“I’m asking the questions.”
“Why can only you ask and not me?”
“Because you’re in my apartment.”
The man considered that reasonable and made another half-hearted attempt to sip the coffee. “Sugar? Oh, wait, am I allowed to ask that?”
Puppy muttered all the way back and forth to the kitchen, slamming a bowl of sugar on the coffee table. The man dumped in about four tablespoons.
“Happy?” Puppy asked.
“I could use some eggs.”
“So could I. Where’s Dallas Memorial?”
“Texas.” The man growled at Puppy’s stupidity.
“You came all the way from Texas with cancer?”
“I died there.”
Puppy told himself not to laugh. “Then how’d you get here?”
The man shook his head in deep sadness. “Damn do I know. And where am I that I don’t know how I got here?”
“New York City.”
The man brightened. “I lived there. A hotel on Central Park. The memory ain’t terrific. Must be the dying and all.”
“You have a name?”
He paused, thinking. “Mickey Mantle.”
“Mickey Mantle.” Puppy smiled carefully. “Like the old baseball player?’
“I am the old baseball player,” Mickey shouted.
“Okay, okay. You are.“
“Except I ain’t anymore. Except here I am. So I must still be. ” Mickey swallowed down the rest of his coffee and polished off Puppy’s cup.
“Nice to meet you, Mickey.”
“That’s better.”
“I’m Puppy.” Better not to give out last names.
“What kind of retard name is that?”
“Ask my parents. They’re both dead.”
“Like me.” Mickey burped. “I want breakfast.”
“How about a shower first?”
Mickey’s eyes narrowed. “Why? You a fairy?”
“What’s that?”
“Fairy. Fag. Queer.”
Grandma’s bra straps. “No. I mean, I’ve…” Puppy thought best not to answer too deeply. “No. Just girls. Take a shower. I’ll find food and then we’ll figure out where you belong.”
“I belong in Heaven,” Mickey yelled.
Puppy laid out an old towel and washcloth on the sink, turned on the shower water and tried to find fresh clothes while the old guy scrubbed away, singing some country song Puppy recognized by Merle Haggard, Okie from Muskogee.
Mick came out with two towels Puppy would never use again wrapped around his waist. He plopped back onto the couch.
“I left you clean clothes.” Puppy put down some bacon and toast.
“They’re ugly,” Mickey snorted.
“Yours stink.”
“So wash them.” Mick bit into the bacon and looked up with wondering disgust. “What is this?”
Puppy sighed. “Bacon.”
“No, it ain’t.” Mick tossed it on the plate.
“Because it’s not really real. It’s AG bacon. Alleged. Or SC. So-called. Most of the foods are synthetic. Because of the radiation. From the war. Any of this ring a bell from your life before you took a bath in rum?”
“I hate rum.” Mick took cautious, displeased bites of the toast. “Best you got?”
“It’s the best anyone has,” Puppy yelled.
The DV Community Center on East 163rd Street was a long, open portable building inside a wire-fenced playground which had been originally built for the Allah Deportations of the late 50s. It took a while to get the stench out and some felt it still smelled of goat, but that made it perfect for the DVs. Nothing had changed since Puppy had shot pool with Zelda or flirted up Noreen Delgado. Same eager kids with suspicious eyes. Same glistening floors and squeaky polished windows. Same long bulletin board with endless index cards advertising work or asking for work, announcements of after school programs, tutors available.
Help me any way I can, said Grandma’s Eleventh Insight running along the far wall. Basketball courts echoed with loud grunts. An entire wall of books, about forty feet long and twelve feet high, occupied a wall; kids sat on the floor studying, whispering advice. No one screwed around. If they did, one of the matrons, always fat, always a woman, always ugly, Puppy had no idea why, would bounce their butts onto the street and it would take weeks, sometimes months, sometimes never for the kids to be able to return. There was little room for error in the DV.
Always the kids were here, except for the adults dropping them off with hopeful embarrassment. The parents, who knew painfully they were responsible for this situation, leaving with a quick kiss to hurry back to their shop, store, business, whatever proliferated along the shopping streets like desperate pleas. Give us another chance.
Puppy led Mickey to the front table. The matron raised up her black glasses from the chain around her neck.
“Morning, madam,” Puppy said politely. “This is my friend Mickey Mantle.”
“Hiya cookie.” Mickey winked.
The matron reddened indignantly.
Puppy shrugged helplessly. “That’s why I’m here. He wandered off and I’m trying to get him back to where he belongs.” Puppy whispered, “I think it’s a hospital.”
“Hey, I’m dead, not deaf,” Mickey barked.
The matron cleared her throat authoritatively. “Can I see your Lifecard, Mr. Mantle?”
Mickey looked at Puppy, who said, “Lifecard. Identification.”
Mantle patted his dirty pants. “I ain’t got one.”
“He doesn’t have one,” Puppy said.
“I am not deaf, either, sir.” The matron smiled. “Where were you living, sir?”
“In Dallas Memorial Hospital. Texas. Where I died.”
The matron’s smile tightened. “When was that?”
Mantle looked up thoughtfully. “Must’ve been 1995.”
She exchanged a worried glance with Puppy.
“Do you know what year it is, sir?”
“How the hell would I know?”
“He’s been dead,” Puppy threw that in.
“So he said.” The woman frowned. “It’s 2098.”
“No shit?” Mickey took that pretty calmly. “No wonder I feel so rested.”
The matron turned to Puppy. “Where did you meet Mr. Mantle?”
“On his floor,” Mick grumbled. “Must be some elevator to Heaven.”
Puppy leaned forward. “Him. Where.”
The woman blinked at Puppy’s shorthand, smiling a different way now. “Home.”
“DV.”
She nodded. Puppy glanced at Mantle, leering at a busty teenage girl.
“Just sign here, sir.”
Puppy hesitated longer than he should’ve. They sat on a long wooden bench, waiting for the processing and sipping lemonade. A couple of kids skateboarded past.
“They’ll take good care of you in the Facility.”
Mantle frowned. “I ain’t staying with you?”
“I’m not allowed. You don’t have any ID.”
“Because I’m dead.”
“These are the laws.”
“If I wasn’t supposed to stay with you, then why the hell did I end up on your floor?”
Good question, Puppy didn’t ask himself.
2
Busily scribbling on their pads,
