That nice face and body still served her, for the embalmers had done a great job preserving her not-inconsequential looks. The middle-aged chiropractor who drove her from the cemetery would happily have driven her all the way across town to the house she shared with Brandon, her husband, but she decided to go to Larry’s condo first.
More than anything else, she needed to find the man who had raised her from the dead.
A few people noticed as she walked from the parking lot to Larry’s door, and she got some second looks, but she paid them no mind. People often mistook her for an actress or a model here in Los Angeles, the land of the Barbie.
The steps up to Larry’s condo seemed endless when you were wearing four-inch heels. She smoothed her hair, cleared her throat before knocking on Larry’s door, and felt a thrill of anticipation. Wasn’t he going to be happy to see she was alive again!
But Larry’s mouth gaped, closed partially, then reopened. His eyes bugged out, like a fish flopping on a shore gasping for air.
“What are you doing here?” Larry finally said. “I thought you were dead.”
“I am.” She pushed her way into the condo, irritated. For that, she didn’t slip her pumps off and line them up next to his five pairs of shoes on the tile, but tracked grave dirt across his white carpet. “And I don’t appreciate you raising me from the grave if this is the kind of welcome I’m going to get.”
Larry had slipped on his loafers to walk two feet from the carpet to the door, and now he took them off. His linen pants were cuffed, but not wrinkled, and he smoothed the fabric out as he settled at the far edge of the couch. “Why are you here?”
“Because you raised me.” Melanie looked at her fingers. The grave had not yet been filled in with dirt, a small blessing, but her manicure looked terrible. “Why are you being such a prick? Come on, it’s me, baby.”
“Did someone murder you?” Larry asked. He perched on the edge of the cushion, hands resting on knees, leaning away from her. “Is that why you’re haunting the living?”
“No one killed me, Larry, I just went in for a routine tummy tuck. Must have been some kind of complication.”
“So if no one murdered you, why are you haunting me?”
Melanie frowned. She’d been excited to see him, flattered that he loved her enough to raise her from the dead, but now it was apparent that he didn’t. All those times he swore he couldn’t get enough of her, and now he was tapping nicotine-stained fingers (and she had always hated how his condo stank like cigarettes), his gaze flicking towards the door. Why had she ever slept with this man?
Back when she was alive, a strong chest and blue eyes must have outweighed his other faults. “Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?”
“You want a drink?” he spluttered, as though pouring a glass of wine for the woman he’d been carrying on an affair with for four months was the last thing on his mind. “You want a drink?”
“I want something.”
“I, uh, I’ve got some orange juice.”
He got the drink from the fridge, still sidling around her as though she were a crazy bag lady instead of a rich, young (young-looking, anyway) and beautiful woman who, now that she was thinking about it, was probably too good for him. After he handed her the glass, he watched her drink it, not sitting, but standing expectantly, as though she were an auditor, or an in-law: someone distasteful he couldn’t wait to get rid of. After she drank the orange juice, she realized the discomfort was mutual.
Funny, when she’d first met him, she had thought he might be the kind of lover who’d keep her amused for years, a secret pleasure for when Brandon was working late again, a not-so-secret one for when Brandon went out of town. And yet by the time she finished the orange juice, she realized that what had started as a very promising affair was over.
As suddenly as, well, as death.
“Gotta go,” she said, setting the half-finished glass of orange juice on the coffee table, next to the coaster. “I’m late.”
Larry didn’t laugh or offer her a ride home, and she had already walked down all the stairs when she remembered she didn’t have her car.
It was easier to go without a soul than a car in this town. She felt her skirt for keys which weren’t there, since they don’t bury you with car keys, and muttered some unladylike words. They don’t bury you with a purse, either, no matter if it was Prada and went very well with the shoes. And they don’t bury you with money, or even a bus pass, that mythology about the river Styx notwithstanding.
Nor had she ever walked so far in her life. No one had ever told her how awkward it would be to find her way home when she was used to having a car, and now she had to navigate around freeway overpasses and alley walls behind shopping complexes, which would have been no fun to traverse even if she were alive and wearing sensible footwear.
She thought about hitchhiking again, but decided she didn’t really want to talk. She’d just ended an affair, after all. She needed some alone time.
But it was warm for May, and the horizon held a brown layer of smog. No one left their cars, no one walked the streets if they could help it, and the air had a grimy feel to it that would have burned her lungs if she were still breathing. She walked for several hours, until she wanted someone to give her a ride, her husband maybe, or a girlfriend. Then she wanted someone to talk to. And maybe a glass of merlot.
By the time she staggered up the pavement in front of their house, the lacquered layer of hairspray on her professionally dyed hair was starting to flake off, she was getting a little squishy around the eyes, and the flies kept landing on her, especially her eyes and mouth. She tried to wave them off, but her coordination wasn’t what it should have been, so she kept smacking her boobs. Those were still as plump as ever, which was only fitting seeing as how she had paid more for them than she had for her first car. Her sister Jessica had mocked her for the waste of money, but Jessica had the same flat chest Melanie had been cursed with and hadn’t even managed to get married.
She undid another button, displaying more of the cleavage she had bought. Men loved her breasts. Someone had raised her from the dead just so they could see them again.
Probably Brandon. Her husband was the kind of guy who could make anything happen with enough money. She’d have to thank him when she saw him again, but right now she was tired, she was irritable, and she needed a drink.
Melanie pounded at the door, even though Brandon wouldn’t be home. Maybe the housekeeper would let her in.
A woman screamed.
Melanie turned. The petite blonde wore a camel-colored suit that might have been Chanel until someone let out the seams beyond what its lines were ever meant to bear. She kept screaming, her hands in the air (holding a set of car keys that looked suspiciously familiar), and screaming, and screaming, until it became obvious to the both of them that no Dudley Do-Right was going to sweep out of the bushes and save her.
Brandon’s secretary, Cindy. She better be there just to drop something off, Melanie thought. Just because she was dead didn’t mean Brandon could cheat. Melanie waited until the buxom waif grew hoarse.
Cindy tapered off to fluttering hands near her throat, and finally, when nothing else seemed to work, the girl spoke.
“You… you’re dead!”
“Is Brandon home?”
“You’re dead!”
Cindy began to scream again, which was really irritating, because one, Melanie still wanted a decent drink, and two, she needed to see Brandon to figure out what to do about this whole “rising from the grave” nuisance. Cindy kept screaming, so Melanie finally plucked the keychain directly from her fingers. Sure enough, there was a house key. Melanie unwound it from the ring.