Just Kill Me (14 page)

I get to know all the peddlers, hustlers, and bums who circulate around River North—Rick calls them “urban jawas.” The guy who hustles tourists into posing for caricatures is named Terrence (Cyn calls him Vincent Van Go Home). The giant-nosed necklace peddler is named Pierre (or says he is). One evening he gives me a whole lesson in why gold necklaces are easier to sell than fancy colognes, which was his old racket. I learn a lot from Pierre.

Pretty soon the stretch of Clark Street around the Rock and Roll McDonald's is a place where everybody knows my name. When I show up at the tour bus parking zone, the Al Capone tour guys tip their fedoras. The double-decker-bus sightseeing-tour guy will say, “Ghost girl!” Even Edward Tweed and Aaron Saltis get to be fairly friendly with me; when I run into them on Clark Street, we nod and say hi and chat a bit.

One time I challenge Saltis to work the word “mucocarneous” into his tour.

“What's it mean?”

“A mass composed of mucus and flesh.”

He makes a face, but nods. “Shouldn't be too hard.”

“Give me one.”

He thinks for a second, like he's doing a really hard algebra problem in his head, then says “prestidigitation.”

Easy. That's a word for “sleight of hand.” Midtour I tell people that most of the ghosts people think they see on other tours are just the result of prestidigitation.

I make about three times as much money per hour as I make bagging groceries. If we get the TV show, it'll be even more.

And I love almost every minute of it. I get annoyed by some of the people who just talk all through the tour, and the weirdos who want me to confirm that their photo of a flash bouncing off a window validates all their views on obscure points of Catholic dogma, but I can ignore them, for the most part.

It's a fine life, rolling with the rotters.

For most of the first tours I run, it's just me and Rick; having him ready to jump in helps a lot before I get totally comfortable.

And he jumps in plenty. He can't resist grabbing the mic now and then, or messing with passersby. Soon we have a routine and a dynamic similar to the one he has with Cyn, only he and Cyn are like an old married couple, and he and I are like brother and sister. We tell people that he's the big brother I never had, and I'm the little sister he never wanted. I don't tell him
all
about my stories, but I tell him a lot. He says he's bi too, and we bond over that, even though I'm rooting for him to end up with Cynthia.

After work sometimes we'll go to one of the diners he loves so much, or over to a little jazz club on Hubbard. I'll sit at the bar having water while he downs a beer and gives me advice about Zoey. I pay more attention to the jazz band than
to his romantic advice, but when he talks about comedy and comic timing and stuff, I listen.

My attempts to look a few years older apparently work. One night they even let me into the Signature Room, a bar on the 93rd floor of the Hancock Center, without carding me. The view is spectacular.

“I feel like I can see clear to Arizona from here,” I say. “Like I could actually see Zoey.”

“Maybe if she stood on a chair,” says Rick.

He and Cyn both tell me to move on and find another person to date, but Zoey's still the first one I want to talk to after every tour.

And there's so much to tell her. So many things happen on tours that I can't wait to tell her about. Even if they didn't pay me, it would be worth doing the job just for the stories I get about what happens during tours.

Rick and I have a lot of games we play to help get passengers loosened up. Like, when we get to a long traffic light, we'll tell them that we can all try a psychic experiment where we pool our mental energy and focus on the color green, and that'll make the light change within a minute or two. Works every time.

In the Gold Coast we have them play “What Do They Have,” which is played by looking out the window of the bus and into the windows of the mansions to see what people have.
They have some nice shit in the Gold Coast. Libraries, working gaslights, statues, grand pianos.

One time a naked guy stands at a window. We see what
he
has.

The game I tell Zoey the most about is one called “Let's Mess with Cars.” This is where we pull up next to cars at red lights, open the door, and mess with them. Rick believes that a large bus that says
GHOST TOURS
on it is the single greatest instrument ever created for the purpose of messing with people, and tells me that having access to such a vehicle gives you a sacred duty to use it.

One gag he taught me was to ask the driver in the next car over at a red light if he wants to drag race.

“We can get this machine up to nearly forty miles per hour,” I'll say, while Rick revs our engine. “Two cylinders of raw, whining power, baby.”

Most people laugh. One guy just takes off right through the red light, leaving us in the dust. “Well, I guess he certainly showed us,” says Rick.

Some nights we'll tell the person in the next car that the Popeye's Chicken they're stuck in traffic next to is haunted by the ghost of a one-legged stripper who lost her leg in a shuffleboard accident before buying a chicken franchise, where she died after falling into the deep fryer. They always think it's funny, but Rick worries that even though the story is pretty obviously a joke, it might end up getting repeated as fact on
Ghost Encounters
someday. He swears it's happened before.

But he lets me tell people that random statues we pass are of Captain Hezekiah Crunch, who sailed under General Mills in the Spanish-American War and inspired the cereal mascot. At least one person believes that every time. Cap'n Crunch is comedy gold. Sometimes I ask people in cars if they've accepted Cap'n Crunch as their lord and savior yet.

Most of the people on the street or in cars that we mess with are happy to play along. Now and then, though, we have a person who isn't amused. Once, during the Resurrection Mary story, we open the door to shout, “She died
right on this spot
,” and there's an Amish couple standing there. The guy gives us a look that would do any pissed-off grocery-store customer proud.

“Oh, crap,” says Rick. “He looked like he was gonna pitchfork my ass!”

“Yeah!” I say. “He was like, ‘I'm-a poke thee, sinner!' ”

And we laugh so hard that I can't even tell the rest of the story.

Then, just as we're calming down, I look up better words I could have used besides “sinner.” “Fornicatress” comes up, and that starts us laughing all over again.

By the time we calm down enough to talk, we're at the spot where we start telling the story of the Haymarket Riot. Resurrection Mary is a famous enough ghost that we have to talk about her, though, so Rick veers off the route and goes
by Harpo Studios, where Oprah used to film her show. One hundred years ago that building was the Second Regiment Armory, where the bodies of the victims of the Eastland Disaster were laid out to be identified.

“It's definitely said to be haunted in there,” he says. “They've never allowed anyone to investigate it formally, but a lot of employees tell stories about it. One thing I hear a lot is that there's one bathroom that they usually keep locked, but they're always hearing the sound of a crying woman coming from inside of it. I like to call her Moaning Myrtle.”

When no one but me seems to get the Harry Potter reference, he moves right along, saying, “Now, here's the thing: five of the victims here were named Mary and ended up buried at Resurrection Cemetery, so it could be that one of them became the ghost we call Resurrection Mary, whom Megan will now tell you all about while we head out to the next stop.”

Smooth.

The laughs are addictive. The gasps are addictive.

Within a couple of weeks, I look forward to tours like a smoker looks forward to the next smoke break.

In mid-July, Brandon, the guy who is thinking of putting the TV show together, asks if we can meet him for dinner and take him on a tour.

Mom comes along with me the night of the meeting, partly because she still hasn't actually gone on a tour yet, and
partly because she'll be one more person in the seats. We want to impress Brandon, so the more people we have, the better. Of course, Mom is also planning to make sure I'm not getting taken advantage of or roped into anything that could reflect poorly on her. I'm a little annoyed that she thinks I can't take care of myself, but I
do
want her to see a tour. I'm proud of the work I'm doing.

Brandon's production company is picking up the bill, so Cyn arranges to meet at some trendy foodie place (even though Rick lobbies hard for one of his beloved grubby diners). Mom and I get to the neighborhood early and wander around a bit, admiring the gorgeous old Victorian townhouses in the Armitage-Halsted historic district.

Near the restaurant, we pass a little life insurance office that's really going for the hard sell. In the window they have a sign saying

YOU JUST DIED
.

YOUR FAMILY WILL BE HERE IN 15 MINUTES.

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO TELL THEM?

Mom reads it and laughs. “Megan,” she says. “If you're in this woman's office fifteen minutes after I die, I want her to tell you that you're under arrest.”

“You insured for much cash?” I ask.

“Don't get any ideas.”

As we walk along I tell her all about Rick's plan to have his mortal remains propped up on a bus, and she approves. She wants a simple funeral herself—I think most funeral directors do. When the time comes, I'm supposed to ship her off to a medical college and throw a little memorial party. That's what I want for myself too, really, though I do sort of want whatever college gets my body to send my ashes to my heirs when they're done with me, so they can be slipped under the door of the Couch tomb and future ghost-tour guides can know for sure that there's at least one dead person in there.

Zoey told me once that she wants someone to sneakily scatter hers at Disney World, but I've read that people try that all the time, and the Disney people just sweep them up and throw them out with the trash.

Cyn and Rick meet us outside the restaurant, and Brandon arrives just in time for our reservation; he's younger than I pictured, probably not much more than thirty, with long brown hair and a beard. If we passed him on the street during a tour, Rick would probably say, “Hey, there's a guy who knows a thing or two about coming back from the dead. On your right, Mr. Jesus Christ!” Brandon shakes my hand and treats me like one of the team, and I feel very grown-up, even though I brought my mom.

The menu is all fancy stuff. Colorado lamb. Israeli couscous. Stuff like that. If they served Count Chocula, it would be listed as “Pure Michigan Count Chocula.” I'm eager to try some of it, but Rick rolls his eyes and says he wishes we'd gone to a diner.

“Yeah,” says Cyn. “Because that's where you go to make a good impression. Filthy Al's House of Slop.”