Still, it was kind of like a game with us, a bar contest.
Seeing who could pick out the dead ones.
"Eyes left."
This one sure wasn't dead. Chestnut hair tied back long and gleaming, tan shoulders glowing in the sun. Curve City too, if you know what I mean. The silky dandelion-print dress seemed spun onto her. Low cut and no bra.
"Jesus," said John, "are those nipples or fuckin' spark plugs?"
John could be crude but he had a point so to speak. Her nipples were extremely elongated and hard, like they wanted to spike through the fabric. "If they're sparkplugs," Neal said, "maybe they need to be regapped. Know a good mechanic?"
"Notice that nipples are back this year?" I said. "For a while you hardly ever saw them."
John nodded solemnly. "It's a good thing. It's a godsend."
Then she was gone and two pretty smiling Goths walked by dressed in black, chrome nubs glittering in their vampire-red lips. It's eighty degrees out there and they're wearing black. They were holding hands. "You gotta love this town," I said, smiling.
We turned back to our drinks and talked about Tom Waits on the juke. Neal had seen him fall off his piano stool in Nashville. Whether it was part of the act was still open to question.
"Eyes left."
John let out a low whistle. "Can you say chest fruit?"
"No, but I can say mammiferous," I said. "Can you?"
"What she needs," said Neal, "is an exemplary and thorough breast examination, care of Dr. Neal, to be promptly followed by regular pants-sausage injections on a daily basis."
"What if she's a vegetarian?" said John.
"Then I've got a plantain that'll change her life."
"You guys are terrible," I said.
"Listen to him," John said. "We're terrible and he's standing there cross-legged."
Then it was back to the drinks and talk again. Cigarettes had gone up nearly fifty cents. Rent control was once more being threatened in the legislature. ABC grips were considering a walkout. The usual New York bullshit. Then, "Eyes left," again.
"Call it," John said. "Dead or alive."
"Alive," Neal said but then his squint grew narrower.
I knew she was dead before she was halfway by the window. "Dead," I said. Easy on the eyes at first, sure. But then you caught the autopsy staples showing in the gap between the top of her jeans and the bottom of her peach blouse. She glanced in at us and you could see it in the eyes.
"The winner!" said John. "Anna, get this gentleman another Dewar's on me and another Heiny for myself."
"What am I," Neal said, "chopped liver?"
"And a plate of chopped liver for Dr. Neal of the exemplary breast exams."
These guys. I mean, you can't take them anywhere.
Anna knew us all pretty well by then though and poured refills for everybody. No chopped liver made an appearance. We drank.
"Gustavo told me a story last night," Neal said. "About those apartments over the flower shop. Hey, where the hell were you two guys last night, anyway?"
John shrugged. "I was home doing the Sunday Times crossword puzzle and listening to ole Blue Eyes. What, you go out every night? I had to work today. Not everybody's an artiste and makes his own fuckin' hours. Some of us gotta work in the morning, y'know?"
"I was on the computer," I said. "Online from about ten to midnight. They did another Dead Chat last night."
Neal made a face. "Why do you bother with that shit?"
"He's a voyeur," John said, "of the dead."
"No, I just like hearing what they have to say. And let me tell you, they have some stories. When they start writing novels I'm really fucked.”
“Eyes left."
We looked. "Hubba hubba," Neal said.
A real head-turner. Tall and sleek with mile-long legs walking along like a runway model in this sheer off-the-shoulder top and flowing organdy dress. Lots of jewelry and fiery red hair.
The redheads always get to me.
Behind us Anna laughed. "You perverts! She's dead!"
She was right. When she turned her head you could see the long, unhealed gash along the side of her throat. Like somebody had tried to cut her head off but didn't quite make it.
John groaned.
"So much for hubba hubba," I said.
Neal ordered a plate of fried calamari and Anna went to place the order with the kitchen. We watched her too. Anna was quite a looker herself but way off bounds. You didn't mess around with your bartender.
"So? Like what?" John said.
"Huh?"
"Those stories you were talking about. These Dead Chats. What's so fuckin' interesting?"
"Okay. Take this guy last night. Ninety-two years old, starved to death in his own apartment. Got out of bed one morning, got dressed, wanted to take a leak but his bedroom door wouldn't open. He starts yelling for his nephew, who lives with him. Nephew's only sixty-four. No answer. So the old guy opens his bedroom window, takes a four-story piss, then goes back to pounding on the door and yelling for his nephew. Who still doesn't answer."
"Where's the nephew?"
"I'm getting to that. So this poor guy's trapped in his bedroom with no phone and no food and nothing but a John Grisham novel to keep him company. Can you imagine that? He's trapped in there for a week with John Grisham. So finally he just lies down on his bed and dies."
"So then he comes back, right?"
"Right. And you know what they say. Sometimes they're stronger than when they were alive. So he pushes at the door and this time it opens. What's been blocking the door is the nephew. He's dead on the floor from a heart attack."
"How come he didn't come back like the old man?"
"No brains."
"Say what?"
"See, the nephew had a plate in his head from a war injury. So when he fell down behind the heart attack his head slammed into the radiator knob. Pops the plate right out of his skull along with half of what's inside. Rats made short work of whatever was left."
John laughed. "I dunno whether you call that good luck or bad. For the nephew I mean."
"Got me. Depends on your point of view, I guess most of them seem pretty content, though. At least they're walking around."
"Eyes left! Quick! Man, is that one hot dish or what?"
John and I looked. Then gagged.
"Yeah, one hot dish of ground chuck," John said.
"Prick!"
She was roadkill in a sundress, probably pushing three hundred pounds and all of it rot. One eye was gone and so was her lower lip. At least she'd done her hair up nice. Neal was having a good old time though, laughing at our expense.
"Now that's what I call a wood-killer," John said.
I had to look away. "Jesus, I bet she leaks, leaves a trail of drippings. There oughta be a law against the ones like that."
"The dead aren't toxic, remember?" Neal said. "Nobody knows why but they're not. So there's no reason there should be a law, you bigot. Come on, now. The dead are people too."
He was mocking me. I probably deserved it. I could get a little preachy sometimes on the subject of the dead. There were laws to protect them these days and I agreed with those laws. A lot of people didn't. But sometimes it got to be a little much even for me, seeing the really-maimed or rotten ones like this. I once saw a guy walking down Broadway carrying his guts in front of him in a wicker basket.
Wasn't pretty.
"You were saying something about Gustavo and last night? Something about the flower shop?"
His calamari had arrived in front of him and Neal was nibbling the batter off a piece of squid to expose the grey-black tentacle. That wasn't pretty either.
"Oh, yeah. Last Saturday he's sitting here in the bar tossing back a few tequilas and notices a couple of squad cars pull up over there. They don't have their lights on or anything but he just happens to notice them and while he's talking up some woman beside him, he keeps an eye on them. Comes from growing up in Spanish Harlem — you watch the cops. Anyway, they're no sooner out of their cruisers when the old lady who runs the flower shop comes out and she's yammering away and keeps pointing up to the third-floor apartment over the shop."