Bob talks with his mouth full of bagel. “Hospital sent me this yesterday with a big settlement check, just for a laugh,” he says. “Not for the faint of heart.”
He clicks Play, and a moment later, there he is, blue-gray on a metal table, his floppy bits hanging out in the open. (We should be offended, but this is too fascinating for propriety.) Next thing we know, a young Asian woman in a white coat and facemask is cutting a deep “Y” into his torso. Just as she inserts the rib-spreader, Bob’s limp hand goes stiff, juts out and grabs her by the wrist. She screams, drops the ribspreader. Then Bob’s eyes snap open and he too begins to scream, like a lion being stabbed in the gut. He rolls off the table and, for the next two minutes, runs naked and bellowing around the morgue, chest gaping open, chasing away anyone who gets close. Finally a group of orderlies wrestle him to the ground and drape a white sheet over him, and the recording ends.
It is the most spectacular thing we have ever seen.
Bob smiles. “Pretty cool, huh?”
“Did it hurt?” Charlotte asks, pointing toward Bob’s chest. (It occurs to us that this is the most any of us have said to Bob in years.)
“Not really,” Bob says. “Didn’t feel much of anything. Itches like crazy now, though.”
“Can we see?” Jeremy asks, giddy.
Bob shrugs, untucks his brown polo, pulls it up over his pudgy body. And there it is: the Y-shaped line of staples running down his entire torso.
Incredible.
“Staples will be out in a few days,” he says.
Cayla, standing in the doorway, interrupts our trance. “When you died,” she says, saccharine in her smile, “Did you see loved ones? Your family?”
A long silence follows—Cayla is clearly expecting him to say his dear old granddad showed up to lead him to the Pearly Gates. But Bob shakes his head.
“Sorry, kiddo,” he says. “One minute I was falling face-first into the hedges, the next I was splayed open on that table. Nothing in between.”
Cayla’s smile goes taut, like it’s been carved into her face. “Well, that can’t be,” she says. “You weren’t really dead.”
“As a doornail,” Bob replies. “No pulse, no brain activity, nothing.”
“Then you must not be Christian,” Cayla huffs.
“Catholic, born and raised,” Bob says.
Cayla’s entire face scrunches up so tight we think it will implode. “I’m confused,” she says. “Of all people, why you?”
Bob shrugs. “Couldn’t tell you, kiddo. Just glad to be back.” He reaches out to pat her shoulder, but she recoils.
“Don’t touch me,” Cayla whispers, and turns to leave, her frilly, multilayered pink skirt bouncing with each step.
Bob takes another long sip of coffee. “Tell you what, kids—being dead sure does make you appreciate things like a good cup o’Joe.”
We nod, suddenly craving coffee. That ancient Bunn churns out a sludge that tastes like it’s been squeezed from a wet dishrag, but as the hot liquid touches our lips, it seems richer somehow.
For most of the day we stare at Bob, smiling as he takes his calls, waving or winking at us when he senses our eyes on him. The deep lines that etched his face before he died are beginning to disappear, though we can still see pronounced veins on his forehead and forearms. We are almost used to him being back, so much so that on occasion our eyes wander back to Cayla, in her lime-green tunic and skirt and a medallion twice the size of her fist, with a cannon and a cross and the caption, IN THE ARMY OF THE LORD. When she has paperwork for Bob she tries to pass it to one of us to hand him; we pretend to be busy just to watch her slink up to Bob’s desk, set the papers on the very edge, and tiptoe away as if he doesn’t see.
It is our tradition to do karaoke night at Big Mike’s on Thursdays after work, and for the first time since any of us has been here, we invite Bob, who thinks about it for a minute, shrugs, and says, “Don’t mind if I do.”
Big Mike’s is a bar and grill next to the office, built like an oversized Airstream trailer with a little plank for a dance floor and miniature juke boxes at each table. Bob looks around the place as we go in, joy in his eyes. “This place has been here for nine years and I’ve never even been inside,” he says. “Imagine that.” We are pleased with ourselves for introducing him to such a treasure, even if a bit late.
For the first half-hour no one steps up—it takes a few beers to lose enough inhibition—but finally Bob gets up from his seat next to Charlotte. He fiddles with the karaoke machine for a minute, presses the button. Horns blast over the PA; Bob seizes the microphone stand like he’s about to swing it, and belts out the lyrics to “Mack the Knife” in a velvet baritone you’d never expect to come out of his dumpy body. And he’s good.
None of us knew Bob could sing.
When Bob is finished, the half-drunk crowd bursts into applause; he takes a bow and returns to us.
“That was fucking awesome!” Jeremy slurs, slapping Bob on the shoulder.
Later, when Roger gets up to do a spastic rendition of Barbara Mandrell’s “Sleepin’ Single in a Double Bed,” we watch in awe as Bob takes Charlotte’s hand and leads her to the little wooden pallet of a dance floor. At first it’s ridiculous, Bob’s thin arms flailing about his pudgy torso like no human thing, and it takes every bit of Charlotte’s will not to laugh. A few people at the tables near us do, but Bob doesn’t care. After a minute or two, he loosens up and starts whipping her all over the floor. When the song ends, he twirls her under his arm; dour, anorexic, alcoholic Charlotte is laughing, but there’s no mockery in it, and once she stops twirling she plants a kiss on his neck, right below his ear.
At ten, when we’re dried out and tired, we stumble back to the office parking lot. Spent as we are, we still notice Charlotte climbing into Bob’s old hatchback, and we smile.
When we arrive at work, Charlotte’s blue Volvo is still in the same space as last night, far from the building near the railroad tracks, and we believe in miracles.
Then we notice the red spray paint on the front door: GOD HATES ZOMBIES.
Of course Marlene asks, and of course Cayla denies it.
Bob and Charlotte arrive together: Bob first, Charlotte thirty seconds later, acting like nothing has happened.
“You old dog,” Jeremy says, punching Bob in the shoulder. Bob merely winks and whispers, “Shhh.”
It takes Cayla a moment to comprehend the meaning of it, but when she does she cups her hand over her mouth like she’s holding in vomit.
Bob actually looks good, better than before he died: eyes full, skin bright and peachy, posture straight and tall. Even his clothes are better: a form-fitting charcoal blazer and smoky gray slacks in place of his usual sagging Henleys and khakis. For most of the morning he softly whistles the synthesizer line from Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy,” which gets stuck in our heads for the rest of the day. We should be annoyed, but Bob has never seemed so happy—no, alive—and we feel strangely elated. Even Charlotte is in a good mood, slapping Bob’s flat ass whenever he passes.
But Cayla is here, so there must be drama. Just after ten, she sends Bob the wrong form via Roger. Bob gets up, shuffles over to her little gray cubby near Marlene’s office, taps her on the shoulder. When she realizes it’s him she pulls back so hard she falls out of her chair and scrapes her face on a cubicle wall. Bob reaches out to help her up, but she grunts like a frightened animal and does a sort of crabwalk out of the cubicle, all the way to the ladies’ room. We hear her mad scrubbing under the faucet, her voice murmuring a prayer in tongues.