The evening crowd starts drifting in through the frosted-glass door of the Lethe Café, doing that familiar little Charleston of wriggling out of coats and hats and conversations about grandchildren, and started back home in the blackstone rows. They’re dressed beautifully, pearls and half-Windsors all around. A woman swathed in a glittering red swirl of amazingness hands her matching red fur coat to Neil the gargoyle, who kisses her hand with his wolfy lips.
“I wish they’d’ve buried me in something like that,” sighs Daisy Green, curled up next to me, shoes off, bare feet tucked under her in the long, curved booth. She lays her head on my shoulder. She smells like the best part of a nice city, the part that’s all lights and laughter and tidy, blooming trees. “I never wore anything like this a day in my life.”
Daisy Green is stuck for all eternity in a modest black sack dress with a ridiculous lace Peter Pan collar. An Amish schoolmarm would cringe and ask for something with a little more flair. Her gorgeous butter-blond hair is frozen in a straight homeschool braid, and her shoes were clearly fished out of a lost-and-found bin at the funeral home. She’s Miss America dressed as Norman Bates’s mother.
“You and me both,” I sigh. I’m no better. I’ve got the dress I graduated in, and it’s plaid.
Down here in Deadtown, all us boys and girls are cursed to wear whatever the hell you buried us until the heat death of the universe, so give us a goddamn break! The stars will burn out and the oceans will boil before I can take these stupid plastic butterfly barrettes out of my hair and wipe off the Carefree Coral lipstick some mortician thought looked timeless. Well, it’s pretty fucking timeless now, and I hate it like hellfire. I’ve seen men in powder blue suits and long-toed loafers trying to claw them off in the alley. Girls bending scissors on their black wool twinsets. Daisy’s braid might as well be made out of stone. But some people get lucky, like Miss Red over there, savoring her empty wineglass. Somebody thought to take care of her. Buried her in a prom dress or her favorite gown. Let her hair hang loose and full. Must be nice.
We order another round. Outside the Lethe’s big, dark windows, the streetlights flicker. It’s starting to rain.
“Turn on the radio, would you, Neil?” calls Miss Red. The bartender reaches up above the top shelf. With one thick, steel-colored claw, he turns the dial on a big deco monstrosity like flipping the tap on a pint of beer. Static glugs out and the Lethe Club goes quiet. Well, not totally quiet. The dead are a loud bunch. But while the moon never sets and the dark never fades in Deadtown, the clock on the wall says 5 PM and that means one thing in this neighborhood. A voice as warm and rich as the head on a chocolate stout pours down from the speaker.
“You’re listening to DPR, Deadtown Public Radio, the Voice of the Underworld. That was Quarter Inch Bleed with their hit ‘Cyan Eyes Make Cyanide.’ And now, ghosts and gargoyles, dames and demons, boys and beasts, spirits dire and kindly, sit back and let your favorite rag-and-bones girl cart your cares away. It’s time for Daisy Chain, the talk of Deadtown, with your dear departed host, Daisy Green.”
Daisy smiles against my shoulder. It’s her voice. It’s her show. She likes to listen to herself in a crowd. Seeing them listening. Seeing them care so fucking much about what she has to say. Being in two places at once is no problem in Deadtown. Her echo is down at the studio, wearing huge headphones and making love to a microphone, while she drinks with us. Down here, people remember her from the movies, but they only mention the really arty ones. Down here, her voice is always the best it ever was on some perfect day after a good night’s sleep, no cigarettes in a week, and a quart of honey in her tea.
Down here, it’s always her best show.