Нил Шустерман - Antsy Does Time

“Hello. You’ve reached the Kings County Morgue. Our offices are closed now, but if this is a morgue-related emergency, please dial zero. Otherwise please call back during normal business hours.”

I looked at her, gaping and shaking my head. This was my doing. Just like I said, I had programmed the morgue into her speed dial as a joke, and I must have programmed it over Frankie’s number. What stinking, lousy timing.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so, so, sorry.”

My eyes started to well up, because right here, right now, it almost seemed like a bad omen, and she was getting all choked up, too. She turned away. Then I heard her give a little hiccup, and then another, and when she turned back, I could see that in the middle of tears, she had started laughing.

“You rotten, rotten kid.”

And then I was laughing, too. I put my arms around her and held her, and both of us stood there laughing, and crying, laughing and crying like a couple of nutjobs, until the doctor came in, and cleared his throat to get our attention. Maybe he understood what we were feeling, maybe he didn’t. Maybe he’d seen everything. He started to speak before we had the chance to brace ourselves.

“He made it through the operation,” he said, “but the next twenty-four hours are crucial.”

We relaxed just the slightest bit, and Mom finally got to call Frankie instead of the morgue.

My father almost died again the next day, but he didn’t. Instead he started to get better. By Friday, they moved him out of intensive care, and by Saturday, he was bored. He tried to squeeze news out of my mom about the restaurant, but all she would say was, “It’s there,” and she forbade anyone else to talk about it, for fear that talking business would send my father back into cardiac arrest.

With my dad on the mend, and more than enough people doting on him, my thoughts drifted to Kjersten and Gunnar. I went to visit on Sunday morning, to see how they were handling their own hardships, and give whatever support I could. The Christmas wreath was gone from their door, and the foreclosure notice glared out for the whole world to see.

“Good riddance,” I heard one beer-bellied neighbor say to another as I walked down the block toward their house. “After what they did to our yards, let ‛em go back where they came from. Freakin’ foreigners.”

I turned to the man. “No, actually I was the one who did that to your yards, and I ain’t going nowhere. You gonna do something about it?”

He puffed on a cigarette. “Why don’t you just move along,” he said from behind the safety of his little waist-high wrought-iron fence.

“Lucky you got that fence between us,” I said. “Otherwise I might have to go samurai on your ass.” I have to say there’s nothing more satisfying than lip delivered to those who deserve it.

Mrs. Ümlaut answered the door, and pulled me in like she was pulling me out of a blizzard instead of a clear winter day. She barely allowed Kjersten to hug me before she dragged me into the kitchen, practically buried me in French toast, and had me tell her all about my dad’s condition. Now that I had fought various members of the Ümlaut household and had been struck repeatedly by a blunt object, I guess that made me like family.

I went upstairs to find Gunnar in his room, watching a black-and-white foreign film called The Seventh Seal.

“It’s by Ingmar Bergman, patron saint of all things Swedish,” he said. “It’s about a chess game with death.”

“Of course it is,” I said. “What else would you be watching?” I sat down at his desk chair. There was dust on his desk, as if he hadn’t done homework for weeks.

“What’s that thing the Grim Reaper holds, anyway?” I asked.

“It’s called a scythe,” Gunnar said. “It’s what people used to use to harvest grain.”

“So does modern death drive a combine?”

Gunnar chuckled, but only slightly.

We watched the film for a few minutes. It was a scene where the main character was looking out of a high window, supposedly facing the horizon of his own mortality, and it got me thinking about the guy who fell from the Roadkyll Raccoon balloon on Thanksgiving. I wondered if he, like the guy in the film, saw the Grim Reaper waiting for him.

No one likes the Grim Reaper. He’s like that tax auditor who came to our house a couple of years ago. He’s just doing his job, but everyone hates his guts on principle. If there really is such a guy and he comes for me someday, I promised myself I’d offer him cookies and milk, like little kids do for Santa Claus. Then maybe at least he’ll put in a good word for me. Bribing Death never hurts.

“It’s good that you’re reconnecting with your roots,” I told him. “I should watch more Italian films.”

He turned off the TV. “I don’t need to watch this,” he said. “I know the ending. Death wins.”

I shrugged. “Doesn’t mean you gotta go carving tombstones.”

Gunnar tossed the remote on his desk. “I’m done with that.” He flexed his fingers. “I think maybe it gave me carpal tunnel.”

He looked at his hand for a while, and although his gaze never left his fingers, I know his thoughts went far away.

“My father’s at the casino again,” Gunnar said. “He hasn’t found a place to live yet, so I guess that’s where he’s staying until he does. Maybe he’ll just set up a cot underneath one of the roulette wheels. I really don’t care.”

That, I knew, was a lie. Keep in mind that I had almost lost my father a few days before, so I knew what Gunnar was going through. It was in a different way, but the concept was basically the same. Reapers come in all shapes and sizes. And they don’t always clear-cut the field with their scythes—sometimes they just leave crop circles.

I really don’t care, Gunnar had said—and all at once I realized that Gunnar was finally, finally in denial. For him this was the best thing that could happen, and it gave me an idea.

“I know they’re taking away your house,” I said to him, “but do you think you guys can squeeze out enough money to fill your mom’s car with gas?”

Even if the answer was no, I knew that I had enough money if they didn’t.

When someone’s addicted, they have these things called interventions. I know about them because my parents had to intervene for one of my dad’s high school buddies who got addicted to some designer drug. Like drugs ain’t bad enough, they got designers involved now. Basically everyone the guy knew sat him down in a room, told him they loved him and that he was a freakin’ moron. Love and humiliation—it’s a powerful combination—and it probably saved his life.

That’s what I thought we’d have with Mr. Ümlaut—a feel-good, huggy-feely intervention. But it didn’t quite turn out that way.

The Anawana Tribal Hotel and Casino was located deep in the Catskill Mountains, on the grounds of an old summer camp, proving that times changed. Old crumbling cabins, yellow and brown, could still be seen from the parking structure. The place boasted a riverboat that, for a few dollars more, would tool around Anawana Lake while you gambled.

The hotel’s main casino was patrolled by security, but I guess Kjersten, Gunnar, and I looked old enough to pass for gambling age—or at least old enough to be ignored for a while, because they didn’t stop us from going into the casino. Kjersten was quiet, steeling herself for the ambush, which is pretty much what this would be.

“Do you really think this will make a difference?” she asked me.

I had no idea, but the fact that she asked at all meant that she still had hope. She held my hand firmly, and it occurred to me that I was no longer her gateway to a younger, simpler time. In spite of our age difference, she’d never see me as “younger” again. And yet still, she was holding my hand.