George Martin - Suicide Kings

She lay back with an exhalation, watching the ceiling go from black to grey, grey to blue, blue to white. On his way back toward the kitchen, he caught himself humming something. Louis Armstrong was in his head. Say nighty-night and kiss me

Just hold me tight and tell me you’ll miss me

While I’m alone and blue as can be

Dream a little dream of me

He stopped humming.

The FedEx guy came while Ellen and Aliyah were in the shower. Bugsy signed for the box and dropped it on the counter, then picked it up and checked the return address. New Orleans. Jerusha Carter, his old teammate from Team Hearts. Somehow invoking hearts seemed like an omen, but he couldn’t say whether it was good or bad. Probably it was just the hangover talking.

Ellen walked in from the back, still toweling off her short hair. “Who was it?” she asked.

“Christmas in November,” he said, nodding to the package. Ellen picked it up, turned it over, then got a steak knife out of the drawer and slit the tape. Something in bubble wrap, and a note. “What is it?” Bugsy asked.

“Another hat,” Ellen said with a sigh that meant another lottery ticket. Another chance that maybe this was the one she’d lost. Nick. Will-o’-Wisp. Her lost love, carried away by the wild winds of New Orleans. In the year since she’d lost him, they’d gotten hundreds, and not just fedoras. Baseball caps. Kangols. Two leather ten-gallon cowboy hats. A straw porkpie.

Ellen tore the bubble wrap open with her fingers, the popping sound like distant gunfire. The thing nestled in its center was a nasty green-brown, smelled of rot and river water, and had once been a fedora. “Hey,” Bugsy said. “That one even looks kind of like-”

She had already scooped the hat up, cramming it over her still wet hair. Her body went still. Bugsy held his breath, and Nick opened her eyes for her.

Well, Bugsy thought, fuck me sideways. Things just got more complicated again.

“What happened?” Nick asked.

“You blew off in a hurricane. Ellen’ll fill you in on the details,” Bugsy said. “I’d hang out, but I’ve got a thing I’ve got to get to. Anyway, you two lovebirds probably want to catch up, right?”

Nick looked stunned, his attention focused inward, where Ellen was probably talking with him. Another dead guy in the house. When Bugsy slipped out the front door, there were tears in her eyes, and he couldn’t tell if they were Nick’s or Ellen’s.

His three-way was a foursome again. Being in love with dead people was probably the only thing he and Ellen really had in common. Nick was going to be some hard explaining come Christmas dinner with the Tipton-Clarkes.

The offices of Aces magazine were open when he got there. He waited in the lobby drinking stale coffee from a paper cup until Digger Downs came out, shook his hand, and led him to the back office. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” Digger said. “We’re just about to put this issue to bed. You still doing any writing?”

“Not much,” Bugsy said, with a little twinge of longing. A phantom itch on an amputated career. “Saving it up for the memoir, I guess.”

Digger chuckled, gestured to a chair, and leaned against his desk, arms folded. He looked older, up close. More wrinkles around the eyes, more white in the hair.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

“I’m doing some background work on the Radical. When he first came on the scene. Who his friends are.”

“Should any of them still be alive,” Downs said.

“That’s the guy I’m talking about,” Bugsy said. “I have him first showing up in China in 1993, but he’s clearly a westerner since-”

“Sixty-nine.”

Bugsy tilted his head.

“Nineteen sixty-nine,” Downs said. “San Francisco. Right after they shot those kids at Kent State. The Radical was in the People’s Park riot when the Lizard King fought Hardhat.”

“Ah. Was T. T. even alive in the sixties?” Bugsy said.

“Who?”

“Todd Taszycki. Hardhat.”

“No no no,” Digger Downs said. “Not that one. There was another guy who used that name back then. Very blue-collar. Didn’t have much use for the hippies.”

“So when you say the Lizard King,” Bugsy said, “you mean Thomas Marion Douglas? Lead singer for Destiny?”

“I sure do,” Downs said. “The Holy Trinity. Jimi, Janis, and the Lizard King. He was… he was amazing. I saw him in concert once. When he died, we really lost someone. That was a little before your time, though.”

“ Ninety-four was before my time,” Bugsy said. “Sixty-nine was the end of the Napoleonic wars. What was Weathers doing in San Francisco in the sixties? And where was he for those twenty-five years in the middle?”

“Got me,” Digger said.

Jackson Square

New Orleans, Louisiana

“And how do you feel today, Miss Pond?”

Michelle opened one eye. A middle-aged woman wearing hospital scrubs was standing over her. “Like someone I don’t know just woke me up.” Her voice was still rough. And she was thirsty. Really thirsty. “Can you get me something to drink?”

“I imagine so. I’m Mary. I’m supposed to check your vitals.”

“I’m not dead.”

“That’s pretty clear.” The woman moved out of her line of sight. Michelle wanted to crank her head around, but the fat made it impossible. When Mary walked back into Michelle’s sight, she had an Aquafina bottle in her hand. The water was sweet and cold, and Michelle drank almost the full bottle before gasping for breath.

Then Michelle became aware of a noise. It sounded like a flock of birds, but she’d never seen big flocks of birds in Jackson Square. “What’s making that sound?”

“That? Oh, that’s the faithful talking, honey.”

“The faithful?”

As she pulled a stethoscope from her bag, Mary nodded. “They’re the bunch of folks who’ve been bringing you these flowers, praying over you, making you the focus of their lives.”

Michelle tried to move her leg, but couldn’t. It pissed her off to no end. “That’s insane.”

Mary shrugged and stuck the stethoscope in her ears. “Honey, you’d be amazed. And, just to be fair, you did prevent a lot of them from dying horribly.”

“I was trying to save my friends.”

Mary put her hand on Michelle’s wrist and popped the business end of the stethoscope onto Michelle’s chest. “Doesn’t matter why you did it. Just matters that you did. Now be quiet for a minute.”

Michelle ignored Mary as she poked around. There wouldn’t be any blood drawn. Needles broke when they came in contact with her skin. That had been happening ever since her card had turned.

“Everything sounds good,” Mary said. “Same as it has for the last year.”

Michelle wasn’t listening to her. Her attention was focused on the TV. The volume was still turned off, but there were images of herself flashing behind the blond anchor. One showed her at the height of her modeling career. Then there were publicity shots from American Hero. And finally there were pictures of her lying in Jackson Square after

… after.

Michelle had grown to love her fat. It was power and control, and it meant nothing could hurt her. But seeing herself… Bile rose in her throat. The whole world had seen her like that.

Her body was a distorted mass. Rolls and rolls of fat rippled across each other. The cement under her had shattered. Most of her body was naked. Her pale flesh mortified by the summer sun. And everyone had seen it. Hot tears stung in her eyes.

“Oh, damn it, honey,” said Mary. “They should have turned that off.” She walked to the set and punched the red button.

“Why are they showing that now?” Michelle asked.

“Because you’re awake now. You didn’t die when they took you off life support. You’re a miracle.”