The Living Dead

of a steam engine, jamming his feet down on the rails to try to brake the train, smoke boiling up from his heels, feet swelling, glowing red.

'Oh you prick,' she said.

'I'm sorry!' he grinned, holding his hands palms-up in front of him. 'Kidding, kidding. Funny Bobby, you know. I can't help myself.' She hesitated—had been about to turn away—not sure whether she should believe him or not. Bobby wiped his mouth with the palm of his hand. 'So we know what you do to make Dean laugh. What's he do to make you laugh? Oh that's right, he isn't funny. Well what's he do to make your heart race? Besides kiss you with his dentures out?'

'Leave me alone, Bobby,' she said. She turned away, but he came around to get back in front of her, keep her from walking off.

'No.'

'Stop.'

'Can't,' he said, and suddenly he understood he was angry with her. 'If he isn't funny he must be something. I need to know what.'

'Patient,' she said.

'Patient,' Bobby repeated. It stunned him—that this could be her answer.

'With me.'

'With you,' he said.

'With Robert.'

'Patient,' Bobby said. Then he couldn't say anything more for a moment because he was out-of-breath. He felt suddenly that his makeup was itching on his face. He wished that when he started to press she had just walked away from him, or told him to fuck off, or hit him even, wished she had responded with anything but patient. He swallowed. 'That's not good enough.' Knowing he couldn't stop now, the train was going into the canyon, Wile E. Coyote's eyes bugging three feet out of his head in terror. 'I wanted to meet whoever you were with and feel sick with jealousy, but instead I just feel sick. I wanted you to fall in love with someone good-looking and creative and brilliant, a novelist, a playwright, someone with a sense of humor and a fourteen-inch dong. Not a guy with a buzz cut and a lumber yard, who thinks erotic massage involves a tube of Ben Gay.'

She smeared at the tears dribbling down her face with the backs of her hands. 'I knew you'd hate him, but I didn't think you'd be mean.'

'It's not that I hate him. What's to hate? He's not doing anything any other guy in his position wouldn't do. If I was two feet tall and geriatric, I'd leap at the chance to have a piece of ass like you. You bet he's patient. He better be. He ought to be down on his fucking knees every night, bathing your feet in sacramental oils, that you'd give him the time of day.'

'You had your chance,' she said. She was struggling not to let her crying slip out of control. The muscles in her face quivered with the effort, pulling her expression into a grimace.

'It's not about what chances I had. It's about what chances you had.'

This time when she pivoted away from him, he let her go. She put her hands over her face. Her shoulders were jerking and she was making choked little sounds as she went. He watched her walk to the wall around the fountain where they had met earlier in the day. Then he remembered the boy and turned to look, his heart drumming hard, wondering what little Bobby might've seen or heard. But the kid was running down the broad concourse, kicking the spleen in front of him, which had now collected a mass of dust bunnies around it. Two other dead children were trying to kick it away from him.

Bobby watched them play for a while. A pass went wide, and the spleen skidded past him. He put a foot on it to stop it. It flexed unpleasantly beneath the sole of his shoe. The boys stopped three yards off, stood there breathing hard, awaiting him. He scooped it up.

'Go out,' he said, and lobbed it to little Bobby, who made a basket catch and hauled away with his head down and the other kids in pursuit.

When he turned to peek at Harriet he saw her watching him, her palms pressed hard against her knees. He waited for her to look away, but she didn't, and finally he took her steady gaze as an invitation to approach.

He crossed to the fountain, sat down beside her. He was still working out how to begin his apology, when she spoke.

'I wrote you. You stopped writing back,' she said. Her bare feet were wrestling with each other again.

'I hate how overbearing your right foot is,' he said. 'Why can't it give the left foot a little space?' But she wasn't listening to him.

'It didn't matter,' she said. Her voice was congested and hoarse. The makeup was oil-based, and in spite of her tears, hadn't streaked. 'I wasn't mad. I knew we couldn't have a relationship, just seeing each other when you came home for Christmas.' She swallowed thickly. 'I really thought someone would put you in their sitcom. Every time I thought about that—about seeing you on TV, and hearing people laugh when you said things—I'd get this big stupid smile on my face. I could float through a whole afternoon thinking about it. I don't understand what in the world could've made you come back to Monroeville.'

But he had already said what in the world drew him back to his parents and his bedroom over the garage. Dean had asked in the diner, and Bobby had answered him truthfully.

One Thursday night, only last spring, he had gone on early in a club in the Village. He did his twenty minutes, earned a steady if-not-precisely-overwhelming murmur of laughter, and a spatter of applause when he came off. He found a place at the bar to hear some of the other acts. He was just about to slide off his stool and go home when Robin Williams leaped on stage. He was in town for SNL, cruising the clubs, testing material. Bobby quickly shifted his weight back onto his stool and sat listening, his pulse thudding heavily in his throat.

He couldn't explain to Harriet the import of what he had seen then. Bobby saw a man clutching the edge of a table with one hand, his date's thigh with the other, grabbing both so hard his knuckles were drained of all color. He was bent over with tears dripping off his face, and his laughter was high and shrill and convulsive, more animal than human, the sound of a dingo or something. He was shaking his head from side to side and waving a hand in the air, stop, please, don't do this to me. It was hilarity to the point of distress.

Robin Williams saw the desperate man, broke away from a discourse on jerking off, pointed at him and shouted, 'You! Yes, you, frantic hyena-man! You get a free pass to every show I do for the rest of my motherfucking life!' And then there was a sound rising in the crowd, more than laughter or applause, although it included both. It was a low, thunderous rumble of uncontained delight, a sound so immense it was felt as much as heard, a thing that caused the bones in Bobby's chest to hum.

Bobby himself didn't laugh once, and when he left his stomach was churning. His feet fell strangely, heavily against the sidewalk, and for some time he did not know his way home. When at last he was in his apartment, he sat on the edge of his bed, his suspenders pulled off, and his shirt unbuttoned, and for the first time felt things were hopeless.

He saw something flash in Harriet's hand. She was jiggling some quarters.

'Going to call someone?' he asked.

'Dean,' she said. 'For a ride.'

'Don't.'

'I'm not staying. I can't stay.'

He watched her tormented feet, toes struggling together, and finally nodded. They stood at the same time. They were, once again, standing uncomfortably close.

'See you then,' she said.

'See you,' he said. He wanted to reach for her hand, but didn't, wanted to say something, but couldn't think what.

'Are there a couple people around here who want to volunteer to get shot?' George Romero asked, from less than three feet away. 'It's a guaranteed close-up in the finished film.'

Bobby and Harriet put their hands up at the same time.

'Me,' Bobby said.

'Me,' said Harriet, stepping on Bobby's foot as she moved forward to get George Romero's attention. 'Me!'