At home I worry that strands of other peoples’ hair got swept in with mine. Who knows what memories of other people he could accidentally smoke and attribute to me? To be safe, I go through the baggie and take out anything even remotely straight. I am miles of curls.
The next night when I show up at the morgue with a bag of hair and a lighter, Gizmo is a bit skeptical.
“What if I take the wrong memories?” he asks. “What if I smoke this and then you don’t even remember your name?”
“I don’t think so,” I say, “you’d need toddler hair for that. This hair is all memories I can stand to lose.”
For a moment I ponder tricking him and pretending not to know anything right after he inhales. I could ask Where am I? then grab his hand with confused doe eyes.
Suddenly he gets a suspicious look on his face and lowers the joint. “Have you ever owned a dog who died a slow and painful death,” Gizmo asks, “and if so, did you stand by its side the whole time in constant vigil?” His expression is filled with caution.
“No dogs,” I report, “goldfish.” I make the sound of a toilet flushing.
Assured, he nods and takes a deep inhale. My head begins to feel warm and maneuvered, like certain parts of it are getting massaged. He coughs a little. “Is it working?” I ask.
“Truffles,” he says, putting his hand to his forehead like a fake psychic. “You really like truffles.” I nod; they are my favorite tuber. The contents of my head begin to fill with motion, like water is bubbling up in my ears. Tiny popping noises start coming from a place in my skull and grow crunchier. Suddenly, Gizmo’s eyes change.
“Your ex is a jerk,” he says. This seems right too, but when I try to come up with a specific example I’m left with a vague and unscratchable tickle deep in my brain. “You’re too vulnerable,” he says. “That moron could never have given you what you really want.”
All of a sudden, one of the dead bodies shakes and its hand rises up on the table. I scream and hold my bubbling head. “Don’t worry,” Gizmo says, “it’s just a death-rattle.”
“Just a death-rattle?” I laugh. “Do you even know how disturbing that sounds?”
Gizmo puffs more of my hair. I suppose he is used to the disturbing.
When we walk over to the rattling body, it looks vaguely familiar. “This isn’t him, is it?” I ask. “My ex?”
“No. But I can see the resemblance.” Gizmo turns his head a little and stares at the corpse. “Same chin.” As I admire Gizmo’s hands, they take a small clump of the body’s hair between two fingers. He gives me an inquisitive look. “Want to see what this guy’s life was like?”
I decline, for superstitious reasons. I figure I now have a memory hole in my head that might take a few days—weeks, even—to fill. I fear I might decide some other person’s memories are my own.
When I look over at Gizmo, he’s done with my hair joint and staring at me in a funny way.
“What,” I ask, “spill it.” We move towards a corner with a bench, and suddenly the sour smell in the air grows stronger.
“It’s wrong how we postpone bodies from rotting,” I say. “I can smell how wrong it is.”
“That’s what happened with you and the ex. It was going badly, but you kept holding on.” His gloved hands move under my shirt a little and around my bare waist. Knowing he has just handled dead flesh creeps me out at first, but then I move closer. Maybe, I decide, it is a nice contrast for him. After touching a dead person, my skin must seem quite special and alive. “You know,” he says, “I’ve smoked up many memories of bad relationships.” He takes off a glove so he can press his bare hand to my face. “I know what not to do.”
The body behind us gives another death-rattle. It startles me and I jump, but his hand stays on my face and I do not look away. “I’ve seen good memories too, though,” he continues. “I know how to be very romantic.”
I expect his breath to smell awful, like burnt hair, but instead it smells like Lilac Rain shampoo. I watch the fine layer of talc the rubber glove left on his hand glitter magically in the light, and the memory-hole in my brain turns hungry then hungrier.
Eat him with kisses, the hole says; it needs to snack on a new memory right away. So we kiss, and the weird smells of the morgue suddenly turn into something tame and slippery, something our lungs can slide over like jelly, something that can hold our hearts steady through our own quiet death-rattle.
CAT OWNER
I invited Eddie over for dinner as a first date. I am bad at dating, which is to say, I am bad at waiting for people to fall in love with me. What is the hold up? Where is the kink in the hose?
Tonight, I’ve prepared mashed sweet potatoes. I’m nervous because they look like the diarrhea of a clown.
When Eddie knocks, Baxter begins to growl. Baxter is my obese cat. His thyroid condition and back paw deformity prevent exercise. Baxter’s growl is low when he initially spies danger, then it gets very high if the offender does not flee. Your cat sounds like a Hank Williams song, an old boyfriend once said, but he said it while quickly leaving so it wasn’t a compliment they way it could’ve been.
Tonight when I open the door, Baxter slowly crawls over to Eddie’s foot and bites.
During dinner, Eddie tells me all about his job as a claims adjuster. I could care less. I don’t even eat because I’m planning on sex, and I don’t want any sloshing in my stomach or for my mouth to taste like food instead of sex. The tricky part about having sex at my apartment is Baxter, who watches on and growls while slowly crawling towards the bed, then slowly climbing up the woolly cat ramp he uses to get onto and off of the bed when I’m not home. Once he gets to the top, he approaches me and my partner and begins with the fangs. I’m so used to the biting that it doesn’t bother me any more, not even in really sensitive areas, but past partners have freaked out at Baxter’s intimidating 27 lb. figure and his sideways tongue combined with the biting and growling. I should note that by the time Baxter has finally reached the top of the bed he’s exhausted and his mouth is foamy. Maybe it has mad cow disease, an old fling once said, a one-night stand from the bowling alley. He’s not a cow, I replied, but the man was adamant, other things get it, goats and people and all kind of creatures, and when Baxter bit him the man sent me a bill for several expensive precautionary vaccinations he requested at the ER after leaving my apartment. Baxter kind of looks like the cat that’s printed on my checks, only much larger. My checks say, “WHAT’S WITH MONDAYS?” and the thin Baxter printed on them is very confused-looking. I sent the man the check for his medical expenses on a Saturday, specifically so he’d get it on a Monday, and maybe like the joke enough to get back with me. He might call one day.
“This gravy is awesome,” says Eddie. That’s good news. Awesome enough to sleep with me? I want to ask, although people who have the haircut I have and wear the beige vest I wear don’t say such things. My haircut looks like the wigs men don when they want to pretend they are living in the era of Shakespeare. The bangs are totally harsh. I have wanted to tell cashiers, Slit your wrists on my bangs, harlot!” when they are rude to me, especially when they give me an amused look as I’m buying prophylactics. I know what they’re thinking: that I have no use for them.