Life is But a Joke

Sleeping in a crypt isn’t as comfortable as one might believe. But it helps if you’re already dead. Jones had never given much thought to what went on in graveyards before dying. He’d tried to avoid them, if he were going to be totally honest here. He’d played sick when the only boss who had ever been kind to him passed away unexpectedly. Had even missed his mother’s funeral, although the rest of the family had never forgiven him for that one. He hoped she had.

Jones would have said, if you were buying him a beer at your local, that life had taken a turn against him. He liked to wax rhapsodic, act as if he had no hand in his bad luck. It was easier that way. He’d comb his fingers through his long black hair, feel the corners of his blue eyes crinkle, and say, “I think God had it in for me from the get go.”

It was easier to blame circumstances rather than ask yourself why or how you’d gotten to that place. Sleeping on a park bench one night. Behind a gym the next. Cozying up—as well as one could cozy—between two sheets of cardboard, newspapers for a pillow. You learned to breathe through your nose. You learned which sounds meant imminent danger and which sounds meant cover your ears with your hands and try not to think about what was happening to someone you didn’t know and couldn’t save.

It hadn’t always been like this, but it had always been rough. Once he’d had an apartment and a roommate, a goldfish in a margarita pitcher on the counter and a spider plant hanging in a macrame pouch his grandmother had made for him.

He’d been working in sales, and he hated it, but so did his boss. Her name was Sheila, and she was only a few years older than he was. Early thirties but looked late twenties, he thought. She would sometimes sit with him at lunch. She was thin with sad eyes, and she always wore black, always wore long sleeves even in the summer. Sometimes he could make her laugh, and that gave him pleasure, as if he’d won a game at a carnival or beat the system. Her laugh changed everything.

Late on a Wednesday, they’d ended up in the copy room at the same time, and he had wanted to kiss her. A look had passed between them, and he thought she felt what he was feeling.

They’d actually made a plan to meet up one night, but she hadn’t shown. He had been there, at Charlie’s, and he’d waited, feeling an excitement he couldn’t quite place. A promise, maybe. But the next morning, after no calls from her, no texts, he hadn’t even gone into work. Hadn’t wanted to face the fact that she’d blown him off, and so he hadn’t found out about her death until two days later. The arrest of her husband. The years of abuse.

He’d tried to focus on work after that. Put more of himself into the job he hated. But then he’d been rude to a customer—who deserved it, let me tell you, he’d drunk for free that night on the story—and he hadn’t been able to land another job as easily as he had expected. Some of his charm had worn thin. The roommate kicked him out when he couldn’t scrounge rent for the third month running, and his ex had been unreceptive to a reunion since she’d guessed, correctly, that he had simply wanted access to her hot water and California King.

This became that. That became the other. He got to know which grocery stores didn’t pour Borax on the perishables that had nearly (or very recently) perished. He became friends with a few dishwashers at local restaurants who would give him the leftovers leftover by guests too well off to bring home a doggy bag. He’d wait for the handouts in the alley, smoking butts he’d found in the park.

He was lean, but he’d always been lean. More interested in how to score a beer, nice and cold if he could wrangle it, warm and old if he couldn’t. Winters, he learned, were far more dangerous than summers. Summers got hot, and he smelled. Winters, you could freeze to death, which is exactly what happened to him, why he’d wound up in the crypt in the first place, looking for a respite from the wind and snow. A graveyard cat had snuggled up to him for part of the night, only leaving when he’d expired.

She knew before he did. She understood he was dead when he exhaled but didn’t inhale, and she went off in search of the mice she often chased in the corners of the next mausoleum. She was a graveyard cat. She knew the lay of the land. The dead didn’t bother her at all.

Jones stretched, not cold anymore, not alive anymore, and pondered this new state. He had never given much thought to heaven or hell. Not since Sunday school—which he’d been unceremoniously kicked out of in second grade after beaning the nun with a pebble from his purloined slingshot. He had been too busy trying his best to remain alive to think about what might happen next, and now here he was, dead but sort of awake. Thinking about a hot cup of coffee.

He wondered what would have happened if he’d found a car to sleep in. Or if he’d run into one of his old friends from high school and they’d let him crash on the stained futon in their garage. That happened every so often. Never the ones you thought, either. There had been this one shy chick who he’d occasionally catch staring at him in the 11th grade. He’d run into her when panhandling outside of a minimart, and she’d done a double-take and then brought him home and let him clean himself up. She had tried to help him. Had tried to be nice to him. Lent him a jacket left in her closet by a former flame. But he hadn’t been nice to her back. When she’d left for work in the morning, promising to bring home pizza for dinner, he’d stolen her VCR. He wished he could say sorry now.

See, maybe life hadn’t been rough on him. Maybe he’d been rough on life. Maybe he’d been punching at everything and anything that came close to him. Too close to him. Maybe he’d felt unloveable so therefore made himself unable to love. He’d never thought like that before.

Thoughts were coming more clearly now. Was his mother in this graveyard? He believed she might be. Maybe she would say sorry she had never been able to kick her habit. Maybe he could say it didn’t matter anymore and that he sometimes had stolen change from her battered faux alligator purse for the ice cream truck, and those days were the best of his life. Sitting on the stoop of some derelict building, eating a cherry snow cone and feeling the sun beat down on him.

Small moments flickered through his mind. He thought that was supposed to happen before you died.

The snow had stopped. Sun was out and shining through the broken window at the rear of the crypt. That’s why he’d frozen, he realized now. Hadn’t seen that window in the night. It was why there was a layer of snow on the floor, and why that cat had curled up on his chest. He didn’t feel cold at all now. Didn’t feel anything, except that strange dark craving for coffee.

The cat wandered back into the small building and looked at him. He had wondered if he was going to be invisible now. At first, he felt that because the cat clearly saw him, maybe he wasn’t. But he’d known cats before. They sometimes stared at things he hadn’t been able to see. So did cats see ghosts?

He wrapped his arms around himself for a moment, as he always did when it was chilly out. Then he realized the movement was unnecessary. He was grateful to not be cold.

The cat eyed him for a moment, then seemed to decide he was worth her time, and she wound herself between his legs, sinuous, and he automatically reached down to pet her, watched his hand make contact, but felt nothing. She seemed to appreciate the gesture and butted her head against his knee before leaping to a small nest of shredded burlap on a marble ledge and starting to purr. She was right in a sunbeam. Basking the way cats did.

He stood in the doorway of the crypt for a moment, peeking through the crack to see if anyone was around. Across from him was a similar building with a stone angel on top. While he watched, a wisp passed through the door and then solidified into the form of a woman. She was dressed in a long black dress, and her hair was up in a twist. She looked pale but pretty in a funereal way. With a jolt, he realized it was Sheila. He felt her looking in his direction, expectantly. “Are you coming, Jones?” she called out to him. “I’m dying for a cup of coffee.” She smiled. He could see her smile clearly, and he remembered how he’d always felt when she’d teased him at work. They’d had a connection.

Old him would have taken a breath for courage. Alive him would have felt nervous. He wished there was a mirror. How did his hair look? “We can go down to the diner,” she said, approaching his crypt. “Nobody knows we’re there, but the coffee is hot, and believe it or not, we can taste it.”

The cat looked at him. He straightened his coat and squared his shoulders.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” Sheila called.

He’d always had something to lose before. Something riding on the next spin. He’d always felt like he was missing out on the gag, that he didn’t understand the joke. But maybe it was a joke without a punchline.

“I’ll help you,” she said, and he believed her. He’d wanted to help her, too, once upon a time.

He didn’t take a breath, but he stepped out into the sunshine.