Doomed

^{DECEMBER 21, 10:29 A.M. PST} A Gruesome Setback

Gentle Tweeter,

The next time some sensitive, inquiring person asks you whether you believe in life after death, take my advice. That pompous question—which smarty-pants, intellectual Democrat types use to winnow the idiots from their own ilk: Do you believe in an afterlife? Do your personal beliefs include a life after death?—no matter how they phrase their snotty test, do the following. Simply look them in the eye, snort derisively, and retort, “Frankly, only a provincial ignoramus would even believe in death.”

Please allow me to share an anecdote from my former life. This one time, en route to a shooting location in Nuremburg or Nagasaki or Newark, the production company sent exactly the wrong kind of car. In place of an elegant black Lincoln Town Car they sent a customized superstretch Cadillac limousine with all the interior upholstery trimmed in purple chase lights. The carpet’s stench of Ozium was in direct ratio to the number of bachelorettes who’d retched up Long Island iced teas and semen in the backseats, and to make matters worse this particular car had a faulty battery or bladder or alternator or whatnot that wouldn’t hold a charge. And to skip ahead, my mom and dad and I found ourselves standing on the shoulder of some Third World turnpike while a team of automotive paramedics arrived in some towing company ambulance and attempted to give the limo’s heart a shock using two scary-looking nipple clamps. No amount of car defibrillation could restart that odious bus; nor did my parents and I desire to reenter its lumpy interior pungent with expelled bodily fluids.

This is exactly how I feel looking down on the ungainly corpse of poor Harvey Peavey. Once more betrayed by his failed heart, he lies on the not-sanitary carpet of LAX, the bumbling chauffeur whose soul departed in tow with Satan. The paramedics shout, “Clear,” and jolt him with another shock, but no way am I reentering that mess.

“Lucky him,” says a voice. The blue spirit of Mr. Crescent City steps up beside me, both of us looking down on Peavey’s corpse.

I ask, “Where’s your body?” I glance around, but there’s no overdosed rag doll slumped in any of the plastic airport chairs. A short line of three or four people is forming outside the locked door of a handicapped bathroom. Even now that I’m postalive, the thought of using a public toilet fills me with terror. To Crescent City, I say, “Those private toilets are reserved for crippled persons.”

Crescent nods his shaggy head at the corpse and says, “Did you hear what he said? Right before he died he called you a liar.”

In truth, I called me a liar. I was only using Peavey’s mouth.

“I heard,” I say.

Incredulous, Crescent says, “You can bet he’s in Heaven by now.”

I don’t say anything.

Softly, under his breath Crescent City begins to chant, “Fuck… fuck… fuck…” without cessation.

That trip when we got the smelly stretch limo… on that same trip to some desolate shooting location in Angola or Algiers or Alaska, the cultural liaison for the flyspecked government lamented to us how shipments of surplus cheese from the United States had been waylaid by guerrilla fighters, and losing this crucial source of high-density multinutrient protein meant every village in the region was hungry. And standing there on the shoulder of that godforsaken highway, my mom got a brainstorm. Without missing a beat she snapped her manicured fingers and made a mouth-open, dazzling-idea face. Her brilliant solution was to whip out her mobile phone and make two million dinner reservations for the refugees at the Ivy or Le Cirque. She smiled at the cultural liaison and asked whether any of the starving hordes had any dietary restrictions.

Problem solved.

That, Gentle Tweeter, is not how I want to be. As this Mr. Crescent lunatic, as his ketamine ghost chants that revolting F-word, I say, “Please stop.”

The blue shape of him is already dispersing. He falls silent.

“Go,” I tell him. “Go collect your body. Take me to my mother. I have some truth telling to do.”