The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

Mary’s eyes don’t react to a penlight. One EMT listens to her nonexistent heartbeat, and the other takes her nonexistent bloodpressure. It goes on like that for awhile. The teenagers come back with some of their friends. Other people too. Ray guesses they’re drawn by the flashing red lights on top of the EMT Suburban the way bugs are drawn to a porch light. Mr Ghosh runs at them again, flapping his arms. They back away again. Then, when Mr Ghosh returns to the circle around Mary and Ray, they come back and start looking in again.

One of the EMTs says to Ray, ‘She was your wife?’

‘Right.’

‘Well, sir, I’m sorry to say that she’s dead.’

‘Oh.’ Ray stands up. His knees crack. ‘They told me she was, but I wasn’t sure.’

‘Mary Mother of God bless her soul,’ says the fat lady with the Bugles. She crosses herself.

Mr Ghosh offers one of the EMTs the souvenir tee-shirt to put over Mary’s face, but the EMT shakes his head and goes outside. He tells the little crowd that there’s nothing to see, as if anyone’s going to believe a dead woman in the Quik-Pik isn’t interesting.

The EMT pulls a gurney from the back of the rescue vehicle. He does it with a single quick flip of the wrist. The legs fold down all by themselves. The old man with the thinning hair holds the door open and the EMT pulls his rolling deathbed inside.

‘Whoo, hot,’ the EMT says, wiping his forehead.

‘You may want to turn away for this part, sir,’ the other one says, but Ray watches as they lift her onto the gurney. A sheet has been neatly folded down at the end of the gurney. They pull it up all the way up until it’s over her face. Now Mary looks like a corpse in a movie. They roll her out into the heat. This time it’s the fat woman with the Bugles who holds the door for them. The crowd has retreated to the sidewalk. There must be three dozen, standing in the unrelieved August sunshine.

When Mary is stored, the EMTs come back. One is holding a clipboard. He asks Ray about twenty-five questions. Ray can answer all but the one about her age. Then he remembers she’s three years younger than he is and tells them thirty-four.

‘We’re going to take her to St Stevie’s,’ the EMT with the clipboard says. ‘You can follow us if you don’t know where that is.’

‘I know,’ Ray says. ‘What? Do you want to do an autopsy? Cut her up?’

The girl in the blue smock gives a gasp. Mr Ghosh puts his arm around her, and she puts her face against his white shirt. Ray wonders if Mr Ghosh is fucking her. He hopes not. Not because of Mr Ghosh’s brown skin, Ray doesn’t care about that, but because he’s got to be twice her age. An older man can take advantage, especially when he’s the boss.

‘Well, that’s not our decision,’ the EMT says, ‘but probably not. She didn’t die unattended—’

‘I’ll say,’ the woman with the Bugles interjects.

‘—and it’s pretty clearly a heart attack. You can probably have her released to the mortuary almost immediately.’

Mortuary? An hour ago they were in the car, arguing.

‘I don’t have a mortuary,’ he says. ‘Not a mortuary, a burial plot, nothing. Why the hell would I? She’s thirty-four.’

The two EMTs exchange a look. ‘Mr Burkett, there’ll be someone to help you with all that at St Stevie’s. Don’t worry about it.’

‘Don’t worry? What the hell!’

The EMT wagon pulls out with the lights still flashing but the siren off. The crowd on the sidewalk starts to break up. The counter girl, the old man, the fat woman, and Mr Ghosh look at Ray as though he’s someone special. A celebrity.

‘She wanted a purple kickball for our niece,’ he says. ‘She’s having a birthday. She’ll be eight. Her name is Tallie. She was named for an actress.’

Mr Ghosh takes a purple kickball from the wire rack and holds it out to Ray in both hands. ‘On the house,’ he says.

‘Thank you, sir,’ Ray says.

The woman with the Bugles bursts into tears. ‘Mary Mother of God,’ she says.

They stand around for awhile, talking. Mr Ghosh gets sodas from the cooler. These are also on the house. They drink their sodas and Ray tells them a few things about Mary, steering clear of the arguments. He tells them how she made a quilt that took third prize at the Castle County fair. That was in ’02. Or maybe ’03.

‘That’s so sad,’ the woman with the Bugles says. She has opened them and shared them around. They eat and drink.

‘My wife went in her sleep,’ the old man with the thinning hair says. ‘She just laid down on the sofa and never woke up. We were married thirty-seven years. I always expected I’d go first, but that’s not the way God wanted it. I can still see her laying there on the sofa.’ He shakes his head. ‘I couldn’t believe it.’

Finally Ray runs out of things to tell them, and they run out of things to tell him. Customers are coming in again. Mr Ghosh waits on some, and the woman in the blue smock waits on others. Then the fat woman says she really has to go. She gives Ray a kiss on the cheek before she does.