I withdraw my hand and drop my eyes to the table, grateful that I’m incapable of blushing. ‘Need . . . to wait,’ I mumble. ‘They . . . think you’re . . . new convert. They’ll notice.’
‘How long?’
‘Few . . . days. They’ll . . . forget.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ she sighs, and covers her eyes with her hand, shaking her head.
‘You’ll . . . be okay,’ I tell her. ‘Promise.’
She ignores this. She pulls an iPod out of her pocket and stuffs the earbuds into her ears. She returns to her food, listening to music that’s just a faint hiss to me.
This date is not going well. Once again the absurdity of my inner thoughts overwhelms me, and I want to crawl out of my skin, escape my ugly, awkward flesh and be a skeleton, naked and anonymous. I’m about to stand up and leave when Julie pulls a bud out of one ear and gives me a squinting, penetrating look. ‘You’re . . . different, aren’t you?’ she says.
I don’t respond.
‘Because I’ve never heard a zombie talk, other than “brains!” and all that silly groaning. And I’ve never seen a zombie take any interest in humans beyond eating them. I’ve definitely never had one buy me a drink. Are there . . . others like you?’
Again I feel the urge to blush. ‘Don’t . . . know.’
She pushes her noodles around the plate. ‘A few days,’ she repeats.
I nod.
‘What am I supposed to do here till it’s safe to run away? I hope you don’t expect me to just sit in your housejet taking blood baths all week.’
I think for a moment. A rainbow of images floods my head, probably snippets of old movies I’ve seen, all sappy and romantic and utterly impossible. I have got to get ahold of myself.
‘I’ll . . . entertain,’ I say eventually, and offer an unconvincing smile. ‘You are . . . guest.’
She rolls her eyes and resumes eating. The second earbud is still sitting on the table. Without looking up from her plate she casually offers it to me. I stick it in my ear, and the voice of Paul McCartney drifts into my head, singing all those wistful antonyms, yes/no, high/low, hello/goodbye/hello.
‘You know John Lennon hated this song?’ Julie says as it plays, speaking in my direction but not really addressing me. ‘He thought it was meaningless gibberish. Funny coming from the guy who wrote “I Am the Walrus”.’
‘Goo goo . . . g’joob,’ I say.
She stops, looks at me, tilts her head in pleasant surprise. ‘Yeah, exactly, right?’ She takes a sip of the beer, forgetting the imprint of my lips on the bottle, and my eyes widen in brief panic. But nothing happens. Maybe my infection can’t travel through soft moments like these. Maybe it needs the violence of the bite.
‘Anyway,’ she says, ‘it’s a little too chipper for me right now.’ She skips the song. I hear a brief snippet of Ava Gardner singing ‘Bill’, then she skips a few more times, lands on an unfamiliar rock tune, and cranks the volume. I’m distantly aware of the music, but I have tuned out. I watch Julie bob her head from side to side with eyes closed. Even now, here, in the darkest and strangest of places with the most macabre of company, the music moves her and her life pulses hard. I smell it again, a white glowing vapour wafting out from under my black blood. And even for Julie’s safety, I can’t bring myself to smother it.
What is wrong with me? I stare at my hand, at its pale grey flesh, cool and stiff, and I dream it pink, warm and supple, able to guide and build and caress. I dream my necrotic cells shrugging off their lethargy, inflating and lighting up like Christmas deep in my dark core. Am I inventing all this like the beer buzz? A placebo? An optimistic illusion? Either way, I feel the flatline of my existence disrupting, forming heartbeat hills and valleys.
‘You need to corner sharper. You keep almost running off the road when you turn right.’
I crank the skinny leather wheel and drop my foot onto the accelerator. The Mercedes lurches forward, throwing our heads back.
‘God, you’re a leadfoot. Can you go easier on the gas?’
I come to a jerky stop, forget to push in the clutch, and the engine dies. Julie rolls her eyes and forces patience into her voice. ‘Okay, look.’ She restarts the engine, scoots over and snakes her legs across mine, placing her feet on my feet. Under her pressure, I smoothly exchange gas for clutch, and the car glides forward. ‘Like that,’ she says, and returns to her seat. I release a satisfied wheeze.
We are cruising the tarmac, taxiing to and fro under the mild afternoon sun. Our hair ruffles in the breeze. Here in this moment, in this candy-red ’64 roadster with this beautiful young woman, I can’t help inserting myself into other, more classically filmic lives. My mind drifts, and I lose what little focus I’ve been able to maintain. I veer off the runway and clip the bumper of a stair-truck, knocking the Boneys’ church circle out of alignment. The jolt throws our heads to the side, and I hear my children’s necks snap in the back seat. They groan in protest and I shush them. I’m already embarrassed; I don’t need my kids rubbing it in.
