The Living Dead

grueling work, which would test them body and soul, they would be paid in cash, a sum so colossal he dare not say the number aloud, he could only show it. He held aloft a dollar bill, and there was more laughter. Then Tom Savini, up on the second floor, leaned over the railing, and shouted, 'Don't laugh, that's more than most of us are getting paid to work on this turkey.'

'Lots of people are in this film as a labor of love,' George Romero said. 'Tom is in it because he likes squirting pus on people.' Some in the crowd moaned. 'Fake pus! Fake pus!' Romero cried.

'You hope it was fake pus,' Savini intoned from somewhere above, but he was already moving away from the railing, out of sight.

More laughter. Bobby knew a thing or two about comic patter, and had a suspicion that this bit of the speech was rehearsed, and had been issued just this way, more than once.

Romero talked for a while about the plot. The recently dead were coming back to life; they liked to eat people; in the face of the crisis the government had collapsed; four young heroes had sought shelter in this mall. Bobby's attention wandered, and he found himself looking down at the other Bobby, at Harriet's boy. Little Bob had a long, solemn face, dark chocolate eyes and lots of thick black hair, limp and disheveled. In fact, the kid bore a passing resemblance to Bobby himself, who also had brown eyes, a slim face, and a thick untidy mass of black hair on his head.

Bobby wondered if Dean looked like him. The thought made his blood race strangely. What if Dean dropped in to see how Harriet and little Bobby were doing, and the man turned out to be his exact twin? The thought was so alarming it made him feel briefly weak—but then he remembered he was made-up like a corpse, blue-face, scalp wound. Even if they looked exactly alike they wouldn't look anything alike.

Romero delivered some final instructions on how to walk like a zombie—he demonstrated by allowing his eyes to roll back in his head and his face to go slack—and then promised they'd be ready to roll on the first shot in a few minutes.

Harriet pivoted on her heel, turned to face him, her fist on her hip, eyelids fluttering theatrically. He turned at the same time, and they almost bumped into each other. She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. They were standing too close to each other, and the unexpected physical proximity seemed to throw her. He didn't know what to say either, all thought suddenly wiped from his mind. She laughed, and shook her head, a reaction that struck him as artificial, an expression of anxiety, not happiness.

'Let's set, pardner,' she said. He remembered that when a skit wasn't going well, and she got rattled, she sometimes slipped into a big drawling John Wayne impersonation on stage, a nervous habit he had hated then and that he found, in this moment, endearing.

'Are we going to have something to do soon?' little Bob asked.

'Soon,' she said. 'Why don't you practice being a zombie? Go on, lurch around for a while.'

Bobby and Harriet sat down at the edge of the fountain again. Her hands were small, bony fists on her thighs. She stared into her lap, her eyes blank, gaze directed inward. She was digging the toes of one bare foot into the toes of the other again.

He spoke. One of them had to say something.

'I can't believe you're married and you have a kid!' he said, in the same tone of happy astonishment he reserved for friends who had just told him they had been cast in a part he himself had auditioned for. 'I love this kid you're dragging around with you. He's so cute. But then, who can resist a little kid who looks half-rotted?'

She seemed to come back from wherever she had been, smiled at him—almost shyly.

He went on, 'And you better be ready to tell me everything about this Dean guy.'

'He's coming by later. He's going to take us out to lunch. You should come.'

'That could be fun!' Bobby cried, and made a mental note to take his enthusiasm down a notch.

'He can be really shy the first time he meets someone, so don't expect too much.'

Bobby waved a hand in the air: pish-posh. 'It's going to be great. We'll have lots to talk about. I've always been fascinated with lumber yards and—plywood.'

This was taking a chance, joshing her about the husband he didn't know. But she smirked and said:

'Everything you ever wanted to know about two-by-fours but were afraid to ask.'

And for a moment they were both smiling, a little foolishly, knees almost touching. They had never really figured out how to talk to each other. They were always half-on-stage, trying to use whatever the other person said to set up the next punch-line. That much, anyway, hadn't changed.

'God I can't believe running into you here,' she said. 'I've wondered about you. I've thought about you a lot.'

'You have?'

'I figured you'd be famous by now,' she said.

'Hey, that makes two of us,' Bobby said, and winked. Immediately he wished he could take the wink back. It was fake and he didn't want to be fake with her. He hurried on, answering a question she hadn't asked. 'I'm settling in. Been back for three months. I'm staying with my parents for a while, kind of readapting to Monroeville.'

She nodded, still regarding him steadily, with a seriousness that made him uncomfortable. 'How's it going?'

'I'm making a life,' Bobby lied.

In between set-ups, Bobby and Harriet and little Bob told stories about how they had died.

'I was a comedian in New York City,' Bobby said, fingering his scalp wound. 'Something tragic happened when I went on stage.'

'Yeah,' Harriet said. 'Your act.'

'Something that had never happened before.'

'What, people laughed?'

'I was my usual brilliant self. People were rolling on the floor.'

'Convulsions of agony.'

'And then as I was taking my final bow—a terrible accident. A stagehand up in the rafters dropped a forty pound sandbag right on my head. But at least I died to the sound of applause.'

'They were applauding the stagehand,' Harriet said.

The little boy looked seriously up into Bobby's face, and took his hand. 'I'm sorry you got hit in the head.' His lips grazed Bobby's knuckles with a dry kiss.

Bobby stared down at him. His hand tingled where little Bob's mouth had touched it.

'He's always been the kissiest, huggiest kid you ever met,' Harriet said. 'He's got all this pent-up affection. At the slightest sign of weakness he's ready to slobber on you.' As she said this she ruffled little Bobby's hair. 'What killed you, squirt?'

He held up his hand, waggled his stumps. 'My fingers got cut off on Dad's table-saw and I bled to death.'

Harriet went on smiling but her eyes seemed to film over slightly. She fished around in her pocket and found a quarter. 'Go get a gumball, bud.'

He snatched it and ran.

'People must think we're the most careless parents,' she said, staring expressionlessly after her son. 'But it was no one's fault about his fingers.'

'I'm sure.'

'The table saw was unplugged and he wasn't even two. He never plugged anything in before. We didn't know he knew how. Dean was right there with him. It just happened so fast. Do you know how many things had to go wrong, all at the same time for that to happen? Dean thinks the sound of the saw coming on scared him and he reached up to try and shut it off. He thought he'd be in trouble.' She was briefly silent, watching her son work the gumball machine, then said, 'I always thought about my kid—this is the one part of my life I'm going to get right. No indiscriminate fuck-ups about this. I was planning how when he was fifteen he'd make love to the most beautiful girl in school. How'd he be able to play five instruments and he'd blow everyone away with all his talent. How'd he be the funny kid who seems to know everyone.' She paused again, and then added, 'He'll be the funny kid now. The funny kid always has something wrong with him. That's why he's funny—to shift people's attention to something else.'

In the silence that followed this statement, Bobby had several thoughts in rapid succession. The first was