'The dead don't need a ride. They can appear when they want, where they want. They walk through air. They fly.'
'All I'm saying is, if you tell me some dead person was sitting in my car, I'll waste a whole day scrubbing the upholstery. It creeps me out.'
'What if it's Elvis?'
'That's different.' She finished her dill pickle. 'How was Rosalia this morning?' she asked, meaning Rosalia Sanchez, my landlady.
'Visible,' I said.
'Good for her.'
SEVEN
GREEN MOON MALL STANDS ALONG GREEN MOON ROAD, between old-town Pico Mundo and its modern western neighborhoods. The huge structure, with walls the color of sand, had been designed to suggest humble adobe construction, as though it were a home built by a family of gigantic Native Americans averaging forty feet in height.
In spite of this curious attempt at environmentally harmonious but deeply illogical architecture, patrons of the mall can still be Star-bucked, Gapped, Donna Karaned, and Crate amp; Barreled as easily in Pico Mundo as in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, or Miami.
In a corner of the vast parking lot, remote from the mall, stands Tire World. Here the architecture is more playful.
The single-story building supports a tower crowned by a giant globe. This model of Earth, rotating lazily, seems to represent a world of peace and innocence lost when the snake entered Eden.
Like Saturn, this planet sports a ring, not of ice crystals and rocks and dust but of rubber. Encircling the globe is a tire that both rotates and oscillates.
Five service bays ensure that customers will not wait long to have new tires installed. The technicians wear crisp uniforms. They are polite. They smile easily. They seem happy-Car batteries can be purchased here, as well, and oil changes are offered. Tires, however, remain the soul of the operation.
The showroom is saturated with the enchanting scent of rubber waiting for the road.
That Tuesday afternoon, I wandered the aisles for ten or fifteen minutes, undisturbed. Some employees said hello to me, but none tried to sell me anything.
I visit from time to time, and they know that I am interested in the tire life.
The owner of Tire World is Mr. Joseph Mangione. He is the father of Anthony Mangione, who was a friend of mine in high school.
Anthony attends UCLA. He hopes to have a career in medicine.
Mr. Mangione is proud that his boy will be a doctor, but he is disappointed, as well, that Anthony has no interest in the family business. He would welcome me to the payroll and would no doubt treat me as a surrogate son.
Here, tires are available for cars, SUVs, trucks, motorcycles. The sizes and degrees of quality are many; but once the inventory is memorized, no stress would be associated with any job at Tire World.
That Tuesday, I had no intention of resigning my spatula at the Pico Mundo Grille anytime soon, although short-order cooking can be stressful when the tables are full, tickets are backed up on the order rail, and your head is buzzing with diner lingo. On those days that also feature an unusual number of encounters with the dead, in addition to a bustling breakfast and lunch trade, my stomach sours and I know that I am courting not merely burnout but also early-onset gastrointestinal reflux disease.
At times like that, the tire life seems to be a refuge almost as serene as a monastery.
However, even Mr. Mangione's rubber-scented corner of paradise was haunted. One ghost stubbornly inhabited the showroom.
Tom Jedd, a well-regarded local stonemason, had died eight months previous. His car careened off Panorama Road after midnight, broke through rotted guardrails, tumbled down a rocky hundred- foot embankment, and sank in Malo Suerte Lake.
Three fishermen had been in a boat, sixty yards offshore, when Tom went swimming in his PT Cruiser. They called the cops on a cell phone, but emergency-rescue services arrived too late to save him.
Tom's left arm had been severed in the crash. The county coroner declared himself undecided as to whether Tom had bled to death or drowned first.
Since then, the poor guy had been moping around Tire World. I didn't know why. His accident had not been caused by a defective tire.
He'd been drinking at a roadhouse called Country Cousin. The autopsy cited a blood-alcohol level of 1.18, well over the legal limit. He either lost control of the vehicle due to inebriation or he fell asleep at the wheel.
Each time I visited the showroom to stroll the aisles and mull a career change, Tom realized that I saw him, and he acknowledged me with a look or a nod. Once he even winked at me, conspiratorially.
He had not, however, made any attempt to communicate either his purpose or his needs. He was a reticent ghost.
Some days I wish more of them were like him.
He had died in a parrot-patterned Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts, and white sneakers worn without socks. He always appeared in those clothes when he roamed Tire World.
Sometimes he was dry, but at other times he appeared to be soaked, as if he'd just walked out of Malo Suerte Lake. Usually he had both arms, but occasionally his left arm was missing.
You can tell a lot about a dead person's state of mind by the condition in which he manifests. When dry, Tom Jedd seemed to be resigned to his fate if not fully at peace with it. When wet, he looked angry or distressed, or sullen.
On this occasion, he was dry. His hair had been combed. He appeared to be relaxed.
Tom had both arms this time, but the left wasn't attached to his shoulder. He carried his left arm in his right hand, casually, as though it were a golf club, gripping it by the biceps.
This grotesque behavior did not include gore. Fortunately, I had never seen him bloody, perhaps because he was squeamish or because he remained in denial that he had bled to death.
Twice, when he knew that I was looking, he used his severed arm as a back scratcher. He clawed between his shoulder blades with the stiff fingers of that detached limb.
As a rule, ghosts are serious about their condition and solemn in their demeanor. They belong on the Other Side but are stuck here, for whatever reasons, and they are impatient to move on.
Once in a while, however, I encounter a spirit with his sense of humor intact. For my amusement, Tom even conspired to pick his nose with the forefinger of his severed arm.
I prefer ghosts to be somber. There's something about a walking dead man trying to get a laugh that chills me, perhaps because it suggests that even postmortem we have a pathetic need to be liked-as well as the sad capacity to humiliate ourselves.
If Tom Jedd had been in less of a jokey mood, I might have lingered longer at Tire World. His shtick disturbed me, as did his twinkly-eyed smile.
As I walked to Terri's Mustang, Tom stood at a showroom window, vigorously and clownishly waving good-bye with his severed arm.
I drove across sun-scorched acres of parking lot and found a space for the
