I read my obituary in the newspaper. At first I’m not sure it is me, but a closer investigation of the photo shows that the man who is dead is truly me. I am mooning the camera in the photo, and my distinct violin-shaped birthmark is visible for all to see.
The waitress who is pouring coffee into my mug shrieks in horror as she peeks over my shoulder at the page. She begins to scream, “Donald, Donald, you’re dead!” whereupon the short order cook, who is wearing an eye-patch, clutches his chest and falls halfway into the pie display case, his head buried in a strawberry shortcake heaping with whipped cream. Indeed, Donald Slutsky, owner of the St. Ignatius Café is also dead, his smiling mug, both eyes twinkling, beside my gleaming moon of a bare ass.
According to Donald’s wishes he is cremated, his remains released to his ex-wife Gladis who keeps the box-like urn near the back of her bedroom closet for two months, the appropriate mourning period she believes. After the sixty day black time, she empties the ashes into her refuse bin and uses the box to hide Ziploc bags of illicit pharmaceuticals such as Percocet and Vicodin she has started to pilfer from the hospital in which she works as a registered nurse.
It is under the influence of fifty milligrams of Vicodin that had been stashed safely away in her ex-husband’s urn that Gladis injects air through an IV tube into the vein of insurance salesman Reginald Swan. The air is an adequate amount to stop his already weakened heart. The family man had taken a nasty descent down the stairs into his basement and broke his femur and collarbone, thus explaining his presence in Gladis’ emergency room the night of his demise.
Luckily, two weeks before, Reginald’s wife Margaret had taken out a million dollar life insurance policy on her husband. With the sudden windfall delivered in a single check from her husband’s employer and insurer, she and her two children, Allison, 15, and Ruben, 12, hop on a flight to St. Lucia in the crystal blue Carribean. It is on this flight that Allison in seat 19C meets Michael in 19D. Michael is eager to be Allison’s lover whenever her mother and younger brother are down on the beach just below their timeshare condo.
Within two months, it becomes obvious that Allison is with child, having missed her monthly flow, but having instead that “motherly glow” that Margaret laments she sees emanating from her daughter. Tests confirm Margaret’s intuition. Abortion is considered, but Allison protests, wanting to keep the coming bundle of joy and responsibility. A compromise is struck when Ruben confides to his mother and sister that his best friend in sixth grade is adopted and he isn’t weird at all.
Eight months later Allison gives birth to a seven pound, ten ounce hermaphrodite. The doctors are quite perplexed, having failed to notice the unusual development during standard ultrasounds. These same doctors write a research paper theorizing that certain chemicals in the drinking water on the island of St. Lucia may have something to do with the hermaphroditic development in fertilized human embryos. Their research goes far in explaining what had so far been a great mystery - a cluster of intersex births occurring in paradise.
Thus Dr. Manuel Molina, the preeminent expert in abnormal prenatal development in Latin America reads the abstract of the study between a break in his classes at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He books a flight from Mexico City to Hewanorra International in St. Lucia. Unbeknownst to him, he caries a stowaway Mexican cucaracha in his briefcase among his important papers and collection of macabre sonograms. While in transit from the airport to his suite at the Jalousie Hilton Resort and Spa, the roach escapes and plants several egg cases inside a dried out apple core discarded under the drivers seat by the tropical taxi driver.
A Miss Eve Pascal, nascent swimwear model, gets into the same taxi two weeks later after the van her agency has hired experiences two simultaneous flat tires. Four baby cockroaches scamper up her long legs causing her to shriek in surprise and disgust. The driver, already unnerved by the delicate movement of Miss Pascal’s slender gams and the beads of perspiration bejeweling the ridge of her slightly upturned nose like a fleshy crown, jerks the steering wheel to the right and guides the taxi into a poorly placed cinnamon tree.
As Miss Pascal lies in the back of the crumpled taxi, she discovers that neither her legs will move nor can she feel the cockroach looking up at her in ignorance from the vantage point of a bloodied knee. She realizes this is what paralysis feels like and begins, in her mind, to make a wager. In this wager she surmises that she believes in God because she may very well be dying. She does not want to deal with the consequences of not believing in God if she does indeed go all the way. A passing small boy, the son of the a vendor of trinkets on the beach, holds her hand through the crushed door frame.
A minute after making this wager, she asks the taxi driver if he also believes in God. He does not respond because he has been cheated out of his chance to shimmy up to the card table for one final hand before his casino closed for good.
Miss Pascal returns to New York after two weeks of care in Tapion Hospital. Luckily, her paralysis is temporary and she is fortunate to meet her future husband, a spinal surgeon by the name of Dog (I can’t explain this). The going in the marriage is tough at first, she is away on photo shoots so often, and he puts in hellish hours at the hospital. Still, Miss Pascal and Dog make it to the two year mark. Unfortunately, Miss Pascal has an assignment to do a swimwear shoot on the Serengeti on their second anniversary. She is bitten when her photographer asks her to wade out into a stream during the rainy season. A crocodile mistakes her for a migratory wildebeest.
The truth is both Miss Pascal and her entourage are miles from quality care. The bush guides throw the fading model into their swiftest Range Rover, but she dies several hours into the race to the nearest doctor, her blood staining the backseat. Eve has bad luck in backseats.
Dog receives a phone call bearing bad news from the other side of the world. He takes the call while he is attending a conference on emergency trauma medicine in San Diego. A friend sees the man shaking in the lobby of the convention center and asks him to sit down. Dog explains to him what had happened to his wife in Africa and declares that he would not be attending the next presentation on the subject of shock management.
Dog screams out to a janitor in a fit of agony, “God is in a lover’s quarrel with the world!”
The janitor simply says, “I know man!”
This friend returns to his home of Seattle and discusses an old and smelly idea with another professional acquaintance. They have discovered that they can make mice hibernate, essentially have the rodents turn cold-blooded, by forcing them to breath hydrogen sulfide. They believe they can duplicate an identical effect in humans. By forcing humans to go into a state of suspended animation, they can save thousands of severely injured people who would otherwise die because they cannot receive satisfactory trauma care within what the doctors call the “golden hour.”
After years of testing animal subjects with the gas that smells of rotten eggs (actually smells worse), these scientists begin to test the science on human subjects. Two test subjects walk into their lab for the first round of experiments. One is named J_____ and the other is Rube. J______ agrees to be put into suspended animation as long as he has exclusive rights to write about his experience. Rube, who believes he is dying from a third relapse of lymphoma and is completely bald from several rounds of chemo, wishes to give the end of his life some meaning by allowing the researchers to learn from their investigation. The two lie opposite from one another as the nurses insert the anesthesia drips.
J______ asks Rube if he believes he will dream while he is in suspended animation for three days. Before Rube can answer, the doctor, the very same man who sat Dog down in San Diego and listened to him talk about supermodels and crocodiles and shock, replies that neither of them will dream. The brain will remain in what he calls a “basal state.”
Rube disagrees. He tells J______ that he believes that they will indeed dream but it will be their souls that are dreaming, not their minds. The scientist smiles a bit mockingly and asks J_____ to count from ten . . . backwards.
10 . . .
9 . . .
8 . . .
A page begins to come into focus.