Dating Dead Men (3 page)

Excuse me, I wanted to say, I'm dealing with phantom corpses, so you just wait your turn. But I didn't. I hung up, stuck with the creepy feeling I'd had all day. Walking back to the veranda, I snuck a look at the alleged Mr. Mafia, a sixty-something man in a gorgeous suit, smoking a pipe. He returned my look openly. I know, his eyes seemed to say, murder is hell.

Back at my table, Dave picked up where he'd left off on his travelogue with chaos, a mathematical theory explaining behavior that seems to be random but turns out not to be.

This was my favorite part, hearing what the Dating Project guys did for a living. On previous dates I'd learned about: perchloroethylene, a cancer-causing chemical used by dry cleaners; the air-conditioning system at L.A. Community College; weightlifting; divorce settlements; zoning laws; the Talmud; how copper conducts heat; and how Pizarro conquered Peru. Now I learned that randomness and chaos are not the same thing: while random is random, chaos is not. If you can find the pattern in chaos you can change it. I loved that.

I was mentally composing my journal entry on Dave—“not a people person”—when he reached across the table and stroked my wrist. His fingernails were buffed.

“You have really soft skin,” he said. “Goose bumps, though. Are you cold?”

Seven minutes to go, I thought. Four hundred twenty seconds. “I'm fine.”

“My apartment is warm.” He smiled as if he were trying out a new set of teeth.

This was the worst part of dating, maybe for everyone, but certainly for me. In addition to the two-hour minimum, Dr. Cookie had spelled out official standards of behavior: no crying jags or sitting in stony silence or running screaming into the night. No assault, no bringing a book. Mindful of all this, I mustered up a simple “No, thank you, Dave.”

“Come on, Woollie. Your place is far away, it'll be so late by the time we get there.”

“It's ‘Wollie,'” I said. “And it'll be later if we go to your house first.” I began to calculate how much driving I had ahead of me, to Rio Pescado, then saw he was still smiling, waiting for an answer. But what was the question? Oh, yes.

“I can't stay over,” I said. “I can't sleep with you.”

His smile faded. “Why not?”

“I don't want to.”

Dave looked around impatiently and snapped his fingers. “Check.”

“He's not our waiter,” I said. “That's Christian. Ours is Jonathan.”

“Who cares?”

I ended up taking a cab home. Dave paid half.

         

M
Y
VW
R
ABBIT
zoomed up the 101 north, past the Denny's, McDonald's, and International House of Pancakes of Woodland Hills, Westlake Village, Thousand Oaks. I drove without the radio, a habit left over from the days when a trip to Rio Pescado made me nervous to the point of nausea. I thought about how it was now more fun to go to the mental hospital than it was to go on a date, and I wondered if that was progress.

I'd dressed haphazardly, in the interest of speed and warmth: my long calico skirt from earlier in the day, heavy wool socks over my tights, red high-top Converse All Stars, gray hooded sweatshirt, jean jacket. Nothing matched and it didn't matter. It's hard to dress wrong for the hospital. On the seat next to me were seventy-five square feet of Reynolds Wrap quality aluminum foil. In my jacket pocket was a Regency romance,
Sylvester, or The Wicked Uncle
. A useful thing to know about mental illness, which you won't find in pamphlets or medical textbooks like the
DSM-IV,
is how much time is spent, by everyone involved, waiting at hospitals, pharmacies, police stations, or on hold, which is why it's important to carry reading material at all times, or a portable hobby, like needlepoint or whittling.

After forty minutes the terrain changed dramatically. Flat, complaisant communities gave way to a sweeping vista as the freeway snaked around canyon curves high above the valley floor. I took the Pleasant Valley exit.

Entering the little town at midnight was disorienting, like spotting the cleaning lady at an after-hours club. But I made the drive to the hospital most Thursdays at noon, so it didn't take long for my internal compass to kick in. My Rabbit bounced along past the corn and onion fields till the Deer Crossing sign reminded me to slow down.

And so, when the shape loomed in the road ahead, there was plenty of time to imagine what else it might be, must be, other than the thing it was, until I'd come to a gradual, disbelieving stop.

I kept the motor running and covered my wide-open eyes with my hands like that would make it go away. I reached over to lock the doors in the Rabbit, even though they were already locked. And I told myself that the thing in front of the car wasn't what it appeared to be. Finally, reason rolled in like the tide. With all the things that existed only in my brother's head, this one also existed in the real world.

Dead body. Cadaver. Corpse.

chapter three

P
.B.,
I thought, and stopped breathing.

My eyes focused. My headlights showed a head of dark hair on the body in the road. P.B. is as blond as I am. Relief hit, then fear—I could not leave my car to make sure that body was dead, or save its life if it wasn't. I'm not a brave person.

“Brave shmave,” said a voice inside me. Ruta's. “How do you know that's a corpse? What if it's a person trying to get to a hospital, taking a rest along the way, maybe having a small coma? You find out. You, who used to be a Girl Scout.”

A conscience is a dreadful thing. I tried to recall ways to tell if people are dead, short of feeling around for a pulse, something I find tricky even on myself. There was the sticking-someone-with-a-pin method. I looked around. On the sun visor was a No on Proposition 29 button, but it seemed like adding insult to injury, stabbing someone who was already clearly unwell, and with an old political button. And if a person was unconscious, would he respond to jabs? Oh! Mirrors. You held a mirror to someone's lips, right?—or nose—and if it fogged, he was breathing. Of course, that would mean looking at a face, which might be okay if the face was alive, but not okay if it was dead.

“Enough wasting time. Go save a life maybe,” Ruta's voice said.

Armed with a cigar-sized flashlight and a Cover Girl mirror compact, I made a sign of the cross and got out of the car, leaving the door open and the headlights on.

He was faceup, wasn't moving, and didn't look comfortable. Ten feet separated us, and I focused on his clothes as I advanced. Dark shoes, gray sweatpants, an ancient-looking sweatshirt the color of, well, blood. With letters on it. MIT.

“Buddy,” I said, to get his attention, but it came out a whisper. I couldn't look at his face. I sniffed the air; I'm not sure what I was sniffing for, but there was a courtroom set up in my head, and I was rehearsing the possibility of “Your honor, he smelled dead, I didn't need to go any further.” But the air smelled like night in the countryside, and whatever death smelled like, it probably wasn't this.

I focused my little flashlight on the body part closest to me, a leg. Exposed between dark socks and the gray fleece of sweatpants was some four inches of hairy male flesh. That's what I touched, the fleshy part of the calf. With my index finger.

It was as cold and firm as a naked turkey sitting in the refrigerator Thanksgiving morning. Waiting to be stuffed.

I pulled back. The imprint of my finger stayed on the leg, white against the surrounding skin. I stared at it, transfixed, then stood, stumbled back to the car, got in, slammed the door, put it in reverse, backed up twenty yards, and stopped.

I was shaking. The body wasn't P.B., but it was somebody, somebody most likely loved by other people, people whose world was now about to change. I was glad it wasn't my world, my brother, and I felt guilty about feeling that way, and I felt sad for the man in the road and people who loved him. I was at a loss about what to do next.

I could drive to a gas station, call the hospital, and say there was a body in their driveway. But that would be leaving the scene of a crime. If it was a crime. What if the man had simply dropped dead on the road to Rio Pescado? That was no crime. But my driving away from it might be. Unless I was driving away to report it to the police.

Police.

Police would want to know what I was doing there in the middle of the night and that would lead to P.B. And his arrest record. And—

P.B.

How had my brother known there was a corpse in the road? P.B. was stuck on the old surgical ward, recovering from a broken foot. Wasn't he?

I had to find out, make sure he was safe, and talk to him before I talked to the police, if I talked to the police at all, which, now that I thought about it, was a terrible idea. And I shouldn't have touched the dead man. What if they found my fingerprint on his calf muscle? I put the car in gear and inched ahead, scared now of veering into the ditch in my effort not to drive over the poor man.

I headed for the Administration Building in slow motion, hands at ten and two o'clock, concentrating as though taking a driving test. I heard myself talking, saying, “You're okay, you're okay, you're okay.”

The empty parking lot was well lit, but some instinct made me drive around the corner of the building and park in the dark.

I walked into Administration, and over to the glass-enclosed security office. Nobody there. Through the window I could see signs of a Carl's Jr. dinner in progress. I glanced toward a door leading to the hallway. When people aren't where they're supposed to be, I assume they're in the bathroom. A glass door led to a courtyard, and beyond that I could see my destination, the building known as RT, for Rehab/Treatment. I tried the door. Locked.

I went to the hallway and tried that door. Unlocked. I hesitated. In the past, I'd been buzzed through, so clearly I wasn't supposed to be wandering down there. Not that I wanted to. It was pitch-black. A jangle of keys behind me scared me into a decision. I stepped forward, closed the door, and faced darkness.

Dr. Charlie's office was here somewhere, and if memory served, some back way we'd taken to visit P.B. in RT, where they'd brought him after his foot surgery at a local hospital. I walked toward a red exit sign, hands in front of me, heart thumping, certain that every dark office I passed harbored someone who would jump out and do some nameless, dreadful thing to me. Mercifully, the exit was unlocked and suddenly I was in a garden of night-blooming jasmine, with the sound of crickets and a three-quarter moon above. Ahead was the RT building.

Open.

A single light pointed the way to the elevator, but they weren't frittering away funds on extra watts. No need to worry about surveillance cameras, either, in the hallways or elevators—Rio Pescado, Dr. Charlie once told me, had a smaller security budget than the average 7-Eleven. I pressed the up button. The rest of the building was older than the elevator, brown linoleum and green walls, bringing to mind my old elementary school. The stillness unnerved me.

I remembered Dr. Charlie telling me that back when the hospital had been a full-service operation the basement had been a morgue.

The elevator went
ping!
and I jumped.

The elevator interior was huge, big enough for a gurney, a gruesome image somehow, but at this point, what wasn't? On the second floor I crept past an empty nurses' station to P.B.'s room.

Moonlight illuminated two beds. P.B.'s was by the window, and a curtain separated him from his roommate. The roommate didn't seem murderous, hooked up to an IV tube, pushing ninety, and wearing a hospital gown. P.B., in seersucker pajamas, slept soundly. His blond baby-fine hair, identical to mine, was damp. Night sweats. The clean-shaven face looked closer to sixteen than thirty-three. I could see the altar boy he'd been at ten. Whatever demons had tormented him all day had the night off.

I considered waking him. The odds of getting coherent information without rousing his roommate, the rest of the ward, and whatever staff was nearby were not good, and a midnight visit, irregular at best, would be construed as suspicious once that body on the road was discovered. Knowing P.B. was safe would have to do for now.

I set the aluminum foil on the nightstand, moving aside his Chap Stick and an action-adventure comic book. I kissed my brother on the forehead, touched his pajama collar, and crept out.

The hallway was empty, but the elevator was not. Inside was a gurney. Empty.

Next to the gurney stood a man.

I froze.

In addition to a white lab coat he wore a green scrub suit, complete with paper hair cover and shoe covers. Only his face was exposed, a Mediterranean-looking face, with dark eyes and darker eyebrows and the beginning of a beard. Just my type, I thought, surprising myself, and felt a wave of desire so inappropriate I chalked it up to post-traumatic stress syndrome.

He didn't ask what I was doing there at that hour. He didn't say a word. I stayed frozen until the elevator began to close, then I snapped out of it and came aboard. He held the door-open button.

I started to say thank you, then stopped. Opening my mouth could activate my honesty compulsion, especially potent around authority figures such as doctors. Already I had an impulse to grab him and say, “I've just seen a dead body.” Instead, I pressed 1, and lowered my head so he wouldn't get a good look at my face. His paper slippers had no shoes in them, only socks.

That struck me as strange.

The elevator went past the first floor and continued to descend; we were headed for the former morgue. I stepped closer to the man. His body heat was palpable.

His head was bent, looking at the paperback in my jacket pocket:
Sylvester, or The Wicked Uncle,
for heaven's sake—why couldn't I be reading something hip? Jack Kerouac or somebody. Nietzsche.

We hit bottom with a thud, but the elevator doors remained shut. This beautiful doctor could be a serial killer, I realized, luring victims to the old morgue in order to—

With a creaking that cried out for an application of WD-40, the doors opened.

Two men stood waiting.

One was dressed like a security guard. The other was a near giant, a foot taller, in a suit. I guessed he was a guard too, and there were no uniforms his size. Clearly, they'd come to haul me away for entering the RT building without permission, for finding a corpse without reporting it. I backed up to the rear wall of the elevator.

The guards looked at us, and then at each other. As the elevator doors rumbled shut, they hurried through. The doctor did not hold the door-open button for them.

I was now practically stapled to the back wall, slightly behind the doctor—
my
doctor, as I was beginning to think of him. Not a serial killer, I decided, but an ally. I was close enough to see the perspiration on his neck curling a lock of hair that had escaped the scrub suit cap. I could smell his smell. The top of his head was level with my eyes, which put his height at about five six or seven. Short. Sweaty. I wanted him.

We waited for the elevator to move.

The guards, it seemed to me, were staring at the doctor's feet—perhaps noticing, as I had, his strange footwear.

A subtle clicking, like tiny Morse code, drew my attention to the doctor's lab coat. He had one hand in its pocket, holding a lump the size of a blow-dryer. The lump was in motion. The doctor must have sensed my scrutiny because he turned. His eyes looked up into mine and stayed there.

Read my mind, they seemed to say. Then he winked.

Perhaps because I have no aptitude for winking, I'm a sucker for winks. This man could have a hand grenade in his pocket now and I'd give him the benefit of the doubt.

The elevator still did not move. The clicking grew louder. The two men in front of us turned just as I happened to sneeze.

“Gesundheit,” said the uniform.

“Thank you,” I said, and sneezed again.

The two men took turns pushing the 1 button, the way you do when you want to make things happen faster, and the uniformed one threw a look back at us. A hand—
his
hand—wrapped around my wrist. And readjusted to grasp my fingers. What a shocking thing to do, I thought. How thrilling.

With a clang and a hum, the elevator ascended. From the pocket of the lab coat, where the doctor's hand had been, the hand that now held mine, there emerged the snout, then the face of a small white animal. I stared at the animal. It stared back.

The doctor squeezed my hand, and now I was absolutely sure he was telling me something, only I had no idea what. I squeezed back, in an “I don't know what you're saying, but I like you” manner. He squeezed again. “I like you too,” I decided it meant.

When the elevator doors opened, the security guards stepped out and turned, clearing a space for us to exit. Then they stood there. Waiting. Waiting for me.

I didn't move.

The doctor let go of my hand and said, “After you.” He had the voice of a more macho man, the voice Mike Tyson should have gotten. I liked it. I wanted to hold his hand some more.

I said, “No, that's all right.”

“Go,” he said, more forcefully.

It showed good manners, but there are situations that override standard etiquette.

“Gurneys first,” I said courteously.

“Fine.” He pushed the gurney out, then stepped back, reached around, and grabbed onto my—well, I think he was going for my arm, but he found my breast instead and fumbled around and I stumbled against him and then his arm was around my waist and I was being held tight against him and I thought, Wow, and then he spoke again.

“Nobody moves or she gets it.”