'Do you want to split a dessert?' She asked.
I wondered if I had imagined that quick, furtive glance. Probably. 'You go ahead and get one, I'm pretty full.' I put my fork down, my blackened salmon hardly touched.
When I got home I sat at the kitchen table and wrote a $3000 check to the World Hunger Fund. I usually sent them $50 or so. Three grand hurt, but I could afford it. Looking up, I was startled by a face staring in through the kitchen window. Her face. Until now she'd stood facing the windowless front door. Evidently she could learn. She stared, unblinking. She never blinked—I guess I'd noticed, but it hadn't fully registered till now.
As I worked the check into an envelope I found myself holding it so my corpse could see it. I wondered, was the little girl still in there, aware of where she was and what was happening, or was she just an empty shell?
I tore up the check and wrote another, for $10,000. That much I could not easily afford. I walked it to the mailbox. It was a beautiful night; the moon was full, the crickets and cicadas deafening. Two houses down and across the street, the corpse of a tall, scrawny black man squatted, peering with one eye through the lighted crack of a drawn shade. My corpse came around the house, pushing through the waist-high grass and native weeds (another testament to my green sensitivities, another reason why this corpse was a mistake), and met me on the way back. She followed me to the front door. I closed it in her face.
I got up early the next morning after a mostly sleepless night. I pulled up the shade, and there was her little round face. She was just tall enough for her nose to be above the bottom of the window frame.
'Shit.' I thumped my forehead on the molding, fought back a hitching sob. I had really hoped I could buy her off.
'Get the hell away from me!' I shouted through the closed window before yanking the shade back down.
While I showered I pictured my corpse waiting patiently outside the window. Why couldn't it have been a man—an old man with no teeth? Fall semester loomed. My first class was in five days. I couldn't imagine teaching with a corpse staring at me.
None of the students had corpses, so mine was the only one in my 10 a.m. class. The students politely avoided looking at her, even though she stood barely three feet in front of me, her head craned to stare up at my face as I went over the syllabus.
My hands shook from exhaustion and nerves as I held the syllabus. I'd been a wreck the night before, had four or five drinks to staunch my anxiety, took forever to figure out what I would wear. I debated whether to dress down—a t-shirt and jeans—to demonstrate that I was just a regular guy, that I lived simply and didn't really deserve a corpse. But would the students see through me, think I was being pretentious? I'd finally pulled out a pair of black jeans and my white shirt, the shirt I'd been wearing the day my corpse had shown up, actually. Smart casual, the sort of outfit I usually wore.
Things got worse as I started to lecture. I tend to pace back and forth as I talk, and as I did she shadowed me, taking two small, lurching steps for every one of mine. The scuff of her little feet on the linoleum floor set my teeth on edge. Bare feet scuffing on dirty floors made me nuts, the way some people go nuts at the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard, or the feel of cotton balls. I stopped pacing.
I kept losing my train of thought, stumbling over words. I made eye contact with one of my new students; she quickly looked down, pretending to take notes, though I hadn't said anything important. I was barely saying anything coherent, let alone important.
Without realizing it I found myself looking right at my corpse, as if I were lecturing to her. She stared back. I forced myself to look away, at the blank white wall in the back of the room, realized I was pacing again, and she was pacing with me—scuff-
I let the class out early and headed to my office in a fog—exhausted, hung over, wondering how I could possibly make it through my one o'clock class. She did her best to keep up—I could hear the scuffing behind me.
A surge of anger tore through me and I wheeled, pointed at her, opened my mouth to speak. Her gaze flickered to my chest for a split second, then back up. This time I'd seen it, there was no doubt. Her eyes had dropped and almost—not quite, but
'I saw that!' I said, stabbing my finger at her. I was in the hall outside my office, confronting a corpse. Jack popped his bald head out of his office, took in the scene, pulled his head back inside.
Embarrassed, I wheeled and headed into my office, leaving the door ajar, allowing her to follow. I stared down at her.
'Tell me what I did!' I shouted, leaning down and pushing my face close to hers. 'I'm a good person! I don't deserve this!' I wanted her to focus, to look at me, to listen to what I was saying. I saw the little pinkish-grey dollop dangling from the back of her throat. Below that, darkness.
I yanked the onyx Buddha statue off my desk and hurled it over her head. It crashed into a bookshelf, shattering a framed picture of Yankee Stadium, scattering a half-dozen textbooks.
'Jesus! sYou okay?' Jack called. I hefted my computer monitor over my head and slammed it to the floor at her feet. It split partway, popping and sparking. Then Jack was on me; I hadn't seen him come in, but he was behind me and had his arms wrapped around my chest.
'Calm down, calm down!' he shouted.
I struggled, tried to yank free. I'm not sure what I would have done if I'd gotten free. I truly hope I wouldn't have brought the computer console down on her head. I gave a final, violent tug. My shirt ripped loudly.
'Shhhh, shhhh,' Jack said into my ear. 'You're okay, it's okay, shhhh.' I started to cry. Jack held on until he felt me relax, then loosened his grip, kept his arms around me for a moment longer, let me go.
Jack and I didn't know each other very well; it added to the surreal feel as I stood in my demolished office, crying. Through a blur of tears I saw a button lying on the floor by my corpse's foot. In a daze I knelt and picked it up. It was her button—grey, with veins of teal. Unmistakable. How had it gotten out of her pocket?
'I think the shirt's a total loss,' Jack said behind me a little sheepishly. I looked down at my shirt. There was a long tear along the seam under the arm, and the front was flapped open—three or four buttons had popped off.
I guess you never look at the buttons on a shirt, even if you button them a thousand times. The buttons on my white shirt were gunmetal grey, with veins of teal. Quite unique. They weren't as bright and new as my corpse's button, because they'd taken a few turns in the dryer.
Gently I lifted her hand and turned it over, ran my finger over her tiny palm, over the pads of her baby fingers. Rough. Not the fingers of a child who spent much time playing hopscotch.
'Is everyone all right?' Maggie, from down at the end of the hall, stood in my doorway. Behind her two more of my colleagues craned their necks, trying to see what was happening. There was rarely excitement in our department; maybe an irate student once in a while, but never shattered glass or exploding computer monitors.
'Everything's fine,' Jack said. He was a good guy, I realized. I was still down on my knees, staring at the button, my eyes red and tear-stained. The crowd dispersed, trailed by two corpses.
Jack squatted, put his arm around my shoulder. 'You okay now?'
I nodded.
'I'm not gonna say I understand how you feel, but it must be awful.'
I nodded.
'If you ever want to talk, just knock.'
I nodded a third time. He patted my back and left.
It was nearly time for my one o'clock class. I kept a sweater in the bottom drawer of my desk for days when the a/c was cranked too high. I pulled the sweater over the ruined shirt, and, as my head popped through, I thought I caught my corpse glancing down at the button lying at her feet.
I stooped and retrieved the button, slipped it into her pocket, next to the other, shinier one.
I went around the corner to the bathroom, held the door open for my corpse when it started to swing shut on her. I washed my face and combed my hair, her watchful eyes reflected in the mirror.
I yanked a couple of paper towels from the dispenser, wet them under the faucet, knelt and wiped the worst of the dirt from my corpse's chubby cheeks and forehead. I tried to comb some of the debris out of her hair, but it
