Vicious Circle

Rolling her eyes to show what she thought of these instructions, Lisa flung the door open. Showing me into the parlor meant pointing to a door off the narrow entrance hall to the left as she took off in the opposite direction herself. There was a door right at the end of the hall where I could see Imelda’s back as she labored over her latest patient. She was singing to herself, a gospel song, most likely, but it was under her breath and from this distance I couldn’t make out either the words or the tune.

I’d been here before, about two years back, so I knew the drill. I also knew that Imelda didn’t like me very much: exorcists were bad for business. Sending me into the parlor to wait was a piece of calculated sadism, but there wasn’t a hell of a lot to do about it, so I just took a deep breath, held it, and walked in.

The Ice-Maker is basically just a faith-healer with a very specialized clientele: a clientele whom no other doctor, whether alternative or vanilla, is likely to want to poach. She deals exclusively with zombies, and she claims, by laying-on of hands, to slow the processes of decay almost to a standstill. I always thought it was bullshit, but Nicky goes to her twice a month without fail—and he’s been dead a long while now, so I respect his judgment on matters of physical decomposition. Her monicker—Ice-Maker—comes from her boast that her hands are as good as a deep-freeze in terms of keeping dead meat fresh.

But the smell in the parlor, I have to say, was one of sour-sweet decay, deeply ingrained. Like I said, this wasn’t my first visit, so I knew what to expect, but it still hit me like a wall and almost knocked me down. I went on inside, and six or seven of the walking dead glanced up to appraise the newcomer. The sitting dead, actually, since the room was laid out like a doctor’s waiting room with chairs all around three walls, and most of the chairs were taken. There were even magazines: a chalk-faced woman in the corner with a small hole in the flesh of her cheek was flicking through a vintage copy of Cosmo.

Zombies don’t breathe, so sharp intakes of breath were out of the question; and there wasn’t a stand-up piano to tinkle and plunk its way into shocked silence as I walked in. All the same, though, I could feel the tension. The zombies who’d already looked up to clock me carried on staring: the others, catching the mood, glanced up to see what was happening.

I sat down, just inside the door, and picked up a Reader’s Digest. Flicking through it, I found an article about a possible enhanced role for walnuts in the treatment of colonic cancer, and started to read. The great thing about the Reader’s Digest is that it exists outside of space and time as we know them: mystics and ecstatics read it to achieve a trance state deeper than normal meditative techniques allow.

Sadly, though, I wasn’t going to be allowed to attain a lower consciousness tonight. Over the top of the magazine, I saw a man’s broad torso heave into view.

“You’re alive,” said a harsh voice, through a bellowslike soughing of breath.

“Yeah,” I agreed, without looking up. “I’m working on it, though. You know how it is.”

“The fuck you doing here, you blood-warm piece of shit?” This was said more vehemently, and the waft of fetid breath made me wince.

“I’m waiting for a friend,” I said mildly.

There was a heavy pause, and then: “Wait outside.”

I looked up. The guy must have been a real holy terror back when he was still counted among the living, and if anything he was even scarier now that he was dead. He stood about six two, and it was mostly muscle: the kind of sculpted, highly defined muscle you get from working out. And his arms were bare and his T-shirt was tight, so you got to see the muscles sliding against one another when he moved like tectonic plates. His bald head glistened—not with sweat, obviously, so I guessed it must have been with oil of some kind. He was a thanato-narcissist, in love with his own defunct flesh and keeping it polished up like a museum piece.

But I’d been pushed around enough for one night: enough, and heading inexorably toward more than enough.

“I’m fine right here,” I said, and returned to the good news about walnuts.

He smacked the magazine out of my hands. “No,” he growled. “You’re not. ’Cause if you stay here, I’m gonna rip your tongue out.”

I glanced around the room, took in the reactions from the rest of Imelda’s dead clientele. They seemed a little uneasy about what was happening—but then, Imelda’s services aren’t cheap. Most of them looked to be a lot more well-heeled than this sad piece of worm-food, and they probably had that whole middle-class anxiety about making a scene. That was good news for me: it meant they were less likely to mob me and tear my arms and legs off if this went badly.