The Ups and Downs of Being Dead (6 page)

“Oh, swell.” Robert scrunched his face at the prospect of
meeting a bunch of old codgers.

“You must come,” Maggie insisted. “The temps are your only
network of friends now. You’ll be glad to have them as the years go by.”

“It’s not important yet,” Sam said. “But eventually, you’ll
want to be present at all meetings because you never know when something might
break in technology. You don’t want to be late when they thaw you out.”

“Yeah, okay,” Robert said with a wave of his hand. He was
tired of arguing with these two. “Maybe I’ll go home first, see what Amanda’s
doing.”

Robert was sure she had big plans for a memorial service for
him, some elaborate final performance for the grieving widow. Plus, he wanted
to be there when his attorney, Martin, gave her the bad news.

Poor Martin. Stuck with one last unsavory task. Remorse
flickered for an instant, but Robert shrugged it off. That’s what an attorney
was for, to handle the dirty work, and Martin had made a small fortune off
Robert over the years. Let him earn his severance check.

“Let me just warn you about going home,” Maggie said. “It’s
a lot tougher than it sounds. You see your family grieving and you can’t do
anything to ease their pain. Or worse, they’re
not
grieving.”

She paused to give Robert a moment to grasp the implication,
but Robert didn’t expect anyone to grieve. Well, maybe his daughter, Rachel.

“If your business is successful,” Sam said, “you’re hurt
that they’re getting along without you. If the business starts to slide, you’re
frantic to get things back on track.”

“You see your children, your grandchildren make mistakes,
and you’re powerless to help.”

Sam snorted. “You find out things you don’t want to know, or
things you wish you’d known twenty years earlier. I checked in on one of my
colleagues and found out he was surfing the ‘net for young boys. Very
disturbing.”

“But you both went back,” Robert countered. “Why shouldn’t
I?”

“No one’s saying you shouldn’t,” Maggie said. “We all go
back. But it’s rarely what we want to see.”

Robert was the first to board the flight to Atlanta,
although soon enough, a businessman claimed the same first-class seat Robert
occupied. He stood. It didn’t matter. The flight attendant wasn’t going to
interfere, and he wasn’t uncomfortable standing.

For all the walking he had done since leaving the Cryonics
Center, his feet weren’t sore. He hadn’t slept; he wasn’t hungry. His only
concern was time. How was he going to fill seventy-five years?

He pondered Sam’s question: What had he always wished he had
time to do? He wasn’t into watching sports. Sightseeing, travel, that whole
tourist thing held no lure. Go back to school? Learn a new language? Boring.
Reading books posed some major problems. He couldn’t pop into a library and
take a book off a shelf. If he read an e-book, it would be over someone’s
shoulder.

The truth was that anytime Robert had wished for more time,
it was to squeeze more business into a day. He hadn’t taken many vacations with
his family. He didn’t have a circle of friends with similar leisure activities.
In fact, he couldn’t think of any friends at all. Maybe Martin. Interesting how
his only friend was also his attorney.

Martin was an ace at negotiating real estate contracts with
failing shopping centers in need of a new anchor store. He’d also come to
Robert’s rescue on personal problems, like the skiing fiasco in Utah, or when
his daughter, Rachel decided at the age of fourteen that she wanted to be
emancipated.

The first person Robert called when he found out about the
cancer was not Amanda, but Martin. True to form, Martin had objectively walked
Robert through his options: go public with Audrey’s and re-distribute the
stores as franchises, or turn the privately-owned corporation over to Rachel.
Martin advised Robert to limit any inheritance to his son Robbie, and offered
to act as executor to Robbie’s portion, rather than Amanda.

Amanda’s share of the estate had seemed a bit too generous
for Robert, but then Martin always had a soft spot for her. All she had to do
was stick out that bottom lip, or let her crocodile tears pool in her eyes, and
Martin obliged.

When Robert became a member of the Cryonics Center, his
relationship with Martin cooled, especially when Robert retained Jackson Burke
to write up his Living Will and Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care.
Robert tried to explain that Jackson specialized in that type of law, but
Martin was miffed. And when Robert chose Anne from the center as his health
care agent instead of Amanda, Martin vehemently objected.

He just didn’t get it. If Amanda knew an autopsy would botch
Robert’s plans for revival in the future, she’d be the first to demand one.

* * *

Atlanta boasted several ‘old money’ neighborhoods like Druid
Hills and Buckhead. Amanda wanted a Buckhead address, and if she couldn’t live
right on West Paces Ferry, she certainly had insisted on Tuxedo Park.

How strange for Robert to step off a MARTA bus at the corner
of Valley Drive and West Paces, and walk the rest of the way home with a
brigade of cleaning ladies.

He stood for a moment at the end of the long driveway,
wishing he had half the money he’d sunk into that gothic revival monstrosity,
all in the hopes that with a prestigious address, Amanda might fall in love
with him.

Passing through the front door, Robert took in the two-story
foyer with its Italian marble floor. He made his way past the sitting room, the
game room, the study, the formal dining room. How many rooms did the house have
that Robert rarely set foot in?

Comfort had never been Amanda’s goal. She wanted the house
to be featured in Architectural Digest, and she didn’t stop spending until it
was. Who could have guessed that once she reached that lofty goal, she would
sink into a depression that only cream puffs and cheese blintzes could relieve.
She must have gained another fifty pounds before Robert had a guest room on the
pool level renovated into a small gym.

When he didn’t find Amanda in the kitchen, he made his way
up the back staircase and down the hall to the master bedroom. He heard the
shower running and poked his head through the glass door. The sight of Amanda
was so shocking that Robert jerked his head back through the glass as though
he’d accidentally wandered into the wrong house. He gazed through the frosted
glass at her leg propped up on the tile bench while she shaved. Yes, that was
Amanda. Robert slipped back into the shower for a closer look.

Her thighs were more taut than when he’d first met her. He
knew she’d lost weight, but when had she done all this? Had he really been
spending that much time away from home?

Even her breasts looked rebuilt. She’d had no desire to
breast feed either Robbie or Rachel, but during her pregnancies, her breasts
still swelled to gargantuan size; and once they shrank back, they were forever
marred by stretch marks.

When she straightened to allow the water to rinse her leg,
he saw how high and perky her breasts rode on her chest. She’d had them
reduced. That was nothing short of a criminal offense.

Her stomach flattened into a classic washboard, and all that
excess flesh from pregnancy was gone. Her upper arms and shoulders hinted at
muscles. This wasn’t just diet; she had to be working out for hours to sculpt
that figure.

Evidently, she’d hired a personal trainer. An image of some
sleazeball in spandex, rubbing his sweaty body next to Amanda’s, pissed Robert
off. The dirtbag should have seen her after Rachel was born: the rolls of
sagging fat, the thighs that slapped against each other when she walked. The
figure Robert had worked so hard to promote had been utterly destroyed.

She’d been the Audrey’s girl; her picture in every fashion
magazine from McCall’s to Mademoiselle. He’d even thrown good money on ads in
Vogue knowing those readers would never lower themselves to shop at Audrey’s.
But he’d done it for Amanda.

After that first photo shoot at the Empire Hotel, Amanda had
agreed to dinner. She babbled about the other models who missed their marks
causing yet another retake. She groaned about her aching feet from so many trips
down the catwalk. But Robert caught the glimmer in her eyes. She was finally
one of the girls. By the end of dinner, he was holding her hand.

And when the advertising agency provided him with layout
proofs, he hand-delivered the boards to her apartment so she could see that her
photo was by far the most prominent. She threw her arms around his neck and
crushed her lips against his.

The day Mademoiselle hit the newsstands, he bought her a
copy from the vendor on the corner. Her hands shook as she flipped through the
pages. And after studying the spread forever, she looked at him with tears in
her eyes.

Then she dragged him up to her apartment. He’d barely gotten
the door closed when she was pushing his jacket off his shoulders, and tugging
at his belt. They went at it right there on the living room floor, moaning,
clawing, grunting their lust like animals.

He wondered if she’d been faking even then.

* * *

Wrapped in a plush towel, Amanda strolled into their
bedroom. Robert followed, sinking into a chair to watch her step into a black
lace thong. She ran her fingers delicately under the front panel to smooth the
edges, then peered over her shoulder at the mirror to check out her perfect
buns. She was still putting on a show.

Robert remembered times, especially after they were married,
when she would prop a leg onto the chair he was sitting in, giving him a quick
peek at the hidden treasure between her thighs before slowly drawing a stocking
up her leg. She would dust her breasts lightly with powder, swirling the puff
around her nipples, and then bend to drop those wonders of nature into a lacy
brassiere. It was like a strip-tease in reverse that drove him wild.

By the time she was dressed, he was hard as a rock; but of
course she pushed away any advances, insisting that he not muss her makeup or
hair. He usually finished himself off in the shower.

He’d like to give himself a little personal attention right
now, watching her stretch that black jersey dress over her thighs. She hadn’t
worn anything that sexy in years.

“Mourning becomes Amanda,” he muttered.

The tasteful Crane’s vellum announcement of Robert’s
memorial service was wedged into the corner of her mirror.

She reached into the cup of her bra to plump her breasts.
Her
reduced
breasts.

Robert sadly shook his head. “You shouldn’t have.”

As she clacked down the marble stairway, she pulled her cell
phone from her purse. Robert pressed his head against the telephone to see who
she was calling. Somewhere a phone rang several times before a sullen, groggy
voice grumbled, “What?”

Robbie.

Amanda’s face locked into a smile. “Are you all packed? You
need to call a cab by ten-thirty if you’re going to make your flight.”

“I’m in fucking bed, Mother. So you can knock off the
fucking good humor bit.” It sounded like Robbie rolled to sitting. “What time
is it?”

Her smile morphed into a sneer. “You promised you’d come to
Atlanta. This is your father’s funeral, for Godsakes. I sent you the ticket. I
have a driver coming to Hartsfield to pick you up. All you have to do is catch
a cab to LaGuardia.” Her voice rose to a higher pitch with each sentence. She
ended in a whine. “How will it look if you’re not here?”

There was a pause on the other end, followed by Robbie
sucking in a breath of air. A cigarette? Or his first inhalation of the drug de
jour?

“He’s not dead, so why do I need to come home for your
little charade? You can pretend this is a funeral, but sooner or later people
are going to find out the truth.”

She escalated to screeching. “You promised you would come!”

“No, Mother. I said I’d think about it. Now when was the
last time I thought about anything and decided to do it? Never?”

Amanda slumped into the Louis the Fourteenth chair in the
foyer. Why was she so surprised? Robbie was twenty-six and still hadn’t worked
a day in his life. Why should he? She sent him a monthly allowance, to say
nothing of the million and a half she’d ‘invested’ in a condo for him in
Battery Park.

How much had she shelled out over the years to bail Robbie
out of scrapes with school officials, duped girlfriends, and the police? The
way she squandered money, she’d go through her share of Robert’s estate in ten
years. Would she end up having to sell this house?

If she cut Robbie loose, she’d be quite comfortable living
off her interest, but if she let Robbie keep eating away at the principal—?

“I just think you could show your father some respect—”

“Respect?! And this coming from a woman who called him a
loser and an imbecile, right to his face!”

Amanda massaged gently between her eyebrows to keep the
muscle from contracting into lines. “I was angry. He was dying and I couldn’t
do anything to save him.”

My God, her voice even cracked when she said that. She may
be too old for modeling, but she had a promising career in Hollywood.

“You found out he was going to freeze-dry himself and keep
most of his estate.”

She scraped her teeth across a corner of her freshly-glossed
lips, debating. “I told you if you didn’t come home, I was going to withhold
your November allowance.”

Robbie scoffed as he blew out smoke. “Don’t threaten me,
Mother. You’re so bad at it. And listen, when you transfer the funds, you
better add a couple extra thousand. I had some unexpected expenses.”

He hung up.

By the time Amanda got to Harrison’s, she’d stopped fuming.
After expelling one last breath of frustration, she painted a smile on her face
and stepped inside the restaurant.