Dying For You (12 page)

“Uh, I’ve got nothing like that.”

“Nobody has.”

“Now who’s being self-involved?” she teased.

“I’m sorry for what I said,” he said dully.

“It’s all right. I know a lie when I hear one.”

He met her gaze with difficulty. “I love you. I’d die for you.”

“I love you, too, and I absolutely forbid it. No dying allowed.”

They linked hands and walked through the pool wall, through the earth, and up into the sunlight. “You had to work on Christmas?” she finally asked.

“Yes.”

“Where was your mom?”

“Dead. She died having me. She was the first ghost I ever saw. She—” He swallowed and she heard the dry click in his throat. “She tried to get me away from my dad, tried to talk me into running away to my aunt’s. She wasn’t afraid he’d hurt me, just that he’d…use me up, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“But he was my dad.”

She knew. You could never walk away from your parents; they trapped you with sticky webs made of love. You were the fly to their spider. But they only ate you because they loved you.

“Nikki, where’s your family? You seemed so concerned about Cathy and Jack—”

“They’re my family. I was an only child, and my parents died when I was a freshman in college. Cathy sort of adopted me, you know? We’ve been friends for a long time.”

“What happened to your folks?”

They were walking through the sand now, headed for his cabin. “Well…”

“Is it horrible? It’s horrible, isn’t it?” His fingers tightened over hers. “You can tell me. There isn’t a thing I haven’t heard, honey, you can trust me on that one.”

“No, it’s not that horrible, but you’ll make a big thing out of it.”

“Because it’s horrible!”

“It’s
not
. Okay, calm down, I’ll tell you. Just—don’t read into it. It’s not a big thing. Okay?”

“
Mmm
. Tell me.”

“Well, I was the first person in my family to go to college, right? In fact, I thought that was my name for a while; my mom never introduced me as Nikki or Nicole, it was always ‘This is The First Person In Our Family To Go To College.’ You could actually
hear
the capital letters.

“So, anyway, we didn’t have a pot to piss in, so I got a scholarship and a part-time job, started at the U of M that fall, blah-blah. My parents were so proud; I’d finally made my other name a reality. Then I get a call from Mom’s neighbor: big car accident, they’re both in the hospital, some dipwad drunk driver ran a red.

“So, I call the hospital—Abbott—and my mom’s conscious,
but my dad’s in surgery and can’t talk to me. And my mom’s all, ‘Don’t come, don’t come, we’re fine, it’s finals week there, right?’ I mean, she knew my schedule better than I did.

“But I was all, ‘Come on, Mom, you guys are hurt, I’ll come see you.’ And then Mom tells the biggest lie of all: It’s nothing, we’re fine. We’ll call you when we get discharged, come see us after you take your tests.

“And, of course, they died. Dad wasn’t in surgery; he was in a coma. Mom died on the operating table. She cheated me out of saying good-bye because she didn’t want me to miss my exams. Stupid! Like the school wouldn’t have let me take them after the funerals. But Mom didn’t know anything about college. Because I was—”

“The First Person In Your Family To Go To College.”

“Yeah.”

“So. You weren’t there for them when they needed you.”

“Yes, and I felt tricked and betrayed, and do not be going and making something out of this. It’s got nothing to do with what’s happening now.”

“No, of course not. I’m sure that’s not significant in any way.”

They were cuddling on the bed now, looking up at the ceiling. Nikki wondered why they bothered—they were incorporeal, they could sleep outside. Heck, they could sleep in a grove of trees and never get bitten by a bug. But old habits.

Lotus-Tom was sitting in a chair across the room. She was used to having two Toms around by now, and scarcely noticed him. “So, back to the business at hand. I love you. And you love me.”

“Yes,” he said, sounding—could it be? Happy? Well, she’d fix that in a hurry. “I love you and you love me.”

“So. You have to go.”

“No.”

“Yes. Tom, you have to. There’s—there’s no hope for us. I’m stuck here and you have a life, and if you stay, I’ll walk into the ocean and never come back.”

“I can’t leave you.”

“You better. Because I’m not going to have your death on my conscience, Skinny.”

“And what kind of a life am I going back to? Being at the beck and call of crackpots?”

“They’re not all crackpots,” she said quietly. “Some of them need your help. For some of them, you’re the
only
one who can help them. You can’t turn your back on your life’s work for me.”

“It’s my father’s life’s work,” he said bitterly, “and just watch me.”

“Tom. Isn’t it bad enough that I’m in limbo? You have to be, too?”

“I won’t let you send me away.”

“Yes, you will. You know why. I didn’t get a chance to say good-bye once, and it’s cast a shadow over my life—and death. You have to let me go, just like I have to let you go. That’s what all this
is
. There’s a lesson to be learned, and I’m by God going to
learn
it this time, you know?”

“No,” he said again. He sounded fine, but she could see tears trickling down his cheeks; how they shone in the moonlight! He squeezed her, held her, hugged her hard. “No, no, no.”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“Tomorrow.”

“No. A week,” he begged. “Another month.”

“You think this will be easier in a month?” To keep him company, she was crying, too. “It’ll never be easier than it is tomorrow—only harder. You have to go. You have to let me go. And I have to let you go. It’s the only way we’ll be free.”

“Freedom is fucking overrated,” he said, almost shouted.

“Don’t lie to me, Tom. I can spot one a mile away. Now ask me why.”

He groaned. “I know why.”

“Now ask me how I can let you go.”

He picked up her hand, kissed the knuckles. “I know that, too.”

They held each other all night and Nikki thought she had never cried so long or so hard, or seen a man cry at all.

And she thought:
your heart can still break when you’re dead, oh yes
.

She waited until he fell asleep, and left. She couldn’t watch him leave. If she did, she would weaken, beg him to stay, happily watch as he indifferently starved himself to death, had a heart attack from potassium deficiency, toppled over in bed, and suffocated because he had no one to watch his body.
Whatever, just die and be with me.
Except there were no guarantees that he
would
be with her. And just because her life had been cut short, why should his?

No, she wanted him to live for a hundred years, five hundred, just like she wanted Cathy and Jack and their baby to live for a hundred years. A hundred years at least.

She was going over the same ground again and again (literally; she was on the south side of the island again) and tried to think of something else. Anything else.

She closed her eyes and thought of Tom. His smile, his
rare beautiful smile. His long fingers. His eyes, so wounded and so bright. His skinny legs and bony arms; God, he was scrawny. In her heart’s eye, she loved it all, even the way he nibbled on his hangnails when he was distracted.

Tom. You’d better be drinking a milkshake right now. You’d better be
—
well, if not happy, at least resigned. Happiness will come. It’s got to. It
—

She opened her eyes.

And managed to just stop herself from screaming in surprise.

The beach was gone. The ocean was gone. She was in someone’s living room.

She looked around wildly. Yes, the beach was gone. Yes: couch, coffee table, end tables, chairs…this was a living room. She walked over to the window and looked out: traffic streamed by below. And—she
knew
this place. This was Commonwealth Avenue. Boston, Massachusetts.

Boston? But that was where—

She heard keys jingling, locks clacking, and turned around in time to see the door swing open and Tom walk inside, white-faced with fatigue.

Their eyes locked. They spoke in less than romantic unison: “What the hell are
you
doing here?”

“This is my apartment,” he said, dropping his bag. On his foot, she noticed, but he didn’t notice. “This is where you told me to go.”

“But—but—but—but—” She had made him go. She had insisted he set them free. And now she was free. Free to go where she wanted.

What had he said, what had his unique vision of the afterlife been?

He slammed the door, curled into Lotus-Tom right there in the living room.

(It’s whatever you can imagine.)

Jumped out of Lotus-Tom, raced to her. Kissed her until she thought they’d both topple through the window.

(If you see harps and angels, that’s where you go. If you see hell, that’s where you go. If you think you have unfinished business, you stay here.)

“I love you, I love you,” he was saying, raining kisses on her face, “I love you, but I’m going to choke you for sending me away, I love you.”

(The afterlife—it can be anything. Anything at all.)

“I’ve got some bad news for you,” she said, kissing him back.

He held her at arm’s length. “What?”

“Well, you have to eat more.”

“Done. What’s the bad news?”

“Your apartment’s haunted. You’re my afterlife.”

“Oh, that,” he said. “Luckily, I happen to be a psychic.” And kissed her some more.

This story is, yawningly,
for Cindy Hwang, again, who asked me,
and Ethan Ellenberg, again, who made it happen,
and my kids, who stayed out of the way, mostly.

Stories may pop full-blown into a writer’s head, but there’s a helluva lot more to making a book than that, or me, the author. There’s the editor, who calls you up and asks if you want the project. There’s the agent, who wades through the eight-point-font paperwork and looks out for you and points out what’s good and what’s not so good and why you can’t write that story for this guy, but you could write the
other
story for this guy. There are the copyeditors (who think I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer) and proofers (who think same, and are right) and PR staff (I don’t know what they think), the sales guys and gals (ditto), the booksellers (they seem fond of me!), and finally, the readers (it’s a toss-up). Pull any one of those people out of the equation and…no book. Worse, no royalties!

So thanks, thanks, thanks to the unsung heroes of publishing. Since my name is on the front cover, I get most of the attention and the credit, and the blame if something goes wrong, which is only fair, because it’s always my mistake in the first place. But, as above, without the whole gang, there’s no book, typos and all.

What would I do without all of you?

This story takes place after the events in
Derik’s Bane
and
Undead and Unpopular
. Also, in the real world, in our world, there are no such things as werewolves, but about vampires, I’m reserving judgment.

Also, the opinions (“I hate kids.”) of the characters in this story do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the author, the editor, Berkley Sensation, or Penguin Putnam.

Finally, you are required to let the air out of your tires before driving out on a Cape Cod beach, and the people who don’t do that? Deserve whatever happens to their tires.

Burke Wolftauer, the Clam Cop, dusted his hands on his cutoffs and observed the black SUV tearing out onto Chapin Beach at low tide. Crammed with half-naked sweaty semi-inebriated humans, the Lexus roared down the beach, narrowly missing a gamboling golden retriever. It roared to a halt in a spume of sand and mud, and all four doors popped open to let a spill of drunken humanity onto the (previously) calm beach.

All of which meant nothing to him, because the full moon was only half an hour away.

Burke dug up one more clam for supper, popped it open with his fingernails, and slurped it down while watching the monkeys. Okay—not nice. Not politically correct. Boss Man wouldn’t approve (though Boss Lady probably wouldn’t care). But never did they look closer to their evolutionary cousins
than when they’d been drinking.
Homo sapiens blotto.
They were practically scratching their armpits and picking nits out of their fur. A six-pack of Bud and a thermos of Cosmos and suddenly they were all miming sex and drink like Koko the monkey.

All of which meant nothing to him, because the full moon was only half an hour away.

Now look: not a one of them of drinking age, and not a one of them sober. Parked too far up the beach for this time of the day, and of course they hadn’t let any air out of their tires. They’d been on the beach thirty seconds and Burke counted an arrestable offense, two fines, and a speeding ticket.

He licked the brine from both halves of the clam shell, savoring the salty taste, “the sea made flesh,” as Pat Conroy had once written. Clever fellow, that Conroy. Good sense of humor. Probably fun to hang out with. Probably not too apelike when he knocked a few back. Guy could probably cook like a son of a bitch, too.

Burke popped the now-empty clam in his mouth and crunched up the shell. Calcium: good for his bones. And at his age (a doddering thirty-eight) he needed all the help he could get.

Then he stood, brushed the sand off his shorts, and sauntered over to the now-abandoned Lexus. He could see the teens running ahead, horsing around and tickling and squealing. And none of them looked back, of course.