THREE

Dead Body State

[Outside Time]

“Finch,” I told him, “you’re dead.” And it was true.

Yet the value of such a truth lay far less in my knowing it than in how it was accepted (or not) by the young man who sat across the table from me. He: Finch, the one who was dead, and did not seem to know it.

In the flickering light of the fluorescents of Inn House Manor’s basement dining room, at the wobbly table’s scratch-marked surface of old linoleum, he with his hooked nose and pale gray skin and unlikely air of aloof aristocracy (a thing seldom if ever earned, but in the composure of a beggar, a mooch, a thing that didn’t belong at all), and I, with I can scarce say what look I wore, yes, we faced each other. We faced each other staring in a sort of Mexican stand-off of dead-body wits. I wanted to pry his mouth open and make him say something true and factual, or if that didn’t work, I wanted to write it as a note, to wrap the note up and stuff it in there and make him eat it.

“Look,” he said at last, “I don’t know about that. I don’t know why you’d say that. I don’t know why people, when they look at me at all, they look right through me and say that same thing. At least they used to. But now, like you… or maybe not like you… everyone I know seems to have just forgotten I was ever there. They’ve changed. Everyone has changed. Nobody even sees me now.”

“That’s because…” There were only so many ways that I could say it.

“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” Finch protested. “And I don’t know what you’re doing here either.”

Here. That in itself was a dilemma. The dining room was a dismal place, no doubt, with its mismatched collection of tables, some little, some long, and plastic chairs and folding metal chairs arranged around them; its scuffed floors, its sick and seeping yellow walls. One moment, the room was full of bodies, people eating, lost looks on their faces, more or less ignoring one another, the next again, it was empty but for the two of us. Whether it was day or night outside was hard to tell because there were no windows and the light was always the same. The kitchen was open one moment and closed the next, its sliding metal partition at the service window drawn up or down, depending. And if there was someone inside the kitchen, they dispensed the food. And if there wasn’t, they didn’t. But the order of this – open, closed, feeding or not – became blurred, and the difference was ultimately meaningless. We weren’t eating. We couldn’t; we were souls.

“I’m here,” I said, “I think because I’ve left my body. So far as I know, it’s still up there in the world, walking around, doing stuff without me, who knows what. It may be possible that not everyone who’s dead has exactly died – at least I hope that’s the case, but don’t hold me to it. Maybe I was disappointed once too often, or this single disappointment came too hard and so I’ve given up hope. In any event, despite my obvious limitations, there’s likely no one more qualified to be your guide through the land of the dead than me. If that’s where we are.”

“So you’ve got a cigarette for me, in that case?” Ever hopeful, his eyes all lit up.

I ignored the question. “When you overdosed on heroin nineteen years ago, Finch, nobody really knew if it was because you’d meant to kill yourself, or if you’d just blundered into it. Maybe you didn’t know how much of the stuff was too much, or maybe you didn’t care. Either way seemed just as likely. I know that the last time I’d seen you, downtown on the sidewalk in front of that tavern, you’d seen us coming. My friend and I spun on our heels and walked the other way, since we knew you were just going to hit us up for a beer or a smoke, most likely both, and we were sick of it. It wasn’t premeditated – nobody decided to ostracize you for your annoying behavior. The thing was entirely spontaneous. We were fed up with you, Finch. But then I found out a week or so later how you’d died, and I couldn’t help but feel in some small way responsible, and maybe that’s why you’ve stuck to me for all this time. Because I feel guilty for treating you badly, because of how you might’ve taken it. What do you think? Is that why you’ve been following me around? Is that why I’m the one who’s tasked now with showing you how to be dead?”

“I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about. But if you give me a cigarette, I’ll tell you that story.”

“The extent of your incomprehension is staggering to me. You are nothing but empty inside.”

“I am hungry.”

“No doubt.”

“Come on, give us a cigarette.”

“We can’t smoke in here.”

“Nobody cares, and besides, they won’t notice. And if they notice, they won’t do anything about it. Come on, give us a smoke, will you? I know you’ve got one, and I know you’ll like this story.”

Hell. What was it to me? I gave him a smoke from the crumpled pack in my shirt pocket. He took it and lit it from matches in his possession. There was at least that much – he didn’t ask me for a light as well.

•

“It’s less a story than a setting for a story, actually,” explained Finch once he’d set the tip to glowing and taken a good long pull. It was clear he relished the smoke; he held it in his lungs and felt the nicotine before pushing it out again in a long stream.

“I’m already a little disappointed,” I said.

“Well, just wait, would you? Hear me out before you pass judgement. You may even like this.”

“You told me,” I said, “that I definitely would like this. Now you say I might like it? You’re lowering my expectations, now you’ve got what you wanted, because you’ve got nothing. So what’s next? Should I be happy you haven’t simply robbed me?”

“I want to tell you about a place. I think I saw this place once – I’m not entirely sure. But I’ve carried around ever since the image of the city, the idea of this city. I don’t know that it’s a place that’s either good or bad, only that it isn’t real. There is nothing about it that’s real. A person might have an idea about somewhere like this, in fact they very likely do, about what it’s like; they might think it must be bad if it isn’t real, or it must be good, or something. But the place itself doesn’t tell you that. It is only that way, and not some other way, say what you will of it, good or bad or whatever. The city is an unreal place, where only unreal things happen, and it’s somewhere I want to go. I think I’ll get there. It’s where I might finally get on my feet, you know? Get a good job, find a nice girlfriend with big tits. I call it Fake City. I think the name says everything you need to know about it. I could maybe just as well call it ‘First Place’ or ‘First City’, because it’s the sort of city that came before everything else, before all the other cities. At least that’s how I think of it. I’m pretty sure it’s that way.”

“That would make it a very old city,” I said as I took out another cigarette for myself. What the hell, I figured. Finch had been right about that much: nobody else was around at the moment, much less offended that we were smoking.

“No, it wouldn’t. That would make it outside of time completely. We don’t know when the real first cities happened. There’s an awful lot that we don’t know about when everything started. But the idea for the first one, the one that’s unreal, has to come from outside of time, otherwise it won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“Why not? Because otherwise it has to be at some point, at some time, and you have to know that time was the first time, and that would make it real, at least a little bit, and this one isn’t like that. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said, holding up my hands in surrender. It was his story after all.

“And if I go there, and when I go there, I wanna arrive in style. I don’t want to be stupid about it, just to walk in, get off a train or a bus or something, like any dumbass. I want it to be a parade, with cheering and trumpets and confetti, and girls dancing, and free beer. I think it should be like that.”

“But why should anything be like that?” I asked him.

“Nothing there is real, so why shouldn’t it be?”

“Because you haven’t done anything to deserve it. Why should all these people in this whole city – even if it’s a fake one – why should they be so happy you’re here? Do you see what’s wrong with this?”

Finch really seemed deflated at that. He slumped in his chair and bent his head forward, looking, if possible, even more pale and lifeless than before.

But I wasn’t going to let him off the hook so easily. “You’re dead now, Finch, and that’s sad and everything, and you died for a stupid reason, and that’s even more pathetic. But I’m sorry, I don’t think it should win you any prizes, and you shouldn’t get a parade for your merits. For what I can see, you have none. It’s no different from when you were alive. You only took as much as you could from anyone who would give it to you, and it was never enough. That’s why those of us who knew you turned and walked away when we saw you coming. You would just show up and expect that people should give you stuff. But why should anyone give you anything? If they do, it’s because they’re good and charitable people, and they feel sorry for you. But you can’t and you shouldn’t expect that, much less think that it’s somehow owed you. Where did that attitude get you? Did you even pay for that dose that killed you? I’ll bet you didn’t. Maybe you said you’d pay, but dying got you out of that obligation, even bought you a little sympathy.”

“Man, are you serious all of a sudden. What brought all that on? You’re really kind of an asshole, you know? And besides, I’m giving you a story…”

“It’s not even a story, Finch. It’s a setting for a story that doesn’t happen.”

“Well… you don’t know that. Just because it hasn’t happened yet… that doesn’t mean it’s not going to.”

“Okay, Finch. I’m sorry, you’re right. So what else can you tell me about this place that isn’t there?”

With this he seemed to brighten. He straightened up, waving his cigarette dramatically through the air. “Now there’s your first mistake,” he said. “It’s not that it isn’t there, but that it could be, and is, anywhere. Just like Fake City is outside time, Fake City is any place. It could, for instance, be right here, just as much as anywhere. You don’t need to take a bus to get there, you don’t need to take a train or a plane or walk or hitch a ride. Because when you get to Fake City, you’ve always been there, and Fake City is anywhere you are. And I’m going to tell you something else about it. Are you ready to hear this? Because I don’t think you are.”

“Teach me the wisdom of the dead, Finch.”

“We are there right now. It is all around us.”