The entity known as Dabba Doo sat in front of the television at the end of a long day, as was his habit. All of his days were long now—almost beyond belief.
He was not a child; nor was he a man.
Neither a landlord nor a tenant be . . .
He was a diver who’d spent too much time in the lower depths, with no decompression chamber waiting.
His memories were a miasma, a stew dissolving into broth. His physical body, such as it was, flicker-faded. Intermittently, his breath became labored and he could feel his very blood coursing its last lap. When he asked himself (with growing infrequency) what it was that had happened to him, he was baffled, and dropped the thread. What he lived for, if living is the word, was the Meetings—communion with those who were like family now. For the first time in his life, he loved and felt loved in return.
But even that was beginning to flicker-fade—
His son and daughter-in-law saw the change in him and searched for evidence of a stroke. They wanted him to get a check-up but he refused. He never left the house anymore, except for the hour-and-a-half round-trip to the Meetings in Detroit.
Then—one morning after a morose and hectic sleep—something happened that seemed like a miracle. He began to remember everything about his old life, a life that’d been slipping away since the murdered boy Dabba Doo settled in with his childish ways, his childish memories.
He remembered he once was a hunter. He was a schoolteacher too, but he had always been a hunter, and childhood memories—not Dabba Doo’s—returned to cosset him. When he was small, he hunted insects, chickens, snakes and mice, before graduating to cats and dogs, household and stray. At twelve, he stole onto a neighbor’s property at midnight and killed a young horse. Thinking about the foal’s dissection gave him a hard-on. That hadn’t happened in a long while, not since his child-tenant took up residence.
He tried to conjure the hunting life after his teenage years but had trouble. But the miracle had arrived, the miracle of becoming himself again, and those memories, his memories, would soon come as well. He knew there must be a purpose to everything he’d undergone in these strange, epic months, that all had been orchestrated by a force greater than him—some fierce, wild-hearted god.
Roy Eakins died and was reborn as Dabba Doo, but now the child-tenant was collapsing and something new was taking its place, staking its claim. Dabba Doo slept most of the time now, in a little royal bedroom deep inside the castle of what Roy Eakins was becoming.
He felt as if he were in the midst of being granted a third life. He was convinced he was changing into something extraordinary and that it would be a mistake to wait passively for his destiny to unfold. He came to believe that had been the whole problem, the reason he’d been there the longest: because he hadn’t seized his destiny. He just sat in Meetings like an addled coward, waiting for it to seize him.
Now he knew what he must do to be whole—to retrieve the memories of the hunt.
Violet answered the door in her business suit. She smiled in friendly puzzlement—she’d never seen a landlord outside of the Meeting before. It was a fun thing but flustered her.
“I was in the neighborhood,” he said. “Thought I’d stop and say hello.”
“Yes, hi, of course! Come in!”
She was winding down after her workday and he smelled wine on her breath. The insurance company paid her well; the condo was beautifully done. She made a joke about being sorry she didn’t have any gummy bears, “not even green ones!”
He laughed and said, “But I’ll bet you have angel food cake.”
“My favorite,” she said. “And I do!”
“I’m Roy, by the way. Roy Eakins. That’s my ‘street name’—my landlord name.”
“I’m Sarabeth Ahlström,” said the one he knew as Violet.
“Lovely apartment. My lord.”
“Thank you.”
“I guess I had to come to Dearborn Heights to see how the other half lives.”
“Ha! Well, do you approve?”
“I more than approve. I envy.”
“Can I get you a drink, Roy? It might dull the pain.”
“I’d like that. Whatever you’re having will be fine.”
She went to the fridge to get ice.
“Hey, is this kosher?” she called out.
“The wine? Well, if it ain’t Manischewitz—”
“You’re silly! I mean, are we landlords supposed to fraternize?”
“Rules were made to be broken. The Porter’s sure got a lot of them.”
“Yes she does,” said Sarabeth.
“Let’s break ’em one by one.”
“I won’t tell if you don’t.”
“Mum’s the word. I don’t think we can get in too much trouble—what’s Annie gonna do, put us in detention? It’s kind of tough to punish a dead person.”
Sarabeth laughed out loud. “You’re a wicked man!”
As attractive and even flirtatious as she was, it was clear that sex wasn’t going to be part of the program. From what she’d shared in Meetings about her tangle of spurned lovers, Sarabeth had been a very busy girl before she died. But she’d been around too long now; her child-tenant, Violet, was dominant, killing off the landlord’s body’s memory of desire.
“Here you go, Dabba Doo,” she said, handing him his drink. “A little dab’ll do ya.”
He laughed and said, “You better call me Roy—Dabba Doo’s underage and providing a minor with alcohol will get you in trouble.”
“You’re right! I stand corrected. Or sit corrected.”
She was a little drunk.
“You know, you’re awfully young,” he said. “Do you happen to know how you died? That always intrigues me. Some of the landlords seem to know, others haven’t a clue.”
“Well, I have a suspicion,” said Sarabeth. “I was in the air, flying back from Europe, when it happened—when I felt Violet come. Maybe a blood clot? I googled it. Deep vein thrombosis. I thought maybe that was—”
With a surge of energy, Roy sprang up and broke her jaw, knocking her off the designer loveseat. He crouched over her as she lay stunned on the vintage flat-weave carpet.
“So many things are becoming clear,” he said, in a pensive, almost decorous tone. “Have you had any of the same feelings?” He spoke with the openness and vulnerability of an old friend seeking to ratify common experience. He thought she said Why through the bubble and gristle. “Why? Because I can!” he laughed. “Sorry—hate people who say ‘Because I can.’ Just hate it.” He rabbit-punched her stomach until she vomited blood. “Haven’t done this in a while,” he mused, climbing off her. “Can’t even remember the last time I hunted a full-grown. The little ones were always my thing. Which is perhaps ironic.”
Sarabeth clung to consciousness with just enough awareness to feel Violet trying to escape. The child-tenant cried as she ran through dark corridors, searching for her cabin on the train.
“And just so’s ya know, I had nothing to do whatsoever with the fool who murdered your precious tenant. What’s sad, though, is that Violet’s killer is about to get full amnesty—gonna go free as a bird. Right? ’Cause let’s face it, if a kiddie blows his moment of balance, he’s seriously fucked in the revenge department. No tickee, no momentito de balancia. Pardon my French.”
He pulled her pants down. The underwear was soaked in bright blood and Roy peeled it off with the sunny industry of a nurse redressing a wound.
“You said you thought you were getting close to your moment . . . sorry to rob you of that. Wonder who the bugger was. Oh well. Hey, you know what Violet is? Violet’s a rude little cunt. There you are, flying around in planes, business class no doubt, occasional upgrade to first, enjoying your life, drinking fine kosher wine, making a shitload of money—doin’ all kinds of quality fucking (you know you’re the hands-down hottie of the Meeting, right? Though Maya’s a close second)—there you are at the top of your game and wham!—a-hole Violet moves in so she can play her dumb shitty game of afterlife retribution. Tsk, tsk. That’s an interesting theory about the thrombosis, and you might just be right. I think I had a heart attack, which is more age-appropriate for a fogey like me. I remember driving along, don’t recall where to, and I suddenly had these killer chest pains, the whole radiating, achy-arm, elephant-on-your-chest classic. Probably the Big One—what the cardiologists call ‘the Widowmaker.’ I did a little googling myself. I pull over and pass out and the next thing I know I’m awake and just fine—relatively speaking! Off I go, putt-puttin’ down the road. And right then, I started to feel him: the incredible shrinking loser and party-crasher, Mister Dabba Doo. What a pain in the ass he is. No wonder some pedophile whacked him! Dabba Doo: now there’s a bigger cunt than Violet. And wham! A week or so later, my butt’s sitting in a Meeting. Wham, bam, thank you, Annie!”
He took off his clothes. Roy wanted to hear music but her audio setup was too hard to figure out.
“Hey, but Annie’s a helluva gal, don’t you think? She hasn’t looked too spiffy in the last few weeks, have you noticed? Maybe she’s got a thrombosis goin’ on herself.”
He stayed with Sarabeth and Violet until past midnight, long after both departed.