and her life pulses hard. I smell it again, a white glowing vapour wafting out from under my black blood. And even for Julie’s safety, I can’t bring myself to smother it.
What is wrong with me? I stare at my hand, at its pale grey flesh, cool and stiff, and I dream it pink, warm and supple, able to guide and build and caress. I dream my necrotic cells shrugging off their lethargy, inflating and lighting up like Christmas deep in my dark core. Am I inventing all this like the beer buzz? A placebo? An optimistic illusion? Either way, I feel the flatline of my existence disrupting, forming heartbeat hills and valleys.
‘You need to corner sharper. You keep almost running off the road when you turn right.’
I crank the skinny leather wheel and drop my foot onto the accelerator. The Mercedes lurches forward, throwing our heads back.
‘God, you’re a leadfoot. Can you go easier on the gas?’
I come to a jerky stop, forget to push in the clutch, and the engine dies. Julie rolls her eyes and forces patience into her voice. ‘Okay, look.’ She restarts the engine, scoots over and snakes her legs across mine, placing her feet on my feet. Under her pressure, I smoothly exchange gas for clutch, and the car glides forward. ‘Like that,’ she says, and returns to her seat. I release a satisfied wheeze.
We are cruising the tarmac, taxiing to and fro under the mild afternoon sun. Our hair ruffles in the breeze. Here in this moment, in this candy-red ’64 roadster with this beautiful young woman, I can’t help inserting myself into other, more classically filmic lives. My mind drifts, and I lose what little focus I’ve been able to maintain. I veer off the runway and clip the bumper of a stair-truck, knocking the Boneys’ church circle out of alignment. The jolt throws our heads to the side, and I hear my children’s necks snap in the back seat. They groan in protest and I shush them. I’m already embarrassed; I don’t need my kids rubbing it in.
Julie examines our dented front-end and shakes her head. ‘Damn it, R. This was a beautiful car.’
My son lunges forward in another clumsy attempt to eat Julie’s shoulder, and I reach back and smack him. He slumps into the seat with his arms crossed, pouting.
‘No biting!’ Julie reprimands, still inspecting the car’s damage.
As we circle back towards our home terminal, I notice the congregation emerging from a cargo loading gate. Like an inverted funeral procession, the Dead march out in a solemn line, taking slow, plodding steps towards the church. A clutch of Boneys leads the pilgrimage, moving forward with far more purpose than any of the flesh-clad. They are the few among us who always seem to know exactly where they’re going and what they’re doing. They don’t waver, they don’t pause or change course, and their bodies no longer either grow or decay. They are static. One of them looks directly at me, and I remember a Dark Ages etching I’ve seen somewhere, a rotting corpse sneering at a plump young virgin.
I break away from the skeleton’s hollow stare. As we cruise past their line, some of the Fleshies glance at us with uninterest, and I see my wife among them. She is walking alongside a male, her hand woven into his. My kids spot her in the crowd and stand up on the back seat, waving and grunting loudly. Julie follows their gaze and sees my wife wave back at them. Julie looks at me. ‘Is that like… your wife?’
I don’t respond. I look at my wife, expecting some kind of rebuke. But there is almost no recognition in her eyes. She looks at the car. She looks at me. She looks straight ahead and keeps walking, hand in hand with another man.
‘Is that your wife?’ Julie asks again, more forcefully. I nod. ‘Who’s that…
I shrug.
‘Stop shrugging, you asshole! I know you can talk; say something.’
I think for a minute. Watching my wife fade into the distance, I put a hand on my heart. ‘Dead.’ I wave a hand towards my wife. ‘Dead.’ My eyes drift towards the sky and lose their focus. ‘Want it… to hurt. But… doesn’t.’
Julie looks at me like she’s waiting for more, and I wonder if I’ve expressed anything at all with my halting, mumbled soliloquy. Are my words ever actually audible, or do they just echo in my head while people stare at me, waiting? I want to change my punctuation. I long for exclamation marks, but I’m drowning in ellipses.
Julie watches me a moment longer, then turns to face the windshield and the oncoming scenery. On our right: the dark openings of empty boarding tunnels, once alive with eager travellers on their way to see the world, expand their horizons, find love and fame and fortune. On our left: the blackened wreckage of a Dreamliner.
‘My boyfriend cheated on me once,’ Julie says to the windshield. ‘There was this girl his dad was housing while the foster homes were being set up, and they got blackout drunk one night and it just happened. It was basically an accident, and he gave me the most sincere and moving confession of all time, swore to God he loved me so much and would do anything to convince me, blah blah blah, but it didn’t matter, I kept thinking about it and running it through my head and just
I study her. She runs a finger through her hair and twists it around a little. I notice faint scars on her wrists and forearms, thin lines too symmetrical to be accidents. She blinks and glances at me abruptly, as if I just woke her from a dream. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you this,’ she says, annoyed. ‘Anyway, lesson’s over for today. I’m tired.’
Without further comment, I drive us home. I brake too late, and park the car with the bumper two inches into the grille of a Miata. Julie sighs.
Later that evening we sit in the 747, cross-legged in the middle of the aisle. A plate of microwaved pad thai sits on the floor in front of Julie, cooling. I watch her in silence as she pokes at it. Even doing and saying nothing, she is entertaining to watch. She tilts her head, her eyes roam, she smiles and shifts her body. Her inner thoughts play across her face like rear-projection movies.
‘It’s too quiet in here,’ she says, and stands up. She starts digging through my stacks of records. ‘What’s with all the vinyl? Couldn’t figure out how to work an iPod?’
‘Better… sound.’
She laughs. ‘Oh, a purist, huh?’
I make a spinning motion in the air with my finger. ‘More real. More… alive.’
She nods. ‘Yeah, true. Lot more trouble though.’ She flips through the stacks and frowns a little. ‘There’s nothing in here newer than like… 1999. Is that when you died or something?’
Another obstacle to estimating my age: I have no idea what year we’re in. 1999 could have been a decade ago or yesterday. One might try to deduce a timeline by looking at the crumbling streets, the toppled buildings, the rotting infrastructure, but every part of the world is decaying at its own pace. There are cities that could be mistaken for Aztec ruins, and there are cities that just emptied last week, TVs still awake all night roaring static, cafe omelettes just starting to mould.
What happened to the world was gradual. I’ve forgotten what it actually was, but I have faint, foetal memories of what it was like. The smouldering dread that never really caught fire till there wasn’t much left to burn. Each sequential step surprised us. Then one day we woke up, and everything was gone.
‘There you go again,’ Julie says. ‘Drifting off. I’m so curious what you think about when you daze out like that.’ I shrug, and she lets out an exasperated huff. ‘And there you go again, shrugging. Stop shrugging, shrugger!
