“I don’t feel well,” she said.
“I don’t either,” Annabelle chimed in, propping herself up on one elbow.
“I have to get coffee.”
I walked into the kitchen and flipped the switch on the coffee maker. I can’t deal with anything before coffee. Certainly not zombies.
Alexander Vinokourov was dancing in anticipation of breakfast when Birdie came hobbling into the kitchen. She looked over my shoulder when I opened the fridge to get the plastic container of Performance Dog raw meat.
“I like meat,” Birdie said.
“This is for the dog,” I replied. “It has tripe and trachea. It’s not for humans.”
“I don’t care,” Birdie insisted.
I sighed. I filled Vino’s bowl and put it on the floor. Then I took a plate from the cupboard, spooned out some meat, and handed it to Birdie.
“Let me get you a fork,” I said, but the word fork wasn’t even out of my mouth before she’d started using her fingers to scoop the bloody flesh into her mouth. She ate every last scrap, then, holding the plate to her face, licked it clean.
“Do you have any more tea?” Sophia had wandered into the kitchen now. She was wearing my fuzzy slippers and a dingy white T-shirt. She was naked from the waist down.
“No, I don’t,” I said. “You guys smoked all my pot. And ate all my ice cream,” I added, a little resentfully.
Birdie and Sophia both looked at me like I had broken some law of basic decency by bemoaning their consumption of petty, replaceable things like weed and a one-gallon tub of butter pecan ice cream.
“We need tea,” Sophia said.
“I don’t have any more.” You weed-hogging dead hooker houseguest from hell, I thought. “And it’s illegal.”
“It makes us feel better,” Sophia said.
“It does,” Birdie concurred.
“It makes lots of people feel better,” I said. “But I don’t have any more. You smoked my entire stash. If you want more weed, you’ll have to go turn some tricks or something.”
“What?” Annabelle joined in, her delicate face pinched.
I was pretty sure I was going to have a nervous breakdown.
Instead, I decided to walk my dog, leaving the zombies in my apartment. Putting on my huge sunglasses so the world couldn’t see me.
Alexander Vinokourov and I had been walking for a while and were making our way up Warren Street, the main drag, when his ear shot straight up in the air and he started pulling on the leash.
He led me right over to the front of the drugstore where I saw none other than Sophia, leaning on a parking meter, smoking a cigarette. She was batting her eyelashes at a very large man who was grinning, showing off a gold-tooth grill. She was dressed in my clothes. A pair of jeans that clung to her, a button-down white shirt kittenishly knotted above her belly button, and, incongruously, my black combat boots that were clearly too big and made her look like a child.
Vino went right up to Sophia and licked her hand. As Sophia went to scratch Vino behind the ear, I reached for her elbow and started trying to lead her away.
“Hey!” the guy with the tooth grill said. “We were talking.”
“Too bad,” I said.
I dug my fingers into Sophia’s upper arm and pulled her away from the guy.
“You can’t do that, Sophia,” I said, when we’d gone half a block. “The minute you open your mouth, people are going to think you’re insane and they’re going to take advantage of you.”
“You told us to go turn tricks,” Sophia said.
Two passersby heard Sophia and their heads swiveled in our direction.
I smiled at them.
“I was joking, Sophia. You were complaining about needing more weed. I can’t afford to keep you three stoned for however long it is you plan to hang around. And, by the way, how long is that? Don’t you have anywhere to go?”
“Go? Where the hell would we go? Back to the cemetery? We have no one. No friends. No relatives. No one. We’ve been dead for ninety years, remember?”
I sighed. “Right.”
I’d barely closed the door to my apartment before Sophia kicked off the combat boots and started peeling off her clothing. Then, leaving the clothes in a pile by the front door, she tromped into the bathroom where I heard her start running a bath.
Annabelle and Birdie weren’t feeling that ambitious. Both were lying on the sofa bed, looking piqued.
“Something is wrong with us,” Annabelle said. Her eyes were puffy and her lips were cracked.
“Yes,” I said. “You think you’ve been dead for ninety years.”
“You don’t believe us?” Birdie asked. “After all this?”
“After all what? It’s not like you guys have walked through walls or started melting when sunlight hits your skin.”
Annabelle seemed vexed. Birdie ignored me.
By ten a.m., their faces were the color of skim milk. They didn’t have the strength to clamor, but were weakly begging for weed. I finally broke down and went around the corner to see Jeremy, my occasional supplier, the skate-punk kid who lives in a garage on Rope Alley.
“Whoa,” he said, pushing his white-person dreadlocks out of his eyes. “You’re really smoking it up, Zoey.”
“I have houseguests.”
“Oh yeah?” His eyes opened a little. “Female houseguests?”
“In a manner of speaking,” I said. I was out the door with my new stash of weed before he had a chance to ask more.
I got the ladies good and stoned, and they did appear plumper and pinker after smoking. Then it was nearly noon and I had to go to one of my odd jobs, teaching yoga to developmentally disabled adults.
I changed into yoga pants and a tank top then washed my face and hands so I wouldn’t reek of pot. I hadn’t even smoked, but the zombies had exhaled all over me.
“You guys please stay inside the apartment and don’t let anyone in. You can watch TV,” I said, flicking on the television, which had initially scared the hell out of them, but now seemed to soothe them.
“Okay?” I glared at Annabelle.
She looked up at me, all dreamy and stoned. “Okay.” she said in a faraway voice.
My dog was curled up next to Sophia, who was raptly staring at a talk show hosted by people wearing surgical scrubs.
The rec room where I teach the yoga class smelled like cabbage. Katie, a cheerful sixtyish woman, came bounding in.
“I brought you something!” she said brightly.
It was a dinosaur book. She had given me a dinosaur book the previous week too.
“Thank you, Katie.”
Will, a tall man with a vacant stare, told me his back was hurting and he wanted me to arrange him into a restorative pose. I did.
The class went smoothly until one of the men peed his pants. I had to go find an aide who took him to get changed.
On the way home, I stopped at the coffee store, Swallow, and bought two pounds of coffee. That was another thing. The zombies liked their coffee.
As I let myself back into the apartment, I heard a male voice. My heart sank. Had Sophia gone out and found her friend with the tooth grill and brought him home?
The voices were coming from the kitchen. I walked in and nearly walked back out. What I was seeing was too fucking weird.
Doon, the neuroscientist acquaintance I’d e-mailed the previous night, was sitting across the kitchen table from Sophia, apparently drawing her blood. Doon, as far as I knew, lived in Pennsylvania and was not in possession of my street address.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I came as soon as I got your e-mail,” he said.
“Isn’t that enough blood?” Sophia asked Doon.
I stared at the blood swirling around inside the syringe’s cylinder. It was dark red, like any other blood.
“Almost,” Doon said.
“What are you doing to Sophia?” I was feeling protective.
“Just drawing blood.” Doon finally glanced up at me. “Hi, Zoey.”
“Yeah. Hi,” I said back.
Doon looked exactly as he had four years earlier when I’d helped look after his father: amiable, short brown hair, square jaw, deep-set black eyes, tidy clothing.