Page 22

22

Body Disposal

Dodi

I’ve finally had a chance to plead my case. For a full minute I think I’ve succeeded in ruining their fun, but then a breathless, murmuring chatter breaks out. A murderer! A murderer amongst us!

“It’s her . It’s definitely her ,” a voice just below the stage says. “I recognize her from that news article—”

“Holy shit. Holy shit. ”

“Can we get her autograph?”

The room has gone wild, and they all want a piece of me. Twisted degenerates, the lot of them. I pan the crowd, and in the busy, moving mass Jake sticks out, still as a statue. Lips parted, expression blank, the image of a man spun around and dropped in a world where up is down. It’s that frozen audience of one that gives me stage fright. He looks at me like he’s seeing me for the first time.

I’m rocked, the way I was five years ago when a random email with a link to a podcast fell into my inbox. I’d had a lot of feelings, which was interesting because I’d sworn off feelings—although what else could I do upon discovering the worst moment of my life was entertainment to a bunch of strangers?—but after having been alone for years by then, a social pariah, a hermit, I suddenly had company. I had people. Very sordid, fucked-up people, like me. I listened to podcast after podcast. They were out there, flying under the radar, passing by like sharks swimming in dark water. People who wouldn’t judge me. People who would understand. If I could find one single person, I’d settle for that.

I thought I’d found him. Not a murderer, but someone who understood.

I step back into the shadows. There’ll be an exit somewhere back here, behind the stage curtains— there . One robotic step and another before I pick up my pace. I’m running by the time I reach the exit. The fire alarm triggers when I slam through the door and burst out into the night like a bat out of hell.

“Wait!” A voice follows me as I pelt down the sidewalk. My shoulders knock into tourists, and someone’s drink splatters on the ground near my feet.

“Dodi—”

I push at the crowd in front of me and become ensnared in a writhing mass of elderly ladies all wearing pink shirts with flamingos on them, posing for photos in front of the Bellagio Fountains, now frothing and spurting all over the fucking place. I whirl on the spot when a hand touches my elbow.

“What?” I shriek.

Jake recoils a step and bends over, hands on his knees, breathless from the pursuit. It occurs to me I’m panting too.

“Dodi—”

“Don’t call me that!”

“I didn’t know—”

“You knew!” I shout. “You knew !”

It comes out sounding feral.

“That day on the roof, you told me I was a ghost. It was like someone finally saw me. You knew what I was going through. You lost your parents—you know about loss—ever since he died, I’ve felt like I died too—I’m just—haunting the living—unfinished business—” My breath catches in my chest, and it’s a moment before I can speak again. “You knew . I told you. I told you I was a widow. You told me—you told me you knew about the secret I keep in plain sight on my desk. You got me tickets to their show. You knew .”

Jake stares at me. He didn’t know.

I feel like I’ve been mugged. Something precious and special I kept clasped in one fist since that day on the rooftop has been stripped from my possession. Another person’s understanding. Another person’s acceptance.

Another person —full stop. He’s dying . I could fucking kill him.

If he’s looking at me like that, I’ve already lost him. I turn on the spot within the throng of flamingo ladies.

“I’m glad you did it,” he says, voice raised over the cackling hubbub of the Flamingo Squad. I freeze, and turn back.

“Not glad ,” Jake amends, voice dropping. He opens and closes his mouth. “I’m dying,” he says quietly, and I wouldn’t hear the words if I couldn’t also see his lips moving. It’s almost experimental the way he says it, like he hasn’t had practice with the phrase. He holds his hands to show me: ghostly white fingers, like they were during our serial killer date.

“It’s a degenerative neurological condition. It’s hereditary. There’s no cure. No treatment. I’m twenty-nine. If what happened to my dad is anything to go by…” He trails off. “It’s going to be bad,” he says simply.

My chest squeezes into itself like a black hole compressing. This handsome, healthy man. Not so healthy. I really know how to pick them.

“He was lucky to have you help him,” Jake says.

I can’t speak.

He reaches to touch me, but what’s the point? He’s dying. I twist and pull away.

“Where are you going?” he asks.

“I have things to do.” There was a reason I needed to get to Las Vegas. I wriggle between two women craning their phones to take photos they will never look at again and reach into my bag to make sure the token is still there—yes—but it spins out of my grasp when I pull my hand from the bag. It flips through the air, glinting with reflected light, and lands somewhere on the pavement at my feet. Jake beats me to it. He gets down on one knee and locates it in a crack between the pavers. When he finds it, he holds it up and peers at it.

Around us strangers step back, turn, gasp, and point their phones at us. Jake and I freeze and watch the crowd around us with alarm.

“He’s proposing!” a flamingo woman shrieks to her silver-haired friends. “He’s proposing !”

Jake’s mouth falls open and I grow roots. The old girls press close around us, yowling their delight, penning us in as securely as a prison fence with their enormous magenta bosoms, all the while the fountain blaring “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” the silver and blue light flashing gaudily—and I’m convinced this is limbo, and we both died just now, and he and I are probably trapped here in this claustrophobic bubble of sensory torture forever when—

“Say yes!” another woman shrieks in my ear. Her friend jostles me from the other side. “Say yes!”

I snatch the token from Jake’s hands and the Flamingo Squad claps and squeals and flaps their hands.

“Wait till I show Ruth what she missed!” the original silver-hair gasps from behind her phone, recording the whole thing.

Jake quickly stands and leads me with an icy cold hand to a deserted vantage nook by the fountain. His face is painted in the gaudy lights of the display, the reflections in his glasses obscuring his eyes. We’re quiet for a moment. My heart is still pounding in my chest. I wonder what his heart is doing.

“Why did you need to come to Las Vegas?” he says at last.

It’s amazing how many times I have to repeat myself. I place my bag on the ground, unzip it, and pull out a square stone vase. The one he’s seen on my desk at work. I hand it to him. “Unfinished business.”

It takes him a moment to understand what he’s holding: the secret I’ve been keeping in plain sight.

“He wanted his ashes scattered somewhere in Las Vegas,” I say.

Jake raises his eyes to mine, understanding everything, finally. He really does see me this time.

I bite my cheek. “You’re the body disposal expert, aren’t you?”