The Last Time I Died (21 page)

Black.

I know I’m alive because I was dreaming.

It was a dream I’ve had before about Lisa and seeing her one last time. Seeing her happy, that is. I can only remember the bad times when I’m awake. Wallow in them. The good times are locked away somewhere, like my childhood. The difference being I made the conscious choice to hide the happy times with Lisa in a deep, dark corner of my mind. Not as punishment. To save me from further breakdown. Remembering what I lost when she left can only hurt so I don’t deal with it.

This must be a pattern I set up so long ago. Something in my head decided when things get bad enough, you simply put any and all records of them in a nice tight package and store that away for later. Not too shabby for an eight-year-old. As a thirty-eight year-old, though, I should probably rethink the logic. What would the harm be in wallowing a bit every once in a while? I guess that’s what my dreams are trying to tell me. A mental movie trailer for what could be seen if I would man up and go through what people have told me is a healthy, if arduous, process.

Whenever I have this dream, at least eight times in the last year and a half, I recognize it immediately. As soon as it starts. It feels good. It’s not that I know exactly what’s going to happen next, but I do go through a bit of a calming déjà vu. I know what is coming will be good. Like I’ve come home to a place I had forgotten about but know very well. Later that day, when I’m fully awake, I forget that I had the dream. Or I repress it once again. Whatever I do, there’s no acknowledgment on any conscious level that it was there. I suppose whatever purpose the dream served will have been accomplished. An option presented. An itch scratched. My mind will put it back on the shelf until the next time it is needed.

The dream is simple. Lisa and I lie in bed together, wrapped around each other. Laughing. I don’t know what we thought was so funny. Doesn’t matter. It feels good. Her skin against mine. The smell of her hair. Her unguarded giggle. At some point she gets up and walks out of the room and I don’t mind. I know she’s coming right back but I always wake up before she does. Tell me again why this is a bad thing, Christian. Tell me why you won’t let yourself remember the good times. Surely, the pain of acceptance can’t outweigh the value of fond memories?

I am a petulant child. My mind is a living, breathing tantrum. I am screaming NO at myself. The memories are there, but I don’t deserve them.

She’s just left the room and I’m lying there thinking I have to tell her something when she comes back but, as always, she doesn’t make it.

The dream fades fast, and just as fast reality creeps in to replace it in my half-awake mind. Lisa’s presence is shunted away in favor of the feel of the stiff sheets I’m lying on. The warm sunlight we lay under chills into the hospital smells that surround me now. Our laughter is replaced by the drones and beeps and buzzes of monitors.

This time when I open my eyes, I feel less shock and amazement that I have returned from the dead. I expected I would. What confidence one needs in their medical caretaker to make that assumption. Wow.

I am back.

I have succeeded. I am not grateful to be alive. I am satisfied with a job well done. This is not a Thank You, Jesus moment. It is a Mission Accomplished one.

No. Not yet. I have to sketch.

The foyer. My mother. Her eyes. The cop’s forearms. His muscular back. The stack of mail. The closed front door. My mother’s nervous body language. I have to get everything down immediately.

Cordoba left pencils and a brand-new sketch pad on the table next to my bed. I force my brittle muscles to grab the tools and start drawing a wide picture of the scene. The master shot. I’ll use this to trigger myself to remember more details as the day gets later. I can’t feel some of my fingers, so it takes longer than I hoped.

I’m starving and I feel hung-over, although that’s impossible. Being dead is a great way to stop drinking.

I finish a rough of the master shot and move next to my mother’s eyes. Furtive. Frantic. Needy.

Wait.

I waste a few seconds checking my body for missing organs. I feel much better than the last time. No stitches. No missing limbs. Still have two eyes. Feels like she kept her part of the bargain.

Except for the sex. What was that?

Cordoba humped me like a truck stop whore as I was dying and probably for a while afterward. It was preplanned. She was ready with the hard-on medicine and timed it to perfection. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, I guess. I already know I want her to kill me again so the issue has to be addressed. Or does it? Do I really care what happens to the bag of tissue that hosts my mind and gets me from place to place? Argue it all you want, but I’m not offended. No, not at all.

The cop put his hand on my mother’s shoulder. I was in the room and they know I saw it happen. I sketch the basics of the gesture and wonder what the point was. A practiced move calculated to reassure a hysterical housewife. An over-familiar touch. A random act. It was either empathetic or shameless or meaningless.

I readjust myself and feel a little something on my chest. Peeking inside the gown she put me in I see rounded rectangles of burn marks on my chest. About the size of defibrillator paddles. Looks like I was dead dead. Maybe this wasn’t the easiest procedure ever performed. But whatever. Here I am.

My mother had a bruise on her eye, but that was not why she called the cops. It was healing. She had no fresh injuries. Only residual panic. She had to know I could hear what she was saying.

Where is Cordoba anyway? Isn’t one of these monitors letting her know I’m up and conscious?

I’m almost done with sketches. Drawing the cop’s forearms is easy although I’m not sure why I would ever need them. But everything goes down. Everything. Except his face. I couldn’t hang on long enough to see his god damn face.

Cordoba walks in. She’s unimpressed that I’m awake. Maybe one of those monitors did let her know. I have no idea what any of them do. She checks the one closest to me and I don’t know by her reaction what it tells her.

—How are you feeling?

Business as usual. Not that I expect a high-five, but she is one cold fish. She checks my vitals. I’m perfect or at death’s door. She doesn’t tell me which.

—I feel great, relatively.

Although, I have paddle burns on my chest. How close was I?

—Did you have any trouble bringing me back?

Cordoba ignores the question and places a fresh syringe and more meds on the tray next to the bed. Magic medicine. Looks like she’s down for another round as well. Alright, let’s say there was no trouble. Which leaves us with the one question I can’t resist asking.

—The sex. Right when I died. What was that?

Her hair is once again pulled back into a tight ponytail and she looks at me so very evenly. Like the predator that she is. It’s either anger or embarrassment. No, it’s neither. I wonder if she feels emotions at all. She waits for me to withdraw the question. I won’t.

—That’s why you lost your license.

—That was a consideration, yes.

Unapologetic. Just the facts. Take it or leave it.

—So what happens next time I die?

—Do you need to die again?

—I do.

Finally, she moves her eyes away from mine to the syringe.

—Come back in two days.

When her eyes come back to meet mine again, they’re dead. Cold. Lifeless. It’s time for me to leave.

I’m still hungry and the sunlight is killing my eyes.

I’ve never been this sensitive. The street is crowded and I know people are giving me a wide berth as I make my way uptown. I’m trying to go unnoticed, but that’s not going to happen. Even among the homeless around here, I stand out. Unstable has its own distinct aura.

My sketches are rolled up under my left arm and I’ve got the syringes locked in a death grip in my right hand. I want to go start the recovery process as soon as possible, but if I don’t eat I might not make it back to my apartment.

I sell my watch at a pawn shop I noticed on the way over. Lisa paid a little more than eight grand for it one Christmas. I never understood the extravagance but it seemed to be meaningful to her so I kept the watch. Never took it off. She had it engraved with our initials separated by a plus sign over the phrase
Truly, madly, deeply
. I believe at the time it was true.

The greasy little broker gives me four hundred. We both know he’s ripping me off, so he pretends to be doing me a favor and tells me I’m lucky he doesn’t call the cops. In the reflection of the two-way glass behind him, I see that my hair is now completely gray. I look twenty years older than when I started this mishigas.

Truly, madly, deeply. Noticeably absent from the phrase was the word forever.

There’s a diner across the street. I go in and order three breakfasts. The place is empty and I can’t resist unrolling the sketches and spreading them out across my table and the two that flank it.

My mother.

The cop.

I don’t know what else to do. He’s not leaving me any choice.

What was my father doing that was so bad the cops had to set up some secret plan with my mother? Domestic violence doesn’t usually merit a full covert operation. Her eyes stare back at me but don’t answer. They never answer.

My food arrives and I eat it like the starving pig that I am. I’ve never tasted food this good. I don’t know if the illegal immigrant in the back happens to be the best cook in the world or this is a byproduct of being brought back to life. Doesn’t matter. I contemplate a fourth breakfast but I’ll vomit if I do and fuck if I’m wasting what little money I have like that. I can’t move fast enough to skip out, so I pay the check, screw the waitress on the tip, and leave.

I don’t get ten steps out the door before I know I’m being followed. Same feeling I had before only stronger. I stop.

Nothing.

There’s nothing behind me. Even with my oversensitive eyes, I can see there’s no one creeping up on me. No whistling simpletons. No bogeymen. Nothing. WTF?

When I turn back toward my home, I’m met with the self-satisfied smirk of the exact motherfucker I thought might be following me. Standing there waiting for me. About six inches from my face. Goose, the mustache man. Smiling like the dickhead that he is.

—Who are you?

Did Harry send him to watch me? Could he be an old friend of Lisa’s? Do I owe him money? What could he possibly want from a bottomed-out loser?

—Who. Are. You.

He doesn’t answer me, of course. Just stands there with that shit-eating grin stretched across his face. I don’t know how he snuck up on me, but here we are.

He head butts me before I can make a move. Fucking head butts me right in the nose. Blood is pouring out my nostrils and past my hand as if I hadn’t even raised it.

I back away from him as I try to balance not getting blood on my drawings with not losing control of the meds in my pocket with figuring out why I’m being attacked by a stranger.

He’s grinning even wider as he watches me suffer. I think he laughs to himself. It must be going better than he hoped. Congratulations, pal.

I gather myself and throw a punch, landing a beaut of a right cross on his cheek. He shakes it off like it’s nothing. Didn’t feel it. Am I that weak or is he that strong?

He takes a step closer and grabs my left wrist, the arm with the drawings tucked under it. I fight to keep my elbow chicken-winged against my side but he’s stronger than I am. Stronger than anyone I’ve ever met. The drawings drop to the ground and I do my best not to step on them. I can still feel my meds in my pocket. Why did I take my hand off of them? He plants a foot firmly on my sketches and yanks me toward him.

He head butts me again on my forehead and it hurts worse than the first one. Is he getting stronger? My knees buckle and I drop but not all the way to the ground. I can’t. Goose holds me up by the wrist high enough to punch me in the face several times.

He’s pounding me. I remember when I used to like this kind of thing. There was nothing like a good beat down to take the edge off. Release a little stress. It gave me such clarity. As he takes his fist back again, I realize I’m not getting the same kind of thrill this time. No sharp pang of anticipation before his knuckles meet the thin flesh covering the border of my eye socket. Is that because I didn’t provoke it or because what I’ve been up to is so much more dangerous than being pounded into raw meat? I think I’ve desensitized myself to this level of danger. It’s boring. But I know I’ve got to go through it. How is Goose not breaking his hand on my face? Shouldn’t he at least be getting tired by now? He’s enjoying this. Truly, madly, deeply.

I hear a bystander say
What’s he doing?
and another calls out something that sounds like
Do you need some help?
I can’t answer. My mouth is full of blood and I’m having trouble focusing my eyes.

Finally, Goose is kind enough to let me drop the ground. I manage to not land on my meds by turning to the side and letting my bony hip absorb the brunt of the fall. Goose takes the opportunity to launch a few kicks into my stomach.

How are there no cops here by now? I’ve gotten a summons for walking out of a bar to smoke a cigarette with a drink in my hand. And there are no cops around when this is going down? No good Samaritans with martial arts training? No one’s even yelling at Goose to stop. Can’t anyone on this street see that I’m getting mugged or whatever this is? The crowd that has gathered to watch this beat down is not reacting the way I would expect. No one is horrified at the senseless violence taking place fifteen feet away from them. One guy even looks sort of amused. Like he might post it on YouTube.

Goose offers no explanation for the attack. And he’s so efficient with his blows. This can’t have gone on longer than forty-five seconds. I’ve been reduced to a cowering sack of cuts and bruises in under a minute. But he hasn’t said a word.

This is so wrong. If I’m going to die for real, I want it on my own terms.

And then it’s over. By the time I notice he has stopped kicking me, Goose is ambling down the street as if nothing ever happened. And whistling. No one even looks at him as he passes. Me, they never take their eyes off of, fascinated. The bloody pile of human. I presume this is because, as ragged as I was before the beating, I must look exponentially worse now. Like I might die right in front of them and they don’t want to be distracted for a second. How often do you have the opportunity to see something like this? Maybe they think I live on this sidewalk. That I’m used to this. That I deserve it.