I shake my head, making a gag face.
‘What, you don’t eat fat people?’
‘Fat . . . not alive. Waste product. Need . . . meat.’
She laughs. ‘Oh, so you’re an audiophile and a food snob! Jesus.’ She tosses the clothes aside and lets out a deep breath. ‘Well, all right. I’m exhausted. The bed in there isn’t too rotten. I’m going to sleep.’
I lie back on the cramped love seat, settling in for a long night alone with my thoughts. But Julie doesn’t leave. Standing there in the bedroom doorway, she looks at me for a long minute. I’ve seen this look before, and I brace myself for whatever’s coming.
‘R . . .’ she says. ‘Do you . . . have to eat people?’
I sigh inside, so exhausted by these ugly questions, but when did a monster ever deserve its privacy?
‘Yes.’
‘Or you’ll die?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you didn’t eat me.’
I hesitate.
‘You rescued me. Like three times.’
I nod slowly.
‘And you haven’t eaten anyone since then, right?’
I frown in concentration, thinking back. She’s right. Not counting the few bites of leftover brains here and there, I’ve been gastronomically celibate since the day I met her.
A peculiar little half-smile twitches on her face. ‘You’re kind of . . . changing, aren’t you?’
As usual, I am speechless.
‘Well, goodnight,’ she says, and shuts the bedroom door.
I lie there on the love seat, gazing up at the water-stained cottage-cheese ceiling.
‘What’s going on with you?’ M asks me over a cup of mouldy coffee in the airport Starbucks. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah, I’m okay. Just changing.’
‘How can you change? If we all start from the same blank slate, what makes you diverge?’
‘Maybe we’re not blank. Maybe the debris of our old lives still shapes us.’
‘But we don’t remember those lives. We can’t read our diaries.’
‘It doesn’t matter. We are where we are, however we got here. What matters is where we go next.’
‘But can we choose that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘We’re Dead. Can we really choose anything?’
‘Maybe. If we want to bad enough.’
*
The rain drumming on the roof. The creak of weary timbers. The prickle of the old cushions through the holes in my shirt. I’m busy searching my post-death memory for the last time I went this long without food when I notice Julie standing in the doorway again. Her arms are folded on her chest and her hip is pressed against the door frame. Her foot taps an anxious rhythm on the floor.
‘What?’ I ask.
‘Well . . .’ she says. ‘I was just thinking. The bed’s a king-size. So I guess, if you wanted to . . . I wouldn’t care if you joined me in there.’ I raise my eyebrows a little. Her face reddens. ‘Look, all I’m saying – all I’m saying – is I don’t mind giving you a side of the bed. These rooms are kinda spooky, you know? I don’t want the ghost of Mrs Sprat crushing me in my sleep. And considering I haven’t showered in over a week, you really don’t smell much worse than I do – maybe we’ll cancel each other out.’ She shrugs one shoulder, whatever, and disappears into the bedroom.
I wait a few minutes. Then, with great uncertainty, I get up and follow her in. She is already in the bed, curled into the foetal position with the blankets pulled tight around her. I slowly ease myself onto the far opposite edge. The blankets are all on her side, but I certainly don’t need to stay warm. I am perpetually room-temperature.
Despite the pile of luxurious down comforters wrapped around her, Julie is still shivering. ‘These clothes are . . .’ she mutters, and sits up in bed. ‘Fuck.’ She glances over at me. ‘I’m going to lay my clothes out to dry. Just . . . relax, okay?’ With her back to me, she wriggles out of her wet jeans and peels her shirt over her head. The skin of her back is blue-white from the cold. Almost the same hue as mine. In her polka-dot bra and plaid panties, she gets out of bed and drapes her clothes over the dresser, then quickly crawls back under the covers and curls up. ‘Goodnight,’ she says.
I lie back on my folded arms, staring up at the ceiling. We are both on the very edges of the mattress, about four feet of space between us. I get the feeling that it’s not just my ghoulish nature that makes her so wary. Living or Dead, virile or impotent, I still appear to be a man, and maybe she thinks I’ll act the same as any other man would, lying so close to a beautiful woman. Maybe she thinks I’ll try to take things from her. That I’ll slither over and try to consume her. But then why am I even in this bed? Is it a test? For me, or for her? What strange hopes are compelling her to take this chance?
I listen to her breathing slow as she falls asleep. After a few hours, with her fear safely tucked away in dreams, she rolls over, removing most of the gap between us. She’s facing me now. Her faint breath tickles my ear. If she were to wake up right now, would she scream? Could I ever make her understand how safe she really is? I won’t deny that this proximity ignites more urges in me than the instinct to kill and eat. But although these new urges are there, some of them startling in their intensity, all I really want to do is lie next to her. In this moment, the most I’d ever hope for would be for her to lay her head on my chest, let out a warm, contented breath, and sleep.