Hitchers

Gilly said Mick did good. Really good.”

I gulped back tears. “That’s great. Can I meet you at the High? I’d like to see you.”

“Yeah. Hurry.”

I hung up without saying goodbye. We kept our conversations short now; precious moments shouldn’t be wasted on hello, goodbye, participles or adverbs.

It occurred to me that, assuming I made it to the High Museum before Lorena or Grandpa took over again, this might actually be goodbye.

As the Atlanta skyline rose into view through my windshield, I wondered how many more times would I get to see it. Maybe this was the last.

Maybe I should plan to slip out of my body with the skyline stretched out before me, then I could watch it while I blew away. That wouldn’t be the real skyline, though, just a reflection of a shadow of a memory of the real one.

“Maybe we can make this work, find a way to share one body,” I said. How transparent that must be to him —I was suddenly willing to negotiate because I was losing. Wasn’t bargaining one of the stages of coming to grips with your own imminent death? First there was denial, then anger, then bargaining.

I was dying, wasn’t I? Not in the usual sense, not because my body was going to cease functioning. I was dying in a completely new and novel way, by having my body stolen from me. Maybe this would become the twenty-first-century version of AIDS or the bubonic plague. Maybe every time there was a mass murder now, the hole would open up and souls would flee back to the world of the living. Maybe if I could hold on, keep too much of myself from blowing away, I would get my own chance. I wouldn’t want it though; I wouldn’t want to put someone through what I was going through. Unless it was Grandpa.

In the stages of dying, depression came after bargaining, then acceptance. I didn’t want to go through those last two; I wanted to go back to anger.

I splurged for valet parking, raced up the concrete stairwell, through the folk art exhibit, past urns and mirrors, into the French Impressionism room.

Summer was sitting with her legs crossed, chin on her fist, staring through Reflections of Clouds on the Water-Lily Pond. I sat beside her silently, looked up at the painting.

Summer was right; I felt better.

“When I took an art history class, the instructor went to great pains to make it clear that French Impressionism was overrated by the unenlightened masses,” Summer murmured, her chin still on her hand. “He likened it to how children are attracted to bright, primary colors.”

“He was full of shit,” I said.

“I know.”

I rotated 180 degrees to look at a Manet. Summer followed, her slim legs vaulting the bench.

A gondola driver was navigating among blue and white poles jutting from a canal in Venice. The driver looked as if he didn’t have a care in the world, had no place to go, could enjoy the cool breeze and rippling periwinkle water all afternoon. I remembered having afternoons like that, but they were so far removed from my present that I doubted my memory. In fact all of my memories from before the day I drowned in that reservoir seemed ancient and unlikely, as if I’d been born in that water, and everything prior had been implanted.

“It’s getting harder to hang on in there,” I said.

Summer drew her feet up and crossed her legs on the bench. “I felt it for the first time. The pull you told me about.”

A hitcher wandered through. He was a big guy—both tall and fat—with a red baby face and long black hair, although that told me nothing about the hitcher him- or herself.

“I never believed it would come to this,” I said. “I thought we’d figure it out. I really did.”

“Me too. Maybe we still will, and not just for Mick.”

“Maybe.” I didn’t see how, though. “But just in case—”

“There’s Gilly,” Summer said, pulling her vibrating phone from her pocket.

#

Mick met us at the door. We looked at him expectantly, but he just shrugged.

“If I’m supposed to feel different, then Gilly’s not gone. I don’t feel any different.” He held up a sheaf of papers. “Here it is, every bloody note in place, and he’s still here.”

“What did we miss?” I asked, looking from Mick to Summer.

Mick turned and headed inside. “It was a long-shot from the start.” He dropped the composition on the coffee table. “It’s finished, though. That’s something.”

Summer looked at me. “It’s got to work. Something’s keeping Gilly here.”

I tried to put myself inside Gilly’s head. His masterwork was complete; no more music running through his head. Fences were mended between him and Mick. But he was still watching through Mick’s eyes, hanging on despite himself. For what? If I was Gilly, what would I want? I closed my eyes, imagined I had just finished what Mick called one of the greatest rock albums of all time.

I’d want to hear it, or course. I’d want to see other people hearing it. We didn’t have time to organize a concert, though. I put my hands on my head, trying to think, staring at the wall.

The answer was right there, on the wall. The framed poster of The Beatles’ movie, Let It Be.

“Oh, shit. Mick?” I shouted.

Mick turned at the urgency in my voice.

“Do you have an amplifier here? And a microphone? You’ll need a microphone.”

He canted his head, trying to read me. “Yeah. What do you have in mind?”

“Help me get everything to the roof.” I spun around. “Summer, get on the phone and call every news agency you can think of.” I gestured out the window. “All the networks that own those helicopters buzzing around out there. Give them this address. Tell them Mick Mercury is going to give a concert. Tell them he’s going to perform a new album recently co-written with his dead ex-collaborator Gilly Hansen. On the roof.”

Mick burst out laughing. “Brilliant.”

“I hope Gilly thinks so. God bless The Beatles.”

CHAPTER 37

Half a dozen helicopters buzzed overhead as Mick made his entrance to wild applause (wild applause from Summer and me; the dozen or so press reps who were present clapped politely). Mick was dressed in black leather pants and a plain white t-shirt with the sleeves torn off, or maybe chewed off from the look of them. He waved to the helicopters as he approached the mike, raised his arms and shouted, “Hello, Atlanta!”

We’d stacked every amplifier in Mick’s apartment along the edge of the roof, and the sound was impressive. I’d had no doubt the press would flock to cover this—it had everything they craved—drama, celebrity, a feud, hitchers.

The helicopters descended, jockeyed for the best vantage point as Mick launched into the first song.

I’d heard bits and pieces of songs, croaked by Gilly, mostly under his breath. I’d had no idea.

By the third song tears were streaming down both Summer’s and my face. We kept exchanging astonished glances. Are you hearing this? the glances said. We knew something important was happening. This music was alive; it was breathing. It had undertones of New Wave and Punk, but it was neither. It soared to breathless heights, plummeted to low, dark places that chilled me, because I knew Gilly had composed them in Deadland.

The dead had returned to Atlanta, and they had brought something new.

Though Mick didn’t know the songs by heart (we had to tape the pages to the back of a hutch hauled up in the elevator), he sang as if the music was being pulled right up from his soul.

People hearing the music from the streets filtered onto the roof, slowly forming an audience, and Mick fed off their energy. There was a nip in the air, but he was pouring sweat. On the street below more people congregated,