“What is it?” Luke asks. “I’ll try anything.”
“We have to get loaner bodies,” Edgar says. His skin looks better than it did and if I’m not mistaken, his suit does, too.
“Exactly!” Ernesto says.
“How do we do that?” Greg asks.
“Where did everyone go?” I ask. Meeting my new staff has certainly been a bust. There’s no one left at the conference table. Seems like they would stick around and at least offer to help.
“They all scattered. Can’t say I blame them,” Ernesto says.
“What do we need to do, Ernesto?” I ask.
“Right. Loaner bodies.” Ernesto holds out his hand and a file appears. He opens it and says, “Only two of us can go.”
“Why?” Greg asks.
“There are only two loaner bodies available. There might be more in a matter of hours or even minutes, but right now there are two.”
“I’m going,” I say. “I know Doris better than the rest of you do.”
“I’m going, too,” Edgar says. “That bitch is mine.”
“You shouldn’t go. We have to find her so she can stop taking spots from these boys. It’s not time for revenge. Not right now.” Ernesto closes the file and says, “I’ll go with Naomi.”
“No. I will.” Luke stands with his shoulders squared and chin out. “I’m not going to wait around for someone else to fix this.”
Ernesto focuses on Luke’s face and nods. “I’ll give you a briefing and send you on your way. You must be very careful. I’ll follow behind as soon as I can get a body.”
Tony is suddenly closer to me than he was before. He puts his hand on my arm, producing an oppressive, heavy heat. Maybe from his anger or maybe a leftover sensation from Oblivion. “I’m letting you go so you can find Doris. When you get back, we will settle this once and for all.”
“Gee, can’t wait.” I give him a fake smile and flip him off.
“Let’s go,” Ernesto says.
Ernesto, Luke, and I are back in my new office.
“You’ll have to remember how to keep time. If you don’t return within twenty-four hours, you’ll be stuck.” Ernesto talks as he flips through another binder. His eyes are scrunched together like he doesn’t quite understand what he’s reading. “There are a lot of unknowns to what you’re about to do. It’s pretty risky. If you die and it’s not suicide, you’ll be sent to a final afterlife with a mixture of your memories and the loaner’s. You have to be careful.”
“How do we find Doris?” Luke asks.
“Her name is Dylan Pine. She’s been carrying his headshot around for a while now. I think he’s an actor,” I say.
“Did she mention where he lives?” Ernesto asks.
“She did.” I close my eyes and think, really think. So much of what Doris said about Dylan didn’t go directly into my brain. I got tired of hearing about him. She said something about visiting the Statue of Liberty. “New York.”
Ernesto pulls a file out of the air again. “That’s good. Both loaner bodies are in the same house in Connecticut. You should be able to get to New York quickly.”
“How are we going to find Doris, or Dylan, whatever? New York is huge, right?” Luke says.
“This is where the Internet will come in handy.” I put my hand on his shoulder and smile. I have a glimmer of hope that this will work. “We should be able to search for Dylan Pine and find his address or where he works or something like that. Hopefully, he has a MySpace account so we can look for details there.”
“I’m glad you’re going, Naomi.” Ernesto pulls a necklace from his pocket and drapes it around my neck. “When it’s time to come back you’ll have to kill yourselves again. This is a timer.”
“Won’t that send us to Oblivion?” I ask. “That would be a second suicide for both of us.”
“No. The loaner bodies are different. It’s not your second chance.”
“Are you sure this will work?” Luke asks.
“No. But it’s all we have,” Ernesto says. “We just have to hope for the best.”
“Andy!” A man shouts from the hallway.
My lungs fill with air as my surroundings start to register. I have moved around abruptly now for a very long time, but this time is definitely the strangest. I breathe in and out, in and out. How did I do this for two decades without thinking?
I’m in bed and I have a boner. A blessed, blessed boner. I’m in a small bedroom with posters on the walls that have the names of bands I’ve never heard of. I’m wearing only boxer shorts and tube socks. I stand from my bed and stretch every muscle I can stretch. It feels amazing. I move my head from side to side, cracking my neck.
There is a bathroom attached to the bedroom. In the mirror is the most handsome face I’ve ever seen looking back at me. It’s like Matt Dillon and Ralph Macchio had a baby and I am him. I’m older than I was when I died, maybe close to 30. But if I’m that old why am I in this tiny bedroom?
My body. My God, my body. A six-pack, those broad shoulders Sasha told me about, bulging biceps.
I look inside the boxer shorts. The boner isn’t as huge as the rest of my body prepped me for, but it will do.
A man steps into the room. He has a camera on his shoulder and some sort of ID badge around his neck.
“Dude, you’re on set in two minutes.”
“On set?”
“We’re starting in the kitchen today, remember?”
“I guess I forgot,” I say.
“Lay off the weed, man. It’s eating your brain.” He backs out of the room as I start looking for clothes.
The closet contains several pairs of jeans that look tiny and about a dozen shirts with embroidered details. I’m not sure if these are fashionable or if Andy has bad taste.
I select an outfit and walk into the hallway.
“Hey, Andy.” A girl emerges from the door across the hall. She has long auburn hair and giant eyelashes. She’s wearing a tight tank top and tiny shorts. “We better get a move on.”
“Yeah,” I say. She leads the way down the hall, and I follow with my boner freshly returning.
“Late night last night, huh?” She turns around and winks at me. It’s a cartoonish, exaggerated wink.
“Did we have sex?” I ask before I can stop myself.
The girl tosses her head back dramatically and laughs. “You wish.” She looks at me over her shoulder and says, “If you play your cards right, I’ll let you past third base tonight.” She stops and turns around, placing her hand on my chest. “Maybe I’ll let you slide into home.”
“Naomi?” Please, please be Naomi.
The girl’s jaw drops. “Who the fuck is Naomi?” She rolls her eyes and turns away from me with her arms crossed over her chest.
We walk into a massive kitchen. It’s bigger than the apartment where I killed myself. There are people everywhere. Several men and women with cameras on their shoulders line the walls, and there are a couple of people with boom mikes.
“Good morning, love birds,” a tall Black man in basketball shorts says with a laugh. He pours a glass of orange juice and takes a drink.
“Turn the label toward the camera, Mike,” a fortyish woman with a clipboard says. She’s wearing glasses and headphones.
“We’re not love birds.” The girl sticks her lips out in a pout and says, “He just called me Naomi!”
Mike erupts in laughter. The other non-crew people in the room do as well, except for an older woman who sits at a stool at the island countertop. She pulls a coffee cup to her lips with a trembling hand and raises her drawn-on eyebrows at me.
A short girl with a pixie haircut and tortoise shell glasses says, “Way to go, Andy. Put that bitch in her place.”
“Shut up, Elle!” the girl puts her hands on her hips and says, “No one has remembered your name since 2002.”