Everything's Eventual

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   The autopsy procedure has begun.

   'Let's flip this pancake,' she says cheerfully, and I am turned over just that efficiently. My right arm goes flying out to one side and then falls back against the side of the table, banging down with the raised metal lip digging into the bicep. It hurts a lot, the pain is just short of excruciating, but I don't mind. I pray for the lip to bite through my skin, pray to bleed, something bona fide corpses don't do.

   'Whoops-a-daisy,' Dr. Arlen says. She lifts my arm up and plops it back down at my side.

   Now it's my nose I'm most aware of. It's smashed against the table, and my lungs for the first time send out a distress message—a cottony, deprived feeling. My mouth is closed, my nose partially crushed shut (just how much I can't tell; I can't even feel myself breathing, not really). What if I suffocate like this?

   Then something happens which takes my mind completely off my nose. A huge object—it feels like a glass baseball bat—is rammed rudely up my rectum. Once more I try to scream and can produce only the faint, wretched humming.

   'Temp in,' Peter says. 'I've put on the timer.'

   'Good idea,' she says, moving away. Giving him room. Letting him test-drive this baby. Letting him test-drive me. The music is turned down slightly.

   'Subject is a white Caucasian, age forty-four,' Pete says, speaking for the mike now, speaking for posterity. 'His name is Howard Randolph Cottrell, residence is 1566 Laurel Crest Lane, here in Derry.'

   Dr. Arlen, at some distance: 'Mary Mead.'

   A pause, then Pete again, sounding just a tiny bit flustered: 'Dr. Arlen informs me that the subject actually lives in Mary Mead, which split off from Derry in—'

   'Enough with the history lesson, Pete.'

   Dear God, what have they stuck up my ass? Some sort of cattle thermometer? If it was a little longer, I think, I could taste the bulb at the end. And they didn't exactly go crazy with the lubricant . . . but then, why would they? I'm dead, after all.

   Dead.

   'Sorry, doctor,' Pete says. He fumbles mentally for his place, and eventually finds it. 'This information is from the ambulance form. Originally taken from a Maine state driver's license. Pronouncing doctor was, um, Frank Jennings. Subject was pronounced at the scene.'

   Now it's my nose that I'm hoping will bleed. Please, I tell it, bleed. Only don't just bleed. GUSH.

   It doesn't.

   'Cause of death may be a heart attack,' Peter says. A light hand brushes down my naked back to the crack of my ass. I pray it will remove the thermometer, but it doesn't. 'Spine appears to be intact, no attractable phenomena.'

   Attractable phenomena? Attractable phenomena? What the fuck do they think I am, a buglight?

   He lifts my head, the pads of his fingers on my cheekbones, and I hum desperately— Nnnnnnnnn—knowing that he can't possibly hear me over Keith Richards's screaming guitar but hoping he may feel the sound vibrating in my nasal passages.

   He doesn't. Instead he turns my head from side to side.

   'No neck injury apparent, no rigor,' he says, and I hope he will

just let my head go, let my face smack down onto the table—that'll make my nose bleed, unless I really am dead—but he lowers it gently, considerately, mashing the tip again and once more making suffocation seem a distinct possibility.

   'No wounds visible on the back or buttocks,' he says, 'although there's an old scar on the upper right thigh that looks like some sort of wound, shrapnel, perhaps. It's an ugly one.'

   It was ugly, and it was shrapnel. The end of my war. A mortar shell lobbed into a supply area, two men killed, one man—me—lucky. It's a lot uglier around front, and in a more sensitive spot, but all the equipment works . . . or did, up until today. A quarter of an inch to the left and they could have fixed me up with a hand-pump and a CO2 cartridge for those intimate moments.

   He finally plucked the thermometer out—oh dear God, the relief—and on the wall I could see his shadow holding it up.

   '94.2,' he said. 'Gee, that ain't too shabby. This guy could almost be alive, Katie . . . Dr. Arlen.'

   'Remember where they found him,' she said from across the room. The record they were listening to was between selections, and for a moment I could hear her lecturely tones clearly. 'Golf course? Summer afternoon? If you'd gotten a reading of 98.6, I would not be surprised.'

   'Right, right,' he said, sounding chastened. Then: 'Is all this going to sound funny on the tape?' Translation: Will I sound stupid on the tape?

   'It'll sound like a teaching situation,' she said, 'which is what it is.'

   'Okay, good. Great.'

   His rubber-tipped fingers spread my buttocks, then let them go and trail down the backs of my thighs. I would tense now, if I were capable of tensing.

   Left leg, I send to him. Left leg, Petie-boy, left calf, see it?

   He must see it, he must, because I can feel it, throbbing like a beesting or maybe a shot given by a clumsy nurse, one who infuses the injection into a muscle instead of hitting the vein.

   'Subject is a really good example of what a really bad idea it is to play golf in shorts,' he says, and I find myself wishing he had been born blind. Hell, maybe he was born blind, he's sure acting it. 'I'm seeing all kinds of bug-bites, chigger-bites, scratches . . .'

   'Mike said they found him in the rough,' Arlen calls over. She's making one hell of a clatter; it sounds like she's doing dishes in a cafeteria kitchen instead of filing stuff. 'At a guess, he had a heart attack while he was looking for his ball.'

   'Uh-huh . . .'

   'Keep going, Peter, you're doing fine.'

   I find that an extremely debatable proposition.

   'Okay.'

   More pokes and proddings. Gentle. Too gentle, maybe.

   'There are mosquito-bites on the left calf that look infected,' he says, and although his touch remains gentle, this time the pain is an enormous throb that would make me scream if I were capable of making any sound above the low-pitched hum. It occurs to me suddenly that my life may hang upon the length of the Rolling Stones tape they're listening to . . . always assuming it is a tape and not a CD that plays straight through. If it finishes before they cut into me . . . if I can hum loudly enough for them to hear before one of them turns it over to the other side . . .

   'I may want to look at the bug-bites after the gross autopsy,' she says, 'although if we're right about his heart, there'll be no need. Or . . . do you want me to look now? They worrying you?'

   'Nope, they're pretty clearly mosquito-bites,' Gimpel the Fool says. 'They grow em big over on the west side. He's got five . . . seven . . . eight . . . jeez, almost a dozen on his left leg alone.'

   'He forgot his Deep Woods Off.'

   'Never mind the Off, he forgot his digitalin,' he says, and they have a nice little yock together, autopsy room humor.

   This time he flips me by himself, probably happy to use those gym-grown Mr. Strongboy muscles of his, hiding