CHAPTER NINETEEN
WE FLOATED AND swam like mermaids. I slipped in and out of consciousness, half-frozen and half-Buddha, one step closer to nirvana and pure being.
I was a butterfly, a jellyfish. My life as a human grew more and more remote. The trappings of culture, all we created, the whole bloated project of humanity, from the pyramids to Frank Gehry, Pindar to Bukowski, suet to sushi, all of it as ephemeral as an Etch-A-Sketch. Like Ros, I remembered random events from my past as if they had happened to someone in a movie.
As children, my sister and I spent a few weeks every summer with Oma and Opa in their cottage in Seattle. It smelled like lavender potpourri and boiled meat. The four of us played Scrabble and Oma always won, clasping her thick fingers together and bringing them to her lips as she studied the board.
“We escaped the camps,” she said, “so you could be here, kleine Jack. Safe and happy with us.”
When Oma and Opa died, they left my father a sizable legacy of property, stocks and bonds, old money from Austria, plus new money they’d earned in America. When my father and mother died, that legacy was passed down to my sister and me. Although I’d produced no heirs of my own, my sister had two sons set to inherit our world.
Or did she? And whose world was it? My nephews and my sister, were they alive, dead, or living dead? Animal, vegetable, or mineral?
We passed over a wondrous fish feeding on the bottom. It must have been seven feet long, coral pink, with spikes on its back like a dragon. It didn’t look up at us, just continued to suck on the sand like an aquatic vacuum cleaner. No doubt that species of fish has lived unchanged for millennia, eating whatever settles on lake bottoms, and growing and maturing as a result. Releasing eggs in the spring, reproducing, then getting old and dying. Perfect in its design, no need to evolve. Like a cockroach or an alligator.
I rolled my torso, undulating. I could feel Ros pulling on us, his flippers an advantage in this environment. I pulled on the rope, bringing Guts closer to me. A snail was on his cheek and I ripped it off.
Zombies are the next step in human evolution. The virus, our birth, the apocalyptic mad scientist shtick—no Frankenstein’s creature or end of the world, but a giant leap forward. Progress. Like Vonnegut’s Galápagos, back to the sea.
We eat but don’t grow. We reproduce but don’t need eggs or mitosis, ejaculation or even love. We are as simple as fish. Simpler than fish.
And as Henry Zombie Thoreau said: simplify, simplify, simplify.
We swam past another fish, this one about half the size of Guts. It was the color of a tin can with a splash of orange on its fins. I reached out and grabbed it under the gills. The fish thrashed; its tail was strong and slapped my shoulder, but I brought it to me.
The first bite yielded a mouthful of scales. The second bite was all bone, but I ripped through it anyway. Because the third bite hit braindirt: minuscule, grainy, and cold. Entirely unsatisfying. Like jerking off instead of screwing; playing checkers instead of chess; watching Gus Van Sant’s shot-by-shot remake of Psycho. Looking at a photograph of Guernica.
Still, I ate the fish. You take what you can get. The water turned pink with its blood and the gang gathered round, hungry for stink.
We chewed on its stomach, intestines, tail, fins, spine, the solid meat of its sides. What I wouldn’t have given for hot brains. Ros popped a fish eye in his mouth and said something that sounded like, “Needs wasabi.”
That’s why I loved Ros. Like his namesake, he was comic relief.
A FLASHBACK, PRE-ZOMBIE. As vivid as reality. Lucid dreaming. Lucy dreaming.
“Jack?” Lucy asked, her voice lilting up at the end of my name. “Why did you marry me?”
I closed the book I’d been reading, marking my place with my thumb: Rene Descartes’s Principles of Philosophy.
“Can someone say high-maintenance?” I said, laughing. “You know why.”
We were in my study with its book-lined walls, big oak desk, Persian rug, Macintosh laptop, and antique china hutch loaded with pop culture ephemera—my Pez collection, a Sigmund Freud action figure, a can of Billy Beer, a Magic 8 Ball. Lucy was dusting, although she didn’t have to. Someone came in once a week.
“We can’t reproduce,” she said. “Isn’t that what marriage is for? To start a family?”
“Tell that to our gay friends.”
“Touché.”
Lucy had just suffered her third miscarriage, and the doctors warned it would likely happen again.
“I married you,” I said, “so no one else could have you. It was a selfish endeavor.”
Lucy wiped my vintage Archies lunch box with an old sock. “Have you thought more about adopting?” she asked.
I put the book on my desk and gave her my full attention. Her dark hair stuck up in the back like Alfalfa’s. She was trying not to cry.
“C’mere,” I said, and held out my arms. She snuggled onto my lap and buried her face in my neck. Her bony ass jutted into my thigh. She was all bones and heart, that girl. Bones and heart.
“I don’t want some stranger’s baby,” she whispered. “I want my own.”
I rubbed her back and petted her short hair. It had been a tough week, a tough year. For Lucy especially.
“Do you want to keep trying?” I asked. “I’m game if you are.”
“I’ll probably fail again.”
“Don’t say that. You didn’t fail,” I said. “How about concentrating on your writing? You could finish your novel.”
“My novel is nothing but self-involved drivel. It’s not gonna change the world.”
“In all honesty, neither is a child.”
“But ours would be special. It would grow up to cure cancer. Or AIDS.”
“Or start a major war.”
“We could raise a Hitler!”
“Or a radio talk show host,” I said.
“Maybe I’m not meant to be a mom.”
“Nobody’s meant to be anything. And even if we had a kid, what then? He would be born, grow up, be happy sometimes, sad mostly, become bitter as he aged and didn’t realize his dreams, and then die old and alone. That’s it. End of story.”
“Don’t forget take up space and use valuable resources.”
“You’re absolutely right. Every human being is a drain on the ecosystem. We’re overrunning the planet as it is. Perhaps it’s for the best.”
Lucy refused to give up, however. We tried for the next several months, but I ate her before she could get pregnant again. For that I’m glad: Her barren womb nurtured me when I needed it most.