He started pumping the ladies for information. “What do you remember?” He was drooling in his eagerness to learn more about them.
Sophia was shaking her head, clearly not remembering anything, and Annabelle couldn’t do much better, her earliest memory of her new life going back only as far as awakening inside her coffin as it was being split apart by the earth-moving machine.
“What are you going to test their blood for?” I asked.
“Anything that deviates from the norm,” Doon said. “Ditto with their genetic material.” He pointed at a kit containing giant Q-tips and glass slides.
I didn’t like it. But the zombies were going along with it all. Presumably they were as eager as Doon to understand what they were.
It wasn’t until he’d taken off, nearly two hours later, that I discovered Doon had given the ladies the creeps.
“The minute you left the room he asked questions that had nothing to do with being dead,” Birdie said. “Questions about life as a hooker. Dirty, nasty stuff.”
Birdie was about as prudish as an undead hooker could be. Even one from 1924.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Can we smoke now?” Sophia asked. “I don’t feel well.”
“Did you tell Doon that weed makes you feel better?”
“No,” Birdie answered. “You said it’s illegal.”
“Right,” I said.
I handed over my bag of weed.
My phone chirped early the next morning.
“Zoey,” Doon said, “I’m assembling a team and we’re coming up there. Your friends are most certainly over a hundred years old!”
“Really?” I mustered. I hadn’t had coffee yet.
“Really. We will be up this afternoon. And we’ll take over.”
“Take over? We?”
“We’re going to take your friends to the lab at Penn State.”
“The lab? They’re not rats, Doon. Not that rats should be in a lab either. But these are people. Or … something.”
“We’ll treat them respectfully and give them comfortable accommodations.”
“What if they don’t want to go?”
“What else are they going to do? Live on your couch forever?”
“I don’t know, Doon, but I’m not sure they want to be experimented on.”
“Zoey, this could be huge. If we can figure out what brought them back to life and what is sustaining their lives, well, imagine the implications!”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“I’ll see you later,” Doon said, hanging up before I could protest.
I stared at my phone.
Alexander Vinokourov lifted his head, sniffed the air, then looked at me.
“They want to take them away,” I said.
Vino blinked.
I tiptoed into the living room. They were still sleeping. I went into the kitchen, fed Vino, and put coffee on. Eventually, Birdie came into the kitchen and I offered her a few spoonfuls of Vino’s meat.
She seemed surprised at my generosity.
“Why are you being nice to me?”
“What are you talking about? I’m always nice to you. I’m giving you shelter, food, clothes, and pot. What else do you want, a fucking kidney?”
“Kidney?” Birdie tilted her head.
Sophia and Annabelle made their way into the kitchen and started hovering. I waited till they’d gotten some coffee down then told them about Doon’s plans for them.
“Pennsylvania?” Annabelle said, wrinkling her nose. “I was born there. I have no wish to return. Not even ninety-five years later.”
“Does he think we’re like Frankenstein or something? How horrible of him,” Birdie said.
“Would we make money?” Sophia asked.
“It’s possible.”
“Would we go on TV?” Sophia pointed at the television set.
“Maybe,” I shrugged.
“Really?” Sophia’s eyes widened.
“Sophia, we do not wish to be put on display like zoo animals,” Birdie said.
“We don’t?” Sophia squinted.
“We don’t,” Annabelle said.
“Where can we go?” Birdie asked.
“Go?” I said.
“I don’t want to be experimented on. If we stay here, they will come for us.”
Birdie was right. But where could they go? They’d only been living in the twenty-first century for forty-eight hours. I couldn’t very well send them to, say, Maine, or New Jersey, and expect them to blend in, never mind survive.
“What do you know about Wyoming?” I asked.
“Like your wallet?” Sophia pointed at my weed-stash wallet open on the coffee table.
“Like the state out west,” I said.
“Cowboys?” Annabelle asked.
“Sort of,” I said. “I think nowadays the cowboys drive pickup trucks and wear helmets. The West isn’t that wild anymore, but nothing really is.”
All three looked at me blankly.
“Well?” I said.
“What would we do when we got there? We have no money, no nothing,” said Birdie.
“I’d get some odd jobs like I have here. And you would too.”
They looked at one another. Then they looked at me again.
“Okay,” Sophia shrugged. “I guess. But if it’s horrible, then I want to go be a zoo animal and be on TV.”
“How do we get there?” Annabelle asked, glancing all around, like maybe the twenty-first century had teleporting devices that she hadn’t noticed yet.
“We’ll drive,” I said. “My car fits four. And a dog.”
“When do we leave?” Annabelle asked.
“As soon as we pack up a few things,” I said.
I had nothing I valued in the apartment. As for my jobs, the developmentally disabled adults wouldn’t remember me for very long, and though I would miss seeing Henry, the big mastiff at the shelter, finally find a permanent home, it was about the only thing I’d regret.
What’s more, I’d have company.
I’d always figured I’d eventually rescue more pit bulls or try living with a man for more than three weeks. Now, instead, I had zombies.
At least they had normal-sized heads.
B
OB
H
OLMAN
is a poet, professor, and proprietor of Bowery Poetry Club. His new book, his sixteenth (if you count CDs and videos, which he does),
Sing This One Back to Me
, is from Coffee House Press. His series on poetry and endangered languages,
On the Road
, is shown on LinkTV. org, and his new special,
Language Matters
, will premiere on PBS. He is also working on a multimedia performance called
The Trip
. Holman lives on the Bowery in New York City.
pasta mon
by bob holman
Pasta Mon cookin in a limousine
Windows rolled up—poem written in the steam
Poem starts to change—to a recipe?
I’m cookin up a story! You still hungry?
Deep in the blue sea deep in the memory
Connected, perfected—totally poetry
Yuppie got a puppy & the baby got a Pamper
Doin the 500 in a Winnebago camper
Why?
Why?
Why Pasta Mon cry?
Back in the history I shot the deputy
For not makin sauce sufficiently garlicky
Everyone entangled in a single ecstasy
A single strand of Pasta Mon’s linguini
This is the wild life! Carbohydrates? Out of sight!
“Pasta Mon Fashions” give eyesight insight
See the world through spaghetti headlights
Ravioli figleaf? Pasta Paradise!
Why?
Why?
Fresh onions is why