Judson Carmichael - The Scared Stiff

“Oh, shut up, Barry,” Lola said, clearly having had it up to here with me. “Since I suppose you’re going to insist on having a drink, why don’t you just go ahead and order it?”

“Oh, I have your permission,” I said. “Oh, how wonderful. How gracious.”

Lola, tight-lipped, stared down at the river and the rocks.

To the waitress I said, “A Tanqueray Gibson. Can your bartender handle that?”

“Oh, yes, sir, he—”

To Lola I said, “And you, my darling? What would you like most of all on this lovely evening?”

She glowered at me, and everything she wasn’t saying hung in the air over all heads in the immediate vicinity. Beneath their shimmer, after a little pause, she turned to the waitress, smiling politely in an effort to return civility to the table, and said, “Just water for me, thank you.” Yes, ma am.

The waitress would have turned away, but I said, “You didn’t write it down.”

The look she gave me was cool. “I don’t need to, sir.”

“Oh, of course! Stupid me, I do beg your pardon.” I flopped first my left hand, then my right, onto the table, palms up, as I looked at each in turn and said, “One Tanqueray Gibson, one glass of water. Even I could remember that.”

The waitress, without her smile, made her escape, and I grinned savagely at Lola.

“Water. If you want water so much” — thumb gesture at the river down below — “why not just jump?”

She leaned closer across the table. “Do try to keep it down, Barry,” she muttered, in a tense undertone that nevertheless, I’m certain, carried very well. “People are looking at you.”

“If people are looking at me instead of their food,” I said, not at all keeping it down, “they’ll stab themselves in the cheek with their forks. And deserve it, too.”

Well, it went on like that. I wasn’t funny, I was merely boorish. Clearly, I was either someone who couldn’t hold his liquor or I was someone who’d had more liquor than anyone could hold.

It was hard at night to get rid of liquids at that table. There was no potted plant handy, to corrupt with alcohol. If you just poured your unwanted drink over the side to join the river, it would glisten and gleam in the floodlight glare all the way to the rushing water below.

So what we did, we both drank our water right away, and I poured the first two Gibsons into those glasses after I’d fished out and eaten the onions. The third (and last) Gibson arrived just after the white wine had been delivered in a nice traditional ice bucket containing water and ice, so from then on the gin went to help cool the wine, and so did some of the wine.

Meantime, I was picking at my food, getting drunker, slowly becoming louder without ever reaching the point where Mike might have to come over to have a word with me, and sniping without letup at Lola, who occasionally snarled back but usually just sat there in grim forbearance, frowned at her plate, and mechanically ate her food.

Food. I really should eat something. I put down a couple of mouthfuls, which gave our neighborhood a moment of blissful rest, and which I ended by abruptly hurling my fork down onto my plate with a hell of a clatter, as I jumped to my feet, threw my napkin at the jungle — it floated downward through the air like a flawed parachute, in all that light — and yelled, “I can’t take it anymore! Do what the fuck you want! Stay here in this godforsaken place, if that’s what you want!”

Stunned silence all around, except of course for the river, which went on with its own busy shushing sounds just as though some person weren’t making a scene right overhead. And now, as no one in the entire room ate, and no one spoke, and no one looked directly at me, I spun about, corrected myself in time so that I didn’t march into space, spun about in the other direction, and marched out of the joint.

“You pig! ” — said in clear tones of utter outraged contempt by Lola — was the only sound that followed me.

Mike, near the door, looked as though he wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to hit me or I was supposed to hit him, but whichever it was he was going to hate it. As I swept by him — no fisticuffs — I snarled, “She can pay for dinner. About time she paid for something!” And out I went.

The Impala now was parked to the left of the Beetle, and as I ran from the Scarlet Toucan’s front door across the parking lot, Arturo got out from behind its wheel and came around to the car’s right side. The Impala’s interior light had never worked, at least not during the car’s years in Guerrera, so when he opened both right doors no lights went on. Nevertheless, I could see me slumped in the passenger seat. I recognized me, of course, from my royal-blue shirt.

In a small poor South American country with few records, where people still emerge from the jungle not knowing how old they are or how to write their names, unknown bodies are not rare. People live their lives, and then they die. If they’re still in the jungle, their families bury them right there. If they’ve come to the city, solitary, doing casual labor, living on the margins of society, when they die there’s nobody to claim them or bury them except the government. My undertaker, tensing over his dinner in the Scarlet Toucan at the moment, in addition to his regular family trade also had a contract with the government to deal with the unknown and the indigent. And that’s how we’d gotten our body at a reasonable price.

Very reasonable. In addition to the meal at my expense that my undertaker was I hoped enjoying this evening with the companion of his choice, he could expect to be paid at American rates for his services to the late Barry Lee, not at Guerreran rates. Arturo had provided him with a second set of clothing identical to what I’d worn this evening, he had provided the clothed body, and I had provided dinner.

“Quick!” Arturo whispered.

“One second, one second.”

The only thing I carried that mattered was my wallet. I went to one knee beside the Impala and pushed my substitute leftward so I could slide the wallet into his hip pocket. He was cold but not stiff; in fact, he was unpleasantly soft, not at all what I’d expected.

The Beetle’s interior light switched on when I opened the driver’s door, but no one else was in the parking lot and it wouldn’t be lit for long. I grabbed the royal blue shoulders and Arturo grabbed the chino knees, and we lugged him out of the Impala and behind the wheel of the Beetle. I put one of his hands on the steering wheel, and in the brightness of the interior light I saw his hand was soft and pudgy, with a clear mark on the third finger where a ring had been removed. And wasn’t that a recent manicure?

What was this? This was no indigent, no unknown peon. I tried to see his face, but he was slumped too far forward, I could only see that his cheeks and neck were not scrawny and his hair was neatly barbered.

Something was wrong here, but there wasn’t time to do anything about it. I’d have to ask Arturo later. Who are we getting rid of here?

“Come on, hermano .”

“Yes, yes,” I said, “I’m coming!”

I stood up out of the car and shut its door and the light went off. He was a peon again; he was me again; he was no longer a mystery. I reached in past him to start the engine, which immediately coughed into life. I shifted into DRIVE and got my arm out of there, and the Beetle moved forward to poke the rail fence, insistent but not strong enough to break through.

Now, while I stood there, Arturo ran to the Impala. He got in, started it without switching on the headlights, and backed up to get behind the Beetle. As I stepped backward out of the way, he suddenly accelerated as fast as he could at the rear of the Beetle, hitting it with a crunch that popped the smaller car forward, through the fence and off the edge.