Dead is Better (11 page)

As the sun sets over the world of the living, the Rabbi recites the Yiskor, the Prayer for the Dead, then the Shema, and the hazzan blows the shofar to signal the end of the service.

Forgive me, Happy Andy, for I have sinned.

Mr. Nilsson is probably at Costco buying muffins and coffee at a discount. And his dog is still suffering on that rope.

“In the midst of life, we are in death.”

—Agatha Christie,
And Then There Were None

***

It’s Celebrate Community Day at the so-called Great Park near City Hall. Portable toilets are set up at one end and food trucks are parked on the periphery. Rose and I drift past them, and I slow down, imagining the smells that must emanate from them like auras—Pad Thai, grilled bratwurst, hamburgers, Korean short ribs with kimchi, black beans and rice. Once a fat man, always a fat man.

Rose gives me a questioning look and, ashamed, I remember that her experience with food was tragically limited.

We sail over the hundred or so white rental chairs that have been arranged in perfectly straight rows before a raised platform on which two women test a microphone, above trash cans placed at regular intervals, shiny white plastic trash bags lining each one, and picnic tables covered in bright blue plastic tablecloths.

The industrious Mr. Nilsson, casual in jeans and a blue MMC t-shirt, pops inside the large bloodmobile parked on the grass. The outside is painted with the MMC logo and a smiling drop of blood says, “Save a Life!”—then Nilsson hurries to a white truck where plastic flats of bottled water and plastic bottles of orange juice are being unloaded by a two young men. Nilsson points to the bloodmobile, and they nod, Nilsson is definitely hands-on. He supervises the installation of thick balloon rainbows over a canvas “MMC WELLNESS!” banner and counts the number of t-shirt boxes piled behind the Volunteer Check In Tables.

A fire truck arrives. Then someone in a Smokey the Bear costume. Mimes. Clowns. Face-painters. People scurry about, unpacking boxes of brochures and product samples, opening umbrellas, and taping thick electrical wires to the pavement. I see that most wear t-shirts representing an organization or a business, among them: LAPD (navy blue); Alpine Fat-Free Yogurt (powder blue); LA Open Clinic (yellow); TreeFolk (dark green); Animal Rescue LA (beige); Mamacita’s Tortilla Chips (brown), Fruity Juiceee (red), and—why am I surprised?—Happy Andy Snack Foods (cheese ball orange), Wings of Hope (white).

It makes perfect sense that a homeless shelter would participate in this event. And Wings of Hope is just around the corner at Skid Row. And my shit brother, Mark—is he here? I don’t see him, but recognize Patrick and a few others from the warehouse—Mark never passes up a chance for free advertising or for what he likes to call “brand enhancement.”

Rose’s distress propels her—us—back into our tight orbit around Nilsson. Right now he holds a clipboard and laughs with one of the bloodmobile nurses, “Sarah, don’t tempt me! Those white chocolate chip cookies are my downfall. Save them all for the blood donors. I think today we’ll break last year’s record.”

Rose looks so sad, so worried, and so tired. I hate this man. I fucking hate him. His easy manner. But most of all I hate his folksy laugh. How did Hamlet’s father do it? How did he free himself, night after night, from death’s exile and occupy the world of air?

How can I accomplish what he did?

Maybe I’m not trying hard enough. Maybe, as I did in life, I’ve given up too easily and too soon.

I sail toward a uniformed policewoman who stands at a food truck where she’s placing an order. I lower myself until my head is an inch or two from her face.

“I want to report a crime,” I yell. “A crime in progress!” I bellow, louder now. “You must send a police car to 22282 Circle Drive, the Nilsson residence, right away! That’s mid-city. Carthay Circle. A dog there is being horribly abused. This dog could die!”

“No kimchi with the chicken bowl,” she says. “Did you get that? My partner doesn’t like kimchi, but if it’s okay, I’ll take his.”

Hamlet’s dead father only spoke to his son, I remember then. Sure he appeared to others, but vaguely. No message was delivered until his son appeared.

Perhaps the way this dead-to-living communication thing works is that the deceased can only reach one person, one important person, the only one with the power to make the things happen that must happen if there is to be justice, any justice at all.

There is only one living person who can make a difference.

Frantic, I fly above the milling people to Rose, to Nilsson, then dive, my fat ass rising in the air above my head, grasping Nilsson’s neck with my hands, then squeezing with all my strength.

“You asshole!” I yell.

You would think this much cold, dead hate would amount to something, wouldn’t you? That injustice would make a tiny blip on the universal radar, that Rose’s suffering and the living dog’s pain would thin the life/death membrane just enough to allow me one brief opening? Just one?

But my great and desperate efforts—to be heard by the living and to murder Nilsson—result in nothing. Not even a small hiccup, a tiny shudder, a blink, or the clearing of the sadistic Mr. Nilsson’s throat.

“
Rosencrantz:
We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat?

Guildenstern
: No, no, no… Death is…not. Death isn’t. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can’t not-be on a boat.

Rosencrantz:
I’ve frequently not been on boats.

Guildenstern:
No, no, no—what you’ve been is not on boats.”

—Tom Stoppard,
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

***

This is hell.

I’m sure of that now. Not just for me, but for Rose, too. There she is by the stage, bereft and floating in her tormentor’s, her murderer’s shadow, looking at me as if to say, “Follow, too.”

How fucked up is that? And being stuck with me for eternity—how’s that for punishment? And for what? What could this innocent sweet creature have ever thought or done to deserve what she suffered in life and suffers afterwards?

I know what you’re thinking. Karma. Re-in-fucking-carnation, right? Perhaps you’d say to me—if I could fucking hear you here—”Hey, Charlie, maybe the view you’re taking of your situation isn’t long enough. Maybe in a past life Rose or that dog did something really bad. Maybe that dog was Hitler. And maybe Rose was Pol Pot.”

Well, fuck you.

And the cloud of incense you rode in on.

You’ve got to be fucking kidding.

And if it’s not you who’s kidding, maybe it’s God. Or Krishna. Or the Buddha. Or Jesus. Or Allah. Or Something that’s part of the structure of the universe—maybe dark matter is composed of suffering. Maybe pain is the cosmic glue that holds the world together.

I know I’ve fucked things up real good. But give me another thousand lives and another thousand deaths, and I bet I’ll fuck those up, too.

Why wouldn’t I? I’m a piece of shit. I’m worthless.

But not Rose. And not that dog, whose time is running out. They mean something. They are valuable. They are good.

The fault must lie in me, not in the fucking stars. I get it, now—this hell is me.

Fine. I accept the terms and conditions of my eternal nonexistence.

But there’s one last thing I have to do and have to say to Whoever or Whatever is In Charge—Enough.

I sincerely pray, beg, request, ask and humbly implore of Thee, leave Rose and the dog out of this.

Let their suffering be mine, all mine.

“The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it’s just sort of a tired feeling.”

—Paula Poundstone

***

The park grounds are crowded with people now, many of them children who climb aboard the fire truck or take free samples from the various tables and displays. Two men with dreadlocks are on the stage, playing electric guitars and singing “Good Morning, Sunshine.”

For a moment I can’t locate Rose, but then I see her, to the left of the stage, hovering above Nilsson who is chatting with a man. I float to Rose and gently stroke her worried forehead.

How do I tell her that I’ve failed her? How do I explain that it’s time to leave? That we must abandon the living permanently?

That I can do nothing to save the dog?

Now I am right above the man talking with Nilsson. The muscles of the man’s tanned arms and of his large shoulders are sharply defined, even under the white t-shirt he’s wearing. His hair is black and short.

“I heard last delivery had a problem,” the man says.

A girl in pigtails pushes between the two men and Nilsson smiles at her and she smiles back.

“That can’t happen again,” the man says after she’s out of earshot.

The music is louder now. People are clapping and singing along. I move in, almost beneath Rose’s belly, and can see WINGS OF HOPE printed on the front of his t-shirt. Then I look at his face.

This is the same guy we saw at Brian’s funeral at the beach. The guy who looks like a boxer.

“Don’t worry,” Nilsson says, unsmiling now and almost grim, “It won’t. That’s all taken care of. And I’ll make damn sure nothing like that happens again.”

“Death is as unexpected in his caprice as a courtesan in her disdain; but death is truer–Death has never forsaken any man.”

—Honoré de Balzac

***

I try to pry Rose loose from Nilsson. She’s with him as he joins a group of “community leaders”—representatives from TreeFolk, Community Clinic, and Alpine Yogurt—onstage with the Mayor, the Chief of Police, and a few members of the City Council, as cameras flash.

She shadows him right inside the Bloodmobile, then flits over his head like a butterfly while he pretends to donate blood and a professional photographer from the
L.A. Times
takes pictures of him smiling, then drinking a cup of orange juice and eating a chocolate cookie.

Rose stays close, circling him as he smiles—Nilsson is a champion smiler—next to him as he schmoozes one person and then another, or helps a group of volunteers sign in at the MMC tables.

“Rose,” I call out almost sharply, “Rose.” I’ve never spoken to her this way before in death or during our visits to the living world. I’ve always addressed her gently and as my equal—one dead being to another.

Rose stays close to Nilsson but she looks at me, surprised.

Then I speak to her as I’ve heard living people speak to their living dogs, giving her not a command, exactly, but making a sternly expressing an expectation: “Rose, come. Come with me. Now.”

Rose watches as Nilsson smilingly receives a tall Starbucks coffee from a woman in a blue MMC t-shirt, then returns her gaze to me once, her brown eyes large and doubtful.

“Come, Rose. Come. Come with me now. Come on, Rosie, please.”

“Alive. Alive in the way that death is alive.”

—John Fowles,
The Collector

***

The dying afternoon streaks the yellow sky with clouds. The jangly sounds of steel drums from the Celebrate Community event in the Great Park reach the people here on San Julian Street. We float opposite a regal middle-aged man in stained tuxedo pants, a red sweatshirt, and flip flops with mismatched socks—one white, one green—as he guards an overflowing shopping cart outside the entrance to Wings of Hope. He must be waiting for the evening meal, I think.

“Oh Lord!, Oh, Jesus! Bless you this street. Oh God, bless this sidewalk!” The man has dropped to his knees, and deep-voiced, shouts his exhortations at the dirty sidewalk. Then he swivels his head to survey the people near him. “Oh, Heavenly God, bless that man with the blue blanket! Lord, shower the woman with that cigarette with your love!”

The man with the blanket and the woman with the cigarette receive these intercessions with aplomb, as if they’ve heard all this before, though one guy, a lean and handsome African American man with an Afro that sits like a halo on his head, nods and says, “Amen, brother. Amen.”

Tuxedo man springs to his feet, surprisingly agile, and withdraws an empty wine bottle from his cart, then waves it around for emphasis. I wished I could meet Christopher Smart. Well, here, in a way, he is.

“This bottle is holy! This cart is holy!” he declares. “This trash bag is holy!” He waves a tattered black bag for all to contemplate, then drops it into the cart. “This, this bathrobe right here, right now is holy!” He extracts a woman’s pink and yellow chenille bathrobe from the cart. The sleeves and hem are singed, as though it had been rescued from a fire. And full of holes.

“God bless this!” he shouts, agitated now, lifting an empty potato chip bag from the curb. “God bless nothing!” he screams, focusing his intent, wild eyes exactly on the space Rose and I invisibly occupy, then sending the wine bottle through my forehead and onto the littered street where it explodes.

Rose trembles, fear shuddering through her in waves. I pull her close to me.

As the bottle travels through me, I flinch, but Rose cowers, shrinking into herself, reflexively afraid of being hurt, expecting the pain that she received in life. I am so sorry to bring Rose here, but I must find the muscular black-haired guy we saw with Nilsson—the same man, I’m sure, now, who attended the Missing Brian’s melancholy funeral.

I scratch the soft fur behind Rose’s ears, massage her neck, but she’s still nervous. This guy—the one who looks like a boxer—he does some kind of work at Wings of Hope.

“Please don’t die.”

—Randy Pausch,
The Last Lecture

***

Supper is served late at Wings of Hope because of the disturbance. A black and white, siren howling, arrived soon after the bottle shattered. Two male uniformed officers, both wearing latex gloves, emerged, and examined the broken bottle as if it might be radioactive or explosive. After that they conversed quietly with Tuxedo Pants, who smiled and nodded when they pointed to the broken glass. Tuxedo Pants barely had time to bless both officers and to declare their police car holy before they threw him on the ground, forced his hands into steel cuffs, and dragged him, his flip flops falling off and breaking, his precious cart abandoned on the sidewalk, into their police car.