Dead is Better (9 page)

I don’t have a car. And if I did, I couldn’t drive. Couldn’t hold the keys or control the gas pedal or the steering wheel.

My hands, my arms, my ample body—they don’t function in the living world.

Even if I had a cell phone, I can’t call 911 and report the dog’s feloniously abusive owner to the police.

I can’t yell for one of the neighbors to help.

My voice is silenced here.

In life, I admit, I was pretty fucking useless, but this—this is tragic and ridiculous.

Rose tries to lick the dog again, then looks at me, expectant.

But I can do nothing, nothing at all for this thirsty, hungry, suffering dog.

“Dead, we are revealed in our true dimensions, and they are surprisingly modest.”

—Michael Cunningham,
The Hours

***

I float in circles while Rose hovers, head on paws, dejectedly. We are back in our cozy corner of the annihilated after-world. Rose was reluctant, but finally she left the living dog and returned with me.

I need to clear my head, to think. And this is the finest and most private place for that.

And I couldn’t think straight watching that dog suffer what Rose suffered. I can’t figure things out while wanting to crush that fucking sadist Nilsson’s windpipe with my bare, chubby hands, while hoping to tear his big pink head right off his neck, to stick my chubby fingers in his pale blue eyes and his mother’s eyes, too.

I need some distance from the living—from their suffering. I float in circles above Rose like a supernatural smoke ring or a hologramic snake biting its own ass.

What must I do?

Save the dog.

What can I do?

Nothing.

What do I know?

I will not rest until that dog is free.

“Even in the grave, all is not lost.”

—Edgar Allan Poe

***

First law of dead physics: The dead cannot act directly upon the living.

And even if we could, our actions would be subtle and oblique. Think ghosts. Specters. Apparitions. Spooks.

I do not kid myself that this law will ever change. Or that Rose and I will become any less dead.

Second law of dead physics: The dead do not act; they know.

Knowing is how we will, if we will at all, somehow transcend our appalling lack of physicality.

I’ve learned all I can about that dog. But I’m sure I’m missing something. Something big.

“I do not carry a sickle or scythe. I only wear a hooded black robe when it’s cold. And I don’t have those skull-like facial features you seem to enjoy pinning on me from a distance. You want to know what I truly look like? I’ll help you out. Find yourself a mirror while I continue.”

—Markus Zusak,
The Book Thief

***

Rose and I ooze—like The Blob through a window screen—through the delicate but powerful membrane that divides our worlds—dead us—living you—into the brightly lit front office of the 24-Hour Psychic on La Brea. All I know is that it’s night in your world. I’ve completely lost track of days.

I picked this place because it’s always open, because of the large red neon sign outside, and the cheerful Christmas lights and kitschy Egyptian statues in the window—Anubis, dog god of Death; Ammit, Eater of the Dead, with his head of a crocodile, torso of a leopard, and legs and fat ass of a hippo. Also because I drove past it often going to AndyCo. after a detour to Bob’s Donuts or to the airport.

The decor is black and white with red walls on which hang dream catchers, crystals, ankhs, and crosses, and a little sign says, “All Credit Cards Accepted.” What? No Mogen Davids? There is a white plastic sofa and a table covered with a black tablecloth, candles, a crystal globe, and a Ouija Board. Rose is tense. She’s been this way since our visit to the living dog.

I don’t blame her. I’m desperate too. Why else would anyone come here?

Rose and I hover like hummingbirds, one fat and graceless, one slim and delicate, over the woman I presume to be the psychic and her client.

If the psychic feels the presence of two dead beings right above her head, she doesn’t let on.

The psychic, an ample woman in late middle age, sits behind a table. She wears a white Mexican blouse and a turquoise shawl, and her black hair, threaded with silver, hangs in loose curls around her wrinkled face. Her eyebrows have been penciled into a surprised expression; red lipstick bleeds from the edges of thin lips onto her mouth. But her long fingers are delicate and rest lightly on the planchette that sits upon a wooden Ouija board.

Across from her is a woman about my age, slender, pale, with white-blonde short hair dyed hot pink at the tips, and wearing faded jeans, flip flops and a pink t-shirt. She leans toward the medium.

“He’s been missing for 5 weeks. I filed a missing person’s report, but nothing’s happened. I need to know if he’s okay,” the client says. “Can you find out if he’s still alive?”

“We are not alone,” the psychic announces suddenly in a deep and gravelly smoker’s voice, but she does not even glance up to the space Rose and I occupy right above her head. “We are not alone,” she repeats melodramatically “I can feel it, I can feel the presence of the dead.”

The blonde’s eyes widen.

“Go ahead. Ask them what you wish.”

“Where is Brian? Is Brian alive?” the woman asks, looking at the board, then at the empty white couch, as if perhaps the dead had parked themselves in the only remaining place to sit.

“One question at a time,” the psychic cautions.

“Is Brian alive? I need to know. Is Brian alive?” the blonde repeats softly, staring at the board.

The planchette takes off across the board in three diagonal streaks.

“Y. E. S.” reads the psychic slowly, one letter at a time. “Yes. Your Brian. He is still among the living.”

Tears roll down the blonde woman’s cheeks. She wipes them away and grips the table.

“Oh, God. Thank you!” she cries out. “Oh, I’m so relieved.”

The psychic smiles and steals a quick glance at her watch, “The dead, they have come here to help you. But they cannot leave the Other Side for very long. You may ask them one more question.”

Rose doesn’t react to the scene below, just hovers in place with what has become her permanently worried expression. The only Brian I knew died in a car accident the summer I graduated from high school.

The woman swallows, then looks down at the planchette on board. “Where is Brian? Where is Brian now?”

The medium closes her eyes and waits, her fingers barely touching the planchette, which trembles for a moment and then stalls.

Howdy do as Happy Andy used to say at the end of every show. The planchette has ceased its travels around the board.

“The power of the dead is that we think they see us all the time. The dead have a presence. Is there a level of energy composed solely of the dead? They are also in the ground, of course, asleep and crumbling. Perhaps we are what they dream.”

—Don DeLillo,
White Noise

***

That psychic is full of shit, I know. Brian the Missing is probably in Reno. But besides making me desperate, death has made me superstitious. So little happens to me now that each event overflows with portent.

I cannot let go of the matter of the Missing Brian.

Which is why Rose and I have returned to the LAPD Administration building, this time to the Detective Support and Vice Division on the 6th floor. Uniformed officers and women and men in business attire walk through the hall carrying paper cups of coffee like extras in a movie. I’ve noticed that the longer I am dead, the more the world of the living loses its credibility.

Rose and I float side by side to a large bulletin board outside the closed double doors of the Missing Persons Unit. One sheet announces, “MOST MISSING RETURN HOME”: “Of the 3200 adult missing persons reported annually, 70% are found or voluntarily return within 48 to 72 hours. Not all adult missing persons are the victims of kidnapping, murders, or some other criminal act.”

Another instructs the reader that “BEING MISSING IS NOT A CRIME”:

“Being a ‘voluntary’ missing person is not a crime. Any adult person can simply walk away, and choose to ignore family, friends, associates and employers. Since this type of behavior is not ‘criminal,’ law enforcement is limited on how they conduct these types of investigations. When facts and circumstances indicate a strong possibility of ‘foul-play,’ or the disappearance is the result of a criminal act, the investigation will continue along such a course.”

I marvel at the quotation marks—in “foul-play,” “criminal,” and “voluntary”—then wonder if Brian decided to get the fuck out of his life or “life”—no matter how concerned or nice that blonde girl seemed to be.

Rose floats near a poster entitled “HERE’S WHAT YOU CAN DO,” and for a brief moment I wonder if she can read. She keeps going until she reaches a locked glass case in which is a bulletin board posted with photographs.

If death has taught me anything, it’s that no special powers accompany our dissolution. It is I who reads the paper:

Provide birth date or age, physical description, medical information, circumstances surrounding the disappearance and the last location where the missing person had been seen or was known to be.

Provide any known associates and telephone numbers of persons who know the missing person.

Provide cell phone numbers, email address, and social network information.

Check local area hospitals, homeless shelters, the Los Angeles County Sheriff “Inmate Locator” website, the Los Angeles County Coroner and the Los Angeles County Morgue.

The blonde must have done these things already, including a consultation with the “Inmate Locator.” Why else would she have nothing left to do but visit a psychic in the middle of the night?

Rose stays near the display case, then paws the air. I drift to her side, looking where she looks. There are so many photographs on this board, some stapled over the edges of others, many faded with almost illegible dates on the bottom from the1990s. I study the faces. Good-looking middle-aged men; lovely young women; old men, some smiling, some frowning. Bald men. Men with mullets. Women in full makeup and women whose shiny scrubbed faces reflect the flashbulb. Last seen downtown. Last seen in Encino. Last seen going to work in Northridge. Last seen dropping off children at a daycare business in Silverlake.

I don’t know any of these lost people. But Rose keeps pawing, almost frantic. I look again, then notice a picture has fallen from the board and lies face up in the glass below:

Name:
Bingham, Brian K.

Missing:
August, 20, 2013

Age:
26

Sex:
Male

Descent:
Caucasian

Height:
5’11”

Weight:
162 lbs.

Hair:
Dyed purple (Brn)

Eyes:
Brown

Missing from:
Los Angeles

Report #:
13-576638

Last seen around San Julian Street, Los Angeles.

Above those words is a pixilated color photo of a young, unsmiling man. His hair is dyed bright purple and spider tattoos cover his face.

“Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.”

—Epicurus

***

Rose and I have returned to the afterworld. The other side. The nether realm. The not so great beyond. Purgatory. Whatever the fuck place this is—we’re here.

I’ve begun to think that death’s architecture is honeycombed—with an infinite number of discrete and silent chambers, each sheltering an occupant (or two) who toils for eternity toward his own small truth—and maybe, peace.

I know that face. The purple hair and spider tattoos. But for a moment I can’t place it.

It takes some probing to locate the purple hair and spider tattoos in my memory. There is no voice connected to it, no vivid event or important place. Then I recall our nocturnal visit to the Wings of Hope, Rose and I oscillating slowly over the dormitory residents as they slept.

The blonde girl and the police must have checked the homeless shelters already. Maybe Brian fell and hit his purple head and then forgot completely who he was. Or maybe he was robbed, attacked, and left with nothing, not even his own memories? Perhaps his is an amnesiac’s existence on Skid Row?

Most likely he’s just gotten the fuck out of Dodge. He’s dumped the blonde and started over with someone else, divesting himself of whoever Brian was and lying low—without the need of credit cards or things that might keep the old Brian visible.

Skid Row must be a very good place for disappearing. Almost as good as death.

Rose looks at me, one ear higher than the other.

Okay. I admit it. Searching for the Missing Brian was another crap idea of mine—like the time in college I started an FM radio station called KFK—KFUK–KFOLK—get it?

I know, I say to Rose, I haven’t forgotten: The one that’s important is that dog.

“By daily dying, I have come to be.”

—Theodore Roethke

***

I marvel at handsome Mr. Nilsson’s ease, his cheerful competence. He has a folksy manner, a wide smile, a ready laugh. In life I would have envied his athletic grace, the way he makes his way among the living, happy to stop and chat with the people that he meets.

Early this morning though, while it was still dark and the sound of his neighbors’ air conditioning units masked the sounds, he didn’t smile as he wrenched his dog’s neck until it howled, then silenced the howl with two vicious kicks.

Rose and I are following the sadistic Mr. Nilsson. We’re on his worthless ass and won’t let up. We occupy his shadow in the sunlight. We are twin darknesses within his night.