Re-appearance

Let’s face facts: 9 times out of 10 it is simply easier to talk to dead people. First of all, they don’t care if I like them, and second, neither do I. Dead people never worry about how they’re dressed or if their hair looks better this way or that. That is, if they have any, and, really, who would notice?

Also, they never show up unless they have something to say—no one is less likely to be interested in killing time. Being dead is itself a full-time job. Just ask any old person-- Where did the day go? Time flies by faster and faster; they become slower and slower. No matter how bad it may seem, it is much easier and far less time-consuming to get around and do the simplest chores when at least you’re still alive.

On the other hand, it’s true: dead people can be difficult to understand, even if you know who they think they’re talking to. It only makes sense that I should try a little harder and make the extra effort.

X must have become restless about being dead. He always liked being on his own so, naturally, it took a while. And it wasn’t exactly that he missed being alive—his marriage was killing him, but then so was so much else: high blood pressure, sclerotic sinuses, achy joints, people who rang the doorbell. Everything, really. She was definitely part of the problem and one of the reasons we’d grown apart from the start. But that’s not fair of me, their thing began long before we met, and it wasn’t as if he’d been poisoned or murdered: X died of Old Age (and after a very good dinner).

By the time he died I wasn’t paying too much attention to him and hadn’t been for a long time. I was far away. Of course, after he died, X and I could have pretended the way most people do, but, in this regard, we were too much alike. Hell, we both had better things to do, though when he was alive, he would wax sentimental every now and then, usually in some kind of whining rage, and a person could only wonder: what was that all about? Everything, really. He could always find some reason to run off in a huff without leaving the room. He liked being trapped almost as much as he liked being alone. Looking at him you could never tell quite where he was.

The only thing he never complained about, perhaps the only thing he truly loved without reservation, was the daily four-hour commute to work. He was in Heaven—all alone in the car, practically invisible, wrapped inside a cashmere cataract of cigarette smoke so perpetual that the windshield was thick and greasy with tar. And limitless jelly doughnuts, fresh from the little place on La Cienega Blvd. I guess that was my fault. On his own he would never have thought about ‘fresh’ jelly doughnuts, but when I mentioned it he understood the significance immediately and tried inconspicuously to jot a quick reminder in his calendar.

Almost every day, I stopped in at 3:15 a.m. on my way home to the beach from a night on the town spent mostly in recreational exercise of the horizontal variety. At the other end of the radar, on the other side of town and hours later, X had the unexpected treat of adding 20 minutes to his cherished morning drive so that he could be in line, bright-eyed, for the 7:15 a.m. batch straight from the kettle.

I had been very explicit: he would have to wait a little, so the jelly didn’t burn his tongue. The difficult calculation was determining the tiny margin in which the jelly was still warm but the pastry had not yet solidified into just another doughnut; it took skill and training. He liked things ever so just this way, but he was absent-minded. So, of course, I had to stress how important it was to start from the side with the hole or there’d be an unwelcome gusher of boiling red dye #6 jelly all over his pants and, frankly, the car was filthy enough as it was. The diabetes thing, of course, put paid to the doughnuts, but by then, I guess, the commuting was over. I had given them up after a week or two; they made my teeth ache.

To be truthful, I had forgotten about him, except at the barbershop or occasionally while looking in a store window. I’m not actually sure when I last saw him before the re-appearance; I know it was long before he died, and his heart wasn’t in it, even then. He was a bad actor and genuinely enjoyed giving a bad performance and wouldn’t dream of ‘breaking’ character. It was a charade with no clues, no other players and no end. He had chosen the role long ago and mostly it worked—for him, that is. When he wasn’t being an asshole, he had perfect manners; a little too perfect, nothing but manners. He never said anything worth listening to anymore. Maybe I had forgotten how to listen too.

There’s that time in life, oh, it feels like forever, but it isn’t, you know, or, perhaps it could be. You forget and think that what people say is what they’re saying. Stress, overwork, loneliness, the kids; I don’t know. Nothing so interesting; just something always there, in front of everything else: brighter, louder, overdue.

Looking back, I can only imagine that he wanted to apologize but didn’t know how. And it wasn’t his style to just show up and ring the bell. He knew there were reasons a person might not open the door, least of which was the dead thing. He might have thought to bring a box of candy, but he knew he’d just eat it on the way.

He was very smart, in his way, and practical. I don’t know exactly how it happened. I’m not the type to go around cleaning out closets or rummaging in the past. Well, that’s what I say. Anyway, somehow the photo turned up. Oh, it looked harmless and I have to admit: it was very clever of him. Everyone thought it was so cute and artsy: a dopey out-of-focus photo of some building downtown with one of those cookie cutter gingerbready kind of olde world peaks and one very silly tree. But no people in the picture; so, what’s it a picture of, someone asks?

Somebody else thinks it must have been taken from a bus, moving. Hmmm. Just like an Impressionist painting, said someone who doesn’t know Impressionist painting. Daubs and dots of colorless colors scattered with a zillion white speckles: jittery sunshine peeking through a clump of blackeyed green bouncing off of dirt red bricks on a grey day, or just rain on the lens? A darkish line runs up the middle, maybe it really is a tree. The left half of the photo looks like a page torn from a spiral notebook and at the bottom, loopy dents from a ballpoint pen that has run out of ink. No message, just marks from the dry tip trying to scratch something into the paper.

I turn it over. Printed on the back it says, Amsterdam, but the letters bleed into a puddle, apparently illegible to everyone but me. (Once he sent a postcard-- unsigned-- from Hong Kong; it took me the longest time to figure out who it was from.) The photo, of course, is of the building. Alive, he had never known that I had ever been there; nor I he, and, after all, there was such a long time between then and then and now. He probably never went inside, but we both had stood in the same spot, looking at the same thing, light years away.