Inheriting Dust
Part 7

by joseph    March 11, 2002

I thought all of this as I laughed through my vomit in the hallway next to the cooler. I'd only seen three dead people, and the first two had been made up and laid out in a coffin in their best suit--you got the idea from funerals that death wasn't bad, just uncomfortable. I had never realized before how much death smells -- even in the bitter dry cold of the walk-in cooler, I could smell the coppery blood, the bright smell of tissue beginning to deteriorate and decay. Our bodies work constantly to keep us the processes of the world from reducing us to dust. When we're no longer able to keep up, we're overtaken quickly.

I was laughing because of Dave's ridiculous smile, and I had a vision of him in some dull gray afterlife, serving up beers with a shit-eating grin plastered on his face, a crescent moon cut into the back of his neck, the surrounding skin gone blue with time.

When I was done puking up the bit of Mickey's that hadn't been absorbed into my bloodstream yet, I slumped back against the wall opposite the cooler and struggled to think. I keep telling myself internally not to panic, that that was the worst thing I could do, but I quickly realized that I wasn't panicking -- whether I was just drunk or whether the incident with Kay earlier had sucked all my adrenaline out of my system, I don't know.

Do something, I kept telling myself. I went to the bar and got a clean towel and wiped my face. I looked at myself in the Budweiser mirror behind the bar. Pale, unshaven, but no worse than the packs of Drag rats who walked up and down the street, so I could blend in. I needed to move fast. Customers would start coming in, John or Teddy or Susan, and I was determined not to make this my mess.

From TV, you expect that the minute you see someone dead, you'll have a wave of nausea and then take a deep breath and go, "Okay, now, let's deal with this." I took a lot of deep breaths but I never had any clarity, only a voice inside me screaming at me to leave before I got trapped there. All it would take is one car to pull up, one person at the door waiting to come in and that'd be it -- it'd be long hours with Austin's finest getting this one sorted out, and I knew enough to know that my story raised more questions than average, and if it's one thing I was not in the mood to do, it was to provide any answers. I looked at the towel and told myself I should wipe away any of my fingerprints, but I couldn't remember what I had touched, and it was a bar, for Christ's sake, there were fingerprints everywhere -- no spot on any wall had escaped having at least one hand pressed against it for stability and support while waiting for the bathroom, or helping a friend off the floor.

So I threw the towel down on the bar and went to the front door. I unlocked the single bolt (being very happy not to have to fish through a dead man's pockets for the guy) and let myself out the front door onto the street. It was a chance, I knew. Most of the regulars pulled around back, but out front anyone walking down the street or driving by could see me. I slipped out into the heat and walked down the street. A Drag rat, a girl about sixteen with a handful of piercings in her lip and a kitten on her shoulder, asked me if I had a cigarette. I scratched the kitten's head and gave her a five-spot, then asked her where she was from originally. She told me, and I thanked her and went into a Circle K to buy a bottle of water and drain the ATM of five hundred bucks. Then I got on the pay phone to Amtrak and ordered a ticket to Seattle.

Then I went to get Felicia. When I checked out, I gave Sonia at the front desk what I imagined was a smile similar to the one Dave had on his face there at the end, and after half a six-pack of Red Dog that I drank while waiting for the cab to come take us to the train station, I decided that, either out of perverse humor or some kind of respect, my next name, my Seattle name, would be Dave.

(end of Part 7)
On to Part 8