And there they were again, his pink-nosed friends.
"Let's get the tree set up and then do it in the graveyard, okay?" She jumped a little for emphasis and Theo nodded, following the recoil. He suspected that he was being manipulated, enslaved by his own sexual weakness, but he couldn't quite figure out why that was a bad thing. After all, he was among friends.
"Sweetheart, I'm a peace officer, I can't —»
"Come on, it will be nasty." She said nasty like it meant delicious, which is what she meant.
"Molly, after five years together, I'm not sure we're supposed to be nasty." But even as he said it, Theo was moving toward the big evergreen, looking for the ropes that secured it to the Honda.
Over in the graveyard, the dead, who had been listening all along, began to murmur anxiously about the new Christmas tree and the impending sex show.
They'd heard it all, the dead: crying children, wailing widows, confessions, condemnations, questions that they could never answer; Halloween dares, raving drunks-invoking the ghosts or just apologizing for drawing breath; would-be witches, chanting at indifferent spirits, tourists rubbing the old tombstones with paper and charcoal like curious dogs scratching at the grave to get in. Funerals, confirmations, communions, weddings, square dances, heart attacks, junior-high hand jobs, wakes gone awry, vandalism, Handel's Messiah, a birth, a murder, eighty-three Passion plays, eighty-five Christmas pageants, a dozen brides barking over tombstones like taffeta sea lions as the best man gave it to them dog style, and now and again, couples who needed something dark and smelling of damp earth to give their sex life a jolt: the dead had heard it.
"Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah!" Molly cried from her seat astraddle the town constable, who was squirming on an uncomfortable bed of plastic roses a few feet above a dead schoolteacher.
"They always think they're the first ones. Ooooo, let's do it in the graveyard," said Bess Leander, whose husband had served her foxglove tea with her last breakfast.
"I know, there are three used condoms on my grave from this week alone," said Arthur Tannbeau, citrus farmer, deceased five years.
"How can you tell?"
They heard everything, but their vision was limited.
"The smell."
"That's disgusting," said Esther, the schoolteacher.
It's hard to shock the dead. Esther was feigning disgust.
"What's all the racket? I was sleeping." Malcolm Cowley, antique book dealer, myocardial infarction over Dickens.
"Theo Crowe, the constable, and his crazy wife doing it on Esther's grave," said Arthur. "I'll bet she's off her meds."
"Five years they've been married and they're still at this kind of thing?" Since her death, Bess had taken a strong antirelationship stance.
"Postmarital sex is so pedestrian." Malcolm again, ever bored with provincial, small-town death.
"Some postmortem sex, that's what I could use," said the late Marty in the Morning, KGOB radio's top DJ with a bullet — a pioneer carjack victim back when hair bands ruled the airwaves. "A rave in the grave, if you get my meaning."
"Listen to her. I'd like to slip the bone to her," said Jimmy Antalvo, who'd kissed a pole on his Kawasaki to remain ever nineteen.
"Which one?" Marty cackled.
"The new Christmas tree sounds lovely," said Esther. "I do hope they sing 'Good King Wenceslas' this year."
"If they do," spouted the moldy book dealer, "you'll find me justly spinning in my grave."
"You wish," said Jimmy Antalvo. "Hell, I wish."
The dead did not spin in their graves, they did not move — nor could they speak, except to one another, voices without air. What they did was sleep, awakening to listen, to chat a bit, then, eventually, to never wake again. Sometimes it took twenty years, sometimes as long as forty before they took the big sleep, but no one could remember hearing a voice from longer ago than that.
Six feet above them, Molly punctuated her last few convulsive climactic bucks with, "I — AM — SO — GOING — TO — WASH — YOUR — VOLVO — WHEN — WE — GET — HOME! YES! YES! YES!"
Then she sighed and fell forward to nuzzle Theo's chest as she caught her breath.
"I don't know what that means," Theo said.
"It means I'm going to wash your car for you."
"Oh, it's not a euphemism, like, wash the old Volvo. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge?"
"Nope. It's your reward."
Now that they were finished, Theo was having a hard time ignoring the plastic flowers that were impressed in his bare backside. "I thought this was my reward." He gestured to her bare thighs on either side of him, the divots her knees had made in the dirt, her hair played out across his chest.
Molly pushed up and looked down at him. "No, this was your reward for helping me with the Christmas tree. Washing your car is your reward for this."
"Oh," Theo said. "I love you."
"Oh, I think I'm going to be sick," said a newly dead voice from across the woods.
"Who's the new guy?" asked Marty in the Morning.
The radio on Theo's belt, which was down around his knees, crackled. "Pine Cove Constable, come in. Theo?"
Theo did an awkward sit-up and grabbed the radio. "Go ahead, Dispatch."
"Theo, we have a two-oh-seven-A at six-seven-one Worchester Street. The victim is alone and the suspect may still be in the area. I've dispatched two units, but they're twenty minutes out."
"I can be there in five minutes," Theo said.
"Suspect is a white male, over six feet, long blond hair, wearing a long black raincoat or overcoat."
"Roger, Dispatch. I'm on my way." Theo was trying to pull his pants up with one hand while working the radio with the other.
Molly was on her feet already, naked from the waist down, holding her jeans and sneakers rolled up under her left arm. She extended a hand to help Theo up.
"What's a two-oh-seven?"
"Not sure," said Theo, letting her lever him to his feet. "Either an attempted kidnapping or a possum with a handgun."
"You have plastic flowers stuck to your butt."
"Probably the former, she didn't say anything about shots fired."
"No, leave them. They're cute."
Chapter 5
THE SEASON FOR MAKING NEW FRIENDS
Theo was doing fifty up Worchester Street when the blond man stepped from behind a tree into the street. The Volvo had just lurched over a patched strip in the asphalt, so the grille was pointed up and caught the blond man about hip-high, tossing him into the air ahead of the car. Theo stood on the brake, but even as the antilocks throbbed, the blond man hit the tarmac and the Volvo rolled over him, making sickening crunching and thumping noises as body parts ricocheted into wheel wells.
Theo checked the rearview as the car stopped and saw the blond man flopping to a stop in the red wash of the brake lights. Theo pulled the radio off his belt as he leaped from the car, and stood ready to call for help when the figure lying in the road started to get up.
Theo let the radio fall to his side. "Hey, buddy, just stay right there. Just stay calm. Help is on the way." He started loping toward the injured man, then pulled up.
The blond guy was on his hands and knees now; Theo could also see that his head was twisted the wrong way and the long blond hair was cascading back to the ground. There was a crackling noise as the guy's head turned around to face the ground. He stood up. He was wearing a long black coat with a rain flap. This was "the suspect."