Saïd Sayrafiezadeh - New American Stories

Stevie

Preeti

Nishi

Hero

Alicia

Liberty

Vyvienne

Yumiko

—

“Were you really going to do it?” Hero wants to know. This is before the snake, before I know what she’s up to.

“Yeah,” I say.

“Why?”

“Why not?” I say. “Lots of reasons. ‘Why’ is kind of a dumb question, isn’t it? I mean, why did God make me so pretty? Why size four jeans?”

There’s a walk-in closet in the burial chamber. I went through it looking for something useful. Anything useful. Silk shawls, crushed velvet dresses, black jeans in the wrong size. A stereo system loaded with the kind of music rich goth girls listen to. Extra pillows. Sterling silver. Perfumes, makeup. A mummified cat. Noodles. I remember when Noodles died. We were eight. They were already laying the foundations of Hero’s pyramid. The Olds called in the embalmers.

We helped with the natron. I had nightmares for a week.

Hero says, “They’re for the afterlife, okay?”

“You’re not going to be fat in the afterlife?” At this point, I still don’t know Hero’s plan, but I’m starting to worry. Hero has a taste for the epic. I suppose it runs in the family.

“My Ba is skinny,” Hero says. “Unlike yours, . You may be skinny on the outside, but you have a fat-ass heart. Anubis will judge you. Ammit will devour you.”

She sounds so serious. I should laugh. You try laughing when you’re down in the dark, in your sister’s secret burial chamber — not the decoy one where everybody hangs out and drinks, where once — oh, God, how sweet is that memory still — you and your sister’s Face did it on the memorial stone — under three hundred thousand limestone blocks, down at the bottom of a shaft behind a door in an antechamber that maybe somebody, in a couple of hundred years, will stumble into.

—

What kind of afterlife do you get to have as a mummy? If you’re Hero, I guess you believe your Ba and Ka will reunite in the afterlife. Hero thinks she’s going to be an Akh, an immortal. She and the rest of them go around stockpiling everything they think they need to have an excellent afterlife. The Olds indulge them. The girls plan for the afterlife. The boys play sports, collect race cars or twentieth-century space shuttles, scheme to get laid. I specialize in the latter.

The girls have ushabti made of themselves, give them to each other at the pyramid dedication ceremonies, the sweet sixteen parties. They collect shabti of their favorite singers, actors, whatever. They read The Book of the Dead. In the meantime, their pyramids are where we go to have a good time. When I commissioned the artist who makes my ushabti, I had her make two different kinds. One is for people I don’t know well. The other shabti is for the girls I’ve slept with. I modeled for that one in the nude. If I’m going to hang out with these girls in the afterlife, I want to have all my working parts.

Me, I’ve done some reading, too. What happens once you’re a mummy? Grave robbers dig you up. Sometimes they grind you up and sell you as medicine, fertilizer, pigment. People used to have these mummy parties. Invite their friends over. Unwrap a mummy. See what’s inside.

Maybe nobody ever finds you. Maybe you end up in a display case in a museum. Maybe your curse kills lots of people. I know which one I’m hoping for.

—

“ ,” Yumiko said, “I don’t want this thing to be boring. Fireworks and Faces, celebrities promoting their new thing.”

This was earlier.

Once Yumiko and I did it in Angela’s pyramid, right in front of a false door. Another time she punched me in the side of the face because she caught me and Preeti in bed. Gave me a cauliflower ear.

Yumiko’s pyramid isn’t quite as big as Stevie’s, or even Preeti’s pyramid. But it’s on higher ground. From up on top, you can see down to the ocean.

“So what do you want me to do?” I asked her.

“Just do something,” Yumiko said.

I had an idea right away.

—

“Let me out, Hero.”

We came down here with a bottle of champagne. Hero asked me to open it. By the time I had the cork out, she’d shut the door. No handle. Just a keypad.

“Eventually you’re going to have to let me out, Hero.”

“Do you remember the watermelon game?” Hero says. She’s lying on a divan. We’re reminiscing about the good old times. I think. We were going to have a serious talk. Only it turned out it wasn’t about what I thought it was about. It wasn’t about the movie I’d made. The erotic film. It was about the other thing.

“It’s really cold down here,” I say. “I’m going to catch a cold.”

“Tough,” Hero says.

I pace a bit. “The watermelon game. With Vyvienne’s unicorn?” Vyvienne’s mother is twice as rich as God. Vyvienne’s pyramid is three times the size of Hero’s. She kisses like a fish, fucks like a fiend, and her hobby is breeding chimeras. Most of the estates around here have a real problem with unicorns now, thanks to Vyvienne. They’re territorial. You don’t mess with them in mating season.

Anyway, I came up with this variation on French bullfighting, Taureau Piscine, except with unicorns. You got a point every time you and the unicorn were in the swimming pool together. We did Licorne Pasteque, too. Brought out a side table and a couple of chairs and set them up on the lawn. Cut up the watermelon and took turns. You can eat the watermelon, but only while you’re sitting at the table. Meanwhile the unicorn is getting more and more pissed off that you’re in its territory.

It was insanely awesome until the stupid unicorn broke its leg going into the pool, and somebody had to come and put a bullet in its head. Plus, the Olds got mad about one of the chairs. Turned out to be an antique. Priceless. The unicorn broke the back to kindling.

“Do you remember how Vyvienne cried and cried?” Hero says. Even this is part of the happy memory for Hero. She hates Vyvienne. Why? Some boring reason. I forget the specifics. Here’s the gist of it: Hero is fat. Vyvienne is a bitch.

“I felt sorrier for whoever was going to have to clean up the pool,” I say.

“Liar,” Hero says. “You’ve never felt sorry for anyone in your life. You’re a textbook sociopath. You were going to kill all of our friends. I’m doing the world a huge favor.”

“They aren’t your friends,” I say. “None of them even like you. I don’t know why you’d want to save a single one of them.”

Hero says nothing. Her eyes get pink.

I say, “They’ll find us eventually.” We’ve both got implants, of course. Implants to keep the girls from getting pregnant, to make us puke if we try drugs or take a drink. There are ways to get around this. Darius is always good for new solutions. The implant — the Entourage — is also a way for our parents’ security teams to monitor us. In case of kidnappers. In case we go places that are off-limits, or run away. Rich people don’t like to lose their stuff.

“This chamber has some pretty interesting muffling qualities,” Hero says. “I installed the hardware myself. Top-gear spy stuff. You know, just in case.”

“In case of what?” I ask.

She ignores that. “Also, I paid a guy for three hundred thousand microdot trackers. One hundred and fifty have your profile. One hundred and fifty have mine. They’re programmed to go on and off-line in random clusters, at irregular intervals, for the next three months, starting about ten minutes ago. You think you’re the only one in the world who suffers. Who’s unhappy. You don’t even see me. You’ve been so busy obsessing over Tara and Philip, you never notice anything else.”