“You need to be sure.”
“I’m sure.”
“And you understand that if it works, someone else will be walking around in your body. If someone you know sees him on the street, they’ll think it’s you. Your friends, your family.”
“I don’t have any family, and no close friends.”
Audrey paused. She wasn’t sure how to react to that. Well, she wanted to ask why not, but that seemed a bit cruel, considering why she was here.
“Audrey, I’ll be honest, I have never really connected with anyone. I mean, I’ve had girlfriends, even serious ones, but they’ve always left, and I’ve always let them. I’m not sad, or heartbroken, I just go to work the next day and try to do my job. Another girl comes along, and then we’re off to the races until the race ends again. Same with friends. I get along with people, I like listening to them, I play in a softball league with some cool guys, but if they all went away tomorrow I’d be fine. My folks are dead, my brother and I have been out of touch for years, all the rest of my extended family is all over the country and we don’t see one another. Not bad blood, just blood. I guess I only realized after these people, these ghosts, came to me on the bridge, but I’ve been like a ghost for a long time. It sounds like this friend of yours can put better use to this body than I ever have. He’s welcome to it.”
Audrey was breathless. He was so calm about it, so sure. This was the place you tried to get people to in bardo, to accept their death as part of their life, as a door through which all must pass, will pass, and have passed. He was standing calmly in the doorway, unafraid. It was the sexiest thing she’d ever encountered, and if it weren’t for Charlie, she would have wrestled him to the couch and screwed his brains out right then. No. From desire comes suffering. And besides, she could jump him after he was dead. Her Buddhist practice had suffered somewhat, she realized, since coming back to the States.
“Mike, have you thought about something less violent? Carbon monoxide? Pills?” Was she actually planning a murder with the victim?
“No, it has to be the bridge. That’s where I’m going. I mean, that’s why I’m going. Concepción, did Lily tell you about her?”
“Yes, but I don’t know about any Ghost Thief. I’ve never even heard the term before.”
Mike nodded, looked into his teacup, which he held loosely by the edge between his knees. “I figured. But they need me.”
“For what?”
“Don’t know.” He shrugged, smiled. “If your Charlie said he needed you, would you ask him what for?”
Oh yes, she was going to do him until he begged her to stop. He’d be lucky if he could walk straight when she was done with him.
She cleared her throat, fidgeted. “I guess not,” she said demurely.
She really did need to get laid more than once every twelve years. This must be what it’s like for locusts. Long periods of dormancy followed by crazy tantric bug-fucks. Maybe not.
She cleared her throat again, hoping it would clear her restless mind as well. “Well, we’ll have to be there, when you . . . when you . . .”
“Jump?” he offered.
“Really, do you have to jump? Maybe you can crawl up in a cubbyhole with a bottle of sleeping pills? You don’t have to jump, do you?”
“I think I do. Believe me, that part sort of gives me the willies. I mean, if you’re up on the bridge five days a week for ten years, there’s not five minutes that pass that it doesn’t occur to you that you are just one mistake from plummeting to your death.”
“That’s it!” she said.
“That’s what?”
“That’s why you’re who you are. That’s why you can do this, why we’ll be able to do this. Probably. You’ve lived every day of your life preparing for your death.”
“Not really preparing.”
“But you’re not afraid when you’re up there, right?”
“No. Well, I was a little bugged out when the ghosts first showed up.”
“But you’re aware, always.”
“You kind of have to be.”
“We can do this, Mike.” She put her tea down and reached out for his hands. He put his tea down and took her hands across the table.
“I’m sure we can do this; we just have to coordinate everything.”