moments like this at every session. Ted sits there with absolutely no idea of how to help me and I sit there watching the seconds tick off one by one in monochrome. It's like watching the clock count down to the New Year, only in reverse. And the ultimate moment never comes.

… twenty-five … twenty-six … twenty-seven …

“When you say tired,” says Ted, “do you mean physically, emotionally, or spiritually?”

ita, Helen, Jerry, and I are on the way home from another meeting with a new group member, a forty-five-year-old surfer named Walter who wiped out and hit his head on his surfboard and drowned. They actually never recovered the body until Walter walked out of the surf in his wetsuit at the Santa Cruz Beach and Boardwalk two days later—his lungs filled with salt water and his hair tangled with kelp.

“Dude,” says Jerry. “So what was it like being under water for two days?”

“Don't know, dude,” says Walter, his voice a water-logged gurgle. “I just woke up in a kelp forest and couldn't figure out how I'd fallen inside my waterbed. Except I was wearing my wetsuit and I never wear my wetsuit to bed.”

If I didn't know any better, I'd swear Walter and Jerry were related.

“At first I figured I was dreaming,” says Walter. “Until I felt something sliding down the back of my wetsuit.”

“What was it?” asks Jerry.

“Sea slug, dude,” says Walter. “It was gnarly.”

“Dude.”

“Totally.”

It's not like I can just walk away from them. At least if I keep them on my left I don't hear them as well through my disfigured clump of an ear, but somehow one of them always seems to end up on my right-hand side.

We cross a parking lot and head down an alley, doing the Robert Frost thing and taking the road less traveled. Not from any desire for adventure, but because we're less likely to disturb any Breathers this way. It's one of the Undead Commandments:

You will not disturb the living.

You will not be out after curfew.

You will not commit necrophilia.

You will not covet your neighbor's flesh.

There are a few more about honoring your host guardians and refraining from acts of civil disobedience, but for the most part they're just a bunch of rules we have to follow in order to coexist with the living. Breathers, on the other hand, don't have to follow any rules regarding the undead. Except for the necrophilia part. But that's just common sense.

The alley runs behind several blocks of light industrial complexes, all of which are closed for the night. Helen and Rita walk ahead of us, probably sharing a nice conversation about something meaningful while I'm stuck in purgatory.

“Dude, you wanna touch my scalp?” asks Jerry, removing his baseball cap. “It's, like, totally cool.”

Helen suddenly stops and holds her hand up like a crossing guard.

“Dude,” says Walter, running his fingers across Jerry's glistening brain. “That's awesome.”

“Shush,” whispers Helen.

At the end of the alley, in the darkness behind us, car doors open and close. Male voices echo through the alley along with laughter and the sound of a bottle breaking. Then silence.

“What's going on?” asks Rita.

“Breathers,” whispers Helen. “By the sound of it, my guess is fraternity boys.”

Rednecks mostly just scream insults and break bottles over your head and terrorize you until they get bored. Teenagers are more dangerous because of all the raging hormones, though they lack imagination. Bowling leagues are typically single-minded, using the tools of their trade to inflict their damage after a night of drinking. But frat boys dismember, beat, mutilate, torture, carve, and flambé. And they never seem to get tired of it.

That's what I hear, anyway. I've never actually encountered any fraternity members, bowling leagues, or rednecks. And other than the teenagers who hit me with tomatoes to christen my new existence, most of the abuse I've encountered has been verbal.

After a few minutes, another bottle breaks. More laughter, followed by a single voice:

“Zombies, come out and play-ayyy!”

“Uh oh,” says Jerry.

Uh oh is right.

At the end of the alley behind us, more than two blocks away, five or six figures materialize out of the darkness carrying various objects of destruction.

“Run,” says Helen.

That's easy to say when both of your legs work. But when your left ankle is a surrealistic piece of art, running isn't really an option.

“I'll help Andy,” says Rita, slipping over to my left side. “You three go.”

Walter and Jerry don't have to be told twice and take off. Helen hesitates a moment, then follows, her short legs pumping
faster than I would have imagined a fifty-two-year-old zombie could run.

Rita puts one arm around my waist, draping my left arm around her neck. “Ready?”

I want to be brave and tell her to leave me here. But I'm glad I can't talk because it's comforting to be touched by Rita, to have her arm around me and her body pressed up against mine. And it's so much better than getting dismembered all alone. So I just nod.

It's slow going at first, but by the time Jerry, Walter, and Helen reach the end of the alley up ahead, we've got a rhythm going and it feels like we're making good time. Then I glance back and see the frat boys barely a block behind us.

“Gaack,” I say to warn Rita.

Hoots and hollers echo along the alley as the steady threat of footsteps running on asphalt grows closer. Rita and I keep stumbling toward the end of the alley, like the last contestants in a three-legged race trying to cross the finish line. Except we're not laughing.

And no one's cheering us on.

And if we fall down we'll get attacked and mutilated.

We're past the last building and I'm hoping we can find someplace to hide, some way to ditch our pursuers, when a figure appears in front of us.

“Come on!” says Jerry, helping to escort me around the side of the building to a Dumpster. “Let's get him inside. Hurry!”

Together, Rita and Jerry help me up and over the edge until I'm falling face first into something soft and sticky that seems to split open on impact.

“Stay there,” says Jerry. “We'll come back to get you.”