Back at the apartment building, Oz struggled to contain his frustration toward an oblivious teenager struggling with the security door key. Once inside, the kid dropped his keys but continued on his way, bobbing his head. Oz caught the door just as it was whispering closed and grabbed the keys. He rushed up the stairs to return them, but the kid increased his pace. Oz chased up the entire first flight before giving up.
He threw the keys up to the kid followed by a stiff middle finger.
Bard snorted. “I gave you too much credit. Thought you’d figure it out on your own.”
“Figure what out?”
Bard rushed up the stairs, faster than Oz thought the old man was capable of moving, to catch up with the teen then stopped right in front of him. The kid stopped, too, but didn’t look at Bard. He screwed up his face and patted his jacket and jeans pockets.
“Shit,” the kid mumbled, and started back down the stairwell. He passed Oz and exited.
“We’re invisible?” Oz asked, once the kid was out of sight.
“Hardly.” Bard waited for Oz to catch up with him at the top of the second flight. “More like unnoticeable. People remember that they have other places to be when we’re around. Or they forget things. Or they’ll be pulled out of the way by someone or something.”
Oz remembered the crowd surrounding the accident and how they seemed to part like the Red Sea as Bard moved between them. “Does this happen everywhere? Or just when we’re working?”
“We’re always working.”
“Right.” Oz walked into the apartment. “Why two coins?”
“What?”
“The first guy got one coin. The second, two.”
“Obvious, isn’t it? Not all Bas are created equal.”
Bard didn’t follow Oz inside.
“Keep yourself busy in here and out of trouble,” he said, “I got some stuff I have to do.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“None of your fuckin’ business type stuff.”
“What am I supposed to do? Just wait around for you like some dog?”
“Ruff.” Bard turned on his heel and slammed the door.
Well fuck you too, then.
The apartment was an oven. Stuffy. Oz walked the perimeter opening windows and filling the apartment with cool air and noise. Beneath the window in the far corner of the main room was a box that Oz was sure hadn’t been there before. It was folded closed with “Open me” written in the corner in black marker. How Alice in Wonderland, he thought and considered not opening it. Curiosity won. He pulled back the flaps and found a typewriter—a baby blue electric Smith Corona. Oz gently lifted it out of the box. The faded keys and the scratches and chips on the body told him the thing had seen major use, but Oz was willing to bet this gem still had some life in it. Underneath it was a note written in loopy, girlish hand: Didn’t think you were the television type. For the down time. Cora.
Cora.
He lifted the paper to his face. It smelled like a garden. Basil and something sharper. Cilantro or sage.
Bard was an asshole and not above withholding the truth. Maybe he’d been fucking with Oz about the whole lesbian thing.
That body.
Oz couldn’t ever remember seeing a woman with a body like that. And now, she’d given him a gift. Granted, he could probably go from now until eternity without seeing another typewriter and be okay with it, but it was a personal gift. If he remembered correctly, women didn’t give men these types of presents unless they wanted to sleep with them. Or was it the other way around?
He preferred not to think about how long it’d been since he’d been near a woman or the last time he’d felt desire like he felt for Cora. God, how long had it been since he’d thought about a woman in terms outside her death? The question hurt his brain and his balls. Pathetic.
Oz pressed the note to his face again and her scent stirred an old, but familiar feeling.
He locked the door then sat on his small bed.
Though it’d been a long, long, (long) time, like riding a bike or breathing, the mechanics of masturbation stayed with him. Oz wasn’t sure he could go through with it because, like the shoulder and the face that stared back at him from the bathroom mirror, the dick wasn’t his. He couldn’t quite get over that hurdle. Holding some other dude’s penis was still holding some other dude’s penis. Oz wasn’t the type of guy to do that. But the more he thought about Cora, her heart-shaped ass, the way her entire body swayed when she walked...
His new dick looked different. Darker. Smaller. But only slightly. He made a fist around it and nearly collapsed with pleasure. If he closed his eyes, he could forget that the body wasn’t his. It didn’t matter in the dark. He jerked faster, gasping, slowly falling backward against the mattress. Every muscle in his body tensed, like a guitar string tightened to the point of snapping, before, finally, quick release.
I’m alive, he thought.
He wiped the jism from his pelvis with the corner of the sheet.
Kind of.
Oz laughed. Years without a single orgasm. It felt like the first time—twelve years old—hidden beneath a makeshift bed sheet tent and the astonishment (and not a little fear) that something came out of this fleshy joystick. He felt that same astonishment now.
He kicked the sheet to the floor and vowed to burn it at first chance. The sperm of a reaper couldn’t be anything but noxious.
As it’d been in those beginning sexual years, the euphoria passed and it was only minutes before boredom set in. Oz considered a second round, but the twang of an acoustic guitar drifted through the open window, distracting him. The light, melancholy tune beckoned him. He knew that song. In the initial chaos of his first reap Oz had almost forgotten that there was a rest of the world outside. He wasn’t trapped at a desk anymore.
Oz promised himself he wouldn’t go far, just outside the apartment building. That wasn’t really leaving, though it wasn’t likely Bard would see it that way. Oz didn’t care. Maybe it was the post-orgasm haze that had him feeling slightly reckless. He was in the land of the living, in a body. He intended to use it.
Oz opened the door wide enough to let a sliver of piss-yellow light in and looked down both directions of the hallway. It smelled like wet dog. Bard probably wouldn’t wait right outside the door, expecting Oz’s escape, but it was impossible to predict exactly what the old bastard might do. Oz left with the uncomfortable feeling of being watched.
The afternoon sun had all but disappeared. Dark clouds gathered and a breeze blew, thick with moisture. The guitarist stood beneath the awning of a used book store with his guitar case open. A small, short haired dog, fought against its tether as it nipped the heels of passersby until its gaze locked on Oz. As he drew closer, the few onlookers checked watches and cell phones and realized they had other plans.
Oz felt guilty for having inadvertently driven the guitarist’s patrons away. He wished he had money to give him and scanned the ground for an errant quarter, dime, anything. Used to be you could find change anywhere. The corner of a dollar bill flapped from beneath a mound of mulch. Score! Oz picked it up and approached the guitarist. The man stopped playing, mid song, stuffed the tips into a pouch inside the case, and placed his guitar inside. He couldn’t seem to pack fast enough.
“Hey, wait,” Oz said, but the guitarist, of course, didn’t acknowledge him.
He latched his case, slung the strap over his shoulder, and untied the dog’s leash from the rack. The dog growled low and deep but didn’t bark. It was like he was afraid to, but wanted Oz to know that he knew he was there.
“What’s your problem, Kujo?” The guitarist dragged the still growling mutt in the direction of a bakery across the street.
It’s enough to make a man feel unwanted, Oz thought sourly.
The end of the street had been blocked off by half a dozen police cars and miles of yellow tape. A news reporter and a couple of morbid stragglers ogled the aftermath of the bus crash. Oz pocketed the dollar and walked in the opposite direction.
He looked for identifiers that would help him establish a sense of place, but nothing stood out. Buildings were buildings. Sidewalks were sidewalks. The deeper into downtown he wandered, the more dilapidated the buildings became. He figured he’d wandered into one of those historical areas like the ones he avoided when he was a skittish kid who believed that history is where ghosts like to hide.
Oz walked several blocks before he came upon a delicatessen. A sign announcing its grand opening adorned the short, wrought-iron gate surrounding the empty patio. The door was propped open and the scent of various deli meats rode the air like a ship of deliciousness bound for the harbor of Oz’s mouth. He reached into his pocket and felt only the dollar he’d found on the sidewalk. His heart sank and his mouth salivated. There was no food in his apartment and he wasn’t willing to bet that Bard’s “business” involved a visit to the market. He might not starve and die but he might fade away under the pressure of his undeniable craving. His stomach growled.
A car double parked at the curb right in front of the delicatessen. From the driver’s side a leggy woman slid out, rounded the front of the car, and made a beeline for the entrance, and by default, for Oz. When she passed within inches of him, so close his nose stung from the sharpness of her high-end perfume, her pocket rang. She stopped, answered her phone, and practically ran for her car. The tires squealed as she sped away.
Bingo. He’d just go inside, snag a sandwich and be on his way. Of course he’d pay them back once he found a way to get his hands on some cash...
Just as Oz decided it was justifiable to burgle a pastrami on rye, his legs went rogue and decided to stop obeying his brain. They weren’t glued to the spot. It was as if they didn’t exist at all. He could see them, but couldn’t feel them. His brain sent a message to step backward and they miraculously obeyed.
“Not fair,” he grumbled. How could the Powers That Be taunt him with this ability then throw contrary rules at him?
Next door was an antique shop. Oz turned and crept toward it, paying careful attention to how easily the steps came. He walked without incident until he was close enough to kiss the shop’s front door. His legs phantasmed into nothingness again.
He stopped at every storefront on the block, but all to no avail. Death wasn’t allowed in.
* * *
The kid could handle himself for a few hours. Bard needed to think.
He knew he shouldn’t read too much into the fact that it’d taken Oz a few tries to get the coins. It’d happened before.
Once.
Something didn’t feel right. Bard didn’t believe in coincidences and this was becoming all too familiar.
The only shaded bench in the park closest to Oz’s apartment was free. As long as his presence repelled anything living, it would remain that way. Bard laid down the length of the bench and plugged his mouth with a cigarette butt from the sidewalk. Nasty fucking habit but it calmed him. Gave him something to do with his hands. He hadn’t even started smoking until after... well. A pair of squirrels squabbled in the tree above him, knocking leaves and twigs from their path.
The scars along his arms tingled. He lit the cigarette with a match and the nicotine quieted them.
Bard closed his eyes and saw her face. He’d never known her name, but always thought she looked like an Emily or Maggie. A soft name to match her soft, china doll features. Some days, when he thought about her, her eyes were blue. Other days, brown. They’d been closed as she lay beneath the water, so he didn’t know for sure. It used to be that he’d go days without thinking about her, but after having seen The Department and watching Oz in a way that felt like looking in a warped mirror, her face refused to leave his mind.
And of course with memories of Emily-or-Maggie came thoughts of the shadows that took her. The shadows that’d laughed as they carried her off because Bard was too busy fulfilling his selfish second-chance desires. Too busy to do his job.
Bard had been used to having life dick him over. When he was recruited and thought he’d gotten his second chance, he treated it as something he was owed. And for that, Emily-or-Maggie was lost and he was forever a fuck up.
Oz looked like a fuck up, too.
One hour and three cigarettes later, his nerves still burned. Bard was getting too old for this shit.